War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel

by James Rollins

  Tucker pictured the destruction of the desert town at White Sands—and how they had survived. He turned to Josif and pointed to his toes. “Do you have cellars, caves, anything underground?”

  The old man must have seen his fair share of hard times, and rather than being panicked, he looked angry and determined. “Da. Many root cellars. Also caves.” He waved toward the west side of the village.

  Tucker stared the man hard in the eyes. “Show me those caves. Get your boys moving everyone into cellars or over to those caves.”

  Josif nodded and spoke rapidly to his sons.

  “Tuck!” Jane called to him.

  He stepped to the open door, glancing across the chaos in the square. Most of the children stayed with their teacher, huddling around her, grasping her skirt and sobbing. A scatter of other children fled down nearby paths and streets.

  “Jane, I’m going to help get these children to some caves at the west side of the village. Take the Yeti and collect as many other pe—”

  Another artillery round whooshed overhead and crashed into a home on the opposite side of the square. Cedar shingles and white bricks exploded outward, zinging across the open space and peppering the fountain. The statue of the soldier teetered sideways and crashed into the fountain’s basin. To his right, a boy of ten or eleven flew through the smoke, then crashed across the ground, his body shredded by shrapnel.

  Frank started heading that way, but Tucker grabbed his arm.

  The boy was already dead.

  Josif waved for Tucker to follow. His sons spread out, grabbing younger children and swinging them up into their strong arms, while herding older children ahead of them.

  “Zuri, zuri!” the pair shouted, urging their charges to move faster.

  Tucker turned to Jane. “Circle the town! Stuff as many people in with you as you can and meet us on the west side!”

  She looked scared but nodded.

  “Kane, to me,” he said.

  The shepherd leaped to his side.

  As the SUV whipped around to make a pass through the village, he and Frank followed Josif and his two sons. Tucker grabbed a young girl hiding behind a bench.

  Frank waved his arms, parroting the two brothers. “Zuri, zuri!”

  Upon Tucker’s signal, Kane ran back and forth, barking to get any stunned stragglers to move. Tucker pulled out his satellite phone and tried to raise Ruth, but he could find no signal.

  Frank noted his effort. “Bastards must be jamming this region, like back in Trinidad, blocking outgoing satellite, cell, and landline.”

  “What about Rex?”

  Frank checked the CUCS unit. “Still connected. Makes sense. They’d have to keep local transmissions and frequencies open in order to control the drones.”

  Another thunderous blast echoed from the southwest. A plume of orange rose into the sky past the shoulder of the neighboring mountain.

  Frank looked aghast. “They’ve begun shelling the other villages.”

  As Tucker continued through the town, he caught glimpses of the southern border. A pall of smoke hung there, marking the location of the artillery guns and tanks.

  He could guess the enemy’s strategy.

  They’re softening up these places before the tanks start rolling.

  Afterward, there would be survivors, along with footage of bombed-out homes, of Montenegrin tanks grinding along village streets, and of bodies, too many of them children.

  “How can they do this?” Frank gasped out.

  Tucker didn’t care. He had only one purpose glowing behind his eyes.

  To stop them before those tanks got here.

  Frank dashed down a side street and helped a pregnant woman cradling her stomach who struggled toward them. He rejoined Tucker, with an arm around the woman’s waist.

  After an interminable slog, they finally neared the village outskirts. Far up ahead, one of the brothers waved to Tucker and pointed down a side street, directing the parade of refugees that way.

  Tucker needed no encouragement to keep moving.

  Another bomb struck the square behind them all, casting up smoke and fire. The blast wave pushed them forward. The artillery barrage was in full swing now, moving back and forth across the valley, sending up plumes of flame and debris. Smoke filled the air, the stench of it thick in Tucker’s nostrils. Shouts and the cries of frightened children echoed throughout the quickly emptying streets. Dozens of people now followed behind Tucker, while others sprinted past.

