Текст книги "Dreamland"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“We’ll be within FUR range in five minutes,” she told her copilot.

“Four and a half. I’ve already computed it,” he told her. “Man, I could. go for a cigarette right about now.”

“I thought you gave up smoking.”

“Stuff like this tickles my throat,” he said. “Shit, we got something in the air.”

Chris seemed to be operating on a sixth sense, picking up something before the high-powered detectors had sniffed out the radar. But he was right—a Jay Bird radar had flicked on ahead. The computer poked a green puff in the radar-warning screen. It was below them, which seemed impossible since they were at only a thousand feet.

“The source is far off,” said Chris, hunkering over the screen and working the computer to refine the read. “This is on the ground, Bree. Shit, this has to be a MiG-21. Off, it’s off.”

“On the ground? Has to be A-1.”

“Yeah. Like it was a maintenance check or something. Or a decoy.”

“We’ll be close enough to find out pretty soon.”

“Be nice to have a pair of fighters covering our butts about now,” Chris said.

“We can deal with a MiG-21 ourselves,” said Breanna. “Ground radar?”

“Negative. Scope’s clean. No ground stations. Nothing. Of course, they could take off and turn it on once they were in the air. We’re sitting ducks here.”

“The MiG radar can’t find a standard B-52 at twenty miles,” said Bree.

“What I’m worried about are those MiG-29’s we saw before,” said Chris. “Maybe they’re Libyan fighters. Qaddafi’s got a bunch of them.”

For once, his fear was well-founded. The passive sensors on the MiGs could theoretically allow the interceptors to target Fort Two from long range, possibly even before being detected by Fort Two’s own passive arrays.

“I think those MiGs we saw before are out there,” said Chris. “I thinking they’re waiting to ambush the Ospreys. They could be in those mountain ranges to the west.”

“If they came from Libya, they’d never have the range to linger,” said Bree.

“What if they launched from A-1? If it’s long enough for a MiG-21, they’d have no problem.”

Breanna leaned closer to her stick. They were about thirty miles from the airstrip.

“I think there’s something stalking us, maybe twelve miles off,” said Chris. “What do you think of turning on the active radar?”

“If there is something out there, it’ll tell them we’re here,” said Bree. “And it’s expressly against orders.”

“Well, there is that,” said Chris. “But getting shot down is too. If we hit the radar we can get a clear picture. We see something, we launch the Scorpions. I swear something’s watching for us, Bree. They’re to the west, right there.” He pointed across the cockpit. “I can feel it.”

“We’ll see them first,” said Breanna.

“Maybe not. They could circle out through the hills, duck around us, go for the Ospreys. The rotor engines are monster signals for any IR seeker. They’ll be sitting ducks.”

Less than sixty seconds now separated them from the small airstrip where Breanna believed Smith and the others had been taken. Turn on the radar and they might never reach it.

On the other hand, if the MiGs were where Chris thought, the Ospreys would be sitting ducks.

“Go to search and scan,” she ordered.

“On it.”

Chris was wrong. The MiGs weren’t in the mountains to the west.

They were hugging the ground forty miles to the east, running south like all hell. There were four of them, and while two were within striking distance of Vector, they didn’t seem to be interested in the Ospreys—they were going for the F-117’s, just arriving on target with their Paveways as Breanna clicked the radio to broadcast a warning.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0430

AS THE BUS WOUND DOWN OUT OF THE HILLS, THEY could smell the scent of the sea through the open window. The moon and the stars were fading, the sky blending into the early dawn.

“There’s an air base down there,” said Gunny, who was at the window. “Shit, Major, come tell me what I’m looking at.”

Smith pulled himself up from his seat and stepped over Jackson, who was sleeping in the aisle. Howland was hunched two rows back, snoring into the seat back. Mack’s head had stopped hurting, but his ribs throbbed worse than ever. He slid in the seat behind Melfi, his leg irons clanking as he pushed his face to the window.

