Perilous Skies (Stony Man)

by Don Pendleton

  Adan Neruda was lambasting Encina from the loudspeaker, but now he made a sudden bark as he finally saw Hawkins sneaking up on the prisoner.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Neruda shouted from the loudspeaker, and several of the nearby rounds burst. A salt cloud billowed out of the ground and sparks and grit tore into Hawkins’s exposed skin. He ignored the blasts and lunged to the top of the hill, grabbing at the hardware station in its plastic tub underneath the woman’s chair. He pulled out a laptop computer and a power pack intended to keep the thing running for hours. Several more explosive rounds cracked open and the salt cloud was so thick the air was actually beginning to darken. The woman in the chair was gagging and wheezing. Her breathing passages were closing up, and the tape meant she could not breathe through her mouth. She was going to suffocate within minutes.

  T. J. Hawkins flipped over the laptop, ripped out the power cable to the auxiliary power supply, yanked off the plastic battery panel and took out the battery. The laptop went dead.

  The charges stopped bursting.

  And he could no longer hear the woman in the chair breathing at all.

  He grabbed the chair, yanked it back and dumped the woman to the ground, then looped his arm around her and yanked her down the hill of salt, back the way he’d come.

  That was five long seconds after the bullets started flying.

  * * *

  MCCARTER AND CALVIN JAMES were on the move. McCarter stepped into the line of sight of a pair of men ahead, visible through the haze of salt drifting from the hilltop. Both men were firing at the top of the hill and McCarter triggered a burst on the run. He had to get that gunfire to stop, distract those men, while there was any chance they might be hitting the woman or Hawkins.

  It was a tough shot—through the haze, over the distance and on the run—but McCarter had been in a running gun battle a time or two and he stitched the first gunner across the crotch, shattering a hip bone. The dramatic effect was that his legs folded sideways under him at an unnatural angle and he screamed. The second gunner was already turning on him when McCarter ran directly at him, triggering the MP-5, and their rounds may have passed each other in flight. But McCarter’s shooting was on target, dropping his adversary hard. His adversary’s bullets flew over McCarter’s head with an angry buzz.

  He circled the booby-trapped pile of salt and found another knot of gunners and a pair of bodies bleeding into the dirt. He triggered a long burst from the submachine gun, cutting through the tight collection of Argentinean hardmen, and from somewhere out of sight Calvin James fired at the same moment. The hardmen withered. Three of them collapsed to the ground, one man ducked away behind a salt pile, but another one spun and took rounds in the back. He staggered, lost his weapon and fell against another salt pile. He left a bright pink stain on the pale white rock when he forced himself painfully to his feet again. McCarter cut his feet out from under him.

  Then there were no more signs of life. Most of the Encina mob had turned tail.

  McCarter retreated quickly to find T. J. Hawkins, apparently uninjured. Another suicide mission had turned out not to be one. The woman was heaving, but her eyes were open, and the frantic rising and falling of her chest was already slowing down. There was no sign of blood, on her, either. Hawkins had the tape off her mouth, and a small plastic mask fed with a thumb-size cylinder of emergency oxygen seemed to be reviving her.

  McCarter gave a thumbs-up to Calvin James. The black Phoenix Force commando was jogging down the rows, patrolling between the piles of salt, just in case any of Encina’s gunners returned.

  “Do you think it worked?” James asked.

  It was a rhetorical question. McCarter and James each worked their way slowly and cautiously up to the top of a nearby salt pile. James watched north. McCarter watched south, where he could see, in the long distance, the retreating tiny figures of the surviving Encina men. They’d reached their cars.

  And there they stayed. McCarter used his field glasses to examine them more closely. Men were rummaging in their cars, emerging with fresh weapons, but there was no indication that they were going anywhere fast.

  If David McCarter was reading their behavior correctly, this was a good sign. He could imagine them, furious and feeling stupid, and Encina, if he was not among the dead, radioing for backup from his new, powerful asymmetric vector. He would bring his nifty new toys out to play. The foot soldiers weren’t about to wade into the fray again until the backup arrived.

