“Maybe that is the best way,” he said. He started to pull himself up, then lost his balance. As he swung down, the pipe shifted an inch downward, taking him further away.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“It’ll be easier if you let go of the packs and the two machine-guns,” she said.
“No,” said Bison. “I can make it with them.”
“Let go of the fucking packs!” she yelled at him, furious.
Bison looked around and, finally, dropped the guns and pack that hadn’t snagged. They crashed against the metal, then rebounded into the water. He pulled himself up, groping over and across the girder to a large flange at the side of the pier where she was. The metal, about the size of a manhole cover, formed a kind of seat and he rested there for a few moments. Jennifer scrambled up to see how he was.
“You got a dirty mouth for a girl,” he said when she reached him.
“And you’re as stubborn as a mule.”
“As a buffalo. That’s how I got the nickname,” he said proudly.
They climbed down about thirty feet to a platform that completely surrounded the pier. The only way to get down would be to hang off and try and get a foothold on the girder before stretching down. It was impossible to see the work ladder from above. Jennifer thought she was nimble enough to do it, but might not be tall enough to reach back easily; Bison, on the other hand, looked tall enough but exhausted. One of them was bound to slip.
Another girder extended out over the water a few feet above the platform; a pulley set at the bottom of the metal beam was all that remained from a small lift that had been used to move equipment.
“I think we should jump from there,” she told Bison, pointing. “Jump?”
“Look, it’s only twenty feet from the water. As long as we keep our balance to the very end and go out there, we won’t hit anything. It’s like a diving platform. The others can pick us up.”
“Shit on that. Twenty fuckin’ feet”
“Easier than snaking under this platform, I bet.”
“Twenty fuckin’ feet. Maybe thirty.”
“I bet you did worse than that at Lackland when you went through special operations training.”
“Yeah, but that was Lackland. Everybody was out of their mind there”
“Come on. You go first,” she told him.
“Ladies first.”
“We’ll both go first. Come on.”
“You ain’t walking out there, are you?” he said as she climbed up.
“Should I run?” she said, standing on the girder.
“Jesus,” said Bison. He pulled himself up and started to crawl out behind her.
Jennifer waited until Bison was on behind her, then started resolutely toward the edge. She felt her right foot slip, and pushed forward—she did run now, pushing her momentum so that she was sure she would fall far from the metalwork. As gravity took her, she pushed her legs together and brought her arms in together, covering her upper body.
The water punched at her so hard that she was convinced she had struck the metal. Her lungs rebelled; she pushed upward, flailing desperately. Finally she saw light just ahead, but two strokes failed to bring her to the surface. She felt despair, tasted the salt water in her mouth.
But she’d hit rock bottom a month and a half before, when the air force seemed to turn against her, launching an investigation that targeted her. She’d survived that; she could survive anything.
A shock of cold jerked her body as if she’d touched a power line. Jennifer’s head bobbed upward, breaking the water’s surface. She gasped once, twice, then felt herself lurching backward.
Liu pulled her into one of the Zodiacs. She sat upright just in time to see Bison pulling himself onto the other a few yards away.
The motor at the rear revved. The lightweight boat bucked forward, picking up speed quickly.
“Down!” yelled Liu.
Jennifer wasn’t sure why he was yelling, until she saw the platform explode over his right shoulder.
Aboard
“Penn,”
off the coast of Brunei
1755
Zen brought Hawk One into a shallow dive to strafe the nearest ship, the smaller of the two. He saw as he came on that the bridge area at the front of the superstructure had already been struck by something; he slid his cannon fire into the center of the gun in front of it, riding the stream of bullets through the housing as the barrel swung in his direction. He flashed overhead, spinning back for another shot. Since the gun no longer moved he slid toward the missile launchers atop the rear deck; they looked like a pair of long garbage cans angled toward the sky.
It wasn’t clear which of the ships had launched the missile at the platform earlier, but by the time he laid off the trigger it was clear that this launcher wasn’t going to be used again—a secondary explosion erupted from the front of the tube as Zen cleared upward.
