Terce shrugged, looking westward out to sea. In the end, it would not matter. Nomura was right. Stealth outweighed firepower. No matter how-many soldiers, missiles, and bombs they possessed, the Americans could not attack a target they could not find.
He froze. Something was moving out there above the Atlantic, right near the edge of his vision. He stared harder. Whatever it was, the object was drawing closer at high speed. But it was difficult to make out through the thick, distorting lenses of his gas mask.
With a snarl, Terce tore off the mask and attached respirator and tossed them aside. At least now he could see clearly! A small dark green dot, racing low just above the ocean waves. It curved toward him, tilting slightly — growing larger fast. Sunlight flashed off spinning rotor blades.
* * *
Aboard the UH-60L Black Hawk, Smith leaned forward in the copilot's seat, peering at the airfield ahead of them through a pair of high-powered binoculars. “Okay,” he said loudly, shouting to be heard above the howl of the troop carrier's two powerful engines and its large, clattering rotors. "I count two An-124 Condor cargo planes near the north end of the runway, parked next to a big hangar. Also what looks like a much smaller executive jet, maybe a Gulfstream."
“What's that moving down near the south end of the runway?” Randi yelled in his ear. She crouched behind the forward cabin's two seats, holding on tight with whitened knuckles. The Black Hawk was shuddering and bouncing wildly as Peter fought to hold the helicopter just fifty feet above the rolling crests of the ocean waves — all the while flying at more than one hundred knots. He had brought them in at very low altitude to avoid being picked up by the airfield's radar.
Smith swung his binoculars to the right. For the first time, he saw the three huge flying wings lined up one after another on the long concrete strip. The lead aircraft was already moving faster and faster, rolling smoothly toward takeoff. At first, his exhausted mind refused to accept that anything so big and, at the same time, so fragile-looking could possibly be airworthy.
Then, in a flood of understanding, the facts and images fell into place, pulled from memory. Several years ago he had read up on NASA's scientific experiments with high-altitude solar-powered long-endurance robot planes. Nomura must have stolen the same technology for his own vicious ends. “Good lord!” he said, rocked by the sudden realization. “Those are Nomura's attack aircraft!”
Quickly he briefed the others on what he remembered of their flight profile and capabilities.
“Can't our fighter planes shoot them down?” Randi asked somberly.
“If they're flying at close to a hundred thousand feet?” Smith shook his head. “That's beyond the maximum ceiling for any fighter in our inventory. There's not an F-16 or F-l 5 or anything else we own that can fly and fight that high up!”
“What about your Patriot missiles?” Peter suggested.
“One hundred thousand feet is above their effective ceiling, too,” Smith replied grimly. "Plus, I'll bet those damned drones out there are built to avoid most radar.“ He gritted his teeth. ”If they're at high altitude, they'll be invulnerable and probably undetectable. So once those planes are operational, Nomura will be able to hit us at will — unleashing nanophage clouds over any city he chooses!"
Horrified by the danger he saw looming before the United States, Jon focused his binoculars on a small group of men standing together just off the runway. He drew in a short, sharp breath. They were wearing gas masks.
The world around him seemed to blur, slowing while his mind raced. Why were they wearing masks? And then, suddenly, the answer — the only possible answer — leaped out at him.
“Take us in, Peter!” Smith snapped. He jabbed a finger at the airfield. “Straight in!”
The Englishman glanced at him in surprise. “This isn't an attack mission, Jon. We're supposed to be scouting — not riding in with sabers drawn like the bloody cavalry.”
“The mission just changed,” Smith told him tightly. “Those planes are armed. That son of a bitch Nomura is launching his attack now!”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Frowning, Peter banked the Black Hawk tightly, turning in toward the airfield. Santa Maria's coastline loomed larger, rapidly taking on shape and definition as they flew toward it at one hundred knots. The Englishman turned his head for just a moment, looking at Randi. “You'd better break out the weapons.”
She nodded. The three of them were already wearing Kevlar body armor, and the helicopter had come equipped with three M4 carbines, cut-down versions of the U.S. military's M16 assault rifle. She moved back into the troop compartment, careful to keep a tight grip with at least one hand on anything bolted down.
