Z

by Bob Mayer

  “Six minutes. Switch to your personal oxygen and crack your chem lights.”

  Riley stood up at the front of the cargo bay, behind the coupled parachutes. He unhooked from the console in the center of the cargo bay that had been supplying his oxygen up to now and hooked in to the small tank on his chest. He took a deep breath and then reached up and cracked the chem light on the back of his helmet.

  “Depressurizing.”

  Riley swallowed, his ears popping. A crack appeared at the back of the plane as the back ramp began opening. The bottom half leveled out, forming a platform, while the top half disappeared into the tail section.

  “Stand by,” the jumpmaster called out over the FM radio as he inched forward until he was at the very edge, looking out into the dark night sky. Riley knew from Colonel Rogers’s briefing that they were still over the Atlantic, outside the twelve-mile international limit to avoid attracting any attention from ground-based radar.

  “Go!” The jumpmaster and his buddy were gone. The others walked off, the pairs moving in unison. Riley went last, throwing himself out into the slipstream and immediately spreading his legs and arms akimbo and arching his back, getting stable.

  He counted to three, then pulled his ripcord. The chute blossomed above his head. He slid the night vision goggles down on his helmet, checked his chute, then looked down. He counted eight sets of chem lights below him. He turned and followed their path as the Rangers began flying their chutes in toward shore. With over five miles of vertical drop, they could cover quite a bit of distance laterally by using their chutes as wings. Riley didn’t know what the current record was, but he had heard of HAHO teams covering over twenty-five lateral miles on a jump. He felt confident that with the sophisticated guidance rigs the front man of each pair of jumpers had on top of his reserve chute, they would find the target. All Riley had to do was follow.

  Riley was cold for the first time in weeks. Even at this latitude, thirty thousand feet meant thin air and low temperatures. As he descended, it got warmer. Eventually he could see the coastline through his goggles. The white of the surf breaking on the rocks was a bright line, running north and south. Riley’s hands were on the toggles that controlled the chute, both turning and descent rate. He adjusted as the line of chem lights below him changed direction slightly. He checked his altimeter: fifteen thousand feet. Not long now.

  Twenty kilometers out to sea, the first wave of the air assault element was flying in toward the coast. Four AH-6s—known as Little Birds—led the way. They were modified OH-6 Cayuse observation helicopters. The AH-6 is one of the quietest helicopters in the world, capable of hovering a couple of hundred meters from a person and not being heard. The two pilots both wore night vision goggles and used forward-looking infrared radar to help fly in the night.

  Two Little Birds carried a 7.62mm mini-gun pod and the other two 2.75-inch rocket pods. In the backseat of each aircraft, two Ranger snipers armed with thermal scopes provided additional firepower. The Rangers wore body harnesses and could lean completely out of the helicopter to fire their rifles.

  Ten kilometers behind the Little Birds, four Apache gunships followed. Besides the 30mm chain gun mounted under the nose, the weapons pylons of each bristled with Hellfire missiles. A Black Hawk helicopter was directly behind the Apaches: Colonel Rogers’s command aircraft. And ten kilometers behind the Apaches came the main ground force: eight Black Hawks carrying ninety-six Rangers ready for battle.

  At a higher altitude and circling, the air strike force from the Abraham Lincoln was poised. It was an eclectic group of aircraft, chosen for the job each could do: F-4G Wild Weasels to suppress air defense; F-18 Hornets with laser-guided munitions to follow, along with A-6 Corsairs with their heavier loads.

  And circling high above it all was Colonel Harris in his AWACS, coordinating carefully with Colonel Rogers to make sure that everything arrived on target at just the right moment.

  Riley understood the tandem rigs now. The man in the rear was flying the chute. The man in front, not having to bother with controlling the toggles for the difficult maneuvering to land on the roof, held a silenced MP-5 submachine gun in his hands with a laser scope.

  The jump formation broke apart two hundred feet above the roof of the Van Wyks headquarters building. Riley knew the guards on the roof had to be awake, but would they be looking up? Not likely, he knew, and that was what they were counting on.

