Razor's Edge

by Dale Brown

  “You’re headed back toward him,” Habib told Zen.

  “He can’t see you, but he hears something.”

  “Could be bogus,” said Breanna.

  “Aware of that, Quicksilver. RWR is clean.”

  “I concur,” said O’Brien.

  “You’re overhead—he thinks you’re at about fifteen thousand feet.”

  “Tell him I’m about a fifth of the size of an F-15,” said Zen. “I’m a hell of a lot lower than he thinks.”

  “I can’t talk back to him,” said Habib. His listening gear was just that—built for listening, not talking. They’d have to wait until they got close enough for Quicksilver‘s set to make contact.

  Zen magnified the visual feed ten times but saw nothing but large rocks. A cliff loomed ahead; he climbed, deciding to circle above the hills where he wouldn’t have to worry about running into anything.

  “I still don’t have him on standard Guard band,” said Chris over the interphone. “Can you pipe your input into our radios?”

  “Negative,” said Habib.

  “Are you sure you have his location right?” asked Breanna.

  “I don’t have it nailed down,” said Habib. “But we’re very close.”

  “I have a radar,” said O’Brien. “Slot—no, I’m not sure what the hell it is.”

  Zen’s RWR went red, then cleared.

  “Clean,” said O’Brien.

  “Hawk leader copies. I had a blip too. Jen?”

  “I can’t tell if it was a blurp or the real thing,” she said.

  “He’s lost you,” said Habib. “I lost him.”

  “I’m going to goose a couple of flares over that valley where he must have seen me,” said Zen. “Let’s see if that wakes him up.”

  High Top

  1620

  DANNY FREAH WATCHED AS THE MARINES OFF-LOADED gear from the transport helicopter, ferrying large bundles out the rear to a six-wheeled trolley that looked like something they’d borrowed from a Home Depot outlet. A separate crew of Marines, meanwhile, refueled the CH-46E from one of the barrels of fuel it had brought with it.

  One of the pilots hopped out of the cockpit, ambling over to say hello.

  “Have a cigar?” The Marine, tall but fairly thin, had left his helmet in the chopper. He had at least a two-day-old beard, so rare for a Marine in Danny’s experience that he wondered if the pilot was a civilian in disguise.

  “Don’t smoke,” said Danny. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Hey, not a problem,” said the pilot, who took out a pocketknife to saw off the end of the short cigar. “You’re Captain Freah, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Name’s Merritt.” He took out a Colibri lighter and lit the cigar, sending a pair of thick puffs into the air before continuing. “Friend of yours asked me to say hello. Hal Briggs.”

  “You know Hal?”

  “I do some work for him, every so often. A lot of these guys in the MEU do, SF stuff,” said the pilot, adding the abbreviation for Special Forces. Danny knew that his old friend Hal Briggs was deeply involved with covert actions for ISA, but operational secrecy meant he was hazy on the details.

  The pilot exhaled a thick wad of smoke. There was a decent wind, but Danny still felt his stomach turning with the scent.

  “Hal says you’re outta your mind if you’re predicting the Yankees make it to the World Series. He wants Cleveland,” said the helo pilot.

  “Hal doesn’t know shinola about baseball,” Danny told the pilot. “Cleveland. Where’s their pitchin’?”

  “Cleveland? Ha!” A laugh loud enough to be heard two or three mountains over announced the arrival of Captain Donny Pressman, the pilot of the MV-22. Pressman was a sincere and at times insufferable Boston Red Sox fan.

  “Now, if you want to talk about a team—”

  “Bill Buckner, Bill Buckner,” taunted the Marine, naming the first baseman whose error had cost Boston the World Series against the Mets several years before.

  “Old news,” said Pressman.

  “Yo, Merritt—we got a situation here,” yelled the other helicopter pilot from the front window.

  Danny and Pressman followed the pilot back to the chopper.

  “AWACS says one of the Megafortresses has a line on a downed pilot. He’s just over the border. We’re the closest asset to him.”

  “Shit—we’re not even refueled.”

  “We are,” said Pressman. “Let’s go!” He started to run toward his aircraft. “Get me some guys.” Danny twirled around and saw two of his men, Powder and Liu, pulling guard duty at the edge of the ramp area.

