by Mike Maden
“I wonder if he ever flew here,” Pearce said to himself.
“Who?” Early asked.
“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”
“Say again?”
“The writer. You know, The Little Prince? He flew airmail routes for this outfit between the wars.”
“Sorry, buddy. I skipped the Lit courses. But I can tell you all about my Aunt Bertie’s goiter.”
“What happened to this place?” Mann asked.
Mossa pointed to the crumbling pump house. “The French dug a well there, but it was shallow and dried up after the first summer, so they had to leave this place. My father saw his first airplane here, when he was a boy. But that was a long time ago.”
“Mossa gave you an airport, as promised. Where is your plane?” Cella asked.
Pearce checked his watch. “Still another hour. Judy will be here, guaranteed.”
Mann raised a pair of binoculars to his face. “Not a bad location, if you wanted to open up postal routes into central Africa.”
“Drug smugglers fly their planes into here sometimes,” Mossa said.
He ordered Balla and Moctar to scout ahead. They nudged their camels forward down the slope toward the airport, guns up, while the others waited and sweated in the late-morning heat.
—
The tower and the hangar were empty of drug runners, but decades of human detritus—crushed food tins, cigarette butts, empty paper oil cans—littered the hangar. The well in the pump room was dry as dust and the pump was long since removed from its bolted perch, as was the generator and any piece of valuable metal that might have been attached to it.
The tower building was no better. The first floor had served as some sort of lobby and office complex. The porcelain and plumbing in the two restrooms had been ripped out, save for the pan in the Turkish toilet, stained and vile.
The second story served as the observation tower. Whatever electronic equipment had been there had long been removed, and anything of value spirited away. The tower windows offered a 360-degree view, but they were wide open to the sky. Small shards of yellowed glass crunched beneath their boots, and the back wall was pocked with bullet holes.
“How’s the arm?” Pearce asked.
Early shrugged. “Never better.”
“Then you’re here on overwatch.” Pearce knew Early was lying, of course. If they were attacked, his friend would be in the safest position.
“You got it, chief.”
“You want one of the RPGs?”
“Nah, I’m fine with this.” Early charged his SCAR-H and flipped the firing-mode switch to automatic. The rifle had no burst mode.
“Stay frosty up here.”
Pearce and Mossa worked their way back down the crumbling cement stairs to the skid-marked tarmac. They made their way over to the hangar where the rest had gathered. The rolling hangar doors had long since disappeared, burned for firewood, Pearce guessed. Even the metal tracks to guide the wheels had been ripped out of the floor for scrap. At least the corrugated steel roof panels were still in place, though sunlight leaked through the scattered gunshot holes, shot from inside judging by the shape of them.
The camels and the others were all inside the cavernous building, hiding from the sun. The cracked floor was strewn with dried chestnuts of camel dung of indeterminable age. Clearly, they weren’t the first visitors to park their animals in here.
Mossa approached his men, sitting cross-legged in front of their kneeling camels. Pearce found Cella near the hangar entrance, smoking a cigarette, staring at the sand.
“We never finished that conversation we had the other day,” Pearce said. “Borrow one of those?” He pointed at her cigarette.
“I thought you quit.” She held out a pack. He pulled one out.
“I quit a lot of things.”
She flicked her lighter. He lit up. They smoked in silence for a while. Pearce thought she would take the bait, talk about her daughter. Something was wrong about that situation. But it really wasn’t any of his business.
“What’s next for you?” Cella finally asked.
“Work.”
“Where?”
“Wherever.”
“Must be lonely for you.”
“I was never much of a people person.” Pearce saw movement in the sand. “What’s that?”
Cella shielded her eyes. “Looks like a snake.” The long, thin shape S’d down the dune toward them. She called over her shoulder to Mossa in Tamasheq.
Mossa came over to them. She pointed at the snake, now stopped on the dune. “What kind of snake is that?”
“I have never seen such a snake.”
Pearce threw down his cigarette and bolted for the dune.
The snake suddenly reversed direction, S-ing backward up the dune, tail first.
Pearce was faster. He snatched up the snake around its neck. The snake flopped and twisted in his fist. He felt the tiny servos grinding in his grip as the rubbery snake body flailed. Pearce wrapped his other fist around the snake’s neck and tried to twist off the head, as he’d done to a hundred other snakes in his life. But the metal spine wouldn’t give way that easily. When he reached the tarmac, he put the flailing snake under his boot and cut the head off with his combat knife. He picked up the severed head. He lifted his boot and the body flopped around on the tarmac. He examined the head more closely as he marched back to the hangar. Video and audio sensors inside the unit. No question.
“What is it?” Cella asked.
“Surveillance drone.” He tossed the head to Mann, now standing at the door along with Balla and Moctar.
“Excellent craftsmanship,” Mann said. “Israeli or Chinese.”
“I’m betting Chinese.” Pearce turned to Mossa. “Get your men ready. We’re going to have company.”
