Dr. Sahin watched while Max checked. All the materials from the joint Union/Rashid/Romanova exercises held ten months previously were in the database—an entire database full of comm protocols, transponder codes, command and control rules, and the other minutiae that allow elements of different armed forces to work together as a unit.
“Yarmouk Three, this is one-one-four. Affirmative. We have a complete set of documentation for the ex, including the Oscar Hotel and the Romeo Oscar Echo. Over.” Meaning, the Operational Handbook and the Rules of Engagement.
“Excellent, one-one-four. Then please implement Formation Comm Protocol Bravo with you as the pigeon. You are assigned new call sign ‘Sadeek One.’ ” Max saw the doctor smile broadly at that. He made a mental note to ask what ‘Sadeek’ meant. “If we are not successful in establishing communications in two minutes, return to this frequency and the current encryption. Over.”
“Roger that. Formation Comm Protocol Bravo, I’m the pigeon, new call sign Sadeek One, and if we are not talking in two minutes, come back here using the same encrypt. Changing frequencies now. Over and out.”
Max called up the protocol and started punching in the frequencies. He also loaded the applicable encryption scheme, known as Casablanca, into the Clover’s ENDEC, or ENcrypter/DECrypter, better known as the “Blue Box,” even though as long as anyone could remember, they were all painted reddish-orange.
While he was doing this, Max asked, “What does ‘sadeek’ mean?”
“It is a felicitous choice of appellations. It means ‘friend.’ ”
“Sounds good to me.” Pause. “Or maybe not. ‘Speak, friend, and enter.’ ” He gave a brief, apprehensive, chuckle.
“What is ‘speak, friend, and enter’?”
“An inscription over a doorway in one of my favorite books when I was younger.”
“What was on the other side of the door?”
Max thought for a moment, wondering how to summarize something like twenty pages of a complex and classic work of English literature. He did his best. “A long, dark journey, full of wonder and deadly peril. But a journey that had to be made.”
“Let that not be an omen.”
“Amen. That author wrote about omens a lot. But now that I think of it, I don’t think he believed in them. All right. I’ve got everything set up.” He keyed for transmission. “Yarmouk Four this is Sadeek One. Do you read? Over.”
The response was immediate. “This is Yarmouk Four reading you five by five, Sadeek One. I have new instructions for you.” The other pilot described a series of maneuvers, altitude changes, and a new landing point in such densely woven aerospace jargon that, excluding articles, adjectives, and the occasional adverb, the doctor was certain he understood only one word in twenty. When Max had repeated the instructions back to Yarmouk Four in equally impenetrable language and followed the fighter squadron through a change in course and altitude, he turned to his companion. “Let me guess. You didn’t get any of that.”
“Scarcely a word. You might as well have been speaking Pfelungian. I can’t imagine why you would have to guess. You conducted a conversation, for minutes on end, consisting of nothing but incomprehensible pilot argot, which I have long suspected pilots specifically evolved as a coded language so that members of your elite club of drive-and-rudder men can speak without being understood by the uninitiated and, further, as a kind of secret handshake so that you can recognize one another. It should entail no guesswork at all to conclude that I, an ignorant cretin who merely speaks a dozen and a half languages or so and who possesses a veritable plethora of university degrees in six different fields, would be unable to comprehend a word of the proceedings.”
“That’s ‘drive-and-thruster man.’ Thruster.”
“See what I mean? You people have your own language, constructed with incomprehensibility and exclusion as an objective, and you have the undisguised temerity to wonder that you are not understood. You might as well build a fire and marvel that it generates heat, light, and smoke.”
Max knew better than to offer the rejoinder that medicine was just as bad or even worse. Although aerospace jargon had its basis in Standard, most medical terms are derived from Latin, the language of a long-dead civilization that was currently spoken only by the Romanovans, and Greek, a beautiful but now obscure language spoken by only a few million of humanity’s hundreds of billions. He knew from experience that Sahin would never admit the comparability of the two cases. He decided just to go ahead and explain what was going on.
