Darpa Alpha wi-11

by Ian Slater

  The boy’s unemotional, businesslike tone was alarming, chilling. The child had a cold, calculating heart beyond his years, the inheritance of the terrorist heartlessness.

  “Is he armed?” Freeman asked, ready to bring up his AK-47 from its casual barrel-down position by his right side.

  “A pistol in his waistband,” the boy told him. “He’s left-handed.”

  El-Hage was still standing by the truck, as if frozen in time. Wait a minute, thought Freeman, slowing. What if the kid was lying — a sucker ploy to get him away from the sniper, Thomas, her shooter’s eye resting in the scope’s reticule. A no-miss shot, with El-Hage in her scope.

  El-Hage suddenly ran to the other side of the truck and snatched up an AK-47. Freeman immediately dropped to the ground, firing as he did so underneath the Jinlin. He heard a cry of pain, the Arab’s legs out from under him, and the man fell, his AK-47 clattering on the Jinlin-flattened reeds. The general unleashed another long burst, and the Hamas leader was grossly spastic in his death throes. He tried to say something to the boy, but only bright arterial blood issued from his mouth, and he was dead.

  Freeman heard the rifle’s crack, and wheeled. Thomas, still too weak to shout loudly, had fired a warning shot into the air from her sniper rifle, and was now pointing at the T-90 a half a mile away in the minefield, its gun lowering to slightly below the azimuth, which meant it was about to engage a short-range target. “Run!” Freeman told the boy, who needed no encouragement, having sized up the situation as quickly as the general. They heard the boom of the 125 mm cannon and felt a great rush of air.

  “Down!” Freeman yelled as the Jinlin somersaulted ten feet into the air and became a ball of tangled metal and flame crashing to the ground.

  Melissa now had the scope on Abramov, his head and that of the other two crewmen by the cupola in her crosshairs. The tank was coming straight for her. Below the Russians were winks of orange light, the T-90’s machine guns sweeping the rain-drenched reeds that Freeman and the boy were racing for.

  So enraged was Abramov, kneeling on the tank with one hand on the cupola, that, despite the T-90’s superb suspension, his head kept bobbing around in Melissa’s IR scope. The furious terrorist’s instructions to his driver didn’t allow for any zigzag pattern during the T-90’s charge. He wanted to run Freeman down.

  Melissa lowered the M40A1 for a seventy-yard chest shot, and fired. Abramov flew off the tank into its wake, the impact of Thomas’s sniper round against Abramov’s Kevlar vest such that while it didn’t penetrate all the way through, it knocked him ass-over-tit, verkh dnom, as the Russians say, his money-filled backpack leaking a trail of assorted currencies as his body, wrapped in gold, rolled in the tank’s wake.

  Though badly wounded and bleeding, Abramov rose in feral rage, screaming at the now-stopped tank, from which Nureyev, his driver, and two other terrorists escaped, risking all to get his money for themselves. The general was waving his 9 mm Makarov menacingly at them as Freeman, emerging from the reeds, fired a long burst. Abramov’s body was sent reeling back, his face a bloody pulp.

  The four terrorists, would-be millionaires, held up their hands. One, with a green signal flag, frantically called, “Don’t shoot. No shooting!”

  “You’ll take the money and leave?” shouted Freeman, his AK-74 aimed at the four Russians.

  “Sure,” said one of them. “No problem.”

  Without taking his eyes off the four Russian terrorists, Freeman told the boy to climb quickly up on the T-90 and drop his jacket in, the Russians mesmerized by the brightly colored Euros and thousand-dollar U.S. bills still falling out of Abramov’s torn knapsack and being sucked away by the faint but frigid breeze.

  “We get the money now?” asked the man who had been waving the maneuver flag.

  “Sure,” said Freeman. “It’s yours.”

  The boy had taken off his jacket and, without a glance at Freeman, tore the collar label, dropped the jacket into the hole with his right hand, and slammed the cupola lid down with his left.

