Текст книги "Collateral Damage"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

4

Tripoli

Kharon’s collaboration with the Russians had brought him any number of complications over the years, and he knew better than to trust them any more than absolutely necessary. And so while he could have asked Foma to arrange for access to Russian satellite intelligence on the war, he decided it was much safer to simply steal it.

Russian hackers were arguably the best in the world at getting into secure systems, even better than the Chinese groups that tended to dominate news reports. But the security on the Russian government’s own systems left much to be desired. The feed sent to certain Spetsnaz units in Chad and southern Libya used a common and easily defeated encryption. Getting past it was child’s play.

Finding that out had taken a bit of work on Kharon’s part, but now he enjoyed the benefits, looking at near real-time satellite images as they were relayed to the unit. He sat at the console in his university lair, flipping through the quadrants as they loaded.

Nothing much had changed in the past two weeks. The reinforced lines were still where they had been for days. The only exception was in the east, where a number of tanks were poised to strike near Sawknah, a small city liberated by the rebels early in the war. Wisps of black smoke drifted in the area.

Zooming in for detail, Kharon could see irregular troops lining the ruins at the southwest corner of the road. The buildings immediately behind them were badly battered. Many were heaps of rubble. The one three-story that remained intact on that side of the street had several men on the roof, obviously snipers.

It was impossible to predict the outcome of the battle from the image. But the fact that the government felt strong enough to fight back there surprised Kharon. Everything he had seen to this point had led him to think they were not only losing, but on their last legs. But launching an attack some two hundred miles from their strong point implied they were stronger than he believed.

The government leadership had just been shaken up as well. Maybe there was life left in them after all.

But Kharon was not really interested in the direction of the war; he was looking for Rubeo.

He delved into the Russian intelligence bulletins, searching out information. The name didn’t jump out. Nor were there details about the UAV incident. The Russians seemed not to care about it—at least not tactically.

That made sense. It had little impact on anything the Russian special ops troops would be involved in.

One odd thing stood out—the government had fired antiair missiles overnight in the same area where the Sabre UAVs had operated. They had claimed they shot down two aircraft, but NATO had not acknowledged any losses.

A coincidence?

Kharon went back to the satellite imagery, examining the grids linked to the summary.

He spotted two large pickups parked well off the road behind a ridge of sand and rock. There were tents nearby.

He zoomed to the trucks. They were large American vehicles, unlike the small Japanese models common in the region.

Rubeo?

It had to be.

Damn, he thought. Right under my nose.

5

Sicily

“Looks like Dreamland isn’t the superhero he’s cracked up to be,” said Paulson when Turk walked into the squadron’s ready room.

“What the hell does that mean?” snapped Turk.

“It means what it means.”

“That’s enough,” said Ginella. She was at the front of the room, poring over a paper map.

“Excuse me,” said Paulson. “I didn’t mean to insult teacher’s pet.”

“Knock it off, John.” Ginella went to the coffeepot at the side of the room, walking between the two men. She poured herself a cup, even though the coffee was clearly cold. Everyone else took a seat.

They went through the squadron debrief mechanically. All of the squadron’s pilots and a lot of the enlisted personnel, including Beast and the others who were still suffering from the flu, came in to hear what had happened.

Turk had always felt a bit like an outsider, but it was worse now, much worse. No one said anything, but he felt that they were all blaming him for Grizzly being shot down.

What could he say?

It wasn’t his fault. But that sounded lame. Better to keep quiet.

He played the scene over and over in his head, trying to re-create what had happened. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t see a missile, or any weapon for that matter—nor a shadow that looked like one.

The bastards had hidden it somehow.

“Grizzly will be back tomorrow,” announced Ginella. “I spoke to him right after I landed. He claims he’s going to steal a helicopter off the Italians if they don’t let him go. I’m sure they will send him back—it sounds like he’s eating them out of house and home.”

The others began applauding. Somehow, that just made Turk feel worse. He slipped out the door, heading in the direction of his car.

He was already in the lot when his phone began to vibrate. Dreading talking to Ginella or anyone else, he hesitated before pulling it out.

It wasn’t a call. It was his calendar, reminding him of the appointment he’d made to play soccer with the kids.

