“Too small!” Andi shouted as loud as she could.
“Does she know that?” Holly roared back.
The instant they were alongside, Elayne twisted to look at them.
And they almost all died at that moment.
70
Holly wasn’t sure how Andi managed to not intermesh their rotors when Elayne twisted the helicopter along with her body.
But the Night Stalker training came through and Andi kept them right on station, with only a few meters between the tips of their main rotors.
Holly aimed at Elayne’s face behind the canopy and fired.
The bullet skipped off the surface but sent Elayne slamming the other way.
Every move she made, Andi kept her close.
Holly kept firing, beating on the canopy. Never giving Elayne a moment’s rest.
Elayne just wouldn’t take the hint. She’d turned away from her direct flight to Tiyas military base, but she hadn’t begun descending.
Holly’s own training by the SASR was probably similar to Elayne’s, far more about destroying an aircraft than flying.
She dropped the rifle across her lap and grabbed the controls for the M230 chain gun mounted directly under her seat.
The Mi-28 Havoc might be fully armored, but not enough to stop a 30 mm round. Or the twelve hundred of them loaded in this bird.
Miranda turned just her head to look out at Holly from the forward cockpit.
“Thank God! She’s alive.”
Now to keep her that way.
Holly studied the targeting scope, lined up her absolute best guess…
And fired.
71
Elayne looked down in surprise.
The huge bang had reverberated through the hull.
A hole twice the size of her thumb had appeared in the left side of the canopy. On the right side, a massive round was buried in the glass.
Another round blasted through the canopy from side to side, so close in front of her face that she could practically taste it.
The wind whistled through the two holes.
The message was clear.
Holly was such a bitch that she was willing to sacrifice her precious Miranda Chase for revenge.
Well, wasn’t that just so interesting?
Holly wanted to take her on personally. One-on-one and screw the consequences.
Ooh, they were more alike than she’d ever imagined.
Elayne locked the collective control for a moment to free up her left hand. Then signaled to Holly across the narrow gap between them.
You and me, she waved a single finger back and forth. Then pointed at the ground.
The last time they’d met, it had taken Holly and two Special Operations fighters to capture her. One-on-one, taking down Holly Harper was going to be easy.
Holly nodded her agreement.
This was going to be so awesome!
And way easier than landing this damned helicopter. The rugged foothills didn’t offer a lot of options.
And each time she got close to the ground, a blinding cloud of dust blanketed everything, forcing her to climb aloft once more.
Finally, she picked a hockey rink-sized flat spot, managed to stabilize to a hover over it, and just eased down on the collective while she tried to stay in one place.
The world blanked behind dust.
Down. Down.
“How goddamn far away is the groun—”
The helo slammed onto the dirt and she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood.
But she was down.
Holly’s helo settled smoothly beside her, raising its own massive dust cloud.
When the dust cleared, Elayne could see Holly sitting in her cockpit without windows like the old witch Baba Yaga perched in her chicken-leg house.
Elayne popped the canopy and exited the Havoc on the side opposite where Holly had landed.
She’d show Holly exactly who was the best.
As she circled the nose of the Havoc, she was surprised to see Holly was still sitting in the cockpit. Her rifle was still propped between her legs, the barrel pointing skyward.
“Come out and play, Harper. Your call. Guns, knives, bare hands? I’ll take you down any way you want. Twelve months. Twelve fucking months in that cage I’ve been wanting to do you.”
Elayne tossed the boy’s rifle aside—she’d never learned his name before leaving him to die on the Falcon.
“And the last three fucking weeks? All those little phone calls, but never once helping me get out of there. I did those guards good, by the way, just want you to know. Next after you, maybe that little phone caller, don’t you think? I’ll find out who it was. Him, I’ll goddamn fuck to death. Not like we did to your precious Senators. Poof! Up close and personal for that bastard.”
She heaved aside Betty’s helmet.
“Senators scattered all over the desert. Bang!”
She discarded the weapons harness.
“We’re gonna smear your Yankee asses right out of the Middle East. Then right out of Europe. But that boyo on the phone, ever so anonymous? Oh, I’m going to hurt him so good.”
Then the vest, so hot in the desert despite the cool shadows.
“But the first ass I’m gonna fuck is yours! You’re now! You know you want to do me yourself. Maybe like the old days?”
Elayne untied the knife from her thigh and tossed it aside.
“Skin to skin!”
She yanked off her t-shirt until all she wore was her bloody bra.
“Aww,” she brushed a hand where the blood had dried brown over her breasts and was flaking away all down her side. “And I never learned the big Chinese bitch’s name—” then she grabbed her own crotch and yanked upward, “—not even when I drove my knife so far up her that she just couldn’t stop squealing. Same kind of delight I’ll give you, Harper.”
She waved toward the deep desert.
“Then Pow! I blew her up with your plane, Harper. Tiny bits scattered everywhere. Come on down and play. You know you want it—so bad!”
“I had something else in mind,” Holly had still made no move to climb down.
