He ran toward the helicopters, trying to figure out which one to try for. The Little Bird observation and assault helo was favored by black-ops types for its heavy weapons and maneuverability, but the Black Hawks had greater range and his limited piloting skills meant that he wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the Little Bird’s greater maneuverability anyway. He ran to the nearest Black Hawk and jumped inside. He slung his leg around the stick and reached for the ignition, but the key was missing. He used the knife as a screwdriver and worked as quickly as he could to remove a metal plate below the ignition like he’d seen pilots in his unit do whenever they had lost a key. The first rays of the morning gave him barely enough light to see what he was doing. His big fingers fumbled with screws and he pried off the panel, sliced through the wires leading to the ignition, then twisted them together.
Keyless entry, Zulu-style.
There was still no sign of Stella, but he knew the only indication of her could be a small red laser dot ranging the distance between her rifle and his chest. He reached to the overhead console and flipped on the APU, then the generators and the start button for each engine.
Silence.
The engines didn’t even let out a whimper.
The trailer was spinning and Camille touched her forehead to see if there was any blood where Hunter had made her smack her head on the desk. As soon as she could stand, she grabbed for a desert tan T-shirt and khaki shorts, not bothering with a bra or panties. An M-4 assault rifle in hand, she dashed from her trailer, still sticky from sex and burning from anger. Pete stepped from her trailer.
“Which way did he go?” Camille said.
“Who? What’s going on?” Pete said.
“Stone. I want all personnel on the alert for him. Deadly force is authorized. I want that lying son of a bitch dead.”
Hunter’s mind raced through the startup sequence. If a helo were on the tarmac, it had to be airworthy. These things were kept in top shape and it wasn’t like a car which might have run its battery down from leaving the lights on all night. He leaned back and glanced at the battery behind the copilot’s seat. It was unplugged—standard operating procedure for military helicopters. He turned everything back off, then wedged his body between the seats, leaned back, but couldn’t get to it. Counting the seconds, he jumped from the cockpit, threw open the crew door and shoved the plug into the battery.
He sprung back into the pilot’s seat without bothering to strap himself in and flipped the overhead switches.
“Come on, baby.”
He pressed the starters and breathed again when he heard a welcome hum. At first the huge blades lumbered past the window and in moments turned into a dark distortion in the otherwise clear early morning air. He shoved the throttles all the way forward. With his left hand, he pulled up on the collective and the bird lifted into the air.
Textbook.
Camille heard the whoosh of the Black Hawk starting up and dashed around the trailer in time to see it lift into the air. She wouldn’t even take Chronister’s money. This one was on her. She dropped to one knee, aimed the M-4 at the vulnerable tail rotor and she squeezed off a burst.
Hunter heard bullets pinging against the hull. Only a dozen feet off the ground, the helicopter immediately yawed to the right, turning clockwise along with the rotors. None of the warning lights on the dashboard had gone off and he knew the bullets weren’t his problem—he was. He stomped the left pedal and the helicopter spun the other direction and didn’t seem to want to stop. His heart pounded as he hit the right pedal and it whirled again the other way. Saddam’s Presidential Palace blurred past him, then Stella’s trailer. A hundred feet off the ground, he danced on the pedals as he struggled to compensate for the gyrations while the helicopter spun around out of control.
Camille stopped firing, stood and watched as the helicopter twirled around like a Tilt-A-Whirl, all the while gaining altitude.
“That was a damn good shot.” Pete stood beside her and watched it spiral upwards.
“I don’t think so,” Camille said. “If I hit it, it would behave that way, but he wouldn’t be climbing. Without the tail rotor he should enter auto-rotation and take her down immediately. I think he’s just a really lousy helicopter pilot. That asshole better not crash my bird.”
Hunter was dizzy and his stomach felt like it had been left behind several rotations ago. He realized he was overloading the machine with inputs before it could even respond. His eyes closed and focused on finding balance. With each spin he forced himself to go easier on the pedals, overcompensating a little less as he slowly gained command.
As soon as Camille realized Hunter was getting the hang of it, she ran toward the helicopters on the ramp. “Get me a pilot, now!”
Hunter clutched the cyclic control so hard, his fingers were growing numb. The bend in the Tigris was in sight behind him, its deep green waters still a dark strip in the early morning light. He could see the famous cross sabers on Saddam’s old parade ground in front of him. More or less in control of the helicopter over Baghdad, Hunter had now executed his plan in full and didn’t know what the hell he was going to do next, other than get dressed. Flying in the nude was not what it was cracked up to be. His ass was sweaty and sticking to the NOMEX seat, but the rest of him was freezing to death. The troop doors in the back had been removed for combat and the cool air was whipping around. He pulled the shirt on, then managed to slither into the Dockers without sending the helo into a spin.
