Strike Zone

by Dale Brown

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s got to suck.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She frowned, but then she started to cry. Danny found himself hugging her awkwardly, patting her back, telling her it would be okay.

  Southeast Thailand

  12 September 1997

  1650

  EVEN THOUGH HE hadn’t had much sleep last night, Boston found it impossible to nap on the plane. While he had a special set of headphones to drown out the sound of the engines, the small plane shuffled up and down every so often, just enough to keep him awake. He spent his time leafing through a book he’d brought along and trading audio tapes with Bison, who unfortunately seemed to like the Grateful Dead considerably more than Boston would have thought possible.

  Boston’s adrenaline shot up as soon as Colonel Bastian announced that they were within sight of the airfield. He strapped his seat belt on and waited as the plane banked and then circled over the small strip. While they undoubtedly cleared the nearby jungle by a good margin, to Boston it seemed like the wingtip came perilously close to the top of the nearby trees. He struggled not to close his eyes as the airplane turned hard and legged down onto what looked more like an unkempt driveway than an airfield. The strip didn’t have any lights or even a fence nearby; the only structures Boston saw as he stepped down the stairs were a telephone pole with a windsock and a two-story pillbox with a flat roof.

  Boston put on his Smart Helmet and did a quick search of the area, using its composite view, which cobbled together IR, radar, and optical inputs to identify weapons and individuals. There was no one around.

  “Yo, Boston, help me with the bikes,” said Bison from inside. The sergeant went back and manhandled the small dirt bike out of the rear cabin, barely clearing past the seats. They had taken along several cans of gas as well as guns and radios. Everyone on the team wore civilian dress, authorized by the colonel because of the nature of the mission.

  Colonel Bastian and Stoner met the two Whiplash ops on the hard-packed dirt.

  “I want someone to stay here with me and watch the plane,” said the colonel. “And let me emphasize, we show no military gear.”

  “I think we have to wear vests,” said Stoner.

  “All right,” said Bastian. “Be as discreet as possible.”

  “Who’s better at riding a motorbike?” said Stoner.

  Boston looked at Bison, who looked at him. Both men shrugged. While riding a motorcycle was not part of the Whiplash job requirements, everyone on the squad had done so at one time.

  “Flip a coin,” said Dog.

  Boston won the toss.

  THE WIND WHIPPED hard against Stoner’s face as he drove up the winding trail toward the fabrication plant. The sat photos he’d seen of it, part of a routine series covering the area, along with some background research provided by analysts back at the CIA, indicated that it had been abandoned about six months before. Already the jungle had begun closing in. Nature’s relentless march had broken up the edges of the road leading to the site; what two years ago had been a row of small, hastily built houses was now a collection of scavenged foundations.

  Stoner would have preferred that the plant was still in operation. Getting information then would have been considerably easier—go in as a prospective client and look around, set up a tap into their computers, maybe even do a little B&E routine. Now all he could do was nose around and see what he could come up with. He had a digital camera and a chemical “sniffer” in his backpack, as well as a collection of programs on computer disks that would allow him to examine any computer he found. But as the building came into view, he realized he wasn’t going to be finding much of anything.

  The parking lot and helipad had been overgrown by vegetation, and the weeds were so thick that Stoner had to stop his bike about twenty yards from the front of the building. He got off and took the IR viewer from his backpack, using it to check around.

  “We should cover the road,” said Boston, who’d taken his MP-5 from his ruck.

  “Anyone who’s interested in us isn’t going to use the road,” said Stoner.

  Built of cinderblocks, the one-story building had a row of windows at the front and side. Most of the windows were broken; the interior of the building had been stripped, not just of the valuable tools and machinery, but also of most of the sheetrock, ceiling tiles, and electrical wire. Stoner used his elbow to break enough of one of the windows so he could slip in easily.

  A thick coat of reddish jungle clay covered the floor, swept in from the lot by the wind. There were tracks from another window at the side, but in the dim light Stoner couldn’t tell how recent they might be. He took out his sniffer and started walking toward the back of the large open room, holding the long sensor wand ahead of him as he went.

  The metal skeleton of a wall stood about twenty feet from the front. A jungle of twisted metal studs and beams lay beyond it, marking the actual fabrication areas. Much of the ductwork remained, though parts of it had been pulled out. Stoner followed the long runs as they snaked back into the bowels of the large plant. He nearly tripped over a row of pipes that jutted out of the cement floor, the last remains of a restroom. Pushing past a twisted wall brace, he entered a section of the plant that had been used as a clean room.

  The sniffer picked up silicone and traces of gallium arsenide, along with a long menu of materials. There was no question the plant had been used to manufacture chips, and that its products were more advanced than the sort of circuitry needed to power a television or VCR.

  WHEN BOSTON WAS a kid, he’d lived in a bad section of town, and he and his friends would sometimes wander through abandoned buildings about two blocks from where he lived. One building in particular held endless fascination for the nine- and ten-year-olds. Once a sewing factory, it was filled with ancient machines and all manner of pulleys and gears, many still hanging from the high ceiling. A mannequin sat in a shadowy corner; they liked to scare unsuspecting friends with it.

