Raven Strike

by Dale Brown; Jim DeFelice

  Li Han rose and walked to the nose of the small plane. Its skin was covered with a black, radar-absorbing paint, obviously intended to lower the radar profile. He took an LED flashlight from his pocket and ran its beam over the wreckage. The antennas might be hidden under the wreckage; they would be on the top of the aircraft most likely, where they could receive signals from satellites. But where was the sensor pod with its cameras?

  Integrated into the hull. The material seemed almost porous.

  The two Brothers who’d accompanied him came over the hill, huffing for breath. They slid down the ravine on the sides of their feet.

  “Careful,” said Li Han, forgetting for a moment and speaking in his native Mandarin.

  They looked at him sheepishly.

  “We must get the wreckage out of here before the satellite comes,” he said, switching to English. “Before it is dawn. We have only three hours. Do you understand?”

  The taller one, Amara of Yujst—they all had odd, African names—said something in Arabic.

  “Pick it up and carry it out,” Li Han told him, still in English.

  “It will be heavy,” said Amara.

  “Then get more help,” said Li Han.

  Chapter 10

  Western Ethiopia

  “We’ve been targeting him,” said Damian Jordan, pointing at the hazy black-and-white image of an Asian man on the screen. “Mao Man.”

  “Sounds archaeological,” said Danny, looking at the face.

  “Li Han,” said Nuri coldly.

  “You know who he is?” asked Jordan. He cracked his knuckles, right hand first, then left. The sound echoed in the room. Except for a pair of cots and a mobile workstation, the room was empty.

  “I never heard him called Mao Man,” said Nuri. “But I know who he is. He’s a technical expert, and a weapons dealer. A real humanitarian. You’ve heard of A.Q. Khan, right?”

  Khan was the Pakistani scientist who had helped Iran—and possibly others—develop their own nuclear weapons program.

  “This guy is similar, except he’s Chinese,” said Nuri. “He had some sort of falling out with the government and military. Probably over money. Anyway, he’s been in a number of places in the last few years, selling his services. He’s pretty smart. And absolutely no morals.” Nuri turned to Jordan. “He has a team here?”

  “Not a team. He’s working with the Sudan Brotherhood.”

  “Lovely.” Nuri turned back to Danny. “Muslim fanatic group. Gets some money and help from al Qaeda.”

  “I don’t know about the link—” started Jordan.

  “I do,” said Nuri flatly.

  “Well you know more than me,” said Jordan. “All I know is we’re targeting this guy. It’s a noncontact situation.”

  Nuri frowned. “How long?”

  “We’ve been here almost five weeks,” said Jordan. “Most of that time was getting the aircraft ready, though. We only just started tracking him.”

  Jordan began briefing them on Raven, an armed UAV they had used to track Mao Man. Its function was similar to Reaper—the armed Predator drones—but it was newer, more capable.

  “How?” asked Danny.

  Jordan shrugged. “Faster. A little smaller. More robust.”

  Nuri snorted.

  “This was its first mission,” said Jordan. “Really more of a shakedown cruise. They picked a quiet area for a maiden flight. Afghanistan was too hot.”

  “Yeah,” sneered Nuri.

  “Have to try it somewhere,” said Jordan. “It wasn’t my choice. There was some sort of mechanical problem about a third of the way through the mission. There were temperature spikes in the right engine. My guess is that there was impurity in the fuel and something blew in the chamber. The power profiles were off, and we got a lot of ambient sound, kind of like you’d get in a car if there was a hole in the muffler. It may have been loud—that’s what may have tipped off Mao Man and the guerrillas he’s working with. Or maybe they heard the Predator, or saw something somehow. Anyway, they came out of the mine and fired a couple of MPADs—shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles. It was a Stinger Block 2.”

  “An American missile?” asked Danny.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “How’d they get that?”

  “Don’t know. They get a lot of stuff out here.”