He checked the fuel indicator. There was enough to fly a little over four hours, depending on the winds, so he was in range of Iran, Saudi, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait and probably even Turkey, although the altitude would zap his fuel. All of the choices sucked. He couldn’t find any charts and the last thing he wanted was to run out of fuel in the desert, so he was limited to following the Tigris or the Euphrates. The port of Kuwait offered ships to anywhere in the world, but travel by sea took too much time and the place had too many Americans and too many bad memories. He pressed on the left pedal, shoved the cyclic forward and headed away from the rising sun into the desert. He would hit the Euphrates, hang a right and follow it north to Syria. With any luck, his old contacts in Damascus would still be alive.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Green Zone, Baghdad
The Rubicon security executive Larry Ashland had just dozed off when a phone call from the CIA case officer Joe Chronister woke him up with good news: Hunter Stone had been spotted in Baghdad. It wasn’t good news to Ashland, because it meant that he was still in danger of exposure. As long as the Force Zulu operator was alive, Ashland’s cover with Rubicon was at risk. Stone had recognized him from Afghanistan and also from the Iraqi insurgents’ safe house and the Zulu operator knew he was a spy. Judging from their middle-of-the-night encounter in the Rubicon offices at Camp Tornado Point, Stone didn’t seem to understand who Ashland was working for or what he was doing spying on Rubicon. But it didn’t matter. If the Zulu operator passed along the information about him, some analyst along the way might put the pieces together and blow his cover. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Stone had to die.
Seven hours later word came in that Stone had stolen a Black Management helicopter. Ashland immediately dialed the Rubicon Baghdad chief of operations, stepping into his pants while he waited for him to pick up.
“It’s Larry.” Ashland said into the secure phone as he zipped his fly. He gave the Rubicon ops chief a situation report. “I don’t care how much of a head start he’s got on you. Find some helicopters in the direction he’s headed, scramble them and neutralize him. I’m on my way.” He slammed down the phone, cursing his own stupidity. Ashland sensed that the blow-back was just getting started. All he’d wanted to do was keep Stone from tying him to that earlier operation in Afghanistan and blowing his cover. He should’ve taken Stone out himself instead of relying on his former assistant Kyle to do the cleanup work. At least his own tidying up with Kyle was a little more thorough.
Chapt
er Thirty-Three
Camp Raven, the Green Zone, Baghdad
Camille didn’t care why Beach Dog was peeling duct tape off his wrists as he hurried over to the Little Bird. All that mattered was that Pete found a pilot and he seemed to be sober. Beach Dog hopped into the aircraft, reached into his pocket and pulled out a small white figurine of a cat with its paw in the air. He stuck it to a piece of Velcro that was already on the dashboard. Camille guessed it was some kind of talisman. In less than a minute, the blades were turning. Camille jumped into the copilot seat. Pete finished her phone call and started to climb in, but Camille stopped her. “I want you to find out everything you can about this Julia Lewis he was supposedly married to.”
Pete glared at Camille, irritated at having to stay behind.
“That’s an order,” Camille said, then turned to the pilot as she pulled out a Bose headset. “You understand the mission? I want my Black Hawk back in one piece and I want the pilot in as many pieces as possible.”
“Gotcha, ma’am,” Beach Dog said as the Little Bird rose into the air. “What do you want me to tell the big military?”
“He was heading toward the airport, so I’m guessing he’s flying until he hits the Euphrates, then he’ll use it to navigate visually to Syria. Tell the air traffic controllers we’re sightseeing today, heading to Camp Tornado Point via the Euphrates.”
The nose pitched up as they climbed out over Saddam’s old parade grounds, passing above the oversized crossed-swords monument.
“Ma’am,” Beach Dog said. “The Hawk’s maximum speed is about ten knots above ours. We’re not going to catch up with him.”
“Then let’s cut him off at the pass. He’s following the river and it’s not the most direct route. Take us direct to Fallujah. Contact the ground radar and see if they’re carrying his track.”
“You bet.”
“And turn off our transponder. I want to sneak up on him.”
Camille stared down at the Baghdad slums, remembering Hunter’s touch, his eyes, his smell—and her joy. The cityscape beneath them turned into desert and Camille could feel its harsh emptiness.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Anbar Province
About thirty-five minutes into the flight, Hunter decided that helicopters were pretty cool machines after all. His hand had finally released its death grip on the cyclic and he was playing around a little, zigzagging along with the river, cautiously improving his skills. Sunglasses, tunes and a mug of strong coffee would’ve made the ride a lot more fun. He started humming to himself, “Born in the USA.”
Daybreak at five thousand feet was beautiful, even near Fallujah, but since Anbar was a very active area of operation, he decided he’d better go low and fly below radar. He pushed the cyclic forward to tilt his nose and pushed down on the collective to decrease power. The bird did exactly what he wanted, descending to two hundred feet. Toys like this were reason alone to make up with Stella.
The Rubicon Mi-8 helicopter crew was barely five minutes out of Camp Tornado Point when they made visual contact with the Black Management helo. The Bulgarian pilot, Boyko Koritarov, had been briefed that the Black Management pilot was a novice and probably was flying visually. He knew exactly what he was going to do and he took his time to give the target a wide berth, then Koritarov brought his Russian-built aircraft in behind him, careful to hug his blind spot. When he calculated that he was ten rotor disks away, he ordered his gunner to open fire.
