Wraith (22 page)

The screen on Walker's computer wavered as he slammed his fist down on the table. When it settled, the words from the SATCOM link still remained.

CALL OFF STRIKE

WRAITH IS DOWN

NO CONTACT WITH SURVIVOR

LAST KNOWN POSITION:

COLOCATED WITH TARGET

The colonel's shoulders sagged as he stood and prepared to deliver the bad news to his team. He looked at the engineers and maintenance technicians around the table, still diligently trying to come up with a solution to Drake's weapons bay door problem. “You can put your books and charts away, people. Dream Catcher is down.”

“You mean he ditched in the gulf?” asked Amanda, clinging to a final thread of optimism.

Walker didn't mince words. “No, he crashed in the target area. We're unsure of his status. There has been no contact.” He turned back to the SATCOM and sent a reply to the B-2.

ALERTING SAR ASSETS

REMAIN ON STATION

MONITOR SAR FREQ UNTIL BINGO

THEN DEPART FOR TANKER

“What about the Nighthawks?” asked Amanda.

“I'm going to let them continue.”

“You can't. They'll kill him!”

“Calm down, Miss Navistrova. Baron is smart enough to get away from that target. With any luck he's already running south. I have a Sandy search and rescue team on alert in Kuwait. I'll get them suited up.”

This did not placate the blond engineer. She marched over to his workstation. “Suited up? If you know he's down. Why not launch them?”

Walker kept his voice steady, but he did not mince words. “We know that Lieutenant Baron is down, Miss Navistrova, but we do not know if he's
alive
. Until he initiates contact, I can't risk the lives of the rescue force. For the moment, Baron is on his own.”

*   *   *

Though he could no longer see the outside world, Nick knew that Dream Catcher was pitching over, listing to the left, and picking up speed. There was no way to restart the engine without fuel; and with a dead battery, the electronic displays and flight controls would not function. Yet for some subconscious reason, he continued to struggle with the stick as if he were going to save the aircraft. In the surreal light of extreme crisis he could only laugh at himself, until instinct finally took over and he reached for the ejection handle.

The moment Nick's hand connected with the cold steel of the handle, time slowed to a crawl. Adrenaline surged through his system and his senses snapped to a capability beyond anything he had ever experienced.

He watched, with more curiosity than fear, as his world progressed through Scott's four consecutive miracles. He could see every spark from the ballistic charges that split Dream Catcher into two clamshell pieces. He watched the desert floor appear before him and noted academically that he was still heading toward the dimly lit compound. Then he got the sense that the ejection was going wrong.

The pieces of Dream Catcher were supposed to fall away, but the two halves were keeping pace with him instead. Only a quarter of a second passed, but in that short time, a hundred scenarios of what had gone wrong and what he could do to survive the impending explosion flashed through Nick's mind. Then he felt the tug of his drogue chute and realized he was okay. His parachute jerked open. The remains of Dream Catcher shot away beneath him.

Nick let out an involuntary grunt at the opening shock. It felt as if his parachute was pulling him back up into the sky rather than merely decelerating his descent. He looked down and watched the pieces of his doomed aircraft plummet toward the desert floor and wondered if the incendiary cord would really work. Just then, the night lit up in a spectacular eruption of fire and sparks, like a volley of fireworks, with several cracks and sizzles that continued for more than a second. With the last crackle of Dream Catcher's destruction, time snapped back to its normal pace.

Nick blinked as if coming out of a dream. He pulled the night-vision monocle out of the front pouch of his vest and surveyed his surroundings. The wind still carried him toward the compound, although now he was drifting slightly to the east of it. His first instinct was to steer a course farther east, and put more distance between himself and the small gathering of enemy troops, but then he saw figures running out of the buildings and loading up vehicles. Men shouted and truck doors slammed. Activity at the compound had increased to a mad rush. Dream Catcher's final death throes had spooked the targets.

The ground rush came while Nick was still staring through the monocle, and his gentle descent suddenly became a genuine plummet. There was little time to react. He grabbed for the steering handles, dropping his monocle in his haste. With just a few feet to spare, he steered into the wind, in an effort to kill some of his forward speed. The round chute turned at an agonizingly slow rate. In the same instant that he finished the turn, the impact of landing came.