  McCarter spotted the Land Rover, with Encizo at the wheel, at the far western edge of the salt field. He took a sharp turn into the field and drove across the grid, in a row about a hundred yards from the Encina bunch—taunting them.

  There were a couple of gunshots, in the distance, paltry and ineffectual.

  “They’re taking potshots at you, Rafe,” McCarter advised.

  “Let them,” Encizo said. “The worst thing they can do is ding the paint. Did you take out the optional rental insurance?”

  “It’s not a rental. The car belongs to Uncle Sam,” McCarter reminded him. “It’s Uncle Sam’s paint job. He might be ticked off if you ding it.”

  The Land Rover had been arranged by Stony Man Farm. It could have come from almost anywhere—a U.S. embassy or some other U.S. government agency working inside Argentina. It was well-enough armored that the small-arms fire from the Encina gang was no danger.

  “See anything?” Encizo asked as he reached the eastern edge of the field and slowed to an idle five miles per hour. McCarter was searching the skies over the desert. It was the same hazy blue skies, it seemed to him, as they had seen over southern Mexico. Were the skies of South America always like this—nearly cloudless, blue-gray, slightly hazy? They were perfect for hiding the stealth aircraft.

  That notion was reinforced at the moment that one of the aircraft materialized out of the sky, close, and it was like a ghost fading into existence just outside the reach of his fingertips.

  McCarter knew those craft were pretty small, but this one loomed unexpectedly large in the sky when it became visible. It was almost on top of them already.

  “We have incoming,” McCarter announced over the headset. “One bird, from the south, coming in right over our Argentinean friends.”

  * * *

  ENCIZO STOMPED ON THE GAS and twisted the wheel, sending the Land Rover into a quick sideways skid that ended with the vehicle facing directly back into the salt field. The quick move also served to raise a cloud of dust from the desert floor to attract the attention of the aircraft, in case it hadn’t noticed the SUV already.

  Encizo accelerated across the grid of salt hills for several hundred yards before he stomped on the brake again. The crusty desert surface, stripped of its top layer of salt, released another opportune cloud of dust. Encizo grinned to himself. There was no way that aircraft could ignore him.

  He pulled a tight turn amid the pile and pointed the Land Rover due north, and he wondered just how close the plane actually was. He couldn’t take the time to look for it and he couldn’t hear it; it could be on top of him right now and he wouldn’t even know it.

  He hit the gas again, accelerating rapidly to highway speeds in the narrow corridor between the hills of salt, and his question was answered in the form of a sudden burst of .50-caliber machine-gun fire. It cracked into one of the piles of salt just as he was passing. They were already close enough to have his range.

  Encizo touched the brake, slowed by twenty miles per hour, and machine-gun hits on the desert floor in front of him threw up bursts of dust.

  The aircraft loomed into view, flying no more than forty feet over the peaks of the salt hills and almost directly over the hood of the Land Rover.

  He couldn’t hear her engines over the hum of the Land Rover. He was never going to get used to that.

  “Let’s play!” Encizo announced to himself, and pushed on the gas.

  * * *

  DAVID MCCARTER CALLED to T. J. Hawkins.

  “Can she be
moved?”

  “I’m good,” the woman said, pushing to her feet.

  “This is not over. You stay with T.J. until the danger is passed.”

  The woman cursed colorfully in Spanish, then demanded in heavy-accented English, “It’s my son-of-a bitch brother, isn’t it?”

  “He might be dead already,” Hawkins offered.

  “Might be? I will shed no tears if he is killed.”

  “You may get your wish,” Hawkins said.

  * * *

  DAVID MCCARTER HURRIED through several rows, then hoofed it up to the top of a salt pile. He was in time to see the aircraft fire another volley at the speeding Land Rover, and then watched the Land Rover slow down, allowing the aircraft to catch up to it. Then Encizo sped up again, barreling forward, pulling well ahead of the slow-moving aircraft. He was leading it along like a smart fox being chased by a foolish dog.

