by Jack Mars
Susan looked at Kat.
“I think I’d like to vomit,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
4:40 p.m. Eastern European Time (10:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
Incirlik Air Base
Adana, Turkey
Swann seemed to be speaking inside Luke’s head.
“Luke, I need to run a test. Turn on a beacon and let me see what I’ll be looking at.”
Luke stood on the tarmac, in a rough circle with Ed Newsam and Bill Cronin. They all wore flight suits.
Luke was barely listening to Swann. Gunner had just sent him a text message.
Where are you?
Turkey, Luke wrote. Where are you?
A moment passed, a little pencil icon indicating that something was being written.
School. What are you doing in Turkey?
Luke smiled. What else? Eating turkey sandwiches.
“Luke?” Swann said again. “You gonna give me that beacon?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was distracted for a minute.”
Luke twisted the cylinder in his hand and tossed it about ten feet away. It rolled along the ground. It didn’t seem to be doing anything. It could be one of those pneumatic tubes you put your money in at the drive-thru bank teller.
“Might be a little early to see that,” Luke said into his helmet microphone.
Nearby, a jet fighter took off and immediately broke the sound barrier. The noise was deafening. The sun was setting toward the west, a dim orange glow. The evening was just coming on, but wasn’t there quite yet.
“No, I’m getting a nice green strobe, just to your left. It’s blinking every three seconds, very pretty. That’ll work fine.”
“Luke?” a female voice said. It was remarkable how young the voice was—it sounded almost like a little girl talking.
“Hi, Mika. What have you got for me?”
“Colonel Hassan Musharaff,” Mika said. “Sixty-two years old. Three times divorced, seven children. Colonel Musharaff is a lifer in the Turkish Air Force. He joined when he was eighteen. He was an early mover, reaching the rank of Major at the age of thirty-two. But that’s where he stalled. Throughout his career, he’s been associated with hard right elements in the Turkish military, as well as with mosques and organizations known to harbor extremist sentiments. He has been vocal in his disdain for the secular nature of Turkish society, and has been especially critical of the Turks sitting on their hands since the Russians seized their islands in the Black Sea. He has also expressed sympathy for the idea of reestablishing a Muslim empire based on Sharia law.”
“The caliphate,” Luke said. “Which means ISIS.”
“Exactly,” Mika said. “These views put him at odds with most of the military brass, and the elite of Turkish society. Which is likely why he never attained the rank of general, despite more than forty years of service.”
Luke sighed. “How did he manage to stay in the military at all? He’s so far out of the loop you’d think they would have shown him the door by now.”
“He comes from a wealthy and prominent family. His grandfather was an olive farmer who vastly increased his holdings with land seized during the Armenian genocide. He became one of the largest exporters of olives and olive oil in the country. He developed lucrative side businesses in wine, dates, and specialty foods. The family’s Turkish delight candies are still popular all over Europe. So there’s that. Also, the colonel’s older brother is a government functionary who’s held high-level cabinet and adviser posts across three administrations. Musharaff may be a malcontent, but he’s an untouchable malcontent.”
“Where is he now?” Luke said.
“Nobody knows. He went underground once the uprising started. The rumor is that if he isn’t behind it, he is somehow involved.”
“Okay,” Luke said. “Keep digging, see if you can scare up his location. What about this other guy? The Phantom?”
She hesitated. “Uh… sketchy. There are accounts of someone known as Jamal, or the Phantom, taking part in all kinds of terrorist activities over the past fifteen years. He’s here, there, and everywhere. But there’s nothing solid. If he’s ever been in custody, I can’t find it. If he was born and grew up somewhere, there’s no record of it. It seems just as likely that there is no such person, and it’s a rumor that the jihadis share among themselves. Kind of like the boogeyman, or Santa Claus.”
