by Dale Brown
“Here goes nothin’, boss,” he radioed.
“Good luck, Whack,” Patrick said.
Taking a running start, he jumped just at the very edge of the illuminated area outside the fence, clearing it with ease. He rolled as he hit the sandy hard-packed dirt inside the compound, leaped to his feet, and dashed as fast as he could to the closest spot of darkness at the inner edge of the illumination area he could find. He stopped and listened for any sound of alarm or pursuit. His escape plan was to jump out of the compound to the north, run downhill toward a riverbed about a mile away, then hide in a small cluster of farms if necessary. But so far he didn’t need that plan.
“Made it, Muck,” he radioed. “No sign of alarm.”
“Don’t get cocky, Whack,” Patrick said.
“I know, I know,” but he knew that, except for the exit jump, the hard part was over.
The inside of the compound was almost completely dark except for pole lights mounted near fire hydrants or outside entrances to some of the buildings, and it was easy enough to avoid those areas. His sensors tipped him off to any personnel or patrols nearby in plenty of time to take cover. There were guards everywhere, but no one seemed especially vigilant. That was often the case: When the number of guards increased, everyone tended to relax a bit more, assuming that the added numbers made everyone more secure.
Whack reached the antenna within two minutes of jumping the fence and found the service ladder. He carefully and quietly popped the lock off the protective gate, opened it, extended the ladder, and started climbing. His armored feet barely fit between the rungs, so he just used his arms to crawl up the ladder, going about three times the normal climbing rate. He made the twenty-story climb in about sixty seconds. Once on the bottom of the dish, he identified the framework structure that also attached to the transmitter-receiver module in the center of the dish, climbed onto it, and was on the rim of the antenna dish in no time.
The antenna had four long arms holding the large transmitter-receiver module in the center of the dish. In the Tin Man armor, it was easy to climb across the arm to the module. Hanging by one arm, he retrieved the signal analyzer-transmitter box from his backpack and attached it to the side of the center module. It would pick up any signals broadcast by the antenna, store them in digital memory, and then burst-send them to a waiting CIA satellite for downloading and analysis.
He reversed his direction, climbing back down the pedestal service ladder. He closed the gate, then pressed the hasp of the broken lock down into the lock with his microhydraulically powered fingers until the hasp jammed in place. Hopefully no one would notice the deformed lock until many days and at least one netrusion attempt from now-the first flyby of a Kingfisher weapon garage was in just eighteen hours.
Almost home free. He made his way carefully to his planned exit point on the north side. The terrain dropped away on the other side of the fence a bit more steeply, which might make it harder for pursuers to locate him. He also knew that there were probably motion or vibration sensors on the ground outside the fence, so he had to jump as far as he could past the fence and hope he didn’t set anything off. He lined up, took one last scan around for any sign of guards, dashed for the fence…
…and cleared it with plenty of room to spare. He landed a little inside the illumination zone, but he quickly rolled away, got to his feet, and dashed for the ravine. He ran all the way down the slope for about a half mile before he dove behind the biggest rock he could find and lay still, scanning for any sign of alarm or pursuit.
Nothing. Dead quiet. “Holy cowbells, boss, I think I friggin’ made it,” he radioed.
“Congrats, Whack,” Patrick radioed back. “Now concentrate on getting back to the lighthouse. Check your power level-it looks low from here.”
Whack checked and was surprised to find the second and last set of batteries already down to 40 percent. “There might be a glitch in the armor,” he radioed. “I think I’ll try staying nearer the shoreline to avoid all the steeper terrain.”
“Take time to do more scans,” Patrick suggested.
“Roger. On the move.” Whack made his way down the ravine to the freshwater stream that led to the Gulf of Aden, then started heading east.
It was easy going until Qadub. The fiesta and fireworks were over, but now the fishermen were working on their boats, getting ready to put to sea. Staying away from the lights from the wharves and piers meant moving closer to the highway, and it was getting a bit busier as dawn neared. Whack had to drop prone several times to avoid what he thought were people staring in his direction, and he considered digging a hole in the marshy sand a few times because he thought someone might come out for a closer look at what they thought they saw.
