Paladin of Shadows 1 - Ghost

by John Ringo

  * * *

  "Holy crap," the pilot of Seahawk 412 said, turning the helicopter to the side and going to max power, nose down and hauling.

  "FAST, this is SOCOM Six," the sat radio said. "Copy weapon armed. Abort, abort, abort. Move towards Agent Winter Born's position. After detonation, recover if possible. Navy surface support is inbound. If you have to ditch, they have your location."

  "Roger," Captain Talbot said, keying his mike and nodding. "We need to get clear, ASAP." He turned to the team and waved. "Mission is ay-bort! Weapon is armed. Say, again, weapon is armed. Prepare for ditching maneuvers!"

  * * *

  Mike had strapped himself into the seat and the boat was now on autopilot, slamming southeast as fast as it could go. He couldn't really see anymore, his vision going gray and red at the impacts of the speedboat over the waves that remained from the storm. He wasn't sure if the thing was going to go airborne first or if he was going to bleed out or the bomb was going to detonate. When it did, it would send a tsunami in every direction. The girls were probably going to be fine. The Banks weren't going to allow for a major wave and they were not only ten miles away but shielded by the small islands. He, however, was still less than five, with nothing between him and the bomb but open water.

  The boat hit a particularly bad wave, going airborne, its engine screaming, as the world suddenly went white. He saw that, but it was really the last thing he remembered.

  * * *

  "Oh shit," the Seahawk's pilot said, quietly, as a new sun erupted to her northeast. Captain Kacey Bathlick was a short-coupled brunette with moderate breasts and shapely legs who had wanted to be a pilot since she had read her first Dragonriders of Pern book. She had considered all three services before opting for the Marines. She'd joined the Marines because she considered herself just as much of a warrior as the "cargo" in the back, and over the years she had handled more than a few midair emergencies. But, as her stick and all her instruments went dead from the nearby EMP, she admitted to herself that she'd much rather have been fighting Thread on Pern. "BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!" she shouted in a throaty contralto as she prepared to autorotate.

  * * *

  "EVAC!" Captain Talbot yelled, yanking open the troop door. He grabbed the FAST Marine next to him as the trooper dropped his armor, and tossed him out the door, then followed, yanking the quick releases on his armor in midair.

  The technique the Marines used was called helocast. It was a fast water-entry method that could also be used for just such emergencies. Talbot rotated his body in midair to turn his back into the motion of the helicopter. By holding his nose and putting the body in a "half-pike" position it was possible to enter the water from rather high and rather fast.

  But normally not quite as high as they were, and not as fast. And then there was the fact that the helicopter was falling towards them. The last thing Talbot saw before his feet hit the water was the rotating blades of the chopper above him coming down.

  As his feet hit, his body was tumbled backwards so that it hit on the legs and then butt, breaking into the water in a V formation with a tremendous splash, the speed of the impact actually causing him to tumble in the water. The impact drove the air out of his lungs, but he automatically hit the inflator on his buoyancy vest and bobbed back to the surface just as the chopper hit, with a tremendous splash, less than thirty meters from his position, one of the still-rotating blades slapping the water not far from his nose and then sinking out of sight as the helicopter rolled over . . .

  * * *

  Autorotation was, conceptually, simple. As a helicopter fell, its blades tended to pick up the spin of the air running across them. By occasionally reversing the pitch of the blades, it was possible to use their momentum to get momentary lift.

  However, it worked much better at, say, a thousand feet, than at two hundred. The props continued to spin for a moment, giving her a smidgeon of lift, then stopped and reversed. She was an expert pilot and had practiced autorotation hundreds of times. And she knew damned well there was not nearly enough rotation going to slow them as she reversed. But they were going in, no question, and any lift was better than no lift as the helicopter plunged towards the tossing sea.

  "Oh, well," her left seat said. "At least the water will be warm."

  "I'm just hoping to survive the impact," Kacey snapped, reversing the blades at the last moment possible. There was a smidgeon of lift again and then they hit the water's surface. Hard.

