Cyclops One af-1

by Jim DeFelice

  What was the alternative, he wanted to know. Do nothing? They had been right in India: Millions of people owed their lives to that gamble. That good could be measured unambiguously.

  Blitz began to stutter.

  “Dr. Blitz?”

  Blitz pushed his head upward from the desk as the classroom disappeared. He was in his office; he’d fallen asleep, exhausted, waiting for word about McIntyre.

  One of the military liaisons was standing at the door.

  “Dr. Blitz?”

  “Go ahead. I’m sorry, I was dozing.”

  The aide nodded. It was a little past three in the morning.

  “Mr. McIntyre just called again. We have a good location. The Pentagon people are trying to contact the task force working with Colonel Howe.”

  “Good.” He rose, stretching some of the fatigue away. “I’ll go over to the Tank as soon as I can.”

  Chapter 13

  Howe and Timmy climbed through thirty thousand feet, circling upward over Chinese territory as the MV-22 finished collecting the last member of its team and set course back to Afghanistan. It would stay low for a little under two hundred miles, threading its way through the mountains and valleys to avoid any possible detection by radar. At that point it would climb and skirt into eastern Pakistan and then over into Afghanistan.

  Though much faster than a helicopter, the Osprey was still a propeller-driven aircraft, and flying low through the unforgiving terrain was not something that could be rushed. It would take close to an hour to reach the relative safety of the Pakistani border.

  Timmy proposed to fill that time with a song.

  “What sort of song?”

  “I was thinking something by Limp Bizkit,” joked the wingman.

  “If you try that, I’m going to order silent com,” said Howe.

  “Don’t you think there ought to be an M3 hookup in these?” asked Timmy. “Actually, a karaoke rig. That’s what we need. I’m going to talk to Firenze about that when we get back.”

  Laughing in spite of himself, Howe was just about to suggest that Timmy sing “Old MacDonald” when the AWACS supervisor radioed, requesting that he switch to a new frequency. The moment he keyed in, an Army lieutenant colonel at the Pentagon introduced himself by saying they had found their man.

  “Which man are we talking about?”

  “An NSC staffer was in the helicopter your plane shot down at the start of the Indian operation,” said the colonel, who was transmitting from the Tank through a satellite hookup. “He’s alive on the ground nearby.”

  “How nearby?”

  Howe listened as the colonel explained the situation. The location was very close to where they had taken out the helicopters in the Kashmir border area, reachable via a short though significant detour from their planned flight path.

  “That’s not a pretty place,” said Howe. “My briefers this morning were talking about guerrilla conflicts all through that region.”

  “That’s why we need him located and rescued ASAP,” said the Army colonel. “He’s a valuable commodity.”

  So are we all,thought Howe, though he didn’t say it.

  Chapter 14

  McIntyre stared at the door as it cracked open slowly. The guns were next to him on the desk, but he made no move to get them. He just stared as the door opened.

  A teenager took a step inside. He swung a bucket before him, setting it down on the floor and starting to reach back for something outside before seeing McIntyre across from him in front of the desk.

  He froze, and for a second they stared at each other, neither able to react.

  It was the Indian who moved first. He fell backward out of the building, scrambling away as the door closed. McIntyre followed, still holding the phone in one hand. He cracked open the door, crouching at first, worried that there would be more people outside.

  The boy had disappeared. No one else was there as he gradually opened the door wider and wider.

  “McIntyre — what the hell’s going on?” Brott was asking when McIntyre closed the door and brought the phone back up to his ear.

  When he told Brott about the kid, the aide said he should have shot him.

  “Yeah,” answered McIntyre. “Do you know where I am?”

  “Listen, you’re going to have to go somewhere else now. Do you understand? Is there a place back where you were that you can hide, near the first place you called from?”

  “No,” said McIntyre.

  “Can you leave the phone on?”

  “I’m worried about the battery,” he said, glancing at it.

  “Get to a safe place and call again,” said Brott. “We have assets en route, but it’s going to take a while. It may take a long while.”

  A safe place.McIntyre wanted to laugh. Instead he just looked at the phone.

  He couldn’t kill a kid who had nothing to do with him, who was just coming to wash the floor or the windows, for chrissakes.

  “Yeah, I’ll call,” he said abruptly, then pushed the End button, got his guns, and went outside.

  Chapter 15

  Howe spotted the wreckage of the helicopter strewn across the side of a slope, then began arcing north-westward in the direction of the GPS coordinates he’d been given. He needed to strike a balance: go slow and low enough to be seen by McIntyre, and yet somehow not be slow and low enough to be nailed by some joker with a shoulder-launched SAM.

  Couldn’t be done. He had to risk a good portion of his butt to save McIntyre’s.

  Not that he wasn’t willing to make the trade. He just wanted to understand the equation.

  “One, yeah, I see the debris,” said Timmy. “Uh, you got maybe two feet over that ridge, boss.”

  “Come on, now, I have five at least,” said Howe, who was actually close to a thousand feet over the peak that rose two miles off to his left. Howe pushed toward a black-topped road that wound up one of the hillsides, trying to compare it with what the Pentagon colonel had described, which of course was itself second- or thirdhand.

