by Tom Clancy
“Then you’ll never be anything in this world, so it doesn’t matter if I take the bike or not.” He started away from Chopra and grabbed the bike’s handlebars.
His friend came up behind them. “Can you ride me?”
“Sure,” said the boy. “Climb on.”
The second boy balanced himself on the rear wheel’s bolts while the first took a seat.
“You can’t take it!” shouted Chopra, reaching toward them.
The first boy turned and shoved Chopra away. “Don’t do anything. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Chopra reared back, ready to punch the boy in the face, but suddenly he was on the ground, the dust coming up into his face. The other kid had hopped down and shoved him.
With tears in his eyes, Chopra watched as his bicycle vanished down the alley.
“Change of plans,” said the Snow Maiden, riding up beside Chopra.
They were still pushing along the embankment, passing the rows of gridlocked cars, with Hussein keeping close behind them.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked.
Chopra glanced at her. She was riding through that old alley in Mumbai, and then the alley dematerialized into the narrow country road. “What did you say?”
“I told you we have a change of plans. We’re not going to Dover anymore. We’re heading to Folkestone. We’ll be met there. It’s farther south than Dover and closer to us. Now let’s pick up the pace. Come on.”
Chopra was already sweating profusely in the summer heat and humidity. He took a deep breath, wondering what those boys had ever done with his bike. He’d never seen it again, and in truth he’d never forgiven himself for allowing them to steal it. His father would not have approved.
But he’d shown them, right? He’d risen from the dirt, the ashes, the same way Dubai would in time. He refused to let this woman take that away, and he silently vowed that she wouldn’t. No matter what he had to do. He glanced back at the young sheikh, who rolled his eyes and said, “When can we stop? I’m absolutely dying of thirst!”
“You have become an expert at complaining.”
“Shut up, old man.”
“You must learn to respect your elders.”
“Get me a drink — or at least get her to get me a drink…”
Chopra braced himself. Patience. Patience.
* * *
Brent loved how politics affected military operations.
When he’d earlier needed Close Air Support, he couldn’t get the time of day, but now, after Dennison had had some time to throw her weight around and negotiate her way up and down the pipeline, an old UH-60 Blackhawk came whomping toward them. They’d be picked up and whisked at high speed back into the chase.
The Snow Maiden, Chopra, and Hussein were on bicycles and riding toward the coast.
Dennison had had to repeat that.
Bicycles? There was the Snow Maiden’s connection to the Tour de France, the cousin who’d been murdered. But bicycles?
Dennison had explained that all the roads had been flooded with people trying to flee to the coast and cross over to France. The Snow Maiden’s escape was actually quite clever and much faster than any attempt by car.
A keen-eyed intelligence analyst with his face glued to a satellite feed had, however, picked up the group of three pedaling southward.
Easy prey? Hardly.
Worse, getting back in the air wouldn’t go by the numbers, as Lakota confirmed. “Our ride’s got a Russian on his tail. Looks like another Howler.”
“All right, you talk in our ride, and I’ll get us to put some fire on that Howler,” Brent said, still jogging through the forest.
He reached the road and the pair of trucks where the others had already climbed aboard and were waiting for him. He signaled to both drivers: Take us back up the road, to where a large clearing would serve as the landing zone.
They tore off, the engines revving, Brent’s driver cursing under his breath, a habit it seemed. It took just five minutes to reach the zone, where Brent ordered his team to fan out, away from the trucks — all but Daugherty and Heston. He put those operators on the fifty-caliber guns. Then he told the two British drivers and gunners that they didn’t have to stay, that his men would take out that Howler, and thank you very much for allowing us to borrow your nice toys.
“You think I can stand here and turn over my equipment to a Yank? Hell no!” hollered Brent’s driver. He ordered his gunners back to their weapons.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not giving you a choice.”
“Bloody hell, I know that. So rest assured, we’ll get the job done. You put your boys on the bird as well. We’re in the fight now.”
