She dialed her phone.
64
Elayne had considered jumping on the M2 highway and bolting toward Russian territory. But an M-ATV topped out at a hundred kilometers an hour.
She’d seen Holly clear as day racing toward the wreck. How many minutes until she was hot on Elayne’s tail? And that truck could crack two hundred kilometers an hour. It was a two-hour drive to Tiyas Military Airbase, the closest Russian stronghold.
Holly might catch her.
While she was thinking, she reached the US al-Tanf garrison. Well, she could hide for a few minutes in plain sight. Not even Holly would think to look for her here.
Maybe even find a room to hide in with Miranda while Holly ran about like a chicken with her head cut off looking for them.
No. Too lame.
Elayne offered the guard a salute at the gate.
He waved her in with no further inspection. Not even checking Betty Glaser’s ID.
The main compound was a small warren of mud-brick buildings. A row of technicals were lined up in the courtyard. If she had a driver, it would be fun to go hunting Holly with one of those. Riding in the truck bed, her hands latched onto the big M2A1 swivel machine gun.
Pop! Pop! Bang! Bang!
Then, as she cruised slowly across the inner compound, through a small gap in the HESCO wall, she saw an adjoining HESCO-ringed courtyard. There she spotted exactly what she needed. It was beyond perfect.
65
Holly didn’t waste time on accusations. She should have thought there was some chance of Elayne coming here. Until this instant, she hadn’t known why Elayne would do so, but now she did. “Lessons learned” were what post-mission debriefs were for.
They were still in the crisis.
Mike and Andi piled into the front seat of the technical—Mike holding Holly’s rifle upright between his knees like it might explode. She really had to teach him to shoot someday.
Taz and Jeremy sat in the back with the M2A1 Browning machine gun.
The first thing she did was circle the debris field a couple hundred meters out from what had once been the Senators’ C-40B transport jet. There was a multitude of tracks to the south in the direction of al-Tanf.
The farther she circled around the crash site, the more she didn’t see any other tracks across the desert.
Nothing west, north…or east.
“Shit! I passed her. That had to be her.”
“What had to be who?” Mike braced an arm against the dashboard as Holly pounded back over the track she’d just traversed from al-Tanf.
“Elayne Kasprak.”
“No way.”
Holly glanced over to see Mike’s expression wasn’t so much disbelief as fear. He knew just how dangerous Elayne was.
“Who?” Andi asked from where she sat between them.
“A Russian operative who just escaped the cage we put her in a year ago. Lethal as an Australian eastern brown snake, crazier than a wombat, and pissed as hell.”
“Why would she target Miranda?”
Holly knew the answer to that one only too well.
Because Elayne knew just how much it would hurt Holly.
66
They were less than half a mile from the garrison’s front gate when a helicopter lifted over the HESCO barrier.
“Holy shit!” Andi’s curse burst forth before she could stop it. She’d never faced this helicopter before, but she knew everything that the US Army knew about it. It had been a part of her training as a pilot for the 160th Night Stalkers, back when she’d still been qualified to fly.
The Mil Mi-28 Havoc was one of the nastiest looking helicopters in the sky.
Painted in the Russian mottled bands of dark green, light green, and gray, it was ten tons of lean, mean, gunship machine. It had a chin-mounted 30 mm cannon. And winglets to either side, which sported four rocket pods. Each side had an eight-pack of S-8 rockets capable of delivering three inches of hell up to two miles away, and the five-slot S-13 rockets were five inches across and punched three times the explosive charge—enough to really destroy a building’s day.
It was built to instill terror—and to destroy anything in its path.
It swooped so low that she cringed out of the way, sure it was going to fire at them. At the very last second it waggled from side to side in a friendly wave.
“Bitch!” was Holly’s curse as she kept the M-ATV racing back to the garrison.
“Who—”
“Elayne Kasprak. And we can be sure she has Miranda.”
Andi twisted around to see the helicopter racing away to the north.
“What is a Russian helicopter doing here?”
“Damn good question.”
She blew through the barrier.
The guard had it only part way raised, so it smashed in the windshield, but still Holly didn’t slow. Instead, she leaned her head out the driver’s side window and raced through the compound. Soldiers scattered to either side.
Andi looked back. Some raised their weapons.
But it was clearly marked as one of their vehicles with no one standing at the rear machine gun, so they weren’t sure if it was an attack or not.
Andi glanced out the back window.
Jeremy and Taz weren’t cringing out of sight, they were waving. Definitely Taz’s style to confuse.
“Someone really needs to teach these guys about security,” Holly muttered as she charged through a narrow gap.
An AH-64D Apache attack helicopter was being prepped for flight.
Holly skidded to a stop that almost sent Andi flying through the barrier-shattered windshield.
“Can you fly one of those?”
“Sure. I mean I’m not certified on it, but Night Stalkers train to fly almost any—”
Holly grabbed her shoulder and dragged her out of the truck.
“Hey, Holly, they have real Apache pilots here.” Andi tried digging in her heels to no avail; Holly kept dragging her forward.
