Kee blinked rapidly as her mind struggled to kick into gear.
“We could—” turn back and leave Dilya with the others. Not an option. They were already fifteen minutes behind schedule. They’d planned to be on station an hour early, now it would be a mere forty-five minutes. She could hear the turbines running higher, trying to make up the lost time. Going faster made them louder and more detectable. A calculated risk.
If Evans and Arlov decided to leave early, or they themselves were on site for too long and discovered, there would be a war. They couldn’t afford another half hour that the return trip to Viper would take.
“What if—” No. Landing and leaving Dilya wouldn’t work. There’d be no guarantee they could stop and fetch her on the return flight. If they were on the run or had to leave by a different route, she’d once again be an orphan lost in the high-mountain desert. At least she’d be back in her own country, but it was a country she didn’t know or belong in anymore. The first time she spoke in English, who knew what would happen to her.
Kee made sure Dilya understood that the strap had to stay around her waist, then rested her hand on the girl’s head.
“Please, keep her safe.” Kee didn’t know where she sent the prayer, but she felt better for doing so. She kissed the girl on her forehead, receiving a nose full of furry parka hood, then returned to her seat by her Minigun.
When she was clipped back in and had her hands back on her gun, she responded.
“She’s a Night Stalker now, ma’am. And Night Stalkers Don’t Quit.”
“NSDQ,” Archie and Beale murmured.
“Damn straight!” Big John echoed softly.
They were less than half an hour from position. Archie sat and watched the desert rolling by. He’d chosen their route carefully. As a result, they’d flown over no towns at all and few dwellings. Occasionally a road would flash by beneath them, the only interruption of the rolling landscape.
A couple of times he turned to check on Dilya, she’d waved back cheerily enough for a kid strapped down in a helicopter jerking and twisting to stay no more than twenty feet above the rolling terrain. This area of Uzbekistan was more arid than western Pakistan. Scrub trees were often miles apart because the land couldn’t support more growth except where irrigated.
“Major, I’ve been thinking.”
“Am I going to like this?” She rolled them to the right, to edge around the base of a hill. He waited until it had flashed by and they’d once again settled on their original course.
“Definitely not.”
Emily sighed, “Why am I not surprised. Okay, Arch, what are they going to do?”
Her question surprised him. As if he had a magic crystal ball of tactics and strategy that no one else possessed. With the perspective that Kee had given him, reinforced by the President’s comment, maybe his theory wasn’t as completely outrageous as it sounded. The next problem simply felt… obvious.
“With only one helicopter, we’ve lost more than half our chances of catching him in the air. We could spot him, but we are in a slower craft. Our plan depended upon two layers of attack and the ability to herd him from one of us toward the other. We can’t do that solo.”
“I knew I wasn’t going to like this. So, what are we going to do?”
Archie hesitated. He didn’t like his own conclusion in the slightest.
Kee spoke. “We take them out while they’re still on the ground.”
She was absolutely right, and it confirmed his worst fear. Kee thought with her gut and her survival instinct, supplementing his own mental calculations in a synergistic way that would have fired up his body under any other conditions.
“You’re saying,” Major Beale rolled the words around slowly, as if she’d bitten into something nasty. “That we need to attack an armed air base in less than two hours? No matter how sleepy, they aren’t dead. Remember that we’re supposed to make it look like an accident. The whole point is that the US Armed Forces has not staged an invasion on friendly soil. That would be worse than the President calling to warn them. Any bright suggestions on how we do that and then slip away in broad daylight in a US Army Sikorsky MH-60M Direct Action Penetrator Black Hawk?” Emily sounded pissed by the time she finished.
The silence stretched out. Archie hated his answer to this question worse than the one before it. He decided to sneak up on that answer.
“We think Evans and Arlov will be taking off shortly after dawn, the notebook confirms that with the note about the local time of sunrise. They want everyone to absolutely know that their jet came from K2 and that it is Russian. It also has the schedule of today’s events with the 0800 breakfast meeting circled. Everyone will be there, all of the countries’ leaders, advisors, and the media. It’s the splashiest event, the only one they can guarantee no one will skip.”
“I know all this.” Emily didn’t sound happy. She jinked hard left to slip between a rare line of trees and a low building.
Archie pulled up a satellite map of K2. He scanned around for a minute before he found what he was looking for.
“There,” he punched in the GPS coordinates on the nav computer. “We want to go there. Five miles southeast of the runway. Nothing there but farmers’ fields. Come in low and quiet. There is a single house and a grove of trees. We park in the trees and secure the house. After we’re done, we can lie low there until dark and fly back tonight.”
Again the silence. Archie held his breath. He knew he was asking too much, but it was nothing compared to what he’d be asking others to give.
Emily swore, then corrected her course to the west, placing the house dead ahead and ten minutes out.
“And what, Mister Genius, do we do after we land there?”
“After we land…” Kee responded. Archie knew she would see it.
“I go crawling across the landscape with my rifle and shoot down a jet before it can take off.”
50
Emily circled them around the back of the grove of trees. She hated this. Far too many things could go wrong, already had gone wrong.