A long strip of black jutted roughly parallel to the sea, lit by the full moon. A phalanx of heavy earthmovers worked on one end, pushing and leveling. On the other, crews were erecting a shelter of some sort; from here it looked like a curved pizza box. There were planes lined in a neat row near the middle. They were far away and the light was poor, but one was definitely an airliner or similar transport. There were at least two others, smaller military jets, possibly MiG-21’s. The bus bounced and turned around the road, its path taking them out of view.

“The strip’s being extended. They’ve paved it pretty recently,” Mack told Gunny. “We had a small airstrip on the map up north here somewhere when we briefed the mission; I think we had it pegged as a dirt strip. It’s a lot bigger than that now.”

One of the guards at the front of the bus grunted an instruction to keep quiet. Mack held up his hand as if he would, then leaned close to Gunny.

“There’s a transport down there, an airliner. I can’t tell in the dark what it is, but I’d bet they’re going to fly us out.”

“I say we don’t,” hissed Gunny. “I don’t think they’re going to be taking us home. And I don’t want to star in this trial the raghead is talking about.”

“I agree,” Mack said. He felt his ribs tug at him, as if to remind him they weren’t exactly loaded with options. “I don’t know what sort of chance we’re going to have, though.”

“Were you thinking of that when you slugged the raghead’s guard?”

“No,” said Mack. “But I should have.”

“You make a move, we’ll follow,” said Melfi solemnly. “Should we stall getting off the bus?”

What would that get them? A few more minutes? For what?

Odds were the Iranian would just shoot them and be done.

Preferable to being turned into cowards and traitors. That was where this was headed.

Mack grunted noncommittally, unsure what to say, much less do. He put his head back against the stiff seat top. The anger that had exploded inside him had disappeared; it seemed foreign now, as if it belonged to someone else—Melfi most likely. He was a pilot—logical, careful, precise.

Except when he let himself get shot down. That had been a fuck-up, despite what Gunny had said.

Unlike him. He was too damn good to get whacked so easy. Too damn good to do something stupid.

So what the hell was he doing sitting here?

As the bus started down the winding road, the moon stabbed his eyes. Mack sighed, but didn’t close them.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0430

FORT TWO SQUEALED AS IT TUCKED AND ROLLED through the air, almost as if the Megafortress welcomed the seven-g back flip. Breanna felt her world narrow to a small cone as she rolled into a dive and recovered in the opposite direction. She had become the plane, pushing through the air like a force of nature, turbines spinning, wings slicked back. It took several seconds for them to gain momentum in the new direction; she rode the air current gracefully, plunging her nose down and picking up speed. By the time the MiGs reacted to their radar, they had narrowed the gap to thirty miles, the outer edge of the AMRAAMs’ range.

“Open bay doors, prepare to launch,” she told Chris. “Bay. They’re taking evasive maneuvers.”

Breanna’s HUD showed the radar’s air-combat-mode projection, with the enemy bandits displayed as triangles with directional and speed vectors. Confident that it could nail each of the aircraft, the combat computer displayed red hatch marks over each plane.

“Which ones are near the F-117’s?”

“Good question. Hold on.”

The stealth fighters were too far away to be detected directly; Chris set the computer to look for atmospheric anomalies—essentially canceling some of the correction it normally did to erase interference from the wind. He managed to find two of the F-117’s, just starting their attacks.

“One MiG within theoretical visual range,” said Chris. “Targeting.”

A box appeared around the triangle. The tiny symbol blinked, as if the computer were jumping up and down, yelling at them to nail it.

“Fire,” said Breanna.

The Scorpion AMRAAM missile slipped out of its launcher so easily that only the launch indicator told Breanna it was gone. With a one-hundred-pound explosive warhead, the Scorpion packed roughly twice the explosive power of a standard AMRAAM, while retaining its high speed and superb active radar capabilities. Once launched, the missile took care of itself.

