Authors: Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice
Duka
D
anny jumped up an instant after the explosives blew out the panel. It was a neat penetration, a literal door for the Whiplash team to run through. The first trooper inside tossed a flash-bang grenade in the direction of the lone occupant. The man fell from the chair where he’d been sleeping; two Whiplashers reached him before the room stopped reverberating. One put his boot against the man’s back and his gun against his head, just in case he had any notion of moving. The other trussed his arms and legs with thick zip ties.
“Where the hell is the plane?” yelled Thomas “Red” Roberts, who’d been tasked to secure the UAV. “All I see is the pickup truck.”
Danny nudged Red out of the way. He was right. The only thing inside the building was the truck.
Danny flipped the shield on his helmet up. A single lightbulb near the front threw dim rays around the large room. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he pulled the signal receiving unit from his pocket and turned it on. The device was relatively simple—it beeped as it tracked the transmitter, the signals getting closer and closer together.
It was a solid tone.
He went over and peered over the back of the truck. There was a small jumble of what looked like debris near the cab. He picked it up—it was a hunk of plastic with some circuitry attached. Undoubtedly the tracking transmitter.
Damn.
“Movement in Building Two,” said MY-PID.
“Two, three people moving to the front,” added Turk, who was watching the feed.
“Osprey up,” said Danny. “Red, Marcus—search this damn place.”
“Already on it, Cap,” said Marcus. He was another of the new recruits, a former Ranger, also trained as a helicopter pilot. Danny hoped to use that specialty in the future.
There was a burst of gunfire from the front of the building.
“Boston?”
“They ducked back inside,” said Boston. “Didn’t look like they had weapons.”
The Osprey’s heavy rotors pounded the ground as it approached. Red went to the passenger side door of the pickup truck.
“Wait!” yelled Danny. “Check—”
His warning was too late—the truck exploded as Red pulled open the door.
Walter Reed Army Hospital
Washington, D.C.
T
he past was gone, erased and buried from his memory, shocked out of him, drugged away. The past was gone and the future was blank; only the present remained, only the present was real.
Mark Stoner shifted in his bed, staring at the ceiling.
What was the present, though? Working out? Getting better?
Better from what?
It was all a jumble, a knot of torn thoughts.
Zen. Who was Zen?
A friend. Someone he knew.
But why was he in a wheelchair? And what was a friend, exactly?
Someone he saw a lot.
What was he supposed to say to him? What was he supposed to do?
Stoner leaned to the side. Dr. Esrang had given him a radio. He turned it on and began flipping through the stations.
“. . . Two out, and here comes Granderson. He flied out his last at bat. The former Yankee is batting just .230 this year . . .”
The words were strangely familiar. Stoner tried to puzzle out what they meant.
Baseball.
He knew that. The game.
He knew everything about it, didn’t he? He could picture what was happening in his head. He saw the batter swing and miss.
A memory floated up from deep within his consciousness. He was at a game with his grandfather.
His grandfather!
There was a past.
Baseball.
Stoner folded his arms across his chest and listened as the game progressed.
Duka
T
he explosion blew Red back into Danny. Both men fell against the floor. The explosive charge was relatively small, and their body armor absorbed most of the blow. Still, there was enough of a shock to knock both of them out for a second. Danny came to with Flash leaning over him.
“Cap, you OK?”
“Yeah,” managed Danny. He got to his feet with Flash’s help. Red was shaken, but uninjured except for some cuts and bruises—the biggest one to his pride.
“Nothing in here,” said Flash. “You want to evac?”
“Right. Let’s get out of here. Take the prisoner with us. Both of them—get the guy Sugar knocked out.”
“On it.”
They left through the hole at the side. Boston and Sugar joined them as they crossed over the railroad tracks, running into a small clearing where the Osprey could land and pick them up. Danny could smell the exhaust in the wash from the Osprey’s rotors as the aircraft swooped toward them, its engine nacelles angled upward in helicopter mode.
His head was pounding. He paused as the aircraft settled down, counting his men to make sure they were all there. Flash had cut their prisoner’s leg restraints away, but he held his man by the arms as they moved double-time toward the rear of the Osprey. The prisoner was small and skinny, a young teenager.
Sugar had the other POW on her back. This one was tall—close to six feet—but just as skinny as the other.
