by Dale Brown
Instead of jet-jumping away, Paul commanded a fullthrust jet-right into the rocket, just a few feet below the warhead section. Unrestrained by its road-march holddown bar, the rocket easily toppled off the launch rail. Just as it hit the ground, the single-stage liquid rocket propellant ignited. The rocket streaked across the ground, slammed into the SS-12 unit beside it, and exploded. In rapid-fire succession, all six SS-12 Scaleboard rockets exploded in a wall of flame several hundred feet high and nearly a half-mile long. Every building within a mile was torn apart in the concussion.
Patrick did not just see and feel the six nearly simultaneous explosions-he was knocked off his feet from the concussion and earthquake-like tremors, even though he was more than a mile away. The eastern sky lit up like a millennium fireworks display. He didn't bother getting up from the ground, but low-crawled behind a doorway that led to yet another passageway underground. "Stalkers, status check," he ordered. He knew where the big explosion was, knew who had been assigned to attack that area, and he dreaded what he was going to learn…. "Castor is secure."
"Nike secure."
"Taurus secure. I got my bell rung, but I'm secure."
"Pollux?" No reply. "Pollux? Paul?" Patrick checked his electronic display for any sign of Paul's transponder. Nothing. "Castor is en route to Pollux's last location," he said. He hit his jump-jets and quickly propelled himself toward the massive explosions to the east. Patrick didn't have to check his heads-up display to know that Briggs and Wohl were on their way to join him.
But there was no way to reach Paul's last location. An area the size of at least four square city blocks was totally engulfed in flames-the very streets seemed to be rivers of fire, and the sky was thick with roiling waves of heat and smoke. Patrick was able to move forward another halfblock with great difficulty before system failure warnings and low-power warnings started to ring. There were several Libyan soldiers in the area, but they seemed stunned both by the devastation and by the strangely armored figure before them.
"Patrick." It was Hal Briggs, suddenly appearing beside him as if from nowhere.
"I'm going in."
"You can't. No one can survive that, not even in a BERP suit."
"I'm not leaving my brother behind," Patrick said. "I left David Luger behind in Siberia, and he survived only to be tortured for five years by the KGB. I won't let that happen to my own brother."
"You can't do it. It's suicide." He paused, studying his electronic visor and downlinking the status of Patrick's battle armor system. "You only have ten minutes of power remaining, and that'll get sucked away fast inside that inferno. My power is down to three minutes. Let's go back to the exfil point and recharge the suits. By then, maybe the fire will have been knocked back, and we can all go in and find Paul."
"No. I'm going in."
"How are you going to find him in thatT
"I don't know, but I'll find him." Patrick didn't know what was guiding him-it wasn't any sensor scan or transponder beacon. He had always believed there was some sort of bond, like a telepathic link, between him and Paul, but it was something he always dismissed as simply two guys being raised together in a house full of women. Whatever it was, Patrick was relying on it now. As Hal Briggs and the amazed and terrified Libyan soldiers looked on, Patrick jet-jumped into the hellish flames.
System warnings flashed in his electronic visor, and his skin felt as if it was going to vaporize right off his body, but he kept going. Moving inside the fire was actually easier than he had thought. His battle armor's sensors detected any large debris around him, so he was able to sidestep the pieces of vehicles and buildings without walking into a burning trap. The multiple blasts had leveled most everything, so all he had to do was avoid the larger pools of burning rocket fuel and continue on. Three or four jumps, and he was in the center of the inferno.
His power was nearly gone. The last estimate he had was five minutes remaining, but the estimate just a minute before that said ten minutes, so in reality he had only a few minutes to get out before the battle armor completely shut down. Patrick knew if that happened, he would be instantly baked alive inside the armor like a potato in a microwave oven-crispy on the outside, well-done on the inside.
One more jump, and he found him-or, rather, what was left of him. Patrick could only stare at his brother, not in horror but in sorrow. He had to have been right atop the SS-12 when it detonated, because the blast had torn right through the Tin Man battle armor. It had been all but peeled off his body, stuck on here and there like clumps of dirt. The intense fires had taken care of the rest. Patrick lifted the body of his younger brother as gently and as completely as he could, then jetted away to the east vlarthe shortest way out of the flames.
