Razor's Edge d-3

by Dale Brown

  The baby sniffed, burped, then stopped crying.

  “You got the touch, Captain,” said one of the men.

  “Well, I’m quitting while I’m ahead,” she said, handing the baby off.

  Chapter 51

  Iraq Intercept Missile Station Two, northern Iraq 1510

  Musah Tahir rose from his prayer mat and bowed once more in the direction of Mecca before starting back to his post in the radar van. For the past three days Allah had been remarkably beneficent, rewarding his poor efforts at improving the Russian radar equipment with fantastic victories over the Americans. Volleys of missiles — a combination of SA-2s, Threes, and Sixes — had brought down several aircraft.

  Or at least his commanders told them they had. Tahir was aware only of his own small role in the war as both technician and operator. He had studied engineering at MIT as well as the Emirates, and in some ways this job was a million times below his capability. But fate and Allah had brought him here, and he could not argue with either.

  Tahir settled on his narrow metal bench before the two screens he commanded and began his routine. First, he made sure that each line of the Swiss-made system in the console on the left was working, punching the buttons methodically and greeting the man on the other line with a word of peace and a prayer. When he reached the third line, there was nothing — Shahar, the idiot Shiite, no doubt a traitor, once again sleeping at his post. Tahir waited patiently, speaking the man’s name at sixty second intervals, until after nearly ten minutes the observer came on the line.

  “Planes?” Tahir asked, cutting off Shahar’s apology.

  He knew the answer would be no — he had not received the warning yet from the spies at Incirlik that the infidels’ planes had taken off. But the question would serve as a remonstrance.

  “No,” said the man.

  “Remain alert,” snapped Tahir, hanging up. He sat back at his console, frowning as one of the guards walked past his doorway. There was only a small security contingent here, a half-dozen men; anything larger might have attracted the Americans’ attention. Besides, so far behind the lines, there was no need for troops. Tahir several times had considered the fact that the men had probably been posted here to keep an eye on him.

  That was hardly necessary. He went through the other lines quickly. When he had determined that all were operating, he proceeded to the next set of checks. These were more difficult, involving the buried cables that ran from the various collection sites. More than two dozen radars and six microwave stations were connected to Tahir’s post via fiber-optic cable that had been buried at great ex-pense, in most cases before the infidel war. If it were laid out end to end it would no doubt reach Satan’s capital in Washington.

  Only two of his sites had been hit in the morning’s bombardments. That was well within acceptable parameters. At this pace, it would take the Americans a full week to eliminate his radars. By then the army would be out of missiles anyway.

  Tahir glanced at the television monitor in the corner, then picked up his cell phone and adjusted the headset. When that was on, he carefully placed the second headset — a Soviet-made unit older than he — over it. He had to position it slightly to the side so he could hear from both sets, but the trouble and the pressure against the edge of his ear and temple were worth it; he could talk and monitor his radar at the same time. Prepared, he let his glance sweep across the console before him one last time, then drew his body upward with a great breath, exhaling slowly as he delivered his trust to Allah, waiting for the alert.

  Chapter 52

  Aboard Quicksilver, over Iraq 1602

  Zen held Hawk One exactly seventy-five meters behind Quicksilver’s tail, waiting for the signal to hit the flares. The Megafortress’s airfoil shed air in violent vortices, and holding the position here was actually more difficult than closing in for a refuel.

  “I need another few seconds,” said Jennifer, fingers violently pounding one of the auxiliary keyboards at the station next to him. “Hang tight, Zen.”

  “Yup.”

  “You ready upstairs, O’Brien?” she asked. “I need you to initiate sequence two right now.”

  “Sequence two initiated,” said the electronic warfare officer.

  “Zen, on my signal …”

  “Okay, Professor.” Zen nudged his power ever so slightly as the Megafortress tucked forward, riding an eddy in the wind.

  “Now.”

  “Bingo,” he said, punching the flares, which were ordinarily used to decoy IR missiles.

