“I thought I saw another shadow,” he reported.
“I concur,” Stark stated. “I think there is a third chopper using stealth, bearing down on you.”
“We’re never going to make it back to the sub,” Levont moaned.
* * *
Bunny tried to not let the sting of Davidson’s rejection cloud her mind. Too much was at stake.
“The nearest US military base is in the Sudan,” Prenner stated.
She shook her head, sending more wisps of hair flying everywhere. “No, Mogadishu is way closer.”
Lopez looked over his shoulder. “Mogadishu?”
Bunny nodded. “It’s a CIA black site. They’ve got armed support there and it is barely thirty clicks from here.”
“Mogadishu it is,” Lopez stated as he leaned the chopper to the west.
“The agency isn’t going to be very happy if you show up at their airport location unannounced,” Stark stated in her earpiece.
“Well, then announce us. I’m sure they can hide their rendition prisoners for long enough to help us out.”
Actually that might be harder to do than to say. The Mogadishu CIA outpost was a major clearinghouse for terrorist prisoners. They serviced the entire horn of Africa and this region was rife with Al Qaeda and Al Shebab, and half a dozen other extremists’ organizations.
The facility had garnered vital information that helped prevent at least twenty attacks worldwide.
Not that it was much of a secret. The CIA complex included at least eight hangars, and another half dozen other buildings. Several terrorist organizations had tried to hit the base, but had been stopped before even getting to the perimeter fence.
It was said the Mogadishu airport was possibly one of the safest to fly in and out of. Nobody was going to mess around in the CIA’s backyard. Or so Bunny hoped.
Whoever was chasing them down might not be too intimidated by the agency.
The girl in the stretcher moaned, turning her head from side to side. Which was kind of the last thing the doctor wanted the girl doing.
Bunny knelt beside the young woman. “Liza, Shhh…”
“Where am I? What happened?” the girl sobbed.
At the least Liza was speaking English that was a definite step up.
“You’re safe. We just rescued you from the pirate’s camp.”
Although as a missile exploded next to the helicopter, sending it reeling to the side. Bunny had to lash a hand out to a nearby metal strut to keep herself from falling into the very girl she was trying to help.
“Okay, relatively safe,” Bunny corrected as she smoothed Liza’s sweaty hair off of her forehead. At least her cheeks no longer looked on fire.
“We’ve got to go to Haiti,” the girl choked out. She grabbed Bunny by the arm. “You’ve got to promise me we’ll go to Haiti.”
Bunny could do no such thing. They were scheduled to head back to DC as soon as the mission was done. “You can go wherever you like once we get you safely back on US soil.”
Liza squeezed Bunny’s hand so hard that she feared her circulation was in danger. “No. We must head straight to Haiti. Promise me.”
Prenner knelt down beside her. “We promise,” he said patting the girl’s arm. “Will Port-au-Prince do?”
Liza licked her lips and nodded. “We can’t delay. They are gathering forces. They will purge the horsemen if we don’t stop them.”
Okay, was the girl starting to speak in tongues again or what?
Prenner just patter her arm again. “We’ll get there in time.”
Bunny shot Prenner a look, but he slightly shook his head. So he was just comforting the girl, not foisting a wild goose chase upon them.
“There it is!” Davidson shouted pointing out the window.
Squinting, Bunny couldn’t see it. There appeared to only be blue skies behind them. Then she saw it, a glint on the horizon. Like a mirage almost, only in the shape of a helicopter. That wasn’t just stealth tech, which only hid an object from radar, but some kind of illusion as well. Maybe they employed Chris Cross.
“Who are these people?” Prenner breathed out.
Bunny didn’t know and didn’t want to know. It smacked of conspiracy and a paramilitary cult. She’d had enough of both of those for a lifetime. Liza moaned again, trying to roll over, fighting the homemade straps of the gurney.
“Shhh… We’re almost there.”
The girl began speaking nonsensical again, her eyes far back in her head.
This mission so was not what she’d signed up for, but Bunny should have guessed it would be weird. It was their team after all. They only did weird.
Even a straightforward Somali pirate hostage rescue had gone insanely sideways on them.
CHAPTER 4
Davidson tried to line up his shot, but the trailing helicopter, who seemed to have perfectly good aim as it fired another missile at them, was not just nearly invisible, but was taking very effective evasive maneuvers.
Lopez, able to see the missile, threw their helicopter down and to the right, cutting across the sky like a mad hornet. The missile blew up where they would have been if Lopez wasn’t quite as insane as he was.
Another problem was that Davidson could only make out the super-stealth helicopter at certain angles of the light. The sun had to be behind the enemy chopper and the chopper had to be flying perpendicular to the horizon.
No biggie.
“Still nothing?” Davidson asked into his mic.
“If you weren’t swearing there was a chopper behind you,” Stark stated. “I would tell you there was nothing in the sky around you for miles.”
Another missile went off, exploding this time so close that the explosion rattled the entire metal frame. Bunny gripped herself around the waist, closing her eyes, slowly shaking her head. The beautiful redhead wasn’t all that keen on fieldwork. The only reason she’d come on this mission was for the free clothes and the fact they felt they had all the danger dialed in. How wrong they all were.