  There was a noticeably soft “whoomp” in the tank as the boy jumped off, slipped on the wet reeds, and banged his head hard against the tank’s track. The Russian terrorists turned as one, and Freeman cut them down with one long burst, his AK-74’s barrel steaming in the cold. “Grab that backpack,” he told the boy, pointing to Abramov. The boy obeyed quickly, picking up the belt of gold bullion as well. “Here,” said Freeman, stuffing the backpack and gold into a plastic garbage bag he’d taken from his DARPA “goodies” waist pouch. “We’ve got to get a move on. Got a plane to catch.” They were running toward the X. “You okay, son?” Freeman saw fresh blood in the boy’s hair.

  The boy didn’t answer, but kept running with Freeman and never looked back at the burning tank and river of spilled fuel that by now was incinerating the dead radio operator who’d remained inside. “Boy” seemed to Freeman a misnomer for someone so mature. But then Hamas had had him. They were a tough outfit, and Douglas Freeman knew it would take some deprogramming at home, a place which at the moment Freeman knew in his gut they had only a fifty-fifty chance of reaching, to straighten the kid out.

  The STAR, or Surface-to-Air Recovery technique, was known throughout Special Forces and Special Ops command as a last resort. Indeed, it was the riskiest extraction method ever devised by man.

  “You afraid of heights?” Freeman asked the boy as they sprinted to where Marine Thomas, now barely visible in the dusk, had begun preparations as per the instructions in the container as the Herk and its two Joint Strike Fighters loitered overhead.

  “Fill it!” Freeman shouted at her. “Time to go. Give the valve its head.”

  What a moment before had been the size of a giant jellyfish now quickly expanded into a car-sized and then a small but definite Goodyear blimp-shaped dirigible as the helium silently inflated it, and it rose high into the icy air, unraveling the first one hundred feet of the five-hundred-foot-long specially treated nylon rope that lay coiled at Freeman’s and Melissa Thomas’s feet as they hurriedly donned the multilayered thermal boilersuits complete with hoods, skydiver helmets, and rescue harnesses for each of them.

  “You’re going to have to hold on to me tightly, son,” said Freeman. “What’s your name, Blue Eyes?”

  “Jamal.”

  “All right, Jamal, now the big Hercules — that plane up there — is going to come down pretty low to get us three out of here. First we’ll go up like a—”

  “General!” Marine Thomas interjected. “The dirigible’s at full height. We’re the only ones holding it down. The Herk’ll pick it up or—” She had no time to finish; the Hercules, its four turboprop engines roaring, was coming at them at about five hundred feet, a big, metal, horizontal V sticking out from the nose like a forked tongue which, in theory, should snag the nylon rope suspended from above by the blimp. If the V snagged the rope, an automatic clamp would lock the base of the V’s jaw onto the line, the dirigible, still attached to the flex rope, now high above the plane and trailing well behind it. The strain would soon be taken up by the rope, if it worked.

  “Ever been on a swing, Jamal?” Freeman shouted against the roar of the Herk as he and Melissa Thomas strapped their harnesses together.

  “Yes, I’ve been on lots of swings.”

  Freeman took the boy in a bear hug. “Not like this one, kid. You hang on to me no matter what, okay?”

  “O—” And they were off, the plane’s V-shaped proboscis having snagged the line, whisking them straight up for 120 feet before the big pendulum swing began, their initial acceleration from the sitting position to more than a hundred feet surprisingly smooth, if very fast, like being whipped up through the air at the end of a five-hundred-foot-long elastic band. The sensation of speed was so frightening and exhilarating that Freeman felt it in his loins as the three of them, in an experience for which not even Top Gun graduates volunteered, went hurtling through frigid air, the lake already far below and behind them, a silver sheen in the
moonlight slipping away westward, the black Herk entering cloud. The easy part was over.

  Above the Herk, now traveling at 144 miles per hour, the dirigible’s breakaway cords snapped from the sheer stress of the air buffeting its huge volume. Inside the plane, at the Herk’s rear ramp door, one of two volunteer crewmen set about lowering a hook line to catch the lift line, which now arced back from the nose of the Herk, now traveling at 136 miles per hour. Meantime, a second volunteer crewman began working the telescopic arm which would, it was hoped, reach out and grab the lift line so it could be brought closer to the underside of the plane, and Freeman, Jamal, and Melissa winched safely into the plane’s belly.

