Collateral Damage, page 33
“I have the one to the north, that one leading on the road,” said Turk. “You can have the rest.”
“Roger, Tigershark, we copy. We’re going to take the others.”
“Copy.”
Turk swung north to line up his shot. As he did, the RWR began to sound—the MiGs that were supposed to be intercepted by the French planes had turned in his direction. But it wasn’t him they were targeting; it was the A–10s.
Danny Freah took a long, slow breath, ignoring the cacophony of protests in his headset. He leaned forward between the two Osprey pilots, trying to spot the trucks in the distance.
“I’m being told to turn back north,” the pilot told him. “The air commander is trying to reach you.”
“You’re under my direct orders,” Danny told him calmly. “You have no responsibility.”
“Sir, I’m going to save our guys, too. Screw everything else.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“We have more vehicles coming up the road,” he told Danny. “Looks like a scout car, and a couple of pickups. Those pickups usually have fifty cals on the back. I’d like to engage them.”
Even without the allied order to stand down and avoid combat, engaging the vehicles was highly questionable. They had not fired at either the Osprey or Rubeo, and in fact had done nothing overtly threatening. But the situation now was simply too chaotic, and their mere presence was a threat. The Osprey couldn’t land close to a fifty caliber, let alone three of them.
“Fire some warning shots and see if they stop,” Danny told the pilot.
“If they don’t?”
“Then splash them.”
Rubeo heard the roar of the Osprey’s engines in the distance, but the shells were still raining down, passing overhead. He guessed they were being aimed at the road, but that was hardly a consolation—any second now he expected one to land short and wipe them out.
“I can’t carry you,” he told Kharon.
“Leave me!”
“That’s not what I meant. Come on.” Rubeo hooked his arms under the other man’s shoulder’s. “I have to get you on the bot.”
Kharon screamed in anguish. Rubeo hesitated, but the whistle of another shell going overhead convinced him to continue. He half lifted, half dragged Kharon to the nearby bot, cringing as the younger man howled in pain.
“We’re getting out of here,” Rubeo told him, putting him down as gently as he could manage on the rear bed of the bot. Kharon twisted, grabbing hold of the spar.
“Diomedes, follow me,” Rubeo told the bot, starting out of the small hollow where he’d taken shelter.
He’d taken exactly three steps when he felt himself pushed from behind, thrown forward by a force he couldn’t fathom.
22
Over Libya
Turk zeroed his gun on the tank and fired six bursts, the bolts leaping from the gun in a sharp, staccato rhythm that seemed to suspend the Tigershark in midair. The line of his bullets was tighter this time, and there was no escape for the men inside—the first slug ignited one of the tank’s shells, and secondary explosions ripped through the tight quarters of the armored vehicle, mincing its occupants. The rest of the bullets simply sliced through the fireballs.
As soon as he let off the trigger, Turk turned his attention to the MiGs. They had separated into two groups, one duo diverting toward the French interceptors and the other coming at the Hogs.
The A–10s were easy targets for the MiGs, but to their credit they remained in their attack patterns, closing in on the tanks.
“Shooter, I’m on those MiGs,” Turk told Ginella. “I have them.”
“We appreciate it.”
There was a launch warning—the MiGs were firing.
“Four missiles,” reported the computer. “AA–10 Alamo. Semiactive radar.”
“Plot an intercept to missiles,” said Turk. He could line up and shoot at the missiles with the rail gun.
“Impossible to intercept all four.”
“Best solution.”
A plot flashed up on the screen.
Three targets. Two were heading for Ginella’s aircraft, Shooter One. The other was going for Beast in Shooter Three.
“Identify target of remaining missile,” Turk said.
“Missile is targeted at Shooter Four.”
Li’s plane, on Ginella’s wing.
“Recalculate to include missile targeting Shooter Four.”
The computer presented a new solution, striking one of the missiles on Ginella as well as Li’s sole missile. But Beast was completely unprotected. Before Turk could decide what to do, four more missiles launched. The computer began running a variety of solutions, but Turk realized that none were going to completely protect the Hogs.
“Choose Solution One,” he said, moving to the course queue as it snapped into his heads-up. “Shooter squadron, you have missiles inbound.”
“We’re aware of that, Tigershark.”
“I can get some, not all.”
“Whatever you can do for us,” said Ginella. Her voice was cold and flat, without effect. “Tanks will be down in a second.”
23
Libya
Danny Freah grabbed for a handhold as the Osprey pirouetted above the road, the chain gun in its nose tearing up the road in front of the approaching vehicles. The two trucks veered off to the side but the armored car kept moving forward.
“Stop the bastard,” said Danny.
The Osprey spun back quickly. The gun under its chin swiveled, and a steady rat-rat-rat followed. Danny leaned forward, watching through the windscreen as the gun’s bullets chewed through the rear quarter of the lightly armored vehicle. Steam shot up from the armored car. The right rear wheel seemed to fall away, sliding from the cloud of smoke and disintegrating metal. The rest of the vehicle morphed into a red oblong, fire consuming it in an unnaturally symmetrical shape. The red flared, then changed to black as the symmetry dissolved in a rage.
