by Dale Brown
“Why are the Russians working with these guys?” Danny asked. “I thought Russia wasn’t involved in Africa at all.”
“It’s something new,” answered Melissa from the back.
Nuri tried to keep his teeth from grinding. She was right, but he still resented her, and something compelled him to answer everything she said. “They try to come in every so often.”
“You know this guy?” Danny asked.
“Never even heard of him,” said Nuri. “According to his dossier, he’s been around awhile, was in Iran a while back. This may have been a demotion, or maybe he’s interested in something special. Hard to tell.”
“The computer keeps track of all this?” asked Melissa.
When Nuri didn’t answer, Danny did, which only annoyed Nuri more.
“The system is like having a thousand assistants at your beck and call,” said Danny. “It’s a serious force multiplier.”
“It’s just a computer,” said Nuri. His tone was so harsh that Danny glanced at him.
“Can I interface with it?” asked Melissa.
“You have to be trained,” snapped Nuri.
“It responds to certain voices,” said Danny, still staring at Nuri. “But we all benefit.”
“I’m authorized to terminate Li Han,” said Melissa. “Once we’re sure we have the UAV, we take him down. I don’t think we should wait,” she added, sliding forward and leaning near Danny. “I think we should get it now.”
“We tried that already, and we missed,” said Nuri quickly. “We’re not positive where the UAV is. We can’t afford another miss.”
“Can’t your device figure out where the plane is?”
Melissa said it innocently, but Nuri took it as a challenge.
“It’s not omniscient,” he said. “It needs data. The area wasn’t under surveillance when it went down. We don’t have our sensors in place.”
“I’m for moving sooner rather than later,” said Danny.
“You think we can take over the whole city?” asked Nuri.
“No, but we will have reinforcements soon,” answered Danny. “Enough to deal with the people here. The problem is, if it’s not here, we’re losing a lot of time.”
“If it’s not here, where would it be?” said Nuri. “Anywhere in Africa.”
“True,” said Melissa.
God, thought Nuri, I must be wrong.
* * *
With the connection to MY-PID now permanently supplied by the satellite, the Tigershark was no longer needed. Danny released Turk to fly home, which he reluctantly agreed to do.
Meanwhile, Danny located a spot for the Whiplash MC-17 to make an equipment drop. It was an open field about four miles northwest of the city. With the Osprey holding south in case the rest of the team was needed, Danny decided they would go up and meet the newcomers and their supplies, setting up a temporary base there. Driving or even flying back and forth to Ethiopia would take too much time. And ideally, he wanted to close the operation down quickly — as soon as he had a definitive word on where Raven was.
They got to the drop zone five minutes ahead of the aircraft. With Nuri monitoring what was going on in Duka through MY-PID, Danny got out and placed some chem markers in the field. The markers were small sticks that emitted a light visible only through infrared gear. Technically, the Whiplash MC-17 could make the drop without the lights, but Danny liked the extra measure of safety.
Melissa got out of the car with him, walking along as he set out the lights.
“I owe you an apology,” she said after he had finished.
“What’s that?” he asked, surprised.
“I was — I felt that you guys were barging in and trying to take over. I didn’t realize how professional you were, and I acted… territorial. Bitchy.”
“Forget it.”
“I am sorry.” She touched his hand and smiled. “I was afraid — this is my operation. You’re trained to not let people in.”
“Sure,” said Danny.
Her hand lingered for just a moment.
“There were a lot of sick people in that clinic,” added Melissa. “They’re pretty desperate for help here.”
“Yeah, I know. We were in a village to the west a few months ago, a couple of villages. It’s a shame. They’re so poor.”
“Do you think — being black…”
“Like what? It could have been us?”
“Something like that.”
“No. Not at all.”
They were silent a moment. The wind picked up slightly, softly howling in the distance.
The MC-17.
“Plane’s coming in,” said Danny. “Come stand over here.”
He led her back away from the target area. The Whiplash support aircraft was a specially modified Cargomaster II. Among other things, its engines had been muffled so they were barely audible even at a few thousand feet. Like the extremely capable stock aircraft, the Whiplash version could land on a small, rough airfield; in fact, it probably could have landed in this field, though taking off might have been problematic. There was no need to risk it.
The plane came in low and slow, dropping a trio of large containers on skids within a few meters of each other. The large crates bounced on air cushions attached to the bottom of the skids, giant air bags that inflated just before impact.
As the airplane cleared upward, three smaller figures appeared overhead — Hera Scokas and two Whiplash trainees, Chris “Shorty” Bradley and Toma “Babyboy” Parker. Hera hit her mark dead on, walking right up to the chem marker in the bull’s-eye. The two men came in a bit to her left, blown slightly off course though still well within specs.
“Colonel, good to see you,” said Hera. The short, curly-haired Greek-American gave Danny a wave, then immediately stowed her parachute and checked on the two newcomers who’d jumped with her.