  There was a brief sparkle to one side and below. The only sign that one of the Rangers was firing. Through his earplug, Riley could hear the men call in.

  “Machine gun one clear.”

  “Machine gun two clear.”

  “Sam Two clear.”

  “Machine gun three clear.”

  “Sam One clear.”

  “Team one down.”

  The first Rangers were down on the roof, and it was clear of opposition without any alarm being sounded. So far so good. Riley let up on his toggles and aimed just off center of the roof. There was a large radar dish there blocking him from landing dead center. He could see the Rangers clearing themselves of their parachute rigs and moving on the next phase.

  Riley pulled in on his toggles and braked less than three feet above the roof. His feet touched and he immediately unsnapped his harness, stepping out of it even before the chute finished collapsing. He turned, looking about, MP-5 at the ready. He could see bodies in the sandbagged pits. A clean sweep.

  Then Riley did what the guards had failed to do. He looked up and it was as he’d feared: a video camera was set up on the struts holding up the radar dish. The small red light on top of the lens was on and it was panning the roof. They hadn’t spotted the camera in the imagery because it was inset under the radar dish. Riley tucked the butt of the MP-5 into his shoulder and fired a burst into the camera, destroying it.

  “We’ve been spotted by a camera,” he called out into the boom mike just in front of his lips.

  “Go in now!” Colonel Rogers’s voice yelled over the radio. “Everyone move up the pace!”

  The Rangers had been carefully placing shaped charges on the roof; four different charges, evenly spaced. Bentley had been unable to tell them which corner Van Wyks’s office was in. He’d never been allowed up on the top floor. They abandoned their careful placement at Rogers’s order, and hurriedly ran out their detonating cord.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  The charges blew, searing the night with their explosive crack and brief flash. Four holes appeared in the roof, and Rangers jumped down into each one.

  Riley paused, head cocked to the side. A roar of automatic fire reverberated out of the southwest hole. Riley sprinted over. A jagged opening, four feet in diameter, beckoned in the concrete.

  Riley pulled a flash-bang grenade off his vest and tossed it in, counted to three, then jumped in, just as the grenade went off. He was firing even before he hit the ground. Except he didn’t hit the ground. He landed on the body of one of the Rangers and fell to his right side. It saved his life. A string of tracers ripped by, just above his prone body.

  Riley stuck the MP-5 up and blindly returned the fire, spraying in the direction the tracers had come from. He heard the sound of a magazine being changed and was just about to move when he froze. That was too obvious. He rolled onto his stomach and peered about. Both Rangers were dead. There was a desk to his left. A wet bar in the direction the bullets had come from. That was where the man was. Whoever he was, he was using the mirror. Riley fired, shattering the glass.

  “Very good,” a heavily accented voice called out.

  Riley put a couple of rounds into the bar, confirming what he’d suspected. He wouldn’t be able to shoot through it.

  “You’re outnumbered,” Riley yelled. “Give it up.”

  “I doubt that my men are outnumbered so quickly. You came by parachute. I saw you on the video, which gave me time to be ready. Still no helicopters—haven’t heard them. I do believe that my people will get here more swiftly than yours. An
d I’m not outnumbered in this room, am I? I saw only one of you come down. That is after I shot the first two who came through.”

  Riley checked the angles. “You talk too much, Skeleton,” he said.

  There was a booming laugh. “You know me. What’s your name?”

  “Riley.”

  “Riley,” Skeleton repeated. “What are you?”

  “Special Forces,” Riley said, not wanting to get into a detailed discussion of his status. The clock was running. “Where’s Van Wyks?”

  “What do you want him for?” Skeleton asked.

  Riley heard just the slightest sound of someone moving over broken glass. “We want the Anslum four.” Skeleton could come from around either side of the bar, and if Riley picked the wrong one, the other man might get the first shot.

  “I told Pieter that he had raised the stakes too high,” Skeleton’s voice sounded like it came right from the center of the bar. “There was no need for a gamble—but Pieter—he’s been living alone with too much money and power for too long. No longer in reality.”

