Текст книги "Dreamland"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

The communicator suddenly cracked with an ungodly noise. A submachine gun began firing from the other side of the hill and something exploded upward. Danny pitched up the barrel of his gun, and had already begun firing at the dark shadow above before he realized what was going on.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” he said.

The crackle over the radio was laughter.

“Buzzards,” Powder was saying. “There’s a fucking nest of vultures on the ledge. Liu toasted three of them, but another got away.”

“I thought he had a marksman badge,” somebody said with a laugh as Danny’s heartbeat returned to normal.

ZEN WAS IN HAWK ONE’S COCKPIT NOW, BARELY twenty feet over the tallest building in downtown Tripoli. He flung himself back toward the outskirts of the capital, feeding live video back to the JSTARS and from there to the SEALS, already en route from the Mediterranean. The route had been carefully chosen, with intricate zigs and zags to avoid defenses; whoever had laid it out had done a damn good job, because he didn’t notice anything deadlier than a water pistol. Nudging his sticks left, Zen put himself on a direct line to the bunker, now less than three miles away.

As critical as the video was for the SEAL team following him in, a good hunk of Jeff’s attention was pasted on the threat indicator in the bottom left visor screen. He was whizzing through green and yellow fingers, ducking an array of radars as he came in. The jammers weren’t set to go on until the SEALs were almost overhead.

A large ring of concrete appeared on his left. A lollipop of a road led to it, lined with tanks and missile launchers.

“SA-6 radar active, attempting to lock,” warned the computer. “Scanning.”

Thirteen seconds to his turn point. He had to crisscross the top of the bunker, catching two air-exchange units with the camera. Then he’d jump to Hawk Two, concentrating on antiair guns at the west end of the complex.

The computer continued to count down the programmed course for him. He took the turn, pushing the throttle for the last ounce of thrust.

Everything was a gray blur, even the bunker facility. He clocked past, noted a set of missiles that hadn’t appeared on the satellite.

“Computer, Hawk Two optical feed in visor,” he said, pushing the computer disengage switch at the stick base as he did. “Computer, take Hawk One on programmed course.”

The images instantly switched, and he saw the world again, as if he’d jumped back in time, not location. A large 57mm gun loomed straight ahead, turning. A row of antiaircraft weapons were arrayed at ten o’clock in the view screen, looking like sewer pipes in a supply yard.

“Team One is inbound. Thirty seconds,” reported Cascade.

The guns started to move.

“Jamming now,” said Raven’s operator.

“They’re firing,” reported Jeff.

Two Navy Prowlers as well as Raven clicked on their fuzzbusters. The interference was so severe the UM/F control computer immediately complained, giving him a red light on the radar altimeter and then warning that it was having trouble maintaining the connection with Hawk One.

“Raven, I need us closer to the Flighthawks,” said Jeff, switching back into Hawk One as Two completed the run of the antiair guns. He flew up the coast, the plane responding well to his controls despite the computer’s admonitions that the signal was degrading.

Somewhere offshore in the JSTARS, the operation coordinators were studying Zen’s feed to make sure they had all of the SAM sites properly targeted. They were like defensive coordinators sitting in the press box during a football game, checking to make sure the blitz they’d called would work.

It did. With a vengeance.

Jeff caught the shadows of laser-guided missiles closing in on the SAM sites as he began to turn Hawk One south. The Libyans hadn’t had a chance to launch.

Secondaries.

Turbulence.

A lot of shit down there.

He was between the two planes, spreading out over the coast. Fuel good, heavy air, almost stormy. His controls felt a little sloppy. Maybe it was the computer reacting to the wide spectrum of ECMs.

He could handle it. Zen nudged the stick up. The signal bar on Hawk One flittered into the red area, got strong again.

“Jeff, they’re asking for another pass on the bunker,” said Jennifer. Her voice seemed to descend from the clouds.

Zen told the computer to bring Hawk One closer. Then he pulled Hawk Two back in the other direction, away from Raven under a heavy cloud of black smoke and exploding tracers. Helos were coming in from the northeast; he saw a pair of Sea Cobra attack helos letting loose with rockets on an official building a half mile from the bunker. Jeff hunkered down, pushing his head into the windscreen, backing off the throttle, slowing down for the longest possible look at the bunker.