The Libyans were getting meaner and bolder now. As Patrick jump-jetted again just a few dozen yards from the perimeter fence, he felt heavy-caliber bullets hitting him from his sides and back. He had commanded the selfdefense electrical beams not to fire to save energy, but his power was all but exhausted. One more jet propelled him over the fence, and the last of his energy reserves drained away.
The fence kept him and the Libyans separated for now, but that didn't last long. Already troops were streaming out, angry voices piercing the night sky, drowning out even the roar of the huge fires behind them. Their blood lust was evident-they were out for revenge and retribution, not capturing prisoners. Patrick had nothing left with which to fight. He could not avoid capture now….
Suddenly, there was a string of explosions between him and the advancing Libyans, stirring up the desert floor like an instant sandstorm. Without the protection of his fully charged armor, Patrick was knocked off his feet as he was pelted with supersonic-blasted sand and rock. Stunned, he lay on the desert floor, knots of pain dotting all around his body. Writhing in pain, he saw the dark profile of his dead brother lying beside him. Both McLanahans, killed in one day, on the same mission. Shit.
He heard a loud roar and felt, rather than saw, more sand being kicked up. The Libyans were closing in, this time with helicopters or armored vehicles, hunting down Wohl and Briggs. The mission was a success, but they might all be wiped out, Patrick thought wearily. Once captured, their bodies put on display along with the remnants of their armor, the Night Stalkers would be dead, the United States would be embarrassed again, and…
"Patrick?" He willed his eyes to open and was surprised when they worked. He was looking directly at the alienlooking helmet worn by Hal Briggs. "You okay, man?"
"Am I shot?"
"You sure as shit got fragged pretty good by the Gators, but I don't see any holes," Briggs said. Patrick moved his arms and legs and found they all functioned, so he struggled to his feet. "Wendy sent in FlightHawk Two right in the nick of time, and she laid down a carpet of cluster bombs and mines right in front of about a hundred Libyan regulars. The armor protected you from the fragments. We're safe right now, but we gotta move." Briggs quickly got to work, snapping a fresh battery pack onto Patrick's backpack. He looked down, examining the body lying in the sand. "You got Paul out. Good work. I'm so sorry, my friend. I'm gonna miss working with him. He's a hero."
Patrick reached for the secure latches to his helmet, but Briggs stopped him. "Better not, man," he said seriously. "FlightHawk One has detected radioactive and chemical agents in the area." He motioned toward the Libyan soldiers lying dead in the aftermath of FlightHawk Two's raid. "If the mines hadn't got them, the radioactivity or nerve agents would have. That replacement battery pack should give you enough juice to hop out of here and be far enough away for the Pave Hammer to safely pick us up. We'd better go."
Patrick nodded, thankful to be alive. The noise Patrick heard was not a Libyan helicopter or tank, but the CV-22 Pave Hammer, making a high-speed pass over the area to check for pursuit. He reached down to pick up his brother again, but Chris Wohl carefully, gently pushed him away, and picked up Paul's body. Together the three commandos and their dead partner jetted eastbound into the desert.
Th
ey unearthed one of their prepositioned resupply caches a few minutes later. Fifteen minutes later they were far enough away so that radioactive and chemical weapon residue levels disappeared. Only then could the CV-22 land and extract them, first eastward into Egypt and then northwest out over the Mediterranean Sea.
It was a long, sad, quiet flight back to the Catherine.
AKRANES, ICELAND THAT SAME TIME
"What in hell are you whining about now, Zuwayy?" the Russian shouted on the secure satellite channel. "This had better be important."
"My missile base at Samah was attacked and nearly destroyed by commandos! American commandos!" President Jadallah Salem Zuwayy of Libya shouted in passable Russian. He was wearing a polyester blue and red warmup suit, with no shoes-the clothes that had been thrown to him as his security officers burst into his bedroom and snatched him literally out of bed into a waiting helicopter. At first, he thought it was an assassination squad-rampant fear was finally being replaced with white-hot anger as he realized he was safe. "They have set eighteen of the missiles on fire! There are nerve agents and radioactive materials spreading all across my desert!"
