Deep Black db-1

by Stephen Coonts

  “What’s up?” asked Dean.

  “Looks like the police pushed them on,” said Karr. “So much for a cheap meal.”

  “It cost me a decent pistol,” said Dean.

  “Lia’ll bring you another; don’t worry. Couple of nice little hideaways in the S-1 pack — these little Glocks.”

  “Plastic.”

  “Strong and light.”

  “Still plastic.”

  “You only like six-guns, right, Wyatt Earp?”

  “I’m not against technology. When it’s appropriate.” Dean leaned against the dashboard as he turned toward Karr, bending his head so that it was almost in his face. “You don’t really think we’re going to get in and get out alive, do you?” he asked. “Even if most of the soldiers are gone, the perimeter is well protected.”

  “Nah. That minefield’s wide open.”

  “How do we get across it?”

  “Pogo sticks.”

  “Very funny. You’re going to have to lay it out for me, step by step. Otherwise I’m not coming.”

  Karr turned to look at him. The look that crossed over his face combined disgust, anger, derision — and fear. Then it dissolved in a laugh so hard the truck shook.

  “You’re a lot of fun, Charlie Dean. Truly.”

  39

  Even Malachi balked at the plan when they conferenced in the Art Room with the Desk Three team. The team needed to get by an SA-6 missile battery with a helicopter — not an easy prospect without eliminating the battery, but doing so seemed almost impossible from the ground.

  “So let’s get it from the air,” said Tommy Karr cheerfully.

  “Can we?” Telach asked Malachi, who was sitting in the Art Room for the conference.

  There was no time to get an F-47C into position, let alone the larger A-7 space plane. That left the Space Platforms’ Vessels.

  Which weren’t armed.

  He could put one through the radar van. Smack through the side with the processing gear — all he’d have to do is fry a transistor or two and the unit would be dead.

  Shit, yeah.

  “I can take out the SA-6 with a Vessel,” he told them.

  “How?” asked Telach. Pacing in front of the blank screen at the front of the room, she looked exactly like his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Woods.

  Malachi tried to ignore that. He’d had a bad experience with Mrs. Woods.

  “I’ll put one of the Vessels through the radar van,” said Malachi. “Sizzle-boom, it’s gone.”

  “What about the ZSU-23s?” said Rockman.

  “What, the guns?” asked Karr. “Screw ’em. Fashona’ll nail the closest suckers with missiles off the Hind when he comes in.”

  “Timing’s going to be tight,” said Rockman. “You have to take out the SA-6 just before the helicopter pops up to clear the fence, then get the guns.”

  “You’re telling me the helicopter’s going to be on the radar screen at six feet?” asked Karr.

  “The fence is twenty,” said Rockman. “And they have a second dish outside to cover just this contingency.”

  “Ah, the SA-6 can’t hit shit under a hundred and fifty feet,” said Karr. “We just stay under that.”

  “I can take out the processing van,” said Malachi. “Tell me the time and it’s gone.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” said Karr.

  “Yeah, but what about the guns?” insisted Rockman.

  “Those Zeus suckers?” asked Karr. “If the helo comes in right, they won’t be a problem. They don’t have a good line of fire, and besides, Fashona’ll splash them.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” said Rockman. “There’s about ten seconds’ worth of exposure in and out.”

  “Ah, what’s ten seconds?” said Karr.

  “You know how much lead that translates into?” asked Telach.

  “Enough for a coffin,” said Karr cheerfully.

  Malachi leaned back in his seat, sipping his strawberry milk. A diversion in the air outside the fence, opposite the direction of the helicopter, would divert the gunners long enough for the Hind to wax them. He could self-destruct a Vessel out there, but there wouldn’t be much of a bang — the whole idea of the process was to be as unobtrusive as possible.

  What if he crashed two together?

  Still not much of a bang. Unless he had the boosters on them.

  “I got it,” said Malachi. “Rather than using one Vessel and self-destructing, we fly two down, then have them crash into each other. Should cause some sparks.”