  A honk drew his attention to the right. The Yeti came hurtling down a steep street from one of the upper tiers of the village. The vehicle barely fit down the narrow path. Through the windshield, now obscured by a skitter of cracks, Jane wore a hard, fixed expression. He remembered it from Afghanistan, Jane in battle mode.

  Relieved to see her, he let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

  She reached the stream of villagers and rode alongside Tucker. She had the Yeti packed from stem to stern with people sprawled on top of each other. She even had a young boy of two or three balanced on her knee, clutching him with one arm as if he were her own son.

  With her window rolled down, she spoke while driving alongside him. “I got as many as I could, but it’s hell up there. Did you see the explosions in the distance?”

  He nodded. From the worry in her eyes, she clearly knew the implication, too.

  Tucker and his group reached the edge of the village and turned north, where one of Josif’s sons stood beside a set of double doors that opened into a chunk of hillside. He was cajoling and shoving people through the entrance.

  Jane explained, noting his attention, “I learned from a passenger that the caves on this side of town are used as a communal root cellar. They burrow deep into the mountain for a ways. Should offer some protection.”

  He hoped so.

  As they reached the entrance, Jane unloaded the Yeti and passed the young boy in her lap to an old woman who seemed to recognize the lad. Still, Jane stared after the boy as he was carried through the doors, her face a mask of concern, plainly thinking of her own child.

  With Frank and Nora’s help, Tucker got the remaining refugees below, then climbed down the steps into the cavern cellars.

  The doors were closed behind them, sealing them all inside.

  12:19 P.M.

  At the bottom of the cellar stairs, kerosene lanterns had been lit. The yellow glow flickered off worried faces and huddled bodies. A low babbling and murmuring echoed from deeper inside the labyrinth.

  Outside, shells continued to slam into the earth, sending shockwaves under their feet. Dirt trickled from the ceiling. Tucker could feel each thwump in his belly.

  “We got to do something,” Frank mumbled to him.

  Tucker took a deep breath to collect himself. But deep in the back of his skull, old anxieties stirred, making it hard to think. He found the others’ eyes upon him.

  Then Kane was there, leaning against him, sensing he needed the support. Those dark eyes stared up at him, warmly reflecting the lamplight. The shepherd’s body trembled slightly against his thigh. Being underground after being almost buried alive had left the dog unnerved, and rightly so.

  Still, Kane stuck by him, ever loyal.

  Tucker took strength from his companion and turned to Frank. “Is Rex still in the air?”

  Frank pulled out the CUCS unit from his pocket. “I left him hovering in silent mode when I spotted all that military equipment. But he’s running low on juice.”

  Frank showed the screen to Nora, who still looked shell-shocked but seemed relieved to have something to distract her. “I’d say Rex has fifty, maybe sixty minutes of charge left.”

  “Were you guys able to get that final triangulation on the central command hub?”

  Frank winced, plainly having forgotten about this detail in the rush of events. “Let me see.” He worked for a few breaths with Nora at his side. “I . . . I think we got it.”

  “You think or you do?” />
  Nora explained the hesitation. “We never instructed Rex to perform this last reading, but he must’ve done it on his own.”

  On his own?

  “Sandy’s amazing . . .” Nora muttered, smiling softly.

  Frank nodded. “I think Rex is learning. He performed the task under his own volition, perhaps sensing what was needed from the earlier hops, recording the information in case we wanted it.”

  “Which we do.” Tucker faced Jane. “Do you still have the map of Skaxis?”

  She nodded and pulled out the folded topographic map. “What’s the coordinate for the C3 hub?”

  As the three of them worked together, spreading the map on one of the earthen walls, someone touched his arm. He turned to find Bozena standing with Josif.

  The old man gave a stiff but polite bow of his head. “Hvala vam.”

  “Thank you,” Bozena said, both translating and adding her own appreciation of their efforts.

  Don’t thank us yet.

  Bozena, her face a mask of fear, clearly recognized the ongoing danger. She cringed as another blast shook the ground. No one was safe yet—especially if those tanks started rolling.

