Enemies c-15

by Keith Douglass

  Then the bottoms of her feet found the ground underneath them and the arms slid up higher, rucking her blouse high around her armpits. “Come on, lady, you can walk. Get moving.”

  Through a blur of pain and disorientation, she stared at the face. Familiar, she knew him… where had she…?

  Murphy. The last few minutes and hours came crashing back down on her, sending her reeling in his arms. “Come on,” he said, and swore quietly. “We got to get out of here.”

  She stumbled along, regaining her balance as she went, with one of Murphy’s arms still around her waist. It went faster now, and she could see that the tree line was just in front of them. She wiggled in his arms, twisting back around for a look at the aircraft in the sky. Two were just breaking to either side of the camp, low enough that she could see the markings on the tail assemblies as they climbed away from their targets.

  Greek. She squinted back toward their course and saw the second wave. More Tomcats — Greek? No, the lighter aircraft just behind them were Hornets, so the Tomcats were probably American. And probably off Jefferson.

  “Damn you, can’t you stop for a single moment?” With a vicious jerk on her injured shoulder, Murphy dragged her into the stand of trees. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

  She pulled free of him, cutting off the low moan that rose involuntarily in her throat as pain shot through her shoulder. “Yes, I get it. If I didn’t, I’d still be back in the camp.”

  With Xerxes. The unspoken thought cut through her like a knife, blocking out the pain for a few moments. She felt the sickness start deep in her stomach and vault up to the back of her throat. She turned away from him retching, and fell to her knees.

  “Easy,” he said, and forced a canteen up to her lips when she’d emptied her stomach. “You’re safe now.” The ground shuddered under them as secondary explosions from the first wave of bombs tore through the structure she’d just been in. Panic reeled through her. A thin laugh broke out from her lips. Safe — as if she’d ever be safe again, as if the term had any meaning whatsoever with five hundred pound bombs pulverizing the ground so close by.

  As if reading her thoughts, Murphy said, “We’ve got to keep moving. They get off course a little, we’re toast.”

  Pamela drew in a deep, shuddering breath and fought for her self-control, reaching deep for reservoirs of strength she wasn’t certain she had. Somewhere inside, she found an iron core of determination founded on the realizations she’d had on her role in the world. “I’m okay now.” She looked up into his battered face, then down as his bare feet. “Thanks. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  He looked away. “It’s okay. Just don’t do anything stupid and get me killed, all right?”

  She nodded. “Can you walk?” she asked, pointing at his bleeding and battered feet.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Let’s go, then. Which way?”

  He pointed deeper into the woods, and said, “We’ll break out before long, but right now the only thing I care about is getting away from ground zero, you know? We’ll worry about making our way back into Greek territory after the bombing stops.”

  “Okay.” She looked back toward where she’d come from and saw that she’d managed to drag her camera all the way along with her. “I need that.” Without waiting for his agreement, she covered the forty feet separating her from her gear, snatched it up with her good hand, then ran back into cover with him. “We can go now.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “Like I said — you never stop, do you?”

  She started to explain, then settled for, “You’re right. I don’t.”

  The stand of trees proved to be far too small to even be called a copse. Instead, it was a narrow strip running between two cultivated fields and the larger stretch that held what had been the Macedonian’s camp. They broke out on the other side of it only four minutes after they started walking.

  “Which way?” Pamela asked.

  He pointed back in the direction the fighters had come from. “That way. We can stay in cover for a while longer and at least we know we’re traveling in the right direction. I’ll recognize some of the landmarks as we go, although they’re going to look different from ground level than they did from the air.”

  They moved more slowly now, conserving their strength. The sound of the explosions gradually grew fainter, not as much due to any great distance that they covered but simply from the screening effect of the trees. Within a few minutes it started to sound like distant thunder again.

  One wave of aircraft stormed by, ascending and clean winged just as the second wave rolled in, still low to the ground and moving more slowly with their wings laden with bombs. They stopped for a moment and watched, felt the power echoing down in their bones at the sound and fury so close by overhead.

  The two waves of aircraft passed each other by, the Greek Tomcats climbing harder now when all at once the orderly formation broke into shards as aircraft peeled off in every direction save the one they’d originally been headed.

  “What the hell?” Murphy stormed forward to the edge of the tree line and stared up at the disorder. “They’re in combat spread, or at least trying to get there.” The separate aircraft were reforming into recognizable pairs, one high, one low, and starting hard climbs to higher altitudes. “What the hell spooked them? They’ve got to have cleared the area before they started in.”

  Just then Pamela saw it. At first she thought it was a cloud in the distance, but the odd spiraled shape to it grew steadily longer, arcing up across the brilliant blue sky so clear that it hurt her eyes. She pointed up at it. “Missile.”

  “Stingers,” Murphy said, then swore.

  She watched as it corkscrewed its way across the sky now, moving impossibly fast toward the closest Tomcat. The pilot dodged and jinked, desperately trying to shake it. At the very last second, she saw the canopy pop up and wretch back behind the Tomcat in its slipstream. The two ejection seats, the back one first by only a millisecond, shot out at angles intended to rocket their occupants clear of the airframe. Just as they cleared the Tomcat, the missile found its target and the aircraft exploded in a brilliant flash.