The east side of the facility was defended only by an armored car. He tilted his wing and banked off, the assault helicopters right behind.

He circled, watching them land. Raven was almost overhead now, beginning to orbit back. Hawk One flew in its set position behind the left wing. Jeff pushed Two around, came in on the bunker once more as the SEALS blew the cover on the southwest air-exchange portal. They immediately began disappearing down the large vertical shaft.

A second Seahawk came in over the back entrance of the bunker. An armored car moved toward them.

Zen was nearly lined up for a shot with the UM/F’s cannon. He prodded the throttle slide but before he could activate his cannon, one of the Sea Cobras obliterated the vehicle.

“They’re in!” shouted someone over the command circuit.

“How’s the trial going now?” said Breanna sarcastically.

“It’s still going,” said the weapons officer, surprised.

Zen saw the main entrance to the bunker implode as he began a fresh circuit. Three satellite dishes collapsed with the dust as the front half of the football-field-sized upper building collapsed.

Had he said the trial was still going?

He pushed Hawk Two into a rolling dive to reverse course and overfly the bunker again.

“Missiles have launched! Flak batteries are shooting unguided in grid A-1. Evasive maneuvers,” said the weapons officer.

“Losing control connection for Hawk Two!” warned the Flighthawk computer.

“Nancy, we need to double back,” said Zen as he struggled to put Hawk Two’s camera on the bunker complex. He jerked his right hand instead of his left, cursed at the infinitesimal delay.

“We have SA-2’s in the air,” said Cheshire calmly. “Jam them.”

“We are. But we’re not taking any unnecessary risks now that the team is down. Evasive maneuvers.”

Zen felt himself being pushed sideways as the Mega-fortress beamed the SAM site’s pulse-Doppler radar. He lost Hawk Two and had to throw One’s throttle to the firewall to try to keep up with the EB-52. The Libyans had launched no less than twelve of the high-altitude surface-to-air missiles at them. While the Megafortress’s ECMs had no trouble thwarting their radars, there were an awful lot of them in the air; just dodging the debris was a chore.

Sixty 57mm antiaircraft guns were filling the air below the missiles with lead and cordite. The flak rose in plumes, hot coals for Raven and the UM/Fs to dance across.

The computer brought Hawk Two into a wide arc south of Raven as Jeff flew Hawk One to the east, cutting back on an intercept as an SA-2 exploded overhead. Sweat poured from Jeff’s neck and back as the small UM/F began to jitter up and down, buffeted by a second explosion he hadn’t seen or anticipated. He gunned the throttle, but got no response; the plane suddenly began nosing down and he tasted metal in his mouth, felt his stomach go sour with a wave of dread. For a moment he thought he was going in—he saw the ground loom and shapes dance, and his head began to spin. Then the UM/F picked herself up and he had only blue sky in front of him; he was clear, accelerating and climbing. The Megafortress was a bare two miles ahead.

“SEAL teams have secured the perimeter,” reported Cascade. “SEAL teams are inside, encountering only token resistance.”

“The prisoners aren’t in the bunker,” said Zen. He was on the interphone; only the others aboard Raven could hear him. “Where was that encrypted video transmission?”

“About fifty miles, south by southeast,” said the weapons officer.

“Jeff?”

“Bree, get us back there. That’s where Smith and the others must be.”

“No offense, Major, but I’m flying this plane,” said Cheshire.

“I’m sorry, Nancy. The bunker is a bluff. The trial broadcast didn’t stop when the satellites were hit.”

“He’s right,” said the weapons officer.

“Why do you think it’s coming from that site and not somewhere else in Tripoli?”

“It’s just a guess. Intuition,” said Jeff. The computer noted that Hawk Two was now “fully communicative,” and he acknowledged, though leaving it under the computer’s command in the trail position. “The Navy’s covering Tripoli. Let’s go.”

“Jeff, you’re talking about deviating from our flight plan based on a hunch,” said Cheshire.