  “Sold by a friendly government,” said Nuri. “Allegedly friendly.”

  Danny shook his head. “So they shot it down.”

  “No, that’s the damn shame of it. Raven was flying with a Predator on overwatch. The two aircraft collided.”

  “You know where it went down?” asked Danny.

  “Roughly. That’s where Melissa went. We have transponders, but the accident knocked one of them out, and separated the other two. So it’s in one of two spots. At first there was no signal because of a sandstorm.”

  “A sandstorm?” asked Danny.

  “Happens all the time here,” said Nuri.

  “The particles screw up the low-power transmissions,” explained Jordan. “It’s a trade-off—if you have a transmission that’s too strong, anyone can find you. At any rate, we can see them now. It’s over the border about fifty miles.”

  Nuri whistled. “That’s not the best place for a woman.”

  “It’s not that bad,” said Jordan. “She’s been out there before.”

  “How is one person going to bring back an aircraft?” asked Danny.

  “She said she just wants to locate it.” Jordan shrugged. “When they told us you were coming, she said she’d get there and you could follow.”

  “Is she nuts?” asked Danny.

  “Well yeah, actually, she is,” said Jordan.

  “We’re getting about a tenth of the story here,” Nuri told Danny when they went outside. “No-contact mission. You know what that means?”

  “No,” said Danny.

  “That means they don’t have to ask permission to kill this guy,” said Nuri.

  “Okay.”

  “They’re out here testing a new UAV on a high-value target? CIA officer goes out by herself to locate it? Granted it’s not as bad as it was a year ago, but it’s still not Disney World. There’s a lot more to the story, Danny. A hell of a lot more.”

  Nuri folded his arms. He didn’t know exactly what else was going on here, but it smelled bad. Predators had never been used against the rebels here, not even the Sudan Brotherhood, because they’d never taken action against the U.S. In fact, except for their religious beliefs, one could have argued that they were much friendlier toward America philosophically than their government was.

  As for Li Han, targeting him made a hell of a lot of sense. But bugging out didn’t. The bureaucratic bs needed to authorize a strike was so immense that an operation like this would continue for years.

  Unless they hadn’t gone through with the bureaucratic bs.

  Which meant the operation wasn’t just black; it was unauthorized; aka illegal.

  Nuri felt his lower lip starting to shudder. The cool air was getting to him.

  “How long before we can hook into the Voice?” asked Nuri, using one of his pet names for the MY-PID system.

  “Tigershark won’t be on station for a few hours,” said Danny, checking his watch. “I’ll find out—I have to tell Bree we’re here. Hang around, all right?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Danny took out his encrypted satellite phone—it used standard military satellites, not the data-heavy Whiplash network—and called in as they walked toward the airstrip, as much to keep warm as to avoid being overheard. Nuri put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth as he listened to Danny’s side of the conversation.

  “Hey Bree, this is Danny. We’re here. What’s the ETA on Tigershark? . . . Uh-huh.”

  Nuri felt a twinge of jealousy at how close the colonel and Breanna Stockard were. There was a level of trust there that he’d never had with any of his supervisors, and certainly not with Jonathon Reid. It wasn�
�t that he thought Reid or any of the men he’d worked for were less than dedicated, or would leave him purposely in the lurch. It was more a question of how far beyond their duty they would go. He’d already seen Stockard risk her career and her life for Danny.

  For them. For the entire team. But it was personal for Danny in a way it would never be for Nuri.

  “Nuri thinks there’s a lot more going on here than we’re being told, Bree,” said Danny. “Uh-huh.”

  Nuri watched Danny listen to something she said, but in the darkness he couldn’t see his face well enough to interpret his reaction.

  “She wants to talk to you,” said Danny, handing him the sat phone.

  “Ms. Stockard, hello.”

  “Nuri, what do you think is going on?” asked Breanna.

  “I can’t say exactly.”

