by Ian Slater
“Yes?”
“Well, what was meant by ‘spotting’ was that at the end of their respective shifts, these two people would take the disk, and I’m talking here about a three-and-a-half-inch floppy, faster than a CD-ROM but larger than a USB memory device, and for security they’d place a very small circular NDE (non-data-erasing) battery within the reverse — hollow — side of the metal hub so that—”
“So it would transmit a tracking signal,” Freeman said excitedly, anticipating Moffat, “in case it was stolen!”
“Yes. Normally the disk’s battery has a ten-second delay so it won’t be activated while the disk is put in its jewel case at the end of the day.”
“I get it,” said Freeman. “But if somebody steals it without its jewel case, its battery would be activated. A beeper!”
“Correct. I’ve passed this on to Pacific Coast Command and the E-2C Hawkeye out of Whidbey Naval Station. It’s festooned with electronic eyes and ears, and it’s going to patch you into its radio net as soon as it picks up any signal from the disk.”
“Brilliant!” said the general, using the declarative adjective he’d picked up from his sojourns with Britain’s SAS regiment. “Absolutely brilliant!”
“Ah, General, there are a couple of other things you ought to know about.”
“Shoot!”
“Dr. Grierson — the physician—”
“Yes,” said Freeman. “Mr. Cool. The doctor who was looking after Roberta.”
“Yes. Ah, well, the word’s out that he and the hospital are suing you as being complicit in, ah, Roberta’s death. I thought you ought to—”
“Fuck ’im!” said Freeman, his face reddening, the phone in one hand, the other holding a grab bar against the turbulence they were encountering. “Fuck ’im! But thanks for giving me the heads-up, Doc.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That prick physician,” Freeman told Johnny Lee, “who I had you arrest at the hospital? He’s suing me! Poor woman’s dead and he’s got a lawyer on my case.”
“Ah,” said Aussie disgustedly. “These guys’ve got attorneys comin’ out their ass.”
Prince was worried, backing up against the team’s two Zodiacs as if looking for protection. Choir reassured him that the general’s anger had nothing to do with him.
“But,” Freeman announced, “good news. That disk the pricks stole—”
“Has a beeper!” cut in Aussie.
“You’ve been listening in on my phone conversations,” charged Freeman, with mock severity.
“I have.” Everyone laughed.
“I ought to have you arrested!”
“General Freeman.” It was the helo pilot’s voice. “We’re descending to the Priest Lake turnoff.”
“Hold on!” cut in Freeman. “Don’t land here. I’ve just heard from Moffat that the terrorists are carrying a beeper, so I want to contact the Hawkeye to see whether they can get a fix on the bastards.”
“Roger,” answered the Chinook’s pilot. “We’ll take you back upstairs for a while.”
The general, allowing for Murphy’s Law, expected it to take much longer than it did to contact the Hawkeye but in fact they were exchanging info within five minutes. One of the electronic warfare officers aboard the Hawkeye was seeing a dot pulsing on his screen with the urgency of a boil about to burst. The E.W.O., one of the “moles” aboard the essentially windowless aircraft, sat beneath the rotating, spiral-painted rotodome. He routed his call through the “box,” and the binary codes of zeroes and ones sorted themselves out into a military frequency that could be heard on Freeman’s modular infantry radio, informing the general that the E-2C Hawkeye was picking up a clearly identifiable beep from Priest Lake. To underscore the sound, the electronic warfare officer brought the “beep” sound on line so that all the team members could hear it via their MIR’s earpiece. The Hawkeye informed Freeman that the plane would loiter on station to provide GPS-assisted intel.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Freeman told the E.W.O. “But I urge you to stay beyond MANPAD range.”
“Appreciate your advice, General, but I hardly think the terrorists would bother adding shoulder-fired rockets to their load.”
The general signed off and wasted no time informing his pilot that the Chinook’s new landing zone would have to be as close as possible to the beep point the Hawkeye was reporting. The signal put their prey two miles west of an island in the southwest corner of Priest Lake. The island itself was about a mile offshore.
“I love that fucking beeper,” said Aussie. “The fuckers are hoist by their own petard.”