Both were probably useless, Danny realized. Whoever had booby-trapped the truck probably figured they were disposable.
“We’re all here, Cap,” said Boston, taking up the rear.
“All right, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What happened?” asked Boston as they ran up the MV-22’s ramp.
“They booby-trapped the door of the truck and we missed it,” said Danny. “We were lucky. And sloppy.”
Duka
L
i Han crouched at the edge of the culvert, watching as the Osprey rose. Its wings began to tip forward; it seemed to stutter to the right, and for a moment he thought it would crash. But the stutter was an optical illusion—the aircraft pivoted, turning away smoothly as it accelerated into the distance.
He had a clear shot for a Stinger missile.
But even if he’d had an antiaircraft weapon ready, it would have been foolish to attack. The aircraft was undoubtedly equipped with a detector and countermeasures, and even if he did succeed in taking it down, he’d be telling them he was still nearby. Better to remain a mystery.
Afraid he might be given away by the locals, Li Han had slipped out of the warehouse with Amara and most of the others, taking over a house about a quarter of a mile away and working on the UAV there. But even that had seemed too close, too small a precaution—as soon as he’d heard the explosion, Li Han had taken Amara with him and run from the building, using a door in the basement.
Now he felt just a bit like a coward.
But caution was always in order, especially when dealing with the Americans.
“What now?” asked Amara behind him.
“We’ll go back inside the house,” said Li Han, thinking. “They won’t attack again tonight.”
They would be watching. He’d have to lay low for a while.
What if he sold the UAV back to the Americans? They’d certainly be motivated buyers.
Amara might be able to broker the deal. He was a little puny physically, but he was smart. And the sight of Swal being shot hadn’t unnerved him; he’d disposed of the body quietly. He seemed to realize that Li Han had done it for him, to reinforce his authority with the others.
“Are we going?” asked Amara. “How long can we stay in this city?”
“Your English is getting better all the time,” said Li Han.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Li Han smiled to him, then turned and led the way back to the house.
Room 4, CIA Campus
R
eid flicked off the viewer as the Osprey took off. He didn’t like monitoring the missions; there was too much temptation to micromanage. When he was in the field, he would never have allowed it.
But times were different now. The best he could do was not interfere.
He was about to call Breanna when the computer announced that she was holding on the line.
“You’re psychic,” he told her, picking up the phone. “I was just about to contact you.”
“Do we have it?”
“Regrettably, no. The tracking transmitter was removed from the body of the UAV. It was booby-trapped, but we had no injuries.”
“Well that’s something, at least.”
“We’re reasonably sure that the UAV itself remains in Duka. But at the moment I think even that’s a guess. Nuri is planning to go in tomorrow and check around. I don’t know that there’s much alternative.”
“The replacement satellite should be on station in a few hours,” said Breanna. “In the meantime, I’ve found a Global Hawk to augment the Tigershark so Turk can get some rest. We’ll have surveillance, but no connection to MY-PID.”
“That shouldn’t be an immediate problem.”
“We may need more force there,” added Breanna. “And I’m going to get more of their equipment over there. This is more serious than we thought at first.”
“The military side is your prerogative,” said Reid. “But I can’t emphasize enough that we have to be very quiet about it. If the Iranians or the Chinese or anyone else sees we’re making a big fuss, they may get nosy. Even if we recover Raven at that point, we may have jeopardized the weapon.”
“I understand, and Danny does, too. Did you talk to Ray Rubeo?”
“I did.” Reid stopped pacing. “I’m going to talk to Edmund again. Based on that conversation . . . Based on that conversation, I may have to talk to the President. A number of things trouble me.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“I think under the circumstances it would be best if I handled that myself,” said Reid. “I still don’t have the whole picture. Whether Edmund will give it to me or not remains to be seen.”
Duka
M
ilos Kimko stood in the shadow of the small hut, watching the aircraft fade into the distance. He was nearly three miles from where it had landed, but even without his binoculars he could tell it was an Osprey: only the American aircraft could move so quickly from a hover.
And what were the Americans doing in this forsaken corner of Africa? Taking sides with one of the two rebel groups who shared control of the town? Simply meeting with them?
Possibly. But what to make, then, of the explosion that had woken him?
