by Dale Brown
"Colonel Bastian, good morning," Captain Jake Lewis, on duty in the base control center, said to him through the headset.
"It's pretty late at night here," said Dog. "Twenty-one hundred hours."
"Yes, sir. You're ten hours ahead of us. Soon your today will be our tomorrow."
Dog frowned. Somehow, the captain's joke seemed more like a metaphor of his career situation.
"Would you like to speak to General Samson?" asked the captain.
"Absolutely," lied Dog.
"Stand by, Colonel."
Dog expected Samson to be connected via the special phone up in his office. But instead the general's face flashed on the screen. Obviously he'd been in the command center, waiting for Dog to check in.
You couldn't blame him for that, Dog decided. He would have done the same thing. A lot of what Samson did, he would have done.
Differently. But what was bugging him was the fact that it was Samson doing it, not him.
Jealousy. Yes. He had to admit it.
"This is Samson. What's going on over there, Bastian?"
"Good morning, General. We've completed our first day of working with Romanian ground soldiers. There were some language glitches, but all in all it went well."
"What kind of glitches?"
"Nothing critical. A little hard sometimes to understand what they're saying, and I imagine vice versa."
"That's it?"
"No. I wanted to alert you to something that should be passed on to Jed Barclay and the White House."
Samson's scowl made it clear that he'd be the judge of that.
"While we were up, a flight of Russian MiGs flew over the Black Sea and part of the Ukraine. I believe they were shadowing us. They appear to have been working with one of their Elint planes to get an idea of where we were. I took a hard turn toward them and they vamoosed. I'm not positive, of course, but—"
"What do you mean, you took a hard turn toward them? You went into Moldova?"
"No, General, I didn't. I stayed inside the country's boundaries and flew in the direction of the Black Sea. But they were watching me closely, and it seems to me they didn't want to be noticed."
"Don't overanalyze it. What sort of planes?"
"Two MiG-29s, configured for air-to-air intercept. There was a Tu-135 just beyond them. We were too far to get comprehensive details. I didn't want to go out of Romanian airspace."
Dog watched Samson step over to one of the nearby consoles in the command center, consulting with one of the men there. Finally he looked back in the direction of the video camera attop the main screen in the front of the room.
"What else do you have?" asked Samson.
"Nothing else. I was wondering when the Johnson will arrive."
"Englehardt and his crew took off an hour ago," said Samson. "They should be there tonight, our time."
"Once they're here, I expect to start running two sorties a day. We'll stagger them—"
"I don't need the details. Carry on."
The screen blanked. Dog leaned back in his seat. He was sorry now that he'd agreed to take on the mission. He should just have gone on leave — he was more than entitled.
Rising, he took off his headset and pulled back the curtain to call the Whiplash communications specialist. As he did, the console buzzed, indicating an incoming communication.
It was Danny Freah.
"Colonel, we have something up," said Danny as soon as he punched the buttons to make the connection. "Report of a possible attack in a village southeast of us. We could use some Flighthawk coverage."
"We're on our way."
Allegro, Nevada
1105
Breanna pulled up against the side of the pool, catching her breath. Her heart was pumping ferociously, the beats so fast she didn't count them. Fearing she was far over her targeted pulse rate, she took a deep, slow breath, savoring the oxygen in her lungs. Then she went to the side and pulled herself out.
"Hell of a workout," said one of the club trainers, a white woman in her mid-thirties with the unfortunate nickname of Dolly, though she didn't seem to mind it. "You were swimming up a storm."
Breanna nodded, still catching her breath.
"You OK, girl?" asked Dolly.
"I'm fine." Breanna forced a smile. She loved to swim, and the water workouts were easy on her knee, but her ribs ached from the vigorous strokes.
"You trying to prove something?" asked Dolly.
"Why?"
Dolly laughed. "I think you just broke the record for the 10K free-style." "Just that I'm in good shape." "No doubts there."
Breanna smiled, then grabbed her water bottle and the small towel she always took with her during a workout.
No doubt there.
All she had to do was convince the doc. Maybe she'd bring him along tomorrow.
She'd just reached the locker room when she heard her cell phone ringing. She opened the lock and took out the phone, opening it without looking at the number.
"This is Breanna."
"I got those tickets. Meet me over at the county airport at four."
"Tickets?"
"To the Lakers, remember?"
"Oh, Sleek. Um, OK. Sure. Where?"
Sleek Top leased part of a small Cessna that was kept at the Las Vegas airport; they'd take it to L.A., where the Lakers were facing Kings later that evening. He told her where to meet him.
"We'll grab something to eat at the game," he said. "I'll have you back home before midnight."
"Great," she said. "I'll see you then."
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2115
The Romanian platoon traveled in four 1980s vintage Land Rover III three-quarter-ton light trucks, and a pair of much older UAZ469B jeeplike vehicles. The former were badly dented and the latter were rusted, but their engines were in good order and the troops wasted no time moving out, driving down the highway in the direction of the reported guerrilla sighting. The gas pipeline was about fifteen miles to the northwest, and Danny wondered if the report wasn't the result of a mistake or perhaps hysteria until he saw the glow of a fire in the distance.
