by Dale Brown
Sixty 57mm antiaircraft guns were filling the air below the missiles with lead and cordite. The flak rose in plumes, hot coals for Raven and the UM/Fs to dance across.
The computer brought Hawk Two into a wide arc south of Raven as Jeff flew Hawk One to the east, cutting back on an intercept as an SA-2 exploded overhead. Sweat poured from Jeff’s neck and back as the small UM/F began to jitter up and down, buffeted by a second explosion he hadn’t seen or anticipated. He gunned the throttle, but got no response; the plane suddenly began nosing down and he tasted metal in his mouth, felt his stomach go sour with a wave of dread. For a moment he thought he was going in—he saw the ground loom and shapes dance, and his head began to spin. Then the UM/F picked herself up and he had only blue sky in front of him; he was clear, accelerating and climbing. The Megafortress was a bare two miles ahead.
“SEAL teams have secured the perimeter,” reported Cascade. “SEAL teams are inside, encountering only token resistance.”
“The prisoners aren’t in the bunker,” said Zen. He was on the interphone; only the others aboard Raven could hear him. “Where was that encrypted video transmission?”
“About fifty miles, south by southeast,” said the weapons officer.
“Jeff?”
“Bree, get us back there. That’s where Smith and the others must be.”
“No offense, Major, but I’m flying this plane,” said Cheshire.
“I’m sorry, Nancy. The bunker is a bluff. The trial broadcast didn’t stop when the satellites were hit.”
“He’s right,” said the weapons officer.
“Why do you think it’s coming from that site and not somewhere else in Tripoli?”
“It’s just a guess. Intuition,” said Jeff. The computer noted that Hawk Two was now “fully communicative,” and he acknowledged, though leaving it under the computer’s command in the trail position. “The Navy’s covering Tripoli. Let’s go.”
“Jeff, you’re talking about deviating from our flight plan based on a hunch,” said Cheshire.
“I trust hunches,” said Breanna. “And I trust Jeff.” Thanks, babe, he thought as Cheshire jerked the Mega-fortress onto the new course.
Over the Mediterranean
24 October, 1050 local
JED SAT BACK AT THE JSTARS CONSOLE WHILE MS. O’Day left her desk in the White House Situation Room to take another call. The attack on Tripoli, planned by Madcap Magician and carried out mostly by the Navy, was still proceeding. But already the Saudi and Syrian governments had taken to the back channels to assure Washington that they had no interest in the Greater Islamic League.
It helped that they trusted neither the Iranians nor the Libyans. It also helped that America was demonstrating how easy it was to obliterate nearly a billion dollars’ worth of military equipment.
Now if they could only complete the rescue.
“Jed, are you still there?” asked Ms. O’Day, coming back on the line.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sitting back up at the console. The major was waving at him—he was needed on the other lines, where he was helping keep the SWAT team and Raven in contact with each other.
“Do they have our men?”
“Not yet,” he told her.
“When?”
“Maybe soon,” he said. The major was waving violently. “Ms. O’Day, I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, cutting her off by switching the simple twist knob that controlled the circuit input on the panel in front of him.
Felt weird. He’d never cut off his boss before.
What if the President had been listening in?
“Cascade, this is Big Bear. Can you get Raven to give us a feed on the base area?”
“Uh, I’m not sure,” he said. He looked around for the major, but he’d gone off to help someone else. “Hang on.”
The screen before him was a live situation map. It showed Raven heading south, away from Tripoli.
Shit. Why the hell were they doing that? And where the hell were their prisoners?
Obviously not in the bunker, if Big Bear was looking for a feed.
“Bear, I’m going to have to get back to you,” said Jed, twisting into the Megafortress’s frequency.
Libya24
October, 0955 local
EVEN WITH THE STEINER GLASSES, THEY WERE MUCH too far from the action to see anything, not even smoke on the horizon, though all of the Whiplash members fixed their eyes in the direction of the coast. The Osprey pilot had moved the rotorcraft to the foot of the hill and was monitoring the raid via the SATCOM circuit back to the JSTARS command plane. He’d alerted Danny when the raid started; laconic to a fault, he remained Silent as the attack continued.