“In the plainest possible terms, here is what is happening. It is believed that our original flight plan has become known to people who want to kill us. Accordingly, our descent and flight path have been changed. As much as possible it now takes place over the sea. We will travel with this escort until the last two and a half minutes or so, or just before we cross the coast. Then, the escort will peel off so that no one will see a microfreighter with a fighter escort, which would attract attention and, apparently, cue the people on the ground that something unusual is happening. We will land at a different field from the one originally planned. This one is technically not a spaceport, but the Rashidian authorities are waiving that requirement and will let us set down there. It’s a military airfield, well garrisoned. Someone will meet us there and take us where we need to go.”
“Why approach from the sea?”
“It’s hard to hide a portable surface-to-air missile launcher or pulse cannon on the surface of the ocean. You have to put it on a ship or a boat, and those have been cleared from our flight path.”
As the two men spoke, Max steered the ship through a series of turns and descents. Just before they crossed the coast, the fighter escort peeled off, the leader wagging his wings as they departed, a fact reflected by a similar motion of the icon representing the fighter on Max’s proximity display. Before Sahin knew it, with a gentle bump the Clover was on the ground.
After a few moments to equalize pressure, the hatch cycled and opened outward with a clunk and a hiss. The doctor was standing at the hatch when the first glimpse of the outside became visible. “But…it is dark,” he blurted indignantly.
“I noticed. The phenomenon is technically known to planetary scientists as ‘night.’ I hear that it happens on a regular basis around here.”
“Do not be obtuse.” He practically stomped his foot with uncharacteristic petulance. “I mean that it is dark when it should be light. I programmed my wrist chrono for the rotational period of Rashid IV and set it for the local time at Amman where we were to meet Mr. Wortham-Biggs. I was expecting it to be 13:42 standard time, which is the middle of the afternoon in Amman’s time zone. But it is fully dark.”
They stood in the hatch. which was about three meters off the ground, and waited for the Clover to extend its embarkation ramp, a process that took a little more than two minutes.
“That is because we did not land at Amman, but at Harun, the planet’s capital city, to confuse anyone who might be planning to do us harm in Amman. Local time here is seven hours later than at Amman. Mr. Wortham-Biggs took a suborbital shuttle and is already at the meeting site. We’re going to be taken by ground car, just like ordinary off-world trade delegates, to the Ministry of Trade building, where we will have our meeting.”
“When did you obtain that valuable intelligence, and why did you not inform me? It is not as though I am along solely as a passenger, you know.”
“Yarmouk Four and I talked about it on an open comm with you sitting right beside me.”
The doctor harrumphed. “It has already been established that I did not comprehend any of your pilot treehouse-gang code conversation. Must you belabor the point? You know, I am rather put out by all of this. I should have liked to have received this disappointing news in a less abrupt fashion.”
“Disappointing news? What’s so disappointing about having the meeting here rather than i
n Amman?”
“Because if we are meeting Mr. Wortham-Biggs at a government office rather than in his private study, the coffee will not be nearly as good.”
Max chuckled inwardly. Coffee my ass. Ibrahim Sahin was clearly hoping to spend a few moments with Wortham-Biggs’s perfectly lovely daughter. According to Spacer Fahad, who had attended the first meeting between the doctor and Wortham-Biggs, a blind man could have seen the sparks flying between the young lady and Bram for the few moments they had been together.
By this time the ramp had extended. and a small party had gathered at its foot. Max and the doctor, each carrying a small, plain-looking duffle, descended to meet them. Two of the men were in Rashidian Air Force uniforms, which looked vaguely like twenty-first-century British Air Force uniforms. Ten more were dressed like Max and Sahin, in the medium brown and tan, flowing robe of the kind worn by virtually everyone on Rashid IV who did not have a specific reason to wear something else.
