by Dale Brown
“Any day now, Fentress,” said Mack.
“Relax,” Danny told him, watching the screen as the Flighthawk circled back over the road. Both tanks had definitely been hit. There was no one near the building, as far as he could see.
“Let’s get down,” Danny told Mack.
“About fuckin’ time. Hold tight — there’ll be a bit of a bump before we stop.”
* * *
The engines revved, then died. the plane pitched forward and seemed about to flip over backward.
Powder was sure he was going to die. Someone began to scream. Powder opened his mouth to tell him to shut the hell up, then realized it was him.
The aircraft stopped abruptly. There was a loud crack on the fuselage and the rear hatch slammed open. Bison fell out of the plane and Powder followed, slapping down the visor on his smart helmet so he could see.
“Let’s go!” yelled Captain Danny Freah. “Let’s go — the building’s there. Two tanks, road behind us — they’re out of commission. Come on, come on — Liu, Egg, Bison — run up the flank like we planned, then hit the door. Powder — you’re with me. This ain’t a cookout! Go!”
Powder trotted behind the captain, his brain slowly un-scrambling. His helmet gave him an excellent view of the hardscrabble parking area near the building. A small white circle floated just below stomach level, showing where his gun was aimed.
“Okay, flank me while I check the back of the building,” said Danny.
Powder trotted wide to the right like a receiver in motion, then turned upfield. The building sat on his left. It looked a bit like the metal pole barn one of his uncles had built for a car shop back home, though a little less faded and without the exhaust sounds. Powder scanned the field behind it, making sure it was empty. He turned to the right, looking down in the direction of the road and the tanks.
“Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves, Cap,” he said.
“For ten minutes, tops. Watch my back.”
Danny began making his way toward one of the two doors they’d spotted on the side of the building. Powder saw something move near the road out of the corner of his eye; he whirled quickly, then realized it was the airplane they had landed in, taxiing for a better takeoff position.
Bastard better not leave them. Then again, considering the ride down, walking home might be a better option.
“Powder?”
“Yes, Cap?” Powder turned back toward the building, spotting the captain near the wall.
“Flash-bangs. Window halfway down,” said Danny, who gestured toward it. “I’ll take the window. You go in the door on the left there. See it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t move until I give the word.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
Chapter 73
On the ground in Iraq
2355
Danny took the tape off the grenade as he looked at the window. Best bet, he thought, would be to knock the glass out with the stock of his gun, toss, jump in after the explosion.
Not a tight squeeze. Landing would be rough, though.
He could hear Rubeo talking to someone back at Dreamland in the background on his satellite channel.
The scientist had warned him that there ought to be at least a dozen technical types running the laser, maybe even more. Danny didn’t expect much resistance from them, but you could never tell. Some of the people at Dreamland could be pretty nasty.
“Front team ready,” said Bison, who had come out around the corner to liaison.
“Powder?”
“Hey, Cap, this door isn’t locked. We might be able to sneak in.”
“Bison, what about the front?”
“Hold on.”
As he waited, Danny switched to infrared mode and tried to see beyond the window inside. He couldn’t make out anything.
Might be a closet. Would there be a window in a closet?
How about a john?
A top-secret facility without much security and an open back door?
No way the laser was here. Danny felt his shoulders sag.
“Front door’s locked, Cap. We’re going to have to blow it.”
“All right, the way we rehearsed it.” Danny slid the window open and readied his grenade. “One, two — go!” he said, breaking the glass. He popped the grenade through, then hit the side of the building as the charge flashed. In the next second he rose and dove inside. A burst of gunfire greeted him. He leveled his MP-5 and nailed two figures about fifty feet away. As they fell, he realized the gunfire had come from the other direction; he whirled, saw he was alone — another automatic weapon went off. He was hearing his own guys, firing up the enemy.
A pair of tractors for semitrailers sat alone in a large, open area. Otherwise this part of the warehouse was empty.
Danny slapped his visor to maximum magnification.
The tractors were just tractors.
No laser.
No stinking laser.
Powder was on the floor to his right, working toward him on his hands and knees. They couldn’t see the others — there was a wall or something between them.
Empty. Shit.
“Wires all over the floor,” said Powder. “Phone wires and shit.”
“Cut ’em,” said Danny. “Cut the fuckers. Two guards up there, maybe someone else beyond the wall.”
* * *
The explosions had pierced Musah Tahir’s dream as he slept on the cot not far from his equipment, but his mind had turned it into an odd vision of water streaming off the side of a cliff. He saw himself in the middle of a large, empty boat on a bright summer day. A calm lake stretched in all directions one second; the next, the water turned to sand. But the boat continued to sail forward. A large pyramid came into view, then another and another.
It began to rain, the drops suggested to his unconscious mind by the gunfire outside.
Tahir bolted straight up. Gunfire!
His AK-47 was beneath the bench near the computer tubes. He needed to get to it.
There were charges beneath the desk. He could set them off if all else failed.
