by Dale Brown
“No shit.”
“Yeah. Like I said, their helo was getting hit and in the confusion the pilot decided his best course of action was to get out,” Briggs said. “He didn’t know he was missing two men. In an event, he did manage to save the rest of the team and the helicopter.”
Briggs slid the satellite image away, jabbing his finger at a yellow blotch on the map. “We’re getting an intermittent signal beacon from this spot here, about two, two-and-a-half-miles south of the Silkworm base, back in these hills here. We haven’t been able to raise the pilot. We sent a rented Cessna and managed to get this,” he added, moving around the papers to find some sketchy photocopies of snapshots.
“We think it’s the wreckage of the plane. Satellite will survey this area as well,” said Briggs. “We’re sending a team at first light. Worst case, we can destroy the wreckage. We’ll also have a team overfly the area of the radio transmission. If Smith’s down there and can work the radio, they’ll grab him.”
“That our job?”
“No. We want you to help secure this site here. Your team and a small group of Delta operators, hitting them from two sides, airlifted by Ospreys. It’s a village about ten kilometers further west that the Iranian’s have been using to train the Somalians. The feeling is that if Smith and the Marines are captured, they’d be held here.” Briggs pulled a pair of reconnaissance photographs and some hand-drawn sketches from the other side of the table and showed them to Danny. “These were taken a few hours ago. They give the general layout. This school here used to belong to a Catholic Missionary order. You see the gun emplacements. And this here is a SAM site.”
Danny strained his eyes to make out the small blotch beneath Major Brigg’s finger. It looked like a microscopic Brillo pad.
“We think it’s an SA-6, which comes on a mobile launcher. It’s likely that there are now more, since the defenses at the Silkworm site were beefed up,” said Briggs.
“Where the hell are they getting all this hardware?” Freah asked.
“Where aren’t they?” said Briggs. “The Silkworms come from China, where they may also have bought some fighters. There’s been a large inflow of weapons into Libya from Russia. Some of that has disappeared, which we think means it’s headed here. There have also been some small boats slipping into Mogadishu in the south, with or without help from the Yemenis; it’s unclear.”
Briggs continued laying out the situation. The antiaircraft defenses posed a serious problem the F-117’s and F-16’s would be needed to help the other operations. The Ospreys would arrive without escort or backup, traveling quickly at treetop level. Though that was under the detection envelope of the missiles’ ground radars, it would be dicey.
“We’re short on air support,” said Hal apologetically. “The Eisenhower is heading up from the Indian Ocean, but they won’t be close enough to help us for at least two days. We’d like to have Smith and the others out by then. If we don’t, this thing is likely to escalate even further.”
“We have the Megafortress,” suggested Danny, who’d been waiting for an opportunity to offer the plane. “They’re packing cruise missiles and four JSOWs fresh out of development lab. They can cover us going in.”
“Are you talking about my airplane?” said Captain Stockard, walking toward them from the door. She was still in her flight gear, wearing a deep scowl.
“Captain Stockard,” said Briggs. “How are you, Bree?”
Breanna ignored him, speaking to Danny instead. “That’s my aircraft. With all due respect, Captain, I’ll discuss its capabilities.”
“I was just pointing out that it carried weapons,” said Freah.
“Did you mention the runway’s about five hundred feet too short to take off from?” said Breanna. She turned back to Briggs. “And I don’t want to talk about landing. Why the hell didn’t you give is a heads-up on that, Hal?”
“I wasn’t aware you were flying a Megafortress in to begin with,” said Briggs. “How are you, Rap?”
“I’ve been better. My butt’s sore and I came this close to blowing out my tires.”
“We’re installing mesh,” said Briggs. “We can push that up. I can’t do anything about your butt while you’re in uniform,” he added.
“Very funny. When’s the mesh going on?”
“ASAP. A thousand feet okay?”
“I’ll have to do the math,” Breanna said. “Major Cheshire has to be told. Raven’s heavier than Fort Two because of the older engines. If it’t wet and she’s carrying fuel, she’s going to have a hard time stopping.”
“Raven? Another Megafortress?”
“We made the flight without a crew,” said Breanna. “Cheshire’s following with a weapons officer and navigator. She should be here within twelve hours, maybe less.”
“Shit. We can use her.”
“Damn straight,” said Danny. “The plane has jamming gear.”
“It’s the next generation ECMs,” said Rap, throwing a glare at Freah. “I doubt they’ll have time to remove it all. Just as there wasn’t time to remove the air-to-ground missiles we were carrying. Officially, we’re only here as transports.”
Briggs shook his head slowly, but he had the start of a grin on his face.
