The Iraqis were so focused on their objective that they never saw it coming. Sand exploded all around the Jeep and sparks flew as armor-piercing rounds passed through the metal like so many knives through butter. One round found its way into the gas tank, bringing with it all the heat of a molten uranium slug passing through steel at more than three thousand feet per second. The Jeep burst into flames.
The occupants made no attempt to escape. They couldn’t. They were cut to pieces by the rest of the massive bullets well before there was time to react.
“Sandy One, off hot. The lead Jeep is toast!” Oso pulled off the target and began his turn back to the north, looking over his shoulder in time to see Tank bring the nose of his jet around to point at the second Jeep. There was a long pause. Something was wrong. Tank was taking too long to refine his aim. The Jeep was in perfect position and generating plenty of heat; the Maverick seeker should have locked on to its signature almost immediately.
The men in the second Jeep seemed undaunted by the violent death of their comrades. They ignored the carnage before them and shot past in desperate pursuit of the downed American pilot. The gunner fired wildly with the fifty-cal, while the man beside him positioned an RPG in the launcher and shouldered it for another shot over the ridge.
“Take the shot, Three!” Oso shouted, but Tank was already pulling away from the target, his Maverick still fixed to his wing.
“Sandy Three is off dry. I’ve got a misfire!” Tank responded in disgust.
With fear in his eyes, Oso turned his gaze back toward the Iraqi Jeep. It was too close to Nick. There was no time to make another pass. The man with the RPG raised it to his shoulder and fired.
Chapter 69
Nick continued to run south along Tango, but the Iraqis had pushed him so close the top that he had to crouch as he ran to avoid the tracer rounds whistling over the crest. The last grenade had been way too close, hitting behind and below him less than fifty feet away. He decided to change his tactic.
He turned downhill and raced to get past the next impact, but gravity and the unstable terrain quickly got the better of him and he tumbled to the sand, coming to a rest on his back. There, looking up at the dusty sky, he saw another RPG, tracing a deadly arc across the brown haze. He sprang to his feet and ran with everything he had in the only direction he could—back up the hill. The RPG hit behind him, but the explosion wasn’t close enough to knock him off his feet.
The next one was.
The Iraqi soldier had locked and loaded his weapon in record time, getting another grenade in the air before the first was even halfway through its flight path. The tactic had overcome Nick’s evasion strategy. The concussion of the second grenade sent him sprawling headfirst over the top of Tango with a piece of shrapnel embedded in his leg. Searing pain shot through his right thigh and up into his ribs. He hit the sand hard.
Nick raised himself up to his knees, fighting through the throbbing pain in his leg. Deep red blood soaked his flight suit. Pragmatically, he determined that the shrapnel had cut an artery. He heard the Jeep rumble to a stop at the base of the hill. The gunner leered at him and took a moment to refine his aim.
Through the thickening fog in Nick’s mind, the thought occurred to him that this death might be a necessary penance for slitting a man’s throat only a few hours before. Then a new sound emerged beneath the noise of the Jeep’s engine and the ringing in Nick’s ears—a sound that took him completely out of his current time.
The desert faded away and he was back at the Air Force Academy, facedown in the red dirt of Jack’s Valley, straining to pump out one more push-up. The distinctive sound was louder here, thumping away, the sound of long blades chopping the air into submission. He tried to look up but was stopped by the sole of a boot on the back of his head.
“Don’t you dare look up, Basic,” the upperclassman said, and then he raised his voice and yelled, “Basics! Tell me what that sound is!”
Cadet Nicholas Baron and his twenty-five classmates responded in unison. “Sir! That is the sound of freedom!”
And so it was.
The leer fell from the Iraqi gunner’s face as he jerked the barrel of the fifty-cal upward to meet the threat, but he was too late. As Jolly One cleared the top of Tango, the sergeant manning the Pave Hawk’s minigun peppered the Jeep with unrelenting fury. Sparks and blood flew in all directions. The vehicle burst into flames. The pilot skillfully brought his bird to a hover just above the ridge and a pararescueman jumped out, trailing a rescue line.
With a last effort, Nick turned to face his savior, holding on to consciousness with a failing grip and trying to focus through the red haze that filled his vision. He saw the silhouette of a man, suspended in midair with arms open wide, and then he felt those arms surround him. They felt strong, like he had been wrapped in iron. When he was finally lifted free of the sand, he tried to grab the line but his arms failed him.
“Trust me. I’ve got you now,” said a deep voice that seemed to come from both far away and very near at the same time.
Nick let go. Logic slipped away and his thoughts would not reach completion. He was tired, sleepy. He would take a little rest, just for a while. Consciousness gave way to darkness.
Part Four
Recovery
Chapter 70
Nick tried to open his eyes, but his lids fought him, unwilling to let him wake up. He rested a few seconds and then tried again. This time, he forced them to part, but he saw only haze and shadows.