Brent snorted. “Not worried about drawing fire?”
“I think they should be,” said the driver, tipping his head toward the oncoming choppers. “Let’s go hunting.”
Finally, Brent smiled. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah, just get ready.”
Brent jogged away as his people set up along a slight mound, all lying prone, weapons trained at the two dark blips appearing over the distant tree line. The team had packed relatively light, not expecting to face armor or aircraft, and Brent longed for a nice Zeus, a fire-and-forget missile launcher that would certainly give the Russians pause — much more so than a pair of fifty-caliber guns.
Brent dropped down beside Thomas, who’d been given a rifle by Lakota. His gaze was fixed through the scope.
“How you doing?” Brent asked, shifting awkwardly onto his elbows.
“Just fine. How are you?” Thomas snapped.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re just a guy trying to save his half-ass career, and I’m just a guy who doesn’t belong here. Never did. Never will.”
“Dennison knows your brother’s there. She’ll send a recovery team.”
“He always knew he’d die out here. I have a detailed list of instructions of what to do. He wrote them for me. This is no surprise.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry.”
Thomas’s tone grew even nastier. “You know why I finally joined the NSA? Because my father came to me, told me he wanted me to protect George. He said George took too many risks. I needed to watch out for him. And stupid me believed my father. What a crock. I found out later that George told my father what to say — just to get me on board. But I keep thinking that maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe it was true. I was supposed to keep an eye on George because I’m the sane one, not the warmonger. And I failed. I let my brother die.”
“Survivor guilt is natural. I promise we’ll talk about this later. I promise.” Brent cleared his throat and opened up a channel to the team. “Ghosts, this is Ghost Lead. Stand by. Here they come!”
The Blackhawk swooped down to within a meter of the treetops, with the Howler trailing. That the Russians hadn’t already blown the transport from the sky bothered Brent. They were holding fire. What the hell?
Maybe they wanted something — or someone — on board. They’d been given orders to track and observe. Interesting…
“Hammer, this is Ghost Lead. The Russians aren’t firing at our bird.”
“Ghost Lead, just take out that Howler. Now!”
Brent glanced up at Lakota, waved her over. She rushed to his side and dropped down. He switched off the audio on his Cross-Com. “This is weird.”
“I know.”
“Talk to that Blackhawk pilot. See if he’s carrying any precious cargo or VIPs.”
“Dennison will hear.”
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
Lakota called the pilot, who said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss such issues. That was pilot code for I got precious cargo but I can’t tell you.
Otherwise, he would’ve just said nope.
“All right, let’s get that bird onto the ground, then we’ll find out what the hell’s going on here,” Brent said.
The Blackhawk drew closer, then, under Lakota’s guidance and on her count, suddenly banked ha
rd to the left, exposing the Howler behind it.
“All right, fire, fire, fire!” Brent shouted.
The two Brits manning the fifties cut loose with a massive barrage, every third round a tracer that shimmered like laser bolts across green crowns of trees. It seemed now that two fire-lit wires were attached to the helicopter as it climbed and rolled against the onslaught. The wires fluctuated and wanted to drag the chopper down.
Below, both gunners adjusted fire until their rounds were drumming along the fuselage’s thick armor plates. It was awe-inspiring to see an aircraft take that many rounds from the fifties and from the rest of Brent’s people. The thing still remained aloft, seemingly undamaged.
“Damn, I don’t think we can touch her,” shouted Lakota.
“Oh, no!” cried one of the gunners, breaking off fire. “We’ve pissed him off now! He’s coming around!” The man abandoned his gun, jumped from the truck, and began running.
As the Blackhawk thumped overhead and swept behind them, the Howler pitched forward, coming to bear on one of the trucks. White-hot flashes came from its rocket pods.
Before Brent could open his mouth in an order to fall back, the first truck lifted off the ground and burst into a dome of fire whose heat and blast wave sent Brent sliding backward.