It took much longer than during the fireworks show, but soon he was at the eastern edge of the fishing community, almost clear. He was in a prone position once again. He listened, heard nothing, and then raised his head a few inches to let his sensors get a better look. Still nothing. He was at the edge of a baby-powder-soft sand beach at the eastern end of the fishing community. The highway curved rather close to the beach here, but it was empty right now. All he had to do was run about five hundred feet across the beach to the other side to a formation of huge boulders right at the ocean’s edge and he would be home free-after that, just an easy four-mile jog back to the lighthouse. Like a sprinter in the starting block, he crouched low, gave himself a countdown, yelled “Go!” to himself, and dashed off…
…and after four steps, he tripped over something lying in the sand.
“Ahhh!” a man shouted. Whack hadn’t seen the guy, sleeping nestled in the sand, covered in a rug, a bottle of something lying beside him. The man sat up, and Whack could see his eyes grow as wide as dinner plates. “Ma bifham la afham!” he shouted. He started to crawl away, still staring at the apparition in front of him in absolute terror. “Imshi! Imshi! Al-bolis! Al-bolis! Sa-iduni!”
“Crap!” Whack swore, and he sprinted away down the beach as fast as he could. He didn’t stop for about a half mile until he heard an approaching car on the highway, then found a good hiding place.
“You okay, Whack?” Patrick radioed.
“I tripped over some guy sleeping on the beach,” Whack said.
“Did he see you?”
“Yes. He looked like he was sleeping one off, and it’s real dark out, so maybe he’ll think it was the booze.”
Whack took his time making his way back along the shoreline, and was extra careful as he approached the lighthouse. A different surveillance car was in the same spot as the first. He hadn’t received any warnings from the motion detector, so no one had approached the house since he left it. He climbed back up the escarpment onto the patio and went inside.
Carefully and quietly, without using any lights, he signed off with McLanahan, undressed, cleaned the Tin Man armor and exoskeleton as best he could, and repacked it. The signals analyzer, disguised as a spare laptop AC adapter, was missing now, but hopefully the customs inspectors wouldn’t notice, or he could say it was lost or forgotten somewhere. Whack set all the Tin Man armor’s batteries in chargers in case he needed it again for an escape. He checked his path to make sure he hadn’t dragged in anything from the beach, took a sip of Scotch whiskey to settle himself down, and then went to bed about an hour before dawn. Mission successfully accomplished.
Whack was awakened by the sounds of low, hushed female voices outside in the kitchen. He looked at his watch-a little before seven A.M., right on time. The voices seemed to be getting nearer his door. The note from al-Jufri had said that if the lantern was still on, he wouldn’t be disturbed by his family preparing the house for the day, and he hadn’t extinguished it, so he wondered if it had blown out or was-
Suddenly the bedroom door splintered apart from its hinges and flew across the room. Whack had already thought about what he would do: He rolled away from the door onto the floor, lifted the bed up, and flipped it toward the door to screen his next move. But ju
st before he was going to leap through the window, it exploded as a three-round burst of bullets fired upward into the ceiling…from the outside. Whoever it was, they had anticipated his attempt to jump out the window and were waiting for him.
“Stay where you are and raise your hands, Mr. Coulter,” a man with a thick accent-a Russian accent-said in English. Whack looked out the window and saw two men in black combat suits, helmet, web gear, and balaclavas, with AK-74 submachine guns aimed at him. The mattress and bed were pushed aside, and two more men similarly outfitted had weapons trained on him. They pulled him out of the bedroom into the living room, shoved him to the floor facedown, yanked his arms behind his back, secured his wrists with plastic handcuffs, then sat him up.
“What the hell is going on?” Whack yelled.
The toe of a boot came out of nowhere and landed on the left side of his head. Whack hit the floor hard, his vision completely blurred out, and he tasted blood and felt a loose tooth in his mouth.
