“Let me show you something,” said al-Shoum, and brought Logan under the tent. After clearing everyone else out, he had the mercenary look at the map littered with red stick pins. “Each of those is a white Toyota truck. We have no idea where the men are.”
“Okay. From that, I see only that you have a bunch of Toyota trucks in Syria.” Logan handed him a piece of paper. “Now look up these coordinates: north 32 degrees, 45 minutes, and east 36 degrees, 25 minutes.” Al-Shoum traced the map grid with his finger and drew a circle with a black marker at a point midway between Dar’a and As Suwayda.
“Why this particular location?”
“That’s them, General! That’s exactly where they are! These boys who came over from Israel brought a GPS locator, and our home office in the States gave them the frequency for a signal being used by the sniper. So right now, they are sitting quiet in that little circle, waiting for night to fall. Or waiting for someone to show up and blow them away. So can we go get ‘em?”
“I will not disobey my orders,” said al-Shoum, hands on hips, staring at the American, loud enough for most of his staff to overhear. Then, much more quietly, he said, “I will shift my searchers away from those coordinates. If my people actually see the Marines, I will have no choice but to protect them.”
“So you have no problem if I fire up the helo and haul ass down there and do what needs to be done, then go away so your boys can come in and make the big discovery of the dead bodies?”
“The two Americans are indeed in hostile territory, and perhaps might die at the hands of villagers who are outraged by the sudden appearance of Crusader forces in their midst. Just be aware that the Americans will soon be sending in another rescue team, this time with my government’s permission and, of course, my utmost personal cooperation.”
Al-Shoum had another idea flash into his head. “Wait just another moment. Perhaps all is not lost,” he told Logan, and scribbled a note in Arabic. He gave it to the mercenary. “Plant this on the bodies. It will be evidence that the deaths were the work of the Holy Scimitar of Allah, the militia group of the Rebel Sheikh. I need to settle a score with that scoundrel in Basra, so let us kill several birds with a single rock. He will have to answer for the slayings of the two Marines, and I will appear as a hero who did everything possible to save them. Damascus will be pleased.”
Logan tucked the note into a pocket. “How long before the rescue team arrives?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I’m giving you a one-hour head start, Mr. Logan. You must do it within that time, before anyone notices that I am keeping search parties out of the area. Then you and your men must vanish. I never want to see or hear from you again, and if I do, you will pay in full for killing that child in Sha’ra.”
He raised his voice for the benefit of his staff, pointed toward the helicopter, and barked at Logan, “I am through with you worthless dogs. Get out of my country!”
“Color me gone,” Logan said, turning and trotting toward the helicopter. He circled an index finger to the pilot to get the rotor turning.
CHAPTER 56
GENERAL BRADLEY MIDDLETON was testy. He and Swanson were free! The Gunny had been in intermittent communication via the satellite phone with the MEU, and had learned that the manhunt was over. Syria had agreed to settle things peacefully rather than have the United States bear down on them over something that Damascus had not been too keen about in the first place. The pickup was going to be unopposed, and Swanson had worked out a landing zone about ten kilometers to the south. Then the sniper went back to sleep, leaving the general on watch and ignoring Middleton’s demand to move out.
“We go when I say go, General,” Swanson had told him. “There’s no guarantee that every Syrian soldier in this region has gotten the word not to open fire on us. I want to arrive at the LZ just before our choppers get there so we’re not standing out in the open with our thumbs up our asses, just asking to be shot.”
At least it wasn’t very hot in the small tunnel in which they were parked, since it was shielded by the sun and cooler because of the foot of barely moving water. Middleton shifted the AK-47, sloshed from one end of the culvert to the other, and crouched behind some of the bushes Swanson had stacked on the left side as a makeshift hide. Traffic had been sporadic along the road, and they had grown familiar with the sounds of an occasional car, truck, or tractor passing overhead. Several helicopters had buzzed in the distance, but there had been no other military presence. A farmer driving a mule cart had taken forever to clatter by.
Middleton took a drink of fresh water and sloshed back toward the other end of the culvert.