Dead tired, all he wanted to do was pour himself into the car and go home to the hotel. He walked to the car, unlocked it, and got in.

His key was almost in the ignition when he pulled it back, deciding he just couldn’t blow off the kids. Ten minutes of running around—even twenty—weren’t going to make him that much more tired than he was.

Hell, maybe he’d just call a taxi anyway. Get a ride to the hotel, grab a few beers and collapse.

Turk walked over to the day care center, where the children were just coming out for their recreation break. The boys’ shouts cheered him up, and for the next half hour he forgot how tired he was, how depressed he was, how out of sorts he’d been. He laughed and joked with the children, lost in the game. When he was done, he told them he would be back, though this time he was smart enough not to make an exact appointment.

Turk went to the fence, preparing to hop over. Li was standing there, a big grin on her face.

“Playing soccer again?” she said.

“Uh, they’re playing. I’m more of a spectator.”

“You seemed to be holding your own.”

“Thanks.” He put one foot in the chain links, then lifted the other over the top bar. Tired but determined not to fall on his face in front of her, he lifted his body over, sliding down slowly.

“I’m sorry about what happened with Grizzly,” said Li.

“Yeah.”

In an instant his spirits sagged. Not only did his fatigue return, but he felt depressed and defensive.

“I heard Paulson talking,” Li told him. “He was out of line. Everyone knows you did what you could.”

“I guess everybody thinks I screwed up. That I missed the missile.”

“No one thinks that,” said Li. “We all know you would have done everything you could.”

“I was—I flew right over that group, a couple of times,” said Turk. “I was close to them—there was no weapon there. I was close enough to see that they were kids, you know? Older than these guys”—he gestured toward the children in the yard—“but still kids. And there wasn’t a gun. Let alone a rocket launcher.”

If he’d been in the Tigershark, the aircraft’s AI sections would have ID’ed the weapon for him.

Maybe he’d grown lazy, relying on the machine to do his job.

“I really didn’t see anything,” he said.

Li’s eyes seemed to have grown larger.

With disbelief, he thought.

“I gotta go,” he said, turning in the direction of his car.

“Hey. Wait. Captain—” Li trotted after him.

“People are pissed because I took their slot, I guess,” said Turk. “I’m sorry—if I thought those kids were a threat, believe me, I would have shot at them. With or with permission.”

“You would have shot at children? Even with a launcher?”

Turk pressed his lips together. The truth was, he would have a hard time doing that, even with permission.

But if he’d seen a missile launcher, if he’d seen something capable of taking down a plane, he would have done it. Definitely. To protect a fellow pilot.

“I just . . . didn’t see anything.”

“You have kids?” Li asked.

“I’m not married.”

“You don’t have to be married to have kids,” she said.

“Duh,” he said sarcastically.

She frowned and started to turn away.

“Hey, no, I’m sorry.” Turk reached out for her arm. She drew back, but stopped. “I didn’t mean—I’m just—I’m tired and I guess– I’m just tired.”

“I know.” She nodded.

“This, and the village before. I had nothing to do with that. I—I shot down those planes. Nobody thinks about that.”

“I think they do, Turk. I think you should lighten up on yourself.”

She had an incredibly beautiful face.

“You want to get a drink or something?” he asked. “My car’s in the lot. We can go and—”

“I’m on duty,” she told him. “I was just taking a break to see what the day care center needed.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe later. You look like you could use some sleep.”

“Yeah. OK. Later.” He took a step toward the car.

“What time?” she asked.

“Time?”

“What time do you want to meet?”

“How’s dinner?”

“Dinner would be nice.”

“Can you get to my hotel? The restaurant there’s pretty nice. Or we could go into Catania. It’s a nice little city. They look like they got a couple of restaurants and things.”

“Oh, Catania would be great. I haven’t been there yet. But how do we get there?”

“I can borrow a car,” said Turk. “There’s a bunch allotted to the personnel at the hotel, and there’s always one or two open at night.”

“That would be fantastic.”

“I’ll pick you up at your hotel around seven. OK?”

“That’d be great. Real great.”

Up until the moment he drove into the parking lot of Li’s hotel, Turk didn’t give Ginella a thought at all. But as soon as he saw the lit lobby, he was filled with dread, worrying that he would run into her.

Would she be jealous?