  * * *

  Mike came to lolling on the sea, boat engine dead. There was a new sun just dying to the northeast and in the light of it he could see a helicopter pinwheeling into the ocean to his northwest. It hit with one hell of a splash, then immediately turned over and began to sink, fast.

  The engine had cut, but he managed to nurse it to life and turned the boat northwest, breathing ragged and the pain getting to be unimaginable. Spray had covered him, the salt like fire in his wounds.

  As he was running northwest he glanced towards the direction of the dying fireball and, in the luminance of lightning crackling across its surface, saw one hell of a wave headed for his position. He turned into it, the boat lifting into the air again, and crashed to the water on the far side. He nearly passed out from the wave of pain and let out a shriek.

  "Crap, that hurt," he muttered. "This had better be worth it."

  * * *

  The impact had been bad, but Kacey had gotten enough lift at the last moment that the water had only come up to cover the windows for a second. Then the Seahawk rolled over and started to sink. Choppers have, effectively, no buoyancy so the multiton aircraft went under like a stone.

  "Everybody out!" she shouted, taking a last gulp of breath as the water in the cabin rose up to her chest level.

  The water was already over the fast-sinking chopper, but she'd trained for this eventuality. She found her chest and waist and removed her harness. Then she moved her right knee to the door and used it to find the door handle. She opened the door handle, grabbed the edges of the door, and headed out into open water. Her side was down so she had to pull herself around the chopper into the open water. She had her eyes open so she could vaguely see the rotor of the chopper going past, windmilling, and it was a sight she hoped she'd never see again in her life. Assuming her life lasted more than a few seconds.

  As lack of air got to her, causing a sudden panic reaction, she remembered the other thing she was supposed to be doing and reached for her Helicopter Emergency Egress Device. This was a small tank of air, generally kept on one or the other leg, that could be used for just such a situation. She yanked the HEEDs off her right leg, put it in her mouth and blew out, clearing the regulator, then sucked in a glorious lungful of air. That problem covered, she started kicking for the surface, breathing in and out as trained.

  When she got there she did a quick head count. The wind was blowing like a son-of-a-bitch and it was hard to count bobbing heads. But she got a glimpse of her co and crew chief and that was all she really cared about. Her responsibility for cargo ended when she got them on the ground, or in the water as the case might be. She hit the release on her Personal Flotation Device, called a Mae West by all and sundry, and rolled up to the surface of the water.

  "Hey," her co called. "Nice landing. Any one you can walk away from . . . or float as it may be . . ."

  "Oh, shut up, Tammy," Kacey snapped.

  * * *

  "Form up!" Captain Talbot yelled, grabbing Private Gowey as he passed. "Get in a group! Don't get separated!"

  Gunny Hilton came crawling over dragging Sergeant Goweda, who seemed to have taken a hit on the head and was mildly incoherent. They'd managed to hang onto their Mae Wests on the exit, at least.

  "Where's Pawlick?" the Gunny said, looking around the group.

  "I think we lost him, Gunny," Sergeant Klip said. "I don't think he made it out of the bird."

  "Fuck," Hilton muttered. "Sir, all of the team is present and accounted for except Lance Corporal Pawlic
k."

  "Thank you, Gunny," the captain said. Everybody had their Mae Wests inflated and he could see the pilots and their crew chief moving towards the group. "The good news is that we were being watched as we went down. The bad news is that our locator beacons probably took a hit from the EMP just like the chopper. So I hope they find us fast."

  "I hope they find us, period, sir," Klip said, looking around. "There's lots of sharks in these waters."

  "Hey," Captain Bathlick said as she backstroked over and hooked into the group. "Sorry about that. The EMP took out all my controls."

  "Figured as much," Captain Talbot replied.

  "Anybody got any shark repellent?" Klip said. "I got followed by one of those bastards on an op and I don't care for them at all."

  "Got it," the crew chief said, lifting out a canister and dumping it in the water. It quickly spread and dyed the waters bright yellow. "There's supposed to be a frigate out there somewhere. Hopefully they'll find us soon."