  The afternoon visits ended abruptly when the building was taken over by crack smokers. Boston remembered them now as he worked through the skeletons of stripped walls, unsure exactly what they were looking for. He had his night-vision gear on, a special viewer designed by Dreamland that was much lighter than the normal-issue AN-PVS-7 and strapped on like a pair of swimming goggles. A light enhancer rather than an IR viewer, the device wasn’t as powerful and versatile as the viewer integrated into the Whiplash Smart Helmet. But it provided more than enough light here.

  Boston got a touch of the willies as a shadow passed along the metal struts where the wallboard had been removed. He knew it was just Stoner, but he couldn’t rid himself of the tingle of fear bouncing in his chest. Then he heard something, or thought he heard something, outside.

  Quickly, the Whiplash trooper retraced his steps out of the bowels of the building, pausing by a side window. He eased himself out of the opening and moved quietly toward the front the factory. Sliding toward the bottom to peer around the corner at the overgrown parking area, he told himself he was being ridiculous; there was no one there.

  Then he heard the bike engines kick to life.

  STONER WAS JUST scooping up some small bits of discarded chip material from one of the fab rooms when he heard the bike engine. Cursing, he stowed the sample and the sniffer in his ruck.

  Boston had already gone outside.

  He pulled out his pistol and ran to cover him.

  THERE WERE THREE of them, two on one bike and one on the other. Boston leaped to his feet, running toward them like a madman. He managed to grab one of the thieves by the back of the shirt and tossed him to the side, upending the other rider and the bike at the same time. A slap of MP-5 against the man’s skull knocked him senseless. The would-be driver, meanwhile, scrambled in the dirt and managed to escape into the jungle.

  Boston scooped up the motorbike, and reacting rather than thinking, he hopped on it and started to chase down the other thief.


  Colonel Bastian had emphasized that they were not in enemy territory, and that their weapons were to be used only if their lives were threatened, and then only as a last resort. Did this situation qualify for deadly force?

  Probably not.

  Definitely not.

  But Boston swore to himself that he’d upend the bastard and give him a good kick in the head when he caught him.

  Just as he started to gain on the thief, the bike turned off a trail to his right. Boston skidded on the uneven surface, nearly losing the vehicle out from under him as he took the turn. He revved up the trail, came to a rise and found himself airborne; when he landed, the bike went one way and he went the other. By the time he got back to his feet, the thief was so far away Boston could barely hear the engine of the bike he’d taken.

  BY THE TIME Stoner got outside, the only one in the lot was a scrawny ninety-pounder, shaking like he was a puppy caught peeing on a rug. The kid looked to be about fourteen; whether he was Thai or Cambodian, Stoner couldn’t tell.

  “What’s your story?” demanded Stoner. He repeated the question in Mandarin and then Cantonese Chinese, finally switching to standard Thai, a language he knew so little of that he could only ask what the man’s name was and whether he could speak English.

  The man said nothing in response to any of his questions, clearly frightened and probably believing he was going to die.

  One of the motorbikes revved in the distance, returning. The CIA officer held on to the thief until he was sure that it was Boston on the bike, then threw the man down and told him, in English, to run. The man blinked at him.

  “Jàu hòi!” Stoner said in Chinese. Get away. Go.

  Finally the kid began crawling backward toward the jungle.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Stoner told Boston, climbing on the back of the bike.

  “He a guerrilla?”

  “I don’t know. Probably just a thief. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “You done inside?”

  “For now. Go. Go!”

  HISTORICALLY, THAILAND SAT at the crossroads of southeast Asia. The land had played host to various migrations for many thousands of years. This history had left a rich culture, but it had also greatly complicated the language situation. Thai was spoken by more than half of the country’s population, but its various dialects and local accents made it difficult for a foreigner to understand, even when that foreigner was communicating with the help of a language expert who could listen in with the help of a small but powerful mike setup.

  “I think what he’s telling you is it’s dangerous,” said the Thai-Kadai language expert back in Dreamland as he tried to decipher the words Dog was repeating through his sat phone.

  “Well, I kind of figured that,” said Dog.

  The man had arrived on bicycle after they’d been on the ground a half hour. He seemed to be a maintenance worker or caretaker; he had explained in heavily accented Thai that the administrator and staff had left some time before—though whether “some time” meant earlier in the day or weeks ago wasn’t entirely clear.

  “Why don’t I let you talk to him directly?” Dog asked his translator.

  “Sounds okay to me,” said the man.

  Dog had to coax the Thai worker into taking the phone. But he was soon chattering away, and Colonel Bastian thought he’d have a hard time getting the phone back.

  “He says he hasn’t been around too long,” the translator told Dog. “He comes every day. The only other aircraft have been army helicopters. The Cambodian guerrillas hide when they come, but there are at least a few dozen armed insurgents nearby, and it sounds like they control the area. Most of the people who live in the jungle there are refugees, or were refugees and have just kind of squatted.”

  “Did he say anything about the factory?” Dog asked.