“People on the ground, coming up along the road,” said the copilot.
“Where are our guys?” asked Danny.
“Going for them now.”
Rubeo fell face-first into the side of the hill. His face felt as if it had caught fire and had been ripped downward at the same time; his head pounded with pain. He pushed back with his hand, then fell to the side, exhausted and spent.
What had Bastian’s advice been? What was his old colonel telling him?
Find out why it happened. For yourself.
He’d done that—Kharon had caused it, with the help of the Russians. He’d closed the circle of a crime committed years before. A crime Rubeo knew he had been completely innocent of, yet one he’d always felt guilty about.
How did he benefit from knowing that?
He should feel relief knowing he wasn’t responsible for the accident, and more important, for the civilian deaths. And yet he didn’t. He should feel horror at Kharon’s crime—he’d committed murder. Anger. Rage. But all he felt was pity, pity and sorrow. Useless emotions.
Was that what knowledge brought you? Impotent sadness?
The man who had built his life around the idea that intelligence could solve every problem lay in the dirt and rubble, body battered and exhausted. He knew many things, but what he knew most of all now was pain.
Up, he told himself. Up.
You know what happened. And what of it? Knowledge itself is useless. It’s how it’s put to use, if it can be used at all.
Diomedes idled behind him. He could feel the soft vibration of its engine.
Time to get up. Time to move on.
“Follow me,” he said, starting to move on his hands and knees.
The bot moved behind him, carrying Kharon and nipping at Rubeo’s heels.
His ears pounded. Rubeo realized belatedly that he couldn’t hear properly. The ground vibrated with something, but whether it was far or close, he had no idea.
Gradually his strength returned. He pushed up to his knees, then to his feet, walking unsteadily up the slope. The world had shaded yellow, blurring at the edges. Rubeo pushed himself forward, trudging across the side of a hill, then down to his right, in the direction of the road. The loose dirt and sand moved under the soles of his feet, and he felt himself sliding. He began to glide down the hill, legs bent slightly and arms out for balance; a snowboarder couldn’t have done it better.
The bot followed. Rubeo glanced at it, making sure Kharon was still on the back. Then he began moving parallel to the road. He passed the disabled trucks, continuing toward a flat area he remembered from earlier.
Kharon’s leg had gone numb, but he actually felt better. The shock had passed; his head was clear. He felt stronger—still injured, of course, but no longer paralyzed.
He clung to the crane arm of the bot as they rumbled across the terrain, the vehicle bobbing and weaving like a canoe shooting rapids. It settled somewhat as it moved off the hill onto the level shoulder alongside the road.
An Osprey, black and loud, approached from the south. Kharon stared as it grew larger. His eyes, irritated by the grit in the wind, seemed to burn with the image. The ground shook. The wings seemed to move upward, the control surfaces sliding down as the rotors at the tips tilted. Dirt flew everywhere.
The world began to close around him, becoming dark. He was a child, trapped in the closet, waiting for something that would never happen.
All these years, and he had never really moved beyond those long, terrible moments. Everything he had done, his achievements, his studies, paled compared to that dreadful time. Life had failed to lift him beyond the sinkhole he’d crawled into that night.
Such a failure. Such a waste. Even the one thing I lived for, revenge, proved unreachable. Rubeo wasn’t even the culprit. Rubeo wasn’t even the villain. The people who helped me were. They probably knew it from the start.
Nothing is left.
Danny moved to the door as the Osprey started to settle toward the earth. Boston was already there, gun in hand, ready to leap out. They had to move quickly; the Osprey was extremely vulnerable when landing and taking off.
Not to mention on the ground.
Something shrieked. The aircraft jerked upward.
“Incoming shells,” said the pilot over the interphone. “Evading—hang on.”
Rubeo saw the aircraft as it swept overhead. Dirt swirled from the wash of the propellers spinning. He put his head down, shielding it with his hands.
“Into the aircraft,” he said, speaking into the microphone for the bot. He still couldn’t hear; his voice in his head sounded hollow and strange. “Go to the ramp at the rear.”
The wind increased. Rubeo bent almost double and stopped moving forward. All he had to do now was wait.
They were out of this damn hellhole.
Diomedes poked him in the back. Rubeo turned, then fell as the wind peaked. He rolled onto his back, eyes and face covered by his hands. He spread his fingers hesitantly, then saw something black fleeing above.
The Osprey was scooting away.
“What the hell?” he yelled in anguish.
The ground shook. Rubeo jerked back to his feet and began shouting at the aircraft. A geyser of sand and dirt rose from the road about a hundred yards away.
“We’re being fired at,” Rubeo yelled to Kharon. He turned and saw Diomedes, which had stopped about twenty yards away, waiting in the spot where the Osprey would have landed. A fresh geyser rose just beyond the bot.
The explosions were smaller than before—a mortar or maybe two or three.
“This way,” Rubeo told the bot. He fingered the microphone cord and started south. The bot quickly followed. He heard something, a growl in the air—his hearing was returning.
“Mortar team behind those two trucks,” the pilot told Danny.