  It was still amazing to McCarter that that thing had been engineered to perform at speeds that slow. Every jet ever made was too damned heavy to get sustained lift at automobile highway speeds—that’s just the way it was. They stalled and they dropped.

  But this one didn’t. It seemed perfectly at home in the air over the top of Encizo’s speeding SUV. The plane was stable and responsive, and when the pilot wanted extra speed to catch up with the Land Rover, he got it.

  He closed in on Encizo, and a new burst of gunfire came from the machine guns mounted under the nose.

  McCarter wondered exactly how well armored the roof of that Land Rover was.

  “Gary?” McCarter asked.

  “Everything’s ready out here,” Manning responded. “I see the plane and Rafe coming—but he’s too far off the ground.”

  Encizo urged the SUV to go faster. The Land Rover wasn’t designed for speed, but this one had plenty of muscle under the hood. The speedometer topped 100, then 110, but of course the stealth jet had no problem sticking to his tail. Another long torrent of machine-gun fire emerged from under the nose of the stealth aircraft and battered the top of the Land Rover.

  McCarter saw dark black paint give way to bright flashes of exposed metal. Craters appeared, a half dozen of them in the roof metal. At that angle, at that entrance point, if they punctured the steel armor....

  “Encizo!” McCarter demanded. “Get out of there.”

  “Nice car!” Encizo said over the noise as another barrage rattled against the roof. “Well made. Think I’ll get me one.”

  Another burst, but now Encizo was slowing slightly, and the puncture marks appeared on the hood. The armor seemed good there, too, at least from McCarter’s perspective. The Land Rover kept going. The engine seemed undamaged.

  McCarter was running now, trying hard to follow the aircraft and Encizo. He’d noticed something of importance in that last burst of gunfire.

  “Rafe! He’s having trouble aiming at you. He lowers his nose to fire. He’s descending!”

  “Keep it up, Encizo,” Manning shouted excitedly through his headset. “Keep bringing him down. The lower he is, the better our chances of taking him out.”

  “Understood,” Encizo said, and at that moment he slowed again, just a little. If he slowed too much, the aircraft would simply shoot ahead of him and would need to make another pass. Encizo stayed in the sweet spot: just within the pilot’s line of fire, and just enough to motivate the pilot to home in on him.

  * * *

  GARY MANNING HAD LEFT the field of battle long before, jogging to the north end of the salt field and working hard and fast during the few minutes allotted to him. This little plan would only pay off if the plane attacked them from the south, from the same direction that the Encina gang had come. It would only pay off if the aircraft came low enough to the tops of the salt piles. It would only pay off if Encizo could get the jet to the right place and Manning could spring the trap at the right instant.

  But then, and even then, they didn’t know if they would succeed.

  This was the first time he’d used rock salt against a plastic airplane.

  In one hand were his field glasses. In the other was the detonator.

  Encizo, in his shredded Land Rover, was coming fast, and the little gray jet was right on top of him.

  * * *

  THE SALT FIELDS WERE HUGE. Even at this speed, they kept coming and coming, and Encizo wondered if they would ever run out. He could feel his head pounding and his teeth clenched from the strain of keeping this position. There was the sweet spot, right under the nose of the aircraft, where he could keep himself directly in the line of fire. He could manipulate the pilot, with accelerations and decelerations, enough to motivate the pilot to nudge his aircraft nose down again and again. The jet was coming closer and closer to the tops of the salt piles. How close, Encizo wondered, was close enough?

  There was another burst of fire, and more pounding on the roof of his SUV, and it was over again, and something new caught Encizo’s eye. At first he couldn’t even tell what had distracted him. Then he realized that it was a tiny dot of sunlight on his dashboard. It had not been there before.

  It came from above.

  No matter how well the vehicle was armored, it would eventually fail under barrage after barrage of rounds.

  The trusty old Land Rover had reached its point of failure.

  Encizo was finally within sight of the end of the salt fields. Another hundred feet.