  A small object came flying over the top of the bar. Grenade, Riley thought, and reacted, rolling right. Skeleton was right behind the object, vaulting the bar-top—which didn’t make any sense if it was a grenade. Riley knew he’d made a mistake as he fired offhand with the MP-5, still rolling.

  Skeleton was also firing in midair, his bullets trailing Riley’s rolls by a few inches, Riley’s winging by him.

  Riley slammed into the wall just as the bolt in his MP-5 slammed home on an empty chamber. He scrambled to his knees and froze. Skeleton—all six feet eight inches of him as Quinn had described—was standing in the center of the room, a folding-stock R-4 assault rifle looking like a toy in his massive hands. Except the muzzle trained right between Riley’s eyes didn’t look like a toy.

  “I’d like to chat, but I must get my men ready for your follow-on forces,” Skeleton said. “Good-bye, Yank.” He squeezed the trigger and nothing happened.

  Both men reacted instantly, throwing down their empty weapons and whipping out pistols and training them on each other’s foreheads.

  “Well, well, well,” Skeleton said. “Standoff.”

  “I’ve got nothing to lose,” Riley said. “I already have your virus. Where’s the destruct for the bio-level four lab?”

  “Well, I do have something to lose,” Skeleton said. His left hand slid down to his belt and came up with a wicked-looking Bowie knife. “Man to man—blade to blade,” he said.

  Riley knew he could kill Skeleton with a shot to the head, but that would still leave the secret to the destruct unknown. He didn’t know how the other Rangers were doing, but he had to assume that if Skeleton was in this room, then the destruct was in here. Or at least one of the destructs.

  “All right,” Riley said. “Man to man.”

  Skeleton slid his pistol back into his holster. Riley drew his thin, double-edged Commando knife.

  “Mine’s bigger.” Skeleton laughed.

  Riley fired twice, both rounds tearing into Skeleton’s right thigh and half spinning the big man around. Riley leapt forward, throwing aside his pistol.

  Their blades met with a spark, then both stepped back.

  “You fuck,” Skeleton said, glancing down at the blood pumping out of his leg.

  Riley circled left, blade up. “Fuck your man to man shit. One thing I learned on the streets of the Bronx was there is no such thing as a fair fight.” He staggered, feeling a wave of nausea.

  Skeleton’s blade flashed forward. Riley ducked and swung his blade up at the other man’s gut, but Skeleton was surprisingly agile for his size, and the knife only caught air.

  They both backed off again. There was a burst of automatic fire from somewhere else on the floor. Skeleton smiled. “My men.”

  Comsky’s pills were wearing off. Five feet separated Riley from the other man. Riley stumbled back, and as he expected, Skeleton reacted, coming forward, blade leading. Riley threw his knife in one smooth motion. Skeleton twisted, the knife slicing along the side of his face and blood spurting forth.

  Riley’s arm continued the motion and he slammed down on Skeleton’s knife arm with his left hand. His right elbow came up, catching the big man on the chin and staggering him back.

  “I still have mine,” Skeleton said, tossing his knife from one hand to the other, then back. Riley backed up until he felt the wall come up behind him.

  Skeleton stepped forward. He was circling the knife, looking for the kill.

  The knife flashed forward and Riley reacted, swinging his right forearm up and deliberately catching the point in the flesh. Riley twisted his right arm, ignoring the agony of sliced muscle. His left hand clamped down on Skeleton’s knife hand. The knife popped out of Skeleton’s hand, more from surprise than the strength of Riley’s move.

  Riley didn’t give him a chance to recover. With all his might he slammed a punch—the middle knuckle of his left hand leading the way—into Skeleton’s right eye. The orb crunched under the impact and Skeleton screamed in agony.

  Riley pulled the knife out of his forearm and dropped it to the ground. He reached down with his one good hand and drew Skeleton’s pistol out of the holster, then snap-kicked the man in the chest, driving him away.