  "I dunno," Talbot said, looking towards the dwindling mushroom cloud. "We're drifting pretty fast. And there's going to be worries about fallout. We'd better be prepared to spend some time in the drink."

  "Great," Bathlick said, grinning. "Know any good dirty jokes? I've got a million of 'em."

  "Sir," Private Gowey said, kicking upwards. "I think I just saw a boat." He pointed southwards and kicked up again.

  "Sure is," Gunny Hilton said. The sun was starting to rise and it was just possible to glimpse a cigarette boat inbound on a snaking course. "But I'm not sure if that's good or bad. There's lots of cigarette boats in these waters we don't want to meet."

  "And whoever is driving that doesn't look as if he knows what he's doing," Captain Bathlick observed.

  The cigarette boat seemed to spot them and came forward, occasionally crabbing on the waves. It stopped just short of their position and started drifting to the south in the north wind.

  "Gowey," Talbot snapped. "Dump your Mae West and try like hell to catch that thing."

  * * *

  Gowey slid out of his vest and down under the group, surfacing to the south and crawling fast towards the boat. He'd dropped his boots earlier and was a very strong swimmer, but by the time he got to the boat it was nearly a hundred meters away.

  It was drifting away nose forward and he managed to snag the dive platform at the rear, dragging himself into the boat. The first thing he saw was a body on the floor of the cockpit, but he ignored it. There was another person, in armor, behind the wheel, slumped to one side and only held up by the four-point restraints for the driver.

  He wasn't sure if the guy was alive or dead, but he had other things on his mind. He undid the restraints, dumping the driver unceremoniously to the side, and keyed the boat to life. Then, inexpertly, he turned it towards the group.

  "There's a guy on here I think's the agent we were supposed to reinforce," he shouted, as he neared the gaggle of drifting Marines. "He's in pretty bad shape."

  * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  "I'm getting really tired of waking up in this same damned hospital," Mike said as Pierson walked through the door.

  "Be glad you woke up at all," Pierson replied. "Exsanguinated doesn't begin to cover it. And it took FAST quite a while to find the frigate that was in support. All they could do was plug the holes with the stuff you had on you. Good tip on the tampons, by the way. FAST's carrying them, now. They ran out, but one of the pilots from the helicopter had some spares with her."

  "I hope they kept my damned cigarette boat," Mike said.

  "Your cigarette boat?" Pierson said, grinning. "You were practically dead when they got to it. I think that counts as salvage. Surely it's the FAST's boat."

  "I wasn't all dead," Mike replied. "Salvage only counts if you're all dead. And you'd better not have lost it. I captured it fair and square."

  "We kept the cigarette boat," Pierson said, relenting. "I take it you want to keep it?"

  "Yep," Mike said. "Gonna paint it silver and black. Call it the Too Late."

  "Well, you stopped the nuke from getting to the U.S. or any other major populated area," Pierson pointed out. "And the fallout fell in open ocean. It was pretty nasty, too. That's what ground-level nukes do with water: very, very nasty fallout. The fishing in the area will be somewhat hazardous for a while."

  "I'm not planning on going fishing anytime soon," Mike said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "I hope somebody remembered my girls."

  "That we did," Pierson said. "FAST and a Navy team dropped on your boat and picked it up. One of the FASTs nearly got shot, but everything's kosher. I'm sorry to tell you the girls decided that, all things considered, they wanted to go home. So . . . nobody waiting for you on your little Caribbean idyll."

  "I think the Caribbean is getting a bit too hot for me, anyway," Mike replied, shrugging with his one good shoulder. "I think I'll go down for a while, just to rest up. But then I'm going traveling."

  "Well, you're entitled to a rest," Pierson said. "And the Finding decided that you still were owed for the mission. So you'll have plenty of money to rest with."

  "Money, shmoney," Mike said, closing his eyes. "I'm going to miss Pam and Courtney, though. They were good for an old soldier's soul."

  * * *

  Mike slid the Maker's Mark around in a puddle of condensation as he waited for his table.