  “How much?” asked Karr.

  Malachi wasn’t sure. “I’m going to have to talk to the design people,” he told her. “May run some sims, too, see where the best impact would be and—”

  “Run what you want,” said Karr. “Just as long as it happens in two hours.”

  “Two hours — that’s tight, dude.” Malachi turned to the screen where he’d punched up a course earlier. “Two hours — I’d have to launch within five minutes.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Karr. “We’ll look for the bang. Update us on times when you’re ready.”

  40

  Dean and Karr rendezvoused with the Hind in a deserted field about five miles north of their target area. Fashona had had to scrape his belly against the ground for nearly ten miles to be sure of missing the SA-6’s radar and was in a foul mood, not even helping them unload the gear.

  Dean remained dubious. The key to the plan was getting across the minefield using a scanning device attached to the handheld. The problem, though, was that it wasn’t designed to find mines, just explosives.

  “Works like the sniffers at airports,” Karr said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I heard those things don’t work,” said Dean.

  “Ah, sure they do, baby-sitter. The only problem is I have to calibrate it for one explosive at a time, say C-4 or gunpowder, or what have you. Not a problem, though, because the Commies only have one kind of mine.”

  “Bullshit,” said Dean, who’d dealt with mines in Vietnam. “And these guys aren’t the Commies.”

  “You’ve been hanging around with Lia too long,” Karr told him. “You’re getting very negative.”

  Lia, carrying a duffel bag of gear from the Hind, snorted in derision. Dean glanced momentarily at her sleek, muscled body, her sweaty T-shirt clinging tightly to her breasts. Then he turned back to Karr.

  “How do we get from the minefield to the buildings?” asked Dean.

  “We cross the road.”

  “Real funny,” said Dean.

  “He’s a riot, isn’t he?” put in Lia.

  “A comedian.”

  “We just duck the patrol, that’s all.”

  “We going to time it?” asked Dean.

  “Nah. Take too long, and besides, you can’t count on these guys. Their watches are always off. Cheap Commie workmanship,” said Karr. “We’ll watch them and go when they’re not there.”

  “How?”

  “The Bagel, baby-sitter. The Bagel.”

  The Bagel looked like a kid’s hovercraft toy. Round with a hole in the middle — hence its name — it had two engines on either side and a long twin-rudder tail. It carried five kilograms of fuel and could fly for about an hour and a half, feeding its video to a receiver in Karr’s backpack. Though very slow, it was extremely quiet, and once in hover would stay at its designated spot even in gale-force winds.

  Dean looked at the thing doubtfully. Even its rotors were plastic. The front had a small clear panel; the rear featured a thick set of baffles where the exhaust was muffled.

  “Georgia uses these for traffic control,” said Karr. “Check out accidents, that sort of thing. They get better endurance because they don’t worry about the noise.”

  Karr took the Bagel and put it into the back of the truck. It didn’t quite fit and he had to angle it.

  “Lia and Fashona can strap the weapons on the Hind. You and I have to get going,” said Karr, looking back to the helicop
ter. “Long walk ahead of us. Get your vest, headset, gun, knife, the works.”

  “I’m not a kindergartner, kid,” said Dean, picking up the lightweight armor.

  “Sorry, graybeard.” Karr laughed and walked over to Lia near the cargo door to the helicopter. When he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, Dean felt a twinge of envy.

  * * *

  An hour later, Dean lay prone on the dirt above the embankment that led down to the fenced area, just out of view of the observation post. The boxy A-2 machine gun was in his right hand. His pockets were stuffed with small grenades; on his back over the protective armor was a wide but narrow rucksack. Inside were extra clips for the boxy gun and his two pistols, a backup com device, flares, rope, and a kind of sling made of rope they’d use to carry Martin out if he was hurt. He also carried a.22-caliber Ruger Mark II with a sonic suppressor — aka silencer — strapped in a holster at his chest.