A downed jet in the middle of the desert could be written off as an accident. One parked on the tarmac with two head-shot pilots aboard couldn’t be so easily ignored. The heat that would land on them would be horrendous. Any attempt to fly home, day or night, would become almost impossible. It was banking a hell of a lot on that slim chance left by “almost.”
She’d had Archie bounce a call to the Hawkeye observer. He’d explained their plan briefly. And all she’d gotten back was, “Abort at pilot’s discretion.”
Completely useless. If she aborted now, she’d hit daylight an hour and a half before she hit the border. So, they’d have an international incident, right before these two goons started the next world war.
Lousy option.
She slid over the tops of the trees and found a hole to settle into. Trees blocked the view on three sides. A barn blocked the view straight ahead. Off to the right, through a gap in the trees, what had looked to be a small house on the aerial photo was actually three hovels.
What they needed was a squad of D-boys. What they had were four Night Stalkers and a pre-teen girl. Emily cycled down the engine quickly. She’d debated about keeping it hot and ready to go, but they needed to hear. And they didn’t want to attract more attention than they already had.
Kee, Big John, and Archie spilled out the doors and moved toward the hovels, rifles at the ready. Less than one more hour of dark remained. They had to secure the helicopter and then move Kee five miles northwest to the air strip.
Emily dropped to the ground and hurried to catch up with them. They were moving ahead in two-by-two formation. Archie and Kee rushing ahead, then squatting with weapons raised. She and John rushed by and did the same behind minimal cover.
In a minute they’d surrounded the first building. In thirty seconds more they’d confirmed the three small rooms were empty and moved to the next.
At the next, she could smell last night’s
cooking. A sharp tang of a curry still lingered in the still air. At a window, Archie popped his head up for a moment then ducked back down. He held up four fingers and pointed where they were, huddled in a corner—cowering together because of the unseen helicopter, now lurking behind their barn. The Hawk was quiet for what it was but still made a huge racket on a quiet country night. That fear could work to their advantage, getting everyone to hide in the same place.
Emily pointed at Big John, then made a slashing motion toward the third building. The moment he moved, the sharp crack of a bullet passed by her head.
“Close. Damn close,” one part of her mind thought. The other part dived and rolled behind a water trough.
John hit the dirt, but his roll showed he hadn’t been hit. Kee knelt with her rifle pointed back in the direction of fire. As Emily looked over, a spray of muzzle-blast shimmered forth from the point of her barrel. The loud crack was followed by an abrupt and brief scream.
“Go! Go! Go!” Emily shouted. They rolled into the house as one. Emily and John secured the startled family: a boy, two women, and two girls, who were indeed huddled together in one corner cowering. Kee’s attention remained out the door, she knelt in a marksman’s squat, her rifle still aimed and ready. Her position mostly shielded by the doorjamb.
Big John checked the back two rooms. Everyone was in here.
Everyone except Archie.
Archie leaned against the wall below the window and did his best not to breathe, because the whole breathing thing didn’t feel good at all. Not in the least. Nope. He’d lie here for a while.
Maybe it was shock.
He’d been shot a couple of times before. The armor in his flight suit had always deflected it. Afterward you were numb and then sore from the impact.
When Kee had wrenched his shoulder, that had hurt, too.
This hurt worse.
He wished Kee were here. She’d know what to do.
A face loomed up out of the dark in front of him.
She couldn’t hide from him that easily. Helmet, safety goggles, chin strap, flight suit, and enough gear to hide Helen of Troy couldn’t hide his gal.
“Hi, Helen.”
“Who the hell is Helen?” She knelt and began poking him.
“You are. My own personal Helen of Troy.”
“Can you move?”
“Don’t know. That was seriously loud, Helen. Wow!”
“I have to move you.”
Before he could protest, she had him by the harness and was dragging him around the corner and into the house.
“Where are you hit? Where?”
Suddenly two lights were dancing over him. His vision was clearing, until someone shone a light in his eyes.
“Ow! Cut that out!”
Emily whistled low, “Look!” Both lights focused on his face.
“Ow! I—” One of them knelt on his chest. Hard.
“Be still!” Kee. Of course. His own personal mistress of pain.
She unclipped his helmet and slid it free. She tipped his head to the side.
“Hey, Emily?” Kee’s voice, he couldn’t read his condition in her voice.
“What? Am I hit? How bad? Is there an entry wound?”
Kee clapped a hand over his mouth as she drawled, “Emily, you got a Band-Aid on you?”
The major opened a pouch on the front of her vest and handed one over with a tube of salve. The salve was cool on his temple, though it stung like a son of a bitch.
Then Kee taped it.
He sat up as Kee dropped back onto her butt. “How bad?”
Emily handed him his helmet.
It took a moment, but he found the bullet’s path. A deep crease through the foam alongside his temple, a tiny tear in the fabric. He ran a hand across the back of the helmet and found a distinct bump where the bullet had lodged.
He laughed. It was half a choke, but he laughed. So did the others, though they were all shaky. They sounded as relieved as he felt.
Then Kee went white as a sheet, turned for the corner and barfed her guts out.