When his feet met the ground, Nick was disappointed to find that the surface did not give way. He hit packed soil rather than a soft dune. Instinctively, he twisted so that he would not tumble directly forward, and he let his body collapse in stages, transferring the energy of the landing. Then he felt the pull of the chute, billowing behind him like a giant flag for any would-be captors. He quickly unhooked one riser, robbing the chute of its air and forcing it to collapse, and then rolled over to a prone position and reeled in the silk mass. Only then did he cautiously raise himself to a crouch to take stock of his situation.

Nick had landed in a small depression, with the terrain rising around him on all sides, providing natural cover. “Thank you, God,” he whispered, looking up at the dark desert sky. Still, there was the chance that someone had seen his descent and was already on the way to capture him. He edged up the north side of the depression and found that he was only a stone's throw from the target compound.

The desert rose gradually from the compound to the crest of Nick's depression, so that he had an elevated view of the enemy activity. There were no lights, but he could see well enough to note that no one was concerned with hunting a downed pilot. Whatever they deemed the crackling sound of Dream Catcher's destruction to be, their primary concern now was evacuating the V.I.P.s.

Headlights flashed on. A black Mercedes, bracketed in front and back by tan Jeeps, raced out of the compound. Saddam and his soldiers made their escape. The terrorists were not quite as fast. Another sedan sat next to the target building, but it was still empty. Tariq al-Majid was still on the premises.

A man in olive drab fatigues jumped into the front of the sedan and started the engine while others ran back and forth from the building to toss bags into the backs of three pickup trucks.

Nick had no time for a lengthy decision process, no time to make a list of pros and cons or risks and rewards. A very simple string of logic flashed through his mind. The secondary target had already left the compound in the Mercedes and the primary would leave momentarily. The Nighthawks were still several minutes away, if not more. From that point on, his motivation was simple: Do not allow the primary to escape. It was his only driving thought.

After shedding his parachute harness, Nick grabbed his survival kit and vaulted out of the depression. He had planned to run down the hill and dive for cover behind the waist-high wall surrounding the compound. In his haste, however, he missed his footing and ingloriously tumbled down the hill instead, rolling to a crumpled heap at the base of the wall. So much for his 007 moment.

Nick cursed his own clumsiness and peeked over the wall. No one looked his way. The noise of the vehicle engines had masked the sound of his fall. He was very close to the last pickup in the line. Its bed was filled with two rows of crates, covered by a tarp, with a gap between the rows that might be just large enough.

As soon as he saw a break in the activity, Nick leapt over the wall and ran to the pickup, keeping his body low, coming to a stop behind the closest rear tire. He froze there, half expecting an alarm to sound and bullets to fly, but still no one reacted to his presence. His heart pounded as if it would burst from his chest. He made a quick check beneath the chassis, looking for telltale boots on the other side of the truck, then crawled around to the back and eased into the bed between the crates.

He had barely reached the front of the bed when an unseen hand slammed the tailgate closed. His view was cut to nothing but a slit of dim light—the back wall of the compound, illuminated by the truck's taillights.

Several moments of agonizing stillness passed. The truck remained stationary.
Time to go, guys
, he thought. Nick wondered if he had just committed suicide. He thought the terrorists were escaping, but now they were just sitting there, and the Nighthawks would not be far away.

Oso and his crew sat in the chow tent, eating a late snack and discussing trivialities. At the next table, a motley crew of HH-60G helicopter pilots and pararescuemen did much the same. The idea that any of them might be called upon to conduct a search and rescue mission seemed little more than a passing fancy.

Oso studied his hot dog, smothered in chili and cheese. The toppings were more a matter of aesthetics than taste. He stared at his snack and tried to imagine a nice juicy bratwurst buried under all that chili, rather than what he knew it to be. He'd seen the boxes of raw hot dogs sitting outside the chow tents that morning, baking in the sun. They were clearly marked
GRADE
D
MEAT
,
INSTITUTIONAL
USE
ONLY
. Nothing but the best for the troops in the field.

Just as Oso brought the snack to his lips, his radio squawked, causing him to spill a big glob of chili on his leg.

“Alert Five, Alert Five: scramble, scramble, scramble. Alert Five, Alert Five: scramble, scramble, scramble. This is not an exercise; I repeat, this is not an exercise. Respond, over.”

He dropped his hot dog onto the foam plate and scooped up the brick. “Control, this is Alert Five. My crew are all with me and we're moving now.” He turned to the other three, who were already on their feet. “We're on, boys.”