  “Liu, Powder—grab your gear, get your butts in the helo.

  Now!”

  “What’s up, Captain?” asked a short, puglike Marine sergeant a few yards away.

  “Pilot down!” yelled the helo pilot. “We got a location.”

  “We’re on it,” said the sergeant. Two other Marines ran up.

  “Into the Osprey,” said Danny. He didn’t have his helmet and was only wearing the vest portion of his body armor, but there wasn’t time to pick up his gear. Danny, Liu, Powder, and the three Marines barely got the rear of the Osprey closed before it began moving forward on the short runway.

  “We got a location from the Marines!” shouted the copilot, appearing in the doorway to the flightdeck.

  “Twelve minutes, fifteen tops, once we get the lead out.”

  Aboard Quicksilver,

  over Iraq

  1640

  THOUGH DESIGNED PRIMARILY TO DECOY HEAT-SEEKING missiles, the Flighthawks’ small flares were fairly conspicuous, even in the strong afternoon light. Zen shot off six, a third of his supply, then circled back.

  He had a good feel for the layout now; the valley ran almost directly north-south, bordered on the east and west by steep mountainsides. A river ran in an exaggerated double Z down the middle; a small town sat along the apex of the second Z at the south end. There were two roads that he could see. One cut through the village and headed east into the rocks; it was dirt. The other was a hard-pavement highway that curved about five miles south of the village. It extended into an open plain and, from the altitude that he peered down at it, didn’t seem to connect to the town, at least not directly. But while he figured there’d be at least a dirt trail connecting them, he couldn’t find it. The rugged terrain gave way in the distance to relatively fertile areas. Zen glimpsed a patchwork of fields before reaching the end of his orbit and doubling back once again.

  The pilot was most likely in the foothills at the northern part of the valley; farther south, and the people in the village would have tripped over him by now.

  “Anything?” he asked O’Brien.

  “Negative.”

  “I’m going to take it down and ride along the river,” said Zen. “See if I can find anything. Quicksilver?”

  “We copy,” said Bree. “Be advised we have a helo en route. Captain Freah is aboard.”

  Zen rolled the Flighthawk toward the earth, picking up speed as he plummeted. He’d take this pass very quickly, then have Jennifer review the video as he recovered. It was the sort of thing they’d done together plenty of times.

  It was also the sort of thing he could have done easily with Fentress on the other mission, though he’d balked.

  What did he have against Fentress?

  Rival?

  Hardly. The guy seemed afraid of his own shadow sometimes.

  Zen put the Flighthawk to the firewall, maxing the engines and tipping the airspeed over 500 knots. At about the size of a Miata sports car, the robot plane was not overwhelmingly fast, but she was responsive—he pulled back on the stick and shot upward, tucked his wings around and flashed back southward. The entire turn had been completed in seconds, and took perhaps a twentieth of the space even the ultra-agile F/A-18 would have needed at that speed. Zen galloped through the air with his aircraft, looking for something, anything.

  Light glinted near the village. He throttled back and
plowed into a turn, trying to give the camera as much of a view to check it out as possible.

  “Makeshift airfield there,” said Jennifer. “Two very large helicopters—about the size of Pave Lows. Three helos, sorry. Barracks. Uh, big enough for a company of men. Platoon—nothing major. Big helicopters,” she added.

  “Hinds, I’ll bet,” Zen told her. “Get the location, we’ll have to pass that on—it’s a target.”

  “Flare indicator—hey, I think I have our pilot!” shouted O’Brien.

  Zen continued northward along the valley about a mile and a half before spotting the flare’s contrail over a foothill on his right.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, pushing toward it. “Where’s his radio?”

  “No radio,” said Habib.

  “Our Osprey is ten minutes away,” reported Breanna.

  “They’re holding for a definite location.”

  “Those Hinds could be a problem,” said Ferris.

  Zen cut lower, working the Flighthawk toward the rocks. Even at two thousand feet it was difficult to pick out objects. The river zigged away on the left side; a dirt trail paralleled it. Something was moving on the trail well to the north. The village lay behind him, roughly four miles away.