Archie looked around the main room of the building. A single chair, father’s place of honor, probably. A low table. A few belongings and a dirt floor. A woman and three children crouched in the corner whimpering with fear. He would too if he were sitting at the wrong end of Major Beale’s carbine.
“Where’s Dilya?”
“Waiting at the helo or I’ll skin her alive.” Kee’d found her voice, though she didn’t move from where she’d been sick.
Archie looked to the door as Dilya slipped in from the dark night and stood in the shadows. Had she seen him shot? A new nightmare for her, or no more than another body in her world filled with death? Maybe he’d rather not know.
John came in right behind her hauling a thin man by one arm. A battered Russian SKS rifle with a shattered stock in his other hand. He flung the man toward the cowering group. He fell to the dirt floor as the family gathered him in. He nursed a hand that the older woman started binding in a bit of rag. John brushed her aside and opened his med kit to tend the man’s wound.
“You shot him in the rifle, Kee. I think you dislocated two of his fingers because he tried to hold on too tight. Good thing he had it across his chest or you’d have drilled him in the heart. How do you do that kinda shit?”
“We’re running out of time here, folks.” Major Beale had her rifle casually aimed toward the cowering family to cover John. “So, what’s the plan, Captain?” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the whimpering of the family.
Archie didn’t have much of a plan. Well, no plan at all if the truth be known. If his head would stop ringing, maybe he could come up with one. Until then, they’d do what came next and he’d keep hoping he didn’t run out of next steps.
“Kee, go get your sniper’s rifle from the helo. John, Major, check the third building. Dilya.”
Kee spun to face the girl. Then she blanched white, and leaned back hard against the wall. She probably would have gone to the ground without the support of her flight suit.
“Come here, girl.” Archie waved her over.
“You talk?” And he pointed to the family whose worried tones were reaching clamorous in the small space.
At her first words, they went quiet. The eldest woman answered her quietly as the rest of the crew slipped back into the night. The father, recovering from his shock, took over the conversation. He and Dilya back-and-forthed a couple of times in a rolling lilt of Uzbekistani that picked up to normal conversation speed in moments.
“The Kee make father ouch. All dogs here.” The man spoke again. “Father tell me story.”
“Story?” he asked as much to fill the time as from any understanding. He needed to think of a plan.
“Story. Like I tell to Winnie-ther-Pooh. Him that kind of bear.”
Archie looked up at her, but her face looked absolutely serious in the dim spill of the flashlight he had laid on the floor.
Kee must be teaching her English from Winnie-the-Pooh. He wondered how far they’d gotten.
“What story?”
“Father know only one reason to make buzzing noise.” Buzzing noise. Bees. Bees had made buzzing noise for Winnie. Bees or…helicopters.
“What did father know about buzzing noise?”
“Bad men. Uzbek men.”
Government men. Great. The father had shot Archie and then nearly been killed by Kee because he thought they were government oppressors.
“Tell them to be quiet and relax.”
“Quiet. Relax.” Dilya said the words slowly, trying on the sounds, her hands fluttered before her as if testing the shape of them. Clearly she didn’t know what they meant.
Major Beale ducked back through the door with Big John close behind. “House and trench are clear, how’s the patient?”
“The man thought we were Uzbekistani raiders. Trying to defend his family.”
“How do you know that?”
“Dilya talked to them. Now
let me think.”
He checked his watch. Not enough time. Even at a run. “We need a car or truck.”
“There’s one in the barn.”
“Excellent. Major, you and Dilya keep an eye on the family and an ear on the radio. If we scream, you may need to come and get us. And if we don’t scream…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Emily’s nod was tight, as if her neck wasn’t working quite right, and her expression made her thoughts easy to read. If they cried for help in daylight, Emily would come, but they’d all be dead before nightfall if not inside the hour. If they didn’t call, the results might well be the same.
“John, go see if you can start the truck. Then get a camouflage net over the Hawk as well as you can. You need to be back here, inside this house before sunrise. Clear?”
He nodded and headed out the door.
Kee entered as John left. This time, her Heckler & Koch sniper rifle hung over her shoulder. Her carbine still dangled from her hand.
“Come on, Kee. We’ve got to scramble.”
She knelt down and hugged Dilya close for a moment then pointed to Dilya, to the major, and then emphatically at the ground.
Dilya nodded understanding.
Didn’t mean that Archie wouldn’t be watching carefully to make sure they didn’t acquire a Dilya-sized shadow. He scrubbed a hand over the girl’s head and ruffled her hair enough to completely hide her face. Kee brushed it aside.
“Kee qilmoq dogs dead. Good?” Kee was asking the girl’s permission. She was so good with children. She’d be a natural mother one day. That would probably shock her to know, but he didn’t doubt it for a second. Assuming they got out of this one.
Archie could read the grim set of the girl’s jaw as she thought about her answer. He had to turn away. So young, yet she’d learned to kill, or at least thirst for it.
His gaze landed on a large wooden chest. Flipping up the lid, he unearthed a pile of clothes. The father started to protest, but then eyed the major’s carbine that had swung to aim right between his eyes. He settled quickly enough.
I Own the Dawn Page 27