That was her role as a reporter. To bring the facts to the world, to force the international community to intervene. And if she had to have a side to claim as her own, then let it be that one — the side of peace.
Xerxes must have seen something odd in her expression. He stepped away from her to the door of the hut and barked out an order, his voice harsher than she’d heard before. Running footsteps answered him, then a sound like early summer thunder far away.
No. Not thunder. Fear surged through her, shattering the peace that understanding had brought her.
Not thunder at all. Bombers.
Hornet 202
1035 local (GMT –2)
Thor dipped the nose of the Hornet down slightly for the barest moment, exposing more of the ground under him to view. Not that he really needed a visual, not following in the path of the Tomcats, not with his own HUD indicating he was on course, on time. And especially not with the streamer of smoke and fire billowing up to his left, evidence of the deadly accuracy of the Tomahawk attack on a fuel and weapons dump. No, visual contact with the ground was simply a final confirmation of what he already knew — that they were dead on in their ingress run.
“Five seconds,” Tomcat Lead warned. “Hold your positions and don’t screw up the egress. Break left if you get hit. SAR and Special Forces are only one mike out.”
Thor waited for Two to acknowledge, then said, “Three.” His wingman followed with, “Four.”
“Alright. Let’s give them hell.” Tomcat Lead began his descent, falling away in a graceful arc, his wingman dropping in slightly to the left and behind him. Thor counted off three seconds, then followed them down.
Closer to the ground now, with trees rushing by underneath him he could truly feel the effect of the Hornet’s speed. Individual trees whipped by, barely visible long enough for him to take note of them before they flashed out of view. Three small buildings spaced perhaps a mile apart, a herd of something — goats, perhaps? — between them. An older burnt-out house, all details he recognized from the satellite photos.
There, just ahead and to the left. An odd patch in the undergrowth, natural enough from a distance but with hard glinty highlights in it as they approached. Could have been quartz formations or rocks if they’d been in a different part of the world, but not here. He’d seen the blowups of the area, taken note of the carefully outlined trucks and encampments the photo intelligence technicians had picked out. It would have been clear enough even without the infrared shots that showed warm engines, campfires, and people moving about underneath what was trying to appear as a simple forest. Smoke from the Tomahawk attack was blowing across the area now, further obscuring the picture.
The camp. Human intelligence sources had confirmed with the locals what the intelligence specialists already knew. And what the people on the ground, in a few short seconds, would know beyond all hope of redemption.
Macedonian camp
1036 local (GMT –2)
Xerxes shoved Pamela to the ground then rolled her under the cot. “Take cover!” He followed her in under the scant shelter of the flimsy wooden frame. It bent then flexed upward. Although her vision was partly blocked by Xerxes body, she caught a glimpse of a darkly tanned foot flashing toward the door.
“No!” She tried to shove him out of the way so that she could escape the illusion of the safety of the cot. Better to take her chances in the open away from the structures.
Xerxes shoved her back against the wall of the hut as though determined to hold her in the death trap that she knew this building surely was. She started to fight back by reflex, her hands clawing at his face, then realized that there was only one way out. Instead of reaching toward him, she flattened her hands and jammed them straight up.
The cot bucked up. It started to settle back down on them, one aluminum leg headed straight for her face, but she got her feet up and kicked. It rose again, rolling now, and clattered over on its side. The noise was lost in the all encompassing thunder of aircraft directly overhead.
Pamela bolted to her feet, narrowly eluding Xerxes’s frantic grab for her ankle. Let him die here if he wished, but she wasn’t going to. Not now. Not this time. She ran for the door, snagging her camera bag strap with one hand as she went. As soon as she hit the door, she cut hard to the right and started running.
God, no strafing. Not this time. She remembered how close the deadly rounds from the Hornets had come when they were clearing the area around Murphy. It was her fault that the Macedonians had gotten him, her fault alone. If she hadn’t dragged Xerxes down from the observation point, they’d never have been within range to take him prisoner.
The feet — Murphy’d left without his boots. For a split second, she almost thought about running back in to the shelter to look for them, but dismissed it almost instantly. There was no time, none at all. She’d be lucky if she made it out of range before the first—
Her world exploded. The ground under her feet heaved up as though trying to rid itself of a flea, bucking and jolting harder than the worst earthquake she’d ever imagined.
The first blow catapulted her forward, and the ground that rose up to meet her seemed far closer than it had any right to be. She hit hard, landing on her right shoulder and rolling immediately over to smash her face into the hard-beaten ground.
Then the second explosion, harder and more violent than the first, but almost inaudible. She shook her head as it tossed her into the air, gravity slamming her back down a second later into the still-reeling earth. It was oddly disorienting, the earth reeling underneath her, dust and flames and debris rising up from the remains of the camp, complete chaos in utter silence.
She lay facedown on the ground, her arms crossed over the back of her head. She waited.