“Tracking,” said Chris. “F-117’s have buttoned up. I can’t see them at all. Okay. One MiG heading north. They’re out of it. More evasive maneuvers. They’re looking for us. SAMs are up! Shit. We’re spiked by that MiG. They’re targeting us for air-to-air.”

“Vector One to Fort Two, what’s your situation?”

“Hold tight, Vector,” said Breanna. The threat screen painted the sky ahead yellow, overlapping radars probing for them. Two fingers of red appeared at the sides; Breanna snapped the Megafortress ninety degrees, trying to beam the MiG that was now targeting them. The computer, meanwhile, began emitting electronic fuzz to confuse the ground-intercept radar that had snapped on.

“The open bay’s going to give us away,” Breanna reminded Chris.

“Having trouble picking out the MiG that’s spiking us,” he replied.

“Can we get the SAMs?”

“Two MiGs heading for us. Twenty miles, dead-on. They’ll nail Vector if they take off.”

“Get the lead MiG,” Breanna directed. “Then we’ll go for the SAMs.”

“He’s too low. They’re firing.”

“Missile type?”

“No ID. No radar.”

“Impossible. They wasted heat-seekers from that range head-on?”

“Lost the missiles. We’re still being spiked. Missile launch.”

The RWR buzzed a warning; the second MiG had fired an AA-10 Alamo radar missile at them. Breanna pulled the Megafortress into a hard bank, unleashing tinsel and then pushing the plane into a dive. The strategy essentially provided the enemy missile with an easy—but nonexistent—target.

She sensed what the Iranians were doing, and fired diversionary flares as she cut a series of zigs in the sky.

“Yeah,” said Chris, catching on. “Three missiles tracking. The first must have been long-range heat-seekers, looking for our butts when we turned. I have a target.”

“Fire!” Breanna steadied the Megafortress as the missile dropped from the bay.

“We’re boxed. Damn it,” said Chris. His voice went up several octaves. “Okay, I’m firing. Shit. Here’s another Alamo—”

“Close bay. Hold on,” said Breanna calmly. She nailed the Megafortress nearly straight down, goosing off chaff and flares. At a thousand feet she rolled inverted and turned ninety degrees into the Doppler radar, in effect making the plane invisible in the eddy of the radar waves. The carbon fiber wings strained at their design tolerance as the massive plane twisted.

The Russian missiles realized they had missed, and blew up a thousand feet overhead. Shaking off the shock waves, Breanna rolled the mammoth plane upright, nudging her even lower.

“Splash one MiG!” said Chris. “Scorpion got it.”

Breanna grinned, then went back to trying to sort out their location as well as that of their enemies. They were north, heading in the direction of A-1. One of the MiG-29’s was running north toward the Red Sea.

“F-117’s got something,” blurted Chris. “Shit. Lots of secondaries. Wow! Big-time explosions. Nailed those mothers!”

“What happened to that SAM that was tracking us?” Bree asked.

“Lost it. Nighthawks got it or it just turned itself off without firing anything.” Chris clicked the radar into long-distance scan, searching for the MiGs. “We may have splashed that first MiG too,” he said. “I don’t have it on the scope. I have two, moving out at warp speed into the Red Sea. Spooked ‘em good.”

“Go back to passive systems.”

“Damn straight.”

Breanna checked the bearing and speed that ghosted in the screen against the instrument readings in the MUD. She punched the Megafortress’s self-test circuits, having the computer run its diagnostics as if they’d been tooling around Dreamland for the past hour.

The computer congratulated itself with perfect scores. All systems green and growing. Time to go back to the barn.

Almost.

“Let’s make it hard for the SOB to land,” she told Chris.

“Bree?”

“We still have the JSOWs in the bay. We’ll be within range of A-1 in zero-two.”

“What about that MiG-21 on the ground?”

“Something to aim at,” said Breanna.

Chris sighed deeply, but turned back to his displays without saying anything. He had meant that they were out of air-to-air weapons, which Breanna already knew.

“We have plenty of fuel,” she told him.

“We’ll be into reserves on the trip home,” he said.