Pearce tapped his ear mic. “You see anything up there, Mikey?”
“A plane. Two, maybe three klicks away. Due west.”
Pearce pulled his sat phone out of his pocket, speed-dialed Ian. “How soon?”
“ETA ten minutes.” It was four in the morning where Ian was, and he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. Pearce heard the fatigue in his voice.
“From what direction?”
“East.”
Pearce cursed again. “I need eyes on the ground, and backup, if you can swing it. We’ve got company on the way, maybe already here.”
“How many?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Troy?” Early said.
“Yeah?”
“Chutes.”
“How many?”
“Looks like . . . oh, shit. Six, seven, eight, nine—”
Ian interrupted. “I only have the one option if you want assistance.”
“Do it. Now.”
“Will do, but it will take longer than ten minutes to reach you. And there’s been a slight change in plan.”
“What change?”
55
Karem Air Force Base
Niamey, Niger
15 May
Same trailer, same ground control station, different crew.
There were only two Reapers on the base and two GCS trailers. The original DoD plan was to deploy four five-person crews, each working twelve-hour shifts in the two trailers, keeping both Reapers in the air twenty-four hours per day. But budget cuts and crew shortages meant they could only field two full crews at any given time, and that meant keeping only one Reaper aloft for twenty-four hours at a time. Until they were fully staffed and funded, the second GCS trailer would remain shut down in reserve.
This morning’s crew, known as Blue One, was flying a fully armed Reaper on a surveillance mission along the Algeria–Niger border. Technically, the computer was flying the machine on a preprogrammed flight pattern. Intelligence sources on the ground report
ed possible AQS traffic in the region. The Reaper mission was tasked with monitoring the border traffic and recording any suspicious movement.
Red One team had launched the aircraft sixteen hours earlier. Blue One had just relieved them four hours ago. The pilot, sensor operator, and GCS controller were bored out of their minds. The pilot wasn’t even in her seat. She was doing yoga stretches, trying to work out a knot in her lower back. The mission monitor was in the clinic on IVs, fighting a bout of dysentery, so the flight engineer, Captain Pringle, was doing double duty. His feet were up on the desk and his eyes were shut, because he was pulling a double shift as a favor to the Red One flight engineer, who’d just taken a three-day emergency pass to be with his pregnant wife in Landstuhl, Germany, giving birth to their third son.
In other words, it was a typical workday. Until the sensor operator shouted, “Shit.”
Pearce Systems Headquarters
Dearborn, Michigan
Ian easily took control of the Reaper. The night Pearce stole the M4 carbine was also spent installing a remote wireless override for the Reapers’ ground control station. Just one of the many useful toys Ian insisted Pearce keep on hand at all times.
He radioed Pearce. “Help is on the way.”
Karem Air Force Base
Niamey, Niger
Lieutenant Colonel Kavanagh examined the latest aerial surveillance photos, which Red One had produced the day before. A thick Cuvana e-cigar was parked in a pristine crystal ashtray on the desk, a gift from his forbearing wife. He loved the big flavor and vapor; she loved the fact that there wasn’t any smoke or stink. A military marriage required many compromises. The e-cigar was an easy one for both of them.
Kavanagh was lean and hard for his age, despite his new career piloting a desk. He’d flown tank-busting A-10 Thunderbolts up until the year before, including Operation Iraqi Freedom, when a rapid decline in his visual acuity pushed him out of the cockpit. It wasn’t too bad, though. Two more years and he could retire, and working with the latest drone technology had been a challenge in the best sense of the word. And as it turned out, he was a damn fine base commander, too. His wife even thought he looked handsome in glasses.
He zoomed in on the Reaper surveillance photo on his big desktop screen and highlighted the image anomalies. He hoped the poindexters back at Langley could make something out of them. If this was, indeed, an AQS border crossing, the terrorists must be wearing first-rate camouflage, because he hadn’t seen anything more than rocks and camels in weeks. He didn’t bother to look up when there was a knock on his door.
“Enter.”
His administrative assistant, a young airman first class, entered. Her ABU name tag read “BEEBY.” Her young face frowned with confusion. “You have a visitor, sir.”
Kavanagh kept zooming and highlighting. “Who?”
“You won’t believe it.”
Kavanagh looked up. “Try me.”
Kavanagh was still in a foul mood after the FUBAR over his credentials back in Germany. How or why anybody had put him on a terrorist watch list was beyond all reasoning. He’d only managed to get back to Karem last night after a long and uncomfortable ride in a rock-hard jump seat in the back of an unheated cargo transport.
The airman smiled. “Okay.” She turned in the doorway and spoke to someone in the cramped waiting room. “The colonel will see you now.”
Beeby stepped aside, and Margaret Myers marched into Kavanagh’s office.
Kavanagh’s jaw dropped. He rose. “Madame President?” He began to raise his hand in a salute, but checked himself.
“Former president. But please, call me Margaret.” She extended her hand. He shook it.
The airman stifled a giggle.