  He couldn’t tell whether the test had worked or not, and neither O’Brien nor Jennifer said anything. Zen held his position, wanting to get on with things. But such was the life of a test pilot — weeks, months, years of routine, spiced by a few seconds worth of terror.

  “All right. That worked well. I think we’re okay,” said Jennifer. “Let’s do it at one mile.”

  “Two minutes to border,” said Breanna.

  “Acknowledged, Quicksilver,” said Zen. He tucked his wing, hurling Hawk One toward the ground as he started to loop out to the launch point for the flare. Jennifer wanted him to pickle it as close to the ground as possible and had calculated a precise angle, twenty-two degrees from the sensor. Zen tucked down toward a wide rift, his altimeter marking his altitude above the valley at a thousand feet.

  “I’m going to put it at fifty feet,” he told Jennifer. A large cliff loomed on his right; he nudged the Flighthawk onto its left wing, clearing the rocks by twenty feet. A wide valley opened up in front of him. A river sat near the center of it. His speed had dropped below 200 knots.

  Sliding his nose forward, he ducked below seven hundred feet, six hundred, burrowing into the valley.

  “Almost there,” he said as he passed through five hundred feet.

  “Transmission!” yelled Habib, breaking in over the interphone circuit.

  “You’re at the right angle,” Jennifer told Zen.

  “Five seconds,” said Zen, concentrating as the Flighthawk slid down below a hundred feet.

  “Transmission — I have an American voice — Guard band!”

  “Hawk leader, hold off on the test,” said Breanna calmly. “Habib, give us a location.”

  “Trying!”

  “What?” asked Jennifer.

  “We have one of the downed pilots,” Zen told her. He pulled level, did a quick check of his instruments, then started the preflight checklist on Hawk Two, still sitting on Quicksilver’s wing.

  “He’s behind us. I don’t have the location — I can’t — he said he saw us fly overhead,” said Habib, his stutter no doubt matching his heartbeat.

  “He saw Hawk One,” said Breanna, her voice almost quiet. “Zen, tuck back up the valley. We’re going to slide back around. Habib, get us a good location. Chris, talk to the AWACS and tell them what we’re up to.”

  “I’d like to launch Hawk Two,” Zen told Breanna.

  “Let’s hold that until we have a good location on the flier,” she said. “I don’t want anyone getting distracted up here.”

  “Hawk leader.” Zen banked Hawk One back in the direction it had just come from. He had the radio at full blast but could hear nothing; reception in the Flighthawks was extremely limited. Then again, Quicksilver’s standard radio wasn’t picking up the signal either. Only the sophisticated gear Habib controlled was capable of finding and magnifying the faint signal, which was undoubtedly being distorted and weakened by the rocky terrain and towering mountains.

  “You’re headed back toward him,” Habib told Zen.

  “He can’t see you, but he hears something.”

  “Could be bogus,” said Breanna.

  “Aware of that, Quicksilver. RWR is clean.”

  “I concur,” said O’Brien.

  “You’re overhead — he thinks you’re at about fifteen thousand feet.”

  “Tell him I’m about a fifth of the size of an F-15,” said Zen. “I’m a hell of a lot lower than he thinks.”

  “I
can’t talk back to him,” said Habib. His listening gear was just that — built for listening, not talking. They’d have to wait until they got close enough for Quicksilver’s set to make contact.

  Zen magnified the visual feed ten times but saw nothing but large rocks. A cliff loomed ahead; he climbed, deciding to circle above the hills where he wouldn’t have to worry about running into anything.

  “I still don’t have him on standard Guard band,” said Chris over the interphone. “Can you pipe your input into our radios?”

  “Negative,” said Habib.

  “Are you sure you have his location right?” asked Breanna.

  “I don’t have it nailed down,” said Habib. “But we’re very close.”

  “I have a radar,” said O’Brien. “Slot — no, I’m not sure what the hell it is.”

  Zen’s RWR went red, then cleared.

  “Clean,” said O’Brien.

  “Hawk leader copies. I had a blip too. Jen?”

  “I can’t tell if it was a blurp or the real thing,” she said.