Her hand had been out of sight below the edge of the canopy’s missing window.
She raised it now.
It looked like a yellow plastic ray gun.
Then Holly shot her in the chest with it.
72
Andi couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing, even as Elayne Kasprak dropped to the ground convulsing.
“Oh, Taz will be so sorry she missed that.”
Once more, Holly pushed the button on the Taser.
Elayne grunted inarticulately as the charge blasted into her again.
“Let’s get this done,” Holly showed no sign of humor.
They climbed down together.
While Holly was seeing to Elayne, Andi hurried over to Miranda. She pulled the tape off Miranda’s mouth and untied her hands.
“Are you okay?” Andi massaged her wrists, then helped her get far enough out of the cockpit that she could cut the ties on Miranda’s ankles.
“I shink sho. Dwugged.”
Once she was out and standing wobbly on the ground, Andi hugged her because she was just so glad to see her.
Then she looked at the two helicopters.
“Uh, Holly. How are the three of us getting back in one Apache helicopter? The Havoc has that small emergency compartment for crew rescue, but we can’t just leave an American Apache here in Russian-occupied Syria.” The AH-64D was a fighter aircraft with seats barely big enough for the two pilots.
Holly didn’t answer. Instead she was dragging a well-bound Elayne toward the Havoc. An impressive pile of body armor and weapons lay on the sand where Elayne had been.
Even as they were loading her into the pilot seat of the Havoc, she began to regain control of her body.
Andi barely managed to avoid a vicious head butt.
“She’s a real sweetheart,” Holly didn’t even look up from w
here she was strapping Elayne into the seat. The straps she was using were more appropriate for securing a car to a tow truck bed than a person to a seat. But the fury in Elayne’s scream said that maybe the straps were a bit on the small side.
If Holly took any notice of Elayne’s increasingly articulate imprecations and curses, she showed no outward sign. Not even when Elayne described in some detail how she was going to fuck Mike Munroe to death.
“She knows Mike?” Andi asked as casually as she could manage while having to shout over the continuing barrage. Actually, the screams of pure rage were almost a relief. Andi’s own anger that Ken had died instead of her, widowed his wife and orphaned his child, almost seemed to be a quiet place compared with this woman’s anger at the world.
“Likes to think so. Mike was too smart for her.”
That unleashed a new barrage.
“Out-maneuvered me, too.”
Andi couldn’t have heard that right, but Holly was already walking away toward Miranda.
Without a word, Holly bent down and simply hugged Miranda hard. It was perhaps the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. Neither of them moved. They simply held onto each other like long-lost sisters.
Then she helped Miranda climb into the forward seat of the AH-64D Apache, slipping the helmet over her head and buckling the seat harness herself.
“I’m sorry about the windows,” Holly waved a hand through the openings in the cockpit door where she’d blown away the glass to fire her rifle. “It’s going to make the ride back pretty windy for you. But I can’t take an American Apache helicopter where I have to go.”
“Ish okay,” Miranda assured her.
Holly handed the Taser to Andi as she came up to ask what the plan was.
“Give this to Taz. Tell her thanks. Now you get Miranda back. Keep her safe.”
She was so serious that Andi could only nod. “Where are you taking her?”
Elayne’s fuming was quieter but no calmer from behind the closed canopy on the Havoc.
“Do you hear how close she came to starting a war?” Holly just shook her head and pulled out her phone to begin typing a text.
Andi thought about the sabotage on the crashed Airbus at Johnston Atoll half a world away. Then she looked up at Elayne flailing ineffectively against the heavy straps securing her in her seat. Finally, she looked back across the desert toward the new crash that had made the fireball ten miles past the first wreck.
She turned back to Holly. “You already know what we’re going to find on the crash of the Senate committee members.”
Holly nodded but stayed focused on her text.
Andi tried to picture it, but sabotage wasn’t part of her Army past. She’d been a helicopter pilot. Her duty had been delivering people who did the black ops, not doing them herself.
“A… Oh my god! We’re going to find that a Russian triggering device, even Russian explosives, are what downed a US military plane full of Senators.”
“The first plane crash was to kill me. The second one was probably to entice Miranda into a kill zone. Or worse, a capture zone. The fact that Elayne would turn Syria into the next Vietnam by starting a major war would simply be an added bonus in her mind. The last place they had her wasn’t secure enough. I’m going to take her where she can’t…do anything. Ever again.”
Holly turned toward the Havoc.
“Can you fly that thing?”
Holly’s smile looked sad, despite the lilt in her voice.
“Just watch me, mate.”
73
Elayne couldn’t even wiggle a finger. Holly had trapped her thoroughly.
“I’m not going back to that goddamn prison, Harper.” Her throat felt like she’d swallowed steel spikes.
“Nope.”
“Where are we going?” She was hoarse and hurting. But pain didn’t matter to a Zaslon operative. “Somewhere I can screw you with a baseball bat? Where I can ram a—”
“Home.”
“Fucking Australia? Oh no. I’m soo scared.”