  Tucker faced Bozena and Josif. “We need your help.” He glanced to the old man’s two sons. “Someone who knows Skaxis Mining well.”

  Josif scowled at that name again. “Zašto?”

  “Why?” Bozena asked, her expression confused.

  Tucker didn’t have time to explain and feared something would be lost in the translation anyway. “With enough help, I might be able to stop this.”

  Plainly suspicious, Josif turned and spoke with Bozena, who seemed to offer some reassurance to the old man, waving a hand at Tucker’s group, then at the people huddled in the caves.

  Finally, Josif sighed and waved one of his boys over. “My son Pravi. He know mines.”

  Tucker drew Pravi over to the map. “Show him where Rex seems to think the C3 hub is located.”

  Frank pointed to a spot on the map on the far side of the complex, in what appeared to be a remote corner, away from the attention of the main mining facility.

  Tucker faced Pravi. “Do you know where that is?”

  The tall young man leaned closer, swiping some blond hair from his eyes, then straightened. “Manstir, da.” He bobbed his head but questioned them. “Zašto?”

  “Can you get us there?”

  Pravi frowned. “Place be high and”—he made an angle with one hand—“strm.”

  Steep, Tucker guessed, which he could also tell from the map’s topography. He began to despair, knowing they didn’t have much time.

  Pravi offered a thin hope, grinning slyly. “But maybe I know way.”

  34

  October 27, 12:33 P.M. CET

  Kamena Gora, Serbia

  Tucker careened the ŠKODA Yeti up the mountain road. Pravi sat in the passenger seat, acting as their navigator, while Jane and Nora shared the back with Kane. The shepherd was again fully outfitted in his gear.

  The final member of their party whispered in Tucker’s earpiece on a channel Rex had encrypted and kept masked from eavesdroppers. “Tucker, the tanks are beginning to roll across the border . . . headed our way.”

  He had left Frank with the villagers at the cavern cellars. Tucker hated to leave the man behind, but Frank had insisted. He was determined to use the last of Rex’s battery life to keep an eye on the border and use the drone’s electronic warfare suite to protect the people as best he could. To do that, he needed to remain in the village.

  “They’ll be on us in the next twenty minutes,” Frank warned, adding pressure to the already strained timetable.

  Even without Frank’s call, Tucker could have guessed the tanks would begin to roll. The artillery barrage had fallen silent for the past several minutes. Apparently the rain of shells had softened the cluster of hamlets sufficiently enough. Now would come the true terror.

  Tucker touched his throat mike. “We’re almost to the perimeter of Skaxis Mining. Do your best to hold the fort.”

  Pravi was taking them up a rutted tract. It was an overgrown old cart road dating from medieval times, a path only the locals knew about. It was so narrow and heavily forested that the SUV’s side mirrors brushed through low pine branches. Several of the men from Kamena Gora used this shortcut to come and go from the mines. It ended at an abandoned section of the complex, where the ground had been emptied of its rare-earth minerals, leaving behind a deep scar.

  The C3 hub lay almost directly across from that spot, a good seven miles away.

  Pravi had offered a solution for quickly traversing that distance.

  Frank radioed again. “Tucker! I just sent Rex for a high pass over those tanks. Something ain’t right here.”

  “What?” he asked while struggling to keep the SUV on the muddy tract.

  “Rex is picking up electromagnetic signatures from the tanks, identical to Tangent’s drones. Same across every frequency.”

  “What’re you getting at?”

  “I think the tanks are drones, too. I think they’re unmanned.”

  Is that possible?

  Tucker called back to Nora and explained the situation.

  She leaned forward. “He could be right. Odisha was only one of a scatter of labs around the country. There were rumors that other places were working on ground versions of our aerial fleet.”

  Tucker realized that such unmanned vehicles might work to Kellerman’s advantage. Back at White Sands, all that had remained after the Warhawks’ bombardment of the Soviet hardware was smoldering slag. With no bodies inside, Kellerman could further mask his involvement.

  But this thought gave Tucker another idea.