“Eliminate it.”
“With pleasure.”
The Osprey’s tail rose, tilting the gun in its nose toward the trucks. A chain of bullets began spitting from the aircraft, chewing the ground just behind the vehicle. The Osprey danced right. The bullets disappeared in a stream of debris. A cloud rose where they landed, growing quickly until it mushroomed over the trucks and everything within fifty yards.
The mortar fire stopped. But there were more vehicles coming out from the city. And the people who had come from the village were gathering along the road about two miles away. Whiplash had blundered into the middle of an uprising—troops who had deserted earlier interpreted the military action as an attack from the loyal troops, and were coming out to fight. The government forces, meanwhile, had seen the action as a rebel attack. And in the middle was the scientist they were trying to rescue.
“Colonel, the air commander is reporting that there’s activity at that army base to the west,” said the Osprey pilot. “This place is getting damn busy.”
“I thought these bastards were negotiating a cease-fire,” cursed Danny.
24
Tripoli
The defense minister’s aide leaned over and whispered something in his boss’s ear. The two spoke quickly.
“I have a report that I must hear,” the minister told Zongchen and the others. “There is a confrontation—American aircraft are involved.”
“Which American aircraft?” asked Zen.
“Several. A black aircraft like a helicopter. And A–10 fighters—”
“You mean an Osprey?” said Zen.
“There is a major fight with rebels,” said the minister. “A rebellion in Mizdah. I must take this call.”
The aide handed him a phone. Zongchen looked at Zen.
“Excuse me a second.” Zen wheeled backward from the table. There was only one unit operating a black Osprey in Libya—Whiplash. He took out his satellite phone, hesitated a moment, then hit the quick dial for Danny.
Instead of getting Danny directly, the call was rerouted through the Whiplash system to a desk operative at Whiplash’s headquarters in the U.S. on the CIA campus. The officer was assigned to monitor and assist Danny and the team during operations; he was in effect a secretary, though no one would ever call him that. “Colonel Freah’s line.”
“This is Zen Stockard. I need to talk to Danny right now.”
“Senator, he is in Libya right now, in the middle of a firefight.”
“I know exactly where he is. I have battle information for him,” said Zen.
“Stand by, Senator.”
The line cleared, seemingly empty. Then Danny came on, as loud and clear as if he were in the same room.
“Zen, we’re in the middle of heavy shit here. Rubeo is on the ground and we’re trying to get to him. I got government and rebel forces on both sides.”
“I have the Libyan government minister here. I’m going to get a cease-fire.”
“That would be damn timely.”
“Give me your location. Then keep the line to me open if you can.”
“Near Mizdah.”
Zen put the phone in his lap and wheeled back to the table.
“If you want a negotiated peace,” he told the minister loudly, “call your forces off the Osprey at Mizdah they’re telling you about.”
Zen turned to Zongchen. “We need to tell the princess to get her people down there to stop as well.”
25
Libya
The Osprey roared overhead. Rubeo could hear almost perfectly now—the engines sounded like a pair of diesel trucks that had lost their mufflers.
The aircraft circled around, checking the nearby terrain as it came down to land.
“Follow,” Rubeo told Diomedes. He looked at Kharon, still gripping the crane spar. Kharon looked haunted, shocked into another dimension. “It’ll be all right,” Rubeo yelled at him. “We’re getting out this time.”
The aircraft settled down thirty yards away. Troopers leapt from the door at the side. Rubeo tried to run toward them but his legs wouldn’t carry him any faster than a walk.
Someone grabbed him. It was Sergeant Rockland—Boston.
“Come on, Doc,” yelled the sergeant, hooking his arm around so he supported Rubeo on one side. “Let’s get you the hell out of here.”
“The bot.”
“Yeah, yeah, the mechanical marvel.”
“Kharon, get Kharon.”
“We’re getting him,” said Boston. “Let’s go, let’s go. There are all sorts of people heading this way.”
Kharon curled his body down as the wind swirled around him and the robot rolled to the rear of the Osprey. One of the troopers ran beside him, gave him a thumbs-up, then turned and waved his gun back and forth, making sure there was no one there.
God, help me.
The bot continued inside the hull of the aircraft, moving forward. The side door was open, a trooper leaning through the open space, a safety belt holding him as the aircraft pitched upward. Kharon was a foot or two away.
The roar began to quiet. For a moment Kharon felt safe, untouchable. But then he noticed the darkness around him, the walls close by.
The closet.
Someone was yelling outside.
“Neil! Neil!”
His mother.
Kharon unfolded his fingers and then his arm. He took a tentative step. Someone grabbed for him. He pushed away.
Leave me alone!
Leave me!
“Neil!”
The sides closed in. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to be smothered.
The door was open in front of him.
With all his strength, he leapt for safety, ignoring the surge of pain in his leg, ignoring all the pain, ducking his head and driving ahead for the light.
By the time Rubeo realized what Kharon was doing it was too late. The Whiplash trooper at the door dove at him, but Kharon moved too fast: He leapt through the open hatchway at the side of the aircraft, tumbling down some one hundred feet to the rocks.