  The boom’s hook missed on the first pass, but snagged the line on the backswing. The winch began its high whine, then suddenly Freeman, Jamal, and Melissa Thomas felt an arm-ripping jolt so severe that Melissa thought their harnesses had split apart, her shout of alarm ripped away by the Hercules’s roaring slipstream. While the jolt, which Freeman thought he’d readied for, failed to loosen his grip on the boy, the general heard something snap, probably, he thought, one of the many wire cables that ran through the aircraft, looming two hundred feet above them, the noise of its big engines reverberating in every bone.

  Three minutes and fifty seconds after the enormous jolt, they were being winched into the plane, the night ahead filled with stars. The plane, having climbed and increased speed to 315 miles per hour, was now an hour and half out of Sapporo, Japan. Chipper Armstrong and Rhino Manowski put their escorting Joint Strike Fighters through a synchronized barrel roll for victory as they crossed over Cape Titova and to the southeast saw the metallic glints in the moonlight that were the ships of McCain’s battle group, another two JSFs already aloft to take over escort duty for the Herk. But, apart from the JSF’s barrel rolls, no signal came up to greet the Herk or its passengers who, like those in the carrier battle group, were on strict radio silence, with no running lights showing. The United States was still in a state of war against terror.

  One of the two volunteer marine crewmen, coiling the lift rope, greeted the general with a hearty, “Welcome aboard, General!” It was a few seconds before a grateful and exhausted Freeman recognized Peter Norton, his courage reincarnated, his newfound self-respect purchased during the final hours of the evac when he’d repeatedly risked his own life, under fire, to help injured marines aboard.

  “Is…” began Melissa, then stopped. “I can’t remember his name.” The noise in the cavernous Herk was giving her a severe headache, and in her utter exhaustion she told the general what marines told one another on a long, fatigue-plagued mission: “I’m dumbed out. Can hardly remember my name.”

  Freeman wasn’t listening. He was bending low over Jamal. He was unable to hear the boy’s breathing, which the general knew shouldn’t be surprising given the thundering noise of the big transport. He stared hard at Jamal to see whether his chest was moving, but it was difficult to tell sometimes, particularly with children.

  “Jamal?” said Freeman. There was no response. “Jamal?” he said louder, giving the boy a shake.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In Sapporo, the media frenzy engulfed Freeman and Marine Thomas, reporters clamoring to be heard now that Washington, D.C., had declared Lake Khanka’s ABC terrorist munitions factory destroyed after reports from the Marine Corps’ Colonel Jack Tibbet and from satellite reconnaissance, which had picked up the dense “pollution debris” over Siberia’s southeastern Primorski region.

  “General, General Freeman!” came the shouts from the frenetic horde as flashes of varying intensity went off all around like so many flares and tracer coming at him. Adding to the charged atmosphere was the increasing cacophony of yelled questions, lens shutters clicking, clacking, and whirring, all pressing in like some unstoppable ambush. Every major newspaper, TV, and radio conglomerate on the globe was seeking the “money shot” and the Patton-like quote from the legendary general who had led the American task force into what one BBC correspondent accurately called “the world’s most dangerous terrorist enclave outside of Iran.” It was all too unnerving for Marine Melissa Thomas who, on Freeman’s request, was whisked away by a Marine Corps chaplain and airport security guard to the U.S. Consulate’s police-ringed limousine.

  Freeman, a man not known for any unwillingness to help the media celebrate his true grit and daring, was, however, unduly subdued, as had been Melissa Thomas, her mood exacerbated by the bruises, scratches, and insect bites that covered her face and hands, injuries which she had no inclination to either explain or complain about.

  The general, though smartly turned out in a fresh uniform that had been rushed to Sapporo, looked tired and drawn taking questions on the dais, especially so to Marte Price who, having had to elbow and fight her way through the Japanese press scrum, was close enough to see the creases of worry lines on Freeman’s face. Finally he held up his hands to quell the din of the media frenzy, and when several Taiwanese reporters ignored his request, he refused point-blank to begin speaking until the room fell silent, though shutters continued to click and whirr, and the bright TV lights remained, forcing him to blink more than was either normal or comfortable.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be brief. Colonel Tibbet and his marines have done an outstanding job of ridding the world of the terrorist filth who make weapons for other terrorist filth. To paraphrase a man who fought Nazi filth, ‘This is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end’ for terrorists all over the world, as we and our allies keep fighting, no matter how long and hard the road may be, until every stain of such scum as Hamas and company is expunged from the earth.” He paused as one of the two U.S. Consulate officials behind him leaned forward, whispering advice: “Easy on the ‘scum’ and Hamas. Don’t want to offend the Muslims.”