  Riley pointed the gun at him. “The destruct controls?”

  Skeleton’s remaining eye saw the gun, but he shook his head.

  Riley fired, the round ripping into the other leg and dropping Skeleton to the floor. “The destruct control.”

  “Fuck you,” Skeleton said. “Pieter’s got it. It’s a remote.”

  “Where’s Pieter?”

  “Down in the vault.”

  Riley aimed and fired two rounds into Skeleton’s forehead. A searchlight came in the window from a helicopter hovering just outside. Riley could see the Ranger sharpshooters hanging out the window and the small laser dots creeping around the room, searching for targets. He saw something on a table and grabbed it, putting it into one of the pockets on his combat vest.

  He pulled down the boom mike, which had been knocked askew when he’d first jumped down into the room. “This is Riley. Van Wyks has the destruct control and he’s down in the basement. Over.”

  The first rule of military operations was: What can go wrong will. Colonel Rogers was improvising, keeping things flowing. Since Riley’s first call that the video had caught the recon platoon landing on the roof, he’d been running this by the seat of his pants.

  The Little Birds were in without incident, flitting about the main building, unnoticed so far. But reaction was coming. The AWACS was picking up antiaircraft radars being activated—seeking targets. The main air assault force couldn’t go in until that problem was taken care of.

  And now Riley was saying that the recon platoon had failed in its mission. They didn’t have the destruct control. For all they knew, the mission was already a failure. Rogers briefly considered halting and cutting his losses—for all of half a second.

  “Eagle, shut down these radars and take out the ground reaction forces. Phase three.”

  “This is Eagle. Roger. Phase three. Out.”

  Riley kicked open the door to the room he’d been in, his reloaded MP-5 in his left hand. He spotted two men in khaki with their backs to him firing around the corner. Riley killed them with one burst.

  “This is Riley!” he called out, moving down the hall. Turning the corner, he met three Rangers—all that were left of the sixteen who had come down. They gathered by the stairwell, one of them holding his muzzle inside the door, firing an occasional shot to keep more of Van Wyks’s men from coming up.

  “The floor’s clear,” a young staff sergeant, the ranking survivor of the recon platoon, reported. Now that the firing had stopped—however briefly—the reality of the situation was setting in and there was a quiver in his voice.

  “All right,” Riley said. “We have to get to the basement.”

  “There’s eleven floors of people between
us and the basement,” the sergeant reported. “We blew the elevators.” He pointed at the stairs. “That’s the only way down.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Riley said.

  The F-4G Wild Weasel was the only remaining version of the venerable F-4 Phantom still in the U.S. inventory. It had one very specific job—kill enemy radar and anti-air systems.

  Two Weasels came in on Eagle’s orders fast and high out of the west. The radar systems of the Van Wyks compound picked them up and locked on, just as Colonel Harris, orbiting far overhead in the AWACS, had hoped.

  Missiles leapt off the wings of the Weasels—Shrike, AGM-78, and Tacit Rainbows—fancy names for smart bombs that caught the enemy radar beams and rode them down to the emitters.

  The pilots of the Weasels banked hard and were already one hundred and eighty degrees turned when the missiles struck. Almost all of Van Wyks’s air defense went down in that one strike.

  The Little Birds were going down the building floor by floor, now that they knew the top was all friendlies and all the other floors were the bad guys. The two armed with 7.62 mini-guns were firing through windows, shooting blindly. The Ranger snipers hit anything they saw moving. Windows shattered out and tracers crisscrossed the floor, tearing through walls. The men inside lay low, hiding from the carnage as best they could.

  The two Little Birds with rockets had a more difficult job. They were firing up the barracks buildings nearby as troops poured out of them. As the first armored vehicles began appearing, they switched to those.

  The four Apaches arrived just in time and fired a salvo of eight Hellfire missiles at the armor. Each one was a kill.

  “Balls to the wall,” was Colonel Rogers’s less-than-elegant order to the pilot of his Black Hawk. The other eight Black Hawks holding his main assault force were right behind him.