  “He’s lost you,” said Habib. “I lost him.”

  “I’m going to goose a couple of flares over that valley where he must have seen me,” said Zen. “Let’s see if that wakes him up.”

  Chapter 53

  High Top

  1620

  Danny Freah watched as the marines off-loaded gear from the transport helicopter, ferrying large bundles out the rear to a six-wheeled trolley that looked like something they’d borrowed from a Home Depot outlet. A separate crew of Marines, meanwhile, refueled the CH-46E from one of the barrels of fuel it had brought with it.

  One of the pilots hopped out of the cockpit, ambling over to say hello.

  “Have a cigar?” The Marine, tall but fairly thin, had left his helmet in the chopper. He had at least a two-day-old beard, so rare for a Marine in Danny’s experience that he wondered if the pilot was a civilian in disguise.

  “Don’t smoke,” said Danny. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Hey, not a problem,” said the pilot, who took out a pocketknife to saw off the end of the short cigar. “You’re Captain Freah, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Name’s Merritt.” He took out a Colibri lighter and lit the cigar, sending a pair of thick puffs into the air before continuing. “Friend of yours asked me to say hello. Hal Briggs.”

  “You know Hal?”

  “I do some work for him, every so often. A lot of these guys in the MEU do, SF stuff,” said the pilot, adding the abbreviation for Special Forces. Danny knew that his old friend Hal Briggs was deeply involved with covert actions for ISA, but operational secrecy meant he was hazy on the details.

  The pilot exhaled a thick wad of smoke. There was a decent wind, but Danny still felt his stomach turning with the scent.

  “Hal says you’re outta your mind if you’re predicting the Yankees make it to the World Series. He wants Cleveland,” said the helo pilot.

  “Hal doesn’t know shinola about baseball,” Danny told the pilot. “Cleveland. Where’s their pitchin’?”

  “Cleveland? Ha!” A laugh loud enough to be heard two or three mountains over announced the arrival of Captain Donny Pressman, the pilot of the MV-22. Pressman was a sincere and at times insufferable Boston Red Sox fan.

  “Now, if you want to talk about a team—”

  “Bill Buckner, Bill Buckner,” taunted the Marine, naming the first baseman whose error had cost Boston the World Series against the Mets several years before.

  “Old news,” said Pressman.

  “Yo, Merritt — we got a situation here,” yelled the other helicopter pilot from the front window.

  Danny and Pressman followed the pilot back to the chopper.

  “AWACS says one of the Megafortresses has a line on a downed pilot. He’s just over the border. We’re the closest asset to him.”

  “Shit — we’re not even refueled.”

  “We are,” said Pressman. “Let’s go!” He started to run toward his aircraft. “Get me some guys.”

  Danny twirled around and saw two of his men, Powder and Liu, pulling guard duty at the edge of the ramp area.

  “Liu, Powder — grab your gear, get your butts in the helo.

  Now!”

  “What’s up, Captain?” asked a short, puglike Marine sergeant a few yards away.

  “Pilot down!” yelled the helo pilot. “We got a location.”

  “We’re on it,” said the sergeant. Two other Marines ran up.

  “Into the Osprey,” said Danny. He didn’t have his helmet and was only wearing the vest portion of his body armor, but there wasn’t time to pick up his gear. Danny, Liu, Powder, and the three Marines barely got the rear of the Osprey closed before it began moving forward on the short runway.

  “We got a location from the Marines!” shouted the copilot, appearing in the doorway to the flightdeck.

  “Twelve minutes, fifteen tops, once we get the lead out.”

  Chapter 54

  Aboard Quicksilver, over Iraq 1640

  Though designed primarily to decoy heat-seeking missiles, the Flighthawks’ small flares were fairly conspicuous, even in the strong afternoon light. Zen shot off six, a third of his supply, then circled back.