  The first chute opened, then twisted around the tumbling ejection seat, wrapping the risers into a tangled mass. The silk streamed out above the aviator, fluttering impotently, following him down to the ground.

  The second chute bloomed then, at first looking precariously lopsided in the sky, then catching the air and filling. The aviator started his gentle descent to the ground when a chunk of flaming debris from the aircraft cut through one riser on its way to the ground. Then a second fragment tore through the fragile fabric itself.

  “They’ll be after our people next,” Murphy said, his voice hard with anger. He traced back the path of the missile to a hillside less than a mile away. “I’m not going to let that happen.” He started off at a broken trot, limping badly.

  “Wait,” Pamela said. “Just hold up a minute, would you?”

  He kept going, and threw the words back over his shoulder at her. “I thought you didn’t choose sides, Drake.”

  “I don’t. I just have to reload.” She slid the pistol out of her camera pack and a clip out of a side pocket configured to hold film canisters.

  He was back by her side almost instantly. “I’ll take that.” His hands closed around the gun, easily prying hers off. She let go and stepped back.

  Murphy popped the clip in and chambered a round. “Got any more?” She pulled out two more clips from her bag and held them out to him.

  “No sides doesn’t mean being stupid,” she said. She hoisted the still camera. “Now — lead on.”

  Anyone watching them would have immediately dismissed the floundering pair as posing any possible threat unless the watcher was close enough to see the nine millimeter tucked into Murphy’s waistband or the ugly expression on his face. They were moving slowly, awkwardly trying to keep to cover when they could, stumbling across open patches
of field when they had to. It took them almost twenty minutes to make their way to the base of the hill. It was grassy and gently sloping along the sides, but the summit was a rugged crag of weathered rock and gnarled trees.

  “How are we getting up there?” she asked. “Can we make it?”

  He led her around the base, studying the slopes and the summit. “We have to go up this side. He’s got the other side covered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s the direction facing the flight path. And no one’s shot us yet. You stay down here — I’m going up.”

  “No way.”

  “Listen, you’ll just slow me down. You’re not trained in this — you’ll make noise, give our location away, and he’ll pop us both before we get within range. You want that, risking those guys lives just so you can play soldier?”

  She pointed at his waistband. “I’m doing my part already. Besides, you’re not going to shoot me to keep me from going. It’d make to much noise.”

  “How about if I just tie you up?”

  “I’ll scream the second you touch me.”

  Murphy sighed and seemed to give into the inevitable. “Okay. Come on up here, then. You stay to my right and slightly behind. You got that?”

  Pamela scrambled up the lower slope, her balance more sure than his had been. “Got it.”

  “One other thing. You see that tree over there? That’ll be our emergency rendezvous spot.” He pointed at a gnarled oak at the edge of the last strip of trees. She turned to make sure she had the landmark fixed in her mind.

  Just as she looked away, she caught an impossibly fast flicker of movement. There was a second of pain as his fist found the side of her head, a flash of light, and then she slid to the ground unconscious.

  The first one hundred yards was easy going. Lush grass clung to the sides of the slope, interspersed with boulders jutting up ancient gray and weathered. Murphy’s American mind came to an immediate conclusion — difficult to now. No way you’d get a riding mower up here, either. This would be strictly a hand job, probably with a rope belayed off the boulders just the way you weren’t supposed to do it.

  Further up the hill, with his injury now draining his strength and the soil increasingly rocky under his bare feet, he saw why the Greeks used the field as grazing for goats. The incline was steeper now, and he had to use the boulders to steady himself on occasion. Be rough going if you were trying to get up here with a pack and a couple of weapons, but certainly not impossible. If you had boots. If you weren’t hurt.

  He paced himself, keeping one eye on the summit for any sign of movement or activity. Nothing so far. Bad field craft, not having a roving lookout to cover your six. Two possibilities — it was either one man alone, or two damned sloppy ones. He patted the pistol. Either way, the odds looked pretty good to him.

  By the time he reached the smooth rocks capping the hill, he was feeling pretty bad. Not so bad that he couldn’t carry on, of course, but pretty bad. He paused for a moment with his back to a boulder, looking downhill and shielded from sight from the top of the hill. He let his lungs build back up the oxygen reserve in his tissue, sweep away the fatigue and lactic acid that had been building up, making sure that he was where he needed to be for the final push. He pulled the pistol out, checked to make sure a round was chambered and reviewed the plan: sneak up on the guy and shoot him. No explanations, not even if the guy spoke English. No second thoughts, no listening to pleas for mercy. After all, this Stinger guy hadn’t shown any mercy to the pilot he’d downed, had he? It’d probably been a buddy of his that had forced Murphy himself to punch out of his aircraft. Besides that, there wasn’t any point in taking chances. Kill them all and let God sort them out, that was the Marine Corps theory.