As Tahir pushed out of bed, something incredibly cold and hard slammed into his chest. As he fell backward onto the cot, he saw two aliens in spacesuits standing before him. They held small, odd-looking weapons in their hands; beams of red light shone from the tops of them.
The alien closest to him said something; too frightened to respond, Tahir said nothing. One of the men grabbed his arm and pulled him from the bed, and the next thing he knew he was running barefoot outside, pushed and prodded toward God only knew where.
* * *
“Got an Iraqi, Captain,” Danny heard Liu say. “Three guards, dead. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else. Screens, black boxes, whole nine yards. This must be the computer center.”
“Record everything you see, then pull whatever you can for the plane. Computers especially. Look for disk drives, uh, tape things, that sort of stuff. Go!” said Danny.
“What do we do with the Iraqi?” asked Liu.
“Bring him with you. We’ll take him back and question him.”
“Hey, Cap, no offense but where’s he going to sit?”
“On your lap. Go!”
Chapter 74
Dreamland Command Center
1600
“Why take a prisoner?” said Rubeo. “Is he supposed to be our consolation prize?”
The others stared at Dog from their consoles. The feed from Danny Freah’s smart helmet, relayed through the tactical satellite and the Whiplash communications network, played on the screen at the front of the situation room. It showed him searching the large warehouse behind the scientist.
“He can tell us what they’re doing there,” Dog said.
“If he’s not the janitor,” said Rubeo. “It’s a parking garage.”
“I believe it’s a covert communications facility,” said one of the scientists. “The trenches outside indicate large cables. The work stations
—”
“We have more complicated systems working the lighting,” said Rubeo. “Obviously, we made a mistake — this isn’t a laser site.”
“The section at the left of the bench area included two radar screens. This must be where they’re coordinating the missile launches from,” insisted the other scientist.
“Don’t be so dismissive.”
“I’m being a realist,” hissed Rubeo. “Missiles didn’t bring down those planes. They’re merely wasting them, just as we are wasting our time here.”
“Bull.”
“All right, everybody take a breath,” Dog said. “We’ve got a ways to go here. We’re not even off the ground.”
Chapter 75
Aboard Wild Bronco, on the ground in Iraq 2400
Mack leaned down from the plane as Danny Freah ran up, the props still turning slowly. He had what looked to be the CPU unit of a personal computer in his arms.
“So?” he yelled to him.
“We got a prisoner and some gear. We’re grabbing all the computer stuff we can grab. I’m going to throw this on the floor of my cockpit.”
“You have to secure it or it’ll shoot around the cockpit when we take off.”
“I’ll sit on it.”
Shit, thought Mack. These Whiplash guys were all out of their minds. “So are we taking the laser or what?”
“There’s no laser here. It may be some sort of communications site, maybe not even that. Can you get the plane closer?”
“Yeah, I guess. Wait — what do you mean, a prisoner?” demanded Mack.
Freah ignored him, tossing the computer piece into his end of the cockpit.
Two of the assault team members ran up with pieces of equipment. They looked like looters who’d hit an electronics store during a power blackout.
“Where we going to put this prisoner?” Mack shouted.
“Shove him in the back with the guys,” said Danny.
“That’s too much weight.”
“We’re taking him back, Major. One way or the other.
I’ll strap him to the wing if we have to.”
“Shit, Danny—”
“You’re telling me you’re not a good enough pilot to get this crate off the ground, Major?”
“Hey, fuck yourself,” said Mack, but Freah had already disappeared. He kicked the dirt once, then turned back to the airplane.
This wasn’t like driving a truck. Weight was critical, especially if they were going to make it over the mountains. He’d worked it out to the pound before the flight, figuring they’d carry away only two hundred pounds of gear.
No way they were going to hold it to two hundred.
Shit. They could start an electronics shop with this stuff.
Grousing to himself, Mack reached into the cockpit for his flight board. An experienced Bronco pilot would know where he could cheat, but he had to rely on the specs.
The Iraqi added how much? Another 150.
Hopefully.
The tanks were another problem. The explosion had pockmarked part of his runway. Stinking idiots did that on purpose, just to make his life difficult.
Mack worked over the numbers, trying to make sure he could make the takeoff on the small runway. The problem was, he had to climb almost right away, and had no face wind to help. He wasn’t going to make it. Had he screwed up his calculations before? He was close to 500 pounds too heavy.
There had to be more margin for error. Somewhere.
Drop the Sidewinders. That’d do it.
Shit, fly naked?
Who was he kidding, though? The only thing he could use the heat-seekers for was as booster rockets.
Mack turned back to see two of the Whiplash people hauling a sack forward. They were almost on top of him before he realized the sack was a person.
“Hold,” he said, walking to them. “How heavy is he?”
The two troopers were wearing helmets and apparently couldn’t hear him. He grabbed hold of the Iraqi, whose eyes were so wide and white they looked like flashlights.
He held him up, shaking him a bit.
A hundred fifty, maybe a little more.
