Razor's Edge d-3

by Dale Brown

  All in all, he had to admit the Bronco was a lot of fun to drive.

  Drive, not fly, he thought. You couldn’t really call moving under 200 knots flying.

  “We’re running behind,” said Danny, who was sitting in the copilot-observer’s seat behind him.

  “Really?” he replied over the Bronco’s interphone circuit. “Well hold on while I hit the rocket power.”

  Chapter 68

  Aboard Raven, over Iraq 2320

  Fentress felt his chest implode as Major Alou counted down the seconds to launch, taking Raven through the alpha maneuver to exert maximum separation force on the Flighthawks.

  People’s lives depended on him doing his job without fucking up. That had never been true before.

  Alou thought he could do it. To Alou, there wasn’t even a question.

  And Zen?

  Fentress hadn’t asked. As far as he knew, no one had.

  Alou was in charge of the mission. He thought he could do it. He would do it.

  “Alpha,” said Alou.

  Fentress’s pinkie jerked with some kind of involuntary reaction on the joystick controller, even though he’d turned the launch over to the computer.

  “Flighthawk launched,” confirmed the computer.

  Though it was night, the view from the robot was as clear and defined as if it were day. In fact, he could tell the computer to present it as a cloudless sky at high noon and it would do so. It was best to keep it in the greenish starlight-enhanced mode, however; it helped keep him oriented.

  Zen’s advice.

  “You’re looking good, Hawk leader,” said Major Alou.

  “Wild Bronco is twelve minutes from target.”

  He hesitated before acknowledging — it felt odd to be called Hawk leader; that was Zen’s title.

  “Twelve minutes,” he said. He was going to overfly the building, check for last second developments. The Megafortress was five miles from the building, the Flighthawk now a little closer.

  “Low and slow like we planned,” said Alou.

  “Low and slow,” he repeated.

  “Gun radars two miles ahead of you, just came on,”

  warned the radar operator a second before the warning flashed in the Flighthawk screen. “North of that town.”

  “Got it.”

  Chapter 69

  Incirlik

  2320

  Torbin Dolk had just climbed into bed when the knock came at his hotel room door. He thought about pretending he was already sleeping but figured that wouldn’t save him; though nominally a private hotel, the building was reserved for military use, and the only person knocking this late would be here on official business.

  “Yup,” yelled Torbin, still hesitating to get out of bed.

  “Captain Dolk?”

  “The same.”

  “Lieutenant Peterson, sir. General Paston sent me over.”

  Paston was a two-star Army general, the ranking CentCom officer at Incirlik. Dolk realized he was about to be fried big-time.

  Very big-time.

  Shit. Harding had told him he was in the clear.

  Worse thing was, they didn’t even have the decency to hang him in daylight.

  “Give me a minute.” He slid out of bed and got dressed, fumbling as he pushed both feet through the same pant leg. His eyes were a little fuzzy and he had to tie each shoe twice.

  “You awake, Captain?” asked the lieutenant when he finally opened the door.

  “Yeah. Uh, maybe we can grab some joe in the lobby.”

  Two Army MPs stood behind the lieutenant in the hall.

  Two other soldiers with M-16s were standing a short distance away. They all followed as Torbin and the lieutenant walked to the elevator, where two Air Force sentries were stationed. No one spoke, either in the elevator or in the lobby, where Torbin sniffed out the boiled grinds in the overheated carafe next to the front desk. Then, cup in hand, he followed the lieutenant to a staff car outside.

  The soldiers followed in a Humvee as they raced through the security perimeter and then back to the base.

  Torbin thought several times of telling the driver to slow down; five minutes one way or another wasn’t going to make much difference. But at least he managed not to spill his coffee.

  Security at Incirlik was ordinarily very strong; even when Iraq was quiet, it probably ranked among the most heavily guarded facilities outside of the U.S. During the past few weeks, the troops guarding it had been doubled, with a number of high-tech snooping and identity-checking devices added to prevent saboteurs and spies from getting in. And now the security had been heightened further.

