Bowden folded his arms. “I agree. The sooner, the better. But we’re not ready yet. We haven’t done any of the live weapons testing, and we don’t have our people in place to designate the targets.”
“We’ll try to get you time to test once you’re down there, but if this thing is ready to go, you may not be able to get the ground force in place. You may just have to go and throw bombs at it, and at least delay it becoming operational.”
“You mean we’d just be pitching bombs into the reflector panels?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes. Then we follow up with the ground forces—if they can get through the defenses…on which we have next to no intel.” He sighed. “But the bottom line is that we can’t let the satrap get a message off to Kulsis.”
“If we hit it early, though, it’s going to be a bitch going back. Once we’ve tipped our hand and shown them our capabilities, they’re going to ring the antenna with every gun and missile they have.”
“Yes, they are. But we’ll have to do it anyway, if it comes to that.”
“Well, fuck.”
“Exactly.”
Bowden sighed. “Okay, so what’s your plan? You said we’re going to go down to the planet for the attack?”
“Yes. We’ll get you planetside via a high-angle polar insertion, then equip the craft and get them ready for the mission.”
Bowden nodded. “Makes sense. Trying to develop some sort of heat shield for the weapons systems would have been a bitch, and no one likes having ordnance go off alongside you.” He smiled. “Back when I did—” he stopped with a wince. “When I flew—before that day—I never thought it sounded like fun, anyway.”
“No, I’ll bet not. Bottom line is we’re going to get you down to the planet ASAP, along with the personnel and equipment you need for the mission. Once you get set up there, you can do whatever testing you need, assuming there’s time.”
“So,” Bowden asked with a wry smile, “when do we leave?”
* * * * *
Chapter 6
Bowden walked off the interface craft and got his first look at the planet. It reminded him of his weapons detachments at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada. Hot and dry, with an emphasis on hot and dry. And, if he understood correctly, it was going to get a lot hotter and drier as the Searing approached. A number of people were working to unload the supplies the interface craft carried, and he pulled one aside.
“First time here,” he said. “Where do I go?”
The man—his rank was unknown since he was working in a sweat-stained T-shirt—pointed toward a point of land to the west. “It’s just around there…uh, sir,” he added.
“Is there any sort of transportation?”
“Sorry, sir. The trucks are for carrying the bombs and stuff you guys brought down.” He nodded to Bowden’s legs. “Your only transport is what God gave you, unless you can ride a whinnie.”
“A whinnie?”
“Big-ass lizards.”
“No thanks.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to walk. It’s how we get back and forth, too. You’ll also want a hat, and soon.”
“Thanks,” Bowden said with a resigned sigh and a glance up at the dual suns. He started walking. The air wing had to do a lot of walking around Fallon, too, during their periodic trips there. You got used to it. As long as you didn’t work hard, you didn’t even sweat much, since the ultra-arid air wicked it off as soon as it appeared on your skin.
As he approached the point of land, he saw a large figure who had stopped and was looking around.
“Hi, Dork,” he said when he recognized the soldier.
“Hi, suh,” the trooper said, saluting.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, I was told the camp was this way, but I don’t see it, and I wasn’t sure if it was this way or around that point of land over there.” He sighed. “I’m lost, suh.”
Bowden smiled. His sense of direction is really bad if he can’t go from one point to another. “You’re on the right path. It should just be around this point of land.”
They started walking again, and the tent city began to materialize from behind the rocky outcropping a minute later. “See?” Bowden asked. “You were almost to it.”
The big soldier smiled. “Thanks, suh. Directions are hard.”
Bowden smiled but privately worried. Hopefully, the soldier could remember the directions he’d been given on operating the mule.
Camp Stark was nestled back in a small, sheltered area between two slopes a short way from the edge of the tableland that overlooked a long valley. In addition to the tents that marked the Terran presence on the planet, Bowden could see a corral as they approached, and he got his first look at the whinnies.
The massive creatures resembled a cross between an iguana and a Komodo dragon, if they’d been fed steroids from birth. From head to tail, they were over three meters long, and stood well over a meter high at the shoulder. They had wide, clawed feet, which were obviously made for digging, and would probably help with climbing some of the arid landscape nearby.
A pretty, olive-skinned woman was teaching a corporal how to ride as they walked by. Although her instruction seemed patient and well thought out, the corporal was having difficulties, and the more the corporal fought, the more the whinnie stamped and snorted.
Bowden stepped up to the railing and chuckled. He’d happily take an F/A-18 over one of the bucking lizards any day of the week. If we weren’t a gazillion miles and a couple of centuries from the closest Hornet, that is.
The woman turned. “Want to give it a try since you think it’s so funny?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” Bowden said. “I was just wondering, though, how hard it was to teach people to ride those things. We have a mission where people will need to go a long way, fast, and those things—whinnies, right?—are probably the best way to get them there.”
“They’re not hard to ride,” she said with a smile, “even if the corporal is having difficulties. As soon as he stops fighting the whinnie, he’ll be fine.”