Abruptly Peter banked the Black Hawk through another tight turn— this time swinging the helicopter north to fly parallel to the runway. “Half a tick,” he said. “Why do this the hard way? Why not just hover above these damned drones and shoot them down over the sea?”
Smith thought the suggestion through. It made perfect sense. He reddened. “I should have thought of that,” he admitted reluctantly.
Peter grinned. “Studying medicine when you should have been studying tactics, eh?” He pulled back on the controls. The UH-60 rose steadily, climbing several hundred feet above the sea in a matter of seconds. “Keep an eye on that first drone, Jon. Let me know when it's aloft.”
Smith nodded. He leaned back in his seat to stare out the cabin's right-side window, over Peter's shoulder. A sudden bright white flash and a puff of dust near the airfield caught his eye. A small dart sped toward them, riding fast on a pillar of fire. For a fraction of a second he stared in disbelief. Then his survival instincts kicked in. “SAM! SAM!” he roared. “At three o'clock!”
“Hell's teeth!” Peter exclaimed. He yanked hard on the controls, adroitly handling the foot pedals, collective, and cyclic stick to throw the Black Hawk into a tight descending turn toward the oncoming missile. At the same time, he stabbed a switch on the control panel, activating the helicopter's IR flare dispenser.
Incandescent flares spewed through a wide arc behind the diving UH-60. Looking up, Smith saw the incoming surface-to-air missile streak right overhead and then curve away sharply, following one of the decoy flares as it tumbled slowly toward the ocean. He breathed out. “Must have been a heat seeker,” he commented, irked to hear a tremor in his voice.
Peter nodded. His lips were pressed tight together. “Man-portable SAMs usually are.” He sighed. “Back to square one, I'm afraid. We daren't mess about at altitude — not with a missile threat like that sitting right behind us.”
“So in we go?” Smith suggested.
“Too right,” Peter said, baring his teeth in a fierce fighting grin. He brought the Black Hawk down so low that its main landing gear seemed to be skimming right over the curling waves. The airfield, now dead ahead, grew rapidly through the forward canopy. “We go in hard and fast, Jon. You clear the left. I'll clear the right. And Randi, God bless her, will do whatever else needs doing!”
“Sounds like a plan!” Randi agreed from behind them. She handed Smith one of the M4 carbines and three thirty-round magazines. With a shortened barrel and a telescoping stock, the M4 was a somewhat lighter and handier weapon than its parent, the M16. He snapped one magazine into the rifle and tucked the spare clips away in his pockets. The third carbine went to Peter, who wedged it beside him on the pilot's seat.
“Thanks! Now, buckle in,” Peter yelled back at her. “The landing will be just a tad bumpy!”
There were more flashes rippling along the runway ahead of them. Several men were standing out in the open, steadily firing at the oncoming helicopter with assault rifles. Five-point-fifty-six mm rounds smacked into the Black Hawk — pinging off the main rotor, ricocheting off its armored canopy and cockpit, and punching through the thin alloy sides of the fuselage.
Smith saw Nomura's first flying wing lift off the ground and begin climbing. He slammed his fist onto the side of his seat in frustration. “Damn!�
��
“There are still two more on the ground! We'll deal with that one later,” Peter assured him. “Assuming there is a later, that is,” he added under his breath.
The Black Hawk clattered low over the tarmac and spun rapidly through a half-circle, flaring out to thump heavily into the long grass growing beside the runway. More rifle bullets spanged off the canopy and went whirring away in showers of sparks. Smith hammered the seat belt buckle hard, opening it, grabbed his M4 carbine, and forced his way back into the troop compartment. Peter followed closely, pausing only to set a couple of switches on the control panel. Overhead, the rotor blades slowed dramatically — but they kept turning.
Randi already had the left-side door open. She crouched in the opening, sighting down the barrel of her carbine. She glanced over her shoulder. “All set?”
Jon nodded. “Let's go!”
