by Dale Brown
“What do you think? What do you think?” he asked Boston.
“Yeah, they’re down. Hold your position. I want to make sure no one’s moving up on the left from the buildings.”
Nuri dropped back to one knee. He looked down at the scope and saw it was flickering — it wasn’t his eyes; there was something wrong with the optics or circuit.
Somehow, that failed to reassure him.
A dark veil hung close to the ground. He took the scope and found that the image held steady if he kept his hand on the top. He scanned the field. The men closest to him were dead or dying. Nothing else moved.
“All right,” said Boston. “We’re clear here. You see me? I’m on the road.”
Boston rose and waved his arm.
“I see you.”
“I’m going to check these bodies here. Then I’m coming up in your direction. You’re covering me.”
“Right. My scope’s screwed up.”
“What?”
“Aw nothing. I’m good.” Nuri rose. His legs had stiffened and his arm had tensed so long that it felt almost numb. He swung his upper body back and forth slowly, trying to loosen the muscles.
His eye caught something moving in the area where the grenade had exploded. He froze, staring at it.
Nothing.
Nuri started walking in that direction, moving slowly. The men there must be dead, he knew, yet he was filled with nervous energy, anticipation.
Fear. That was what he was filled with. He was so tired he was starting to be afraid of things.
He stopped about ten yards from the closest dead body.
All dead. Nothing to worry about. Once again he scanned the field, left to right, then back, slowly. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest.
And something else. Something pushing against the tall grass.
He turned in its direction and started to raise his rifle so he could use the scope. A shadow rose near the road.
“Watch out!” he yelled.
In the same moment he lowered the barrel of his rifle and fired a burst, short of the shadow. Without thinking he raised his left arm slightly and fired another burst, this one dead on.
There was a scream. Boston, on the other side of the road, fired as well.
“You OK?” he asked Boston.
“I’m good, I’m good. We get him?”
“Yeah, he’s done.”
Nuri took a long, deep breath, then tried not to breathe at all, listening.
“Not bad work for a spy,” said Boston when he came close. “Back to the women?”
They found them exactly where Nuri had left them. The pistol was still on the ground, a few feet from Bloom.
Chapter 27
Duka
Kimko ran until his lungs felt like red hot iron burning through his chest. Explosions, gunfire, the Osprey — he was running from the Apocalypse, the Horsemen determined to drag him to hell. Finally his legs gave out: he tumbled forward in a heap, collapsing in the front yard of a native hut.
He had no energy, no will to live. The damp ground swallowed him; the night soaked into his pores.
At some point he realized the gunfire had stopped.
I must go, he told himself, before they come for me. And so he began to crawl, tentatively at first, then more steadily.
Escape.
Finally, Kimko climbed to his feet and began walking. He took stock as he walked, figuring out where he was — east of the city, in the scrub hills that rose into mountains. He tried to make sense of what had happened: the Americans had intervened in the small war, surely to get their UAV back.
He tried to think of what to do. He couldn’t go back to the Sudan First camp, clearly, and to go back to the city was death. But by the same token, he couldn’t survive out here by himself. Even if the Americans didn’t hunt him down and the two different factions left him alone, the wilderness was not a place for a man with only a pistol.
It would take at least a day on foot to reach another settlement; it could easily take longer if he got confused.
What was he to eat? Or drink — he craved vodka, and would gladly now have drunk a liter without stopping, without even thinking.
He had his sat phone. He could call his supervisors for help.
It meant admitting that he had failed. It also wouldn’t guarantee help would be sent. On the contrary, further failure might be viewed in the harshest possible light. They might leave him to rot.
He needed to think of a better plan.
Chapter 28
Duka
Danny’s first priority was the Osprey. The aircraft could take off with one engine, the pilots assured him, but it would be slow and its lifting ability would be limited; better to wait while they assessed the damage to the propeller and the engine, which they believed might be easily repaired. Though dubious, Danny agreed. He assigned Hera and two troopers to help and maintain a perimeter.
