Harwood nodded and led the way up the ramp with Clutch following. The ramp closed quickly behind them, and the plane began taxiing directly into a short runway takeoff, lifting, banking, and leveling across the northern tip of Michigan.
As they ascended into the sky, Harwood glanced at Clutch. His face was stoic as he held his left arm gingerly across his chest. Sometimes the need to heal the psyche outweighed the need to heal physical wounds. The gunshot to the shoulder was stabilized, but Harwood knew that Clutch needed to be here with him just as much as he needed Clutch. Completing the mission was important to both of them.
One of the pilots removed his seat belt and stumbled into the cargo hold.
“We’ve got a coast guard ship on fire about forty miles south of us,” he said.
“Has to be them,” Harwood said. “Go there. Get us over the target and drop the ramp.”
He held out his hand, grasped Clutch by the forearm as Clutch did the same to him, and they bumped shoulders.
“Let’s get some,” Harwood said.
“Roger that.”
* * *
Sassi stepped onto the Black Hawk helicopter with General Cartwright and donned the headset as she chose a rear-facing seat across from the general.
“Breaking all sorts of rules having you out here, but you saw the picture and you pegged the slave ship thing, which has given us an opportunity to prepare the population for potential air strikes, especially something involving chemical weapons, maybe even nukes.”
“I’ve always just wanted to make a difference, General. Your Reaper saved my life. Now I want to help him and you.”
The helicopter rattled, lifted off, and nosed over.
“Coastie Six One, this is Nosebreaker Six,” Cartwright said.
“Send it, Nosebreaker,” the voice came back through the headset. It was scratchy and distant, but distinguishable.
“Reaper element inbound to target area. Confirm when you have positive lock on target vessel.”
“Aye. No confirmation as of yet. Have eight of now thirteen ships confirmed as valid vessels on the Great Lakes Waterway.” He paused. “Make that ten of thirteen. Narrowing it down.”
“Are the three remaining in one area?” Cartwright asked.
“Couldn’t be more spread apart,” the coast guard watch office said. “North, central, and south near Chicago. We’re working it as fast as we can. Have ships closing in on the one in Chicago area. Have a C-130 pinging the one near Milwaukee. Have another C-130 chasing the one that’s just south of Green Bay.”
“Roger. Has to be one of the two northern ones. Keep me advised.”
“Wilco.”
Sassi waited for the conversation to end before saying, “Is it possible they don’t have one of the ships? It seems the one in the north is too far north and the one in the center is too far south from what we know about the times and distances.”
“Anything’s possible, but remember, we don’t know where the trucks met the ship, if there’s a ship.”
“There’s a ship,” Sassi said. “I saw the picture. It all makes sense now. The way that town was vacant of even ISIS fighters. The hollowed core from the chemical attacks and cleanup. Everything points to that place being vacated a month or so before save that small leave-behind force.”
“Could be they just went somewhere else,” Cartwright said.
“No. I can feel this,” Sassi said. “I may not be a soldier, but I know as much about terrorists as anyone on the planet.”
“Why do I believe that?” Cartwright said.
“Because it’s true.”
“Okay, then where should we go to help out?”
“I say north. It’s either the northern ship or one that they haven’t located yet. I’ve had no luck on the logs, but the coast guard should know something. It’s not like these ships can just pass through these locks and narrows without being registered and noticed. But what will we do there when we arrive?”
As she spoke, her voice rattled with the vibration of the rotor blades whipping overhead.
“We’re making this up as we go. We’ve got two of the best warriors in the army in an airplane ten minutes ahead of us. They’re rigged to jump into the night, possibly the cold lake. Might be we have to assist them. Might be they’ll get on the ship and need someone to talk to. Might be we have to land on the ship.”
“A lot of ‘might bes.’”
“Roll with it.”
General Cartwright gave the instructions to the pilot to fly toward the last known location of the ship the coast guard was monitoring.