With Randi right behind him, he leaped out of the helicopter and dashed south along the fringe of the runway. Rifle rounds cracked low overhead, coming from a pair of guards running toward them across the concrete. Smith threw himself down in the tall grass and opened fire-squeezing off three-round bursts in an arc from left to right.
One of the guards screamed shrilly and flopped forward, cut almost in half by two high-velocity bullets. The other dropped flat on the concrete and kept shooting.
From her position on Smith's right, Randi coolly took aim. She waited until the sights settled on the goggles of the guard's gas mask and then gently pulled the trigger. His head exploded.
Jon swallowed hard, looking away. He checked their surroundings. They were about a third of the way along the runway — just a few hundred meters from the massive hangar at the southern end. An enormous tin-roofed warehouse stretched east not far behind them. There appeared to be only one entrance on this side, a solid-looking steel door with a keypad lock. His eyes narrowed as suspicion hardened into certainty. No one put that kind of fortress-like door on a run-of-the-mill storage facility. Nomura's secret nanophage lab must be somewhere inside. You could hide a dozen biochemical factories inside that vast, cavernous space and still have plenty of room left over.
The second of the huge flying-wing planes was rolling down the runway in their direction, slowly gathering speed as its propellers spun faster and faster. Jon could see the deadly canisters clustered beneath its single enormous wing. The third drone aircraft was stopped just outside the hangar, waiting for its turn in the takeoff pattern.
Gunfire erupted to the north, on the other side of the Black Hawk. Another guard screamed and fell back — riddled with bullets fired by Peter. As he toppled, the dying man triggered the Russian-made SA-16 SAM he had been trying to aim. The missile ignited. Trailing a dense cloud of gray and white smoke, it soared straight up, turned east, and then plummeted harmlessly to explode in the empty pastures beyond the perimeter fence.
Smith spotted more movement to the south, not far from the second aircraft. Three more gunmen, led by a much taller man, were advancing along the western edge of the runway — generally keeping pace with the oncoming drone plane. They were bounding in pairs, taking turns covering each other as they came forward.
He winced. Great, he thought. These guys were professionals. And they were being led the third of the superhuman Horatii.
“Watch your front, Jon!” Randi called. She gestured toward the open ground on the other side of the runway. A little knot of men in gas masks and respirators was falling back there, retreating from the battle raging around the tarmac. Most appeared to be unarmed. But two carried submachine guns slung over their shoulders, and they were dragging an older white-haired man between them. A man who was not wearing a gas mask. A man in handcuffs.
“I'll deal with the planes,” Smith said. He pointed toward the retreating men. “You take care of them!”
Randi nodded, seeing Jon already moving along the edge of the runway — heading toward the giant flying wing lumbering north. Smoke from the errant SAM launch wafted across the tarmac, cutting off her view of him.
Left alone, she jumped to her feet and sprinted across the wide bare stretch of oil- and jet fuel-stained concrete. One of the fleeing men saw her coming. He yelled a frantic warning to his companions. They threw themselves prone in the grass. The two guards tossed the old man down beside them and turned toward her. Their submachine guns came up.
Randi fired from the hip, squeezing off three-round bursts on the run. One of the guards spun away and fell heavily, bleeding from several wounds. The other shot back, firing off a full twenty-round clip from his Uzi.
The air around Randi was suddenly full of bullets and fragments of shattered concrete. She dived to the side. Something smashed into her left arm — hurling her backward. A ricochet tumbling off the concrete had hit hard enough to break her arm just above the elbow. White-hot agony sleeted up from the injury. She rolled away, desperately trying to get clear before the gunman could zero in and nail her.
Stunned to see her still alive, the guard yanked out his empty clip and fumbled for another.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Randi brought her carbine up again. She fired another burst. Two copper-jacketed rounds slammed home, hurling the gunman onto his back in bloodred ruin.
She forced herself back to her feet and ran on across the runway. The unarmed men jumped up and scattered in front of her, running wildly in all directions. They all looked alike in their hooded gas masks. Suddenly the old man in handcuffs kicked out, tripping one of the fleeing men. Snarling, the old man rolled over onto the man he had knocked down — pressing him facedown into the tall, tangled grass.