  “Didn’t know anything about it. Hard to tell how sincere he’s being, Colonel. He may be scared of you and be telling you what he thinks you want to hear. Or he might be a guerrilla and be lying outright. Or he might just be telling the truth.”

  Dog looked at the middle-aged man. It seemed to him unlikely that the man was a guerrilla, but of course there was no way of knowing. The Thai government did not actively condone the guerrilla movement against the Cambodian government, but it didn’t entirely discourage it either. The guerrillas were occasionally harassed, but the Thai government did not consider them a big enough threat to kick them out of the country. Historically, there had been plenty of animosity between Thailand and Cambodia, and if it weren’t for the refugees who crowded their borders, the official line toward the guerrillas might have been openly encouraging.

  “He offered to take you to his house for something to eat,” added the Dreamland translator. “Pretty high honor.”

  “How do I say thanks but no thanks?” asked Dog. “We have to hit the road soon. Stoner should be just about wrapping up.”

  AS THEY PASSED the point where the thief had turned off, Boston saw something flash in the jungle on the opposite side of the road. He hunkered toward the handlebars, pushing the throttle for more speed though he already had the engine red-lined.

  Stoner shifted on the bike behind him. Boston yelled at him to stop moving; he was afraid of losing his balance. But the CIA officer was oblivious, and Boston nearly lost the bike as the trail clambered across the side of a ravine before flattening out.

  Someone was shooting at them.

  Bullets flew on both sides of the road, dirt exploding in small wavelets.

  And then there was a loud boom behind him.

  Somehow, Boston managed to keep the bike upright. The small village near the airstrip lay just ahead.

  STONER THUMBED THE tape off another flash-bang as they sped down the hill toward the village. The grenade he’d tossed off had temporarily slowed their pursuers, but he knew that it was just a matter of time before they closed in again. They had a jeep or something like a jeep as well as the other motorbike.

  A group of children playing in the road ahead scattered as the bike approached. Stoner saw someone crouching near a building and realized he had a gun. Before he could do anything, he found himself flying through the air.

  He realized he’d lost the M-84 stun grenade a half second before it exploded.

  BOSTON HIT THE dirt so hard his teeth slammed into his tongue. The pain made him scream; he jumped to his feet, head spinning in the dust. Someone grabbed him from behind, and he shoved his elbow hard into his side, fishing for his ruck and the submachine gun.

  “Come on, come on,” yelled the man who’d grabbed him. “The airport. Come on.”

  Stoner.

  As Boston started to run, the bark of a heavy machine gun resonated off the nearby walls.

  AS SOON AS Dog heard the gunfire and explosions in the distance, he turned and ran back toward the airplane and Bison, who was standing guard near the wing.

  “I’ll get the engines going and turn around so we can take off,” said Dog. “Get them aboard.”

  He didn’t wait to hear an answer. He clambered into the cockpit, just barely patient enough to bring both engines on line before spinning the aircraft around. As he did, he caught sight of two figures running across the open field behind the blockhouse. Bison ran toward them, firing at something in the distance.

  “Come on, damn it,” Dog yelled.

  The plane stuttered, its brakes barely holding it down.

  “Move! Move!”

  BOSTON TURNED AND saw a jeep bouncing across the edge of the road behind him. A machine gun had been mounted in the rear.

  He leveled his MP-5 in the bastard’s direction and emptied the clip. The front of the truck exploded and the vehicle flipped over, the gunner jumping out.

  “In! Go!” Stoner yelled, pulling him toward the borrowed King Air.

  Bison jumped up into the open rear doorway. Stoner yelled something, then threw himself inside the plane.

  Boston took a look back. Two m
en were moving at the far end of the runway.

  One was dragging a small sewer pipe with him.

  No—he had a shoulder-launched missile.

  The Whiplash trooper stopped, slapping a new magazine into his gun. By the time he had it ready to fire—no more than a few seconds later—the two men had disappeared.

  There was a block building near the end of the runway.

  The plane began moving behind him, but Boston couldn’t worry about it now—he couldn’t let the bastards shoot his people down. He heard the engines revving as he started toward the building.

  Where’d the bastards go?

  Ordinarily, he would have taken the corner slowly—ordinarily, he would have had a squad with him, flanked the SOBs, maybe used grenades and machine guns and every piece of ordnance known to modern man.

  But there wasn’t time for finesse.

  Boston ran to the side of the building, finger edged against the trigger of his gun.

  He saw them, the oversized blowpipe on the shoulder of the taller man.

  Boston fired his MP-5 as the missile launcher exploded. For a moment, he saw everything stop; for a split second, he was part of the museum tableau, a display in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

  And then everything turned red. Then black.

  DOG HAD ALREADY started down the runway when Bison yelled that Boston had gone back. He had too much momentum to stop; instead, he took the plane off the end of the runway, winging back quickly to land.

  As he legged around, he saw smoke rise in a misshapen cloud, covering the building near the end of the runway.

  He steeled himself for the worst as he touched down.

  It took forever for Bison and Stoner to get out of the plane. When he saw they were out, Dog took off the brakes and trundled around once more, heart pounding—not because he worried that more guerrillas or whoever they were would appear, but because he dreaded having lost another man.