  “Got a couple of army vehicles back here,” said Timmy. “Uh, two transports, armored car or something in front — near that city.”

  “That’s a city?” asked Howe. He began banking to get lower and take a closer look, putting his nose up slightly to make sure he didn’t run into anything while his attention was directed toward the ground.

  “Not all of us were born in New York, you know.”

  “Timmy, that’s not even a city in North Dakota.”

  The radar synthesized a small downtown area of a dozen buildings. The three vehicles Timmy had spotted were moving northward on the road, parallel to the border. Howe looked down through the canopy as he passed, but he was roughly five thousand feet above them and moving close to four hundred knots; he could tell they were vehicles, and thought the lead one had a gun at the top, but there was no way he was reading license plates from here. He took the Velociraptor along the road, looking for more activity. Timmy, studying the passive IR plot from the sensor suite, nudged to his left when he got a flare of something.

  “Fire, I think,” explained the wingman.

  As they turned and started a fresh track, the Pakistani radar over the border — the one that had been targeted by the Indians to start all this — turned itself on.

  “Somebody’s watching,” said Timmy.

  “Roger that,” said Howe.

  “Yeah, but I’d like to go pee on him anyway.”

  “Eyes on the prize.” None of the radars associated with SAMs had come up. The Pakistanis had given the Pentagon a blanket assurance yesterday that no U.S. planes would be targeted, though for security reasons they had not been alerted to the Cyclops One search. The Indians had not agreed to permit “spy flights” over their territory.

  The Osprey checked in; they were now thirty minutes away at top speed. He went over his game plan with Howe: If their pickup didn’t make his call back on time, they were going to try to drop the SF team near the last phone-in point so th
ey could have a look around. They’d play it by ear from there. An MC-130 was being launched to stand by to refuel the Osprey if things took too long; a second assault team was being rounded up in Kabul, though launching it would take at least two or three hours.

  Howe and Timmy would have to start thinking about a refuel soon as well.

  “Couple of, uh, Land Rovers maybe,” said Timmy. “You got ’em?”

  Howe glanced at his tactical screen, where Timmy had cursored them for him. They were moving across an east — west roadway into a village at the southwest, ten miles away from the crashed helicopter.

  “You sure those are military?” Howe asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m going to get down there and get close,” he told his wingman. “Hang tough.”

  “Only way to go. Got your six.”

  Howe dipped his wing. He came over the road at three thousand feet — not counting the nine thousand or so holding the tar up in the mountains.

  There were definitely troops in the back of the trucks. As Howe began to pull up he saw a glint of something. He went immediately for the defensive flares, accelerating away.

  “They shoot at you?” Timmy’s voice was practically a shout.

  “You tell me,” said Howe.

  “Didn’t see anything.”

  “Getting jumpy.” He pulled around to his left, angling in the direction of the road, trying to see where the troops were going. A puff of smoke erupted near a cluster of buildings that sat before a bend; the buildings looked like storefronts, with large colorful signs at the top. A pinprick of smoke fluttered across the other side of the bend, near a building. Howe saw movement, people running. Bingo.

  “Have some action here,” he told Timmy.

  “Is it ours?”

  “Good question. I’m going to get back with the Pentagon people, see if they can get the Indians and Pakistanis to stop shooting up here.”

  “Part the Red Sea next,” said Timmy.

  Chapter 16

  Duke went over the map with the copilot, trying to figure out the area where their pickup would most likely be. McIntyre’s last call had been made from a building on the outskirts of a small town, but he’d been spotted and had to move. He hadn’t called back yet.

  The pilots in the Velociraptors reported fighting nearby. Whether it had to do with McIntyre wasn’t clear.

  Duke moved to the back and laid it out for his guys. As he expected, they nodded and threw in a few positive suggestions. Not one of them pointed out that finding the American alive was a serious long shot.

  The FBI agent had a pained expression on his face.

  “Something up?” the captain asked, plopping into the seat next to him.

  “Yeah,” said the agent. “I should’ve brought more coffee. Two thermoses just don’t cut it overseas.”

  “You think we’re going to find him?” Duke asked.

  “Question is probably whether you’ll find him dead,” answered Fisher. “But you’re kinda stuck, right?”

  “If things got tough, could you handle a weapon?”

  “Depends,” said Fisher. “The place we’re landing, that a nonsmoking area?”

  Duke started to laugh. “Smoking.”

  “Then I’ll lead the charge.”

  Chapter 17

  McIntyre felt the dryness in his mouth, his thirst returning, as he started toward the road. A low fence cut off some of the view to the right; he heard a truck coming and trotted toward the fence for cover, huffing and wheezing as he slid in. An empty flatbed passed a half-second later.

  When it was gone he started to the left, walking roughly westward as he cut a diagonal toward the road. There was a ravine and then a rise on the opposite side, but there were some scrub bushes he might use for cover on the left if someone was coming.

  As he reached the road he looked down it to his right. It curved sharply northward; he could see the edges and roofs of buildings beyond.

