“Here we go,” said Karr, standing up. He smacked his foot down against the cutout — and promptly fell through the hole.
Dean swung the A-2 forward as he leaped forward. After two steps he dropped knee-first into a slide and pushed the nose of the gun into the hole ahead of his face.
Karr lay sprawled on his back eight feet below.
“Don’t shoot me yet, baby-sitter,” he said, groaning and cursing as he rolled over and got to his feet. “Luckily, I landed on my head.”
Dean pushed his legs over the edge of the hole and jumped down, then crouched and scanned the unlit hallway. At the far end, Karr paused by a set of double doors made of glass. He put out his hand, signaling for Dean to stop. Then Karr took a large device that looked like the plunger head from a plumber’s helper from one of his vest pouches and put it against the glass. A wire ran from the device; he plugged it into his handheld.
“Ssshhh,” warned Karr as Dean crept toward him.
“That some sort of bug?”
Karr didn’t answer. The device used a set of microphones to pick up sounds, calculating distance in roughly the same way a submarine would use passive sonar. The closed stairwell and the glass were a perfect medium, though it could also work reasonably well through a single-layer wall.
“Clear now.” Karr stood and, while still looking at the handheld screen, dusted the door hinges with silicone. It may have helped, but the heavy door still creaked on its hinges.
They stopped at the bottom. Karr handed Dean his A-2, then took the pistol out.
“Two guards, coming toward us. Walking. I don’t think they know we’re here,” he said.
“You better hit them in the face.”
A smile poked up the corners of Karr’s mouth; then he was through the door. The bullets made a light popping sound as they came from the pistol — two bullets, two guards on the ground.
Square in the forehead, both shots.
“Good work,” said Dean.
“I may not be as good as you, baby-sitter, but I can hit what I’m aiming at every so often.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“Basement door,” said Karr, pointing all the way down the hallway. A steel door sat next to the main entrance. He started moving toward it, then stopped as a set of headlights swung across the front of the building. When the lights faded, Karr trotted forward, then threw himself down and slid the last ten feet on his belly, possibly to keep from throwing a shadow that could be seen through the front glass, though Dean thought Karr might just have done it for fun. He put his plunger up again, fiddled with the handheld, and cursed.
“Door’s too thick. Doesn’t resonate enough.”
“Let’s search the rest of the place first,” suggested Dean.
“Nah. If I’m putting a jail in here, it’s going downstairs. Place looks like a lab or something, doesn’t it?”
Dean hadn’t seen inside of the rooms — they were all closed — so didn’t hazard a guess.
“You don’t have some X-ray machine that can see through the walls?” he said instead.
“Stinkin’ bean counters cut it out of the budget,” said Karr. He took a grenade from his belt, thumbed off the tape. Dean still held his gun. “Hopefully, we don’t need this.”
“Agreed.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Sure you’re sure?”
“You gonna bust my chops all night or what?”
“Only as long as necessary, baby-sitter.” Karr jerked the door open, pushing himself across and into the opening. Dean waited until he started to retape the grenade, then slid over to follow.
The basement was a long low-ceilinged room crammed with machinery. Several tables were tarped; others had racks of what looked like oscilloscopes and discarded computer gear. They walked the length without seeing any sign that prisoners were kept here.
“Shit,” said Dean.
“Yeah, all right. Let’s check out the first floor.”
The doors to the rooms were locked by card-readers. Rather than fooling with the locks, Karr put his listening device up, scanning the room sonically.
“You sure that’s good enough?” Dean asked.
“As long as he’s breathing, we’ll hear him. These doors aren’t that thick.”
“What if he’s dead?”
Karr shrugged and moved on. At the last door he pulled down the gear and took out a small drill, punching through the screws that held the mechanism together. Dean tensed, his adrenaline once more starting to pump.
“There’s no one inside,” said Karr. “I just want to see what the hell they do here.”
With the cover of the lock off, he examined the circuit card, then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a set of alligator clips. One of the LEDs on the reader mechanism flashed a few seconds after he began probing around, and the door lock clicked open. Dean started to push inside, but Karr held him back, nodding toward the floor. The goggles picked up two fuzzy IR beams. The room was filled with several dozen servers and storage devices, along with two workstations.
“They have the room alarmed but not the hallway?” said Dean.
“Pretty interesting, huh?” Karr took out a small digital camera and began taking pictures.
“What do you figure’s in those computers?”
“Could be porn.”
Dean wasn’t sure whether he was kidding or not. He followed Karr back upstairs, where a similar search revealed equally empty rooms, though no more computers.
“I was afraid of this,” Karr said. “Let’s go next door. Get on my back.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to lift you out of the building,” he told Dean. “Unless you think you’re strong enough to pick me up and let me drop the rope to you.”
Dean scowled but said nothing, climbing up the bigger man’s back and then balancing precariously as he was lifted by the heels up through the hole in the roof. He felt a little shaky; fatigue was starting to get to him, and he was hungry besides. He managed to crawl out of the hole, then stopped a few feet away, resting for a moment before going for the rope. He was too old for this shit, too old.