Of course.

But maybe not. They were just having a flirty thing, nothing important.

Would she see it that way?

He pulled the car around to the far side of the lot, then took out his cell phone. He didn’t have Li’s phone number, but the hotel desk agreed to connect him to her room. She answered on the fourth ring, just as the call would have gone to voice mail.

“This is Turk,” he told her. “Are we still on?”

“Of course.” She sounded surprised that he would even ask.

“Are you ready?”

“I was just on my way down.”

“I’ll be at the front door in like, zero three minutes,” he said.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

He hesitated, thinking of Ginella.

“OK,” he told her finally, deciding it was more important to keep Li happy. “I’ll be there.”

Even so, he waited a full ten minutes before getting out of the car. He could feel his heart starting to pound as he walked around to the driveway, and by the time the automatic door at the front swung open, his pulse was approaching a hundred beats per minute.

Ginella wasn’t there. Li greeted him with a smile, and they went out quickly to the car.

The Sicilian city was even nicer with someone to share it with. They walked around for more than an hour, checking out the menus posted outside the restaurants. Never picky about food, Turk would have agreed to go into the very first place, a modest-priced ristorante promising “Roman style” cooking. But Li was more of a foodie, and insisted on checking as many places as possible. She didn’t just look at the menus; she glanced inside, and eyeballed the diners as well.

“You can judge a lot about a restaurant by who eats there,” she told him. “What we want is a place that the locals eat at.”

“How do we know that they’re local?”

“You can tell if they’re Italian,” she said. “Look at the clothes. The shoes, especially.”

Once she had pointed it out, differences became very noticeable. A lot of people wore jeans, just as they did, but they had different hues and washes, and tended to be fairly new. The shoe styles were very different, and even the way people walked could give them away.

“I was a psych major in college,” Li told him. “Reading people is more sociology—you can tell a lot by what they’re wearing, and just the forms of how they interact.”

“Can you tell that much about me?”

“I can figure out a few things,” she said. “But it’s no fair in your case—I already know you.”

“What do you know?”

“I know you’re a good pilot. And a good person.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Could you?” Li laughed. It was a little girl laugh, innocent. Aside from the jeans, she was wearing a thick knit sweater that coddled her neck. She couldn’t have looked prettier to him if she were wearing a flowing gown.

They circled through downtown, Li studying the menus, Turk studying her.

“How did you get from psychology to flying Hogs?” he asked.

“You don’t think flying Warthogs takes a lot of psychology?”

“Seriously.”

“I was in an ROTC program. That’s how I paid for college. But I was always going to be a pilot.”

“Or a psychologist?”

“Not at first. I was in engineering. You wouldn’t believe the red tape switching.” The corners of her mouth turned up with a quick smile. “But I was also thinking that maybe I would use it, if I didn’t make it as a pilot. And maybe down the road.”

“Are you going to psychoanalyze me?”

She laughed, a long, warm laugh. “I don’t think so.”

They settled on a small restaurant whose menu was entirely in Italian. The waiter tried explaining the dishes, patiently answering Li’s questions. Turk ended up with a fish dish, even though he thought he had ordered beef. He barely tasted the food, completely entranced by the woman he was sharing the meal with. Everything Li said seemed interesting—she talked about her hometown in Minnesota, about the fact that she had been adopted, about the grudging acceptance of other pilots because she was a woman.

She could have talked about differential calculus and he still would have hung on every word.

His phone rang during dinner. He pulled it out, and not recognizing the number, decided to let it go to voice mail. Then he turned the phone off.

Driving back to her hotel, he searched for some reason to keep the night going. He asked if she wanted to hit the bar. She said she was tired and wanted to turn in.

He let that hang there—it wasn’t an invitation, and in the end he simply said good night.

When she hesitated for a moment before reaching for the door handle, he wondered whether he should kiss her. But the moment passed.

He rolled the window down and called after her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I hope so,” she told him, before turning and going inside.

Back at his hotel, Turk checked his voice mail. He’d missed three calls—all from the same number. Belatedly, he realized it was Ginella’s.

She’d left only one message.

“Where are you?” she said, her voice raspy and tired. “I thought I’d see you tonight.”

Breaking things off wasn’t going to be easy. He turned in, leaving it for another day.

