Authors: Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice
Duka
T
he Osprey pirouetted in the sky, its propellers straining. In level flight it was at least twice as fast as the average helicopter and considerably stronger. But in a hover it was not much more maneuverable than the average Blackhawk, and a somewhat bigger target.
The Stinger that had been launched at it sniffed its decoy flares, homing in on them rather than the baffled exhaust from the MV-22’s engines. It quickly realized it had been duped and exploded, spraying the air with shrapnel. Fortunately, the Osprey pilots were able to get the aircraft far enough away from the warhead so the hot metal fragments completely missed.
But they had a much more difficult time with the simpler rocket-propelled grenade, launched from a different window. Aimed by sight, it was fired as the MV-22 swung away from the Stinger, and by luck or well-trained design, it crossed the path the aircraft was taking. It struck the fuselage a glancing blow. The effect was not unlike what would have happened had the shell hit a caged armor arrangement, greatly decreasing the weapon’s impact. Nonetheless, it sent pieces of metal through the side of the aircraft and one of the propellers.
The MV-22 shuddered abruptly, a frightened horse trying to buck its rider at the sight of a rattlesnake. The two pilots settled her quickly, easing off the stricken engine and trimming their controls to compensate. They edged the aircraft into a wide bank as gently as they could, then found a place to land in a field opposite the railroad tracks, about eight hundred yards away.
In the few seconds it took for the Osprey to right herself, Danny located the room the missiles had been fired from. Hopes of recovering the Raven without damage were no longer operative; he pumped a grenade into the launcher attached to his SCAR, took aim, and fired the 40mm shell into the house.
There was a low thud as it exploded. The corner of the building imploded, crumbling in on itself.
“Osprey, what’s your status?” said Danny as the dust settled.
“We’re intact, Colonel. We’re on the ground. We have problems with one engine.”
“Can you fly?”
“We’re checking the systems. We should be able to, but I don’t know what our payload will be. I’m just not sure yet, Colonel.”
“Roger that. Keep me informed.”
My fault for letting them get too damn close, Danny thought.
“Colonel, doesn’t look like we have any more resistance,” said Sugar. She was on the other side of the building. “No more activity. No gunfire.”
“Hold your positions,” he answered.
Whether he’d been too aggressive in bringing the Osprey up close, Danny now reacted by being cautious, having MY-PID analyze the situation before proceeding. The computer assessed at fifteen percent the likelihood that some of the gunmen inside were still alive and able to fight. It based this assessment on an elaborate algorithm, the sum not only of what it had seen of the battle to this point but of hundreds of other firefights whose data had been entered into its memory.
But what did fifteen percent really mean? Danny didn’t know. In truth, he wasn’t comfortable with using the system in that way to help him make combat decisions, which was why he hadn’t bothered to ask for the assessment earlier.
It was better just to go with your gut.
“All right, team up,” he barked. “Shug, you know how this is done. Anything moves, nail it down. With
prejudice
.”
Sugar quickly organized a small group to enter the building. Rather than going through the front door, they blew a hole in the side, tossed grenades in for good measure, then entered in undertaker mode: anything that was alive wouldn’t be when they were done.
Danny watched the building anxiously for signs that it might collapse.
“Secure,” said Sugar finally. “We have seven individuals, all dead, on the main floor. Checking the rest.”
“Seven?” It was several more than MY-PID had predicted.
“There’s a basement, Colonel. Looks like they might have been sleeping or hiding down there.”
“Roger that.” He flipped up his shield. Melissa was standing nearby, looking at him.
“Nothing so far,” he told her.
“I want to go in.”
“I don’t know if it’s safe.”
“If it’s safe for them, it’s safe for me. This is my deal.”
“All right.”
“Where’s Li Han inside?”
“He’s still back at the other house.” MY-PID had the other building under surveillance; no one had moved inside.
“Don’t you think that’s strange? He missed an appointment here,” added Melissa. “With all the fighting? He’s still just sitting there?”
“You’ve been watching him, you tell me. You say he’s patient—he sat in a cave for weeks.”
“True.”
The damage to the Osprey upset Danny’s plan to hit the house immediately after taking this one. He needed to get over there fast, but they didn’t have transportation.
“Boston, you on the circuit?” he asked.
Boston didn’t answer right away. Danny had MY-PID zoom the Global Hawk image onto his location. He was surprised to see that Nuri and Boston had split up—Nuri was across the street, and Boston was in the field.