Luke wasn’t sure he agreed with her on that. Then again, he once met a Chechen rebel who fought against Russia, and who insisted that in the winter of 1995, there were women guerrillas in the Chechen mountains, dressed all in white to camouflage themselves against the snow. They were expert riflewomen who killed Russian soldiers with a single shot, then disappeared on skis. This was because in their former lives, the women were world-class biathletes from Finland. The Chechen said they were known as the White Tights—so-called because of the skin-tight outfits they wore. It was totally absurd, but people believed in things like this.
“Okay, Mika,” he said. “Good job. Thank you. Let me know if you pick up anything more.”
“Will do.”
Luke glanced around.
Ed Newsam was gearing up for the apocalypse. He had his M79 grenade launcher and six boxes of grenades, four to a box. He had an MP5 machine pistol and two ammo belts looped over his shoulders. He had two Glock nines strapped around his waist. He had a six-inch dagger. He had a pair of spiked brass knuckles, in case it came down to that—Ed would be punching holes in his people’s faces.
“What are you gonna do with all that?” Luke said.
Newsam shrugged. “Keep your pale white ass alive.”
“Swann, you and Mika should see this guy.”
“We do see him.”
Luke smiled. He felt loose and ready. He was tired, but he’d caught a couple of winks on a cot in a quiet corner of the airmen’s barracks. He ate a banana and a yogurt, and drank a cup of coffee in the mess hall upon wakening. None of that really got him going, but he and Ed had each dropped a Dexie a few minutes ago.
That was going to do the trick.
He gave his men the once-over. Ed looked fine. Ed rarely changed. He was big, broad, and physically imposing, but his body always seemed fluid and relaxed. Luke had seen him slumped in a chair with his feet on a desk. And he’d seen him in the minutes leading up to a firefight with the North Korean military. The look on his face was the same both times—impassive, blank, impossible to read. Maybe he was terrified. Maybe he was bored. It was hard to tell.
“Ed? How you doing, man?”
Now Ed looked at Luke. He flashed a smile—bright white, perfect teeth. “Ready to rock, brother. Of course.”
Luke glanced at Bill. Bill looked sick. He was bigger than Luke remembered him—his stomach was rounder, sure, but there was more weight everywhere. Bill had a couple of handguns and a knife. He didn’t look like a man who could fight anymore, if fighting was ever his thing. Luke had always thought of Bill’s specialty as interrogations.
“Big Daddy?”
“Yeah.”
“How you feeling?”
“Ready.”
Luke shook his head. Seeing Bill had changed his mind—he didn’t want to bring him along. Bill knew the layout of the town, sure, and he was an old Syria hand. He knew the language and the culture, he knew who all the players were, and he knew the map like he knew his own face. But he looked like he was past it.
“Bill, I want to tell you a story.”
“Tell away.”
“A few months ago, I let an old friend of mine come with Ed and me on an operation. He was my age, but he had let himself go a little bit. I told him I wasn’t going to be able to keep him alive on the mission. I told him that, but I didn’t really try to talk him out of coming. And that was because I needed him.”
“Okay. And the point of this is…”
“He died. He died during the mission, and I watched him die. There was nothing I could do to save him. He was alive one second, and dead
the next. You see where I’m going with this?”
Now Bill looked at him. His eyes were hard, in the sense of eyes that had no emotion. They were the eyes of a child who could pull the wings off of houseflies, or of a man who could pull the tongues out of helpless prisoners.
“I do. Yeah.”
“I’m not gonna lie to you, Bill. We’re probably going to need you down there. But if you die…”
Luke shrugged.
“It’s my nickel,” Bill said.
“Exactly.”
Bill shook his head. “Don’t lecture me, Stone. You called me, and I came. What’s the old saying—in for a penny, in for a pound. Anyway, I was flying missions when you were in grade school. I think I’ll be fine.”
Luke smiled. “That’s what I like to hear.”
He picked up his rucksack, and the other men followed suit. The tiny helicopter was on the pad fifty feet away.
They called it the Little Bird. And sometimes they called it the Flying Egg.
It was the MH-6 helicopter—fast and light, highly maneuverable, the kind of chopper that didn’t need room to land. It could come down on small rooftops, and on narrow roadways in crowded neighborhoods. The chopper was beloved by special operations forces. As they walked toward it, the chopper’s rotors began to spin.