*   *   *

Once they were suited up, the four A-10 pilots and the HH-60 crew reported to the Rescue Coordination Center—commonly called the Rock—which was the central hub for search and rescue operations in the Iraqi theater. The glorified double-wide trailer had so many cables and hoses streaming from its sides that the gaggle of men had difficulty getting to the door without tripping.

“Watch those cables, boys,” said Tank. “Trip over the wrong one and you might unplug the war.”

Inside the Rock, the cables led to a number of workstations. Aside from stations for the A-10s and the helicopters, there were stations for the C-130s, the F-16s, the AWACS, and Intelligence—all the assets that came into play during a combat rescue. Oso noted with some concern that most of them were empty. “Where is everybody?”

“You're it, sir.” A red-haired, freckle-faced enlisted man emerged from the cubicle labeled
INTELLIGENCE
.

“McBride?”

Airman Will McBride smiled at his former weapons officer. “Small air force, eh, boss?”

“Not really. It's a war. Everybody's here.” Oso waved a hand at the room. “And yet the Rock is empty. McBride, where're the rest of my support assets?”

McBride glanced around the empty space and shrugged. “There are none. You'll have no Herc or AWACS support for this mission. The Vipers have been blackballed as well. My orders say this rescue op is low key, off the books.”

Tank mirrored Oso's incredulous look. “You can't run a rescue op into an air defense net like Iraq's with just choppers and Hogs. Are they out of their minds up at the CAOC?”

“They might be,” McBride answered dryly, “but my orders didn't come from the combined air operations center; they came via data burst from an outside source identifying itself as Lighthouse. I confirmed the authorization code as level seven. His orders carry the weight of a Joint Chief, if not the president himself.”

Tank stared blankly at the enlisted man, stunned into silence. Oso, however, had not yet lost his tongue. “I don't care if the order came from the Pope. Without Wild Weasels or Command and Control, we'll be sitting ducks for their long-range air defenses. If we run into any SAMs out there, this rescue could turn into a Greek tragedy.”

McBride was unemotional in his response. “You're preaching to the choir, sir, but both our hands are tied. I can only guess that the people running this operation are trying to limit its exposure. On the not-so-bright side, the whole argument may be academic. Right now we don't even know if we
have
a survivor to rescue, and your orders from Lighthouse are to remain grounded until he gets confirmation of a live soul.”

“I don't like this,” said Oso, still frowning. “This whole situation is weird.”

McBride shook his head. “If you think it's weird so far, then the ISOPREP is going to blow your mind.” He handed Oso a thin folder of papers. The cover was stamped
ISOPREP
, for isolated personnel report, the basic identification and authentication information used when a pilot goes down behind enemy lines. “This ISOPREP came with the caveat that it is top-secret, need-to-know information. You and I are the only people in the room who've been granted access.”

Oso took a step back from the other pilots and cracked open the folder to get a look at the man he was supposed to rescue. He couldn't believe his eyes.

*   *   *

Merlin lit up his forward-looking infrared and waited for the image to stabilize. He centered his screen on the target coordinates and was not happy with what he saw. “No activity, Two,” he said, his voice filled with frustration. “There are just a few cold vehicles. It looks like the targets have already bugged out.”

“Copy, Shadow One. I'll . . . Wait a sec.” The tenor of Shadow Two's voice rose with excitement. “I think I've got something.”

“Call it out, Two.”

“Four vehicles moving south on a road that runs next to the compound—a sedan and three trucks. Could be our guys.”

Merlin allowed himself a thin hope for success. “Keep them locked up. You're cleared to maneuver as necessary to stay with them. I'll keep out of your way while I talk to Lighthouse.” He typed hurriedly into the SATCOM unit.

NO ACTIVITY AT TARGET

HAVE FIX ON CONVOY MOVING SOUTH

REQUEST CLEARANCE TO STRIKE

Walker's response came almost immediately.

CONFIRM THAT COMPOUND IS CONVOY'S ORIGIN

Merlin keyed his transmitter. “Shadow Two, did you actually see those vehicles leave the compound?”

“Negative, One. But where else would they have come from?”

“Stand by. Stay with them.” Merlin glanced back down at the SATCOM message and sighed. He knew at least one of his targets would be in that sedan. But in a war crimes trial, he would not be able to support that claim. He typed a new message.

CANNOT CONFIRM

This time, there was no immediate response.