  In Dean’s opinion, the gun would be almost useless unless placed right on a victim’s head, assassination-style. Although it was admittedly an excellent weapon in its proper application, its small and relatively slow bullets wouldn’t so much as bruise someone wearing body armor.

  Far better, Dean thought, to have MP-5Ns with suppressors — at least you’d have a chance of putting down the person who heard you.

  A good quiet crossbow — there was a weapon these high-tech junkies should look into.

  “Thirty seconds, baby-sitter,” Karr hissed in his ear. He sounded like he was hyperventilating already.

  Dean’s doubts flooded into his veins, replacing his blood with fear. It was a suicidal plan.

  He’d done crazy things before. The whole reason he was here — the whole reason he was working for Hadash, if he was still working for Hadash — was a crazy foolish plan.

  One that had paid off handsomely.

  That didn’t make this one any less ridiculous.

  Karr leaped up. Dean followed, nearly tripping as they started down the embankment that led to the fence. A twenty-foot- wide swath had been bulldozed around the fence, both as a perimeter road and to make it easier to see and shoot anyone there. Just as they reached it, Karr pushed a button on his handheld, igniting a C-4 bomb he had set amid the gas cans in the back of the pickup, which they had parked on the northwestern flank of the fence.

  Dean pushed himself sideways, got up and reached the fence, then fell through the hole Karr had already cut. He put the fencing back as carefully as he could, using the tape Karr had left to get it back into place well enough to withstand a cursory glance.

  Meanwhile, gunfire, cannons, tracers ripped into the blackness. Even the ZSU-23s fired, their four-barreled volleys sounding like the pounding of a giant tin drum. There were sirens and flares, shouts in the distance. Dean pushed toward the supports for the guard tower on his right. Lights were switched on, searchlights — they were playing on the area in front of the fence, the embankment they’d just come down. Dean moved toward the black hole Karr had disappeared into, knowing he could count on only a few more seconds.

  Bare seconds — but where the hell was Karr?

  He could feel the lights coming, one playing across the interior of the yard errantly, another more purposefully. There was a second explosion, this one in the woods beyond the embankment where they had come down. Automatic weapons began to bark from the guard towers.

  Dean felt the skin in the soft spot behind his jaw prickle with electricity. He ran forward at full speed, forgetting for a second that he was running into a minefield. He saw a shadow on his left that had to be Karr, began to dart toward it, then suddenly felt himself upended, flying in the air. He crashed against hard ground, cowering instinctively, sure the next thing he felt would be oblivion.

  “Don’t get ahead of me, baby-sitter,” said Karr, who’d reached out and upended him. “We’re real close to the mines.”

  The guards stopped shooting. They concentrated their lights outside the fence, where the truck continued to burn.

  “Sucker’s still going,” said Karr. “Guess we’ll have to walk if the chopper goes down, huh?”

  “More likely fly to heaven,” said Dean.

  “Hey, speak for yourself,” said Karr. “I’m going to the other place. Reservation’s all set.”

  He knelt down, holding what looked like a miniature boom mike out in front of him. A thick wire ran to his back.

  “First mine’s two feet in front of you. Then there’s one, um, on the left — shit, these guys are not fucking around. I’ve seen checkerboards that were in a looser pattern.”

  * * *

  It took nearly twenty minutes for Karr to pick through the minefield. By then, things had calmed down to the point where the guards weren’t firing randomly and they weren’t shooting off flares willy-nilly. Sooner or later, there would be a thorough perimeter check. A careful look would find the hole in the fence. They needed to be in the building by then.

  Karr waited next to a four-foot Cyclone fence for Dean to catch up as he cleared the end of the minefield. Just beyond the fence was the main road in. About fifty or seventy yards to the right was a row of buildings that would block off the view of the guards inside the gate, but with time getting tight Karr decided they’d have to take a shot at crossing the road and not being seen. The Bagel’s infrared or IR camera showed that there were only two guards at the gate and another two between them and the target buildings. Get past them, and they could get into the buildings without a problem.

