by Dale Brown
The gunsight began blinking red. He pushed the trigger, sending a stream of 20mm bullets over the MiG’s left wing. The MiG immediately nosed down and then cut back hard in the direction he’d come from. Surprised and out of position because he’d been worried about the border, Zen had trouble staying with the Russian.
The MiG turned south, breaking clean from the Flighthawk’s pursuit. Zen knew he’d hit it earlier, but it showed no sign of damage.
I’m nailing that son of a bitch, he thought, throwing the Flighthawk into a hard turn.
The MiG’s tail came up in his screen, too far to shoot—but Zen’s adrenaline and anger took over, and he pressed the trigger anyway. The slugs trailed down harmlessly toward the earth.
The MiG driver once more leaned on his throttle and slowly began pulling away. He was still going south; Zen started to tack in that direction, thinking he might be able to cut him off a second time.
The Flighthawk computer warned him that he was running low on fuel, but Zen didn’t care. He was going to get the son of a bitch.
Then the computer gave him another warning: His path south was taking him out of control range.
“Bennett, this is Flighthawk leader. I need you to come south.”
“What’s your status, Flighthawk?” asked Dog.
“I’m on the MiG’s tail. I almost have him. Come south.”
“Negative. We have the trucks approaching the border. We need you to provide cover.”
“I’m on his tail.”
“Come back north, Flighthawk. The MiG is no longer a player.”
“What the hell sense is coming north?” asked Zen. “I can’t go across the border if the trucks get in trouble.”
There was a pause. A warning flashed on Zen’s screen:
DISCONNECT IN TEN SECONDS, NINE…
“Come north, Hawk leader,” said Dog.
“Colonel—”
“That is a direct order.”
It was all Zen could do to keep from slapping the control stick as he complied.
“TARGET THE MIG,” DOG TOLD SULLIVAN.
“Targeted. Locked.”
Dog looked at the sitrep. He needed Zen to move off before he fired.
The Flighthawk lurched to the right.
“Take him down.”
“Fire Fox One!” said Sullivan. The radar missile dropped off the rail. It accelerated with a burst of speed.
“MiG is turning back east,” said Sullivan. “Missile is tracking.”
Dog brought the ground radar plot on his control board. He had the same situation on the ground as he had in the air—if the Moldovans attacked, he’d be unable to do anything until they came over the line.
“Splash MiG!” shouted Sullivan.
“Close the bay doors,” said Dog.
“Colonel, looks like the Moldovan ground forces are going to miss our guys,” reported Spiff. “The trucks just got on the highway, heading east. Eight, nine troop trucks. Ten, twelve. Whole force looks like they’ve caught the wrong scent.”
Thank God, thought Dog.
Bacau, Romania
2300
GENERAL LOCUSTA STARED DOWN AT THE MAP BEING USED to track the raid’s progress. The appearance of the MiGs had dramatically changed the mood in his headquarters conference room.
“I still can’t get them on the radio,” said the communications specialist.
“Prepare a rescue mission. Ground and air.”
“Standing by, General. The helicopters should be refueled within ten minutes.”
Damn the Russians. They would claim that they were merely honoring their treaty with Moldova, but Locusta knew this was actually aimed at him—a pointed reminder that he could not count on the Americans in the future.
As for the Americans…
“The Dreamland people. What are they doing?”
“Continuing to engage the aircraft at last report.”
“Have them pinpoint the route of the helicopter toward the border.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Losing one helicopter does not mean the mission was a failure, General,” whispered one of his aides as Locusta stalked across the room for coffee.
“Yes,” he muttered. His thoughts were split between the operation, the men he’d lost—and the president.
The call should have come an hour ago.
“General, we have an urgent call for you from Third Battalion.”
About time, thought Locusta, though as he turned he made his face a blank.
“The unit near the president’s house—they’re responding to an attack by the guerrillas.”
“What?”
“Here, sir.”
Coffee spilled from Locusta’s cup as he practically threw it back down on the table and strode to the phone.
“Locusta.”
“There has been an attack,” said one of the captains at the headquarters of the unit assigned to help guard the president. “Guerrillas.”
“When? What’s going on?”
Locusta listened impatiently as the man related what he knew. The alarm had come in only a few minutes before. Guerrillas had struck at the battalion’s radio and the local phone lines around the same time, making it difficult to communicate with the base.
“When did this occur?” demanded Locusta.
The man did not know. The attack had apparently begun sometime before.
“Where is the President?”
“Our troops are only just arriving,” said the captain. “We have not yet made contact with his security team.”
“Didn’t they send the alert?”
“No.”
They hadn’t been able to—as part of his plan, Anton Ozera had directed his team to activate a cell phone disrupter just before the attack. Like everything else that would indicate the assault was more than the work of unsophisticated guerillas, it would have been removed by now.
“Keep me informed,” said Locusta.
He handed the aide back the phone.