“You’re not going after A-1 because of Mack, are you?”

“What?”

“I mean, you’re not getting emotionally involved here?”

“Screw you, Chris. I’m trying to do my job.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Fort Two, this is Vector. Situation.”

“We’ve chased a flight of MiGs away,” Chris told the Delta leader. “We’re proceeding north to check on A-1. We believe it may be their base.”

Breanna stared at the terrain ahead, rendered green and gray by the starscope panel. Mountains gave way to a dark black that would turn into the sea in about ten seconds. There was a road through the hills on the left. The base should be beyond that, over the next set of ridges just before the water.

“Fort Two, this is Vector. Advise us on the situation at A-1. Are our passengers there?”

“They’re nuts too,” said Chris over the interplane circuit. “We’re pushing this too far.”

“Vector, this is Fort Two,” said Breanna. “Stand by.”

She glanced quickly at the threat indicator. No radars. “Chris, are you just nervous?”

“I’m not nervous, I’m sane,” he told her. “We’ve been flying for a shitload of time, just getting here. We’re flying over a base that launched four MiGs at us. You don’t think there are ground defenses?”

“We’ll see what defenses there are in a second,” said Breanna. “I won’t take unnecessary risks.”

She could practically hear his teeth grinding. But he nonetheless hunkered toward his display screen, where he selected the FLIR and began a close scan of the base, which was just now appearing beyond the hills.

“One Zeus antiair gun, right on the coastline. Machine guns, something, I don’t know, light, near the road. There’s a ship offshore. Tanker or something. No, no, I’m wrong—patrol boat. Has a gun. Bulldozers—man, this looks nothing like that satellite photo we saw.”

That was an understatement. The Iranians had expanded and widened the strip, making it nearly three times as long as it had been, undoubtedly strengthening it as well. They were building hangars at the far end. Three aircraft—two older MiG-21’s and one DC-8 or 707—sat on a ramp area, their tails almost hanging over the water.

“Bus, other vehicles. I’m switching from the FLIR to the starscope. Shit—I have the F-117!” said Chris. “It’s moving. Shit, they’re loading it off a truck at the far end—no, they’re sliding down into a bunker. Shit. Shit. See it?”

“No,” said Breanna. “Can you target it?”

“Bay,” said Chris. “No, wait. No. They’re in the hangar. I can’t tell whether it’s concrete or not. I don’t think so. I don’t have a target point.”

Breanna nudged the stick to bank.

“I can’t be sure what that hangar’s made of,” said Chris. “It looks like it’s cement-reinforced.”

“Can you fly the JSOW into the hangar?”

“Maybe,” said her copilot. “The angle’s tough. I can hit it, but the missiles might not penetrate. I don’t know what’s inside, whether it’s all on the surface or if it’s like Dreamland’s hangars, with ramps and elevators.”

“That’s unlikely.”

“Yeah. But what do you figure the odds are our guys are with the plane?”

Instead of answering, Breanna checked the threat scope again. There were no radars active. The Megafortress was slipping through the night undetected.

They might never have a chance like this again. If the wrecked plane was there, odds were their men were too.

On the other hand, there was no telling what sort of defenses the Iranians and Somalians had waiting.

Her instinct said go for it. She clicked the transmit button.

“Vector leader, here’s our situation,” she said, laying it out.

“We’re en route,” snapped the Delta commander. He patched in the pilots as Breanna had Chris sketch the base and approach.

“We’ll take out the Zeus as you come in,” Breanna said. “The hangar with the aircraft will be three thousand meters beyond it, close to the water.”

“We’ll hit it, take out the plane, and look for our guys.”

“Roger that.”

“ETA five minutes,” said the lead pilot. The two Ospreys were rushing through the mountain passes, heading for their target. “We’re going silent com.”

“Fort Two,” acknowledged Bree. She turned toward her copilot. “Hold one missile in reserve for the hangar if they can’t reach it.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.” Chris nodded, then sighed so loud her earphones practically shattered. He sounded like a horse that had just lost its chance to run in the Derby. “Listen, I’m sorry about that emotion thing I said. I didn’t mean it.”