  He had a good feel for the layout now; the valley ran almost directly north-south, bordered on the east and west by steep mountainsides. A river ran in an exaggerated double Z down the middle; a small town sat along the apex of the second Z at the south end. There were two roads that he could see. One cut through the village and headed east into the rocks; it was dirt. The other was a hard-pavement highway that curved about five miles south of the village. It extended into an open plain and, from the altitude that he peered down at it, didn’t seem to connect to the town, at least not directly. But while he figured there’d be at least a dirt trail connecting them, he couldn’t find it. The rugged terrain gave way in the distance to relatively fertile areas. Zen glimpsed a patchwork of fields before reaching the end of his orbit and doubling back once again.

  The pilot was most likely in the foothills at the northern part of the valley; farther south, and the people in the village would have tripped over him by now.

  “Anything?” he asked O’Brien.

  “Negative.”

  “I’m going to take it down and ride along the river,”

  said Zen. “See if I can find anything. Quicksilver?”

  “We copy,” said Bree. “Be advised we have a helo en route. Captain Freah is aboard.”

  Zen rolled the Flighthawk toward the earth, picking up speed as he plummeted. He’d take this pass very quickly, then have Jennifer review the video as he recovered. It was the sort of thing they’d done together plenty of times.

  It was also the sort of thing he could have done easily with Fentress on the other mission, though he’d balked.

  What did he have against Fentress?

  Rival?

  Hardly. The guy seemed afraid of his own shadow sometimes.

  Zen put the Flighthawk to the firewall, maxing the engines and tipping the airspeed over 500 knots. At about the size of a Miata sports car, the robot plane was not overwhelmingly fast, but she was responsive — he pulled back on the stick and shot upward, tucked his wings around and flashed back southward. The entire turn had been completed in seconds, and took perhaps a twentieth of the space even the ultra-agile F/A-18 would have needed at that speed. Zen galloped through the air with his aircraft, looking for something, anything.

  Light glinted near the village. He throttled back and plowed into a turn, trying to give the camera as much of a view to check it out as possible.

  “Makeshift airfield there,” said Jennifer. “Two very large helicopters — about the size of Pave Lows. Three helos, sorry. Barracks. Uh, big enough for a company of men. Platoon — nothing major. Big helicopters,” she added.

  “Hinds, I’ll bet,” Zen told her. “Get the location, we’ll have to pass that on — it’s a target.”

  “F
lare indicator — hey, I think I have our pilot!”

  shouted O’Brien.

  Zen continued northward along the valley about a mile and a half before spotting the flare’s contrail over a foothill on his right.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, pushing toward it. “Where’s his radio?”

  “No radio,” said Habib.

  “Our Osprey is ten minutes away,” reported Breanna.

  “They’re holding for a definite location.”

  “Those Hinds could be a problem,” said Ferris.

  Zen cut lower, working the Flighthawk toward the rocks. Even at two thousand feet it was difficult to pick out objects. The river zigged away on the left side; a dirt trail paralleled it. Something was moving on the trail well to the north. The village lay behind him, roughly four miles away.

  “I can’t see him,” said Zen. “I’m going to roll again and try my IR screen.”

  He selected the IR sensors for his main view as he made another run over the hills. This side of the valley was still in the sun; finding the heat generated by a man’s body would not be easy.

  “Got a radio — Iraqi,” said Habib. “Hey, he’s talking to someone, giving coordinates.”

  “Must be a search party,” said O’Brien.

  “Just necessary conversation,” snapped Breanna.

  “Major, he’s giving a position five kilometers north of the village, a klick off the road. You see a road?”

  Zen flicked back to his optical feed. “I see a dirt trail. I don’t have a vehicle.”

  “He sees you,” said Habib. “You’re — he’s going to fire!”

  “Missile in the air!” shouted O’Brien as Zen pulled up. “Shoulder-launched SAM. They’re gunning for you!”

  Chapter 55

  Aboard Dreamland Osprey, over Iraq 1650

  Danny Freah caught his balance against one of the Osprey’s interior spars as it pitched violently to the right, hurtling southward as low to the ground as possible. The MV-22 had many assets, but it wasn’t particularly easy to fly fast at low altitude in high winds — a fact made clear by the grunts and curses emanating from the cockpit.