by Dale Brown
“Zen, you see that machine gun twenty yards from the barn?” said Danny.
“I’m on it. Keep your guys away.”
Inaudible above the din and rendered invisible because of its black skin, the Flighthawk seemed to be a lightning bolt sent by God Himself. The earth reverberated as a tornado of dirt and lead swirled in a frantic vortex where Danny’s enemy had been. Gun and gunner disappeared in the swirl, consumed by its fury.
The ricochets and shrapnel missed him, but not by much. A few hit the dead man in front of him, ripping his already torn body still further. Bits of cloth and flesh splattered over Danny, sticking to his uniform.
The gunfire across the battlefield abruptly stopped. Danny turned toward the stream and yelled for the lieutenant, whom he thought would be there by now, but he didn’t get an answer.
He began making his way toward the barn, moving cautiously. He came upon another soldier, facedown in the field. As he checked to see if the man was alive, a shadow moved to his right. Danny raised his submachine gun to fire, stopping only at the last second when he saw what he thought was a helmet, the sign of a soldier.
“I’m Captain Freah!” Danny shouted. “The American observer. The American!”
The figure answered with gunfire.
Two bullets hit Danny’s side. He spun to his right, sprawling on the ground. Though the carbon-boron cells in his body armor gave him considerably more protection than a standard bulletproof vest would have, he could practically feel the welts rising at the side of his chest.
Danny pulled himself around, catching his breath and trying to think of something he could say to get the man to stop firing.
He couldn’t return fire—he’d lost his MP5 when he fell.
Finally, the bursts stopped.
Danny watched as the shooter rose and began moving across the field, apparently thinking he’d killed him. As the man passed close by, Danny realized it wasn’t a helmet he’d seen; the man was wearing a watch cap.
Danny waited, not daring to move until the man was behind him. Then he leaped up, twisting around and throwing himself on the guerrilla’s back. He rode the man to the ground, then grabbed the man’s rifle and began battering his head with the stock. The man tried to roll and fend off the blows, but Danny swung harder. He battered away, anger and adrenaline fueling a bloody revenge.
By the time he got control of himself, the guerrilla was dead, his face a bloody pulp.
Danny knelt next to him, watching as someone ran up from the direction of the stream. It was Lieutenant Roma.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Danny got up. “If you pull the men back, I can have the Flighthawk hit the barn.”
“There may be hostages,” said the lieutenant. “I don’t want to strike blindly.”
As if on cue, another machine gun began to rake the field from the second story of the barn. Danny put a fresh box of ammo in the gun he’d taken from the guerrilla and began moving to his right.
“Where are you going?” yelled Roma.
“I’ll flank it, get an angle. You draw his fire from here.”
“No. You stay. My men will take care of it.”
“Draw his fire,” insisted Danny. “I only need a few seconds.”
Danny leapt up, charged to his right a few yards, then dove back to the ground before the machine gunner could bring his weapon to bear. In the meantime, Lieutenant Roma had begun firing. As the bullets swung back toward Roma, Danny lurched up on all fours and scrambled along the ground until he came to a slight rise. He crawled behind it and crept up along a narrow rift formed by a tiny stream that ran only after very heavy rains. He could see the machine gun’s tracers, but not the gunner inside the building, hidden by the angle.
Before he could decide whether to go back a little and try from another spot, Danny heard a loud hiss in the field. He threw himself back down into a ball, rolling into a fetal position as a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the machine-gun post.
He stayed like that for a full minute before he unfolded himself. The Romanian soldiers began moving forward in the dark.
“American!” yelled one.
“I’m over here!” answered Danny. A sergeant ran toward him. Danny saw three or four figures running past the barn; by the time he realized they were guerrillas, it was too late to shoot.
Lieutenant Roma joined him as his men worked their way toward the barn. There was still sporadic gunfire, but nothing as intense as it had been just a few minutes before.
“We have reinforcements on the way,” Roma said, his voice tight with anxiety. “We’re cutting off the road near the highway. Then we’ll tighten the noose.”
“How many troops are coming?” Danny asked.
“A company. Two. Whatever can respond. I don’t think there are many more guerrillas,” he added. “And those who are left may not have the stomach to keep fighting.”
“They have plenty of stomach from what I’ve seen.”
Aboard EB-52 Bennett,
above northeastern Romania
2217
ZEN SPOTTED TWO FIGURES RUNNING FROM THE REAR OF the barn toward a building across a dirt road a hundred yards away. As he circled around, he saw someone else near the building. Suddenly, one of the walls seemed to give way. A small pickup truck emerged—it had broken through a garagestyle door—and headed toward the road. The man nearby threw himself into the back. The two others ran and did the same. Another vehicle, this one a car, followed.
“Danny, I have a pickup truck and a sedan, mid-size, coming out of one of the buildings across the road, about a hundred and fifty yards north of your position,” said Zen.
“Roger, we heard it.”
“I can nail them.”
“Negative. They may have hostages. Follow it for now.”