“We’re both tired,” she said, worried that his crack had been all too true.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0445

THE OSPREY WHEELED OUT OF THE HILLS JUST AS THE big antiaircraft gun at the edge of the base exploded. Skipping forward, the MHV-22 plopped herself down a few feet from the DC-8 at the edge of the ramp. Danny jumped from the rear of the plane behind Powder, and saw two figures running toward him; he pushed the trigger on his sub-submachine gun and the men crumpled immediately.

“Fuel truck! Fuel truck!” Liu yelled behind him. Danny saw the tanker under the airliner’s wing. Bison had thrown himself in a crouch, aiming his SAW grenade launcher at the easy target.

“Don’t blow it! Don’t blow it!” Freah yelled. They were tasked with searching the plane before destroying it, in case the pilots and Marines were aboard already.

“Somebody in the cockpit!” shouted Hernandez.

Gunfire erupted to his right, a short burst of automatic fire. Danny threw himself down as a flare ignited overhead. He heard the rumble of a heavy machine gun at the far end, saw the silhouette of an Osprey, the other Osprey, descending near the hangar.

There was a boarding ladder near the fuselage of the DC-8 less than twenty yards away. The door was open and there didn’t appear to be any soldiers or guards between them and the aircraft.

“On the plane! On the plane!” screamed Danny, jumping to his feet. Talcom and Hernandez were already at the ladder cart, exchanging gunfire with someone at the top. “Use the concussion grenades!” he shouted as he ran. “Knock them out! Don’t hurt our guys!”

His men didn’t need to be reminded of such basic procedures, but Danny yelled them anyway. Talcom and Hernandez had managed to get inside the plane in the few seconds it took for him to reach the ladder. He took the rungs two at a time, a concussion grenade in his hand. He slipped his thumbnail beneath the tape, ready to toss it in.

“We’re clean! We’re clean!” Talcom was yelling. “Somebody’s in the cockpit!”

Danny threw himself into the airliner, rolling on the rubber-matted floor. The plane shook with a nearby explosion. Something burned on the other side of the base, faint red flickers mixing with the predawn twilight. Danny pulled out his small penlike flashlight, playing its narrow tungsten-lit beam carefully across the interior. The airliner was configured as a bare-bones passenger transport with fifteen or sixteen rows of seats between the boarding door and the flight deck. Talcom and Hernandez were huddled near the cockpit, their heads next to the closed door, listening to see what was happening on the other side. Freah spun around, checking the rear of the plane. There were maybe another dozen rows of seats back to a curtain. He got to his feet and ran back, ducking into the last row of seats.

He took the concussion grenade from his pocket, held it up so the others could see.

Talcom gave him a thumbs-up. Freah pulled the pin and rolled the grenade under the curtain. In the next moment his men at the front fired off the lock on the cockpit door. Danny waited for the boom of the grenades, then dove up and over the seats, rolling into the galley.

No one was there. A cargo compartment lay beyond the galley. He tried the door, found it locked. He stood back, fired at the recessed handle. It still wouldn’t budge. He threw himself against it, his flashlight slipping from his hand and clanking so loudly against the counter that for a split second he thought it was a gunfire.

“Captain! Captain!” yelled Hernandez.

Danny spun back to see a dazed man with vaguely Middle Eastern features being herded down the aisle by his two sergeants.

“Guy’s the pilot. They were just ready to take off, I think,” said Hernandez. “Head’s scrambled or maybe I just can’t understand what the hell he’s saying.”

“APC coming up from the other end of the base,” added Talcom. “Egg’s holding him off.”

Freah grabbed the pilot. “Where are our men?”

The man shook his head as if he didn’t understand. Freah tightened his grip and pushed him against the seat. “My people!” he demanded.

The man said something unintelligible.