"It's the local police station," Lieutenant Roma told him, leaning back from the front seat of the UAZ. "They make these kind of attacks all the time."
The police station was located across from a church in a cluster of six or seven buildings just off the main road. The station was one of three wooden buildings nestled together, and the flames that had been started by an explosion had set the other two buildings on fire.
The Romanian lieutenant split up his force, using about half to secure the road on both sides of the hamlet. The rest came with him as he went to investigate the attack.
The men leaped out of the trucks as they arrived, shouting at the people in front of the burning buildings and telling them to get back. Everything was chaos. There were a dozen civilians, some crying, some screaming, others stoically using pails in a vain attempt to put out the flames.
A man in a soot-covered police uniform materialized from the right of the buildings, his face burned to a bright red by the heat. He had something in his arms — a doll, Danny thought at first. And then as he stared, he realized the doll was a human child who'd been pulled out of the building too late.
Tears streamed from the policeman's eyes, and Danny felt his stomach weaken.
Lieutenant Roma was talking with an older man near the steps to the church. The man spoke in almost a whisper, his head pitched down toward the ground, as if speaking to his shoes.
Roma listened for a while, then nodded. He moved away from the church, toward Danny.
"There were twelve," he told him. "They may have taken a policeman hostage. They blew up the building with no warning."
"Where'd they go?"
Roma shook his head. "They have the police car, the ambulance, and may have taken a truck as well. Someone heard tires screeching on the back road there." He pointed to the side street, which ran to the southeast. "It would mak
e sense that they would go that way. They'll avoid the highway."
"Let's get after them."
The lieutenant frowned. Danny realized he wasn't hesitating out of cowardice — there was no local fire department, and he was debating whether anything could be done to stop the fire.
It was already far too late. Fed by the wood that had dried for more than a hundred years, the flames climbed into the night sky. The back of one of the buildings crumbled to the ground. The fire flared, but without wind to spread it across the street, it would soon run out of fuel, choked by its own ravenous hunger.
Thicker, heavier parts of the buildings — rugs, appliances— began to melt rather than burn. Acrid smoke spread across the road, stinging everyone's nose and eyes.
"Yes, let's go." Roma turned to the man and told him in Romanian that they would be back. Then he looked at Danny. "Are your people ready to help us?"
"They should be in the air any second."
Aboard the Bennett,
above northeastern Romania
2124
Zen took over the Flighthawk as soon as it was launched, juicing the throttle and heading toward the GPS reading from Danny Freah's radio. The infrared camera in the Flighthawk's nose showed a docile, almost dreamlike landscape of empty fields broken only occasionally by small clusters of houses. It seemed impossible that there was a war here, but Danny's voice when he checked in sounded as grim as if he were in the middle of hell itself.
"We're traveling on local Road 154," said Danny. "They have a police car, an ambulance, and maybe a pickup truck. There may be a hostage."
"Roger that," said Zen. His rules of engagement required him to get permission not just from Dog, but the Romanian Second Army Corps commander before firing — unless the guerrillas were shooting directly at a Whiplash team member.
In that case he'd obliterate whatever he felt was a danger and ask questions later.
"Check the highways nearby, just in case," added Danny. "But we think this is the road they took."
"Yeah, we're on it."
Romanian road maps had been uploaded into the computer's memory. Zen gave a verbal command and the computer projected the map on the screen. After highlighting his position, it flashed an arrow on the highway Danny had mentioned, a long, winding road that ran from the larger highway to the south.
The road was about thirty miles away. Zen adjusted his course, turning so he would bring the road into view just south of Danny's location. Then he pushed the plane lower, his eyes locked on the view in the screen.
The road ran for about three miles, taking a few gentle S-turns past farm fields and ending at a shallow creek and woods. There were no vehicles of any kind along it. The infrared camera didn't show anything warm in the vicinity. Zen rechecked his position, then took another pass, slowing the Flighthawk down to get a better look.
Spiff, operating the ground radar, reported that the high way was clear, except for a fire truck responding from a neighboring town.
"Danny, are you sure this is the road?" Zen asked as he flew the Flighthawk north, passing over the army vehicles.
"It's their best guess."
Zen pulled up, taking a moment to consult the radar image of the ground. The odd thing about this road was that it didn't connect to any other roads; it was essentially a dead end, albeit a very long one, flanked by numerous barns and some isolated farmhouses. If the guerrillas had used it, they were almost certainly hiding somewhere.
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2131
Adrenaline was both a curse and a boon.Too much and you started to lose your sense of judgment, rushed into things without taking the wisest approach. Too little and you lost your edge, holding back when you should attack.
Even for Danny Freah it was a difficult balance. The dark night, the unfamiliar territory, and most of all his role as an observer rather than a leader, made it more difficult to walk the tightrope. His heart sped; his head told it to slow down.