The night was giving the first hint of morning, a gray edge pushing far off in the east, nudging against the blackness, trying to make its presence known. They were flying at 150 knots and were well over Lake Michigan monitoring the coast guard UHF radio net and satellites communications.
“Mayday! Mayday! We are being attacked! We are—”
The voice went silent as if the radio had been cut off. Cartwright imagined the worst. A terrorist on board slitting the throat of the radio operator. That image was all he needed.
“Find that ship and go there,” he ordered.
CHAPTER 32
Jasar Tankian
Tankian did Khoury’s job and calculated the distance to Milwaukee—thirty-five miles. All the drones had plenty of distance to reach the targets. He stared at the horizon, believing he could see buildings etched against the sky, but it was most likely a mirage.
There was a shift in him that he had a hard time understanding. Everything for Tankian had always been about the transaction. No emotion. Get the deal done. Now, though, the transaction was devoid of currency and more appropriately focused on the Reaper, the man who had destroyed his business, perhaps his life. Defeating the Reaper became the transaction. He thought about Milwaukee and what a soldier does. He protects his country. Inflicting damage on Milwaukee, or any place in the United States, would be tantamount to wounding Vick Harwood.
He nodded, his mission clear, and walked belowdecks to the cavern holding the aircraft and ordered all his men to gather around him, which they did.
“This morning, we go into battle. Our mission is to attack Milwaukee by air and land. Move through the city swiftly and execute the plans you have rehearsed. Because we are going earlier than we’d anticipated, we are going with option number two. Do not focus on the arena but your other targets.”
The men nodded. They had rehearsed. They looked confident, and so was he. Their quick defeat of the U.S. Coast Guard buoyed him.
Tankian turned to Kareem and said, “Execute option two exactly as you rehearsed it. I’ll be in the lead aircraft.”
Kareem said, “Inshallah,” and dashed to the control room. Tankian walked along the centerline of the runway as the bow began opening again. The first yellow hues of morning licked against the horizon. His men were maneuvering the drones into the center of the runway.
First to fly were the Sobirat reconnaissance drones. They catapulted from the ship and banked to the west, toward Milwaukee. Next were the Hunter S-70 Russian attack drones laden with Russian R-60 air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. They were programmed to hit offset targets from where the personnel were landing.
Last were the personnel drones, one of which carried the canisters of chemical weapons Wolff’s terrorists had secured from Assad by way of al-Ghouta. Tankian boarded the control aircraft that carried the chemical weapons canisters.
He hunched over and moved to the nose of the aircraft, squeezing between silver chemical bombs that he would push out of the drone over the designated targets. The canisters were secured to the skin of the aircraft with bungee cords. He turned and studied the control panel. Even though Kareem would control all the drones from the ship’s command and control platform inside the flight operations area, there was a manual override that Tankian would use if he had to.
Two security men boarded with him. Given his weight and that of the chemical canisters, he imagined, they dec
ided to only allow three, not four, personnel on this drone.
The four tilt-rotors hummed with precision as the commandos pushed his aircraft into the centerline. The engines revved to a high pitch, ready for takeoff. Tankian waited for that moment of the brakes releasing and waited … and waited.
Gunfire echoed in the chamber. The two commandos in his aircraft stared at him for direction. There was an emergency release to open the ramp above his head on the starboard side. The release could open the rear ramp or the nose cone. Because the engines were on the wings, the fuselage was almost entirely cargo space, allowing for frontal- and rear-loading platforms.
Tankian was confused, though. Why weren’t they moving? Were the snipers killing the rest of the coast guard in the water? But that wasn’t possible, because the snipers had collapsed from the top and boarded their own drone.
His stomach boiled with uncertainty. Was this the Reaper?
Tankian shouted into his radio, “Launch! Launch!”
* * *
Harwood and Clutch tucked into delta dives after they’d exited the Casa. The wind buffeted Harwood’s face, pushing his skin into all kinds of deformed shapes, peeling his lips back from his teeth, making him feel like a baying animal lunging for the kill.