  Two companies of heavily armed soldiers stood outside the fence; another platoon of men and a pair of tanks stood along the access road. A short line of vehicles waited at the gate to be searched. The fact that a two-star had summoned him didn’t allow them to cut in the line either.

  “Wasn’t this crazy before,” said Torbin when they were ordered out of the vehicle for the security check.

  “What’s up?”

  The lieutenant didn’t say anything, nor did the MPs looking them over. Finally cleared, the lieutenant didn’t wait for their escorts. He took the wheel himself and drove toward a hangar area at the far tip of the base. As they approached, Torbin realized why the security had been tightened — a huge Megafortress sat in the middle of the access ramp. Passing through yet another security cordon, they approached the plane slowly, having been warned that the guards in front of the aircraft had orders to shoot any suspicious vehicle.

  Torbin had never seen a Megafortress in person before.

  The aircraft seemed very different from a B-52, even though it had supposedly been built from one. Its long nose — silver, not black like the rest of the plane — extended toward the car as they approached; the aircraft seemed to be watching them. Perhaps the shadows made the plane seem bigger than it actually was, but the Megafortress definitely stood several feet higher than a stock B-52. Its wings seemed longer, sleeker. Her engines were single rather than double pods; with fins along the underside, they looked more like rockets than turbofans. The plane’s V-shaped rear stabilizer or tail rose above the nearby hangar, a pair of shark’s fins waiting to strike.

  A soldier dressed in camo and wearing a green beret walked to the center of the roadway as the car approached, holding out his hand. The lieutenant immediately stopped and got out. Torbin followed, trailing along as several other Special Forces soldiers appeared. The lieutenant presented credentials; the soldier nodded grimly and stepped back, allowing them to pass toward the tail area of the plane. A figure in a flight suit approached; Torbin was surprised to find it was a woman.

  And a very beautiful one at that. Five-six maybe, 120 or so — could be a little less.

  Eyes like heat-seekers.

  “You’re Dolk?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m Captain Stockard. Breanna.” She held out her hand. She gripped his more firmly than any hand that smooth had a right to grip. “I understand you’re an electronic warfare officer, a pitter. You fly in Weasels?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We need some help,” she told him. “You had an engineering degree too.”

  “Well, uh, yes ma’am.”

  “I realize you don’t have clearances. We’ll backtrack later. If there’s any reason you can’t help, you tell me now. If you don’t — well, if you don’t want to get involved right now for any reason, any reason at all, turn around and go back to bed. No questions asked. If you come with us and something comes up — you’ll be fried. No one will bail you out. You understand?”

  Her eyes held him. What was she talking about?

  God, she was beautiful.

  “Captain Dolk?” she said. “Staying or going?”

  “I, uh — I want to help.”

  “Good.” She smiled. “We’re trying to get things put back together, and we need someone to help our technical person. She’ll tell you what
to do.”

  Breanna started walking away, then spun back toward him.

  “Yo — get your butt in gear, Dolk,” she barked. “Onto my plane. We have work to do.”

  Dolk hadn’t been spoken to like that since basic training, perhaps not even then. He snapped to quickly, breaking into a full run but failing to catch her as she disappeared up the ladder of the black Megafortress.

  Chapter 70

  CentCom HQ, Florida

  1330

  “Barclay, what the hell are you doing out in the goddamn lobby when I need you in here?”

  “General Clearwater, I was—”

  “Get your butt in here, Barclay, without back lip.”

  Jed Barclay had been told to wait in the outer office by Clearwater’s chief of staff, who had conveniently melted away before the four-star general appeared. But he’d been dealing with the head of Central Command a great deal over the past few months — he’d been told about not using back lip at least ten times already — and so he took the ad-monition in stride, following along as the general walked briskly down the hallway of his Florida headquarters.

  “You see that report from Elliott?” asked Clearwater.