"Zakroy yibala! Shut your fucking mouth and stop blabbering on this line!" the voice shouted back. "This may be a secure channel, but if the Americans are indeed running an operation on you, they may have figured out how to crack the encryption codes. After all, they built the system we are using."
"Did you hear what I said, tovarisch!" Zuwayy retorted. "I am under attack! Thousands of square kilometers of my desert have been contaminated! Hundreds of my soldiers are dead! And the Americans certainly know all about those missiles and where I got them!"
"They know nothing of the sort," Pavel Gregorevich Kazakov responded. Kazakov was sitting at a desk in a small, private apartment in Akranes, Iceland, a few kilometers north of the capital Reykjavik, sipping a cup of tea that an assistant had just fixed for him. His aide, a beautiful young Russian former army officer named Ivana Vasilyeva, deputy chief of staff to the former chief of staff of the army of the Russian Federation-who was just as talented on the pistol range and in a judo dojo as she was in bed-set a tray of sweet rolls and honey on the desk, gave Pavel an enticing smile, then departed. "If they knew anything at all, they would have destroyed the entire base. Just a few commandos-they could have come from anywhere-Israel, Algeria, even your so-called allies Sudan and Syria. Now, shut up and calm yourself."
Kazakov took a sip of tea as Zuwayy started blathering something in half Russian, half Arabic. A phone call an hour before dawn? Kazakov thought bitterly as he sampled one of the pastries. Outrageous. Being in the witness protection program was hell indeed.
One of the world's richest and certainly one of the world's most dangerous men, thirty-nine-year-old Pavel Kazakov, the son of one of the Russian Federation's most highly decorated and most respected army generals, was under house arrest in Iceland, charged with hundreds of counts of murder, conspiracy, fraud, extortion, grand larceny, drug trafficking, and a laundry list of other crimes against several nations from Kazakhstan to the United States. He had been captured by some as yet unidentified commandos, probably Americans, and sent to a Turkish prison. But since so many other countries had lodged charges against him, the World Court ordered that he stand trial in the International Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal in The Hague. With some good lawyers-backed up by generous bribes-Kazakov got some valuable concessions. Turkey usually does not allow extradition of its capital prisoners, but Kazakov agreed to waive his extradition rights in exchange for no death penalty, and he was transferred to a maximum-security facility in the Netherlands.
Then Kazakov started to talk. Within days, Interpol had made dozens of major arrests around the world of suspected narco-traffickers, money launderers, con artists, and gem and art thieves. The authorities had confiscated millions of dollars of stolen weapons, valuables, property, stocks and bonds-even nuclear weapons-in a very short period of time. Pavel Kazakov, still considered the world's most dangerous criminal mastermind, was quickly turning into the biggest and most important informant ever in the history of law enforcement. Some of the world's most feared terrorists, notorious drug smugglers, and slipperiest criminals-men that had been on the run for years, some for decades-had been captured. As much as Pavel Kazakov had cost the world in loss of life and destruction of property, the value of the property alone that his information caused to be recovered or captured topped it by a factor of one hundred.
But, of course, Pavel saw it differently. To him, it was a way to save his own skin, get out of prison-and eliminate the competition. Besides, what did the World Court care about ethnic fighting in Albania or Macedonia, or military men in Turkey, or polluted waters in Kazakhstan? They gladly traded information on drug dealers in Europe and North America for reducing, and then eventually eliminating, Kazakov's prison sentence.
Details of his plea bargain with the World Court were kept top secret. As far as anyone knew, Kazakov was in complete isolation in a prison in Rijssen, the Netherlands, awaiting trial. No one ever suspected that any court would even consider releasing him, and the World Court did not have a witness protection program. But in short order, one was created for him-and Pavel Kazakov was free.
Yes, he was nearly broke-but "nearly broke" for him still meant more wealth than some Third World countries. It still offered him an opportunity to do what he did bestbuild his wealth back up again any way he could, whether it meant dealing drugs, weapons, humans, or oil. Plus, he could do it all from an untraceable apartment and telephone, with a new fully documented identity-all bought and paid for by the World Court in exchange for having the World Court eliminate his enemies for him.