The desert before them gave little hint of the battle raging seventy miles away. The sand seemed permanent, uncaring; the only sign of mankind was a highway about twelve miles to the northeast, as barren and destitute a stretch as Danny could imagine.
“Captain Freah, Raven is hailing you,” said the Osprey pilot over the com set.
“Patch me through.” Freah stood and looked directly down over the side of the cliff, as if that would somehow help the pilot turn the switch and allow the connection.
“Raven proceed.”
“Danny, this is Breanna Stockard. Are you on the line?”
“Affirmative,” said Freah. He could feel his heart pounding now in every part of his body, worried that the Megafortress had been hit.
“Stand by for Major Stockard,” Bree told him.
“Captain, we have an encrypted microwave signal being beamed to a satellite from a grid in B-2, we think about eight miles east of you. What do we have there big enough to house a transmitter?”
“Stand by.”
Freah dropped to his knees, carefully pulling the maps and satellite images from his rucksack. There were only two candidates. One was a small military post, the other an abandoned railroad depot with some old warehouses and support buildings. The sites were separated by about a mile and a half. He gave the positions.
“What do you think of checking them out?” Zen asked. “We’re en route,” said Danny, not even waiting for the explanation as he signaled his men to reboard the Osprey.
THE BROADCAST HAD ENDED A FEW MINUTES AGO, before they were able to pinpoint it; both sites were close enough to have been the source. Zen worked Hawk Two ahead toward the the coordinates of the military base that Freah had supplied. It seemed logical to start there.
The threat screen was blank. Gray asphalt rose beyond the desert sand, bounded by trenches and a ramshackle fence. Two long, dull yellow buildings stood at the far right; a pair of ancient antiair guns were behind sandbags in the middle of the installation. Behind one of the buildings was an earth station, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.
“Losing command link!” warned the computer.
“Jen, I thought you said we increased our control distance.” Zen throttled back. The signal-indicator bar slowly began to climb. “I’m having trouble at seven miles now.”
“I’m not sure what the problem is,” she yelled, working over the control. “We should be fat.”
“Yeah. Raven, can you bring our distance parameter on the UM/Fs to within five miles?”
“Affirmative,” said Cheshire. “We’re dropping to ten thousand feet, staying on your programmed flight path. Cascade is trying to hail us. What should I tell them?”
“The truth—we’re on a wild-goose chase.”
Jeff started Hawk Two on a slow orbit around the base perimeter. Hawk One, meanwhile, was approaching the abandoned railroad warehouses. He toggled the view, saw nothing, went back to Two.
This sure did look like a wild-goose chase. Dust blew across the military base. Place looked like it hadn’t been occupied since World War Two. He scanned for a radar dish, saw nothing.
Hawk Two’s indicated airspeed dropped past two hundred knots, still falling. Zen walked over the gun emplacements. Damn things looked like they were rusted. Good trick in the desert.
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Probably left by the Germans. Rommel had been out here, right?
He told the computer to take Hawk Two back to trail, and flipped back into Hawk One just as it closed to within two miles of the old railroad depot. He slipped down the throttle. Raven was five miles away, closing fast.
The terminal building’s roof was missing, but the warehouses looked intact as he approached. One of the smaller buildings was just a collection of debris. There were two fairly large ones, maybe a hundred feet long apiece, at the edge of the track area. Between them there was a smaller, gray building, low-slung in the desert. It seemed to have collapsed or been swallowed by the terrain.
But was that a microwave dish next to it?
Zen pushed the throttle to close in. As he did, the roof of the nearest warehouse began to disintegrate. The thing seemed to be alive.
The radar-warning indicator flashed red. In the next instant, the sky perforated with explosions. Zen had walked into a minefield. A bank of antiaircraft artillery weapons had been hidden beneath the carefully camouflaged fake roofs of the warehouses.