“Not ones I can trust.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a pilot stepped in front of them.
“See?” Andi waved a hand but Holly didn’t stop.
The pilot pushed against Holly’s shoulder to stop her. “We’re preparing for a flight here. You need to stay back. Someone has just stolen a military helicopter.”
“A Russian Mi-28 Havoc. Why was it here?” Andi figured it was best to keep him talking.
“It was delivered by a defector. We were holding it here pending the visit by the Congressional team; the one that crashed in the desert early this morning.” He had the decency to look both sad and angry for a moment.
“And who took—”
“Mike!” Holly interrupted her as she called out over her shoulder.
He lofted the Desert Tech MDR rifle to her.
She caught it by the grip one-handed and swung the barrel to press against the center of the pilot’s chest.
“Our flight, mate. Give her your helmet and back the fuck off.”
He did, then stumbled backward until he ran into the copilot and mechanic. They must have realized they were the only ones in the helicopter yard close enough to stop them. The three men gathered together, looking ready to draw weapons and charge.
There was a loud clack-clack from the back of the Toyota Tundra.
Taz had just racked the slide on the big .50 cal Browning machine gun mounted there. She aimed it at the ground in front of the flight team.
“You might want to think twice about getting in the way. This is a President-sanctioned codeword-classified operation.”
The men cowered.
Holly half glanced at her, “You think I can trust any of them to fly right into a Russian airbase if necessary?”
Andi didn’t hesitate any longer. She slid into the back seat of the Apache. The two positions were arranged for the weapons officer to sit low and forward, having the best view for weapon’s deployment and navigation. The pilot’s seat was behind and raised high enough for a clear view over the
weapons officer’s head.
Holly said something to Taz, then Andi didn’t waste any more time looking.
She’d only flown a helo once in the nine months since Ken’s death, and this was an unfamiliar cockpit.
But a helicopter was a helicopter, and she soon had the turbine whining on the starter and the four-blade main rotor whooping slowly around overhead.
By training, a Night Stalker pilot could start with a cold helo and be airborne in three minutes.
Andi cut some corners and was ready in two.
Holly climbed into the front seat and yanked on a helmet.
As soon as the intercom was live, Holly was shouting, “Go! Go! Go!”
Andi went.
67
It was a forty-five-minute flight to the Russian airbase at Tiyas and Elayne could only hope that she lived through it. Yes, Zaslon training included basic fixed-wing and rotorcraft flight practice—but very basic on rotorcraft.
Aircraft had always been one of her specialties. Because her father had been a submarine engineer for the Russian Navy, he’d taught her more about mechanics than any classroom could.
Zaslon had honed that for sabotage and attack of foreign military aircraft, but she rarely flew herself.
And definitely not in a highly responsive military aircraft like the Havoc.
It was so twitchy that a moment’s inattention had her skewing across the sky, stall warning buzzers bleating at her.
She’d almost crashed when she’d overflown the Toyota pickup that must be Holly and Miranda’s team. She tried desperately to fire a gun, a rocket, anything at them. Instead, she’d almost piled into the desert to make a fourth crash.
Such a pretty picture: an Airbus at Johnston Atoll, the Senators in the Syrian Desert, and the Falcon.
And that boy bleeding out in his full gear beside his dead girlfriend.
Though it would be better if she didn’t make another hole in the desert herself.
Focus, Elayne.
You’re Zaslon. You’ve got this, baby sister.
Thanks, John.
Together they’d ride their horses rough-shod over the West.
She laughed aloud. The West. The Wild West. Oh yeah, she and John Wayne had this wired.
They hadn’t even had a guard in the helo yard. Granted it was an airless, sunbaked hole, trapped behind double-height HESCO barriers, but there should have been some sort of a decent shootout Stagecoach style.
They came out of the woodwork like angry bees once she was aloft, but a Havoc was armored against small round ammunition. It was also fast.
Once she had better control of the Havoc, going after Holly and the others was tempting, but that big machine gun mounted on the back of the pickup made her decide against it.
Besides, now she was making good progress across the desert—far faster than she could have driven.
She had Miranda Chase, still drugged out in the forward weapons position.
Maybe she’d do Miranda good—then send a video to Holly wrapped in birthday paper.
Elayne started to laugh.
Oh, yes!
That would be perfect!
So perfect!
Or maybe let her live and send a whole series. Then all she’d have to do was let slip where Miranda was stashed. Holly had proven that it wouldn’t matter. Even if it was in a closed city in the heart of Russia, Holly would come for her.
Even better than perfect!
And Elayne would be waiting.
68
Miranda struggled up against the familiar feel of drugs.
There were numerous periods when she was young and having an autistic episode that she’d been dosed with one sedative or another. Tante Daniels tapered her off those when she’d become Miranda’s caretaker, but the feeling was familiar.
It wasn’t some smooth emergence from a cocoon of safety that her parents seemed to think.
It was a scary, blurred journey rising through panic of a world gone mad.
Every perception blurred.
Every sound wrong.