“What’s a petard?” inquired Salvini, who was tightening the webbing that held the helo’s two Zodiacs firmly against the bulkhead.
“Johnny?” called out Aussie as he busied himself checking out his HK G36 assault rifle’s under-barrel grenade tube, the grenades festooned about him. “You’re our linguist. Tell this ignorant savage from Brooklyn what a friggin’ petard is.”
“I don’t know,” said Johnny Lee, the skin over his high cheekbones tightening with concern; for all his knowledge of Asian, Mideastern, Slavic, and Romance languages, he didn’t know what a petard was.
“It’s an explosive device,” Freeman explained, “formerly used to bust through walls. To be hoist by your own petard means you screw up your own plans by your own actions. What Aussie means is that the very thing those scumbags stole is giving them away.” He allowed himself a smile despite the serious business they were embarked on.
“Serves the bastards right,” said Tony Ruth, with grunts of approval from Gomez and Eddie Mervyn, who were tightening the slings on their navy rig Heckler Koch submachine guns.
“And,” said Choir, “if those swine haven’t picked up the Hawkeye’s transmit to us, they won’t know. It’ll be one big surprise when we suddenly appear on top of ’em.” He turned to his beloved spaniel. “That right, boy?” Prince’s tail was wagging affectionately as Choir adjusted the Velcro tabs on the dog’s hagvar bulletproof, anti-shrapnel vest. Prince had easily passed the long, hard training for a tracker at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, but he had never liked the vest, for while it protected his body in the area between his head and hindquarters, it was heavy.
“Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves,” Freeman cautioned Choir. “These swine are clever dicks, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to pull off this attack. They’ve obviously been planning for it for a long time. I checked with the FBI and DHS guys and they say that Tenth Mountain Division has had no reports of theft visà-vis their Paratrooper mountain bikes or uniforms. That tells me,” added Freeman, his voice rising above the noise of the Chinook, “that these terrorists planned their op down to the last detail—” He paused, holding his left hand up for silence, his right hand gripping the roll bar as he listened to the beeper. Damn! It had ceased, which told him that his quarry might be in a “dead zone,” physical barriers blocking transmission, or—
“Maybe the terrorists know they’ve got a beeper,” cut in Johnny Lee.
“Well,” said Freeman, “the best we can do is keep our eyes and ears open.” His left hand indicated the southwest quadrant of his navigational pilotage chart. “We’ll land here, two miles west of this island, the last reported beeper contact. We’ll move in the bush along the west side of this old logging road that runs south-north parallel to the lake. We’ll follow Prince and our own noses but — and I can’t stress this too much — there are isolated cabins, not many, but some with a boat launch for hunters and fishermen. So remember, even if we get a beep right on top of one of them, identify before engaging. These scumbags — twelve of ’em by the bicycle count — may have commandeered a civilian vehicle to save travel time between Pend Oreille and Priest Lake. For them there’ll be no need to worry about identifying friend or foe. Everyone is now their foe, so they’ll be quick on the trigger. I’ll try to stay in contact with the Hawkeye and in whisper contact with you via your MIRs.” The general pa
used. “Questions?”
“We have any idea what they look like?” asked Salvini. “They could still be in U.S. battle dress.”
“They could,” the general agreed. “But my guess, Sal, is that they’ve gone civilian. The media will have the story out by now, or at least their version of it. Reporters can be sat on for a day, maybe, but there’s no way that the murder of ten American scientists and a security guard in a small community can be hushed up for much longer. So, Sal, my answer has to be that the creeps could still be in our battle dress uniform or hunting gear. But not many hunters use automatic weapons, which I presume they’re carrying.”
“True,” said Aussie, “though I know some so-called sportsmen who hunt deer with AK-47s and M-16s.” He shook his head in disgust.
During the remainder of the flight, Freeman and his team did a quick study of the list of cabins and of ten people who, the sheriff had told him, had fled civilization to live year-round by the now storm-caged lake.