Randi moved closer, aiming the carbine with her good hand. “Who the hell are you?” she snapped.
The old man smiled beatifically up at her. “I am Jinjiro Nomura,” he said quietly. “And this,” he nodded toward the figure squirming beneath him, “is Lazarus — the traitor who was once my son, Hideo.”
Scarcely able to believe her luck, Randi grinned back at the old man. “Delighted to meet you, Mr. Nomura.” She kept the M4 aimed at the man writhing on the ground while Jinjiro climbed awkwardly to his feet.
“Now stand up and take off that gas mask,” she ordered. “But do it slowly. Otherwise I might just twitch and blow your head off.”
The younger man obeyed. Slowly, with exaggerated caution, he tugged off the mask and respirator — revealing the gray, shocked features of Hideo Nomura.
“What will you do with him?” Jinjiro asked curiously.
Randi shrugged her good shoulder. "Take him back to the United
States for trial, I guess." She heard a new burst of firing, this time from the north.
“Speaking of which, I suggest the three of us head back to the helicopter right this minute. This neighborhood seems to be getting distinctly unhealthy.”
* * *
Peter ghosted through the drifting haze of smoke, with his carbine cradled against his shoulder. He heard a metallic click close by and dropped quietly to one knee, searching ahead of him for the source of the sound.
A guard loomed up out of the slowly clearing pall. His hand was still on the firing selector for his German-made assault rifle, switching it from single-shot to fire three-round bursts. His mouth dropped open when he saw the Englishman aiming at him.
“Very careless,” Peter told him softly. He squeezed the trigger.
Hit by all three shots fired at close range, the guard crumpled into the blood-soaked grass.
Peter waited a few moments longer, allowing the smoke to clear. It rolled west toward the ocean, slowly shredding in the light wind. He scanned the open ground stretching before him. Nothing moved.
Satisfied, he turned and trotted back toward the helicopter.
* * *
White-faced with pain from her broken arm, Randi prodded her prisoner toward the waiting Black Hawk. She stumbled once and Hideo Nomura glanced swiftly back at her, with hatred written all over his face. She shook her head and lifted the M4, aiming right at his
chest. “I wouldn't try that. Not unless you really believe you can rise from the dead. Even one-handed, I'm a very good shot. Now hop in!”
Walking behind her, Jinjiro chuckled — plainly enjoying his treacherous son's discomfiture.
The man who had called himself Lazarus turned and scrambled inside the helicopter. Standing by the door, Randi motioned him into one of the forward-facing rear seats. Scowling, he obeyed.
Peter loomed up beside her. He peered into the troop compartment at her prisoner. His eyebrows rose. “Nicely done, Randi. Very nicely done indeed.”
Then he looked around in growing unease. “But where on earth is Jon?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Smith sprinted toward the four gunmen advancing alongside the rolling drone aircraft. They were still moving in pairs. At any given moment, two of them were prone — ready to provide covering fire for their comrades. Most of their attention was focused on the battle raging around the grounded Black Hawk, but they were sure to spot him soon enough.
The back of his mind yammered that this headlong charge was a particularly stupid form of suicide, but he furiously shoved those doubts away. He did not have any other options. He had to hit this enemy team quickly, before they spotted him, pinned him down with suppressive fire, and then came in for the kill.
His only real chance against these men was to seize the initiative and hold it. Their tactics showed that they were professionals, probably more of the veteran mercenary soldiers recruited to do the dirty work for Nomura's Lazarus operation. In a set-piece skirmish Smith might be able to take out one of them, possibly even two — but trying to fight all four of them at once would only be a good way to die quickly. Still, he knew that it was the presence among them of the third of the Horatii that tipped the scales toward this seeming recklessness.
Twice before Smith had gone up against one of those powerful and deadly killers. In both fights he had been lucky to limp away alive and he was not going to be able to rely on stumbling into good fortune again. This time he needed to make his own luck — and that meant taking chances.
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