Often, the metal taste of blood in her throat where she’d bitten her tongue or the inside of her cheek.
She’d eventually learned that the feeling passed, but she had to ride it out.
This time, she was in a seat.
The firm pressure of a five-point harness comforting.
The tape on her wrists was less so.
Sound.
The beat of rotors.
A helicopter.
Five blades. With an unfamiliar turbine. No matter how she listened, she couldn’t make sense of the engine noise.
Somewhere, the unfamiliar sound of shrill laughter.
Her eyelids seemed to weigh a ton as she dragged them open.
Open enough to see the sky terrifyingly close in front of her. She was out at the very foremost point of the helicopter with a clear cockpit wrapped close around her.
The cockpit was…Russian.
Tandem fore-and-aft seating. The Russians only made three of them that way.
The rotors overhead weren’t coaxial, so not a Kamov Ka-52 Alligator.
Two of them.
And a Mil-24 Hind was far larger with rounded cockpit glass.
One left.
How had she come to be in a Mil Mi-28 Havoc?
She managed to twist around enough to look at the pilot over her shoulder.
The helmet covered the upper part of her face, but Miranda tried never to look there—eyes were very confusing to look at.
But she recognized the chin even without the clue of the white-blonde curl of hair sticking out the edge of the helmet. The woman was smiling at her in a way that…that…reminded her of a dog about to bite.
Elayne Kasprak.
Miranda turned forward again. She’d been fairly sure that even if Holly hadn’t killed her after the Condor mission that she’d arranged to have Clarissa Reese do it for her.
It had taken Miranda a long time to come to terms with that thought of Holly being a killer. She knew Holly had done that when she was a part of the Australian Army. But that was different from being a member of Miranda’s NTSB investigation team.
Apparently that worrying had been a wasted effort as Elayne wasn’t dead.
Though listening to Elayne Kasprak’s cackles of delight, perhaps it might have been a good thing if Holly hadn’t resisted.
Elayne also wasn’t a particularly good pilot.
Miranda looked out at the barren desert of central Syria and began calculating her odds of survival.
The numbers were not encouraging.
69
“There!” Holly shouted.
The blast nearly took out Andi’s eardrums. “I can hear you just fine, Holly. It’s called an intercom.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do we get her down?”
“Without killing Miranda? No idea. All I have are guns and rockets.” And she was totally helpless. She could drop the racing Havoc in a second, well, actually closer to three at this distance.
Until this moment, her main worry had been catching Elayne before she reached the Russian base. The Havoc had a sixteen-kilometer-per-hour speed advantage over her Apache. But Elayne was an inexperienced pilot and Andi had been trained on how to milk every meter per second out of a rotorcraft.
They now had just twenty kilometers to force her down—only a matter of minutes.
Actually, less than that. There were two low ridges close ahead. Past those, the Russian base’s radar would have a clear view of them, as would their weapons.
“She’ll start climbing any second, Holly. Do something fast.”
Holly started viciously swearing to herself.
“Less swearing, more action.”
“Big help. What if I shoot her engine?”
“No!” Andi shook her head, which was a strangely civilian habit. Gods! No pilot in combat would waste time looking at another pilot. It had been so long since she’d flown.
Was she losing her
edge?
Hell, she’d lost it the day Ken had been blown out of the sky. What was she doing aloft anyway? She couldn’t be trusted to fly. Should she? No. Not anymore. Not since—
“Why not?” Holly demanded.
Andi dragged in a desperate breath. “Because I’m betting…” another dragging breath, “…based on her weak handling skills, that Elayne…has no idea how to do an autorotate landing. She’s all over the sky. Doesn’t even know she should be climbing already.”
“Bugger me with a tree branch.”
“Ouch! I’d rather be shot. Though use a small caliber, please.”
Holly froze in the lower cockpit. Then she slammed against the harness as she tried to turn enough to look back—another real mistake in an Apache. There was barely room to sit, never mind turn.
“You’re brilliant, Andi. Get me alongside her. How do I open one of these windows?” She began poking around the edges of the right-side window in her cockpit.
Andi leaned forward to try and see what Holly was up to.
“No handle.” Holly didn’t hesitate. She pulled out her sidearm and placed it against the glass.
“No, don’t! The glass is bulletproof. You’ll shoot yourself with the ricochet. Miranda told us.”
“Well, hell.”
“Upper left corner of your panel. Canopy Jettison. Twist and punch in.”
Andi had never been aboard when one had been fired. Couldn’t even guess what was going to happen in flight at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
“Helmet visor down firs—”
Her warning was too late.
Holly twisted and punched.
The two glass side panels blew violently outward.
The rotor roar blasted into the cockpit even louder than the wind.
Holly yelled something incomprehensible over the mayhem. Even the intercom couldn’t punch through the noise.
Andi shouted back to show her the problem.
Holly sliced a hand toward the racing Havoc helicopter, then twisted her hand to show them pulling alongside.
Whatever she was up to, Andi hoped to hell that it worked because they were coming up on the ridge far too fast.
Havoc: a political technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 7) Page 21