Smoke swirled in the rotor wash and dropped on them like a woolen blanket as the din of gunfire rose.
Brent coughed. His eyes burned. He could barely see the images piped in from the Cross-Com. And then the smoke thinned.
The second gunner kept firing on the chopper, a fountain of brass casings rising at his side. Brent screamed for the guy to get out of there, but he doubted the man had heard him. The Brit seemed unfazed by the helicopter coming around to finish him off.
Brent hollered again as the rocket pods flashed like cameras and twin smoke trails slashed the air between the chopper and the truck.
But that gunner never released his weapon and fired until the explosion swallowed him.
FOURTEEN
Clearing near Royal Military Academy
Sandhurst
Knowing that Dennison was observing everything on the battlefield, Brent did not report the loss of the fifty-caliber guns or that the Russians were about to finish his team.
Those facts were obvious.
As was the fact that he needed immediate air support. He and his Ghosts were firing slingshots at an armored Goliath, and a break back for the woods would leave them vulnerable.
Only a few seconds after he’d called for help — his senses overloaded by the fires, the secondary explosions, the deafening din of rotors and rotor wash — did a new window open in his HUD to reveal a praying mantis or rather a fighter pilot wearing an alien-like helmet with attached oxygen line. A complex grid of flashing data displays was reflected brilliantly across the pilot’s tinted faceplate.
“Ghost Lead, this is Siren, Joint Strike Fighter Support, over.”
“Siren, this is Ghost Lead, our target is—”
“Relax, Captain. I have your target. Tell your people to take cover, over.”
“Roger that!” Somewhere amid all the racket came the faint hiss of a jet.
Brent hollered for incoming, and they all dug deeper into the mound. Brent craned his neck up, studied the sky, and waited.
Finally, the whoosh of the F-35’s Pratt & Whitney engine boomed louder than the chopper’s.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was a Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) aircraft that had often provided Close Air Support to Brent’s operations in Afghanistan. Pilots could keep their jets hidden in the mountains and launch vertically on a moment’s notice. Some of his operators referred to the fighters as helicopters on steroids, and Brent was well accustomed to working with their highly capable if sometimes immodest pilots. Small world, too, because he knew this particular fighter jockey, and she was one of the best.
Major Stephanie Halverson had fought bravely enough during the Russian invasion of Canada to earn the attention of the president of the United States, along with the admiration of everyone in the JSF. She’d been shot down, nearly captured behind enemy lines, and rescued by a stalwart Force Recon Marine unit, who’d plucked her from the waters of a frozen lake whose ice had given way.
Word was in Afghanistan that if you had Siren on your back, the enemy didn’t stand a chance — and you stood a greater chance of coming home alive.
All of Brent’s people had been trained as air force combat controllers, though Lakota was the most accomplished among them. At the moment, though, Siren didn’t need any help. Brent watched from her point of view as she targeted the Howler and unleashed the dogs: a pair of wingtip-mounted AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles.
That the missiles used a passive IR target-acquisition system to home in on the Howler’s infrared emissions was a trivial detail.
That they would utterly destroy the enemy aircraft was all you needed to know.
And now it was time to stop, hold your breath, and look up at the fireworks show.
And that’s exactly what Brent did.
The twin flashes came, burning magnesium bright, and from the jet’s wings came fate in all its destructive glory.
The Howler tore apart not a second after the Side-winders struck their one-two punch. Flaming debris formed the petals of a brilliant flower before all of it came crashing down just thirty meters away, the entire field trembling, secondary explosions resounding, debris pinwheeling in all directions like razor-sharp throwing stars tossed by ninja warriors.
Brent waved his people away, lest they be sliced apart or caught in the flames. His Ghosts needed no more coaxing and sprinted for the trees.
“Ghost Lead, this is Siren, is there anything else I can do for you today, over?”
“Yeah, you can finally surrender your phone number.”
Although Halverson’s face was hidden by her faceplate, Brent guessed that she smiled. “Always a pleasure, Ghost Lead. Siren out.”