  Freeman nodded politely. “It’s been suggested to me that I might be offending our Muslim brothers and sisters. Nothing could be further from my mind or from American policy. Our war isn’t against Muslims. Our war is against scum like Hamas who use whatever organization they can to spread hatred of the West in general and of America in particular.” Freeman now looked grim. “Today a young boy, a young Muslim boy, his name was Jamal, died en route to Sapporo from a mishap which, I must admit, I thought was relatively minor when we left Lake Khanka but a mishap that due to the stress experienced in our hasty but necessary evacuation, quickly proved fatal. That boy, a young boy, a young Muslim boy, was lost to us because of some scumbag in Hamas who managed to steal this boy’s young life and turn him into a potential weapon.”

  The general stopped speaking momentarily, taking in a deep breath, his unsmiling expression now one of strong resolve. “I dedicate the memory of this mission, and all who made the ultimate sacrifice, to all those young people of whatever race or belief who have been killed, used, consumed by the blind hatred of Hamas and other scumbag fundamentalists. That is all.”

  A barrage of questions went unanswered as General Douglas Freeman strode off the dais and out into the waiting consulate limousine, around which immaculately turned-out Japanese motorcycle police and plainclothes security personnel had formed a cordon sanitaire. But the cigarette smoke was anything but sanitary, and he was coughing before he entered the limo.

  Melissa Thomas, also in a fresh uniform, was sitting on the jump seat. The general indicated that the consular official take the jump seat and Melissa Thomas sit by him. “You drink, Marine?” he asked her.

  “Not much. Besides, I’m on duty, sir.”

  “So am I,” said the general, who now turned to the consular official as the limousine eased away from yet another frenzy of camera flashes to the accompaniment of the police motorcycle sirens. “You have a Coke in there, son?” he asked, tapping his combat boot against the polished cocktail-bar cupboard.

  “Coke? Ah, I don’t think so, General. That’s a multichannel TV.”

  The general frowned at the official. “You people better get on the ball.�
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  “Yes, General,” said the consular official apologetically, failing to see the smirk on the marine’s face.

  “Well,” the general asked Melissa, “were you watching the TV?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You think they bought it?”

  “I don’t understand Japanese, General,” said Marine Thomas, “but I heard some of what you said beneath the voice-over. I believed you and I saw him thirty minutes ago. He was sucking on that milk shake you ordered like it was his last meal.”

  “It will be—” began the general. “Get them to turn off those damned sirens,” he told the consular official. “We’re not going to a fire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In the relative quiet of the limousine, Freeman continued, “It will be his last meal if those Hamas bastards get a whiff of the fact that he helped us.” He turned to the official again. “I want everything I’m going to be debriefed on sent in code. Eyes Only, by diplomatic pouch. The only other people than us to know he’s alive will be the witness protection folk who’ll have to give him the usual — new name, new identity — otherwise those scumbags’ll hunt him. If they—”

  “He’ll be all right,” interjected Melissa, the consular official surprised at the ease with which this marine private was addressing the famous general.

  Freeman, though still concerned, sank back in the plush leather seat. “You think so?”

  “General,” she said. “May I speak freely?”

  “Of course.”

  “None of this,” she told the official, “leaves this car. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Well,” she began, somewhat uneasily, “that—” Suddenly she grabbed the hold strap, her legs stiffening for impact. Both the general and consular official were on the edge of their seats, looking for the unseen danger. As quickly as it had begun, it was over, Melissa Thomas burying her head in her hands in acute embarrassment. “Oh — I–I’m sorry. I thought we’d crossed over to the wrong side of the road. I forgot they drove on the left side over here.” It gave the three of them a much-needed laugh, and it made it easier for Melissa to reassure Freeman about Jamal.