He was lying down, that much was obvious, but he couldn’t tell where he was. There was a periodic beep coming from somewhere in the room and he thought he could make out the silhouette of a person standing over him on the left side of the bed. “Who’s there?” he tried to ask, but only a feeble, unintelligible murmur came out. He felt heavy, as if his entire body were made of lead. His hands and feet would not respond to his command. The simple act of opening his eyes and processing the scant information they provided had worn him out. He soon gave in to exhaustion and let them close again, sinking back into unconscious slumber.
Nick didn’t know how long it had been, but when he opened his eyes the second time it required much less effort. The haze was still there and he lifted his right hand to rub the sleep from his eyes, pausing when he realized that his arm and hand had indeed responded to the command. That was progress. After a while, his vision improved and he could see from the dark green fabric roof above his head that he was in a tent. He was lying on a mobile hospital bed, surrounded by light blue curtains hanging from the type of wheeled aluminum supports found in battlefield ER units. The silent figure at his bedside turned out to be an IV tower, which held a bag of clear fluid that ran down a tube and into his left arm.
With each passing moment, Nick found that focusing his mind became easier. He was definitely in some sort of battlefield intensive care setup. There were wires running out from under his blanket to a blue box with all sorts of lights and digital readouts. He had no clue what it all meant, except for the pulse readout. Fifty-five beats per minute. That made no sense given his current state of distress. They must have drugged him.
The thought of being drugged worried Nick. Had the Iraqis captured him? He shook his head, trying to fight through the haze in his memory. His last moments on Tango slowly came back—the Jeep, the wicked grin of the Iraqi gunner, then darkness. No. There was more. Jolly One had taken out the Jeep. The PJ had grabbed him.
Nick lay back as he realized that he truly had been rescued. “Paranoid much?” he muttered aloud. But his relaxed state lasted only a moment. The memory of the rescue also brought back the memory of his injury. He had taken a bad hit to the right leg. Worried, he slowly sat up again, propping himself up on his elbows to look at the contours made by his limbs under the hospital sheets. There appeared to be two legs. Cautiously, and with trepidation, he lifted the sheets. His right leg sported a large white bandage at
the thigh, with a faint hint of blood showing through. His left leg had a small bandage at the knee. Much to his relief, both looked surprisingly healthy, and suddenly he was less concerned with his wounds, and more concerned that he was completely naked.
Someone had left a pair of white boxers and a set of gray sweats folded neatly on a chair beside the monitor rack. With great effort, Nick swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled on the boxers and the pants, leaving the sweatshirt lying on the chair. Next, he examined the myriad wires running to the monitor rack from sensors taped to his body. His chest looked like his dad’s old stereo system. He turned off the monitor to prevent any loud alarms and then set about the painful task of pulling off all the tape, thanking God that the men in his family were smooth chested.
“Well, look who’s up!” a familiar voice exclaimed as Nick dragged his IV tower out of the tent. Bright sunlight assaulted his eyes and he squinted until Drake’s smiling face came into focus.
The B-2 pilot was seated at a small folding table, playing cards with Danny. The intelligence officer stood, beaming at Nick with his usual ear-to-ear grin.
Nick let his gaze expand from the card game to the rest of the world around him. He had not stepped outside, as he first supposed when the light blinded him. He was standing in an aircraft shelter. Sunlight streamed down through a big hole in the roof where jagged concrete and twisted rebar curved downward toward the interior of the structure. The floor below the hole was cracked and broken as well, with pieces of its own rebar jutting out like man-made stalagmites.
Nick immediately knew where he was. He was in a HAS, a hardened aircraft shelter designed for two fighters, and the hole in the roof told him that he was on the abandoned side of Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base. This was one of the hangars that had been taken over by the Iraqis during the invasion that preceded the Gulf War. An American bomb, dropped to take out the jets that the Iraqis sheltered there, had made the hole in the ceiling and beat up the floor. Nick chuckled at the sight. A decade after the first war, the Kuwaitis still hadn’t fixed these bunkers. They were too busy suing the French manufacturer because the bunkers hadn’t actually stopped any bombs—even though that had been a good thing for the Kuwaitis at the time.
The hangar had been converted into a temporary barracks, with a larger tent next to Nick’s. In one corner, next to the doors, was a refrigerator and a long table covered with bottled water and snacks. There was even a bowl of apples and oranges. The sight of the food sent a surge of hunger through his stomach. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. “What are we doing here?” he asked, rubbing his temples to push back the fog that kept creeping up on him.
“Looks like you’re still a bit toasted on that cocktail the doc cooked up for you,” Drake said, his eyes returning to his cards. “Maybe you should go back to sleep.”
“I remember the mission,” said Nick, frowning at the B-2 pilot. “I mean what’re we doing on the old side of Jaber?”
“How’d you know we were at Jaber?” asked Danny.
Nick lifted an IV-laden hand and emphatically pointed to the hole in the ceiling. “It’s the only base in the region that has bunkers that look like this.”
“You sure you work in intelligence?” Drake flicked a card at Danny, bouncing it off his chest. “To answer your question, Nick—we’ve been quarantined. We know too much to have contact with the rest of the base.”