“Stop!” Kyle Swanson reached out from the back of the truck and put a hand on Middleton’s shoulder. He was sitting up, wide awake. “Hear that?” The sniper leaped from the truck bed with Excalibur in his right hand. “Incoming Huey.”
Middleton had not heard anything at all, but now picked up the signature whomp-whomp of a Huey helicopter’s blades. “Probably just following the road to see if he can spot any signs.”
Kyle was already at the far end of the culvert, kneeling behind the bushes. “No, sir. He’s too low and has been flying straight for the last few minutes, not running a grid search or following the turns in the road or checking any intersections. That’s bad news.”
“So what? Maybe he’s just supposed to give us a ride to the pickup LZ.” Middleton regretted saying that the moment the words left his mouth, and Swanson ignored him. “Yeah. That was stupid.”
Victor Logan was leaning forward between the two men flying the Huey, calling out the GPS coordinates as the helicopter ran through the sky about a hundred feet above the deck. A strong wind whipped through the open side doors. He saw nothing moving down on the ground.
“Okay,” he said into his microphone when the coordinates were exact. “Cut your speed and start making wide circles to the left. Look sharp.” The clattering helicopter bent into a left turn as Logan made a final check of the controls he would use to fire the minigun pods mounted on each side of the chopper.
Relying on the GPS coordinates was helpful only to a point. Ten-digit coordinates were precise to within about a meter, but from an unsteady and moving airborne platform like the Huey, identifying that specific meter was virtually impossible. The most they could hope to pinpoint was a distance that would be about two football fields square. If they saw something, the chopper would have to stop, turn around, and go back to find the point where the crew might have spotted something suspicious. Lining up a shot was easy; finding the target was hard.
The terrain was flat and cut into rectangles of irrigated green fields, which told Logan there were a lot of ditches down there in which a Special Forces operator could hide. But Middleton was not an operator, was out of shape, and was injured. That should provide an edge that would allow Logan to find them.
“Hey, Logan,” called out the Russky co-pilot. “We’re here. Where are they? You sure you plugged in the right numbers?”
“Yeah, asshole, I’m sure I plugged in the right numbers. Just fly this crate and keep looking.” Where the fuck are you, Sniper?
After completing two wide circles, Logan decided to look into some of the bigger ditch lines. “There’s a culvert at about two o’clock. Let’s check it out.”
As soon as he heard the pitch change in the blades, Swanson called over his shoulder, “Get in the truck and start it up, General. We’re going to have to move fast.”
Middleton argued, “I can help you. I’ll spot for you. The two of us would put out more firepower.”
“No! Damn it! Get in the goddam truck! You’re just one more thing I have to think about!”
Swanson ducked deeper behind the brush hide. Stealth was his best weapon, being able to spot the enemy before being seen. The pitch of the rotor blades changed again, to a THUD-THUD-THUD sound that indicated that the helo was coming to a hover. If it was going to just hang up there, edging lower and lower, whoever was inside eventually would s
ee the truck.
Kyle was feeling the hard downdraft as the blades pushed churning air against the ground and the ditch funneled the wind into the tunnel. He kept one hand on some of the bushes, but the others blew away, and he was partially exposed.
The helicopter was about thirty yards away from the mouth of the culvert, and about seventy yards in the air, in a hover and beginning a slow 360-degree spin to scan the entire area. The right side was toward him, and he saw the miniguns. If they open up with those, we ‘re cooked.
Swanson let go of the other bush and brought Excalibur to his shoulder as he leaned his left side against the concrete curve of the underpass to steady himself. The scope was at his eye by the time the canopy of the helicopter swung around to face him, the chopper spinning to its left. He saw the pilot in the left seat and the co-pilot on the right and someone else between them, probably to fire the machine guns.
“Look!” the Russian yelled over the radio and pointed his finger. “There they are!”
Victor Logan leaned forward a bit more and could see one man in a tunnel beneath the road. It was the sniper, and he already had his long rifle up and pointed at the helicopter. “Shit!” he said, reaching out to fire the miniguns, knowing it was too late.