"It is you who is responsible for this!" Zuwayy shouted, finally switching back to full Russian. "My troops could have executed this entire operation without your damned missiles! Now the Americans are breathing down my neck! You must pay for the loss of my base and compensate me for the loss of my soldiers! You must-!"
"Shut your 'scum-sucking mouth, Zuwayy," Kazakov interrupted hotly. "I spent ten million dollars of my own money to put those missiles in place-but not in Samah! I ordered that the missiles be placed in Al-Jawf, not Samah! "
"I put missiles in Al-Jawf-and there they sit, useless, while my men roast in the damned Sahara Desert!" Zuwayy retorted. "You make me pay fifty million dollars for missiles pointed at nothing but wasteland! I say no! Egypt is our true enemy! We need to threaten much more than just the Salimah oil fields."
"You moved some of those missiles to Samah, against my orders," Kazakov said.
"The missiles at Al-Jawf are useless, worthless!" Zuwayy repeated. "From Samah, those missiles can reach Cairo, Alexandria, Israel, even Italy. Moving some of the missiles that I purchased does not affect your plan against the Salimah oil fields."
"I'm not interested in attacking Israel, and I'm sure as hell not interested in attacking Italy with shitty first-generation rockets with chemical warheads!" Kazakov shouted. "Are you out of your mind? If we attack Israel, it will bring the Americans into the region with a vengeance. My oil terminals on the Adriatic Sea are directly downwind of any bases we would attack in Italy-besides, some of my best customers are in Italy! I did not pay you to put those missiles in Libya so you can threaten your neighbors or satisfy your thirst for global conquest.
"I'm glad those missiles in Samah were destroyed, Zuwayy-perhaps now you'll stop going off on your own and listen to what I tell you to do. I will pay you to replace those missiles and warheads-but only if you dismantle any other bases that you put missiles other than Al-Jawf, and only if you stop being a jackass and do as I tell you to do from now on."
"You may not talk to me this way," Zuwayy said haughtily. "I am the king of Libya. I am the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the lord of the Muslims. I am-"
"You are nothing but a back-stabbing opportunistic traitor who would sell his wife, mistresses, children, and even your own mother on the streets of Benghazi for money," Kazakov inter
jected. "You can use that cockamamie I-amroyalty story to impress your people and baffle the rest of the world, but to me you're nothing but a two-bit thug.
"Now shut up and listen. Your primary objective is the Salimah oil fields in Egypt, not to obliterate Cairo or Tel Aviv. Your job is to keep on moving your troops to Sudan, keep their readiness high, and keep on putting pressure on the Egyptian forces opposing yours without starting a shooting conflict yourself. If they are stupid enough to attack, you can simply walk in and wipe them up. Until then, I will continue to push the Central African Petroleum Partners to accept Libya and Metyorgaz as a partner, help develop some of your oil resources, and break the embargo on oil exports from Libya to Europe."
"I do not understand," Zuwayy said, hopelessly confused. "Why don't we just go in, invade Egypt, and take the oil fields ourselves? No one will oppose us."
"You idiot, everyone will oppose us," Kazakov said. "No one will intervene, but we will be drowning in oil because no one will buy what we are pumping, not even on the black market. Besides, if you invade, Central African Petroleum Partners will pull out, and neither you nor I have the money right now to build a thousand-kilometer-long pipeline across the Sahara Desert. We want the pipeline in place and operating before we take over."
"In the meantime, you sit safe and sound in hiding while American commandos destroy my military base," Zuwayy cried. "What am I supposed to do-hold my breath until the poison gas dissipates?"
Kazakov thought for a moment while he watched the former Russian army major Vasilyeva move as she straightened up his desk. She was like a tiger stepping soundlessly through the jungle hunting its prey, every movement graceful and with complete economy. She sensed him looking at her, turned her head to him, smiled, then turned her body so he could see her breasts, squeezing them together with her arms the way he liked to do.