The team, along with the surviving Brits, rallied back to the edge of the field where they’d entered as the Blackhawk settled down into a landing.
“You can ride with us if you want,” Brent told the driver.
“My people are on the way. Thanks for that,” the guy said, glancing at the burning Howler.
Brent gestured toward one of the shattered trucks. “I’m sorry about your gunner.”
The driver made a face. “Me, too. Glad you got us a little help, otherwise we would’ve joined him.”
Brent nodded.
“All right, everyone, let’s load,” shouted Lakota.
Brent shook hands with the driver, a sobering moment to be sure, and then he and the others climbed aboard the Blackhawk. He was the last inside and searched the bay area for any surprising faces. Just the pilot, co-pilot, and two door gunners, about as nondescript a bunch as you could get.
He wanted to express his puzzlement to Lakota, but the bay was much too loud to do any talking. They lifted off and forged onward, toward the coast.
No precious cargo? No VIPs? Why hadn’t the Russians fired at the Blackhawk?
The answer came within seconds. Dennison appeared in his HUD. “Ghost Lead, we’ve intercepted communication from Haussler and his team. They had direct contact with that Howler. They’re trying to track us again, but we cut the line.”
“I thought maybe we were carrying VIPs,” Brent said, lifting his voice above the helicopter’s engines.
“Negative. Well, actually, from Haussler’s standpoint, you are the VIPs. He’ll let you do all the work and show up at the last second to claim the prize. I’ve got a gunship keeping him busy right now, but that asset won’t be mine for much longer. Brits are all tied up, too. I think our German buddy’s going to slip away again, damn it.”
“Roger that.”
“But take a look at this,” said Dennison, her image switching to a streaming satellite video of a hovercraft racing across the channel. A text box indicated that the craft was bound for Folk
estone Harbor, with an ETA of just six minutes. The image then zoomed in to show three people on bicycles heading down the narrow, shop-lined Old High Street, en route to the linkup with that hovercraft.
“We have her now,” Brent said, trying to control his pulse. “If she gets on that ship, that’s it. Done deal. Much easier to isolate and control.”
“I agree. I’m instructing your pilot to hold off. We want her to board, get out into the channel, and then I’m calling in a laser strike on the hovercraft’s engines. Once she’s dead in the water, you move in.”
“Sounds familiar and perfect. Only this time she’s going to be on board. Standing by.”
Brent glanced around at the rest of his team. “Get fast ropes ready! We’re back in the hunt!”
“Roger that,” said Lakota, then she began issuing orders to the others.
So the Snow Maiden wasn’t so clever after all. She’d had her fun back in the Seychelles, but now she’d run out of time and terrain. Brent could already feel the zipper cuffs tightening around her wrists. He moved in front of her, got into her face, and said, “You’re not an easy woman to find.”
And she would just glower at him with bloodshot eyes, resigned to her capture.
Oh, were it that easy.
Taking a deep breath, Brent continued to watch the satellite feed. The three cyclists neared the end of the road and disappeared into the alcove of a restaurant identified by the Cross-Com’s AI as “Fat Sam’s.”
“What? They’re stopping for an early lunch?” Brent asked Dennison.
“Probably holding back until the hovercraft gets through the harbor.”
“She’s obviously in contact with someone. Can you intercept?” he asked.
“We’ve been trying. New form of encryption. Hard to break. Cutting-edge stuff, say the geeks back here. But they always say that, right?”
Just then the Blackhawk pilot began to wheel around and reported, “In our holding pattern.”
Below lay the leathery brown stretches of sandy beach and the Folkestone pier jutting out like a slightly bent arm serving as the end of a railway line.
After another minute, the three cyclists appeared, heading along Harbour Street toward the hovercraft, just now entering and blasting seamlessly up the concrete hoverport lying near the railroad tracks. They were all holding to-go cups and had probably stopped for a quick drink.