Bowden nodded to Dork. “Even someone as big as him?”
“He’d need one of our bigger whinnies, but I don’t see any reason why not.”
“I love horses,” Dork said. “I rode a lot back home.”
“Then you’ll do fine with a whinnie,” the woman said. She patted her whinnie’s shoulder. “Athena and her friends are a lot smarter and easier to ride. If you could sit a horse, you can easily ride a whinnie. ”
“Okay,” Dork said, brightening. “I’ll come over as soon as I can.”
“Good,” Bowden said. “Make sure Renaldi gets over here, too.”
* * *
Bowden sighed as he looked at the interface craft’s laser designator the next morning. Despite the number of times he’d asked to have the wires run through the box and directly into the wing’s hardpoint, the designator looked like a bowl of spaghetti, with wires hanging out of it and running every which way, not bundled up in nice zip-tied runs like he was used to with U.S. military aircraft. If there was time, that still had to be fixed. If the stupid box hadn’t been welded shut, he would have done it himself a long time ago.
“Hey, Kevin, got a moment?” a voice asked from behind him, and he turned to see Tom Byrd.
“Yeah,” Bowden said. He nodded to the designator. “That’s still not the way I asked for it to be.”
Byrd nodded after a quick glance. “It’s just begging for something to come by and rip all the wires out of it.”
“My thoughts exactly. What’s up?”
Byrd looked at him for a second. “This may not be any of my business,” he said finally, “but why aren’t you leading this mission? You seem to know all the tech better than any of us, and you’ve done all of the target analysis…just seems like you should be leading it, and you’re not even going.”
Bowden turned back to the laser designator, unable to meet Byrd’s eyes, and smoothed one of the wires. “I ca
n’t,” he said. “I just can’t.” He played with another of the wires, waiting for Byrd to leave, but he could tell the aviator was still standing behind him. Bowden sighed and turned around.
“My last mission didn’t end well. It was in Somalia.”
“Somalia?” Byrd asked. “I’m not even sure I know where that is. Africa, maybe? What the hell were you doing there?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone really knew.” He shrugged. “It is in Africa by the way, and if there is a place that is the direct opposite of Vietnam, it’s Somalia. Dry, arid, and very few trees.” He sighed, remembering.
“The place went to shit in 1991, when the country’s dictator was overthrown in a military coup staged by a coalition of opposition warlords. Then the warlords began fighting among themselves, and the country fell apart. Everybody there was starving…it was pretty awful. We went in as part of an international humanitarian and peacekeeping effort, but nobody really wanted us there. The various militias disregarded the cease-fires that were in place, and all of them looted and pillaged what they could. Basically, the place just sucked ass.
“Right at the end, there was a guy we wanted to catch—a guy named Aidid—who we knew was responsible for a lot of the badness. We sent in a bunch of guys to grab some of his folks, but the indigs shot down a couple of helicopters and killed a bunch of our people. Newspapers had lots of pictures of the locals doing awful things to their bodies. We decided to kill him, and I led a mission to bomb the building he was hiding in.”
Bowden sighed, a lot heavier this time. “Only it turns out the guy that sold us the location didn’t play straight with us; he gave us Aidid’s chief rival, who was attending his daughter’s wedding at a place outside of town. We couldn’t get anyone close to the building to confirm Aidid’s presence, but the chain of command went ahead and authorized the strike anyway.
“Just as my bombs hit the building, a little girl, all dressed in white, ran out the front door of the building—a church—and the force of the explosion threw her almost thirty meters.” Bowden saw her small limbs spread wide as she cartwheeled through the air, and he choked back a sob. “She…” He swallowed, reliving the end of the memory, then set his shoulders and continued, “She was impaled on the wrought iron fence that went around the yard.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes.
“The last…the last thing I saw on my targeting camera was her twitching, broken body on the fence, her hand outstretched to the mother she’d never see again.”
His breath shuddered out of him. “The newspapers back home ran the picture of the little girl the next day, in color, calling for blood. My blood. I’d have been happy to let them have it. The chain of command sent me home for the official investigation, but I ended up—” he waved a hand at his surroundings, “—here.”
Byrd looked away. “Yeah. Shit happens in wars sometimes. Just be glad you never saw napalm used, or anyone who got it on them. That’s a sight.” He swallowed. “Let me just say it’s unforgettable, even if it wasn’t your bombs that did it.” He turned back to Bowden. “In your case, even though the bombs were yours, hitting the wrong target wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t know the targeting was bad or that the guy lied. You’re not to blame for the girl.”
Bowden shook his head and poked himself in the chest. “My plane. My bombs. My thumb on the button. That’s how the little girl got impaled on the fence. So, bottom line: I did it. And I won’t do it again. I can’t.”
* * *
“Lieutenant Bowden!” a voice yelled as someone shook him. It seemed like he’d just gone to sleep after a day of trying to get the aircraft the way they were supposed to be, so the new weapons systems could be tested out the next day. And the laser designators still hadn’t been rewired.
“Mphf?” he asked.