6

al-Hayat, Libya

When Ray Rubeo was eight years old, a cousin’s house had caught fire and burned to the ground. Rubeo visited the house the day after, as a bulldozer tore down what was left. A metallic smell hung in the air, mixing with the diesel exhaust of the Cat. His cousin’s family stood around, eyes glassy as they watched the dozer work through what had been their home for more than a decade. There had not been time to rescue any of their belongings. Toys and clothes and furniture were jumbled in the flotsam.

The smell and the emptiness returned to him now as he walked through the ruins of the buildings hit by the Sabre’s missiles. The ruins hadn’t been touched since immediately after the attack, when the victims were pulled out. Now the bricks were being salvaged; two young boys were piling them on one side. Otherwise the area was deserted.

“Seen enough?” asked Jons.

“Not yet.”

“I don’t want to stay too long,” said the bodyguard. “We stand out here.”

“Understood.”

Rubeo walked along the narrow street at the center of the attack, coordinating what he saw with what he remembered from the map. With the exception of a pair of buildings at the eastern end, where a fire had started and then spread, the rubble petered out at the edges of the street and three alleys that intersected the target area. That meant the computer had identified the buildings as targets.

Which he already knew.

Or did he? Because really, looking at the targeting information, they simply assumed that the computer had deliberately gone after a building. But it could just as easily have been looking at pure GPS coordinates.

It was a subtle, subtle distinction. Given the coordinates, the targeting section would look at the building, and go from there.

Significant?

Certainly this had not been a random act—the house was struck perfectly.

No, that didn’t mean it wasn’t random. That just meant the house was struck perfectly. Because in theory, to the machine there was no difference in the coordinates for an empty desert.

Not true—the machine took the coordinates and looked at them, deciding if it was a building or a tank or whatever. It then worked from there.

To an investigator coming in later, it would look purposeful. But that didn’t mean it necessarily was.

If it had been given an empty desert, it wouldn’t have attacked at all. But given a location with a house . . .

Rubeo played with his earring. The mission had been programmed in. Assuming there was no interference, what had happened could be explained by a change in the navigation system that made the Sabre think it was several miles away from its intended target, and by an override to the targeting computer that put the strike into dumb mode—in other words, turned off the target recognition feature. Two separate events that someone would have to beam in.

Dumb mode wasn’t on. It hit the house—it was going to a target.

Maybe by accident. Or not accident exactly, but whoever had worked out the coordinates knew it would be close enough to look deliberate.

To reprogram it, you’d have to physically access the system. You’d need a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the Sabres as well as the computing system.

No. You could do it with a sophisticated knowledge of the Flighthawk GPS and backup system, which was the model for the Sabres. In fact, it was essentially the same, ported over with minor changes to account for the hardware.

How would you figure that?

Easy—look through the Air Force bids relating to the project. If you had access to different defense contractors.

So you’re in. How do you get to dumb mode in the targeting section?

Easy—just flip a software switch. But you had to know it was there.

Hmmmph.

Interference, but an extremely sophisticated form.

Hard to get all of that data into the aircraft via the GPS channel. And then you had to erase it.

Rubeo worked the problem out in his mind, seeing the lines of code he would need to write if he were the one introducing the problem.

No, that was the wrong approach. Too complicated. It assumed too much knowledge.

Go back to the random theory. What if rather than playing with the software, which was always recorded, you attacked the hardware—if you changed the voltage to a particular circuit, you might be able to change the targeting mechanism. If you affected the GPS sensor for a short period of time, you could send the aircraft to a new location.

Was that all you needed?

He wasn’t sure. He tried picturing the different circuitry in his mind. One thing he did know, however: when the system returned to normal, there would be no trace.

Who would go to that kind of trouble, though? With that much knowledge, wouldn’t you just reprogram the unit to fly to wherever you wanted it? The Chinese would pay dearly for it.

Rubeo jerked his head around as he heard something fall nearby. The bricks had fallen on the two boys working on the wall.

He ran toward them, Jons right behind.

The Filipino who’d been watching that side of the perimeter got there first. One of the child’s legs was pinned by the rubble. He scooped the material off and lifted the boy gently out. He put him down on the dirt nearby, then swung his rifle up and took a guard position a few feet away.