Camille watched through binoculars as an old Soviet-make helicopter approached Hunter’s bird from his right rear. As if the cheap Russian equipment hadn’t been enough of a giveaway, she also recognized the fuselage’s distinctive diagonal ruby stripe bordered in white. Rubicon. “What the hell’s Rubicon doing?”
“Sneaking up on him, using a blind spot. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was getting ready to—”
“He’s firing.” Camille could see sparks as the bullets hit the airframe.
Hunter was singing to himself when he thought he heard something over the roar of the turbine engines. He stopped for a minute, didn’t hear anything and resumed his jam session.
Boyko Koritarov couldn’t figure out why in the world Rubicon got its gunners from the tropical paradise of Fiji. Fijian mercs were cheap, but there was a reason. The idiot was shooting up a self-sealing fuel tank and a crew cabin that had no crew inside. The Black Management pilot was safely on the left side of the craft, apparently oblivious to the assault.
“Retarget tail rotor gearbox,” Koritarov said in heavily accented English.
Hunter had enough of Springsteen and moved on to the Stones—he loved classical music. A few seconds later the Black Hawk yawed to the right and kept spinning. Hunter stomped the left pedal, but didn’t get anything. It kept going around and around, faster and faster. He rammed both size elevens into a space barely large enough for one foot and pushed the pedal with everything he had while he jammed the cyclic forward. Then he saw the warning lights go off at the same time he caught a flash of another helicopter.
Stella.
Stella had finally nailed him.
Camille keyed her microphone. “Unidentified Rubicon Hip, this is Black Management Six, hold fire or we will engage. Repeat, Rubicon stand down.” She turned to Beach Dog. “Please tell me this is one of the Little Birds we outfitted with the 20 millimeter Gatling guns.”
“Yeah, but we’re not in range—too high and too far.”
“Get in range.”
“Hang on.”
The Little Bird dived so fast Camille felt like she was in a freefall—inside and out. She had been too angry in the trailer to grill Hunter and find out the truth she needed to know about that Julia chick—and he had pulled a gun on her. Now she realized she was in danger of losing that chance permanently. And how dare Rubicon shoot one of her Hawks out of the air? She took the targeting controls of the Gatling gun.
She watched Hunter’s helo gyrate out of control as her Little Bird dropped down behind the Rubicon Mi-8. She estimated the range to target now at two thousand meters and closing fast. A few seconds later she opened fire on the tail boom. Metal flew and the tail rotor slowed. She kept firing and now prayed that Hunter survived. The tail boom began to sag as the Rubicon Mi-8 whirled around.
Beach Dog turned toward Camille, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t you think that’s enough? The dude’s going down.”
The Rubicon helicopter spiraled toward the ground.
The gyrations were getting faster and faster. Hunter reached up and brought back both throttles, then struggled against the G-force to bottom out the collective so the damn thing would auto-rotate and quit spinning the cabin along with the rotors. It was like putting a car in neutral and now all he had to do was coast down a hill—straight down. The rotors would spin with the air and, if all went well, lower him to a rough landing. Fighting vertigo, he scanned the ground for a landing site. A village lay directly below him. He had to get clear of it or at least aim for a street, but he was plummeting fast. Pulling back on the cyclic to flare the craft, he pitched the nose up and used the momentum of the main rotor to brake the descent. The spinning slowed, but he was coming up on a rooftop. He wrestled with the two functioning controls and squeezed out a little altitude and a few more meters of distance. Barely clearing the house, he smacked down hard between two buildings. The specially designed pilot’s seat collapsed onto the floor, cushioning most of the blow, and he swallowed something.
He shoved down the collective, pulled on the brakes and blasted out of the door with Stella’s gun. The main rotor was still moving, kicking up dust and sand. He had to find cover before Stella flew overhead and gunned him down.
On the run again in Anbar, this time with no pants on—man, he’d have given anything to have that damn man-dress back.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Anbar Province
The Black Management Little Bird hovered low over the village while Camille scanned the area, trying to get a peek throu
gh the dust cloud. Please be alive. She keyed the mike to call to her Baghdad ops center. “LIGHTNING SIX to RAVEN. We have a Black Hawk down. Repeat, Black Hawk down.” She relayed the GPS coordinates. “Beach Dog, take us in low and hover. I want to see if he made it.”
“Not a good idea in this neighborhood. The bad guys we’ve chased out of Fallujah and Ramadi like to hole up in these parts. This is the Wild West.”
“Things get too hot, we’ll pull out.” Camille studied the area. Children looked up from the streets and adults were running outside to see what was going on. So far, she didn’t see any weapons.
The cloud began to dissipate around the Black Hawk. It had hit level, sandwiched between two buildings on a vacant lot. Its back landing gear had broken off, but it otherwise seemed intact. If she could get a salvage crew to it before the locals trashed it, it could fly again.
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