A variety of Whiplash equipment had been packed onto the three crates, including tents, two motorbikes, surveillance gear, and almost a ton of ammunition. There was also a solar panel and battery array to provide the temporary camp with electricity, along with point defenses that included ballistic panels — high-tech versions of claymore antipersonnel mines — and a surveillance radar held aloft by a blimp. The body of the blimp was covered with an adaptive LED material that allowed it to blend in with the sky, making it virtually invisible to the naked eye.
As soon as they were unpacked, Danny launched two small UAVs to supplement the Global Hawk’s coverage. Barely the size of a laptop computer, the robot aircraft looked like miniature versions of Cessna Skymasters, with twin booms to the tail and engines fore and aft of the cockpit. They flew neither fast nor high — sixty knots at 5,000 feet was roughly their top speed and ceiling, respectively. But their undersides were covered with LED arrays similar to those on the blimp, making them difficult to pick out even in daylight. And the top surfaces were covered with solar cells that supplemented and recharged the batteries powering their engines. As long as the day was sunny, MY-PID could manage the power consumption so the aircraft would fly 24/7.
Melissa pitched in, quietly working beside the others. She’d changed somehow, Danny realized, or maybe fatigue had just worn off the sharp edges.
Whatever the reason, she was actually pleasant to work with now. She volunteered to brief Hera and the others on the overall situation, and even helped set the posts for the command tent.
Maybe, thought Danny, they could work with her after all.
* * *
Nuri didn’t understand the significance of what was going on at first; he was too busy following MY-PID’s brief on the Russian and his connections in Moscow. But the computer did.
“Large force gathering near the town center,” the Voice told him as he paged through Kimko’s file on the mobile laptop he’d hooked into the system. “Armed.”
Nuri immediately brought up the image on the computer. Then he got out of the truck and went to find Danny.
The colonel was bent over a tent sta
ke, hammering it in with a large mallet. Some technologies were impossible to improve on.
“Meurtre Musique is going to war,” Nuri told him. “Two dozen of them, trucks, machine guns, grenade launchers. They’re getting together near the town square.”
“Do they have night vision gear?”
“Probably not.”
“They’re going to have a hard time hitting the hills where Sudan First is holed up,” predicted Danny. “They’ll spot them coming, even in the dark.”
“That’s not where they’re going,” said Nuri, watching the screen.
The trucks swung south down the main street, then formed two columns turning up different roads to the east. After they’d gone about three blocks, yellow and white flashes began appearing on the screen.
“Is something wrong with the image?” asked Melissa, peering at it over Danny’s shoulder.
“They’re shooting up houses,” said Nuri flatly. “They’re getting their revenge.”
* * *
Melissa felt her stomach sink as the gunfire continued on the screen. The trucks moved slowly through the streets, going no faster than four or five miles an hour, raking everything they passed with gunfire. In the western part of the city, a good portion of the bullets might be absorbed or deflected by the mud bricks of the buildings. But here the buildings were made mostly of discarded wood. There would be little to stop them.
Suddenly, something caught fire at the top of the screen. Danny poked his finger at it, increasing in magnification. A cottage had caught fire. The flames quickly formed a crown as they spread around the outer walls.
Something bolted out from the wall of fire. A finger of flame trailed it, even as it threw itself on the ground.
A person.
Two people, one big, one small.
A mother and child, Melissa imagined.
“This is terrible,” she said. “We have to do something.”
“Like what?” snapped Nuri.
“Colonel, we can’t just let them shoot each other up,” she told Danny. “They’re killing innocent children.”
“It’s not our business,” said Nuri. “Didn’t you say something yesterday about not wanting these people to get in your way? You weren’t worried about collateral damage.”
“This is different.”
“There’s nothing really we can do,” said Danny. “We have our mission. And we don’t have enough force to stop this.”
Melissa knew he was right — and she had said that, and felt it, and did feel it.
But these were real people getting killed.
“Sudan First will retaliate,” said Nuri. “Once they hear what’s up. Both sides go after soft targets first. They’re basically cowards.”
Melissa thought of the clinic. It was an obvious and easy target.
She went over to the tent where they were making coffee, remembering the women and their children there, the people she’d treated before the shooting victims came. Her mind conflated the two, imagining the children shot up, the women bleeding from bullet wounds.
She had to do something.
* * *
Danny watched as the pickups retreated back toward the residential area of the city where the Meurtre Musique supporters lived. Their grass huts would be easy targets for retaliation. Didn’t they realize that?
Most likely they did. But just as likely they felt they had to avenge the earlier shooting, and would have to fight it out.
It was senseless, but there was nothing he could do about it. The question was whether it would interfere with his mission — random bullets flying in the air weren’t going to make things easier.
On the other hand, all the gunfire would make a perfect cover for a raid. No one would notice if he went in.
“Thirsty, Colonel?” asked Melissa, walking over to him with a cup of coffee.
“Sure.”
She gave him the cup. “How do you take it?”
“Black’s good.”