For the first time, Nick noticed the other occupant of the room. A young man in battle dress stood next to the food table. The worn black stripes on his sleeve marked him as a U.S. Army corporal. He was quietly talking on a handset attached to a SATCOM voice unit and there was a sidearm holstered on his hip. “An armed guard?” Nick asked incredulously. “Do they think we’re going to try to escape?”
“His real job is to keep nosy people out more than to keep us in,” said Drake, “but I wouldn’t try to make a break for it. I’m not sure he wouldn’t shoot you.”
“What day is it?”
“March twenty-third,” said Danny. “It’s Sunday; you’ve been out for almost three days. You kicked off the war. Now it’s in full swing.”
“No wonder I’m so hungry.”
Drake chuckled. “Walker has us locked in here until he figures out what to do about the ‘situation.’” When he said the last word, Drake held up two fingers of each hand in mock quotation marks.
“What ‘situation’?” asked Nick, mimicking Drake’s gesture.
Drake answered with a question. “What do you remember of the B-2 during the battle?”
Nick rubbed his temples again, still fighting to push back the fog. He closed his eyes. After a moment, the brown haze parted and he saw Haven heading south, trailing smoke. He opened his eyes and reached out to shake hands with each of his comrades. “You took a missile for me. Thank you.”
Drake shrugged. “De nada. We left the battle area in bad shape. Long story short: We ejected and ended up in the drink. Somehow, Walker got our coordinates and had us fished out and brought here. By the time we arrived, you were already laid out in that makeshift ER over there.”
A shadow fell across Nick’s face. “Uh-oh . . . Walker. Is he here, in Kuwait?”
Drake didn’t answer. His eyes were drawn past Nick to a shadow that darkened the doorway.
“That’s Colonel Walker,” said the black silhouette, “and you, my boy, have got a lot of explaining to do.”
Chapter 71
Colonel Richard Walker stood menacingly at the hangar entrance, but before he could say another word Amanda brushed past him and into the shelter, running straight into Drake’s open arms. She kissed him deeply before tucking her head to his chest in a long embrace.
“I thought you had been killed,” she said, pouting. “What were you thinking?”
“I was never in any real danger.” Drake glanced over at Danny. “I was in good hands the whole time.”
Nick looked back at Walker with a sense of impending doom but saw that he still hadn’t walked much past the entrance. Instead of commencing his inevitable tirade, he appeared to be clearing two more individuals with the guard; their faces were obscured by the trick of light and shadow around the doors.
Amanda released her death grip on Drake and started heading for Nick. He couldn’t read her expression. She walked straight up and hugged him, whispering, “I’m glad you’re okay,” and then stepped back and slapped him hard across the face.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“You ignored the order to ditch. You went back in there and the rest of us had to clean up your mess. You lost my aircraft and you almost got Drake killed.”
Danny stood up and coughed pointedly.
“And Danny. You almost got Danny killed, too,” Amanda finished.
“Excuse me, ma’am, may I cut in?”
Nick looked up from Amanda’s stern face to see Oso standing beside her. He looked just as angry as he had that day in Redeye’s office more than a year before.
Amanda backed out of the way and the A-10 pilot made a motion as if he was going to punch Nick in the chin. Then he stepped in and embraced him instead.
Nick clapped his old friend on the back. “I knew you could do it. I knew you would get me out of there.”
Oso stepped back and held him by the shoulders. “You were right. I was blaming myself for Brent’s death. I had to let go. I’m just sorry it took me so long to see it.”
“Well, Baron.” Walker strode into the hangar followed closely by McBride, “I’m sensing a common thread here. Everyone wants to either hug you or punch your lights out. Guess what . . . I’m not going to hug you.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Nick, unconsciously taking a step backward. “I’m sorry I crashed your plane.”
“How about, ‘I’m sorry I crashed your plane after ignoring orders to disengage, causing a series of events that endangered the secrec
y of the operation and the lives of my comrades, and then resulted in the loss of a two-billion-dollar jet in the middle of the Persian Gulf’?”
“I thought that would take too long to say.”
Walker scowled at him. “I still have to find some way to explain this whole mess to the oversight committee. Baron, you took a basic mission failure and turned it into a complete disaster.”
“Mission failure? Wait a second.” Realization suddenly washed over Nick. He scanned the questioning faces around him. None of them knew.
“You’re looking a little loopy, Baron,” said Walker. “Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“I’m fine.” Nick’s expression turned deadly serious. “Listen, I completed the mission. I got the primary.” He explained every detail, from the Nighthawk’s errant bomb to the fight at Al-Majid’s camp. “The primary is dead . . . like, very dead. I shoved my knife through his neck and into his spine and then a grenade fell out of his hand and blew up right next to him.” He looked into the haggard eyes of the Triple Seven team. “We completed the mission,” he said. “Cerberus is not a failure.”
Walker merely blinked, ignoring the high five between Drake and Danny. “Well, we sure can’t call it a success,” he grumbled, but his scowl seemed to lighten. “That will help smooth things over with the oversight committee; although, you’ll need to put things more delicately when you speak to the politicians. In the future, Baron, you should remember that we don’t talk about the messy details. You didn’t shove a knife into the man’s spine. You ‘neutralized’ him.”
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