  “I can’t see him,” said Zen. “I’m going to roll again and try my IR screen.”

  He selected the IR sensors for his main view as he made another run over the hills. This side of the valley was still in the sun; finding the heat generated by a man’s body would not be easy.

  “Got a radio—Iraqi,” said Habib. “Hey, he’s talking to someone, giving coordinates.”

  “Must be a search party,” said O’Brien.

  “Just necessary conversation,” snapped Breanna.

  “Major, he’s giving a position five kilometers north of the village, a klick off the road. You see a road?” Zen flicked back to his optical feed. “I see a dirt trail. I don’t have a vehicle.”

  “He sees you,” said Habib. “You’re—he’s going to fire!”

  “Missile in the air!” shouted O’Brien as Zen pulled up. “Shoulder-launched SAM. They’re gunning for you!”

  Aboard Dreamland Osprey,

  over Iraq

  1650

  DANNY FREAH CAUGHT HIS BALANCE AGAINST ONE OF THE Osprey’s interior spars as it pitched violently to the right, hurtling southward as low to the ground as possible. The MV-22 had many assets, but it wasn’t particularly easy to fly fast at low altitude in high winds—a fact made clear by the grunts and curses emanating from the cockpit.

  Not that anyone aboard was going to object.

  The aircraft started to slow abruptly, a signal that it was getting ready to change from horizontal to vertical flight.

  “Get ready!” yelled Danny.

  Powder and Liu were crouched near the door. They had their smart helmets as well as their vests, M-4s, a medical sack, and grenades. The Marines were standing along the side behind them, one private holding an M-16, the sergeant and the other with Squad Automatic Weapons, light machine guns whose bullets could tear through an engine block at close range.

  “I miss the Pave Low,” said Powder as they began stuttering toward the ground. “Cement mixer smoother than this.”

  “Pave Lows are for wimps,” barked the Marine sergeant. “You need a Marine aircraft.” Powder’s curse-laden retort was drowned by a sudden surge from the engines as the Osprey whipped to the side and then shot up. All Danny could see out the window was a sheer cliff.

  “We don’t have contact with the pilot yet, but we’re only two minutes out!” shouted the copilot from the flight deck. “Area is hot!”

  “Just the way I like my pussies,” yapped the gunnery sergeant.

  Aboard Quicksilver,

  over Iraq

  1654

  ZEN TOSSED FLARES AND CURLED THE FLIGHTHAWK TO THE right, jinking away from the shoulder-launched SAM.

  The fact that he was actually sitting nearly 25,000 feet higher than the Flighthawk was of little comfort to him; he flew as if he could feel the missile’s breath on his neck.

  More flares, a roll, hit the gas—the U/MF zipped within inches of a cliff wall before dashing into the clear beyond the row of mountains forming the valley.

  “Missile self-detonated,” said Ferris, monitoring the situation from the flight deck. “You’re clear, Hawk leader.”

  “Hawk leader. Thanks, guys.”

  “He’s not on the air,” said Habib.

  “Yeah,” said Ferris. “We’re still clear on Guard.”

  “Maybe it was a decoy,” suggested Bree. “Trying to ambush.”

  “Maybe.” Zen pushed back in his seat, scanning his instruments as he got his bearings. Fuel was starting to get a bit low. He had only two flares left. Full load of combat mix in the cannon, at least.

  “The Iraqi’s transmitting again. He’s on the move,” said Habib.

  “Helicopter is ninety seconds away,” said Bree.

  “Better hold the helo at sixty seconds, if he can,” said Zen. “I’m going to try following our friend in the vehicle.” He circled back toward the north end of the valley, dropping back to three thousand feet. He saw a rift to his right, glanced quickly at the sitrep or bird’s-eye view to make sure it led to the valley, then whipped into it. As he came through he pushed downward but nudged back power.

  “Iraqi is off the air,” said Habib.

  “Another flare,” said O’Brien.

  This time Zen saw it, about a mile on his left, ten yards at most from the dirt road. He still couldn’t see the vehicle.

  “All right—I got something,” he said as he saw movement on the road. “Computer, frame the object moving on the rocks.”

  Before the computer could acknowledge, he saw a brown bar of soap turn off the road.