  He explained that the Agency didn’t seem to be following its usual protocols when targeting a high-value terrorist like Li Han. On the other hand, he had to admit that because he had no direct information about either Raven or the particular mission, he simply didn’t know how suspicious to be.

  The more questions Breanna asked, the less confident Nuri felt. And yet, things still seemed a little off, a little unusual in ways that made him believe the CIA wasn’t telling them everything.

  Well, duh, he thought, handing the phone back to Danny. When did the Agency ever tell anyone everything?

  “She’s going to talk to Reid,” Danny told Nuri after he signed off. “I don’t think Reid would lie to her.”

  “Probably not,” said Nuri.

  “You think Reid would lie?”

  Nuri shrugged.

  There were all sorts of reasons Danny didn’t particularly like the fact that Whiplash was a joint project between the military and the CIA, but they all came down to Nuri’s two words: probably not.

  You never knew exactly what the CIA was up to. The Air Force and the rest of the military might have its problems and its politics, but these paled compared to Central Intelligence.

  “Tigershark will be here in another three hours,” said Danny. Once the aircraft was overhead, they would have real-time surveillance as well as a connection with their computer system, MY-PID. The rest of the team was scheduled to arrive roughly two hours later. Assuming that Melissa Ilse had located the wreckage by then, they would fly in, retrieve it, and come home.

  Danny noticed Nuri staring into the distance.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Just how lovely it is to be back in this stink hole,” said the CIA officer.

  Chapter 11

  Southeastern Sudan

  Melissa Ilse cut the motorcycle’s engine, coasting in the dark as the indicator beeper became a steady hum. She was a mile from the UAV.

  Hand-built by Ducati to CIA specifications, the lightweight motorcycle had a pair of oversized mufflers that kept engine noise to a low rumble. But sound traveled far in the desert foothills, and she couldn’t afford to take a chance of alerting anyone that she was near. She needed to locate the UAV and recover its brain, or her career was shot.

  Harker had told her that in so many words.

  Melissa glided off the dirt trail she’d been riding for the past half hour or so, letting the bike’s momentum carry her to a trio of rocks a few yards up the hillside. She put on her brakes as she reached them. Hopping off the bike, she set it down gently against the largest of the rocks. She pulled the MP-5 submachine gun from its holster on the side of the bike and trotted down to the trail, turning back to make sure the bike couldn’t be seen.

  Her night vision goggles were heavy against her face. She pulled them off and rubbed her cheekbones and eyes. She was surprised there was enough light to see fairly well, and it was such a relief not to have the apparatus pressing against her face that she decided she would do without it for a while. She stuffed it into her rucksack, then examined her GPS.

  The handheld device wasn’t coordinated with the UAV’s homing signals, but it wasn’t hard to get her bearings. The aircraft had gone down on the other side of the ridge. She could either climb directly over it or circle around parallel to the trail she’d been riding.

  Direct was always better.

  Melissa paused every few steps to look around and make sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d been through this general area several times in the past two months, before Raven was brought in. She might even have been on this very hillside, though she didn’t remember it.

  The chapped land and rugged hills reminded her of southwest Nevada, where her dad used to take her camping and hiking when she was a girl. He and her mother had divorced when she was only three; he had custody only a few weeks each year, and they always spent at least one week of that camping. She cherished those trips now, and looked forward to the next, not due for several months.

  Melissa scolded herself. It was dangerous letting her mind drift. Crouching at the top of the ridge, she put one hand on the rocky crust, then folded herself against the hillside, peering over the top.

  Shadow covered everything before her. She slid down a few feet, pulled off her pack and removed her night vision goggles.

  A small settlement sat in the valley on the left, not quite two miles away. There was no sign anyone was awake.

  So where was the plane?

  From the signal, it should be to her right, maybe a thousand yards away.

  Melissa surveyed the area again. The submachine gun felt heavy in her hands. She’d never fired it at an enemy. She’d never used a gun against a real person at all.