  A figure appeared just taking the turn about two hundred yards away. Dressed in grayish white, the man wore a headband and carried a rifle.

  Another figure appeared behind him.

  McIntyre took a step back toward the building, then realized they’d look for him there. He ran instead along the road as he’d intended, holding the rifles in his hands. He heard gunfire, trucks, aircraft maybe; he sensed that the commotion wasn’t about him, but knew that if he stopped he’d be caught in it.

  Fear overcame his exhaustion, and he ran at a decent pace for perhaps ten minutes, running at the side of the road as it curved first left and then right. A stone wall started abruptly at the right side of the road about ten feet past the second curve. The wall, chest-high, was made of pure-white stones that all seemed the same size. His breath finally failing, McIntyre ran behind it and collapsed to the ground, unable to move.

  When his will returned, he saw that there was a house a short distance away. The whitewashed brick facade was punctuated by oversize windows with elaborate wooden frames, as if the glass were part of a shrine. A mountain rose several hundred yards behind the property, its bluish-black flank punctuated by the brown scar of a road.

  McIntyre got up, making sure he hadn’t been followed, then began walking to the back of the house. A metal shed sat at the edge of the yard, collapsed on the ground, its roof and walls a bright mélange of rust and white paint. McIntyre went to the shed and examined it: If he had trouble in the house he could retreat there and hold off anyone who came out. He put one of the rifles down, propping it at the back so it would be easy to grab. He hesitated. The gun was easily seen and, if taken, might be used against him. McIntyre hid it under a loose piece of metal siding at the back of the ruins, then went to the house.

  There was no door in the back but there were two large windows. Long drapes or curtains blocked off his view of the inside. He went to the one on the left and pushed; it gave way easily.

  He stepped inside, heart pounding.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and another for him to figure out that he was in a bedroom. There were two thick mats at the side on the floor, blankets; with a start he realized there was an infant tucked on one side of the bedclothes. Maybe two or three months old, it stared at him with one eye, following as he walked as quietly as he could to the doorway.

  Not a baby: a doll. He realized that as he put his hand to the slatted door.

  Before he could touch the doorknob, it pushed inward. He stepped back as a woman entered. She saw McIntyre and froze.

  She had an infant against her chest. He’d already leveled the gun at her.

  “Are you alone?” he said.

  She didn’t answer. It wasn’t clear whether she understood or not. Her face had paled, and her eyes wore the glaze of a death mask.

  Somehow her terror terrified him as well, though he was the cause of it. For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

  “Alone?” he managed, voice cracking.

  The woman nodded. He pointed with his other hand, motioning for her to back up. She took a step out into what he thought was a hallway but turned out to be a large common room. There was a TV and some upholstered chairs on one side, an old sewing machine, a pile of fabric, something that looked like a shrine on the right. Beads covered another doorway to the front of the house. A slatted wooden door similar to the one to the room he’d come in through sat opposite it. Staring at it, he went to the door, looked at her; neither she nor the baby moved, or even seemed to breathe. McIntyre rapped on it, then reached down and turned the knob. He flung the light door open with his hand. It was another bedroom, this one with real mattresses, though they were all on the floor. He couldn’t see anyone in the tumble of clothes and sheets.

  “All right,” he told the woman. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He reached into his pocket and took out his phone.

  The woman’s cheeks seemed to implode as the baby began to wail. Tears streamed from the mother’s eyes. McIntyre pushed her to the floor; he tried to be gentle bu
t she collapsed in a tumble. He went back to the front room. There was a table there, a washing machine, a stove, an old refrigerator.

  Something had happened to his phone. He couldn’t connect.

  He went to the window, tried again.

  Nothing.

  Cursing, he punched the Power button twice, staring at the corner of the screen where the battery icon would appear. It had about a third of a charge left; it should work.

  There were sounds outside. McIntyre turned and saw something moving by the window, then realized there was someone coming through the doorway. He spun around and pressed the trigger on his gun.

  A small child, a boy of four or five, had come out from hiding near the closet where McIntyre had missed him earlier. By the time McIntyre realized what he had shot, the boy’s neck had been cut nearly in half by his bullets. In the next moment the child’s mother ran into the room, screaming, a knife in one hand and the little baby in the other. He took a step to the side as if he were a matador, pushing her slight body to the floor with his left hand. She rolled to the floor, the knife clattering away as she collapsed in a convulsing heap over the baby.

  Blood from the dead child flooded around her. McIntyre took a step back, his head pounding. The whole house seemed to shake.

  It was shaking: A helicopter was flying nearby.

  Chapter 18

  Duke trailed along the south side of the road just a few yards behind the man who had the point. Their man had called from a point about a mile up the trail, near what passed for a highway here — right in the path of Indian troops pursuing a small band of Muslim guerrillas.

  Poor bastard’s luck was holding.

  He hadn’t called back yet, a bad sign. They had the building where he’d called from pinpointed about a quarter of a mile away. There was a village along the highway to the right; to the left the road switched back and forth like a snake, gradually making its way up a mountainside beyond. There were a few small houses in that direction; they’d check them after the building, then take stock before reconning the village.