He hated to see Bunny this way. He had to stifle the urge to go over and wrap his arms around her. Yet he had worked so hard to keep them at arm’s length. Despite their obvious mutual attraction, Davidson’s upbringing had raised its ugly head again. Living such a covert life for so long, he’d learned not to allow anyone to get too close.
Especially a woman. More covert ops were sunk by pillow talk than by anything else. And a beautiful woman? That clanged bells so loudly in his head that it nearly deafened him. So much of his brain-washing he’d overcome. But this, this seemed to be a non-starter. Every time he thought of moving any further in a relationship with Bunny he felt like he had hives all over his body.
Even though she had proven herself over and over again, he couldn’t shake that deep mistrust that had been drilled into him for decades. His future never included a white picket fence.
“Did you hear that?” Lopez yelled knowing full well that Stark could.
“I can pick up the missiles once they launch,” Stark explained, “But that chopper is running cold and quiet.”
Why wasn’t Davidson surprised? The men who attacked them had some kind of bleeding edge cold suits on. Even this chopper they had stole was much more advanced than even the ones that Lopez had been recruited to test out. And this bird wasn’t even the most advanced chopper in their arsenal. Their attackers had a full on stealth helicopter as well.
“How much longer?” Bunny asked, her eyes now open showing off their liquid emerald color.
“Five minutes, max,” Davidson answered. They were so close to their goal, but that other chopper was gaining ground.
“Make that three and a half minutes,” Lopez said as he flashed that cocky smile of his. Davidson didn’t complain. Let him burn out the engine, they needed to get to safety.
Another missile exploded, this time way too close for comfort. As a matter of fact one of the rotors was on fire.
Davidson took up his post again at the door. Scanning the ski
es for any little glimmer.
“Look!” Prenner yelled from behind Davidson. “The airport!”
Sure enough, far off in the distance was a black splotch with several towers.
“Stark, do they know we are coming in hot?” Davidson asked into his mic.
“They better,” Stark said. “They should be putting up a few fighters into the sky to escort you in.”
Davidson didn’t see any streaks in the sky. This wouldn’t be the first time that the CIA didn’t exactly come through as promised.
No, as always they had to make their own luck.
Davidson turned back to his scope. A missile came out of what appeared to be nowhere, however Davidson marked in his mind where the explosive originated from. Then another glimmer. Now he had a trajectory. Now he had them.
He couldn’t wait for them to make another turn. Instead he fired five shots back to back, tracking forward, trying to anticipate the chopper’s course.
The first three shots went wide, but the fourth? The fourth must have hit something vital as the sky seemed to open up and deliver a full sized helicopter. His fifth shot must have hit the rear blade as the once invisible chopper now swayed back and forth.
Not one to let a moment pass by, Davidson fired again and again, not really caring what he hit, just that he hit his target. The helicopter went into a fatal spin, circling compulsively until it smashed into the ground, exploding in fire and smoke.
“Nice shooting!” Lopez yelled just as two fighter jets streaked overhead. “Always a day late and dollar short,” the corporal grunted.
* * *
Stark frowned as he reviewed the footage from the helicopter chase. What kind of technology were they using? He had full satellite coverage of the area, yet for the life of him couldn’t find a reliable signature to hone in on the enemy craft.
The tech was out there for stealth to minimize or nearly zero out your radar signature. The tech was out there to greatly reduce your sound footprint. His own government used a sound-reduced set of helicopters to raid the Bin Laden compound. The tech was even there to dampen out the heat signature. But to block line of sight? That was just crazy good.
Then there was the nanowire devices that looked basically like a hair brush that could bend light around small objects. Then of course there was the tech to make troops on the ground invisible, the quantum stealth blankets. But those were blankets.
This had been a fully functioning, high speed helicopter. How in the hell had they adapted “invisible” technology to that application? Seriously he wanted to know and develop it himself.
“If they can do it, so can we,” his mother mumbled as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
She was rotating the picture of the downed helicopter, trying to find any sign of the miraculous tech. They were both frustrated that Davidson had downed the vessel, but the team’s lives were on the line, so they couldn’t exactly complain too much. And no doubt the CIA would go and recover the wreckage and it would disappear into some Area 51 hangar, never to be seen again.
“We’re going back out,” Lopez said over the com.
“What do you mean?” Stark asked. Their assignment was to accompany Liza back to DC.
“That was some pretty hinky stuff back there,” Lopez explained. “We need to go gather as much intel on our attackers as possible. And don’t worry,” Lopez tried to reassure him, “We’ll catch up with Bunny and Liza in Germany.”
How exactly the corporal expected to do that, since if Bunny and Liza lifted off now they would be hours ahead so Stark had no idea, but it was Lopez so he was going to take him on his word.
“What do you hope to find?”
This time is was Prenner to answer. “We’re going to take fingerprints, DNA, anything we can get our hands on to refine who our assailants might have been.”
Not that Stark could argue with their logic, however he felt like they would only find more questions than answers. Whoever they had gone up against had been at least two steps ahead. If it hadn’t been for Davidson’s nearly savant like shooting ability, they would have been done for a dozen times over.