  She took a slow breath, controlling her nerves, and started down the hill in the direction of the signal.

  She came to the wreckage sooner than she thought. The aircraft’s left wing jutted from the rocks. It had sheered at the wing root, pulled off by the force of the midair collision.

  Melissa took over, scanning the area. This was bad luck—she’d gone after the wrong part of the plane. The flight computer was in the forward section of the fuselage—the other signal nearly five miles to the northeast.

  She cursed silently, then took the camera from her pocket. They’d want to know what the wrecked wing looked like.

  Chapter 12

  Washington, D.C.

  Senator Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard looked up at the receptionist as he rolled into the rehabilitation ward in Building 5123 at the Walter Reed Hospital complex. They were old friends by now, so well-acquainted that Zen knew she took her coffee black with two sugars.

  It was important, after all, to get those little things right.

  “Luciana, you are looking very chipper this morning,” he said, rolling toward her. “How is my favorite receptionist and nurse in training?”

  “Big test tonight,” she told him.

  “Better hit the books.”

  “I am.” She raised the textbook from behind the counter. Building 5123 was a special facility at the hospital complex, with the highest level of security possible—so high, in fact, that even Zen had to submit to a rudimentary pat down. His aide—Jason Black—couldn’t even go downstairs with him.

  Which, in some ways, was just as well.

  While the staff members were all medical professionals, they worked for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a special branch charged with investigating biology and medicine and their implications on the battlefield as well as society.

  “Jay brought you coffee,” said Zen, glancing back at his aide. Black handed over the cup of Starbucks.

  “You look like you’re still asleep, Jason,” said Luciana.

  Jason blushed. “Naw.”

  “I ride him hard, Lucy,” said Zen. “Twenty-four/seven, around the clock. How’s my patient?”

  “They don’t tell me anything, Senator. But I haven’t heard anything bad.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Zen rolled himself toward the security checkpoint a short distance away. Contrary to what she’d told Zen, the staff downstairs would have pass
ed the word if there was a problem. Not that it would have kept Zen from going down to see their patient, Mark Stoner.

  Stoner had been a close friend years before. They’d worked together at Dreamland; at one point, Stoner had saved Zen’s wife Breanna’s life.

  Stoner had been lost on a mission in Eastern Europe some fifteen years before. Everyone, Zen included, had given him up for dead.

  A recent Whiplash mission had discovered him still alive, though so physically and mentally altered, he was barely recognizable. Zen had helped rescue him. Now he felt obligated to help him back to health.

  Mental health. Physically, he’d never be what he was. He’d always be much, much better.

  Rescued from a helicopter crash by a scientist working with Olympic athletes, Stoner had been the recipient of numerous biomechanical improvements and a host of steroidlike drugs that had turned him into something approaching a Superman. While he had been weaned from most of the drugs the scientists had put him on, he still retained much of his strength.

  A single nurse was on duty in the basement ward. Two guards with loaded shotguns stood behind her.

  “Good morning, Senator.”

  “Katherine.”

  “Dr. Esrang is with him.”

  “OK.”

  Zen wheeled himself next to a chair, then waited as one of the guards ran a wand around him and looked over his wheelchair to make sure there were no weapons or other contraband. Cleared, he got back on and wheeled himself to the steel door. A loud buzzer sounded; the door slid to the side. Zen entered a narrow corridor and began wheeling toward a second steel door. The doors acted like an airlock; only one could be opened at a time, even in an emergency.

  Two more guards waited on the other side of the door. Zen was searched once more. If anything, the second search was more thorough. Cleared, Zen went down the hallway to a set of iron bars. The burly man on the other side, dressed in riot gear but without a weapon, eyed him, then turned and nodded. The bars went up; Zen wheeled through. He said hello, not expecting an answer. He had never gotten one in the weeks since he’d been coming to visit Stoner, and he didn’t get one now.