by Tom Clancy
There was a five-inch-square multipurpose display screen on each side of the central control bank. On these she could choose the TADS, the target acquisition and designation sight, or she could text message with other helos, bring up comms, fuel, and load-out information, or access any of more than 1,500 pages of info in all. A keyboard on the left side of the control bank allowed her to type messages, and even though she wore gloves, she’d gotten as adept at using it as she was at texting on her own cell phone.
Her hands rested on the two video game–like console handholds on either side of her center console, giving her quick access to all her most important controls. She’d been told there were 443 different positions to all the dials, switches, and knobs, and she knew every one of them.
On top of this, she had all the flight controls Oakley had behind her; the cyclic between her knees, the collective by her left knee.
By slaving the weapon to her right eye and looking at the target, she only had to reach down to the cyclic and squeeze the weapon’s release trigger to fire the cannon at whatever she was looking at.
She looked down at the multipurpose screen displaying her target acquisition and designation sight by her right knee, desperately searching for any danger. This gave her access to several cameras in a mobile turret below her. Through the 127-times magnification of the TV camera, she saw an enhanced black-and-white view of whatever she was looking at. Also on the screen she could see crosshairs that showed her where Oakley’s right eye was pointed.
She looked through her thermal view, hoping to pick up human forms in the dark recesses of the bombed-out buildings, but the heat of the day on twisted metal made this a futile task. Sure, they could sit there over the town and she could take her time, but Oak wanted to keep them moving at speed to make it difficult to nail them from below with an RPG, so Carrie Ann just had seconds to scan on any one building, street, or bomb crater.
“Ma’am,” Oakley said, “I’ve got troops, on the road just off our nose. Tucked into the east and west side of the street.”
Davenport looked on the TADS to see Oakley’s crosshairs. She moved her own eye to it and it showed her the 127-times magnification of the street.
There, at least two dozen figures, all with rifles, were shooting at something in a row of buildings to the south.
Oakley increased the magnification. “Chicks. Those are chicks. I didn’t think the Kurdish female soldiers ever got in the fight.”
Davenport said, “The Peshmerga don’t let their females get on the front lines. But YPJ have female units that see combat.”
Oakley asked, “Are we supposed to be helping the YPJ?”
The captain in the front seat just shrugged and said, “We’re helping ourselves if we kill an ISIS sniper. If the Kurdish rebels happen to benefit from our fight, then lucky them.”
“That’s what I like about you, Captain. You can simplify the unsimplifiable.”
“And I like how you make up words, Oak.”
They flew high over the YPJ fighters, who seemed completely pinned down, but even when Oakley circled the entire engagement below counterclockwise, neither he nor Captain Davenport was able to discern any targets. The broken buildings had too many positions from which a sniper could fire, and the recesses were so deep, it would take incredible luck for the Apache above to see anything, even with its TADS.
Oak said, “How about we go down to two thousand. We might get lucky and see somebody popping out to take a shot at us.”
“As low as you need,” came the response.
A minute later they were at 1,200 feet, directly above the YPJ fighters. It appeared even the female rebel unit had stopped receiving fire now, because they just remained hunkered down in groups of three or four along the street.
Oakley said, “Nobody’s shooting at us, or them. Hopefully the YPJ will take the hint and use our presence to back out of here.”
Carrie Ann replied, “Wish we could scare away the bad guys with our presence, but usually they just shoot—”
Just then, a flash came from the third-floor window of a ruined building up the street. While Carrie Ann couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a YPJ fighter, the indicators were good that it was not when the YPJ began firing back and dust kicked up around the concrete window frame.
She slaved her crosshairs to the window. “I’m identifying that as a sniper position. Engaging with cannon.”
A twenty-round burst from the cannon below Carrie Ann’s feet ripped into the window and sent high-explosive thirty-millimeter shells into the sniper’s hide.
The YPJ below cheered, she could see them on her screen, and then they began engaging another dark recess, this one on a building on the east side of the street. Oakley and Davenport both could see the dust and concrete kicking off the hole in the side of the wall.
Oakley said, “They are marking targets for you, ma’am.”
“Got it,” she said. “Engaging.”
She pressed the fire button on her cyclic and sent ten more rounds into the hole. Again the women 1,200 feet below raised their hands and waved at the helo above.
“They’ve got the idea!” Oakley said.
Carrie Ann had trouble getting her shells into a third target, a wrecked building under a collapsed rooftop parking lot. She could even see flashes of sniper fire coming out through the darkness, but whoever was shooting in there must have been a hundred feet or more back under the building, and from her elevation she hadn’t been able to reach the sniper.
She had Oakley descend at the north end of the street, and they set up a rocket run just above rooftop level. He slaved her crosshairs to his, flew a steady heading on her target designation, and picked up speed.
Only five hundred yards from the target, Carrie Ann launched rockets right into the deep, cavelike hide of the sniper. The rockets broke apart a couple hundred yards in front of the Apache, and released 650 flechette rounds, tungsten darts that raced forward into the wreckage and destroyed everything in their path, creating a shock wave that collapsed the rest of the structure.