Zen slipped the Flighthawk farther along the road. The Romanians had forces on the highway about three-fourths of a mile away, though there were several places the guerrillas could turn off. He tucked back, then decided to try and spook them by flying toward them low and fast, pickling a few flares into their windshields as he pulled up.
As he came out of the turn and started in, he spotted a small bridge over a stream ahead of the vehicles and got a better idea.
The bridge was little more than a few wooden planks over a culvert pipe. He climbed a few hundred feet, then pushed in, twisting the Flighthawk so its nose pointed almost straight down at the road surface. He mashed the trigger of his cannon, then waggled his plane left and right, chewing the wood up with his bullets.
The pickup appeared as Zen cleared. His attack had damaged the bridge so severely that it slid sideways as soon as the truck started across. The vehicle skidded but managed to get to the other side as the bridge collapsed behind it.
The car that was following, however, was stranded. Seven men hopped out and ran across the culvert to the truck. From the air, it looked like a circus routine, though without the humor.
“Truck got across the little bridge,” Zen told Danny. “Six, seven guys getting out of the car, crossing. They’re in the back of the pickup.”
“Stand by.”
The pickup drove about ten yards and then stopped. Everyone spilled out and began running toward a nearby house.
“Danny, they’re going toward a building. I see no one that looks like he might be a hostage.”
There was a pause as Danny conferred with Roma.
“See if you can stop them,” Danny said finally.
Zen laid down a spray of cannon fire across the lawn of the house. Three or four men fell, but the others were too spread out for him to target in a single run. He circled back quickly, but by the time he brought his guns to bear, all but two had made it into the house.
Whether they had hostages before, Zen thought bitterly, they had them now.
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2220
THE POLICE CAR AND AN AMBULANCE WERE IN THE BARN.
So
were two policemen. Both had been shot through the head.
Lieutenant Roma quickly regrouped his men, organizing them so he could surround the house where the guerrillas had gone. He seemed to realize that his fears about hostages had probably led to others being taken. Or maybe his somber mood came from the fact that the guerrillas had killed two and wounded four of his men in the field outside the barn.
Danny remained silent as they drove to the house. Half a dozen soldiers had already set up positions near it without drawing fire, but when the guerrillas saw the truck, they began shooting ferociously.
“Time is on our side,” said Roma after they took cover. “We will have them surrounded as soon as our reinforcements arrive.”
Had the guerrillas mounted a concentrated attack on one of the flanks, they might have been able to break through. But within ten minutes another platoon of soldiers arrived; a few minutes later, another.
The house sat in the middle of well-cleared plot of land, with good lines of fire for the army soldiers as they clustered behind vehicles and other cover. There would be no way for the guerrillas to escape this time. Their only hope would be some sort of negotiated surrender.
Along with the reinforcements, senior officers began to arrive: first a company captain, then a major; before an hour passed, a colonel arrived and took charge.
Roma introduced him to Danny as Oz, without reference to his rank. He had a brush mustache and eyes that sat far back in his skull.
“This is something new,” Oz told Danny. “Ordinarily they don’t take prisoners. But then we usually don’t catch them like this. We are grateful for your help.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“There are five girls in the house,” said Oz. “The neighbors say they have a grandmother and an uncle living with them as well. From five to fifteen. Girls.” The colonel shook his head. “Innocent people.”
“Maybe you can get them to release them.”
Oz frowned. “One of my men has already tried calling the house. No answer.”
“Can we wait them out?”
“What other choice do we have?”
About a half hour later two armored personnel carriers arrived. Oz climbed into the rear of one, then the two trucks slowly advanced onto the front lawn, stopping about twenty yards from the house. The guerrillas made no effort to stop them, and, as far as Danny could tell, didn’t appear at the windows.
The rear ramp of the vehicle Oz had gotten into slammed open. The colonel emerged, a microphone in his hand.
“What’s he saying?” Danny asked Roma as Oz began to broadcast a message.
“Telling them they have to surrender,” said the lieutenant. “He’s giving them a phone number they can call to talk to us.”
The colonel paused, evidently waiting for an answer. When none came, he repeated his warning and plea.
This time there was an answer—an explosion so violent it knocked Danny to the ground.
Aboard EB-52 Bennett,
above northeastern Romania
2235
EVEN THOUGH ZEN KNEW BETTER, THE EXPLOSION THAT rocked the house was so intense that for a second he thought the Bennett had unleashed a missile on the building. The fireball rose over the Flighthawk.
“Colonel, you see that?” Zen asked.
“I have it on screen,” said Dog dryly.
“They blew themselves up. Shit.”
“All right, Zen. Tell Danny we’re standing by.”
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2237
BY THE TIME DANNY RECOVERED, THE FIREBALL HAD FALLEN back into the ruins. Smoke and dust filled the air. All he could hear was the low rumble of the motor from one of the personnel carriers; the other had been choked and stalled by the air surge of the explosion.
Then the screaming began. A loud wail went up, as if all the world had begun to cry at once. A dozen men had been hit by shrapnel and were seriously wounded. Another two or three had been killed outright.