The Russian rubbed his eyes. He was tired, physically worn by his job to assess the rebel movements in eastern Sudan. The SVR—Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, or Foreign Intelligence Service—had sent him to Khartoum a few weeks before, and he’d been traveling in the brush ever since.
He had a cover, and a side job, as an arms dealer. It was an excellent entrée to the locals, given the prices he was able to offer. The SVR subsidized the price; in fact, Kimko suspected his supervisors were keeping a portion of the money he sent back for themselves.
The sound of the Osprey’s engines faded. Kimko debated with himself. Should he go and see what they’d been up to now, or should he wait for the morning?
He’d been planning on continuing north at dawn, but that could be changed; it wasn’t like anyone there was setting their watches by him.
But why not take a look around now? He had nothing better to do, truly. The fresh air felt good.
It would also take his mind off the fact that he desperately wanted a drink.
Kimko went back inside. The round hut was tiny, a one room refuge that combined a bedroom, sitting area, and primitive kitchen in the space of four or five square meters. He went to his knapsack on the far side of the bed and took out his gun and holster; he picked up his thick sweater from the floor where it had fallen. He was still losing weight—even with the sweater and the shoulder holster, the jacket hung from his shoulders like an oversized bathrobe, two or three sizes too large. Not long ago it had been tight.
But that’s what Africa did to you. It shriveled you to nothing. It was terrible to foreigners, but just as hard on the natives; everyone he met had an empty look in their eyes, as if their souls had drilled through their skulls and fled.
A pile of clothes lay at the foot of the bed. Kimko took a five euro bill from his wallet and dropped it on the clothes. Hopefully, the woman who owned the clothes would be gone before he returned.
Western Ethiopia
T
he Whiplash team was quiet the entire way back to Ethiopia. Even Sugar, who normally could have been counted on for a dozen wise cracks and half as many put-downs, said nothing.
Red, who’d been closest to the IED when it went off, had been cut in several places and badly bruised, but was spared more serious injury by his helmet and armored vest. A large piece of shrapnel had sliced past the outer fabric into the carbon-boron layer, exposing the intricate web of the protective material. He stared at the slice the whole trip back.
“I’m sorry, Cap—I checked for wires and didn’t see anything,” he told Danny after they hopped out of the Osprey. “I looked underneath, in the back—I didn’t see explosives in the seat or anything—I just—I don’t know.”
“Forget it,” Danny told him. “Focus on the mission.”
“Lettin’ him off easy,” said Boston, watching Red head toward the hut the team had taken over for quarters.
“The bomb kicked him harder in the butt than I could,” answered Danny.
“I doubt he checked it right,” said Boston. “His helmet should’ve picked something up, even if it was a grenade.”
“I’m sure he forgot to reset it inside,” said Danny. “He won’t forget next time. That’s what counts.”
The Whiplash helmets had embedded chemical sniffers designed to warn of IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. But these could easily be confused in a combat situation, where the detection threshold was fairly high—you didn’t want your own grenade or explosive pack setting off the alarm. So the settings could be dialed back, or what the designers called “normalized,” with a reading taken before the actual operation. That reading was supposed to pick up the presence of the chemicals already in the group making the assault. That reading set the threshold for subsequent readings. Roughly speaking, the gear would see that the team had twelve ounces of PETN before the action, and the chemical sniffers would sound the alert only when a thirteenth was detected.
In the situation inside the warehouse, the helmet should have been reset before the truck was examined. This took up to ninety seconds, and in the heat of battle was often forgotten. But there were other reasons the explosive could have missed, and Danny saw no point in calling one of his team members a liar.
“Whoever set the bomb was pretty smart,” he told Boston. “He’s a couple of steps ahead of us.”
“I guess.”
“Has to be their Mao Man, Li Han.”
“I agree.”
“Put the prisoners in separate tents,” Danny told him. “I’ll get Nuri and we’ll talk to them.”
“You got it, Cap. Hey, heads up—storm headed our way.”
Boston pointed toward the small huts. Melissa Ilse, right arm in a sling, was striding in their direction, moving at a speed that clearly indicated she wasn’t pleased.
Danny kept up his own deliberate pace toward the main building. “Ms. Ilse, what can I do for you?”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I didn’t know I was your alarm clock.”
“Listen, Colonel . . .”