“I trust hunches,” said Breanna. “And I trust Jeff.” Thanks, babe, he thought as Cheshire jerked the Mega-fortress onto the new course.

Over the Mediterranean

24 October, 1050 local

JED SAT BACK AT THE JSTARS CONSOLE WHILE MS. O’Day left her desk in the White House Situation Room to take another call. The attack on Tripoli, planned by Madcap Magician and carried out mostly by the Navy, was still proceeding. But already the Saudi and Syrian governments had taken to the back channels to assure Washington that they had no interest in the Greater Islamic League.

It helped that they trusted neither the Iranians nor the Libyans. It also helped that America was demonstrating how easy it was to obliterate nearly a billion dollars’ worth of military equipment.

Now if they could only complete the rescue.

“Jed, are you still there?” asked Ms. O’Day, coming back on the line.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sitting back up at the console. The major was waving at him—he was needed on the other lines, where he was helping keep the SWAT team and Raven in contact with each other.

“Do they have our men?”

“Not yet,” he told her.

“When?”

“Maybe soon,” he said. The major was waving violently. “Ms. O’Day, I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, cutting her off by switching the simple twist knob that controlled the circuit input on the panel in front of him.

Felt weird. He’d never cut off his boss before.

What if the President had been listening in?

“Cascade, this is Big Bear. Can you get Raven to give us a feed on the base area?”

“Uh, I’m not sure,” he said. He looked around for the major, but he’d gone off to help someone else. “Hang on.”

The screen before him was a live situation map. It showed Raven heading south, away from Tripoli.

Shit. Why the hell were they doing that? And where the hell were their prisoners?

Obviously not in the bunker, if Big Bear was looking for a feed.

“Bear, I’m going to have to get back to you,” said Jed, twisting into the Megafortress’s frequency.

Libya24

October, 0955 local

EVEN WITH THE STEINER GLASSES, THEY WERE MUCH too far from the action to see anything, not even smoke on the horizon, though all of the Whiplash members fixed their eyes in the direction of the coast. The Osprey pilot had moved the rotorcraft to the foot of the hill and was monitoring the raid via the SATCOM circuit back to the JSTARS command plane. He’d alerted Danny when the raid started; laconic to a fault, he remained Silent as the attack continued.

The desert before them gave little hint of the battle raging seventy miles away. The sand seemed permanent, uncaring; the only sign of mankind was a highway about twelve miles to the northeast, as barren and destitute a stretch as Danny could imagine.

“Captain Freah, Raven is hailing you,” said the Osprey pilot over the com set.

“Patch me through.” Freah stood and looked directly down over the side of the cliff, as if that would somehow help the pilot turn the switch and allow the connection.

“Raven proceed.”

“Danny, this is Breanna Stockard. Are you on the line?”

“Affirmative,” said Freah. He could feel his heart pounding now in every part of his body, worried that the Megafortress had been hit.

“Stand by for Major Stockard,” Bree told him.

“Captain, we have an encrypted microwave signal being beamed to a satellite from a grid in B-2, we think about eight miles east of you. What do we have there big enough to house a transmitter?”

“Stand by.”

Freah dropped to his knees, carefully pulling the maps and satellite images from his rucksack. There were only two candidates. One was a small military post, the other an abandoned railroad depot with some old warehouses and support buildings. The sites were separated by about a mile and a half. He gave the positions.

“What do you think of checking them out?” Zen asked. “We’re en route,” said Danny, not even waiting for the explanation as he signaled his men to reboard the Osprey.

THE BROADCAST HAD ENDED A FEW MINUTES AGO, before they were able to pinpoint it; both sites were close enough to have been the source. Zen worked Hawk Two ahead toward the the coordinates of the military base that Freah had supplied. It seemed logical to start there.

The threat screen was blank. Gray asphalt rose beyond the desert sand, bounded by trenches and a ramshackle fence. Two long, dull yellow buildings stood at the far right; a pair of ancient antiair guns were behind sandbags in the middle of the installation. Behind one of the buildings was an earth station, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.

“Losing command link!” warned the computer.