The man with the more elaborate uniform and, apparently, the higher rank of the two, approached Max when he reached the bottom of the ramp. He was a handsome man, a bit taller and broader than Max, wearing a thin, closely trimmed beard that seemed to be the style on this world, and he looked to be just on the near side of sixty. He had a bearing that Max was accustomed to seeing in highly effective senior officers. Max would have bet he was the base commander.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “I am Colonel Mubarek and this is my executive officer, Major Hassam. You are Captain Robichaux?”
“That’s correct, Colonel. I’m Max Robichaux. This is my chief medical officer, Lieutenant Ibrahim Sahin. He is also acting Union ambassador to the Kingdom.” The colonel shook hands with both of them in the manner common in the Union, although hand shaking was not the custom on Rashid IV.
“Very pleased to meet the both of you,” said the colonel. “Please forgive me for not introducing these other gentlemen, but they are in a profession in which their names are not the subject of casual discussion. Please also forgive us for the disruption of your visit by certain lawless elements. We will do everything possible to prevent further incidents of the kind. Now, let us attend to your transportation to the Ministry of Trade.”
While an Air Force crew secured the Clover and hustled it into a nearby hangar, Colonel Mubarek led the group into the hangar closest to the landing pad where the microfreighter had set down. In it were three identical, large, luxury-type ground cars. The colonel explained that all three cars would head to the ministry, with two as decoys. Each car would carry four men, with two cars carrying four of what Max mentally labeled the “special ops men”—they were obviously highly trained special forces troops: lean, hard, and deadly. The other would carry Max, the doctor, and two of the special ops men. The three cars would travel in line-ahead formation, swapping positions from time to time.
The three vehicles took off into the night at what seemed, to Max and the doctor at least, to be an imprudently high speed. There were several checkpoints inside the air base at which the motorcade did not even slow down. Within moments, they had crossed the base perimeter and reached a highway that led the short distance from the base to Harun, the capital of the planet and the entire Unified Kingdom of Rashid, Allied Emirates, and Protected Islamic Worlds. Just as the vehicles left the base, Max noticed an aircraft that seemed to be flying in formation with the motorcade.
Max gestured at the vehicle and turned to one of the special ops men. “Is that rotorcraft providing cover for us?”
“That is correct,” he answered. “Only, we use the older term ‘helicopter.’ It’s there to help protect from attack by air and to act as a gunship to strike at any ground targets that should constitute a threat. There are also two atmosphere fighters at higher altitude to provide additional air cover, although they would not be much help with anything on the ground.”
Max nodded, sat back, and relaxed a bit for the first time since the initial Rashidian space fighter escort had first shown up on the Clover’s sensors. He noticed that, as he leaned back in the seat and rested his elbow on the armrest, a console deployed from the space between the seats. The console’s display showed a menu, containing several entertainment and music programs, local broadcast channels, and a navigation display. Max called up the display and examined the layout of the city, paying particular attention to the projected route of the motorcade, the location of the Ministry of Trade, and other landmarks and facilities. Like most naval officers in combat assignments, Max had a good head for maps and spatial relationships, so much so that he was able to get his bearings quickly and before long knew where they were in the city.
Several times so far, the cars had swapped positions. After the last swap, the car carrying the Union men was in the rear. The number two car was about 150 meters ahead, and the number one the same distance ahead of the number two.
The motorcade passed an impressively large Muslim seminary and a large regional retail facility. which the navigational display identified by the peculiar title of “shopping mall,” and Max noted that the ministry was now only five kills away. Maybe, Max thought, whoever had been behind the attempted fighter attack in space didn’t have any assets on the ground in Harun.
Or maybe, they did.
A tiny point of brilliant orange light climbed into the sky from behind a nearby building. It accelerated rapidly, trailing smoke and glowing gas as it swerved erratically through the air before locking in onto its target and making a beeline for the rotorcraft flying about four hundred meters directly over the lead vehicle. Before Max could give voice to the words that came immediately to mind, which were, “Oh, shit, that’s a portable surface-to-air missile; we’re really screwed,” the object had struck the rotorcraft, leaving it a roiling thundercloud of flaming smoke, a hailstorm of metal and plastic shards, and a rain of still-burning fuel that showered the first vehicle as well as half of a city block, setting fire to every combustible object it touched.