He cued on the fire still raging on the water and then picked up the container ship sliding south quickly. More than twenty knots and less than thirty. Without any real reference points, it was difficult to judge the speed. They would gain canopy about one thousand feet above sea level.
The relief of the ship became clearer by the second. An anomaly jumped out at Harwood immediately. The ship’s bow had a platform extending forward. Suddenly one, then two, then three aircraft shot from the ship like bats from a cave. They banked hard right, to the west, and then leveled into steady flight.
More aircraft—drones, he presumed—took flight from the ship. They had been correct. This was an aircraft carrier steaming into the American heartland to launch a blindside terrorist attack.
Harwood motioned to Clutch. They pulled rip cords and gained canopy. Harwood toggled so that he was coming in low over the ship’s stern and tumbled onto the top row of containers that were stacked high above the deck. Clutch followed suit. He engaged his canopy release to prevent the wind from dragging him and then unhooked his harness as he retrieved the M4 he had snatched from the Air National Guard armory. Being that the weapons were used only for guard duty, ammunition was limited, giving them each only four twenty-round magazines. Pathetic, but better than nothing. Just barely.
He felt naked without his customary rucksack but appreciated the lightness with which he could move. The buzzing sound was deafening—like a thousand hornets in a hive ready to bust loose.
“Follow me,” he said to Clutch.
They ran to the bow and watched two more large drones fly through the gap and lift into the sky, banking and joining the others flying to the west—an aerial armada headed west.
Harwood climbed down the containers and swung onto the runway, hanging from a chain and landing on the balls of his feet, his rifle at eye level. Clutch performed a similar maneuver from the opposite direction.
Four large cargo drones just like the Sabrewing aircraft that had crashed with Clutch on board, where this had all started, were lined up, ready for takeoff, tilt-rotor blades spinning and buzzing.
Two men were at the far end of the runway, maybe three hundred meters away. Easy shot with his SR-25. Fifty-fifty with this M4. He fired, causing the men to duck and maybe hitting one of the two. Clutch fired as well. The backfire was quick, forcing them to find scarce cover. Harwood ran toward the lead Sabrewing-like aircraft and used its fuselage as protection, though it was a risky move with the drone at full rpm, ready for flight.
Clutch shouted something that Harwood couldn’t hear. The drone inched forward, pushing against the brakes, when the nose cone lifted up and Tankian barreled out at him, tackling him and swatting his rifle away.
The shock and surprise quickly ebbed as Harwood grabbed his knife. Bullets washed past his head, and he didn’t know if Clutch was shooting at Tankian or if Tankian’s troops were firing at them.
Tankian charged him, ignoring the knife, and lifted Harwood in an acrobatic wrestling move that belied the man’s bulk. Harwood slashed and punched, but the big man was too strong. His muscles were like coiled steel cables controlled by hydraulics, squeezing and squeezing until Harwood could barely breathe.
They were moving to the lip of the vessel when Harwood landed a knife slash in Tankian’s shoulder, causing him to release just enough pressure, where Harwood landed three punches with his left hand while Tankian controlled his knife hand.
In his periphery, Clutch was fending off multiple terrorists with his pistol and M4. They were in the middle of the hornet’s nest, complete with buzzing sound effects.
He and Tankian traded blows on the edge of the ship. Harwood connected with a leg sweep, tripping Tankian, who landed with a thud on the metal deck. He moved in for the kill when something slapped at his shoulder. He immediately knew he’d been shot but failed to realize how close he was to the lip of the platform. He rolled, felt himself falling, and hung tenuously on to the edge of the metal jaw.
As Harwood pulled himself up, he saw Tankian standing above him with a pistol aimed at his face. A shot rang out. Harwood fell into the water.
And everything went black.