There were two more missile launchers on the port side of the ship. As he started toward them, the radar warning receiver erupted with a message—the second ship, about a half-mile to the north—was attempting to lock its anti-aircraft weapons on him.
“You’re up next,” Zen said to himself.
PENN
WAS JUST CLEARING FIFTEEN MILES SOUTHWEST OF the corvette, nearly in range for the JDAM GBU-32, the last weapon in her bomb rack. The GBU-32 was essentially a thousand-pound bomb with a set of steerable fins on the back that could be programmed to strike a specific GPS point. The bomb, still being tweaked for regular military use, was extremely accurate, but it had been designed to hit land targets that didn’t move, not ships at sea.
On the other hand, airplanes had been taking on ships since Billy Mitchell’s salad days, and Breanna had worked out a solid attack plan with the help of the Megafortress’s computer. She intended on launching inside five miles, which would decrease the possibility of the ship outmaneuvering the weapon.
“Zen, I’m about a minute and a half from launch,” she told him. “I’m going to open the bomb bay. Can you take out their missiles?”
“Roger that.”
Over Brunei, near Brunei International Airport
1756
McKenna swung around, getting ready for another run at the Badger.
If she only had bullets in her cannon, she could take the slimer down. Hell, she had half a mind to fly next to the big SOB, whack open the canopy, and wing the pilot with her pistol like they did in World War I.
Hell, she’d even throw a brick at him if she had one.
She did, actually. Four of them, each loaded with 250 pounds of explosives.
Bomb another airplane?
Why the hell not?
The bombs might not explode, but if she could match the other plane’s speed, she could get them right through the wings.
Matching his speed was just a BS aerobatic stunt, the sort of gimmick Ivana used to have her do all the time to close a sale.
McKenna pulled off to the right, taking a wide circle south of the Badger as she tried to decide if she was crazy to even think about taking a shot. What the hell, she decided as she came through the wide arcing turn. She leveled off, trying to slow the MiG-19 down to match the Badger’s speed. The two planes were very different, and she couldn’t quite get it; she pulled close again but the MiG tugged at her, trying to slide off to the right. By the time she got the plane steady she was beyond the Badger’s right wing. She tried swinging out to the right and then tucking back in a kind of weave, but she was still going too fast. The Brunei airport loomed ahead; obviously the Badger was going to try and land.
Maybe I’ll wait until it lands, she thought to herself as she accelerated and turned ahead.
Then she noticed that the gun turret at the top was revolving, following her.
That did it. She didn’t wait for it to fire again. She took the turn, letting her speed bleed off precipitously; the plane seemed to whine at her but she resisted the impulse to nudge the throttle. Wings barely clutching the air, she walked the MiG slowly toward the tailfin of her prey, which was now on a glide toward the concrete runway. As McKenna slipped overhead, losing her view of the Badger, she hit the bomb release. The MiG, now a thousand pounds lighter, shot forward. McKenna went for the throttle, jacking her speed and rocketing upward.
It took more than thirty seconds for her to climb up and come back around to a position where she could get a look at the runway. When she did, she saw that the Badger had landed—without its right wing.
Off the coast of Brunei
1800
Miraculously, the debris from the missile and platform didn’t strike the Zodiac, but the nearby ocean boiled with the rumbling wake. The small boat, designed to withstand anything less than a typhoon, bucked and tumbled with the waves but remained afloat.
The missile had sheared the platform off into the water, leaving only three stalks above the waves.
“Where’s the other boat?” she said to Liu. “Where’s Bison?”
“Ahead of us,” said the sergeant, nodding with his head.
DAZHOU WATCHED FROM THE BRIDGE AS THE SMALL AIRCRAFT started a fresh attack on his other ship, which had stopped defending herself. His crew had been unable to lock on the knifelike aircraft, which danced around the sky like a dervish.
“Use the cannon,” he shouted. “Sight it by eye if you have to.”
As Dazhou turned to the helmsman to tell him to steer closer to their stricken sister, his second in command shouted a fresh warning. “The plane is coming for us!”