* * *
Jake McCairn, sixty-five, had a bad back from too much stress, he thought, and had retreated from the world into his wild, primeval domain. He enjoyed not having to shave or wear his dentures. He liked animals more than people, and when he saw this army guy coming out of the forest at the edge of the lake and calling out, “Mornin’!” Jake ignored him and continued checking the float-lines he’d set for rainbow and Dolly Varden trout.
“You Jake?”
“Eh?” Jake checked another of the lines — nothing.
“You’re Jake McCairn, right?”
“What of it?”
“Signs on the way up from Sandpoint on Pend Oreille say you’ve got a boat for rent.”
“Sometimes. Why?”
“My name’s Ramon. My squad and I need a boat to go up the lake for a while.”
“Should’ve brought your own boat. What d’ya expect, big marinas with neons flashing?”
“We had a boat, a Zodiac, but it got ripped up by a bear or something up—”
Jake McCairn emitted a guttural cough that was a stand-in for a laugh. It could be heard by Ramon’s men thirty feet away in the woods fronting the lake. Low nimbostratus was coming lower, gray mist leaking from it and wreathing the lake in banks of bone-chilling fog.
“So,” said Ramon, producing a wad of fifty-dollar bills. “Could you let us use your boat for a bit?”
“Nope. Going out to the island soon. Gonna get me a wolf skin.” With that, Jake turned his back on the stranger and went back to his line casts.
Jake heard Ramon’s footfall behind him and turned to see about ten or twelve men approaching him from the marshy edge of the lake, and heard the unmistakable sound of an approaching helicopter. He looked up, could see nothing but gray cloud no more than five hundred feet above a gray sheen on the lake, a sign that the sun still existed and was trying to get through here and there.
Ramon grabbed him in a hammerlock, and now the other men were running across the marshy margin between the woods and lakeshore, McCairn protesting violently until one of the men punched him so hard McCairn could hear his jawbone crack.
“Now,” asked Ramon, dark brown eyes appearing almost black in the weak daylight, “where’s your fucking boat, before we break your—”
Jake tried to spit at them but only bloody dribble came out, running down onto his beard-stubbled chin.
“Break his leg,” ordered Ramon, glancing anxiously at the leaden sky for the helo.
Jake attempted to speak but couldn’t, the pain of his broken jaw so intense it came out as “Boa’s…up ’bou’ three hundred yar’.”
“Get him to his feet!” Ramon ordered. “Rashid!”
“Naam!”
“Speak English!” Ramon snapped. “You and Omar deal with the helo if it looks like it’s going to land.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“C’mon!” Ramon told Jake, jabbing him hard with a Heckler Koch 9 mm sidearm. “Take us to the boat and fast or we will break your leg.” He jabbed the old man again. “Think I’m kidding, Mr. McCairn?”
Jake stumbled along through the reeds and fist-sized rocks, and in his hurting fury managed to ask, “You ’mericans?”
The soldier ignored him. When they found the boat, two of Ramon’s men brought the outboard from their torn Zodiac. Then they cut his throat. They started the outboard, a gray wolf howled, and Ramon realized that the dead man’s boat could carry only six men.
There was no argument as to who would go and who would stay behind. Ramon’s commandos from GUPIX, the Government of Palestine in Exile as they called it, always knew that such difficult tactical situations might arise. The four of them, including the two American citizens from one of the vehement anti-federalist Idaho militias who had helped them in their mission against the U.S. government, had trained long and hard, and each man understood what he might be called upon to do in order that those with the disk could escape. And so morale remained high as Ramon told five of his men that he would go with them and the disk in the boat, while the other six men would stay behind.
The sound of the helicopter had now shifted from being eastward, near Montana, back toward them in the thick soup of nimbostratus. Ramon took comfort in the knowledge of how stressed the pilots must be. It would be tough enough on a clear day, flying in the tight airspace in the mist and cloud-shrouded amphitheater of the Rocky Mountains and surrounding hills, but this must be a nightmare. It was nothing like the Iraqi desert, Ramon mused, and he was struck by the sweet irony that in Iraq, in the desert, the terrain had favored the infidels’ infiltration, whereas here America’s rugged terrain helped by inhibiting a helo’s maneuvers.