“Good hit,” Oakley said, and then he pulled the nose of his Apache up and began climbing over the town.
Just on the other side of the buildings to the south of the YPJ, they flew over a medium-sized town-square area, with a mosque at its southern end. Oakley was just about to turn to head back to continue the cover for the YPJ, when Captain Davenport’s voice came over the intercom.
“Shit!” Carrie Ann said. “ZPU!” The ZPU was a 14.5-millimeter Soviet-era antiaircraft weapon that could fire six hundred rounds a minute.
As soon as the words left her mouth, big fast-moving tracer rounds painted the sky in front of them, just over the square.
“Hang on!” Oakley pulled Pyro 1-1 over his right shoulder, lifting it and flipping it, turning the armored belly into the threat. Carrie Ann grabbed the handles above her but still her body was pulled tight in her harness.
While their seats were all but bulletproof from below, anything that hit above shoulder height might get through if it was more powerful than a fifty-caliber round, and both Oakley and Davenport were always aware that a lucky shot on the tail rotor, forty feet behind where Davenport sat over the nose of the aircraft, could send them both spinning to their deaths.
He jinked left and right while he increased speed to 185 knots, and they raced out of the line of sight on the weapon.
They headed north back over the street, and saw the YPJ women were on their feet for the first time since the Apache arrived. They were slowly moving to the south.
Davenport said, “Holy crap, Oak. That was close.”
Oakley confirmed: “Yeah, did you see the gun emplacement?”
“Affirmative. The way it was positioned in that square between all those high buildings around means we’d have to get right on top of it again to take it out. Better we call for a fast mover.�
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Carrie Ann radioed the JOC and requested an aircraft with Hellfires or bombs be sent to destroy the enemy gun emplacement. An F/A-18 could launch from twenty thousand feet, well above the range of the ZPU, while Pyro 1-1 had to fly a few thousand feet directly overhead to see it in the rubble of the town.
While they waited for an answer, Carrie Ann found another two-man ISIS sniper team in her TADS. It was half a block beyond where the YPJ were moving, and Oakley set up a run-in on her targeting point. She fired four rockets, launching thousands of flechette rounds at a half-collapsed building with three levels of dark recesses. This time they banked as soon as they fired, keeping themselves far away from the mosque and the square with the Russian antiair weapon.
On their next pass the camera showed the sniper position, and it was obvious that the two men there had been torn into tiny pieces.
“Delta Hotel,” Oakley said. Direct Hit.
Just then the JOC came back over the net. “Negative on the fast movers, Pyro One-One. No resources available.”
Carrie Ann acknowledged the transmission, then spoke just for the benefit of her cockpit intercom. “These YPJ below us aren’t getting much help.”
“They’re getting us. You know we can leave that ZPU, but that weapon can be fired down a street just as easily as it can be fired at us. Those women will walk into that square within twenty minutes from now, and they will get nailed.”
Carrie Ann thought it over. “Let’s do a run-in from the south, circle the whole town at low level so no spotters can figure out what we’re doing. We can try to hit that gun from behind.”
“Hellfire?”
“Affirm, but we’ll have to get closer than I’d like because I have to laze the weapon.”
“Copy all. It’s going to take four mikes to circle the city. Let’s just hope the YPJ stay put.”
Carrie Ann said, “That’s why I’m not using rockets. Hitting that square from the south will throw flechettes northward up those streets and through any breaks in the buildings. Too much chance of blue on blue.”
They rounded the small town of rubble at an altitude of just two hundred feet, flying as fast as Oak could get his aircraft to go, and with both sets of eyes scanning the sky and the TADS looking for other dangers.
She set up her fire-control system to choose a Hellfire on her right pylon, and she slaved its camera to her MPD by her right knee. For now she just saw the buildings passing by below, but once they got line of sight on the gun, she’d be able to fly it via the camera, right into the target.
Four minutes later they shot at 185 knots over the town from the south. They’d seen the smoke from a couple of rifles shooting at them on their way, but nothing like the ZPU ahead. While Oakley was focused on flying straight and level and fast, Davenport was flashing her eyes between her Hellfire cam and her TADS, looking ahead through the town for the mosque.
Finally she said, “Do you see the minaret?”
“Got it,” Oakley replied with confidence. “Taking you up, then down.”
They climbed quickly, getting more altitude and allowing the Hellfire to fire down into the square, hopefully hitting the ZPU still facing to the north.
Oakley added, “You are going to have to make this work. We’re not going to get another shot at this because they’ll figure out what we’re trying to do.”
“I need six hundred fifty meters’ line of sight to laze the target and put the Hellfire on my tag. Give me six-fifty.”
Oakley climbed to five thousand feet, and then pushed the cyclic forward, sending the nose down. Carrie Ann went weightless, lifting up into her straps, but she kept her finger on her fire button and her eyes on the TADS.
When she saw the square below her she looked to the point where they’d stumbled onto the ZPU fifteen minutes earlier. It was still there, but in the process of turning around.