“Shoot it down,” he said angrily.
* * *
ZEN COULD SEE THE ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILE LAUNCHER turning in the direction of the Flighthawk as he closed on the second ship. He fired point-blank into the side of the launcher’s structure; his second or third shell ignited one of the missiles and started a secondary explosion.
“He’s toothless,” Zen told Breanna. “I’m going back on that first ship.”
UPSTAIRS, BREANNA GAVE A LAST-SECOND UPDATE OF THE target parameters and then nudged the Megafortress into a shallow dive and then a swooping turn, tossing the bomb in the bay at the target. The JDAM left the Megafortress’s belly just inside four miles from its target, a point-blank shot for the weapon. The bomb sailed downward, made a slight correction, then nosed down toward the GPS point the Megafortress and Breanna had calculated for it—the bridge of the
Kalsamana.
THE SHIP REVERBERATED WITH EXPLOSIONS AS THE FIRE IN the missile battery behind the superstructure spread. Dazhou could taste the acrid smoke in his mouth. But he would not give up; he would not abandon the ship, nor flee his destiny.
“Use every weapon you have!” he demanded. “Everything! Everything!”
As the crew moved to comply, the bomb struck the port side of the antenna mast and crashed through the roof of the bridge area directly below, carrying through the deck without exploding. Dazhou turned in time to see something rushing through the cabin directly behind him—a ghost fleeing the demons of the past. The rush of wind seemed to him the swell of voices, the many voices of those who had tormented him in his life, returning one last time to torture him. Every mistake he had made, every man he had lost, every moment of foolishness pressed in around him.
And then the thousand pounds of explosives in the warhead ignited, and neither earthly vengeance nor human failings were of any more concern to Dazhou, or most of the men on the ship.
Southeastern Brunei
Exact location and time unknown
Hours seemed to pass before Mack Smith could make himself get up from the floor. Three of the four terrorists lay in the room dead; the last huddled around a pool of blood at the side.
The woman who had helped him was sprawled on the floor, eyes open, hands unclenched.
“Are you all right?” he said, kneeling over her. “Are you all right?”
Her mouth remained agape and her stare fixed on the ceiling.
Slowly, the others in the room started to move. And then, as if by some secret signal, all the women and children began to wail.
“Stop,” whispered Mack. “Stop.”
The fearful cry continued.
“Stop!” he shouted finally, and one by one the wails turned not to silence but to softer sobs.
“Are there others? Other terrorists?” He had to ask the question three times before he got a response from an older woman at the side.
“These were the all who we’ve seen,” she said in broken English.
“Take me to the men,” he said.
She got up, jaw trembling, and walked toward him. Another woman, much younger, grabbed his arm. “Our savior,” she said. “Our hero.”
“She was the hero;’ said Mack, pointing at the dead woman. “I’m just lucky. Now take me to the others.”
On the runway at Brunei International Airport
Exact time unknown
Sahurah felt his body lifted by a thousand angels. His pain had finally ceased. After his long, torturous journey, he had reached Paradise. The angels carried him through the golden gates, up the winding marble stairs to the vast throne room. The Messenger himself waited on the landing to greet him, surrounded by a veritable sea of angels. Light glowed behind him.
Paradise, he thought. Paradise.
And then the pain returned and Sahurah felt his body fall the hundred miles from heaven, felt it roll and slam and slap against the earth. He felt fire and cursed his existence, cursed his sins and dark desires. Something grabbed him from behind and pulled, dragging him through the black jaws of dragon-snakes that snapped at his body.
“Commander Sahurah! Commander Sahurah!”
It was part of the dream, he thought—the imam stood above him, peering down from above. The Saudi was nearby, his eyes watchful.
“Commander Sahurah!”
No dream this—Sahurah was on the runway,- a hundred feet from where the Badger had crashed. Someone had pulled him out in a misguided attempt to rescue him.
Why was the Lord so cruel to such a devoted servant? Why did he deny him the final glory of paradise?