She took hold of his right arm. As Danny turned toward her, Melissa’s glare reminded him of a look his wife had given him when he told her he wasn’t running for Congress. Ever.
Not a good memory, that.
“I’m in charge of this operation here, Colonel,” said Melissa. “This is my op.”
“No, Ms. Ilse, I’m afraid—”
“Melissa.”
“Right. This is a Whiplash operation. I’m in charge.”
“You’re supposed to help me.
Help
.”
“I really don’t care to argue.”
Danny started walking again. She fell in next to him.
“Obviously, you didn’t recover the UAV.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“I insist that you involve me in any other operation. Do you understand?”
“Your arm better?” asked Danny.
“Colonel, I insist.”
She followed in a huff as Danny entered the main building. Nuri was inside, talking with someone on a satellite phone. Jordan was fussing with the coffeepot.
“Your guys are all right?” asked Jordan, glancing over as he came in.
“Yeah. Just barely,” said Danny.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Melissa?”
“No thank you,” she said frostily.
“A little strong,” said Jordan, handing the coffee over.
“I’ll say,” said Danny.
“Keeps me awake.”
Nuri finished his call and came over.
“I’m sorry,” he told Danny.
Danny nodded. Nuri was sincere; he wasn’t an
I told you so
kind of guy.
“My drugs are on the way,” said Nuri. “They should be here by first light. I’ll go back and nose around.”
“They’re not going to connect you with tonight?”
“Nah. They may think you were coming to get me. I’m a criminal, remember? That’ll only help my reputation.”
“I think Li Han was behind this,” said Danny.
“Could be.”
“I think that’s a very good guess,” said Melissa. “I’m sure he’s still in Duka.”
“I think it’s kind of hard to be that definite,” said Nuri. “We thought he was in the warehouse.”
“He’s still in Duka.”
“What do you think?” Danny asked Jordan.
“I don’t know. Booby-trapping the truck would be very much like him. Finding the transponder? Definitely. But anything’s possible. These people aren’t stupid; they’ve lived by their wits out here for a long time.”
“We brought two guys back,” Danny told Nuri. “Maybe you can get something out of them.”
“Sure,” said Nuri.
Melissa followed them out of the building.
“Unless your Arabic’s a lot better than mine,” Nuri told her as they neared the tent, “I think you ought to stay outside. The less people who see you, the better.”
She gave him a scowl but didn’t argue.
N
uri adjusted the MY-PID ear set and followed Danny inside the tent. A teenager lay on the floor, arms and legs bound by zip ties. The tent was illuminated by a 150-watt bulb in a work lamp hanging from the peak.
Nuri knelt next to the prisoner. The kid was so still that even though his eyes were open, Nuri thought he was sleeping.
“As-Salamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu,”
Nuri said in Arabic. May the One True God’s Peace and Blessing Be Upon You.
The young man’s eyes opened a little wider, but he said nothing.
“Why did you try to kill my friends?” asked Nuri. When he didn’t get a response, he switched to Nubian, the dominant tribal language of the North, and repeated the question.
Nuri’s Nubian wasn’t nearly as fluent as his Arabic, and the differences in the dialects added considerable difficulty. He would at least have no trouble translating: MY-PID could handle it instantaneously. Indeed, as soon as the Voice heard him use the language, it would make suggestions, allowing him to refine his speech as he went along.
The computer’s help proved unnecessary.
“You think I don’t know English?” said the prisoner.
“I didn’t want to insult you by using it,” said Nuri.
The kid made a face.
“How old are you?” asked Danny.
“What kind of question is that for a warrior of God?” snapped the boy.
“You’re not fighting for God. You’re trying to get Dr. Thorika into power,” answered Nuri, referring to the opposition figure supported by the Brotherhood.
“
Phhhh,
Thorika.” The prisoner tried to spit, but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t even force spittle to his lips. “We fight for the rule of Islam.”
“You’re with the Brothers?” said Nuri, who of course had suspected as much, based on what he knew of Li Han. “Have they stopped backing Thorika?”
The prisoner frowned again, perhaps realizing he had given Nuri more information than he should have.
“I didn’t know the Brotherhood had people this far north,” said Nuri in a reasonable tone. “Why have you come into the territory of your enemies?”
“All Sudan is our territory. We have friends everywhere.”