“Dean!” said Karr in his headset.
“I’m moving as fast as I can,” answered Dean.
He looked up. Two guards stood five feet from him, the laser targeting dots from their AK-74s crisscrossed on his chest.
43
Karr didn’t have time to figure out how he’d missed the guards outside when he’d checked the UAV image before they started down the hallway. He ran back to the stairs, Dean’s gun in his left hand and his in his right. He got down to the first floor, slung the second rifle over his shoulder, then pushed out. He ran into the computer room they’d examined earlier, jumping over the security system’s detection beams. He just barely kept his balance.
There were no windows, but there was a door that led to another room. It was locked. Karr threw his shoulder against it, but it stayed put. With no time for finesse, he took out the pistol and bored out the lock mechanism.
This room had two windows. He pushed the door shut behind him, then ran to them quickly. Dean was saying something in English over the com system; it went dead before Karr could figure out what it was.
The windows were alarmed, but it was a simple wire system, easily defeated with a clip and wire set. He pushed the window open, then paused, checking the Bagel scan carefully. He saw now why he’d missed the sentries — there was a ladder up the side of the roof, hidden by an overhang. They were making for it now.
It was on the opposite side of the building, away from Building Two.
Karr pulled up the cursor and clicked it on Dean’s IR profile, prompting the computer to memorize it. It could now locate him at will.
Assuming they didn’t kill him first, of course.
Building Two had a set of steps that led to a steel door in the basement. K
arr ran to them, once more using his.22 to blow out the lock. But this door had a dead bolt or something else securing it: it jammed when he tried to get in.
There came a time in every show when you had to play the luck card. Tommy Karr hated to play it this early, but there was no other choice. He ran up the steps, glancing at the feed from the Bagel — the sentries were coming around the side of Building One. He bashed the nearest window with his gun and then dived inside the building, rolling in the darkness on a surprisingly thick and relatively soft rug.
Like a pig in shit, he thought to himself, jumping up.
44
“What the hell’s going on, Karr? Where are you?” Lia hissed.
“Building Two. Aren’t you watching?”
“I’m still trying to get the feed from the Bagel.”
“Just use the sitrep. Did you get all the weapons loaded?”
“Of course.”
“Did Fashona bitch about the jacks?”
“Is the pope Catholic?”
Specially designed trolleys and hydraulic jacks were used to load the weapons pods onto the wings. While these machines did all the heavy lifting, they had to be positioned just so beneath the hard points; it was not a job for an impatient man, and inevitably left the pilot in a foul mood.
Lia clicked into the map, which showed Karr’s and Dean’s positions. Dean was on Building One, moving toward the side.
Christ, the bastards were going to throw him off.
“We’re coming in,” she said.
“Just hold on,” Karr told her. “Let me find Martin first.”
“They’re going to kill Dean.”
“Relax. They’ll question him before they kill him.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t go postal, honey.”
“Postal? You’re fuckin’ hyperventilating.”
“I’m out of breath. Look, you guys have to stay on schedule or you’ll get nailed by the SA-6. Wait until they take out the van. I’ll get Martin, then I’ll bail out Dean.”
She bounced back to the sit map, which showed the team’s location.
“Karr.”
“You have ten minutes. You can’t sit tight until then?”
She was worried about Dean. She was really worried about Dean.
Would she have worried so much about Karr?
Damn straight.
Maybe.
“Take out the guns, then get the two guards on the inside of the gate, in case they have shoulder-launched SAMs,” Karr reminded her.
“I know my fucking job.”
“Then do it,” he said. “Gotta go.”
His channel remained open. Lia pressed the mike button for the helicopter’s interphone. “Ray—”
“I heard,” said the pilot. “The SA-6 van blows in seven and a half minutes.”
“God, they’ll be dead before we get there.”
“Probably not.”
“Shit, Ray, go! Let’s go now — we can take it out ourselves.”
“If you want to get out and push, be my guest. If not, we do it the way Tommy drew it up.”
“If Dean and Karr die in there, I swear to God, I’ll never talk to you again,” she said.
“Yeah, well, they ain’t going to die, so don’t get your hopes up.”
45
Dean moved down the fire escape — like ladder as slowly as he could. Every five seconds of delay would increase Karr’s chances of getting away, which in turn increased his own odds of survival. Finally, the man above him had enough and began stomping at his fingers to make him go faster. Dean jumped the last two rungs and pretended to crumble to the ground, but the Russians were having none of that — the man who’d gone down first put his rifle about two inches from Dean’s face.
Dean had surrendered the.22 and his combat knife, along with his pack and all of his grenades. He still had a small Glock hideaway strapped to his calf and another under his vest. But at the moment there was no way he could get them before being perforated.