  He was feeling better by the minute, now that he’d had a little rest. Took more than a banged-up leg to slow down a Marine, a hell of a lot more. He flexed his muscles, trying to keep from tightening up, and edged around the boulder to start his last move up the hill. This last bit was tricky, steep and mostly rock. He tucked the pistol back in his pocket for easy access and to free up both hands. No sounds of anyone moving, no indication that his approach had been detected. He slipped around the ancient rock, moving quietly on bare feet.

  The muzzle of an AK-47 stared directly at him.

  Pamela rolled over on the ground and vomited. Her head throbbed as though she’d punched it through a wall of rock. Her hand went up to the side of her head, touched swollen pulsating flesh, and pain seared through her. She groaned, rolled over on her side, and willed her vision to clear.

  What the hell had happened? She remembered the bombing, getting clear of the building, then… Murphy. Situational awareness came flooding back. He had her gun and he’d gone up to take out the Stinger jockey.

  Her head was starting to clear, although it still hurt fiercely. Her vision was a bit blurry — concussion, she decided, and swore that Murphy would pay for that when she caught up with him. She rolled over on her stomach, fighting down another wave of nausea, and shoved herself with her good arm up to her knees. The world spun around her for a moment, then settled down.

  Where the hell was he? How long had she been out? She stared up the hill and squinted, trying to make out moving figures among the shadows and rocks there, but it was no use. Her vision was still too blurred.

  She struggled up into a standing position and stretched experimentally. Nothing else seemed to be broken, and apart from the pounding in her head, there were no new injuries to catalogue. She reached for her camera and slung the strap around her neck. She’d need her good hand to steady herself on the way up.

  Murphy’s mind was calling up every synonym he’d ever heard for stupid. Most of them were obscene, and not a few involved his mother. Still, none of the phrases really seemed sufficient to cover this particular situation.

  “You are noisy,” the man said finally in clear English. “Like a goat.”

  “And you’re lucky,” Murphy said.

  Pamela paused just below the summit. A sheer rock wall made it almost a vertical climb to the relatively flat summit. She couldn’t make it. Murphy would have managed it with no problem, even injured. On most days, she could have kept up.

  But today was not most days. “You’ll never get away with this,” she heard Murphy say.

  It figured. Whenever he had planned had gone badly wrong. Had they been working together, he might have had a chance. But now… she swore silently at the stupid bullheadedness of the man.

  She gazed up at the rock wall above her and ruled out trying to climb it. Even if she could find the strength to pull herself up, she would make so much noise that all she would accomplish would be getting them both shot. For now, for whatever reason, at least they were both alive.

  And why hadn’t the Macedonian already killed Murphy? He had had no compunctions about shooting down American aircraft, had he? So why keep the Marine alive for one second longer than necessary?

  More importantly, what could she do about it?

  She squatted down next to the rock and leaned up against it. The heat-soaked rock felt good against her sore muscles. She opened her camera bag and dug through it just on the off chance that there would be something in it she could use as a weapon.

  Normally the truth is my weapon. Or at least the truth as she saw it, she silently admitted. More and more it was becoming clear to her that there was more than one way to look at the truth.

  Her fingers brushed against a cold plastic shape that her mind recognized immediately. She closed her hand around it then pulled it out of the pack, careful to avoid making any noise. At this angle from the other two, it was unlikely they would be able to hear her, but there was no use taking the chance.

  Finally, she had it out of the bag. It laid bare in her palm like a small, black lifeline. She punched the power button and waited for a dial tone. Ever since the Black Sea conflict, she’d known the private number to CVIC on-board Jefferson. Known it, and had been s
aving it for some very special occasion. This looked like it qualified.

  Five bars appeared on the LED screen, indicating that she had a good signal. She wedged herself in between two rocks, hoping that she was right about the other two not being able to hear her, and punched out the numbers.

  USS Jefferson

  1100 local (GMT –2)

  The intelligence specialist who answered the phone had been in the Navy for ten years. During his time working CVIC, he’d come to know and appreciate the arcane pathways through which information traveled. Aircraft carriers now had instant access to the Internet, email, and a highly classified Web on which sensitive intelligence data was distributed. He himself was the designated Webmaster for USS Jefferson.

  So when the voice on the other end of the telephone line announced itself in a breathless, hurried tone as “Pamela Drake — ACN News. I have to speak to Commander Busby immediately,” he was only mildly surprised. He debated for an instant hanging up on her, and even reached out to the cradle to cut the connection when caution stopped him. He doubted Commander Busby wanted to talk to this woman, not after what she had put this ship through so many times. Still, it was not a decision he wanted to make for his boss. Besides, Commander Busby had been looking glum recently. Maybe yelling at a reporter and filing some sort of complaint against her network would cheer him up.

  So, instead of hanging up on her, he said, “Wait one minute.” Then he put her on hold.

  He ambled back to Commander Busby’s office himself, which took another ten seconds. Maybe the commander would let him listen in as he blasted the reporter they’d all come to despise.

  The technician had heard that Admiral Magruder used to be involved with Drake, and he shook his head over that. How a squared-away pilot like Tombstone could see anything in a woman like that was beyond him. But then, a lot of what admirals and pilots did didn’t make sense.

  “Commander?” he asked from the doorway to Lab Rat’s office. “Pamela Drake on line one for you, sir.” He smirked.