“Captain, our grenade probably beat shit out of his eardrums,” said Powder. “Even if he understands English, he probably can’t hear. Sucker’s lucky he wasn’t killed.” The plane rocked with a fresh explosion.

“That APC’s going to nail us, whether they’re aiming to or not,” yelled Hernandez from the doorway.

A moment later the front of the plane exploded.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0445

THE FOUR-BARRELED ZSU-23 VAPORIZED AS THE warhead of the JSOW exploded. Flames lit the night as Breanna continued through her orbit, one eye on the blank RWR screen.

“Vector aircraft are in. They’re at the hangar and on the airliner,” said Chris, who was monitoring the radio transmissions as well as scanning the site with the infrared. “Vehicles back near the terminal building.”

“Patrol boat?”

“I have it designated. We can take it out at will. Machine-gun fire on the north side of the base. I think they’re shooting at us. No SAMs. No radar.”

Breanna continued around, edging the Megafortress over the water. They were within the lethal envelope of a shoulder-fired missile like a Stinger or the SA-16, the Russian equivalent; she had to be ready to pull evasive maneuvers at any second. Still, she found her thoughts wandering, drifting down to the assault teams, wondering if they had found Mack.

Why did she care? Why had Jeff accused her of having an affair with him?

“Bree?”

“Take it out,” she snapped, her unconscious alerting her to the fact that the patrol boat had snapped on a scanning radar. Her hands were already prodding the Megafortress away.

“Missile away,” said Chris. “Scope is now clean.”

The boat had turned off its radar, but nonetheless began firing its weapon, a large-bore cannon. The air below them crackled and popped with the explosions.

Suddenly it smoothed out and the horizon glowed. “Got the motherfucker,” said Chris. “Big fucking burn. Go baby, go baby.”

“Good one.” Breanna checked her warning screens, making sure Fort Two hadn’t been hit. They were clean, systems in the green.

“APCs launching an attack,” said Chris, back on the FLIR.

“Can you take them out?”

“I can get one, if you can spin us back so I can get a better look. After that, we’re down to our last missile. You still want to save it?”

“Yeah,” she said, beginning the bank.

“APC near the hangar or the airliner?”

“Hangar,” said Breanna.

“Here’s something for you to take home to the Ayatollah,” said Chris as he pickled the missile off.

Breanna’s laugh was interrupted by the RWR buzzer. The two MiG-29’s they’d scared off earlier were on their way back.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0445

THE BUS STOPPED NEAR THE GATE, ALLOWING THE flatbed with the plane to get by. As the Imam walked up the steps, something exploded about a mile away.

“We are under attack,” the Iranian said calmly. “You will follow me off the bus.”

“No, we won’t,” said Mack. This was a gift—now it made sense to stall.

“You will follow me off the bus.” A trio of fresh explosions rocked the vehicle even as he spoke, though they did not affect his manner.

“Maybe we better,” said Howland. “We’re going to get blown up here.”

As if to underline his words, the top of the bus was perforated by machine-gun fire. Outside, men were yelling and screaming. Smith heard the sound of tank and truck motors roaring nearby. The whomp of descending helos—or maybe Ospreys—filled the air.

“You will follow me now,” said the Iranian, disappearing out the front. The two Somalians trained their weapons on the Americans.

“What do you think?” Gunny asked.

Bullets sprayed nearby, sending dirt and rocks against the side of the bus.

“I say let’s move,” said Howland. “And at least get ourselves out in the open where we can make a run for it.”

“Yeah,” said Mack finally.

They didn’t move fast enough for the Somalians—one of them raised his rifle and sent a quick burst through the roof of the bus. The four Americans flinched, but kept moving, walking deliberately to the front and then down the steps. Somalian soldiers crouched nearby; one or two men ran and others yelled, though they seemed confused, perhaps panicked. It was unclear where the attack was coming from or even what was attacking them. A large jet zoomed overhead, its hull dark against the moon. One of the soldiers stood and emptied his AK-47 at it.

Idiots might just as well shoot at the stars, Mack thought.