“We have another developing situation,” he announced.
Presidential villa,
near Stulpicani, Romania
2315
VODA WATCHED FROM THE SMALL, GLASSLESS WINDOW OF the cave as two more members of his presidential security team were carried out to the space in front of the barn. They were clearly already dead; their bodies bounced limply when they were dropped.
The men carrying them were soldiers—or at least were dressed in Romanian army uniforms. The fighting seemed to have died down; Voda couldn’t hear any more gunfire.
Julian was trembling, either with the cold or fear, or maybe both. Voda pulled him close.
“We’re going to be OK,” he whispered. “It’s going to take us a little while, but we’ll be OK.”
“What are they doing?” Julian asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Lights arced through the window. Voda froze, then realized they had come from the headlamps of trucks driving up past the garage. He rose and looked out the corner of the window. Two trucks had just arrived. Soldiers ran from the back, shouting as they disappeared.
“What’s going on?” Mircea asked.
“I can’t tell.”
“Is the army here?”
“Yes, but there’s something odd about it.”
“What kind of odd?”
Voda couldn’t bring himself to use the word “coup.” He watched as two soldiers came into view, walking from the direction of the house. He moved his head to the very side of the window as they took up their posts guarding the bodies yet not hardly looking at them, save for a few glances—guilty glances, Voda thought, though they faced the street, their backs to him.
It was possible that the soldiers had arrived toward the very end of the firefight, with all of his defenders dead, and were unable to tell who was who. Still, the way that the bodies had been handled alarmed Voda. His guards all had IDs, and were wearing regular clothes besides. It ought to be easy to differentiate between
them and the guerrillas.
Was he just being paranoid? The only people in this pile were security people. Perhaps he was mistaking fear of the dead for disdain.
“If the army is here, shouldn’t we go out?” asked his wife.
“There’s something about it that’s not right, Mircea,” he whispered. “I can’t explain. But I don’t think it’s safe yet.”
“They’ll find the tunnel we came through.”
“I know.”
Voda sat down next to the door, trying to think. Mircea turned on the flashlight. He grabbed it from her and flipped it off.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m looking around. Maybe there’s something here we can use.”
“Don’t use the flashlight. They’ll see outside.”
“I can’t see in the dark.”
“There’s enough light, when you get close.”
This was true, but just barely. Mircea began crawling on her hands and knees, working her way deeper into the cave. They had been in this cave only once that he could remember, soon after buying the property three years before. There was nothing of use, he thought—no machine guns, no rifles. But at least looking would give his wife something to do rather than stand around and worry that they would be found.
They would be found sooner or later. Most likely very soon—it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that they’d gone into the cistern well.
Could the army have revolted? These men were under Locusta’s control. Would they defy him?
Would he launch the coup?
He was certainly ambitious enough.
If the generals, or a general, revolted, would the men in the ranks follow suit? Would they remember what the country was like under the dictator?
But maybe life for them under the dictator was better. They were privileged then, poor but privileged. Now they were still poor, and without privilege.
Voda stood back up and looked through the window. The men guarding the bodies were young; they would have been little older than Julian when Ceausescu died, too young to know how things truly were then.
“Two more,” said someone he couldn’t see.
Voda slipped his head closer to the side. Two more bodies, both of his security people, were dumped.
“Have they found the president yet?” asked one of the men who’d been guarding the bodies.
Voda couldn’t hear the answer, but it was some sort of joke—the soldiers all laughed.
He had to find a place to hide his family. Then he could find out what was going on.
One of the men started to turn around. Voda twisted back against the door, getting out of the way. As he did, Oana Mitca’s cell phone pressed against his thigh. He’d completely forgotten it in his scramble to escape.
He took it from his pocket and opened it. The words on the screen said: no service.
Frustrated, he nearly threw it to the ground. But he realized he couldn’t show his despair to his wife or son, and so slipped it back into his pocket instead.
Voda listened carefully, trying to hear the soldiers outside, not daring to look back through the small window. Finally he poked his head up. All of the men had left.
Voda examined the door, using his fingers as well as his eyes. It was made of boards of oak or some other hardwood that ran from top to bottom. It had no doorknob or conventional lock. He had secured it soon after buying the property, screwing a U-hook into the frame and then putting a simple steel clasp on the door. The clasp went over the hook and was held by a padlock. He’d used long screws to make sure it couldn’t be simply pulled aside, and while there was enough play in the clasp for him to feel it move slightly as he put his weight against the door, he doubted he could force it from this side.
“I found a chisel,” said Mircea, coming toward him in the dark. “Can we use it?”
The chisel was a heavy woodworker’s tool, used seventy or eighty years before to shave notches into wood. It was covered with a layer of rust. The edge was thin but not sharp. Voda turned it over in his hands, trying to figure out how he might be able to make use it.
The boards were held together by two perpendicular pieces at the top and bottom. Perhaps he could use the chisel as a crowbar, dismantling it.