“You’re lucky,” he told the EPW after dropping him on the ground. “Few more pounds and we woulda had to cut your leg off to get airborne.”
Chapter 76
Aboard Raven, over Iraq 30 May 1997
0012
The computer flew Hawk One in the orbit around the area at eight thousand feet as Fentress took a break.
His heart wasn’t beating so crazily anymore and he felt good, damn good — the ground team confirmed that he had nailed the tanks.
Actually, they’d turned out to be armored personnel carriers. Same difference.
Zen would be proud of him.
“Bronco is ready to take off,” said Alou.
Fentress retook the stick and began to come back north. Smith grumbled something over the open circuit about wanting wind. Fentress banked, watching as the Bronco struggled to get airborne, its nose bobbing up and down violently as it approached a curve in the road. Fentress felt a hole open in his stomach — he’d never seen an airplane crash before, not in real life.
He didn’t now. The Bronco kept going straight, apparently airborne, though just barely.
“Bronco is up,” he told Alou.
“Good. How’s your fuel?”
He checked his instruments, running through a quick scan before reporting back that they were right on the mark as planned. They traded course headings, double-checking the positions the computers plotted out for them as the Bronco slowly began picking up speed.
“I didn’t think he’d make it,” Fentress told Alou. “Take off I mean.”
“Mack Smith always cuts it right to the bone,” said Alou. “That’s the way he is.”
“A little like Zen.”
“In a way.
“Mack helped develop the Flighthawks,” Alou continued. “He’s never flown them, but I’d guess he knows them as well as anyone, except for Zen. He helped map the tactics sections.”
“Why didn’t he fly them?”
“Doesn’t like robots.”
Fentress had Hawk One flying above and behind the OV-10, following the slow-moving plane much as he would follow a helicopter. He would arc behind at times to maintain separation, while still keeping close to his escort. At the same time, he had to stay relatively close to Raven, which was flying a kind of spiraling oval back toward the base at high altitude.
“Mack was in the air when Jeff had the accident that cost him his legs,” said Alou. “Not that they got along too well before that. But, uh, I’d say there’s still some bad blood there.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. Not the sort of thing you want to bring up in casual conversation with either one of them, I think.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alou laughed. “Hey, relax, kid. You’re one of us now.
You kicked ass down there. Zen’ll be proud of you.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, uh, right.”
Alou guffawed.
Fentress tucked the Flighthawk’s wing toward the ground, rolling around and back to the south before circling back. He scouted the valley as he flew; at eight thousand feet, he was lower than many of the mountain peaks ahead. The Bronco, weighed down with its passengers and climbing to get through the hills, continued to lag behind. Just as Hawk One drew back into its trail position, the RWR blared.
“Zeus ahead,” Alou warned Mack. “Can you get higher?”
“Not without divine intervention.”
A green and yellow flower blossomed in the darkness before him, then another, then another. An upside-down cloud rose from the ground — there were a half-dozen Zsu-23s down there. Fentress accelerated over the exploding shells. “I’ll take out the flak dealer,” he told Mack.
“I’m counting on you, Hawk boy,” said Mack. “Get ’em quick — I don’t want to waste any more gas turning around.”
Fentress tuck
ed left, zigging as another emplacement opened up. He was about two thousand feet over the effective range of the guns — though probably close enough for a lucky shot to nail him. The radar operator on the flight deck warned that there were at least two other guns farther up the valley that hadn’t started firing yet.
Shells exploded above him — heavier weapons, Zsu-57s maybe. Unguided but nasty, their shells could reach over twelve thousand feet, about twice as high as the Zsu-23s.
Fentress realized he was boxed in by the antiaircraft fire. He started to dive on his first target anyway.
“I’m going to run right past them, real low,” said Mack.
“Keep their attention and—”
The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the warning tone of the RWR. A new threat screen opened up — the passive receiver had found a helicopter radar ahead.
“Bogey,” Alou told Mack. “Low. Closing on you. It just came out of nowhere.”
“I’ll get it,” said Fentress, flicking his stick left as C3
marked out the contact as a Russian-made Hind helicopter. He began to accelerate, but as he went to arm his cannon, his screens went blank.
Chapter 77
Aboard Wild Bronco, over Iraq 0042
The mushrooming arcs of green-tinted antiaircraft fire suddenly flared red. There was a flash of light so bright that Danny Freah thought a star had exploded.
“Jesus, what was that?” he said.
“Something just nailed the Flighthawk,” said Mack Smith.
“Shit.”
“We got other problems. Hang tight. This is going to be a bitch.”
“We’re flying through the flak?”
“Close your eyes.”
* * *
It was a worthless gesture, but Mack pounded the throttles for more speed, hoping to somehow convince the lumbering aircraft to get a move on. The air percolated with the explosions of the antiaircraft guns; the wings tipped up and down, and the tail seemed to want to pull to the right for some reason. Cursing, Mack did his best to hold steady, riding right through a wall of flak.