The Imam had begun walking toward the back of the terminal building a few feet away. One of the guards went to Mack and prodded him to follow, pushing with the barrel end of his rifle. As Mack began to walk, there was a fresh burst of gunfire behind him. A machine gun began firing nearby, shaking the ground and air with a jackhammer thud.

Mack felt something sharp flick him in the face. He thought it was a bug at first; reaching up, he found his face wet with blood. A bullet had chipped a piece of cement up and nicked him below the cheekbone.

The guards pushed the Americans toward a knot of soldiers at the side of the terminal building, urging them to run and occasionally firing into the air. It wasn’t clear whether they were shooting at the plane or planes attacking, or just trying to scare them; neither made much sense.

Mack was only vaguely aware of the others following behind him. Despite his chains and his resolve to go slow and look for a chance to escape, he was trotting, moving quicker than he wanted.

The Imam was waiting at the back corner of the building.

“Into the plane,” the Iranian commanded. A few yards away, three soldiers pulled a black tarp off a small, high-winged aircraft in the field behind the building. The twin-engined, boom-tailed craft was an ancient Antonov An-14 “Clod”—a Soviet-era transport used mostly as a civilian plane thirty years ago. As the cover was removed, a man ran to the rear of the fuselage, yanking open a set of clamshell doors and ducking inside. The small plane rocked with his footsteps as he leapt into the cockpit; the engines started almost instantly, revving with a high-pitched grumble.

“Quickly,” said Imam.

“No,” said Mack.

“You will come now,” said the Iranian. He raised his hand, revealing a pistol. Before any of the Americans could react, he fired point-blank into Jackson’s forehead. The Marine’s head snapped back and then seemed to disintegrate; his body fell almost straight down beneath it.

“The sergeant will be next,” the Imam added, quickly pushing his gun into Gunny’s face. One of the guards had already grabbed the Marine from behind.

“Into the plane, Major, or your sergeant will die,” said the Imam. “You and the captain will be dragged aboard anyway. I will not kill you, even though that is plainly what you desire.”

Meekly, Mack bowed his head and started for the plane.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0455

DANNY FELL HEADFIRST OVER THE SEAT, BARELY hanging on to his submachine gun. A hurricane seemed to descend around him; his nostrils burned with the smell of plastic and metal burning.

“Captain! Captain! Captain!”

He couldn’t locate the voice. He tried to stand, felt his throat revolting. He threw himself down to the floor. Instead of landing against the carpet, he kept going, his head and shoulders falling into the open air.

The side of the plane next to him had been blown away. Hanging on by his feet, he flailed back toward the aircraft. Then he saw that the skin of the plane had been twisted into something like a ramp; it would be easier to climb down. As he turned around and began to try to do so, an arm came out of the thick smoke in the plane. He yanked it over him, pulling a man out of the hole, pushing him to climb down. He only realized it was the Iranian pilot as the body slipped and then rolled to the ground.

Another explosion erupted to his left. Danny felt a surge of air against his face, found another body rolling against his. He grabbed it and pushed it toward the tarmac. He rolled down after it, saw it was Talcom.

“Where’s Hernandez? Where the fuck is Hernandez?” he screamed.

Powder, dazed, maybe unconscious, didn’t answer. Danny clambered back up the jagged side of the plane, prodding through the acrid brown stench. He reached the floor of the passenger compartment, got to his feet, and then nearly fell backward as flames erupted in his face. The heat was so intense he could only retreat, tumbling over backward and falling out of the plane headfirst. He managed to grab a piece of metal, slowing himself but ripping his uniform and cutting his arm as he pirouetted around. He fell next to Talcom, who was trying to stand; both men slammed down and flattened the still-dazed Iranian pilot.

It would have been comical had the fuel truck nearby not erupted.

Somehow, Danny managed to pull Talcom and the pilot away. All three collapsed about twenty yards from the jetliner, gasping for breath and feeling the hot flame of the tanker truck.