He slid the tool up, not really thinking the idea had any real hope of succeeding, yet unable to think of an alternative.
“Can you use it?” asked Mircea.
“Maybe.”
As he began working the chisel into the board, he saw that the door was held in place by a long, triangular-shaped hinge that was screwed into the cross piece. There was one on top and on bottom and they were old, rusted even worse than the chisel.
The chisel tip didn’t quite fit as a screwdriver; the screws were inset into the holes in the metal, making them hard to reach with its wide head. Frustrated, Voda pushed the chisel against the metal arm and wood, working the tip back and forth as he tried to get between the door and the hinge arm. He managed to get the tip in about a quarter of an inch, then levered it toward him. The hinge moved perhaps a quarter inch from the wood.
It was a start. He knelt down and began working in earnest on the bottom hinge, deciding to leave the top for last. One of the screws popped out as soon as he pulled against it. The other two, however, remained stuck. He pushed the chisel in, tapping with his hand.
Was it making too much noise?
“Mircea,” he whispered to his wife. “Look out and make sure no one is there.”
“What if they see me?”
“Stay at the corner, at the lower corner. In the shadow.”
She came over. “No one,” she whispered. “Oh my God.”
She turned away quickly, covering her mouth. Obviously she had seen the dead bodies lying in the grass.
“Did the soldiers kill them?” she asked.
“No, but they dumped them there.”
Voda continued to work. The door creaked and tilted down as the last screws popped from the door hinge. Voda steadied it, then stood up.
If he popped off the upper hinge, the door would be easy to push aside; it might even fall aside. But of course the chance of being found would increase.
No. Sooner or later someone was coming through the cistern. They might even be working on it now.
“I can open the door,” he told Mircea. “But we must be ready to run.”
“Where will we go?”
Voda realized he had begun to breathe very hard.
“Into the woods. Farther up.”
“They’ll search.”
“They’ll search here in a minute,” he said.
“Someone’s coming,” she hissed, ducking away from the door’s window.
Voda froze, listening. Julian put his arms around his father, hugging him and whimpering. He patted the boy’s back, wanting to tell him that everything would be OK. But that would be a cruel lie, easily exposed—in minutes they could all three be dead, tossed on the pile of bodies like so much dried wood. He didn’t want his last words to his son to be so treacherously false.
“Alin,” said Mircea, tugging him nearer to the window. “Listen.”
The soldiers outside were saying that the general was on his way and would be angry. One of them asked for a cigarette. A truck started and backed away, its headlights briefly arcing through the hole into the cave.
One soldier remained, guarding the bodies.
He could shoot him, thought Voda, then pry off the hinge, and make a run for it.
“We could go to the pump house,” whispered Mircea. “It’s a good hiding place.”
The pump house was an old wellhead on the property behind theirs. It was at least two hundred yards into the woods, up fairly steep terrain. It had been abandoned long ago; the house it once served had burned down in the 1970s.
It might not be a bad hiding place, at least temporarily, but reaching it would be difficult. And first they would have to get out of the cave.
A small ve
hicle drove up and stopped near the other troop truck. He could hear the sound of dogs barking. The guard went in that direction, then returned with two dog handlers and their charges. They walked to the soldier guarding the bodies, then all of them, the guard included, went in the direction of the house.
Quickly, Voda pushed the chisel in against the metal.
“When the door gives way,” he told his wife and son, “run. I’ll fix it so it looks as if it is OK.”
“Where will we go?” Mircea asked.
“The pump house. We’ll have to move quickly.”
“The dogs—”
“If we can walk along a creek for a while, the dogs will lose us,” he said. “I’ve seen it in movies.”
“So have I,” said Julian brightly.
His son’s remark gave him hope.
The door started to give way at the bottom as he pushed against the hinge. Voda put his leg there, then pried at the top. The screws sprang across the room and the door flopped over, held up only by the locked clasp.
“Come,” he hissed, taking out his revolver. He slipped through the opening, looking, unsure what he would do if someone was actually nearby.
Mircea started out behind him. Voda grabbed her and pulled, then took Julian by the back of his shirt and hauled him out.
“Into the woods,” he told his wife. “I’ll catch up after I fix the door.”
Julian clung to his leg, refusing to go. Voda picked up the door and slid it back against the opening. He couldn’t quite get it perfect; the hinges were gone and the clasp had been partly twisted by the door’s weight. But it would have to do. He grabbed his son under his arm like a loaf of bread and ran.
He didn’t realize there were a pair of guards at the far end of the driveway near the road until he reached the bushes. The men were sharing a cigarette and arguing loudly over something less than fifty yards away. One of them must have heard him running because he shone his light back in the direction of the cave and woods.
Crouched behind the brush at the edge of the woods, Voda held his son next to him, trying not to breathe, trying not to do anything that would give them away. The flashlight’s beam swung above the trees, then disappeared.