More explosions, or perhaps aftershocks — she couldn’t tell exactly which with no sound involved. It seemed as though she were alone in the midst of devastation, cupped in a giant hand that repeatedly picked her up and then threw her at the ground.
She felt something give in her shoulder, and the pain started then. At first it was indistinguishable from the noise and the violence that seemed to have taken root in the earth.
The shaking stopped. She lay on the ground, scarcely able to breathe with the fear pounding through her veins. Finally she tried, drawing in a deep shuddering breath as though her lungs had forgotten how to breathe. She coughed, started hacking hard. The air was almost solid with dust, debris and smoke.
Get away… got to get away. The refrain beat steadily in her head. She couldn’t understand exactly why — something about a camp was dangerous. All she knew was that she had to move, had to try, regardless of whether she could breathe or not.
She rolled over, still hacking and coughing, then rolled again as she realized she was now on her back, staring up into black smoke and bits of burning wood. She made it to her hands and knees, then tried to push herself upright.
The pain now, hard and demanding, threatening to consume her just as the early fury in the earth had. She felt herself scream but heard no sound — and kept moving. If she couldn’t stand, at least she could crawl.
She quickly discovered that her right shoulder would take no weight at all. Even trying to use it to push herself forward brought on waves of agony that threatened to rip her consciousness from her. She still couldn’t breathe well, but traces of oxygen were somehow seeping into her lungs. She held on hard to her consciousness and crawled.
Hill 804
1037 local (GMT –2)
The soldier watched as the compound below him exploded. He was far enough away to be well clear of the devastation, positioned just to the east of the path the attacking aircraft would use to clear the area. It was a good position, a fine position, one he’d carefully scouted at General Arkady’s request. He’d been particularly careful to select a vantage point that would almost guarantee him a direct hit.
More secondary explosions now, the muffled whump-whump of stores of POL — petroleum, oil,
and lubricants — catching up fire. The fire below took on the billowing black form characteristic of the ignitable agents involved. The sound reached him as mild overpressures, each one popping his ears and gently buffeting his body as they reached him.
Soon, very soon now. He had seen the aircraft inbound then lost them briefly behind another rise. The increasing smoke and fire was a problem as well, but he’d taken that into account in selecting his position and the prevailing winds were carrying most of it away from him. He’d have five seconds, maybe six. More than enough time to sight the Stinger in on the aircraft, follow it for a moment to make sure he had a lock, then toggle off the missile. A second Stinger canister lay at his feet, just a precaution. He doubted he’d have time to use it, but it was necessary insurance in case something had been damaged in the climb to the hilltop on the first missile.
He could still hear the aircraft engines, even over the explosions, the roar of the fire and the faint screams coming from the camp. The aircraft sounded higher in pitch now, indicating that they’d changed course and were heading back toward him. He shifted the missile slightly on his shoulder and peered through the sighting mechanism, ready for his target.
All of the planning, all of the preparations had been conducted with the utmost secrecy. General Arkady himself had approved the final plans, his site selection, and his chief of staff had personally brought the two Stinger tubes to his house in town. You could tell when professional military men were involved, the patina of expertise applied to the entire mission.
There was only one thing that puzzled him, a question that he hadn’t dared to ask. He suspected he knew the answer, but the less he knew, the more likely he was to survive the aftermath of this attack.
Just why did General Arkady want him to shoot down a Greek Tomcat?
Greek Tomcat 107
1038 local (GMT –2)
Sweat rolled down Helios’s neck, soaking into the gold Nomex shirt he wore under his flight suit. The damp fire-retardant fabric chaffed again the stubble of beard, creating an almost unbearable itch. Helios took his hand off the throttles long enough to run one finger around the inside of his collar and chase it. Perhaps he’d made it worse by not shaving this morning, but it was a squadron tradition that men went into battle unshaven. Exactly why, he’d never figured out, but such was the case with many traditions.
He dug one nail into the worst spot and scratched, his eyes still keeping up the scan between sky, instruments, and wingman. The scan, the all-important scan — too many aviators died when they let themselves get distracted and failed to keep up their scans. They forgot that the single most important priority, no matter what other hell was breaking loose, was to fly the aircraft.
Finally the itch abated. He placed his hands back on the throttle and tweaked up the volume on the squadron common net. The howls of triumph and exclamations of exhilaration were still crowding the airwaves. He’d give them a few more minutes to glory in the results of the attack before he ordered circuit discipline restored for their approach on the airfield.
He’d just reached for the transmit switch when he noticed the thin tracer of smoke off to his left. His eyes sought it out, and alarms started going off in his head before he’d fully consciously comprehended what he was seeing. His hands were already moving, throwing the lead Greek Tomcat into a hard break to the right.
The circuit went dead as the other pilots saw his maneuver, then the reason for it. The orderly formation disintegrated into a mass of aircraft scrambling for altitude and distance.
Helios’s Tomcat had just turned through ninety degrees when the Stinger found it. The RIO had decided that despite the maneuver, they weren’t going to outrun the missile. His hand was tight around the ejection handle and yanking down as the missile found him.