“Whiplash, Target Two is hot. Hotter than hell!” yelled Jeff, goosing the throttle.
* * *
THEY RODE TOWARD THE VOLCANO, WATCHING THE massed fury of two dozen antiaircraft guns erupting upward. Raven jammed the radars, but the gunners flailed anyway. Danny, hunched over the pilots on the Osprey flight deck, saw the small Flighthawk ducking and weaving in the sky ahead, spinning back and forth like a peregrine falcon eyeing a kill. Major Stockard was trying to keep the gunners’ attention focused on the miniature plane, not on the rapidly approaching assault team.
“Ten seconds,” said the Osprey pilot. “Target building is dead ahead. I see a stairway down. Shit! I’ll get you as close as I can.”
“Okay! Okay!” Danny shouted. He spun back to his men, trying to hold down the bile and adrenaline. “We got stairs down to a bunker, I’m guessing.”
“Vehicles coming up out of a ramp near the warehouses!” yelled the copilot.
“Get us down! Get us down!” Danny insisted. He was wearing the com device, but he yelled anyway. The Osprey pitched and weaved, swirling in the air. A second volcano opened up just to their right, bullets hissing like steam. .The rear door began opening even though the Osprey was still ten feet off the ground. Powder leaped out.
“TV time!” yelled Danny, jumping out with Liu.
“Take him out! Take him out! There’s a machine gun on the steps! Shit! Duck! Duck!” Powder screamed.
GUNNY HEARD THE RUMBLE OF THE ANTIAIRCRAFT batteries above. The entire complex shuddered.
“About fucking time,” he said to the pilot on the metal chair next to him. “Hey, you got any more questions before we go?” he called to the disembodied voice that had been questioning them from unseen speakers.
In the next second, the complex went dark. One of the camera technicians screamed.
“Hit the deck!” shouted Gunny. He reached to pull Howland down, got nothing but air. He found the captain on the ground.
“What now?” said Howland.
“Find a Sommie and get his gun,” said the Marine, crawling toward the door.
RAVEN TOOK OUT THE FIRST BATTERY WITH A PAIR OF JSOWs, even though they were nearly on top of it. Zen barely managed to get Hawk One away from the second bank of ZSUs as the roof of the warehouse opened and the flak dealers began peppering the air.
“Wing damage, Hawk Two,” warned the computer.
Zen could feel it. Hawk Two began to wobble, threatening to yaw out of control.
Time to eject.
Shit, he yelled at himself. I’m half a mile away.
The computer helped stabilize the plane, but the damage was severe, and went well beyond the wing. Zen opened the warning/status screen; he had multiple hits, pending systems failures in the control and engine sections. Power was dropping rapidly.
Destroy the Flighthawk?
Better to land if he could. Whiplash could take it with them, lashing it beneath the Osprey.
He could always hit the self-destruct switch later.
Jeff did a quick check on Hawk One, just to make sure the computer had it under control; then he jumped back into Hawk Two. She was jerking up and down, wrestling with the air instead of gliding through it. He fought the wings level and aimed toward a nice flat piece of sand a quarter mile ahead. As gently as he could, he put her down on her belly, skidding and then spinning to a stop.
“We have the location marked,” Jennifer said.
“Yeah,” said Jeff.
He put himself into Hawk One, pulling the plane over him as the new image kicked into the top of his screen.
“JSTARS is sending reinforcements,” said Cheshire.
“You have to keep me close,” he told her, pushing the Flighthawk lower and back toward the flak.
DANNY TURNED AS A GRENADE WHIZZED FROM LIU’S launcher. There was a low, dull explosion and everything started moving in slow motion. He ran toward the building, ignoring the canvas-backed truck that had come out from the other side. There was a stairwell down; he grabbed the red metal pipe blocking off the side and swung himself down into the hole.