“That’ll be all,” Kavanagh said, dismissing her. She left, closing the door behind her.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, pointing at the only other chair in the tiny room.
“No, thank you. I’ve had quite enough of sitting for a while.”
“Long flight?”
“Is there a short flight to this godforsaken place?”
Kavanagh smiled. “Good point. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need a favor, Colonel.”
“Favors are hard to come by on an Air Force base. We tend to function on the basis of SOPs.”
Myers glanced around the spartan room. The large computer monitor dominated the tiny steel desk. A framed photo of Kavanagh’s wife and children stood next to a picture of him as a younger man in the cockpit of an airplane. She knew it was an A-10 Thunderbolt, the same plane as the model airplane on the shelf behind his head. The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs was one of her favorite places to visit as governor. She’d tried to convince her son to apply there, but he didn’t have any interest.
“Even for your former commander in chief?”
“Depends on the favor, I suppose.”
“I’d like you to release a young woman in your custody named Judy Hopper.”
“May I ask why?”
“I suppose that’s the second favor I’d ask you. I’d rather you didn’t.”
Kavanagh leaned carefully against his desk, folding his arms across his chest, thinking.
“I’m sorry, but Air Force regulations clearly state: only one favor per ex-president. I can grant you one or the other, but not both.”
“Okay, then release Judy and allow us to proceed on our way.”
“For what purpose? And please, don’t tell me that cockamamie story about a rescue mission.”
“It’s about a cockamamie rescue mission. Can we leave now?”
“Seriously, ma’am. What is this all about?”
“It’s about two American heroes who are stuck on the wrong side of the world that need a lift back home, badly. Right now.”
“I can’t authorize an illegal border crossing, even if it is for a spy mission. That kind of operation needs a much higher clearance than my pay grade allows.”
“I’m not asking you to authorize anything. I’m asking you to let Judy go, release her airplane, and wish us luck. What we do when we lift off the tarmac isn’t any of your concern.”
Kavanagh scratched his silver hair, thinking, as he sat back down in his chair. The springs squeaked.
“If you got hurt or captured or, God forbid, shot down, it puts my ass in a sling and the U.S. government on the hook. I’m sorry.” Kavanagh folded his hands on the desk.
Myers leaned on his desk, her face nearly in his. “If I got hurt or shot down or captured, technically, it would be my ass in the sling, not yours. And since when does an American military officer worry about his ass? Is that how you qualified to fly one of those?” She pointed at the A-10, affectionately known as the Warthog.
“No, ma’am.”
“I know it takes a lot of guts to fly one of those. I know a lot of brave young men and women who graduated from the Academy. Just like you.” She nodded at his Air Force Academy ring. “I’m not asking you to get out of your chair or out from behind your desk. I just need you to sign whatever paper you need to sign and let us go. I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll sign any document you put in front of me to that effect.”
“I can’t believe the CIA or the DoD or whoever has recruited you to run some special op into hostile territory. No offense.”
“None taken. There are better-trained men and women than me for that sort of thing.”
“So, then, you admit this is personal?”
She banged the desk. “You’re damn right it’s personal. These are friends of mine and their lives are at risk, and I’m not going to stand around and do nothing about it.” She picked up the photo of the colonel’s wife and kids. “Would you let some pencil-pushing bureaucrat stand between you and your family if you knew their lives were in danger?”
“Hell no.”
�
��Then you understand.”
“Who are these people you’re going after?”
“Two of the finest men I’ve ever known. They risked everything for me, and for our country, time and time again. They deserve better than what they’re getting from our government, which is nothing.”
“Why not call the White House? I’m sure the president would listen to you.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? The administration quoted me chapter and verse on the ‘no new boots on the ground’ doctrine. Can you imagine it?”
“But that was your policy, ma’am.”
“Nonsense. My policy was to not start new wars that don’t advance American national interests. But when American lives were at stake? I would’ve unleashed hell to save one American life. That was my job as president. And that’s my reasonable expectation as a citizen. President Greyhill won’t send troops in order to protect his interests.”
“You’re putting me in a helluva position.”
“What kind of position do you think my friends are in over there?”
Kavanagh’s neck flushed red. “I wish to God you were still the president.”
—
The plane is already fueled and ready to go, according to the colonel,” Myers said.
“I still don’t think you should come. It’s risky,” Judy said. “And Troy would kill me if something happened to you.” She was working a piece of gum hard in her jaw.
“If something happens to me it’ll probably happen to you, so Troy will be the least of your worries.”
The two of them headed for the Aviocar, which had already been wheeled out onto the tarmac. They approached the plane. A square-jawed slab of meat in civilian clothes blocked the entrance to the Aviocar’s cargo door. Judy recognized him. It was Sergeant Wolfit, the man from whom Pearce had stolen the M4 carbine. Judy noticed that a new M4 carbine was slung across the sergeant’s broad chest, filling out a bright orange Tennessee Vols T-shirt. His narrow eyes bored a hole into Judy.