Max knew exactly what that meant and what had to be done. “Driver, change course! Turn around and go down a side street—anything but continuing on our planned route.” Either at Max’s prompting or having come to the same conclusion independently, the driver expertly spun the vehicle 180 degrees, as though it were a stunt car, and in a screech of tortured tires, had it moving in the opposite direction in less than two seconds, trailing a blue cloud of burned Plasti-tyre.
Just as the car began to accelerate, the first vehicle exploded, probably ignited by the burning aircraft fuel in which it was now coated. The ground car’s hydrogen fuel made for a remarkably transparent fireball, a chaotic vortex of blue flame threaded with strands of black smoke and swirls of yellow-orange fire produced by combustion of the plastic, electronics, and human flesh.
The gut-rattling CROOOMP! of the shock wave from that explosion struck Max and Bram’s car, at the same moment another light caught their attention. A yellow-white streak lanced out from the window of a building near the street, striking the second car and obliterating it just as thoroughly as the first. In contrast to the first car’s explosion, this one’s consisted of a sharp BLAM! from the warhead of the weapon, followed nearly two-thirds of a second later by a CROOOMP!, marking the secondary explosion caused by the detonation of the vehicle’s cryogenic hydrogen.
The shock wave struck the side of the still-accelerating car carrying Max and Bram as it turned sharply, fleeing down a side street to escape the shooting gallery, rocking it hard to port. but not slowing its rapid acceleration. One six-second reload later, another yellow-white streak reached out from the same building, but the longer range, poor shooting angle, and the shooter’s haste to fire his weapon before his shot was blocked by the building on the corner, caused the shoulder-launched antitank weapon to miss the car by a good fifteen meters, instead slamming into the side of a building across the street from the firing site.
The ground car carrying Max and the doct
or rocketed down the side street, then took a squealing right down what Max recognized as one of the city’s main boulevards. The second special ops man was talking busily on the vehicle’s Rashidian version of a secure comm unit, informing someone, somewhere, of what was going on—whatever the hell that was.
At that point, as the buildings and parked ground cars flew past his window at about 180 kph, Max decided that it was time he found out what was happening.
“Hey, Driver, do mind telling us what in the fucking hell is happening here?”
Much to Max’s surprise, the driver felt a straightforward question deserved a straightforward answer. “It’s the emir. The emir of the House of Habib. The bastard son of an infidel whore opposes any agreements with the Union. He rules two worlds in the New Damascus system, commands a small system defense force, and has managed to slip a few hundred of his best troops into the city under the ruse that they were soldiers on leave, coming to the capital as tourists. There were caches of hidden weapons waiting for them. He also has supporters in the royal palace, the Ministry of Defense, and several other government departments, who have been providing him with information. Just a few moments ago his men seemingly came out of nowhere, converged on the Ministry of Trade, and ringed it with hastily constructed barriers and field fortifications.”
“What about the Second Motorized Infantry Brigade? I thought they were stationed just outside the city.”
“You are very well informed, Captain. Yes, the Second is stationed nearby precisely for the purpose of protecting the capital against this sort of attack. Unfortunately, our commanders were taken in by a diversion that drew them to another city, Aswan, about two hundred kilometers away. The emir staged a ‘revolt,’ which, when the troops arrived, turned out to be only a dozen or so of the emir’s men and several hundred paid recruits from anti-Royalist student organizations at the university. The students knew nothing of the purpose for which they were hired to throw rocks and light trash fires, but were cleverly coached in how to lure the troops into dispersing and pursuing them on many wild goose chases all over the city. It will be hours before the brigade is reassembled, can remount their vehicles, and return to the capital.”
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 8