“Of course, local conditions prevail. Assuming we do get airborne,” Breanna added, “I’m going to need as much target data as possible. The computer’s persnickety and my copilot’s a real whiner. Personally, I’d trade them both for a good weapons officer, or even a halfway decent radar navigator.”
Dreamland
22 October, 1200 local
“Colonel, I thought we had a date!”
Dog jerked his head up from his desk. Jennifer Gleason was standing in the doorway/
“I had to run by myself,” said the scientist, striding into his office. She plopped herself down in a chair.
“I’m sorry, Doc,” said Dog. “I got tied up.”
“So I heard.” Jennifer glanced back at the officer door. Dog looked in time to see Sergeant Gibbs closing it.
He’ll get his, Dog thought.
“Want to do lunch?” asked the scientist.
“I can’t. I’m sorry,” said Bastian. “I’ve been handling the fallout, from, uh, some recommendations I had to make.”
“You mean killing JSF, right?” She flicked her hair back impishly.
“That’s supposed to be classified.”
“Come on, Colonel. You can’t fart on his base without everyone catching a whiff. Not that colonels fart.”
For some reason, the word ‘fart’ and her beautiful mouth didn’t seem to go together.
“I actually didn’t come here to ask you to lunch,” said the scientist quickly. She leaned forward, somehow metamorphosing from a beautiful if slightly insolent young woman to a senior scientist. “I came to make a recommendation regarding the Flighthawk program. I feel the mission to Somalia should go forward.”
“It’s not a mission,” said Dog, angered that the flight was being openly discussed.
“I understand, Colonel. I also feel that I should be along in case something goes wrong.”
“Doc –”
“First of all, call me Jennifer. Or Jen.” She favored him with the briefest of brief smiles. “Second of all, there is on one in the world who knows that computer system better than I do. That’s not a brag, that’s a fact. If you’re sending those planes halfway around the world, I should be there with them.”
“I don’t know that there’s enough room for you,” said Dog.
“I checked with Major Cheshire. She says there is.”
“Major Cheshire only reluctantly approved carrying the Flighthawks,” said Bastian, who’d spoken with Cheshire only a short while before.
“She was worried about not having enough support. I’m the support.”
Dog shook his head. It was one thing to send the Megafortresses; while they were definitely still in the experimental stage, an early version had already seen some action. Justifying
the Flighthawks was much more difficult, especially since they’d lack the veneer of a ‘transport’ mission. And sending a civilian into a war zone was potentially a hanging offense. Her loss would be a serious embarrassment, and not just to him.
“I’m afraid it’s not possible,” he told her.
“If you lose the U/MFs,” she told him, “they’ll hang you out to dry.”
“If I lose you, they’ll grind me up into little pieces.”
“You’re not going to lose me. Between me and Parsons –”
“Parsons? Sergeant Parsons?”
“He’s waiting in the outer office to talk to you. We drew straws to see who would go first,” she added.
“No way.”
“Colonel, if I were a man, you’d let me go. You need support personnel for the U/MFs. Shit, the only other person who’s qualified to fix that fucking computer and the com system is Rubeo. You want to send him?”
“You talk like a sailor, you know that?” Dog said.
Jennifer shrugged. “My bag is packed.”
If she were a man – hell, that was impossible to even imagine.
They did need a support staff. But a girl?
She wasn’t a girl, damn it.
“I want to talk to Cheshire before I make a decision,” said Bastian finally.
“Good,” said Jennifer, jumping up. “Should I send her in right now, along with Major Stockard, or do you want us to keep going the way we planned?”
Shaking his head, Bastian went to the office door and looked out into the reception area. Cheshire and Parson were there, along with three other Flighthawk specialists.
“Where’s Stockard?”
“Making sure the Flighthawks are prepped,” said Cheshire.
“Everyone in here,” he told the conspirators.
In the end, Dog had no choice but to agree that if it made send to send the Flighthawks, it was logical to send a support team as well. Parsons could probably build the damn things from balsa wood and speaker wire. Gleason made the most sense as a technical expert, since she knew both the software and the hardware used by the Flighthawks’ control system. No way he was sending Rubeo – it would undoubtedly be too tempting for him to be left behind.
Sending a high-tech team halfway around the world with untested weapons was exactly what he had called for in the white paper he’d written so many years ago. So why did his stomach feel so queasy?
“You’re good with this, Major?” he asked Cheshire.
“If the Flighthawks are going, and I think they should, we have to support them.”
He nodded. “This is my responsibility,” he told her. “I’m ordering you to do this.”
Her face flushed, probably because she knew that the Band-Aid he’d just applied to her culpability wouldn’t cover much of anything if things went wrong.
“I have some phone calls to return,” he said. “I’ll try to be there for your takeoff.”
“Fourteen hundred hours sharp,” said Parsons as they exited.