“I want to borrow one of the motorcycles to get into town,” she said, sipping her own. “I need to be there in an hour, just at dawn.”
“What?”
“The clinic,” she told him. “I need to get back.”
“It’s not a good idea to go there,” said Danny. “There’s going to be a lot more fighting.”
“I think that’s why I should go.”
Danny stared at her. She was like his wife more than just physically; he couldn’t quite figure out what she was thinking.
“We put you in as a spy yesterday,” he told her. “That made sense. Now, though, we have all our gear here — we don’t need someone on the ground.”
“You’d be amazed at what these people tell me.”
“Like what?” said Nuri skeptically.
“I found that first house.”
“So did we,” answered Nuri.
“I’m going, Colonel,” she said, turning back to him. “I’ll go if I have to walk.”
“Let’s talk about it in private,” said Danny.
* * *
The night suddenly seemed incredibly cold, and Melissa wished she’d taken a sweater. She and Danny walked away from the tent area, moving along the hardscrabble field. The remains of a stone foundation sat overgrown by weeds; with a little imagination, Melissa could picture a prosperous native farm.
“You can’t go back in there,” said Danny as they walked. “You’ll be a target.”
“No more than anyone else.”
“I can’t let you. It doesn’t serve any purpose.”
“It does serve a purpose.” She felt she owed Bloom, who had helped her, and now would be a target. But at the same time, Melissa also thought that being there might allow her to get Li Han — he might come right to her. But she hesitated telling Danny all of this — her emotions and her sense of duty were all confused. “I can gather intelligence. I can find out what’s really going on.”
“We can drop bugs in there. There’s no need to risk your life.”
“Eavesdropping gear just tells you what people say. It can’t steer conversations. It can’t tease information out.”
“You want to go in to help these people,” said Danny.
“I’ll help them because it will help me. But that’s not why I’m going in. Li Han may come to them. I’ll be able to get him.”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Danny.
“Whatever. I’m not going to argue. You may be in charge of Whiplash, but you’re not in charge of me.”
“You need sleep,” he told her, staring at her face. “You’re tired.”
He had strong eyes. He was a strong, powerfully built man. Yet there was care and concern in his voice. Softness.
“I want to get Bloom out,” she told him. “She helped me. She was an MI6 agent. Now she’ll be in danger.”
“She’s a spy?”
“No. She was. She got out and became a nurse. But she helped me find the house. With what’s going on, she’ll be targeted.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Honestly, Colonel, there is nothing you can do.”
Danny stared at her for a few moments more. Melissa suddenly felt weak — it must be fatigue, she thought, or perhaps hunger: it had been a while since she’d eaten.
Danny clamped his lips tight together.
“I can’t stop you,” he said finally.
“No, you can’t.”
“First sign of trouble, you get the hell out of there.”
“No shit,” she said.
Chapter 4
CIA Headquarters
Jonathon Reid stepped into the elevator in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building and pressed the button to go up to his office. He hadn’t had much sleep — after returning from the White House he’d lain in bed, eyes open, for hours.
A parade of past problems marched across the ceiling. Reid had participated in a number of operations and projects during his career that could be questioned on any number of grounds. He
could think of two that were frankly illegal. In both cases he was operating under the explicit orders of the director of covert operations. And in both cases he felt that what he did was completely justified by the circumstances, that not only America but the world benefited by what he did.
But not everyone might agree. He imagined that if he were the case officer here, if he were on the ground in Africa, or even further up in the chain of command, he would feel completely justified by the goal. Li Han was a clear danger to America. He was not a “mere” sociopath or killer. He possessed technical skills difficult for terrorists to obtain, and he was willing to share that skill with them for what in real terms was a ridiculously cheap price. He was, in a military sense, a force multiplier, someone who could influence the outcome of a battle and even a war.
The U.S. and the world were in a war, a seemingly endless conflict against evil. Li Han clearly deserved to die.
Given that, was the process leading to that end result important?
Under most circumstances he would have answered no. As far as he was concerned, dotting a few legal i’s and crossing the bureaucratic t’s was just bs, busy work for lawyers and administrators who justified their federal sinecures by pontificating and procrastinating while the real work and risks were going on thousands of miles away.
But Raven required a more nuanced view. Li Han deserved to die, but should the Agency be the one making that judgment?
And should they alone decide what to risk in carrying out that judgment?
Raven wasn’t a simple weapon, like a new sniper rifle or even a spy plane. It was more along the lines of the atomic bomb: once perfected, it was a game changer with implications far, far beyond its use to take down a single target.
It was Lee Harvey Oswald all over again.
Of course, he was assuming the President didn’t know. Perhaps she did know. Perhaps she had played him for a fool.
Or simply felt that he didn’t need to know.
Maybe his problem was simply jealousy. Maybe the real story was this: Jonathon Reid couldn’t stand being out of the loop. Even now, far removed from his days as a cowboy field officer, he went off half cocked and red-assed, laying waste to all before him.