“That will happen every time you speak out of order, Mr. Coulter,” the voice said. He was pulled upright by his neck. “Nod if you understand.” Whack nodded, slowly and carefully, fighting off nausea. “Very good. We were planning on meeting with you later today to ask some questions, but we received a curious report this morning from a local citizen about a sea creature that came out of the sea and tried to eat him. The police dismissed the citizen as a hallucinating drunk, but then I remembered something.”
Whack looked up and focused through the pain. The Russian, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, black tie, and light brown trousers, was holding his Tin Man helmet. “An American carrying unusual scuba-diving equipment came through customs yesterday afternoon. Could this be what the man saw?” He paused, then gave the helmet back to one of his men. “You may answer now, Mr. Coulter.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Whack murmured.
“So you are saying it was not you, Mr. Coulter?” the man asked. “You are saying you did not go out for a swim in your fancy diving gear last night?” Whack said nothing. “Mr. Coulter? You may answer now.”
“I wasn’t out swimming last night,” Whack murmured. “I’m hurt. I can’t see straight, and I feel dizzy. I think I need a doctor.”
“You were not?” the Russian asked. “Now I am confused. You are an engineer and builder of undersea robots, according to your Web site. You are scheduled to demonstrate a robot to the Yemeni Fish Company tomorrow afternoon. If you decided to go for a swim in your gear, I completely understand, and it makes perfect sense. All you need to do is tell me you went for a midnight swim, and this whole unfortunate matter can be cleared up immediately.”
“But I didn’t go for a swim,” Whack said. “I didn’t do anything. I need a doctor. Help me, please.”
“We will take you to a doctor right away, Mr. Coulter,” the Russian said, “but this matter must be cleared up first. A citizen reported seeing a man dressed in this outfit on a beach not far from here. It is, of course, not a crime to be out on the beach late at night. I believe the man saw you dressed in your fancy diving gear. All we want to do is straighten this matter out. There has been no crime committed. You can clear all this up by admitting that it was you that the man saw on the beach. Does this make sense to you, Mr. Coulter?”
“I swear to you, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking-”
Whack saw the boot coming this time, but he couldn’t move anywhere near fast enough to dodge it. Another tooth came loose, and he choked on a fresh mouthful of blood.
When he could see again, he was sitting upright, looking into the face of the English-speaking Russian with the nerdy-looking black tie. He shook his head. “You do not look so well, Mr. Coulter. I will summon a doctor for you right away, but first you must tell me that it was you that was on the beach early this morning. If you tell me this is so, you will be treated by a physician and released. If you do not, we may be at this for quite some time.”
Whack’s vision blurred. He didn’t try to clear it, but instead let his mind drift. His vision, and then his conscious mind, went dark. To Wayne Macomber, darkness meant solitude, escape, rest, superiority over an adversary, and safety, and so he allowed his subconscious mind to expand and embrace the darkness. The pain was still there, but it was now tolerable, as if he were falling asleep on rocky ground.
“Mr. Coulter, are you still with us?” he faintly heard the Russian ask him. Whack could feel an eyelid pulled open, but his consciousness remained dark. The Russian said something in Russian, sounded like a curse; then, in English: “I have seen this before, Mr. Coulter. It is a technique that only the best field intelligence operatives and special forces commandos have mastered. Some men are able to shut down their conscious minds to such an extent as to block out pain and fear and thus make the muscles almost impervious to physical torture. So which are you, Mr. Coulter-an intelligence operative, or special forces commando?” Whack chose not to answer.
“Of course,” the Russian went on, “if the mind is even partially conscious, eventually a combination of physical and chemical torture will break down even the most disciplined and well-trained mind-break it, or destroy it, in a most painful and twisted manner. Can you hear me, Mr. Coulter? If you can, you are minutes away from the worst pain any man has ever experienced. You can save yourself the agony, Mr. Coulter, by telling me who you really are, and what this equipment really does, and what you were really doing out there last night.”