Oakley said, “They’ve seen us.”
Carrie Ann kept her voice calm. “Press the attack. I’m lazing.” An invisible beam left Pyro 1-1 and shot forward, striking the Russian 14.5-millimeter gun. She pressed the trigger on the cyclic, and a Hellfire dropped off the pylon and launched forward. “Missile away.”
Oakley kept his ship aimed at the wrecked town below, and shot lower and lower, flying behind the much faster Hellfire missile. Davenport had to keep the laser locked on the weapon until the moment of impact, lest the missile lose its acquisition of the target.
The problem was the Apache was flying right into the potential blast radius of the explosion. Oakley would have to wrench the helo hard to keep them from hitting debris once the Hellfire struck.
“Three seconds,” Carrie Ann said. And then, “Impact!”
Oak pulled hard on the collective and banked to the left, all but spinning the fifty-foot-long machine sideways above the square.
The ZPU exploded into thousands of pieces, killing the entire gun crew in the process, Carrie Ann’s gun camera footage would later confirm.
For now, however, the two hot, sweaty, and exhausted helicopter crew left the town, heading back to the north, hoping they’d done enough for the group of female fighters climbing over the broken rubble toward the south and, eventually, toward Mosul.
43
Jack finished reading every single posting related to the username TheSlavnyKid under the subreddit Baltic War at eight-twenty p.m. This included the postings of everyone who responded to something Rechkov wrote, which had brought the number of individual posts somewhere close to two thousand. He had also created a database of all the usernames of those who commented, and dug into a few of the more prevalent personalities, the usernames that showed up with regularity on Rechkov’s postings.
After nine hours of work Jack had finally finished what he’d set out to do. The only problem was that he didn’t feel like he’d accomplished a single thing.
While Vadim Rechkov got deeper and deeper into the threats and declarations of war against the USA, going so far as to reach out to others to find out how he could learn the name of the man or woman who fired the torpedo that killed his brother, Jack never saw anyone in the subsequent discussion offer to help in any way that seemed relevant to his own search. There were no promises of intelligence, no “friend of a friend” who could get him the info, no sly offers to send him some inside information or speak with him in private. Nothing that looked like someone with the information Rechkov would have needed to target Scott Hagen. While it was true some Reddit users helpfully suggested Rechkov “aim higher” and go for the commander of the ship, even naming Commander Hagen, nobody provided one iota of the specialized targeting information, or even intimated that they knew what specialized targeting information was.
Jack rested his neck by putting his head down on his arms on the conference table.
Gavin apparently saw this from across the table. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got eighty-eight Reddit usernames to go through now, to search everything they’ve ever said online, and not one of them looks promising.”
Gavin said, “Actually, it’s worse than that.”
Ryan slowly lifted his head and looked at Biery with red-rimmed eyes. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You don’t even know eighty-eight is the right number. A Reddit user can also remove one of their posts at any time. For all you know, the guy we’re looking for reached out to Rechkov, or spurred him on somehow, and then removed his posts after the fact. Like when Rechkov got killed.”
Ryan just said, “Well, shit, Gavin. Are you telling me this was an exercise in futility all along?”
Now Gavin smiled. “No, it wasn’t. Because of this.” He spun his laptop around and pushed it halfway across the table to Jack, who still couldn’t tell what he was looking at.
“What’s this?”
“This is an archived version of each Reddit page, kept on a special third-party ser
ver. Completely open-source, free, and legal. These cached pages of the same subreddit will show us if anyone in the discussion removed their posting or postings after the fact.” Gavin added, “If I just talked a guy into killing someone, gave him the intel to do it . . . and then he freaking went ahead and tried it, you wouldn’t find me leaving a trace of it up on some public message board. I’d pull every bit of my side of it down. But even though you can remove your posts from the website, you can’t touch the archived pages.”
Jack smiled. “The Internet is forever.”
“Whether that’s good or bad depends on if you are the one hiding or the one seeking.”
Jack came back to life a little. “I just need to log all the usernames in the cached subreddit and see if there are any on the original version that are no longer around on the current version. Then look into those people and see if I can figure out why they deleted their post.”
“Exactly.”
“And I’m going to do just that.” Jack stood. “As soon as I get home, eat something, and take a shower. See you back here in the a.m.?”
Gavin said, “I’m going to sleep in my office, so . . . yep.”
Jack shook his head. “No way, Gav. I don’t even live two minutes from here. You can crash at my place. I’ve got a guest room I don’t think I’ve been in since I set up the bed in there.”
Gavin said, “Thanks, but no, thanks. I’ve got a buddy at NSA who’s working on the OPM hack. He’s got some special tools that might come in handy, so I’ve been helping him, in case we need him to help us. He’s going to call me in a bit.”
Jack had slipped his laptop in his backpack, and had already moved halfway out the door. “Okay. I’ll bring you breakfast in the morning. Something light.”
“But not too light,” Gavin said, already looking back down to his work.
—