“Lieutenant! You’re needed at the command tent for a radio call. Quick—there’s only a couple minutes of, uh, connectivity!”
He rolled out of his cot and started pulling on his boots.
“No time for that, sir!” the private standing by his cot exclaimed. “We have to go now!”
Bowden didn’t bother lacing the boots; he got up and raced after the private, who waved at the people standing guard at the command tent, and they held open the flap. Not even a framed door, yet.
An Army captain—Bo Moorefield—nodded when he saw Bowden, waved him over, and barked into radio handset, “Glass Palace this is Starkpatch. Lieutenant Bowden is present, over.”
“Bowden, Murphy here. We only have a minute before we run out of line-of-sight comms, but H-Hour is right now. Last pass had the vehicles in the target area wired up and running; they’re charging the transmitter. We have to stop that from happening. I need you to get the mission underway ASAP!”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bowden said. “We’ll get the aircraft loaded and out as quickly as we can.”
“Understood. Three updates for you. First, the two mech columns—one that Captain Moorefield is readying now, and another under Lieutenant Tapper—will not get to the target as soon as you do. The most optimistic estimates put them an hour behind.
“Second, Captain Moorefield is sending a squad with the two handheld designators on whinnie-back, led by Aliza Turan. They’re going to try to get into place by the time you reach the antenna.”
“Good, glad to have them. A ground designate ups the chances of mission success exponentially.”
“It’s good for something else.”
Uh-oh. “What’s that?”
“I need you to fly the mission,” Murphy said. “Captain Hirst broke his ankle last night playing soccer and can’t do it. You have to fill in for him.”
“I can’t—”
“You have to. Byrd will hit the control station, Fiezel the antenna. You are only flying airborne back up. Even if you’re needed, there will be a ground designate. Your bombs will go where they’re supposed to.”
“I don’t—”
“Lieutenant, you must, and you know it,” Murphy said, his voice noticeably fading. “I don’t want to make this an order. But if you don’t fly the mission, we’ll all be—”
Static.
“That’s it,” Moorefield said when Murphy’s voice didn’t come back again. “What do you need from me?”
I can do this, Bowden thought, squaring his shoulders. I don’t have to drop bombs; just go along as the spare. Byrd is a RIO—he knows his shit. He’ll flatten the control station. I won’t have to drop.
“Kevin?” Moorefield asked. “What do you need from me?”
And there’s a team on the ground to designate the target. It’s their fault if a bomb goes astray, not mine. I can do this. It won’t be my fault.
“Lieutenant Bowden, you heard Murphy. We’re on a countdown clock, now. I repeat: what do you need from me?”
I can do this. I have to do this. Everyone is counting on me. All I need to do is fly, not actually drop bombs. I can do this. I will do this. Bowden focused his eyes on Moorefield. “Just thinking about what needs to be done,” he lied. “Murphy said you can send someone to lead my two ground designate guys?”
“I’m sending Aliza Turan and Sergeant Cook’s squad along with them. They’re our most accomplished whinnie riders. If anyone can get your guys to where they need to be, it’s them.”
“Good. Get them moving right away; they’ll take the longest to get there. Then call over to the airfield; we need the aircraft prepped and loaded, ASAP.” And the bombs and missiles still had to be assembled, and there were a million other final details that needed to be overseen. This was the clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks. He looked down and realized he was still in his pajamas. “I guess I ought to get dressed, too.” He smiled, trying to push back the feelings that rose up, trying to overwhelm him, drag him under, drown him in paralyzing fear. Fear of flying a bombing mission again, even as an observer. “I can wake up the crews on my way.”
Okay. This is just like the last-second surprise missions they’d add t
o the flight schedule in Fallon, just to see if the air wing could rise to the occasion, Bowden thought. Except here, I’m missing all the people I would normally have to support me. But dammit, we’re naval air. Can we do it? You bet your ass we can!
* * * * *
Chapter 7
Aliza Turan woke to voices in the dark and froze for a second until her brain was awake enough to focus. She’d thought the memory had been put behind her, but vestiges of it were still obviously lurking in the dark places of her mind.
“Over there,” a woman said grumpily, pointing to Aliza.
A shadow moved from the woman who’d spoken to Aliza’s bed. “Miss Turan?”
“Yes?”
“Captain Moorefield needs you at the command tent.”
“Be right there,” she said, now fully awake. She smiled. Being needed always catapulted her out of the past and into the present; it made everything right and reminded her that, yes, she had a purpose in life again.
As soon as the man left, she pushed off the scratchy blanket, dressed quickly, and made her way to the command tent. Even though she’d hurried, she saw as she entered that she wasn’t the first to arrive. She frowned slightly as she caught sight of Sergeant James Cook and Corporal Bob Parker already talking with Moorefield; she’d hoped to talk privately with him. There was obviously a mission or crisis to deal with. So, no moonlight walk, then.
Damn it.
Moorefield’s smile when he saw her, though, alleviated her disappointment a little. It also made her heart flutter.
Waveoff (Murphy's Lawless Book 6) Page 5