Then he saw why.
“Busy at the moment, Colonel,” answered Boston. “How long before that Osprey gets here?”
“We have a problem with the bird,” said Danny. “What are you dealing with?”
“Dozen tangos in the weeds. I have it under control.”
There was a burst of gunfire.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Danny told him.
M
elissa stepped through the hole in the side of the building, then moved to the side, trying to get her eyes to adjust. It was dark outside but even darker in here; she saw absolutely nothing.
One of the Whiplash people loomed in front of her, the black combat gear making him blend into the background.
Her
blend into the background. It was Sugar.
“Ms. Ilse?”
“Yes. Are any of the people in the house Mao Man—Li Han, the Chinese agent?”
“No Asians. All African. There’s gear and what looks like the UAV in the basement,” said Sugar. “Can you come this way?”
“OK.”
“Uh, you can’t really see, can you?”
“No.”
Sugar reached to her sleeve and flipped on a light. An LED beacon was sewn into the cuff. “Better?”
“Much,” said Melissa. She followed the trooper to a door near the front of the house and descended a set of steps. There was a body halfway down, riddled with bullets. The blood on the steps below was still wet.
Melissa scooped up the AK-47 at the bottom of the stairs.
“This way,” said Sugar, leading her to the side.
The Raven UAV sat in the middle of the basement. It was missing a wing and part of the tail section. Part of the fuselage had been disassembled, and the cover for the computer area was missing as well. Melissa rushed over to it, sliding to her knees to examine it like a child rushing to open presents on Christmas.
The computer was missing.
Shit. Damn.
She looked up at Sugar.
“We need to search the basement and the rest of the house for circuitry, memory boards,” she told her. “Anything that looks like a computer.”
Duka
W
hen Nuri heard the gunfire in the field, he glanced at the women. They stared at him blankly, sharing the frozen expression of people resigned to a terrible fate. Even Bloom seemed to have given up. Her lips were moving rapidly though no sound came from her mouth.
She was praying, he realized.
Only the newborn seemed to have any spirit left—his eyes darted around, still in wonder at the wide world around him.
No way was he going to get them to move.
“All right, I need you to stay here,” he told Bloom. “Whatever happens, stay hidden. You understand? Do you understand?”
She didn’t answer.
“Hey!” Nuri started to shout, then realized that wasn’t wise. The result was a loud hiss, foreign even to him. He grabbed Bloom’s arm and shook her. “Do you hear me? You’re going to stay. All of you.”
“We stay,” she repeated.
Nuri took his Beretta from its holster. “Use this if you need it,” he told her.
She stared at it.
“If you need it,” he told her, pushing it at her.
What he meant was—kill yourself and the women so you don’t have to suffer if the bastards get past us. But he couldn’t say that.
Bloom remained frozen.
“It’s here,” he told her, putting it down. “I’ll be back. Watch them.”
Nuri pushed into a crouch, then scooted to his right, deciding he would take the bastards in the field from the side opposite Boston, catching them in a cross fire. Unlike Boston, he didn’t have a combat helmet, which meant he didn’t have night vision. But he didn’t mind it: he could see the outlines of the field and where the enemy was, and he could move without the claustrophobic sense helmets always gave him.
“Boston, I’m going behind them,” he said over the team radio circuit.
“Move the women back.”
“They ain’t movin’. You keep these guys’ attention, I’ll nail them from behind.”
Nuri scuttled along the edge of the woods, his enemy to his left. He wasn’t exactly sure how much room to give them before turning. He simply ran for a few seconds, glanced to see where the gun flashes were, then ran a little more. Finally he threw himself down and began crawling in the field.
The Sudan First fighters were clustered near the dirt road where they’d crossed, scattered in a staggered line about four men deep. They’d only had rudimentary training. Besides being packed relatively closely and not recognizing that they were opposed by a single man, they fired wildly, wasting bullets and not coming close to their target.
Three of them, apparently having lost their nerve, began crawling to the west, moving perpendicular to Nuri as he came down the hill. Trying to get away, they were inadvertently coming toward him.
Nuri raised his rifle. He leaned his head over, peering through the scope. But he couldn’t see the image. He raised his head, checking to make sure the caps were off—they certainly were, and the scope was on and operating. But for some reason his eyes just wouldn’t focus. He moved his head back and forth, still trying to see through the damn thing, his nerves starting to rise.