Merlin continued preparing for the attack. He would focus on his own job and let Walker struggle with the laws of armed conflict. He used his FLIR to follow the road south until he saw the same set of vehicles that his wingman had found. There was nothing inherently sinister about them, no great sign that said
TERRORIST
H
ERE
,
DROP
BOMBS
NOW
, but it had to be them—otherwise the convoy's presence here was an uncanny coincidence. Besides, very few people drove sedans that nice in Iraq. He glanced at his SATCOM again. Still no response. Why was the colonel taking so long to answer? “Shadow Two, this is Shadow One.”

“Go ahead, One.”

“I'm at your six with the vehicles in my FLIR. I'm still waiting for the go-ahead, but I want to be prepared. Call ready for an attack brief.”

The wingman did not hesitate. “Shadow Two is ready.”

“Copy that. This will be a shooter-shooter attack, one bomb each, simultaneous. The convoy is pretty tight so I'll target the lead vehicle and you take guy at the back. We'll use our second bombs for cleanup if necessary. Any questions?”

“Negative.”

Merlin locked up the sedan. Those were lightweight vehicles down there. One two-thousand-pound bomb could easily kill every man in the convoy, but a simultaneous hit by his wingman would leave nothing to chance. His finger hovered over the pickle switch; all he needed was the word from Lighthouse.

Then it came.

DO NOT STRIKE CONVOY

CONTINUE TO COMPOUND

STRIKE ORIGINAL COORDINATES

Merlin slowly moved his finger away from the switch. “Shadow Two, abort, abort, abort,” he called into the radio.

Like Merlin, Shadow Two's finger had been hovering over the pickle button. Tension had filled his body as he waited for Merlin's familiar voice to give him the execute command. He had not considered the moral and legal dilemma that weighed upon the two senior officers. The strike was briefed. The go-ahead would soon be given. All he needed was a word—the only word he expected to hear. And it certainly wasn't
Abort
.

By the time Merlin said
Two
, his wingman had already mashed down the button. His error sent a single two-thousand-pound bomb hurtling toward the last pickup truck in the convoy.

“I jumped the gun!” Shadow Two shouted into his radio. “I released a weapon. I repeat. I have one weapon away!”

Merlin had no time to be angry. “Shadow Two, shift your crosshairs one-half mile west of the convoy, into the open desert,” he ordered. “Do it slowly, or the bomb will lose the laser and go ballistic.”

Shadow Two obeyed, and the two-thousand-pound weapon did its best to follow orders, but its tiny flight controls could not steer its bulk as far away from the vehicles as Merlin hoped. With five seconds to impact, the seeker lost sight of the laser and the flight controls locked in the streamlined position. The errant weapon impacted the sand barely five hundred feet west of the road.

When the bomb hit, the sedan and two of the pickups had just passed behind a large berm next to the road. The elevated terrain shielded them from the bomb's effects and they received little more than a jolt and a shower of sand. However, the last truck did not benefit from the berm's protection.

The pressure wave blew the pickup sideways across the road until it hit the lip at the asphalt's edge, forcing it into a snap roll. It made a single revolution in the air, throwing all its cargo from the bed, and then its right rear fender caught the sand, slamming it to the earth again.

Watching the other vehicles continue to speed down the road, Merlin let out a bitter laugh. Whether they were Saddam's people or Al-Majid's, their only thoughts were of self-preservation. Some American pilot was trying to kill them, and they would not help their comrades if it meant waiting around for the pilot's aim to get better.

“I didn't kill anyone!” exclaimed the wingman as two men slowly dragged themselves out of the pickup's cab. “Everyone seems to be okay.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. “Phenomenal, Two. But whether you killed anyone or not, chances are you just flipped the ‘on' switch for the air defense system, and Lighthouse says we still have to strike that compound. Turn north and let's get this over with.”

As they pressed toward the target, the sky lit up with antiaircraft artillery tracers, proving Merlin right. He steadied himself with the knowledge that none of the enemy operators had any clue as to the Nighthawks' actual positions. Of course, there was always the chance of a Golden BB. “Wouldn't that just cap the evening off nicely,” he muttered.

They reached the target a few minutes later. With the original compound back in his FLIR, Merlin placed his crosshairs on the center of the southeast building. It still appeared devoid of activity. Almost halfheartedly, he released both weapons and turned back to the south, looking over his shoulder as Shadow Two lobbed his remaining bomb at the same coordinates.

If nothing else, the near simultaneous explosions formed an awe-inspiring display. A lucky cameraman from CNN happened to catch the fireworks while filming the antiaircraft tracers—the first explosions of the war to be caught on camera. The footage was spectacular.