“Son of a bitch!” shouted Tony Ruth, who, struck by the loudness of the strong, resurrected “beep” being amplified over the Chinook’s internal bay speaker, declared, “We must be on top of the mothers!”
“We are!” confirmed the loadmaster.
“Gonna be tricky!” opined Aussie, looking down at the wide, marshy margin between the lake proper and the edge of the woods.
“That’s what we do,” riposted Freeman. “We do tricky.” He glanced down at Prince, who was panting, sensing the excitement and hearing the soft stream of defensive flares that the Chinook was dropping prior to landing. “That right, Prince?” said Freeman. “We do tricky, right?” Prince’s tail was thumping a bulkhead.
“When we land,” began Freeman, “I want every—” He glimpsed a bluish tail of exhaust at the edge of the woods.
“Missile!” yelled the pilot.
They felt the helo jink sharply right, then—
The explosion was earsplitting, and for several moments neither the general nor the rest of the team, who were slammed hard against the fuselage in their H-straps, could hear anything. Then the high whine of the rear rotors’ portside engine took over the world, screaming as it fought to compensate for the loss of power from the knocked-out starboard engine.
“Going down!” yelled the loadmaster.
Nothing sounded or smelled right anymore, the usually loud but reassuring sounds and odors of a Chinook in steady flight now replaced by decidedly out-of-whack noises and the nauseating smell of leaking hydraulics as pilot and copilot fought to get the machine under control, flares still popping through gray stratus and mist. For a moment the big helo rose promisingly against a violent wind shear, but then they began to plummet.
“Hard landing!” shouted the loadmaster, and Choir, holding the spaniel close to him, could hear Prince whine.
They were out of the gray world, the metallic sheen of the lake sliding downhill, the helo’s nose rattling like crazy and rising insanely, the forward rotor spinning, the rear blades slowing arthritically before stopping altogether, fuselage gyrating in the pilot’s unequal battle with gravity; then they saw a long streak of dark woods west of them along the shoreline now seeming to run uphill. An eagle was glimpsed, then a darker, softer green than the woods was racing up at them, getting bigger, then WHUMP! — walls of reed-scummy w
ater erupted all around and a sound like hail as a downpour of dead stalks and other lakeside detritus struck the Chinook’s skin.
They had come down about a quarter mile from the shore in five feet of water, marsh to the left, open lake to their right.
Young Prince was whimpering like a puppy, but no one said a word. Every one of the eight-man team had braced for a tailbone-smashing crash, but the water and marshy margin of the lake here on the southwestern end afforded them if not a soft landing, then at least a less violent one than they had any right to expect.
Tony Ruth looked the most shaken. Prince’s bright and alarmed eyes were looking up at Choir for reassurance. The pilot and copilot were shouting to each other above the noise as they shut down all ancillary systems that could quickly catch fire if the gas tanks had been perforated. In addition, there were still some of the supposedly anti-missile flares aboard, and they too posed a fire hazard.
“What happened with those damned flares?” Freeman demanded.
The pilot and copilot glared at the general. They had managed, against extraordinary odds, to bring the Chinook to a crash landing in marshland about fifty yards east of the dark line of thick woods, no one seemed badly hurt, and what was Freeman saying? Not “thank you, boys,” but what happened to the fucking flares?
“How do we know!” said the helo captain. “They’re supposed to sucker missiles into thinking they’re our exhaust, but something went wrong. Sure as hell wasn’t our flying — sir!”
“Sorry, gentlemen. You did a great job, but we all nearly bought it because—”
“Captain,” cut in the copilot, “we’re still getting the radio signal from that beeper. It’s up ahead of us about three clicks, on the lake. They’re definitely on the water, General.”
“You hear that, guys?” Freeman shouted to the team, who had already dislodged the two six-man Zodiacs from the webbing and were ready to slide them down the rear-door ramp out to the marsh, from which cold mist was blowing into the helo like smoke. “Their beeper puts them about three clicks from here on the lake, so let’s—” Rounds were thudding into the side of the helo, and through the open ramp door, Aussie could see winks of light coming from the woods about two hundred yards from their position.