The Russian said something, probably telling him to move forward to the front of the building, where there was a vehicle. Dean didn’t have to pretend not to understand; he stood with his hands out, as dumb a look on his face as he could muster — which was pretty dumb.
“I don’t speak Russian,” he said.
The Marine said something that sounded like “pash-lee, pash-lee,” which Dean recognized as Russian for “let’s go.” As he started to move, the Marine behind him decided he wasn’t moving fast enough and slammed his rifle butt into Dean’s kidney. The American fell to the ground, this time not faking it. The Marine went to jab him again, this time with the barrel end. Instinctively Dean grabbed the gun.
He realized this was a big mistake about half a second before it fired.
46
One minute, Stephen Martin was having a glorious wet dream, banging two models on a pristine Aruba beach. The scent of sunscreen mixed with tequila and the heavy odor of women in heat.
The next minute, he was being pulled out of bed by his undershirt, dragged across the cold cement floor.
“Fuck,” he mumbled as he tried to grab whatever had him. “Jesus. Let me wake up.”
He jerked his elbow into something hard, then felt himself spinning backward. His head slammed against the cement.
What the hell were the idiot Russians doing now?
“You better be fuckin’ Martin,” said a voice in English.
American English.
“I am,” he muttered. He realized he was still dreaming, but damn—damn—this felt real. He was lifted up and tossed down, carried over someone’s shoulder.
Not a dream. The man carrying him ran from the room, down the hallway to the steps.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m rescuing you. How the hell are you still alive? You a cat?”
“Put me down.”
“Sshhh.”
Martin’s rescuer paused at the base of the stairwell, glanced at something in his hand, then started running up the steps, taking them two at a time. He paused again at the top. Two men lay sprawled on the floor above.
Martin pushed his torso off the man’s back, trying to twist down. The man was large, with hair so blond it nearly shone. He had a handheld computer in his left hand and a long, boxlike gun in his right.
NSA!
“Hey, are you from Desk Three?” asked Martin.
“Let’s save the songs for later, OK? We still got to get the hell out of here and I don’t know if the place is bugged.”
“There are five hundred troops here, and scientists.”
“The troops are mostly gone, and I’m not worrying about any eggheads. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Nice underwear,” said the NSA op, putting him down.
“You look good in white.”
Martin felt himself flush. The man studied the handheld, which seemed to be getting a live video feed. Martin realized it must be a surveillance arrangement showing what was going on outside.
“OK, when I say go, you go, OK? Run right behind me.
When you see the helicopter, run for it.”
“Helicopter?” asked Martin.
“Get ready.”
47
As built, the Hind used a reasonably accurate, if somewhat kludgy, KPS-53AW sight, aiming its chin gun via a pair of control wheels and a primitive optical aiming set. Missiles were aimed with an ocular that looked something like what might be found on a microscope circa 1960.
The Poles had kindly removed these quaint, if obsolescent, devices before selling the chopper to Petro-UK. And while some — Fashona specifically — claimed to prefer some of the old muscle, the items the NSA wizards had selected to replace the original weapons were a vast improvement.
Six Hellfire missiles — considerably more accurate than the original AT-2 Swatters, or even the AT-3 Spirals fitted on E models — sat on triple rails that rode the outside of the winglets. Two GAU-13/A Gatling 30mm can
nons, fitted into slightly modified Pave Claw GPU-5/A pods, sat next to the Hellfires. A four-barrel development of the highly successful GAU-8/A Avenger designed and fitted exclusively to the A-10 Warthog, the guns spewed 30mm armor-piercing and high-explosive incendiary versions at a rate around twenty-four hundred a minute. Not that you’d actually keep your finger on the trigger that long.
Last but not least were the two rocket pods. Here the Hind went native — the weapons were Russian 142mm S-5K rockets that could penetrate roughly nine inches of armor at about four thousand yards.
Which was maybe nine times as thick as the armor on the skins of the two ZSU-23s that Lia had zeroed in on the aiming reticule as the Hind popped up over the fence. The RWR sounded in the cabin behind her, indicating that the SA-6 radar had found and was locking on the helicopter. A half-second later, a space-launched missile known simply as a Vessel flashed down from above, smacking through the radar van at the opposite end of the compound like a Pedro Martinez fastball dividing a bowl of jelly. Three seconds after that, two more Vessels collided in the air opposite the east fence, temporarily drawing everyone’s attention from the approaching Hind.
As tracers from the ZSUs began arcing in the air, Lia got the launch cue from the targeting computer. Her first rocket missed high, sailing into the dirt directly behind it. The second rocket obliterated the top two barrels of the antiaircraft gun on the right. The third and fourth missiles, fired from the other winglet, took out the ZSU she’d actually been aiming at.
“Swinging around!” yelled Fashona, ducking the front of the helicopter.
Lia moved her thumb down on the joystick, selecting the left cannon pod only. She could see one of the sentries raising his gun toward them.
She pressed the trigger and erased him.
Deep Black db-1 Page 22