Holly’s laugh sounded bitter as she closed the canopy and powered up the Havoc. “That’s no more my home than it be yours. Not even close, mate.”
“I’m not your mate, Harper. I ever mate with you, it’s gonna be—”
“Too fuck me dead. I get it.” She took them aloft.
Then she turned northwest and began to climb over the ridge.
“But that way lies Tiyas Airbase.”
“Better than a slap in the face with a wet fish.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I want to kill you myself, bitch. Not the goddamn Russian Air Force. C’mon, Harper, we have to do this. You. Me. You dying in agony, knowing I’m gonna screw your precious Miranda myself until it kills her. Harper! Harper!”
Holly didn’t offer another word no matter what Elayne yelled at her.
74
Andi had flown several miles before she realized that Holly wasn’t behind her.
On the radar, there was a tiny blip that must be the Havoc. Even as Andi watched, the blip moved farther away—directly away!
That couldn’t be right.
Andi turned the Apache around.
The radar wasn’t nose- or belly-mounted like most helicopters; it was in a bubble dome that stuck up above the center of the main rotor. The sensitivity didn’t increase with her turn as it did on most helicopters, but it still made no sense.
The blip of the Mi-28 Havoc was flying directly toward Tiyas Airbase.
“What are you doing, Holly?” She couldn’t use the radio to ask. Even if they’d agreed on a frequency, the Russians would monitor it and scramble their defenses.
Andi raised herself as high as she could, barely enough to see Miranda’s head slumped to one side. She’d fallen back asleep in the front seat. She hadn’t even roused when Andi had checked her pulse before taking off.
Torn between rushing Miranda back to safety and seeing what Holly was doing, Andi finally raced after the Havoc.
Holly cleared the ridge in far better control than Elayne and disappeared from view. She would now be visible to the Russians.
Andi slipped her Apache up behind a sharp ridge edge, then eased slowly upward in a stable hover.
The reason an Apache’s radar dome was mounted above the rotor blades was multi-fold. One advantage was a clear three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view for the radar sweep. But the main advantage was that it let her hover out of sight with only the dome visible. It let her look over the horizon—in this case, the mountain’s ridgeline—without exposing her aircraft.
Holly had descended again, landing only a few kilometers from the Tiyas airfield. Already, a pair of Russian helos were lifting into the setting sun and turning in her direction.
The Havoc sat on the ground for another thirty seconds while Andi held her breath.
Then it fired an entire salvo of missiles.
Both of the approaching Russian helicopters managed to release chaff and get clear.
The missiles impacted the desert just this side of the nearest hangars, tearing up nothing but desert.
Then the Havoc took off and climbed straight toward the Tiyas Military Airbase.
The response was swift.
The two Russian helicopters that had been sent from Tiyas to investigate rushed in.
The Havoc was climbing through five hundred feet when it was struck by missiles from both gunships.
It didn’t dissolve; it exploded so violently that it must have been scattered over a square kilometer or more.
Andi couldn’t make a sound.
Her mouth was open, but no scream found its way out her throat.
Tears blinded her as she eased once more below the ridgeline and turned for al-Tanf.
Miranda slept all the way there.
And Andi couldn’t stop crying.
75
“Sorry, I have a team arriving at the Syria crash that I’ve been waiting to hear from.” Clarissa excused herself from the conference table whe
re she and Gavin Chalmers were discussing the Middle East situation.
She crossed to her desk. She’d left her phone there but had heard its sharp buzz as it rattled on the glass.
Clarissa opened the message.
A man made phone calls to Guest Seven’s cell. Who at CIA wins with dead Senators and a war in Syria?
Somehow Holly Harper had done it again. She’d caught up with Guest Seven. What’s more, she’d again taken her alive and found out about her channel of communication out of the CIA Black Site.
Clarissa’s own phone was so rarely from her side that it was hard to imagine someone else ever accessing it.
Clark?
But that was ridiculous. She couldn’t recall ever telling him about the Diego Garcia Black Site, never mind Guest Seven.
Maybe someone with more direct access to Guest Seven’s phone? Ernie Maxwell out at Diego Garcia had the knowledge of Russia and the Middle east.
But no, he couldn’t have issued orders to the SOG; it had to be one of her directors.
She looked about her office. But how?
Clarissa tapped a quick message before she replaced her phone carefully in its usual spot on her desk. The only other place she ever put it was in her purse. Someone had been close enough to grab it before it auto-locked.
Someone had been in her office, taking advantage of a moment she’d been away.
Someone who knew about Guest Seven.
And the landline connection to Guest Seven.
Or had found out about both.
Clarissa turned to look at Gavin, still seated at the conference table.
Gavin Chalmers, the Department Director of the Middle East Desk.
The most critical and powerful position in the CIA outside of her own and the Russia Desk.
She might step out of the room to get a file or something. If he waited and watched, he might have accessed her phone.
The SOG orders, supposedly sent from her desk. They would damn her, lose the directorship.
Holly’s question, Who at CIA wins with dead Senators and a war in Syria?
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