  The general was in his early sixties and looked at least ten years older. But he walked fast and was rumored to work around the clock.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jed.

  “Well?”

  “Uh, I agree. The damage to the first plane was almost certainly a laser. And since the Iraqis don’t have the technology—”

  “Who says they don’t?”

  “Uh, everyone says they don’t.”

  “Everyone’s the CIA. Those spooks couldn’t read the writing on a billboard at twenty paces. Why in hell would the Iranians be attacking our planes?” continued the general. “We’re in Iraq. Why would Iran attack us?”

  “I didn’t say they did. I said the Iraqis—”

  “Brad says they did. Iranians, not Iraqis.”

  “He thinks they may have sold it to them. The Iranians as well as the Chinese have shown interest in Razor, and as a matter of fact—”

  “Lasers. Fancy Dan Bullshit.” Clearwater practically spit. He was a foot soldier at heart; last week he had lectured Jed for ten minutes on the value of a rifle that never jammed. But while he claimed he didn’t go for “fancy Dan bullshit,” the record showed that he’d made sure his men and women were equipped with the latest technology, including hand-held GPS devices, satellite phones, and laser-dot rifle scopes.

  “If there’s a laser, why haven’t the satellites seen it?”

  Clearwater asked, echoing the CIA’s main legitimate argument against the laser.

  “There’s only one launch detection satellite near enough to cover that part of Iraq,” said Jed. “And it’s not designed to detect laser bursts.”

  “Fancy Dan bullshit.”

  Clearwater turned the corner and entered a conference room. Jed followed along. There were six other people inside, none lower than a brigadier general.

  “You boys know Jed,” said Clearwater. “NSC sent him down to keep our noses clean.”

  “Well, uh, that’s not exactly my, uh, job, sirs,” said Jed.

  Admiral Radmuth, sitting next to Jed, gave him a wink.

  The men, who headed different commands organized under CentCom, apparently knew that Clearwater himself had asked to borrow Jed for his technical expertise — not to mention his backdoor access to the White House.

  “Gentlemen, let’s get this donkey cart in motion.”

  Clearwater slapped his hands on the table. “I want a full update, starting with what we’re hitting this axlehead Saddam with, and what we can expect in return. You have ten minutes. Then Boy Wonder and I are on the plane for Incirlik.”

  “On the plane?” Jed’s voice squeaked involuntarily.

  “I’m going to Turkey?”

  Clearwater turned and smiled at him, probably for the first time ever. He clicked his false teeth, then turned back to his lieutenants. “Gentlemen, I believe pride of place belongs to the Air Force. We have nine and a half minutes left.”

  Chapter 71

  Aboard Raven, over Iraq 2345

  Captain Fentress leaned to the right with the Flighthawk as he came out of the turn, nudging the throttle slide to max. The Flighthawk picked up speed slowly at first, but once it got through 330 knots, it seemed to jump forward, slicing toward the target building. The metal warehouse sat to the left; as he approached, Fentress saw that the sides were missing from one of the two trailers, revealing what looked like a pair of generators. The Flighthawk whipped past, following Fentress’s prompts as it slid above the empty roadway parallel to the building. He backed off the thrust and began to turn, misjudging his speed and ending up far wider than he’d planned for the next, lower run over the area.

  Piloting a Predator typically took four people, and that was a slow-moving, low-flying aircraft, relatively forgiving of mistakes. Light-years more complicated, in some ways the Flighthawk was actually easier to fly — its sophisticated flight control computer, C3, did myriad things for the pilot. But in other ways piloting the U/MF at speeds close to Mach 1 was as demanding as doing a bi-nomial equation in your head while pushing a tractor-trailer through an uphill maze. His thoughts were consistently a half second behind the plane, and his reactions another second or two behind that.

  Not bad for a rookie, maybe, but the six men in the Bronco needed him to be a hell of a lot better.

  He’d die if he screwed up. Just die.