Whack’s eyes were partially open and partially rolled back in his head, his blue tongue hung loosely out of his mouth between partially clenched bloodstained teeth, and his breathing looked as if it had stopped. Antonov stood up and shook his head. “A real old-style warhorse, this one,” he mused. He opened his cellular phone, dialed a number, waited, then spoke in Russian: “It is me, Gennadiy. We found him; he tried to run, but we got him. He can hear us, but he shut down his body to resist interrogation…no…just shut up for a minute…yes, I said he shut down his body to resist physical interrogation…no, I am not making up a story, it can be done, and this one has done it. I have done all I can here. He will have to be evacuated to headquarters in Sana’a or to the carrier Putin to continue chemical interrogation.”
He noticed a splotch of blood on his boots, knelt down, and began to rub it off as he went on: “Oh, and one more thing, Gennadiy: Go over and talk to the commander of that new Strategic Defense Force unit at the radar facility…yes, you need to go over there and talk with him in person, because you need to impress upon him the importance of shutting his operation down and doing a thorough security sweep before…I know those bastards do not like the GRU and do not allow us routine access to do proper security checks. That is why you must convince them to do their own sweep to be sure everything is normal. I will…yes, I will call him first, but you must go over there and…just do it, Gennadiy. I do not care how stuck-up you think those Strategic Defense Force guys are…Me? I will be analyzing this man’s equipment. If it is who I think it might be, we may have stumbled upon the espionage event of the decade.”
IN THE GULF OF ADEN
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING
Seventy-five miles west of its nest, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Rourke, the SH-60 Seahawk helicopter continued its search grid for the downed bomber crew. The Rourke had been detached from its duties escorting the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which was about two hundred miles to the east, to help in the search. At the beginning of its third full day of searching, the outlook was not promising, although the weather was cooperative and the seas rather benign.
For the surface search-and-rescue mission, the Seahawk was equipped with a forward-looking infrared sensor on the nose and a rescue hoist on the starboard door, along with its usual APS-124 search radar. The enlisted aviation-systems warfare officer, trained in searching the surface of the ocean, was in the starboard-side-door station, while a rescue swimmer manned the port-side door. Since there had been no radar contact with the b
omber except for an approximate position given by Armstrong Space Station operators, and the bomber had skipped through the sky uncontrollably after being hit, there was no precise location for the crew, so it was a hit-or-miss job, and so far the results had been a miss.
“Coming up on bingo fuel, guys,” the Seahawk’s copilot/airborne tactical officer reported. He entered instructions into the flight computer, which would catalog their grid pattern search and automatically relay updated grid-search instructions to the follow-on crew. “Station check, secure your gear, and-”
“Contact, port side, nine o’clock, one mile!” the rescue swimmer in the port-side door shouted on intercom. He immediately formed a gunsight with his left hand around what he saw so he wouldn’t lose contact as the pilot turned. “Clear to turn.” The pilot didn’t turn the full ninety degrees, but only forty-five degrees left, so the observer could maintain contact with what he saw out the door while giving himself a chance to spot it, too.
As they closed in, they could see why it had been so hard to spot: The orange life raft was covered with oil, obscuring the bright color, and it was partially submerged because it appeared both crewmembers were aboard a single one-person raft. That was not a good sign.
“I’ve got contact,” the pilot reported. “Swimmer, get ready.” The rescue diver began donning mask, snorkel, and fins.
“We’re coming up on emergency fuel, boss,” the copilot said. “Not enough fuel for a hoist. The destroyer’s too far away.”
The pilot thought he was going to go for it anyway-bingo and emergency fuel figures always had an extra margin included “for the wife and kids”-but there was another helicopter already en route, so why risk losing a helicopter if they screwed up the fuel flow and quantity numbers? “Paul, looks like you’re going to go swimming for a while,” the pilot said. “Feel up to it? Three-Two is only thirty minutes out. Last water temp was sixty-seven.”