The kid switched to Arabic as he repeated several slogans popular with the Brothers. Nuri let him talk for a while before finally cutting him off.
“What about the Chinese scientist? Why is he in charge of you?”
“He is not in charge of us.”
The interview continued in that vein for several more minutes. Nuri concluded that the prisoner was older than he looked, but even so probably didn’t have much information that would be immediately useful.
The second prisoner stuck to Arabic, but was more talkative, volunteering that “the Asian” was in the city, though he didn’t know where. He said he was fifteen, and Nuri believed it; he had clearly not been trusted with much information, and didn’t seem to know that much about the UAV.
“They’re the usual teenage riffraff the Brotherhood recruits,” said Melissa derisively outside the tent. “They’re ignorant. They don’t know anything.”
“The first one spoke English pretty well,” said Nuri.
“So? It’s the official language. One of them.”
“The usual slugs don’t speak it as well as he does,” said Nuri.
“Li Han doesn’t speak Arabic, or any of the local languages,” said Melissa. “They needed someone who could communicate with him.”
“If Li Han is so good, why is he working for them?” asked Danny. “Why isn’t he working for Iran or Syria?”
“He
has
worked for them,” said Melissa. “He’s here because al Qaeda gave the Brotherhood money to hire him. He’s being paid ridiculously well to help them set up communications networks, arrange their computers. Forge networks.”
“Does he work for them, or the Brotherhood?”
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference,” said Nuri.
“The Brotherhood. They contacted him through an intermediary. I’d guess he knows where the money comes from.”
“And where do they get it?” said Nuri. His tone made it clear he was speaking rhetorically. “The big oil states, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the rest. It’s blood money—we’ll pay you off if you don’t try and overthrow us, or preach too hard in our mosques, or do something else that will upset our business arrangements. Whatever it is Li Han is doing out here, he’s getting a ton of money for it. More than you and I will ever make in a hundred lifetimes.”
“That’s true,” said Melissa. “He’s helping them organize. That’s why it’s important to take him out now.”
“Getting the UAV back is our priority,” said Danny.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“I want access to the file,” said Nuri.
“What’s our next move?” Melissa asked Danny.
“It’s not ‘our’ next move,” said Nuri. “I’m going back to see what’s going on. We’ll take it from there.”
“I’m going in with you.”
“No again,” said Nuri.
“Colonel, this is my mission,” said Melissa. “Raven is in Duka somewhere. I have to find it.”
“This is
our
mission,” said Danny. “All of ours.”
Nuri tried to suppress his anger. He could tell what Danny was thinking: he saw this as a squabble between two Agency officers, a turf battle. But Nuri knew there was a lot more going on here than they’d been told—he doubted the assassination operation had been authorized, and there was no telling what else was up. Melissa was exactly the sort of gung-ho idiot higher-ups threw into a situation where the Agency didn’t belong.
“I’m going to the clinic with the drugs,” he said. “After that I’ll check with the other group. I’m not convinced that Li Han is still in town, but if he is, I’ll hear about it.”
“I could go to the clinic,” said Melissa. “I’m trained as a nurse. I’ll gather information in the city.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Danny. “Your arm’s in a sling.”
“I don’t need it.” She pulled it out. Pain showed on her face, but she let it dangle. “Raven is mine. It’s my job to find it.”
“We can get the information ourselves.”
“You haven’t done very well at it to this point.”
Danny scowled.
“I’m going,” said Melissa. “I’d be there now if I hadn’t taken a spill.”
Why not let her? thought Nuri. If she was going to be a jackass, why not let her park herself inside the clinic? She’d be out of the way there.
Sure. And then they’d capture her, torture her, and she’d tell them everything she knew about Raven and whatever else she was involved in.
But on the bright side, maybe they’d kill her.
“You can’t stop me,” Melissa insisted to Danny. “This is
my
mission. My job.”
That was another thing that bothered Nuri—she kept addressing Danny, not him, or at worst both of them.
“They’ll think you’re a spy in the clinic,” said Nuri. “They’ll know you’re American.”
“Of course they’ll know I’m an American. I don’t lie about that. There are a lot of Americans in Sudan.”
“Not a lot,” said Nuri. “And they’re all aid workers.”
“So?” She kept staring at Danny.
“Fine,” said Nuri. “It’s your funeral.”