“Jen, I thought you said we increased our control distance.” Zen throttled back. The signal-indicator bar slowly began to climb. “I’m having trouble at seven miles now.”

“I’m not sure what the problem is,” she yelled, working over the control. “We should be fat.”

“Yeah. Raven, can you bring our distance parameter on the UM/Fs to within five miles?”

“Affirmative,” said Cheshire. “We’re dropping to ten thousand feet, staying on your programmed flight path. Cascade is trying to hail us. What should I tell them?”

“The truth—we’re on a wild-goose chase.”

Jeff started Hawk Two on a slow orbit around the base perimeter. Hawk One, meanwhile, was approaching the abandoned railroad warehouses. He toggled the view, saw nothing, went back to Two.

This sure did look like a wild-goose chase. Dust blew across the military base. Place looked like it hadn’t been occupied since World War Two. He scanned for a radar dish, saw nothing.

Hawk Two’s indicated airspeed dropped past two hundred knots, still falling. Zen walked over the gun emplacements. Damn things looked like they were rusted. Good trick in the desert.

Probably left by the Germans. Rommel had been out here, right?

He told the computer to take Hawk Two back to trail, and flipped back into Hawk One just as it closed to within two miles of the old railroad depot. He slipped down the throttle. Raven was five miles away, closing fast.

The terminal building’s roof was missing, but the warehouses looked intact as he approached. One of the smaller buildings was just a collection of debris. There were two fairly large ones, maybe a hundred feet long apiece, at the edge of the track area. Between them there was a smaller, gray building, low-slung in the desert. It seemed to have collapsed or been swallowed by the terrain.

But was that a microwave dish next to it?

Zen pushed the throttle to close in. As he did, the roof of the nearest warehouse began to disintegrate. The thing seemed to be alive.

The radar-warning indicator flashed red. In the next instant, the sky perforated with explosions. Zen had walked into a minefield. A bank of antiaircraft artillery weapons had been hidden beneath the carefully camouflaged fake roofs of the warehouses.

“Whiplash, Target Two is hot. Hotter than hell!” yelled Jeff, goosing the throttle.

* * *

THEY RODE TOWARD THE VOLCANO, WATCHING THE massed fury of two dozen antiaircraft guns erupting upward. Raven jammed the radars, but the gunners flailed anyway. Danny, hunched over the pilots on the Osprey flight deck, saw the small Flighthawk ducking and weaving in the sky ahead, spinning back and forth like a peregrine falcon eyeing a kill. Major Stockard was trying to keep the gunners’ attention focused on the miniature plane, not on the rapidly approaching assault team.

“Ten seconds,” said the Osprey pilot. “Target building is dead ahead. I see a stairway down. Shit! I’ll get you as close as I can.”

“Okay! Okay!” Danny shouted. He spun back to his men, trying to hold down the bile and adrenaline. “We got stairs down to a bunker, I’m guessing.”

“Vehicles coming up out of a ramp near the warehouses!” yelled the copilot.

“Get us down! Get us down!” Danny insisted. He was wearing the com device, but he yelled anyway. The Osprey pitched and weaved, swirling in the air. A second volcano opened up just to their right, bullets hissing like steam. .The rear door began opening even though the Osprey was still ten feet off the ground. Powder leaped out.

“TV time!” yelled Danny, jumping out with Liu.

“Take him out! Take him out! There’s a machine gun on the steps! Shit! Duck! Duck!” Powder screamed.

GUNNY HEARD THE RUMBLE OF THE ANTIAIRCRAFT batteries above. The entire complex shuddered.

“About fucking time,” he said to the pilot on the metal chair next to him. “Hey, you got any more questions before we go?” he called to the disembodied voice that had been questioning them from unseen speakers.

In the next second, the complex went dark. One of the camera technicians screamed.

“Hit the deck!” shouted Gunny. He reached to pull Howland down, got nothing but air. He found the captain on the ground.

“What now?” said Howland.

“Find a Sommie and get his gun,” said the Marine, crawling toward the door.