Kyle waited to squeeze the trigger until the last possible moment in a contest of nerves, speed, and physics. The co-pilot was clear and large in Excalibur’s scope, which already had glowed with the blue firing stripe, but he wanted the armor-piercing .50-caliber bullet to do more than just take out one guy. When the angle was just right, he finished the shot.
The big bullet smashed through the Plexiglas canopy, caught the Russian under the chin, and tore off the back of his head. Then it continued upward through the roof of the helicopter and into the complex housing of gears and rods that controlled the rotors.
Kyle held the scope on the helo, jacked in another round, and fired again, punching out another chunk of the canopy. The bullet ricocheted through the control panel. He managed to fire a third round before the pilot was able to snatch the nose back around to the right and break away, trying to get out of the line of fire and gain some altitude. Kyle emptied the rest of the clip at the retreating, wobbling bird.
“I’m losing rotor control!” shouted the South African pilot as the helo coughed and the controls stiffened. A loud ripping noise came from overhead, where the rotor gears were grinding themselves apart, and fire broke out in the cockpit.
He wrestled with the aircraft, trying to push it from hover to full power and then bleed off speed for landing. The Huey wasn’t responding, and began tilting on its own.
“We’re going in!” he screamed, and covered his face with his arms.
Victor Logan, strapped into a harness that had allowed him free movement, was sprawled on his back. He grabbed the metal struts of seats along the back of the cabin, pushing his feet hard against the bulkhead separating the front compartment just as the helicopter smashed nose-first into a green and soggy field. He blacked out.
Swanson was running to the truck before the helicopter crashed 400 yards away. Middleton had cranked it, left it in neutral, opened the driver’s door, and slid across to the passenger side, where he buckled his seatbelt and pointed his Kalishnikov out the window.
The sniper piled in behind the wheel, pushed Excalibur over to the general, and tossed him a packet of ammo from his web gear. “Reload!”
Kyle jammed the truck into low gear and mashed the accelerator to the floor. The Toyota’s powerful engine roared, the truck skidded a bit in the muck of the culvert and then the big tires took hold, and they crashed out into the daylight, throwing up a wave of water on each side. A curtain of spray coated the windshield. Swanson saw the downed chopper, but that was no longer a threat, so he twisted the steering wheel violently to the right and the truck growled up the embankment and skidded onto the paved road.
“Where are we going?” yelled the general as he pushed five .50-caliber bullets into a magazine and loaded one more into the raceway.
“Away from here! Toward the LZ.” He brought the truck under control and looked back in the mirror. Two figures had crawled from the wreckage of the helicopter. “They had us dead to rights back there, General. Bastards knew exactly where we were.”
Middleton propped Excalibur between them. “An old chopper like that with no markings. Must have been mercs.”
Kyle left the truck in four-wheel drive as they sped along the pavement because he might have to go off-road again at any time. He agreed with Middleton. “Yeah, I’d bet on the Frankensteins, too. And I’ll also bet there are more of them converging toward us.”
“Want me to call the Fleet and get some fast-movers in here?” Middleton reached for the sat phone.
“No, don’t do that. We would have to give a precise location, and it could be picked up by the bad guys. Not much time before the scheduled pickup anyway, so we have to play hide and seek until then.”
“Where?”
“Beats me, pardner,” Swanson said with a cowboy twang. “I’m a stranger in these parts.”
Middleton threw back his head and laughed.
CHAPTER 57
THE PLAN IS NOT YET FINISHED, Ruth Hazel. There are still things we can do.” Gordon Gates IV had lost none of his silkiness, none of his controlled modulation. He might well have been discussing a high school football game.
Senator Reed did not see it that way. “It is for me, Gordon. It is not every day that I, me, myself, personally am threatened by the President of the United States of America. It was not pleasant.”
They were in the privacy of the manicured flower garden behind Gates’s holiday home in Aspen, Colorado. He talked while scraping the honed blade of a fighting knife back and forth across a sharpening stone. “He’s bluffing. If he had anything, you would be in custody by now and not making this visit.”