Rubeo found the second kid dazed but apparently unharmed. He lifted him by the shoulders and deposited him next to his friend.

“Are you hurt?” he asked the child.

The kid looked too shocked to talk.

Jons called over Halit, who had been back by the car with Lawson. The translator took a stern tone with two kids, immediately beginning to berate them for playing in the ruins.

“Don’t yell at them,” snapped Rubeo. “Find out if they’re all right.”

“They are fine. Look at them.” Halit waved his hands as if he was an exasperated crossing guard. “These vermin are always wandering where they don’t belong. They are worse than monkeys. Monkeys would have more manners.”

“Ask them,” said Rubeo.

Halit began to question them. Neither boy spoke, clearly intimidated. Rubeo went to the kid whose legs had been pinned under the rubble and helped him to his feet. There was a bit of blood near the right knee. Rubeo started to roll up the pants leg; the boy jerked back.

“Tell him we’ll fix his leg,” he told Halit.

“See? He is already OK. He moves around like a monkey. Faking.”

“I have a first aid kit,” said Lawson. “Let me see him.”

Lawson rolled up the boy’s pants, exposing some scrapes and minor scratches. A thick welt was already shaded purple on his shin. Lawson took out a bacteria wash and cleaned the cuts and scrapes. The boy barely reacted, even though the antiseptic must have stung.

“Let’s see you walk a little, fella,” said Lawson. When the child didn’t react, the former Ranger began mimicking what he should do. He added a few words in Arabic, then pretended to be a toy soldier or robot—it wasn’t clear to Rubeo which—bouncing around back and forth.

The child laughed. He took a few steps, apparently not greatly harmed.

“See, laughter is the best medicine,” said Lawson.

“Let’s take them home,” said Rubeo.

“Good idea?” asked Jons, in a tone that suggested the exact opposite.

“Ask them where they live,” Rubeo told Halit. “And say it in a way that gets us a correct answer, or you may find it difficult to walk yourself.”

The boys were cousins, but lived together in a small apartment complex a few blocks away. Five stories tall, with walls of large brown bricks and a stucco material, the buildings were not much different than what might be seen in Europe or even parts of America. The Gaddafi government had erected similar developments throughout the country, awarding them occasionally to the poor, but more often to families connected in some way to the power structure.

The interior hall of the building was clean, and smelled of some sort of disinfectant. But the disrepair was obvious as soon as they were through the door. The elevator, its door scratched and pockmarked with indentations, was out of order. The railing next to the stairs leaned at an angle, missing several supports. The floor tiles were cracked and pitted.

Lawson, with the two boys in tow, led the way up the stairs to the third floor, where they lived. By now he and the kids were great friends, so much so that they ran to the door and pushed it open, shouting to their family that they had found rich Americans. Halit was clearly nervous, hesitating near the door as Rubeo took off his shoes.

“You’re coming in with us,” Rubeo told him.

“Of course,” said the man unhappily.

Lawson and the Filipino nicknamed Joker went first, followed by Jons, who stayed in the doorway until the other two had made sure the place was clear. Abas and the others stayed below.

Four girls and two women were crowded into the living room just off the small foyer. They were the only ones home; all the others were either out at school or work. From what Halit said, there were two families here, and a grandmother. The grandmother, who was in her early fifties, was in the living room and acted as the family spokesperson.

After the children had told their story, she went to the kitchen to prepare some food for the visitors. Rubeo had Halit tell her that they’d just been fed but would gladly like something to drink. Anything more, Rubeo realized, would undoubtedly mean the family wouldn’t eat for a week.

The grandmother found two dusty bottles of an Italian soft drink, and served cups all around. Rubeo told Halit to find out what he could about the family, then to ask if the woman knew the people who had been killed in the bombing.

Halit balked.

“To ask this—it is difficult to know the reaction,” said the translator.

“Tell her we want to help them.”

“She won’t believe you.”

“Probably right, boss,” said Jons.

“Then let’s ask the kids,” said Rubeo. “Have them take us to the families.”

“There was a riot here the other day, Ray,” said Jons. “We’ve really pushed this far. Very far. I really don’t think we should go any further.”

“Fortunately, you’re not the one making the decisions,” said Rubeo.