  “Frank,” he radioed back, “do you think you could use Rex to hack into one of those tanks and commandeer it to the defense of the village, like you were able to pull off with the Warhawk in New Mexico?”

  Tucker pictured that winged drone crashing into the desert bunker.

  “Maybe,” Frank said. “But Rex is flying on fumes, so to speak. If he can manage it, it won’t last long.”

  Still, it could buy them a few extra minutes.

  “Give it your best,” Tucker encouraged him.

  Pravi pointed to a clearing at the side of the road, where the trail ended at a moonscape of jumbled boulders and pyramidal mounds of gravel and dirt. A single battered open-bed truck was parked in the clearing, likely another of the miners’ vehicles.

  Tucker parked his muddy SUV next to it.

  “We go,” Pravi said, and climbed out his side.

  Tucker bailed with the others. The young man led them through the remaining edge of the forest, then along a winding path across the rubble. Tucker felt exposed out in the open, but they had no choice. Before leaving, Josif had gathered heavy coats and jackets from the locals, to better hide them from any casual scrutiny. Still, Tucker hoped all eyes were on the battle in the valley and not on this remote corner of the complex.

  That certainly seemed to be the case at the moment. Several groups of men stood atop the surrounding slag heaps and rock piles, watching the destruction below. Tucker could only imagine what they were thinking. How many of them had family among the villages? How many had abandoned the mines to go to the defense of their loved ones? He could almost feel the anger flowing down the slopes from those standing in furious vigil.

  With that much pent-up hostility, it would not take much to stoke that fire into an all-out attack on Montenegro.

  Leading them steadily onward, Pravi eventually took them to where two cargo helicopters rested on concrete pads. Pravi had them hold with a raised palm. He hurried over to a neighboring shed next to a pair of large red fuel tanks.

  Jane sidled next to Tucker, her arms crossed over her chest. Both of them had holstered pistols—the same SIG Sauers from Trinidad—under their coats. Flying in under EU call signs and passports, they hadn’t needed to pass through customs, so ferrying the weapons in hadn’t been a problem. She stared
now toward the shed, clearly wary, likely wondering if she would have to use her weapon in another moment.

  Pravi appeared again and waved them forward. He headed to one of the helicopters with a pair of fellow workers in tow. Tucker didn’t know what Pravi had told the men to gain their cooperation, but if they were locals, it might not have taken much.

  Pravi spoke to one man, who then climbed behind the controls of the helicopter. The other worker dragged a thick cable and secured it to the undercarriage of the aircraft. The other end snaked to a large metal ore bin.

  Pravi rushed them in that direction. “Zuri!” he urged them.

  Pravi had suggested using one of the company’s choppers to reach the coordinates in the mountainous corner on the complex’s far side, but Tucker had come up with this last detail of the plan. He had remembered watching one of the cargo helicopters hauling debris. He hoped such a means could also be used to deliver a secret payload of passengers to the destination atop the distant ridge.

  It was risky—but they had no better option.

  As the helicopter began warming its engine, Tucker helped Nora inside the tall-walled bin, then he and Jane got Kane up and over the lip. Tucker tossed his pack inside, and he and Jane scrambled up and over to join the others.

  Pravi threw in a folded tarp and said something in Serbian that Tucker could guess meant keep out of sight. Tucker shook out the tarp and got everyone under it. Before ducking away, he watched Pravi climb into the helicopter.

  Moments later, the helicopter’s rotors began churning faster and the engine whined into a growl. Rotor wash whipped across the mouth of the bin, requiring all of them to hold fast to the tarp before it was ripped away.

  Then the helicopter rose from its pad, the metal cable slithering over the concrete.

  “Hang on,” Tucker warned.

  The bin jerked sideways, tilting scarily and scraping a couple of feet to the left—then it lifted skyward.

  Here we go.

  12:49 P.M.

  As they flew, Tucker leaned his palm against his ear to hear Frank’s report. But his friend’s voice was cutting in and out as they passed beyond the radio’s range.