RAVEN TOOK OUT THE FIRST BATTERY WITH A PAIR OF JSOWs, even though they were nearly on top of it. Zen barely managed to get Hawk One away from the second bank of ZSUs as the roof of the warehouse opened and the flak dealers began peppering the air.

“Wing damage, Hawk Two,” warned the computer.

Zen could feel it. Hawk Two began to wobble, threatening to yaw out of control.

Time to eject.

Shit, he yelled at himself. I’m half a mile away.

The computer helped stabilize the plane, but the damage was severe, and went well beyond the wing. Zen opened the warning/status screen; he had multiple hits, pending systems failures in the control and engine sections. Power was dropping rapidly.

Destroy the Flighthawk?

Better to land if he could. Whiplash could take it with them, lashing it beneath the Osprey.

He could always hit the self-destruct switch later.

Jeff did a quick check on Hawk One, just to make sure the computer had it under control; then he jumped back into Hawk Two. She was jerking up and down, wrestling with the air instead of gliding through it. He fought the wings level and aimed toward a nice flat piece of sand a quarter mile ahead. As gently as he could, he put her down on her belly, skidding and then spinning to a stop.

“We have the location marked,” Jennifer said.

“Yeah,” said Jeff.

He put himself into Hawk One, pulling the plane over him as the new image kicked into the top of his screen.

“JSTARS is sending reinforcements,” said Cheshire.

“You have to keep me close,” he told her, pushing the Flighthawk lower and back toward the flak.

DANNY TURNED AS A GRENADE WHIZZED FROM LIU’S launcher. There was a low, dull explosion and everything started moving in slow motion. He ran toward the building, ignoring the canvas-backed truck that had come out from the other side. There was a stairwell down; he grabbed the red metal pipe blocking off the side and swung himself down into the hole.

Powder had beaten him there. He was standing in front of the doorway inside a small alcove. He waved his right hand at Freah to stay back, then gripped his SAW at the handle. The door swung out toward them.

A set of metal steps led downward. Freah, leaping ahead of Talcom, took two at a time. A metal door at the bottom gave way as soon as he butted it with his machine gun; he stooped and rolled in a concussion grenade.

If they’d had a chance to plan this, to work the whole thing out, they’d probably be going in with masks, smoking the bastards out.

But hell, if they’d had a chance to plan the damn thing out, they wouldn’t be the ones doing the attack.

“I got ya, I got ya,” said Powder, taking a covering position as Danny plunged into the dark hall.

Nothing. No fire. Nothing. He ran for all he was worth.

“Door!” he heard himself yell. Powder was on top of him, throwing him down and in the same instant punching the door with the machine gun, ducking, rolling.

Two men fell out behind the doorway.

Light up ahead.

“We’re taking fire up here,” said Liu over the com set.

“Hold your positions.”

“We are. Delta’s en route.”

“Room’s empty,” yelled Powder. Danny started moving down the hall. The boron-carbide vest gave him a dangerous sense of invulnerability—a foolish sense, since he knew that while the vest could stop point-blank machine-gun fire, it covered less than fifty percent of his body.

They came to a T. Both hallways were dark. Smoke curled at his nostrils, made him sneeze.

“Which way we goin’?” asked Powder.

“You that way. I’m this way,” Danny said, wiping his nose.

“And I’ll meet ya in the mornin’,” said Powder, pushing forward.

GUNNY GRABBED THE SOLDIER’S LEG, YANKING HIM TO the ground. He grabbed for a gun, cursing as he realized he’d found one of the unarmed camera people instead of a soldier.

“This way. They’ve all left,” the pilot was shouting. “Stay low!”

“Damn Air Force. Bunch of know-it-alls,” grumbled the sergeant as he scooted for the doorway.

“MISSILES!” JEFF YELLED AS HIS RWR LIT UP. A LIBYAN Roland mobile antiaircraft battery had just activated its radar from inside a disguised post at the south end of the complex.

“We’re out of JSOWs!” warned the weapons officer.

“Evasive action,” said Cheshire.

“No!” yelled Zen. “I can nail them! Keep me close. I’ll get them with the Flighthawk’s cannon.”