“Get me samples of everything so I can analyze them,” Stark added.
He would love to see how those cold suits worked.
“She wasn’t always speaking in tongues,” his mother announced. “At times Liza was speaking ancient Aramaic.”
Because that’s what every twenty-something step-daughter of the Vice President did.
“What did she say?” Stark asked.
“Let the dead bury the dead,” his mother repeated.
“Huh?”
His mother frowned, then took a sip of her white orange blossom tea. “It’s from Matthew 8:22 attributed to Christ.”
“But what does it mean?” Stark asked. He wasn’t exactly up on his obscure biblical quotes.
His mother frowned again. Odd, usually she only frowned at his dating choices. “Most say he meant spiritually dead, but it is open for interpretation. It is never mentioned again in the Bible. Not even the gnostic Gospels.”
Great, so now the girl was not only speaking in tongues, ancient Aramaic, but in riddles as well. He could hardly wait until they could turn her over to the Vice President’s protection detail and be done with this little mystery.
“What the…” His mother typed fiercely as she read a message that scrolled across the screen. “Their flight out of Somali to Germany has been cancelled.”
“What do you mean?” Stark asked, jumping in to investigate. “That is a regular flight to Berlin. It hasn’t been cancelled in ten years.”
His mother shrugged. “I guess someone wants to keep Liza in Africa a little longer.”
“Doesn’t the CIA have a plane they can ship her out in?” Stark asked.
“They say they don’t.”
Stark brought up satellite footage of the airport. There were three transport planes sitting on the tarmac within the CIA’s compound.
“You better get the Vice President on the line,” Stark commented to his mother. What ever was going on, was not above board.
* * *
Davidson checked his com again. “Still down,” he reported.
They had lost contact with Stark within five minutes of leaving the secret CIA base. They had debated turning around, but that felt like they were giving into the terrorists. If anything it signaled to them the importance of going back and getting as much intel as possible.
Could the enemy have something more up their sleeve waiting for them back at the pirate camp? Sure. But they had determined it was worth the risk. Plus trying to get Lopez to turn around was like trying to get a bottle of steroids out of a wrestler’s grip.
Not possible.
“Get ready,” Lopez announced as their helicopter careened toward the camp. They flew in tight over the tree tops, skimming along the foliage. There was no doubt they were flying under the radar basement, but would it be stealthy enough if the enemy had regrouped at the camp.
“You are going to need to jump down because I don’t think I should land.”
Davidson nodded. The last thing they needed was for the helicopter to be shot down.
Lopez brought the helo to the center of the camp, hovering about six feet over the ground. Levont was the first one out. He landed on both feet, gun up, ready to take on anyone that might be lingering in the area.
Prenner was next. Davidson leapt out, landing hard, having to go down on one knee before he was up and following the others.
They came to the first body just outside the camp. The enemy had encroached way closer than any of them would have liked. The blue plastic suit was tightly fitted with about a three millimeter gap where the alcohol had coursed through the fabric, cooling the heat signature. Prenner rolled the man over to reveal a small battery pack which must have fueled the small motor that pumped the liquid.
It was all so compact and elegant. How much R&D had gone into this suit? There had been no wasted weight or energ
y. Levont pulled off the man’s mask. Even in death the man was handsome, square jaw, strong forehead. Dark haired and blue eyed. Actually his eyes were so blue they looked unnatural. Like someone had replaced the man’s irises with the sky.
Prenner took fingerprints and DNA swabs quickly as Levont snapped a thousand pictures of the suit and the man. Davidson scanned the area, making sure no other enemies snuck from the forest.
“Onto the next one?” Levont asked.
Davidson gave a nod. No reason to linger here.
They found the second body a little deeper in the forest. Same suit and once the mask was removed it appeared to be the same man. Same dark hair. Same unnaturally blue eyes.
Davidson looked to Prenner who looked to Levont.
“Are you guys thinking what I am?” Levont asked.
“Twins?” Prenner offered.
It wouldn’t be unheard of, but dang it would be rare in a combat unit. After the prerequisite pictures and samples, they moved on. The third body had taken several shots. It must have been one of the men that Davidson had to track with Stark’s guidance.
When they turned him over they found the same exact features.
“No way they were triplets,” Levont spat.
No one wanted to speak the only other option. Clones. It was illegal, but some scientists were born to explore taboo avenues of research.
By the fourth and fifth body Davidson’s concerns were confirmed. There was no way these men had any kind of cosmetic surgery to make them look alike. They were alike. DNA would verify his suspicion.
“What the…” Levont sighed as they turned over the sixth body. It was getting creepier and creepier. It was one thing to go up against an enemy with a good R&D department who was well funded. It was another thing to go up against a clone army.
Freaky. And Davidson had been raised by a fanatical religious cult.
They approached the last man. He was still bleeding. Still alive. Barely.
“Who are you?” Davidson demanded.
“We are the Righteous,” the man sputtered out in a pool of bright red blood. His eyes as stark and clear as his clone “brothers.”
Bull's Eye Sniper Chronicles Collection (The Second Cycle of the Betrayed Series) Page 7