  “I think I see our guy in the rocks. Nailing this truck first,” said Zen. By the time the words were out of his mouth, he’d already squeezed the trigger to fire.

  Aboard Dreamland Osprey,

  over Iraq

  1700

  THE NOSE OF THE OSPREY BUCKED UPWARD AND THE WHAP of the rotors went down an octave as it cleared a rift in the hills. The pilot had just kicked up the throttle, nearly tripling its speed, but to Danny Freah the sudden change in momentum made it feel as if it had slowed down. Powder and Liu clutched their rifles. Danny realized how much he missed the smart helmet—no map, no real-time view of the battlefield. But much more important, he’d jumped aboard with only his personal handguns—a service Beretta in his holster, and a small hideaway Heckler Koch P7 M13 strapped to his right ankle. That meant no MP-5 with its target scope slaved to his helmet; he didn’t even have his HK Mark 23 SOCOM with its laser pointer and thick silencer.

  There was something to be said for the good old-fashioned feel of the Beretta in his palm. He took it from his holster as the MV-22 skittered forward, and peered through the window on his right at a narrow furrow of gray and black smoke.

  “Flighthawk!” Liu yelled to him over the whine of the GE turboshafts.

  Danny saw it too—a small white wedge twisted through the air about fifty yards away, red bursting from its chin as if it were on fire. It figured that Zen and the others would be in the middle of this.

  Standard combat air rescue doctrine called for rescue aircraft to remain at forward bases until definitive contact was made with a downed airman. Occasionally, those procedures were relaxed to deal with difficult situations—on several attempted rescues during the Gulf War helicopters had actually waited inside Iraq during searches. But they were really freelancing here—according to what the copilot said, Quicksilver had heard the pilot but not seen him. They were listening to Iraqi units search, and had been fired upon.

  Definitely could be a trap.

  “Downed airman is near the road, near a truck they’re smoking!” yelled the copilot. “We got a spot to land right next to it. We’re going for it.”

  “They talk to him?” shouted Danny.

  “Neg
ative, sir. They’re sure, though. Hang on!”

  “Okay, ladies!” yelled the Marine sergeant, moving toward the door. In the next moment, the Osprey pitched sharply, pirouetting around and descending in nearly the same motion, dropping so quickly that for a half second Danny thought they’d been hit. Then there was a loud clunk and he knew they’d been hit. But they were on the ground, it was time to go, go—he fought back a sliver of bile and lurched toward the door behind his men as the door kicked down.

  The Osprey settled harshly onto the uneven surface of the scratch road. Danny was the fifth man out. An acrid smell stung his nose; the Flighthawk had smoked a pickup truck, which was burning nearby.

  “Yo, Marines—my guys on point! Whiplash on fucking point!” yelled Danny. It wasn’t a pride thing—it made much more sense to have the people with the body armor in the lead. The Marines finally caught on, or maybe they just grew winded as Liu and Powder motored past.

  So where the hell was their guy?

  The Flighthawk whipped overhead and wheeled to the right, then shot straight upward about three hundred yards away. But it wasn’t until the plane rolled and dove back down that Danny realized Zen was trying to put them on the downed pilot.

  “There! There!” he shouted, pointing. “Powder, your right. Right! Right!”

  No way the pilot didn’t hear the Osprey. So why wasn’t he jumping up to greet them?

  They had to clamber over a twenty-foot-wide rock slide before finally reaching their man. As he cleared the rocks, Danny saw the pilot sprawled on the ground, his radio lying smashed on the rocks. Powder was just getting to him; Liu was a few yards behind Danny.

  Powder threw back his helmet and put his head down in front of the pilot’s face. Danny noticed a black stain on the pilot’s right pant leg; congealed blood.

  “Breathing. Shit, I thought he’d fucking bought it,” said Powder. “Hit by something.”

  Liu threw his medical kit in front of him as he slid close. He glanced quickly over the pilot’s body, then reached into his pack for the quick-inflate stretcher. He pulled a wire loop and held onto the side as compressed air exploded into the honeycombed tubes. Liu took a pair of titanium telescoping rods from the underside of his go-bag, then propped the stretcher on rocks next to the stricken man.