“We’re too vulnerable here, even with the ECMs.”

“The Roland will take out the Delta Osprey if I don’t nail it,” said Zen.

Someone shouted something back, but he’d stopped listening. He was in the UM/F now, butt tied to its seat, pushing for the dish spiking the mother ship.

The tanklike launcher sat behind a low wall a mile ahead. Its two-armed turret twisted toward the Flight-hawk, its parabolic head spinning as it got a lock.

“Weapon,” he told the computer.

The cannon bar appeared at the top of the screen. Yellow, yellow. Red.

Locked.

Too soon, Jeff told himself, remembering how optimistic the gun radar was. Wait until you can’t possibly miss.

The Roland seemed to move downward. There was a puff of smoke.

It had fired a missile.

The bar suddenly went yellow. His targeting radar was being jammed, probably by Raven itself.

“Boresight,” Jeff ordered. He’d fire manually. The site cleared to a manual cross with a square aiming cue.

He was too high. He nudged, now less than a quarter mile away, moving incredibly fast through the haze.

Zen squeezed, saw the line of bullets move out ever so slowly, impossibly slowly toward the tank, saw the first one get the dish, saw the second, the third begin to unzip the metal as he nudged his aim point lower, the metal hissing.

Nailed the son of a bitch.

BREANNA FELT THE MEGAFORTRESS SLIPPING FROM their grip as they were buffeted by a wave of flak. Two missiles were in the air behind them; there was so much going on it was impossible to keep everything sorted.

“Roland on our butt!” yelled the weapons officer. “I’ve handed off ECM to auto mode, but we’re not shaking it. Watch the flak! We’re too damn low!”

Cheshire cursed, cranking the Megafortress into a tight turn, once more trying to beam the missile’s persistent guidance system. The fact that the German-built antiair weapon was a known commodity wasn’t making it easy to evade. The ECMs were blaring, there was more tinsel in the air than on a dozen Christmas trees, and still the damn thing was coming for them.

“Hold on,” barked Cheshire.

In the next second she slammed the Megafortress in a full-bore dive, plunging straight for the earth. Finally confused, the Roland continued on for ten yards—but ten yards only. Realizing it had missed, its onboard circuitry lit the warhead.

Raven was shaken, but unbowed. Cheshire rolled out at two thousand feet.

Right into a wall of flak.

Rap heard the pops next to her, the sound of an old-fashioned percolator kicking up a fresh pot of coffee. Something flashed in front of her.

For a second she blanked. Then she realized she was shaking her head, her hand on Raven’s yoke. The plane followed her nudge to the right.

“Jesus, that was close,” she told Cheshire.

The major didn’t answer. Bree glanced to the right and saw the pilot slumped forward in her seat. A good portion of the cockpit and fuselage beyond her had been mangled by triple-A.

DANNY PUSHED HIS BACK AGAINST THE WALL AS HE edged further into the complex. The com unit had gone dead; the guns seemed to have stopped. The hallway was filled with a dull red light, perhaps from an emergency lighting system further on.

A shape loomed ahead. He leveled the MP-5 at it, saw something flash.

A bee whizzed by him in the hall. Something ripped the floor next to him.

He squeezed off a burst. The shadow fell backward.

When nothing else came from behind the shadow, Danny slipped further along the wall. The Libyan soldier had fallen face-first, his AK-47 beneath him. Freah kicked the man, making sure he was dead.

He heard something ten yards ahead. He slid down, holding his breath.

Two shadows appeared, hugging the far wall. He raised his gun in their direction.

“I sure as shit hope you’re a fuckin’ American,” said a low grunt.

“Hands up and move forward, fast!” he ordered.

“Gunnery Sergeant James Ricardo Melfi,” announced the first shape, lunging toward him. “And this is Captain Howland.”

“Where’s Smith?” asked Danny.

“We haven’t seen him since Sudan,” said Gunny. “What the hell took you girls so long?”

“We had to do our hair,” said Danny.

ZEN SWUNG HAWK ONE AROUND THE EDGE OF THE complex, gunning for Raven’s wing. He was at bingo fuel. It was a long way back to base; if they didn’t set sail soon the Ospreys would be towing both UM/Fs home.