Even though Zen had said the road was empty, Lieutenant Roma insisted on driving to the very end. When they reached it, he got his troops out and had them cross the creek, searching the woods and nearby fields. Danny, watching the infrared feed from the Flighthawk on his smart helmet's visor, could tell that the woods were too sparse to hide any of the vehicles. When he told the lieutenant, the Romanian replied that a few months back after a similar attack the troop had chased a small unit of guerrillas across a stream nearby and trapped them in the woods.
A nice story, thought Danny, but one that had no bearing on their present situation.
"They always go back across the border," said Roma. "They are cowards and head in that direction."
"But if they took a police car and the other trucks, shouldn't we look for them? They must be hiding in one of the barns we've passed, waiting for daybreak to launch another attack."
"They will abandon them somewhere," said the lieutenant.
"Why take something so obvious as a police car or an ambulance unless you're going to use it?" asked Danny.
"We have only the mayor's word that they took a police car. Sometimes they say things like that because they hope the government will give them new vehicles. That is what I think is happening here — it's a small village; there may not even have been a police car, let alone an ambulance."
Roma had left two of his men back near the village, and between them and the Flighthawk, it was unlikely that the guerrillas would be able to double back without being seen. But the allocation of resources bothered Danny's sense of priorities. When one of the soldiers thought he saw tire ruts on the other side of a shallow stretch of the stream, Roma ordered most of his men to cross the field and search, a decision that would not only waste time but fatigue the troops unnecessarily, Danny thought. He radioed Zen, who took a low, slow pass overhead.
"The terrain goes up pretty sharply at the end of the field," Zen reported. "I could see maybe a jeep getting in and through there, but not a car, let alone an ambulance."
"How about a pickup truck?"
"Yeah, I guess if it's four-wheel drive. But I don't see anything up there on the infrared. It'd be pretty easy to spot."
"You see tracks?"
"Those might be a little harder, but no, nothing obvious." "Keep looking, all right?" "I'm on it."
While Roma's men continued searching the area, the Romanian lieutenant checked in with his division headquarters. The border guards had been alerted, and another company sent over to the hamlet that had been attacked. Five people had died in either the explosion or the subsequent fire; two others were missing. It wasn't clear whether they had been taken hostage or were still somewhere in the smoldering ruins of the buildings.
When the search of the field failed to turn up anything, Lieutenant Roma called his men back and began a systematic search of the buildings they'd passed. The soldiers split into groups so they could cover each other as well as prevent an escape.
The first barn was quite a distance from its owner's house, and Roma didn't bother asking permission before inspecting it. After sealing off the driveway and posting lookouts on the other three sides, two men with submachine guns and a third with a grenade launcher took up positions opposite the large door, which was mounted on a track of wheels that allowed it to be pushed to the side to open. On the count of three, a pair of soldiers shot off the locks and hauled it aside, the runners squeaking and the men huffing as they pushed, then dove to the ground for cover.
Except for some old farm equipment and a few bales of hay, the interior was empty. The house didn't have a garage; after a precursory check of the owner's small Fiat parked in back, the troops moved on.
The second barn was right next to a house, and because of the proximity, the lieutenant decided to alert the owner to the search. After his troops surrounded the place, the Romanian and Danny walked up the creaky wooden steps to the front porch.
Danny had a premonition of danger. He edged his finger against the trigger housi
ng of his MP5 as a light came on inside. A plump woman in her early fifties answered the door, wearing a bathrobe. For a moment she seemed confused. Then she turned angry and began scolding the lieutenant. Roma ignored her, signaling for his men to proceed. They shot off a lock in the nearby barn, hauled the door open, and began their search.
The woman shouted angrily. Roma turned his back on her, signaling for a squad to search inside the house. Enraged, she swung her fist at the back of his head.
Danny grabbed her arm before she connected. She screamed even louder, then spun and tried clawing at his face and bulletproof vest. He pushed her as gently as possible back inside the house. She squirmed against him, flailing with her fists, her fury unleashed. Afraid that she was going to grab his pistol, Danny went to push her away with his left arm and inadvertently smacked her across the forehead with the MP5. The woman staggered back, slapping her head against the doorjamb and then slipping to the floor. He reached out to grab her but was too late; she fell in a heap on the floor, stunned.
Two of Roma's men who had run up to assist grabbed the woman and dragged her farther inside. They pushed her into an upholstered chair. One pointed his rifle at her face and barked something in fierce Romanian. The rest of the squad began searching the house.
Danny stayed downstairs, unsure whether he would be needed or not. The woman sat in the chair, her eyes narrow slits and her mouth clamped shut. She looked as if her insides were literally boiling, her forehead reddened from the effort to keep from exploding.
The whole house shook with the heavy footsteps of the men searching above. Danny moved to the side of the room, watching an alcove that led into two rooms in the back. One of the rooms was a kitchen; a small vase of plastic flowers sat in the middle of the table between two candles, almost as if the woman were expecting a romantic evening.
"Nothing," said one of the soldiers to Danny in English as he came down the steps.
He nodded. The soldier began questioning the woman in Romanian, but she clamped her mouth shut. As the other men came downstairs, Danny decided he'd be of more use outside, and went to see what was going on.