Helios couldn’t be sure exactly what was happening. One moment he was in his aircraft, riding home on the joyous cries of the rest of his squadron. The next he was hurtling through the air, stripped of the comforting protection of his Tomcat, the wind battering him like sandpaper and howling in his ears. There was a brief moment of silence as he reached the apogee of his ejection arc from the aircraft, a moment when the wind seemed to die down to nothing and he hung motionless in the air. A fleeting sensation of every dream he’d ever had about flying like a bird — then the air around him exploded into fire, sound and fury. The force tumbled him away from the aircraft, sweeping him before it like so much debris. He somersaulted in the air, head over heels with his ejection seat straps still holding him hard in the seat. Just at one of the rare moments when his feet were toward the earth, the parachute deployed. The force jerked him up and away from his tumbling descent toward the earth as though he were a puppet.
He stared up, panicking, wondering if the parachute had caught him at the right angle or whether it would spill open and send him plummeting to the ground without a hope of survival. He held his breath, hanging motionless for a moment until he was sure the chute had taken a solid bite out of the air, then swiveled around to look for his backseater.
There were no other chutes. He could see the other Tomcats splayed across the sky, saw one brave soul break off and head back down toward him. He twisted in his seat pan, trying to look behind him to see if his backseater had somehow made it out, but the parachute held him oriented toward the west.
At least his chute had opened. His mind was racing now, going through the ejection procedures they’d drill so often in preparation for just this moment. The swaying motion of the parachute was increasing, inducing nausea, although it seemed like the earth was moving rather than him. He caught the risers, pulled around to stabilize the chute and took another look for his wingman.
There, off to the north. A chute, collapsed and streaming behind a dark figure underneath it. He felt a wash of anger that his backseater would die so, coupled with a feeling of relief and gratitude that he’d survived himself.
The ground was racing up toward him now, harder and faster than he remembered from his practice jumps. He drew his knees up and tried to remember how to relax and let his legs take the shock, already mentally walking through the steps.
Something hard slapped against his face. He took his hand off the risers long enough to touch it and saw blood on his hand when he drew it back. Another hard sting on his leg, then a thin streamer of blood coursing out, some of it soaking into the fabric of his shredded flight suit, the rest keeping pace with his body as he fell. He felt a brief sensation of increasing speed and looked up.
Dread flooded through him. The parachute above him was spattered with spots of blue and red — no, not spots. Holes. Shrapnel from his aircraft, some of it burning, some of it just brutally razor sharp, was peppering his chute and his body.
One of the risers parted, the upper segment flailing against the canopy while the part he held still clutched in his hand wrapped itself around his wrist.
He was screaming now, damning the gods and the fates that would let him survive the missile, survive the ejection only to be destroyed a mere three hundred feet from the safety of the ground.
The ground. It was rushing up at him now at an incredible rate, each individual feature now distinct and dangerous. He tried to steer the remnants of the parachute toward a patch of cleared ground and grass, but more risers were being severed each second.
He seemed to be level with the ground now, and in a moment of insanity he wondered whether he’d already landed. Landed, and survived.
Then he hit. His feet touched down first, knees bent as he’d been taught, and hope lasted a moment longer. He felt as much as heard an odd, ominous crack, then his legs gave way. He twisted to the left, slammed into the ground on his side and bounced back into the air. For a moment he though he’d imagined the initial impact, then he hit the ground again.
The cycle repeated itself endlessly, with time frozen at the first moment that he’d touched the ground. There was no pain, not yet, just the curious and altogether annoying sensation of trying to lan
d on the ground, trying his damndest, and having the earth toss him back up into the sky again. Dirt, grass and sky reeled through his line of sight and he stopped trying to differentiate one from the other beyond the simple fact that blue meant he was being crushed against the green, and green meant he was about to be.
Finally, two hundred feet away from where he’d first hit the ground, the pilot’s body made one last slow arc into the air and landed for the last time.
Hornet 202
1039 local (GMT –2)
Thor watched as the Tomcats leaped up into the air and peeled away to the left and the right, suddenly four thousand points lighter without bombs on their wings. Lead punched through the Tomahawk smoke flume and reappeared almost instantly, his aircraft now dulled with a thin film of ash.
Thor counted to three, then pickled off his own load, breaking left just as gravity wrenched the last one off his wings. He felt the Hornet jolt upward, the engine’s power now applied just to airframe, fuel load and pilot without the heavy weapons.
Thor came around hard, standing the Hornet on its wingtip until he reached the reciprocal course. The Tomcats were high above him now and still climbing, each one gouting afterburner fire out of its tailpipes. He followed them up, increasing his rate of ascent in order to try to avoid their jet wash. He caught a flash of steel off to his right as his wingman followed.
“How’d it look?” he asked the other Hornet.
“Good hit, good hit,” the younger officer said, his enthusiasm patent in his voice. “Man, if I could have pulled a run like that in the pipeline, I’d be a fucking general by now.”
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