But at least they’d be able to. The Roland was off the air. And the stream of antiaircraft fire had finally run dry.

“I need to get home or refuel, Nancy,” Jeff said, punching the intercom. “You know what? As soon as that flight of F-14 Tomcats gets here, let’s set course for that emergency base in Greece. My fuel won’t be so tight. I’ll meet you at fifteen thousand, okay?”

“I don’t know that we can make fifteen thousand,” answered Breanna. “We’re chewed up pretty bad, Jeff. Triple-A chewed through the fuselage while we were trying to get under the SAMs. Nancy got hit, and she’s at least unconscious, if not worse. I’m still assessing damage up here.”

“Are you okay, Bree?”

He felt his heart leaping out toward the front of the plane. He felt like he was a million miles from her, as if he were here and she were back at Dreamland.

“I’m intact,” she said. “How about you?”

“As intact as I get,” he managed. His hands were starting to shake; he gave control over to the computer, settling the Hawk into a shadow trail.

“Hey, Bree?”

“Yeah, Jeff?”

“I love you.”

“Me too, baby. Me too.”

Tripoli

24 October, 0955 local

AS THEY GOT OUT OF THE HELICOPTER, FLAMES erupted from the building behind them. Tripoli was apparently under attack; the Imam’s Allah had apparently stopped smiling at him.

One of the guards turned quickly, ducking with his weapon. The other pushed Mack down toward a set of cement steps that led to a long dock. Pleasure craft were arrayed in a marina to the left.

To the right, an ancient Piaggio flying boat strained a mooring at the end of the wooden gangplank. Mack took a step toward it, then threw himself down as a pair of F/A-18’s screamed less than a hundred feet overhead, en route to a target further inland.

The Imam pulled him to his feet. His voice remained resolute, but for the first time since Somalia he made it obvious that he had a pistol in his loose-fitting sleeve.

“Into the airplane,” said the Iranian.

“Who’s flying?” asked Mack.

“You,” the Iranian said, motioning toward the seaplane. The Piaggio’s cockpit sat in front of a high wing flanked by two overhead engines. “There has been a change of plans.”

“Why don’t we just stay with the helicopter?” Mack asked. He guessed that it didn’t have the range to go where they were going—they’d had to stop several times along the way to refuel.

“You ask too many questions, Major. Go.”

“I don’t know that I can fly it,” Knife told him.

The Imam lifted his arm, placing the gun next to Mack’s ear.

“I’ve never flown a seaplane before,” said Mack, half hoping to see a Marine—maybe even Gunny—pop up from the water. “I can’t remember the last time I flew anything with a propeller.”

Mack was telling the truth, but as a pair of attack jets screamed overhead, he realized he couldn’t stall much longer.

The Imam’s guards were up by the road; they weren’t coming aboard the plane. Climb in, take off, then find some way to dump his captor.

“I’m telling you the truth,” said Mack, ducking as another jet screamed overhead. “I don’t know if I can fly this thing right.”

“I will pray that it all comes easily to you,” said the Iranian, gesturing with his pistol.

“Well in that case, let’s go for it,” said Knife, starting down the dock.

Libya

24 October, 1020

RAVEN WAS MANGLED, BUT FLYABLE. THE RIGHT stabilizer was missing a good stretch of skin. One of the leading-edge flaps on the right wing had locked itself into a two-degree pitch, but the Megafortress’s fly-by-wire controls were able to compensate for the problem so well that Breanna hadn’t realized it until Jeff brought the Flighthawk up to examine the battle damage. Jennifer Gleason, meanwhile, had come up and helped Major Cheshire, cleaning her wounds and making her comfortable, or as comfortable as someone could be while staring at a mangled cockpit wall. The wind roared at the jagged gash in the hull, adding a squeal to the rumble of the Pratt & Whitneys, but as long as they kept their altitude and speed relatively low, Rap didn’t think they’d have a problem. She set course for Greece, the Flighthawk pushing ahead like an Indian scout checking the area for an approaching wagon train.