“That soon?”
“We’ll kick some butt for you, sir,” said the sergeant.
Bastian returned the wily old crew dog’s grin, then pulled over his mountain of pink phone-message sheets. Every member of the JSF Mafia wanted to take a shot at chewing off his ear today; might as well let them have a go.
“Lieutenant General Magnus, please,” he said, connecting with the first person on his list. “This is Colonel Bastian.”
“Oh,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
Dog was more than familiar with the tone. It meant, “Oh, so this is the idiot my boss has been screaming about all day.”
As he waited for the connections to go through, Dog fingered the official Whiplash implementation order, which had come through earlier in the day.
YOU ARE HEARBY ORDERED TO IMPLEMENT WHIPLASH AND SUPPORT SAME WITH ALL APPROPRIATE VIGOR.
‘Appropriate vigor’ could mean Megafortresses. It could mean Flighthawks.
Not if people like General Magnus didn’t want it to. Magnus was close to the Air Force Secretary; word was he was being groomed to be Chief of Staff. Dog knew him largely by reputation. An able officer, Magnus was a good man, unless you disagreed with him.
Then he was the devil’s own bastard.
“Bastian, what the hell are you doing out there in Dreamland? You sleeping?”
“No, sir, General,” said Dog.
“I understand you’ve been there for two weeks.”
“It’s about there.”
“You took your goddamn time.”
Well, thought Dog, at least he has a sense of humor.
“Well, I do my best, General, as pitiful as it may be.”
“I don’t think it’s pitiful at all, Colonel. I think it’s a goddamn time somebody had the balls to say what a piece of shit this JSF crate is.”
Dog looked at the phone, waiting for the punch line.
“You still there, Bastian?”
“Yes, sir,” said the colonel.
“Good. We’re going to take a hell of a lot of shit on this, I guarantee. But I’m behind you. You bet your ass. I read the whole damn report. Ms O’Day made sure I got a copy. And a friend of hers. Brad Elliott. I didn’t think you and Brad were pals.”
“We’re not.”
“Oh? He talks about you like you’re his son. Says you’re right on the mark.”
“Well, uh, I’m flattered. To be candid, General, I thought you were a supporter of the JSF.”
“What? Did you read that in the Washington Post?”
“No, sir.”
“I expect you’re taking a lot of shit,” said Magnus.
“That’s an understatement,” said Dog, not entirely convinced that Magnus was on the level.
“Well, hold tight. And keep your nose clean. Some of these pricks will use anything they can against you. The Congressmen are the worst.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dog. “Thank you, sir.” But his line had already gone dead.
Somalia
23 October, 0100 local
Mack woke to find the Imam staring at him. Sergeant Melfi and Jackson were gone; perhaps he’d only dreamed they were here with him alive.
“Major, very good,” said the Iranian. “Come now. We must meet our fate.”
The Imam straightened, then gestured at him to rise. Though still groggy, Smith felt almost powerless to resist.
“What’s going on?” Mack asked.
“You are going to stand trial,” said the Imam. “Justice will be swift.”
He turned and walked back to the steps. Someone behind Mack pushed him; he stumbled over his chains, but managed to keep his balance.
Goddamn. Mack Smith. The hottest stick on the patch. Damn Iranians were going to make him the star of ‘don’t let this happen to you’ lectures for the next hundred years.
The man behind him pushed again. Knife’s anger leaped inside him; he spun and grabbed the startled soldier by the throat, pushing him to the floor with surprising ease. He smashed the bastard’s head against the concrete. The chain of his handcuff’s clanked against the man’s chest as he grabbed the guard’s ears, pulling them upward to smash him again, then again, feeling the thud of the floor reverberating across the Somalian’s skull.
He knew he was being foolish. The best thing to do was go along, resist, yes, but not so overtly, not so crazily. Doing this was like committing suicide, or worse.
And yet he couldn’t stop himself. Blood spread out behind the man’s face as Mack pounded again and again, screaming, shrieking his anger.
Then a sharp light erupted from behind his ears. Then his head seemed to collapse. He blanked out.
“You screwed up their plans, Major,” Gunny was saying. “You really threw them for a loop. I don’t know what you did, but it messed they up. Kept us here for hours. And they didn’t want that, I can tell you.”
Mack waited for the hunched shadow to come into focus. They were moving, in a train – no, a
bus, an old school bus with half of its seats removed. Gunny, the Marine Corps sergeant, was kneeling next to him in the back aisle. There were scratches on the wall of the bus next to him, empty.
“What do you think, Sarge?” said another Marine.
Jackson. He was leaning over a seat a few feet away.
“I don’t know, I’d say he took a slam to the noggin. You with us, Major?”