  There was no way he could give it up now. He hit the gas, pulled himself out in front of the stealth jet, gave himself a little distance and touched the brake a little bit again at the moment he felt was right. He was learning to play with this pilot, using his instincts to judge when the pilot would fire. He was right on this time. The aircraft fired, the rounds traveled over the top of the Land Rover and the pilot compensated by dipping his nose just enough to bring the aircraft down another five feet closer to the tops of the salt piles. That move allowed him to direct his machine-gun fire directly into the roof of the Land Rover. The rounds chewed at the already twisted and battered metal.

  Inside the SUV the tone of the impact of the rounds had changed. They were more broken. Less muffled. The armor was giving way. There was a burst of light inside the Land Rover. A major hole appeared above the rear seat. And then another crater opened up above the center seat. And more rounds were slamming into the roof just above Encizo. More light appeared on his dashboard and Gary Manning was shouting into his headset, “Let him go! Let him go!”

  The dashboard exploded even as Encizo stood on the brake. Shards of plastic flew around the interior, tearing at his face, and something sliced into his fingers. He ignored the pain in his hands, gripping the wheel hard as the Land Rover skewed wildly, trying to contend with the sudden stop on the uneven ground. Encizo lost the back end and it swung to the right. The wheels slammed into one of the salt piles, slapping the back end in the other direction, and the vehicle lost its balance, its right wheels leaving the earth.

  Encizo wrestled for control of the vehicle, finessing the wheel as best he could even as blood trickled between his fingers and he felt the vehicle slam back down onto four wheels. One of the piles of salt swung in front of the SUV, coming fast, and grew huge in the windshield, but the brake finally engaged. The wheels finally got a good grip on the desert surface, and the Land Rover came to a halt with its front end crunched against a wall of rock salt.

  * * *

  GARY MANNING KNEW Encizo was in trouble when he saw the roof blossom open under the final barrage of machine-gun fire. But he couldn’t think about that now. The stealth jet dipped low and slowed abruptly as its target vanished underneath it. The thing practically drifted, like a heavy burden, over the last of the salt piles, on the edge of the field. It could not have presented itself better to Gary Manning’s booby trap. Manning snapped the switch that detonated the salt piles.

  Unlike Adan Neruda, Gary Manning had planted his explosives near the bottom of the salt piles and driven them in as deep as he could, and when they blew, it wasn’t pow
der that flew in the air. A wall of white rock was jettisoned into the air and pelted the slow-moving jet. The salt rock clattered against the belly, bounced off the wings—and was sucked into the pair of engines on the tail.

  Abruptly the fanlike noise of the stealth jet engines became a knock, then a rattle and finally the clatter of broken parts. The engines ceased to function, regurgitating broken pieces, and the aircraft slowed even further.

  Manning witnessed the aircraft hit its stall speed. The jet went into a flat, quick descent and smacked flat on the desert floor. The body pancaked, leaving the fuselage looking like a flattened tube of toothpaste. The wings cracked off but were still held to the plane by their fiber reinforcement, and then flopped about wildly, disintegrating.

  The structural damage was catastrophic at the moment of impact, and Manning hoped for a heartbeat that the thing wouldn’t burn. At the same time he witnessed the deluge of clear liquid that exploded from everywhere. It was as if every structural component contained part of the fuel tank. As the engines flopped off their mounts they burst into flame, and the fire engulfed the rest of the wreck even as it was still settling to the desert floor.

  Inside something burst apart, and shooting stars were thrown out. There was an explosive few seconds of machine-gun rounds detonating together.

  Manning wasted all of three seconds on the airplane. It was a complete loss.

  He sprinted back through the piles of salt to where the Land Rover had stopped. He could see huge open wounds in the roof of the vehicle. In the end there would have been nothing left protecting the inside of that vehicle.

  He yanked open the driver’s door, hoping he would find Encizo still alive and unhurt, and wondering if such a thing was even possible.

  The interior of the SUV was even worse. The ceiling was tattered and material dangled in strands like entrails. The dashboard was obliterated. Blood spattered the windows, was smeared on the shifter and glistened on the steering wheel.