CHAPTER 33
Tankian turned around after he had shot the Reaper and saw the Reaper’s partner and his former captive, Corporal Ian Nolte Jr., fending off his commandos. The man had considerable fighting skill but would be overwhelmed in short order.
He spoke into his radio. “Kareem, do not kill the American. Take him prisoner.”
“Inshallah.”
Four of his commandos surrounded the man, who now was pulling a trigger with no ammunition in the magazine. Tankian walked up and punched him directly in the wounded shoulder.
“I had that tended for you in Greece. This is the respect you show?”
Nolte stared at Tankian, looked skyward, cocked his head, and said, “I think you misjudge your position, Tankian.”
Rotor blades chopped in the air. A helicopter banked and then began spitting machine-gun ammunition at them. Tankian dove to the ground as everyone scrambled. Smoke grenades skittered across the deck, billowing thick gray clouds of noxious gas. Tankian scrambled to the first drone, reentered, and shouted into his radio, “Launch!”
Nothing happened after a minute, which was a lifetime in this environment. He found the manual override panel and began the process of setting the GPS waypoints as smoke boiled through the open nose of the aircraft. He cursed and crawled forward to close the front end.
* * *
Harwood bobbed to the surface of the water, thrashing, freezing. The chill was bone deep.
He’d let go just before Tankian pulled the trigger, but that didn’t stop the bullet from grazing him as he’d released. He felt his shoulder and found he was missing a chunk of flesh. A hit that could have been much worse.
The container ship loomed gigantic in front of him. He swam as best he could toward the ship, found the maintenance ladder, and began climbing the side of the massive hull. With each pull, his shoulder screamed with pain.
Finally reaching the top, he flipped over the gunwale and took a few deep breaths, steadying himself. The helicopter roared above. Cartwright? Coast guard? He couldn’t tell. The sun was peeking above the horizon, but the shadows were long and the light still dim. Smoke billowed over the lip of the ship.
He crouched and ran low toward the smoke, climbing down to the deck level where he’d just fallen a few minutes before. The front end was completely covered in smoke, a gray cloud like a San Diego marine layer inverting and hanging low. He walked into the smoke, following the sound of the whining rotors.
The nose was still up on the lead cargo drone. He continued toward the opening with no weapon other than his determinati
on. As he approached, a dark shadow appeared to be crawling forward. This time, Harwood didn’t hesitate.
He leaped forward and tackled Tankian, who was reaching up to close the nose cone. Harwood’s forward momentum pulled Tankian into the aircraft while the big man managed to close the front end by sheer physics, his grip, weight, and strength snapping the nose cone shut. His massive hand was grasping the handle. Harwood’s unstoppable force propelled him backward.
They rolled into the cargo hold as the aircraft leaped forward, bumped along the runway, and lifted into the air. Four silver containers were strapped on either side of the aircraft. Oxygen tanks?
Tankian crouched low and began swinging wildly. He was a brawler, hoping to land one in ten punches that might crush a skull.
Harwood was a technical fighter. He used leverage and quickness. About a half foot shorter than the giant, Harwood parried the roundhouses from Tankian. Each of them had to balance as the aircraft was shifted its altitude and azimuth. The drone didn’t fly smoothly. Rather, its corrections were sharp and quick, like a nervous driver on the brakes.
With his lower center of gravity, Harwood waited for the next shift and struck as Tankian stepped backward to regain his balance and placed a hand on the ceiling of the aircraft. With Tankian’s midsection exposed, Harwood pummeled away with his right fist, his left rendered 50 percent effective from the gunshot.
Tankian doubled over, clasping his gut, which provided Harwood with an opportunity to bring an MMA-style knee to Tankian’s face. The man’s nose cracked, and blood splayed everywhere inside the mostly white interior. Still, Tankian barreled forward and tackled Harwood, using his fist to strike near his left shoulder. The blood in his eyes made his punches less accurate, giving Harwood an opening to land three elbows to the man’s temple.
Reaper: Drone Strike: A Sniper Novel Page 27