  He'd been in the body and fender shop for over a month, long enough to be fully capable of getting around on his own, and then headed back to Islamorada. When he got there there was a cigarette boat tied up next to the Winter Born. It was black and silver with the legend "Too Late" already painted on the rear.

  He'd taken it out a time or two, but mostly he'd stayed on the yacht. The explosion in the Andros was the talk of the town but nobody seemed to connect him to it, which was fine by him.

  So he'd been doing his usual, hanging out, fishing, generally getting his head back together, working on his tan and new set of scars. But that meant he was back in the same lackanookie situation he'd been in before the girls showed up in his life. And he was pretty sure it was almost time to travel. It had been a while since he'd seen Europe and he'd never been to Eastern Europe. He was looking forward to traveling—among other things the hookers in Eastern Europe were supposed to be the finest on earth—but something had kept him around. A nagging sense of something left unfinished.

  He'd just glanced at his pager, wondering when his table was going to be ready, when a soft voice spoke behind him.

  "Excuse me," the familiar voice said, "is this seat taken?"

  Mike looked over his shoulder at Pam and Courtney and shrugged, grinning slightly.

  "I dunno," he said. "I was waiting for some friends to show up. But it looks like they just did."

  * * *

  BOOK THREE

  On The Dark Side

  Chapter One

  "Come 'ere, lovely," Mike said, pulling a blonde into his lap as she walked past. The girl—she was probably no more than sixteen but nobody cared in a place like this—was wearing a thong and a garter stuffed with bills. She had very nice tits, large with small pink nipples and fricking gorgeous blue eyes, true cornflower blue, with that sexy Tartar lift that so many of the Russian girls sported. Great cheekbones. Gorgeous tits.

  "You gonna show me a good time?" he asked, sliding a five euro note into the garter and playing with her nipple.

  Mike had decided that he purely loved Eastern Europe. The living was cheap, not that that mattered much, and the women were gorgeous. It was more than the fact that they dressed to the nines to go to the grocery store and didn't tend to run to obesity. It must be pure breeding or something. Just gorgeous, one and all.

  He'd started in Amsterdam, where he found out that most of the really good-looking hookers were Polish. Which had taken him to Poland, one damned beautiful country, where quite a few of the hookers were Lithuanian. This had led him to Lithuania, which he still felt had the best overall quality in Europe.
But a bunch of the best-looking whores were from Russia, so he wandered that way. It was like that Beach Boys' song, but with lots more screwing and some damned fine head. No training these girls; they were teaching him a thing or two.

  "I show you very good time," the girl said, wriggling in his lap and leaning forward to breathe in his ear, her nipples rubbing on his chest. "I be very good to you and you give me much money."

  Even in Russia he hadn't stayed in one place, generally moving further eastward. He'd been fascinated by Siberia since he was a kid and wanted to get a look at it. He'd made it as far as Perm, moving slow and taking his time with the girls. This place, though, was the back of beyond. But the girls were fantastic and the price was sure right. He figured this one would be less than fifty euros for the whole night. And he intended to have one hell of a time.

  "Just another rich American," Mike snorted, starting to lift the girl up as another hooker sat down at the table.

  "She has the pox," the woman said. She wasn't nearly as young, or pretty, as the girl on his lap. The term "rode hard and put up wet" came to mind. But she fixed him with her eye and shook her head. "Besides, you need to talk to me, not her. My name is Tanya."

  "About what?" Mike asked, tickling the girl's nipple again.

  The girl on his lap spat something in Russian at the newcomer and stuck out her tongue. Mike was picking up some of the local languages, but this was too fast for him to catch. He did catch the word for "old," though.

  "Go away," the newcomer said. "He'll be around for you later. We need to talk."

  "I'm not particularly interested in talking to you," Mike said, standing up and taking the girl's hand.

  "You will be," the woman said, standing up and coming over to whisper in his ear. "You want a nuclear weapon?" she asked quietly.

  Mike froze and leaned back, looking her in the eye. She regarded him calmly, then raised an eyebrow.

  "Take off, honey," Mike said, pulling out another note without looking at it and handing it to the girl. "Me and Tanya gotta talk."