  Then the real fun would begin, since they didn’t know for sure which building Martin was in. The Art Room had assigned percentages to the possibilities, though they hadn’t explained the formula they used to come up with the figures. The building on the left was marked at 70 percent; the building on the right, 30. Karr’s gut refused to let him make a call, so he’d go with the Art Room’s numbers.

  According to the Art Room, there had been no more than six or seven people in both buildings at the time their bugs had run out of juice. That struck him as optimistic, but you never knew — they were due for one good break somewhere along the way; maybe that would be it.

  Dean finally crept next to him.

  “OK, baby-sitter, here’s the gig — we run straight to that building right there, one at a time. First guy runs, other guy watches the observation post.”

  “That’s a hike,” said Dean. He thumbed right. “Why don’t we head that way? We can sweep around, just be exposed on the right there.”

  “We can’t afford the time, and besides, the barracks will be able to see us anyway, so it’s not that high a percentage,” said Karr. “At least here we know it’s just the one or two sets of eyes.”

  He looked at the image from the Bagel; there was a truck coming from the barracks area, behind them to the right. “We’ll wait for the truck to clear. It’s got troops in it. If they go to the gate, that’s where the guards’ attention will be.”

  “OK.”

  “If you start shooting, remember the contingency plan.”

  “Which contingency plan?”

  “Every man for himself,” chuckled Karr, hunkering down as the truck’s headlights swung up the road.

  41

  Lia punched the button on her handheld several times, frustrated that they had lost the feed from the Bagel. That didn’t mean it had been shot down or run out of fuel — reception was notoriously difficult in the Hind.

  But it wasn’t good. Lia pushed against the restraints of the gunners’ cockpit. It was a tight squeeze, even for her. With the missiles and gun pod loaded on the stubby wings, she was paranoid about hitting the switches on the panels, even though the gear was fully safed.

  Karr had gone too far this time. It was uncharacteristic — she was the one who took chances, not him, not like this. Jesus, he was out of his mind.

  Dean’s fault. Karr obviously thought he had to impress the old fart.

  Not that Dean was old, actually. Or a fart. Not a fart at all.

  “How we doing?�
�� Fashona asked over the interphone, or internal communications set.

  “They’re working their way to the building, but I’ve lost the feed from the Bagel. Can you get higher?”

  “I don’t want to show up on the radar. We’re just barely out of coverage range as it is.”

  “We’re five miles away and five feet off the ground.”

  “That would be twenty. The radar is definitely on and scanning.”

  “I’d like to see what the hell is going on.”

  “Relax. Karr knows what he’s doing.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about.”

  “Hots for Charlie Dean, huh? He’s a hunk.”

  “Screw yourself, Fashona.”

  “Physically impossible, though many have tried,” he said. “You want me to go over the target list again?”

  “Why don’t you suck on a grenade?”

  “If I go, you go,” he told her.

  “That may be an acceptable trade-off.”

  42

  Dean threw himself against the cement bricks of the building wall, his pulse thumping in his throat. The night glasses blurred so badly all he could see was one dark shadow around him.

  “Up, up,” said Karr in his ear.

  Easy for him to say. Dean put his hand out and moved to the left, fishing for the nylon rope Karr had left for him. He found it finally, took a breath, and started pulling himself upward.

  “Jeez, Louise, what’s taking you?” hissed Karr. “I had to get up without a rope, and I gotta weigh about fifty pounds more than you.”

  “The fucking guard just about saw me.”

  “Relax. I would’ve nailed him.”

  “Fucking Ruger’s bullets would’ve bounced off his head.”

  “Only if his skull’s as thick as mine. Come on. I’m ready to go through the roof.”

  Dean pulled himself over the low rise at the edge of the roof, then immediately began hauling up the rope. Karr had already taken out what he claimed was a silenced Makita portable saw and started cutting. It may in fact have been a Makita — it was blue — but it looked more a small wastepaper basket with a five-inch saw blade than a battery-operated skillsaw. It wasn’t completely silent, but Dean didn’t hear the high-pitched hum until he was about ten feet away.