I need to shoot these bastards now!
Finally he decided they were so close he didn’t need the scope. He started to pull his head back—and of course that was when the image appeared in front of his eye.
The men were low to the ground, moving on their haunches. He raised his shoulder slightly, bringing the crosshair level with the chest of the first man in the group. Slowly, he swung to the left, praying he wouldn’t lose the image.
He tightened his finger against the trigger. The SCAR was a light gun, and for Nuri it always seemed to jump to the right. His plan was to take advantage of that—he’d move in that direction, left to right, taking all three if he could.
His target rose, full in the crosshairs.
The gun gave a light, rapid burp as he pressed the trigger. He swept it right, then brought it back, pumping bullets into the tangos. All three were now on the ground, though he couldn’t tell if he’d hit them or they simply flattened at the sound of bullets crashing nearby.
“Grenade!” yelled Boston over the radio.
Nuri turned to look in Boston’s direction, hoping his friend would be able to avoid the explosion. Belatedly, he realized that Boston was warning him that
he’d
fired. He ducked as the shell exploded less than forty yards away, back near the larger clump of tangos.
A collective scream followed the bang, one of the wounded men screeching in pain. Nuri turned his attention back to the men in front of him, sighting the prone bodies through his scope. One moved. He fired, but the gun jerked against his shoulder, the bullets flying too high. He leaned back left, fired again. The bodies jerked with the impact of the bullets.
Nuri jumped up and began running toward them. He reached them in a few quick strides, his thighs straining. They lay a few feet from each other, guns on the ground. Dropping to his knees, he grabbed the weapons and tossed them into the field.
Gunfire stoked up again near the road.
“Boston—what’s going on?”
“I got three or four more still moving, right by the road. You see them?”
Nuri got to one knee and peered through the weapon’s sight. Once again he had an almost impossible time sighting.
Jesus, I’m going blind out here.
Finally he saw them. He loosed a stream of bullets, then saw a glowing tracer flick from his barrel—he’d reached the end of the magazine.
He slammed the box out and around, using the spare—the team rifles had their mags doubled up so they were easy to change. He fired another burst, then rose to a crouch and began going down the hill.
“What do you think? What do you think?” he asked Boston.
“Yeah, they’re down. Hold your position. I want to make sure no one’s moving up on the left from the buildings.”
Nuri dropped back to one knee. He looked down at the scope and saw it was flickering—it wasn’t his eyes; there was something wrong with the optics or circuit.
Somehow, that failed to reassure him.
A dark veil hung close to the ground. He took the scope and found that the image held steady if he kept his hand on the top. He scanned the field. The men closest to him were dead or dying. Nothing else moved.
“All right,” said Boston. “We’re clear here. You see me? I’m on the road.”
Boston rose and waved his arm.
“I see you.”
“I’m going to check these bodies here. Then I’m coming up in your direction. You’re covering me.”
“Right. My scope’s screwed up.”
“What?”
“Aw nothing. I’m good.” Nuri rose. His legs had stiffened and his arm had tensed so long that it felt almost numb. He swung his upper body back and forth slowly, trying to loosen the muscles.
His eye caught something moving in the area where the grenade had exploded. He froze, staring at it.
Nothing.
Nuri started walking in that direction, moving slowly. The men there must be dead, he knew, yet he was filled with nervous energy, anticipation.
Fear. That was what he was filled with. He was so tired he was starting to be afraid of things.
He stopped about ten yards from the closest dead body.
All dead. Nothing to worry about. Once again he scanned the field, left to right, then back, slowly. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest.
And something else. Something pushing against the tall grass.
He turned in its direction and started to raise his rifle so he could use the scope. A shadow rose near the road.
“Watch out!” he yelled.
In the same moment he lowered the barrel of his rifle and fired a burst, short of the shadow. Without thinking he raised his left arm slightly and fired another burst, this one dead on.
There was a scream. Boston, on the other side of the road, fired as well.
“You OK?” he asked Boston.
“I’m good, I’m good. We get him?”
“Yeah, he’s done.”
Nuri took a long, deep breath, then tried not to breathe at all, listening.
“Not bad work for a spy,” said Boston when he came close. “Back to the women?”
They found them exactly where Nuri had left them. The pistol was still on the ground, a few feet from Bloom.