  C3 noodled him, showing how far off course he’d gone with a dotted red line. Fentress brought it back, kept his speed low, getting a look at things.

  “Whiplash team is ninety seconds away,” said Alou.

  “We’re patching your feed through.”

  Fentress felt his heart pound.

  “Hawk leader, this is Whiplash,” said Danny. “The vehicles on the east side beyond the parking area of that second building — can you take a pass so we can find out what they are?”

  Vehicles? He hadn’t seen any.

  “Roger that.” Fentress slammed the Flighthawk into a turn so abruptly that the computer gave him a stall warning. He eased off, took a breath — it wasn’t a big deal; Zen got those warnings all the time. The computer was just a big sissy.

  He knew that Zen would have fried his ears off for that.

  But Zen wasn’t here.

  Concentrate, he told himself.

  Fentress told the computer to switch the viewing mode on the main screen from starlight to IR, which would make the vehicles easier to spot. He found his course, following the dotted line drawn up by the computer, and dropped through five thousand feet, nudging his speed back until he was just under 200 knots. Running toward the site from the northeast corner, he saw nothing but a flat field and a torn fence, but as he pulled overhead and began to turn he spotted two tanks dug into the ground about a hundred yards from the building, right near the road the Bronco was supposed to land on.

  He’d have to take out the tanks.

  “Hawk leader, this is Whiplash.”

  Fentress could get them both in one pass, but it would be easier, surer, to take them out one at a time. Go for the sure thing.

  Zen would agree.

  He was already lined up.

  “Weapons,” he told the computer. The screen changed instantly, adding crosshairs, targeting data, and a bar at the bottom that could automatically indicate whether he should fire or not once he designated the target.

  “Hawk leader?”

  Something buzzed into the top left of his screen.

  Fentress felt the blood drain from his head directly to his legs. He was nailed, dead.

  No — it was the Bronco!

  “Captain Fentress?” said Alou.

  “Tanks, two tanks, on the road, dug in,” he said.

  Tanks? Or the Razor clone?

  Tanks — he could see the lollipops on top.

  By the time he had it sorted out, h
e’d overflown them.

  He started to bank.

  “They’re definitely tanks,” said Fentress. “Nothing else down there, nothing big enough for Razor, at least outside of the building. I’m going to take the tanks.”

  “Whiplash copies,” said Danny. “We’ll hold for your attack.”

  Fentress banked to the right, sliding toward the warehouse to get it in view of the sensor. As he did, a yellow light erupted from a low hill on the right.

  “Flak!” yelled a voice he hadn’t heard before. It had to be the Bronco pilot, also plugged into the circuit.

  Flak, a Zeus firing 23mm slugs. Not even — something lighter, a machine gun.

  Take that out too, after the tanks. People there, another vehicle.

  Razor? Razor?

  Calm down, damn it. Just a pickup.

  Fentress pushed on, scanning the warehouse through his turn before starting for the tanks. He got his nose onto the first one, tried to ignore the pounding of his heart. His target bar flashed red.

  Fire, he thought. Fire.

  His fingers cramped. He couldn’t move them.

  He was beyond the tank.

  “What’s going on, Hawk leader?” demanded the Bronco pilot.

  “Targeting tanks,” said Fentress. He cut southward, came back quickly — too fast. The tanks blurred.

  Just fire!

  He pressed the trigger and bullets spewed from the front of the Flighthawk. Extended bursts took quite a bit of momentum from the small aircraft, but the computer compensated seamlessly.

  Beyond it. He was beyond it. Had he missed?

  Get the other one.

  “Hawk leader?”

  “Keep your damn shirt on,” he told the Bronco as he looped back to get the second tank.

  Chapter 72

  Aboard Wild Bronco, over Iraq 2350

  Danny grabbed the side of the cockpit as the plane wheeled away from the gunfire. He tried to ignore Mack’s voice over the interphone and concentrate on the view in the smart helmet, which showed bullets flaring and then erupting in a fire.