Powder had beaten him there. He was standing in front of the doorway inside a small alcove. He waved his right hand at Freah to stay back, then gripped his SAW at the handle. The door swung out toward them.
A set of metal steps led downward. Freah, leaping ahead of Talcom, took two at a time. A metal door at the bottom gave way as soon as he butted it with his machine gun; he stooped and rolled in a concussion grenade.
If they’d had a chance to plan this, to work the whole thing out, they’d probably be going in with masks, smoking the bastards out.
But hell, if they’d had a chance to plan the damn thing out, they wouldn’t be the ones doing the attack.
“I got ya, I got ya,” said Powder, taking a covering position as Danny plunged into the dark hall.
Nothing. No fire. Nothing. He ran for all he was worth.
“Door!” he heard himself yell. Powder was on top of him, throwing him down and in the same instant punching the door with the machine gun, ducking, rolling.
Two men fell out behind the doorway.
Light up ahead.
“We’re taking fire up here,” said Liu over the com set.
“Hold your positions.”
“We are. Delta’s en route.”
“Room’s empty,” yelled Powder. Danny started moving down the hall. The boron-carbide vest gave him a dangerous sense of invulnerability—a foolish sense, since he knew that while the vest could stop point-blank machine-gun fire, it covered less than fifty percent of his body.
They came to a T. Both hallways were dark. Smoke curled at his nostrils, made him sneeze.
“Which way we goin’?” asked Powder.
“You that way. I’m this way,” Danny said, wiping his nose.
“And I’ll meet ya in the mornin’,” said Powder, pushing forward.
GUNNY GRABBED THE SOLDIER’S LEG, YANKING HIM TO the ground. He grabbed for a gun, cursing as he realized he’d found one of the unarmed camera people instead of a soldier.
“This way. They’ve all left,” the pilot was shouting. “Stay low!”
“Damn Air Force. Bunch of know-it-alls,” grumbled the sergeant as he scooted for the doorway.
“MISSILES!” JEFF YELLED AS HIS RWR LIT UP. A LIBYAN Roland mobile antiaircraft battery had just activated its radar from inside a disguised post at the south end of the complex.
“We’re out of JSOWs!” warned the weapons officer.
“Evasive action,” said Cheshire.
“No!” yelled Zen. “I can nail them! Keep me close. I’ll get them with the Flighthawk’s cannon.”
“We’re too vulnerable here, even with the ECMs.”
“The Roland will take out the Delta Osprey if I don’t nail it,” said Zen.
Someone shouted something back, but he’d stopped listening. He was in the UM/F n
ow, butt tied to its seat, pushing for the dish spiking the mother ship.
The tanklike launcher sat behind a low wall a mile ahead. Its two-armed turret twisted toward the Flight-hawk, its parabolic head spinning as it got a lock.
“Weapon,” he told the computer.
The cannon bar appeared at the top of the screen. Yellow, yellow. Red.
Locked.
Too soon, Jeff told himself, remembering how optimistic the gun radar was. Wait until you can’t possibly miss.
The Roland seemed to move downward. There was a puff of smoke.
It had fired a missile.
The bar suddenly went yellow. His targeting radar was being jammed, probably by Raven itself.
“Boresight,” Jeff ordered. He’d fire manually. The site cleared to a manual cross with a square aiming cue.
He was too high. He nudged, now less than a quarter mile away, moving incredibly fast through the haze.
Zen squeezed, saw the line of bullets move out ever so slowly, impossibly slowly toward the tank, saw the first one get the dish, saw the second, the third begin to unzip the metal as he nudged his aim point lower, the metal hissing.
Nailed the son of a bitch.
BREANNA FELT THE MEGAFORTRESS SLIPPING FROM their grip as they were buffeted by a wave of flak. Two missiles were in the air behind them; there was so much going on it was impossible to keep everything sorted.
“Roland on our butt!” yelled the weapons officer. “I’ve handed off ECM to auto mode, but we’re not shaking it. Watch the flak! We’re too damn low!”