Luke ducked then and ran to the open passenger hold. The engine revved up, and the blades turned faster and faster as the men climbed over the wooden side-mounted bench and aboard. All around them, night descended.
* * *
The chopper flew low and fast.
The ocean buzzed by below them, maybe fifty feet down, almost close enough to touch. Luke watched its inky darkness from the open doorway. A stiff, cool breeze blew in. He guessed they were moving at over a hundred miles per hour.
He pictured Gunner in his mind. Tow-headed boy, twelve years old, getting bigger all the time, changing all the time. A year ago, the kid was in love with zombies. Where did that go? The first twelve years had passed so quickly—in twelve more, Gunner would be a young man of twenty-four.
Luke would be in his early fifties.
Don’t waste it, man. Don’t waste that time.
“I ain’t seen my little girls in a while,” Ed Newsam suddenly said. He spoke quietly, but his voice inside Luke’s helmet cut through the wind from outside, and the effect was almost enough to make Luke jump out of his seat.
Luke glanced at him—the big man sat back with his MP5 across his lap. His beloved M79 was at his feet.
“Great minds think alike,” Luke said.
“Is that what you guys like to do?” Bill Cronin said. “Gas each other up before you drop in?”
“Pretty much,” Ed said. “What do you like to do?”
Cronin shrugged. “Pray.”
“Gentlemen,” another disembodied voice said, “we are approaching target, ETA approximately ten minutes. Not sure how much time you guys have spent in Syria lately, but I’ve done a little. I can promise you this is gonna be hot.”
Luke went to the cockpit—it was barely two steps away. He leaned his head in between the helmeted, flight-suited pilots. Two men were up front, both of them from the U.S. Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, code name Nightstalkers. Luke and Ed were used to flying with people like this. The 160th SOAR were the Delta Force of helicopter pilots.
Through the bubble windshield, far ahead, there were flashes of light in the darkness. A person might think it was a lightning storm at sea. Luke could tell what it was without thinking about it—firefight. The word didn’t even reach his conscious mind. They were flying right toward the middle of it.
He glanced at the chopper commander’s nameplate. ALVAREZ.
“You know the plan, Alvarez?”
Alvarez nodded. “Primary landing site is on the upper deck of the freighter. We have the coordinates. If it’s too hot, or there are unexpected obstructions on the upper deck, we go to secondary landing site, an old parking lot three hundred meters to the southwest. Failing that, third and final landing site is an open field two miles to the north, northwest. We make the drop, circle around, and if the situation permits, provide air support. If not, we bug out for Turkey.”
“Beautiful,” Luke said. “Let’s do this. Do everything you can for us, but make it home alive, you get me?”
Alvarez’s co-pilot smiled. “We always do.”
Luke gestured with his head at the flashes of light up ahead. Now he could hear faint rumbles.
“That where we’re headed?”
“You bet. Like I said, this place is as hot as it comes.”
Luke ducked back and took his seat between Ed and Bill.
“Approximately seven minutes to the destination,” Alvarez said. “We should be exposed to incoming fire well before that. Second thoughts? Now’s your last chance to jump.”
Luke glanced out the door again. Whitecaps whipped up on the surface of the black waves.
Without warning, Mark Swann’s voice appeared inside Luke’s helmet.
“Luke, you with me?”
“Yeah, Swann. How’s it going?”
“Mika and I are here at the hotel. We’ve got you on real-time satellite with, I think, about ten- or fifteen-second delay. I’ve got a gossamer drone high above that ship, and I’ve got a Reaper that I can do a Stinger missile strike with, if it comes to that. If you ID those nukes, I could sink the ship with it, if we want. Then the SEALs can go deal with those nukes after the war is over.”
“Okay,” Luke said. “How does the theater look?”