What remained of the house was on fire. The glow turned the night orange, casting long shadows around the yard. The Romanian soldiers began to move toward their comrades who had been wounded.
“Groundhog, are you all right?” asked Zen.
“Groundhog. Affirmative.”
“What the hell happened? It looked like a piece of hell opened up.”
The only thing Danny could think of was that the guerrillas had been carrying plastique explosives with them, and augmented their power with something they found in the house, natural gas, maybe.
“I heard there were kids in the house,” Danny told Zen, still in disbelief.
“God.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Though he didn’t have a med kit, Danny was a trained paramedic and realized he could be of more use helping the wounded than lamenting what had happened. He threw off his helmet and ran toward the bodies scattered along the lawn. Most were near the armored personnel carriers, lulled by the bulk of the big trucks into thinking they were safe behind them.
The first man he reached had been hit in the leg by a large piece of metal. The wound wasn’t deep. Danny checked for little shards or metal splinters up and down his thigh; when he didn’t find any, he made a bandage from the man’s handkerchief and had him press down on it to stop the bleeding.
The next man was dead, killed by a large piece of wood that had slit his neck and its arteries wide open.
Oz was sitting on the ground behind the APC, dazed. The shock had thrown him off the open ramp of the carrier and he’d struck his head. His pupils seemed to react to the flashlight Danny shone in his eyes, but that didn’t necessarily rule out a concussion, and Danny told him he’d have to be checked by a doctor. Oz nodded, but still seemed dazed.
Lieutenant Roma walked up as Danny rose.
“You see what kind of people we’re up against, the criminals,” said Roma. He had tears in his eyes. “Devils. Worse. Killers of children.”
“It’s horrible.”
“They’re slime,” said Roma. “Cowards.”
“Yes,” said Danny.
Roma crumpled.
Danny knelt and saw that he’d been struck by something hard, a brick maybe, that had caved in the right side of his head. Blood trickled from his ear.
“Roma? Roma?” he said.
The lieutenant didn’t answer. He wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse.
Danny started CPR. A Romanian medic ran up; they worked together for a minute, two minutes, then five.
When ten minutes had passed and both men could no longer pretend there was still hope, they looked at each other for a moment. Then slowly Danny rose and went to see if there was someone else he might help.
IV
Burnt Wood and Flesh
U.S. Embassy, Bucharest
26 January 1998
0410
STONER RUBBED THE SLEEP FROM HIS EYES AS HE LOOKED at the photo of the house and the aftermath of the guerrillas’ explosion. There was a torso in the foreground. The other photo showed a baby’s arm clutched around a doll.
The American ambassador to Romania pushed the rest of the photos toward the far side of his desk, no longer able to look at them. The ambassador, rarely seen in public without a tie, wore a hooded yellow sweatshirt and a pair of old jeans, as if he were going to work on his car when they were done.
“Pretty gruesome, I’d say.” The ambassador shook his head. “Bastards.”
“Yeah,” said Russ Fairchild, the CIA station chief. “This is what they’re up against.”
“Was it the Russians or the guerrillas?” asked the ambassador.
“Had to be the Russians,” said Fairchild. “That much explosives?”
Stoner leaned forward and took the rest of the photos. Fairchild was probably right about the source of the explosives. But the description of the operation he’d heard from the Dreamland people made it sound too amateurish for Spetsnaz.
He flipped through the pictures
, which had been taken by the Romanian army on the scene. The guerrillas were in pieces, their bodies shattered when the explosives blew.
Stoner found a severed leg. He slipped the picture onto the ambassador’s desk.
“They were guerrillas,” he told the others. “See the shoes?”
“God,” said the ambassador, reacting to the gruesomeness of the shot.
“An old Puma,” said Fairchild.
“The Spetsnaz people who came after me had new boots,” explained Stoner. “Besides, the Russians would have tried to shoot their way out.”
Fairchild nodded. The ambassador seemed to be in shock.
“Can I have these?” Stoner asked, rising.
“By all means,” said the ambassador. “We can print more.”
“Mark?” Fairchild called after him as Stoner started down the hall. “Stoner—where are you going?”
“I should be back tomorrow,” he said.
Dreamland
25 January 1998
1810 (0410 Romania, 26 January 1998)
SAMSON PACED BEHIND THE CONSOLE NEAR THE FRONT OF the Dreamland Command Center, impatiently waiting for the connection to the White House Situation Room to go through. He’d put the call in ten minutes earlier, and had been standing by ever since.
Dealing with the National Security Council and the White House was still new to him, and try as he might, Samson couldn’t help but feel a little excited. And nervous. He’d had Mack Smith prepare a PowerPoint presentation, complete with images from the explosion. The photos were dramatic, illustrating again what the Dreamland people—his people—were up against.
And by extension, what a good job he was doing commanding them.
“Connection with the White House,” said the specialist at the station to his right.
Samson raised his chin and looked at the main screen. Instead of a video feed of NSC head Philip Freeman, however, Jed Barclay’s face came up.