“Why do you think the game isn’t over?”
“You don’t need to know that.” Stroke, stroke the blade, a comforting feel in the routine for a man very familiar with how to use a knife. “Just remember that Middleton and the sniper have not yet been rescued. A fatal accident may befall them before they are.”
“What do I do, then? Gerald Buchanan will name both of us as accomplices when he is subpoenaed, just to save his own skin. He is a stupid man and we were mistaken to bring him in on this.”
“Leave Gerald up to me. He poses neither of us any threat, although he may think otherwise. He really was stupid, wasn’t he? An arrogant and stupid man. We should have found someone else.”
Reed’s voice had a quaver in it as she recalled the chewing-out on Air Force One. “The President was absolutely thunderous. He yelled at me! I never saw him show anger like that.”
“What did he say?”
“The short version is that there will be a full investigation by the attorney general, and the President does not care who gets taken down. Also, the privatization bill is dead because they figure the Middleton kidnapping was part of a plan to keep him from testifying. The President swore that he would hold a national press conference to veto it should the bill come before him.”
That stopped Gates in his tracks. “Interesting.” He sharpened his knife and decided to abort Operation Premier. The kiddies could go safely to the latest animated blockbuster this weekend. No use pissing off the Prez even more by blowing up a couple of multiplexes. The guy had brains, but he would also leave office someday, and Gates Global would still be around, bigger than ever. “Well, that just means we put it off for a couple of years and try again. Try to get someone in the Oval Office who will be friendlier to the business community and private enterprise. Someone like you, Senator. It’s the job you wanted, isn’t it?”
Ruth Hazel closed her political career in that beautiful yard filled with blooming flowers. “No longer. I’ll leave at the end of the year when my term is up, go home to California, and undertake a very low-profile life. The choice between my house in Del Mar and prison is a pret
ty easy one.”
“Have you left any loose ends, anything with my name attached?”
“Not a one, Gordon. There is nothing in my files or notes or on my computer that mentions you in any questionable fashion whatsoever. I never had a whispered conversation with a lover, nor a private chat with an aide about our plans.” She looked him directly in the eyes. “Even if I have to go on trial for something, I would never mention you. I’ve always understood that you would have me killed by a Shark Team if I put you in jeopardy.”
“Now that’s where you are wrong, my dear.” Gates grinned at her, then whirled and threw the knife with force; it spun, end over end, and the point stuck deep into the trunk of a tree ten feet away. “It would not be a Shark Team. I would do it myself.” He walked to the tree, pulled the blade free, and resumed sharpening it. “We do understand each other, then?”
“Oh, yes. Quite,” she said. She reached into her shoulder bag for a tissue, and let her hand brush against the 9 mm pistol she had begun to carry. I’ll be waiting.
CHAPTER 58
THEY SPED SOUTH DOWN THE highway, to the point where it intersected with a major east-west road. An unfenced area of tired old cars, wrecks, and abandoned mechanical devices and farming equipment was off to one side, a mechanical graveyard that had probably begun many years ago with someone’s car breaking down on the road and being pushed to the side and abandoned. It had become a tangle of junk that spread over about ten acres, and Swanson steered into it, driving around until he found a crumbled old Mercedes cargo van that had rolled over in an accident and been hauled to the junk pile to rust in the punishing sun and wind.
Swanson stopped the Toyota next to the wrecked vehicle. “End of the line, General,” he said. “We hump the rest of the way to the LZ, a few more kilometers.”
“Why not just drive?” Middleton was out of the truck.
Swanson emptied his pack and picked out only a few things for them to carry. Water, more ammo, a few grenades, smoke grenades, and the sat phone. Each of them had a rifle, and he kept Excalibur over his shoulder and gave Middleton the pistol. It was time to lighten the load for the final dash, and if something would not fit on his web gear, he would leave it behind. When the pack was empty, he reloaded the computers in it, along with the sat phone, and gave it to the general to carry. “They will be looking for the truck now in a pretty narrow area, so we have to dump it and stay off the road.”
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