“Bad. There’s street fighting maybe a quarter of a mile from the docks. Assad’s people are in there with a couple of heavy tanks. They’re blowing holes in everything. They’re shelling the buildings just to the west of where you’re headed. There’s a helicopter gunship, my guess a Russian Mi-24, circling the battle, putting the heavy guns on rebel positions. Everything’s on fire, a lot of tracers flying, the sky is lit up. You’re going to be visible in there. There’s nowhere to hide.”
“How does the boat look?”
“Uh, I counted about twenty fighters there earlier, taking up positions on the docks and on the upper deck of the boat. Maybe a sniper laying prone on the roof of the pilot house. Now, it’s hard to tell. There’s very little light along the waterfront. I suspect those guys are still there, but are probably pulled back into darkened corners. They don’t want that Russian chopper giving them any attention.”
“Alvarez, you hearing any of this?” Luke said.
“Loud and clear.”
“Thoughts?”
“Continue as planned,” Alvarez said.
“You heard the man,” Luke said to Swann. “That’s good enough for me. Thanks, Swann. Keep in touch. Keep us alive.”
“Will do,” Swann said.
Luke took a deep breath. It wasn’t a full one—the air caught at the top of his lungs. “Ready, boys?”
No one had time to answer. The second he spoke, a jet flew by overhead, the shriek of its engines ripping open the night.
“Bomber!” Alvarez shouted. “Incoming! Right stick! Full speed!”
The chopper banked sharply to the right, flying on Alvarez’s instinct alone. Luke, Ed, and Bill tilted crazily to the side of the cabin.
Dark shadows went by, to the left and behind the plane. Bombs were falling. A line of them hit the ocean, marching in toward land, the impact on the water enough to detonate.
Just below them, the darkness lit up in red and orange—a fierce line of flame. A shockwave hit and the chopper shuddered violently.
“What are they launching at?” the co-pilot said.
“It was a miss,” Alvarez said. “They don’t see us. They’re bombing something on land. They released too early.”
Luke looked back. Fire burned on the surface of the waves. Far to the left now, a new line of bombs dropped, this time hitting pay dirt. Luke saw what looked like a tall building blow apart, consumed in flame.
“Holy hell,�
�� Bill Cronin said.
“ETA three minutes,” Alvarez said. “Prepare for disembark.”
Luke and Ed scrambled for the side-mounted benches outside the doorways, Luke going left, Ed going right. Luke did a quick check—he had a small rucksack with food and clothing, three guns, a knife, grenades, ten meals-ready-to-eat, and water. He had a flashlight, three strobe beacons. He had night vision goggles on his helmet. Body armor under his flight suit. He was good.
He glanced inside the chopper. “Bill, you’re out here with me.”
Bill Cronin clambered out onto the bench.
Another jet screamed by overhead.
“Bombs?” Alvarez shouted.
“Not yet,” his co-pilot said.
Swann’s voice was there again. “Luke, you’ve got trouble. I think the trailing jet must have spotted you in the glow from those bombs. That big chopper just peeled off from the battle. He’s coming out to take a look.”
“Jesus. Alvarez?”
“Okay,” the pilot said. He didn’t sound like it was okay.
“Can we outrun him?” Ed said.
“Maybe, but then we can’t put our guns on him, if he’s behind us.”
“What are your rules of engagement?” Ed said.
“Don’t get in a shootout with Russians.”
“You don’t want to tangle with that guy,” Swann said. “I’ve confirmed his shape with my database—he’s an Mi-24, so-called flying tank. The specs are outrageous. He’s fast, hard to hurt, and bristling with weaponry.”
Luke looked out at the sky. He saw something big out there, with bright lights, getting brighter all the time. It was high in the sky, sweeping the water below with a spotlight.
“We’re below him.”
“I know,” Alvarez said. “Not good. He’s gonna have the drop on us. But if we try to get above him, he’ll see us do it. We don’t have a lot of good options right now.”
Luke didn’t like it. Alvarez had been brimming with confidence a minute ago. For a split second, he wondered when the last time Americans and Russians had directly engaged in combat. Not for a long time.