The next problem was to retrieve the UAV Sugar had found in the building. The aircraft was light, but Danny didn’t want to waste time or manpower carrying it to the Osprey. Instead, he told Sugar and two other troopers to leave it in the basement with charges in case it had to be destroyed; in the meantime they would guard the house.
That left two problems: Li Han and the Russian.
According to MY-PID and Danny’s own review of the surveillance footage from their UAVs, the Russian had run off without taking anything. He was armed with only a handgun. They had a good view of where the Russian was, about a mile and half to the east. He was on foot, with no one nearby; Danny decided they could leave him for now and concentrate on Li Han.
Which meant getting across town. That was more a problem of distance than resistance: the fight had devolved into a raucous pillaging of the Meurtre Musique area, with about a dozen Sudan First members setting random fires and massacring any civilians who hadn’t fled into the fields and jungle to the west.
Danny mapped a path to Li Han’s hideout that would skirt the troubled area. It was about three miles by foot.
“Anybody with a gun gets in our way, take them down,” he told his small group as they set out.
“I’d like to just shoot them all,” said Melissa.
“Yeah, me too,” he muttered, then he added more loudly, “Let’s stay focused.”
They’d gone about a half mile when MY-PID reported a pair of pickups heading in their direction.
“Here come our taxis,” said Danny. He divided the group, splitting them along the road.
“Flash, you have the second truck; I have the first,” he said. “Shorty, if we don’t get the drivers, the trucks stop no matter what.”
“Gotcha.”
* * *
“Who you going with?” Danny asked Melissa.
She hesitated, then ran after Flash.
By now her body had been bruised and strained to a point beyond exhaustion. Her mind seemed to have sunk into a place below her head somewhere, as if her body were a tower where it could roam freely. The gunshots, the explosions, the Osprey rotors — all of the miscellaneous loud noises had hardened her eardrums and encased her head in a shell.
Melissa copied the team as they took positions, sliding down on one knee like the others. At the last moment her trail foot snagged and she tumbled sideways, rolling awkwardly. She stayed down for a moment, dizzy and embarrassed. Finally, she tucked her elbow against the ground and levered up just in time to hear a gun burst nearby. There was another pop, then silence.
Unsure what was going on, Melissa craned her neck and saw that everyone was moving. She pushed to her knees, then hopped up and ran with the rest.
* * *
Danny took a position a short distance from the road, visor up, sighting through his scope as the two trucks barreled toward them. The drivers appeared to be either drunk or having some sort of contest; they veered back and forth, the one in the front not letting the other pass. He zeroed in on the driver, pacing his weave.
“Mine,” he
said, and fired. The bullet slammed into the driver’s forehead, killing him instantly. The pickup veered to the right; the vehicle behind it rammed into the rear, twisting and then stopping itself, the driver shot through the temple by Flash.
The rest of the team opened fire then, downing the five men packed into the rear of the trucks. The gunfight was over before any of the tangos had a chance to pick up their weapons.
“Let’s get the vehicles,” said Danny, starting to run.
Chapter 29
Ronald Reagan Airport
Washington, D.C.
Zen rolled his wheelchair forward as soon as he saw Breanna walking toward the baggage area. It felt good to see her — all these years, and there was still a twinge of excitement after a long separation.
“Hey, if it isn’t the lonesome traveler,” he said loudly, getting her attention despite the crowd.
“Zen — what are you doing here?”
“I was looking for somebody to have a scandalous affair with.”
“Tired of being a senator?” She leaned down and kissed him.
“Actually, I think it would help my career.”
“Teri?” she said, asking about their daughter.
“I sold her to the nuns.”
“Stop,” she said, swatting at him playfully.
“Misses her mother terribly. I guess my cooking just isn’t good enough for her.”
“I’ll bet. And how are you?”
“Trying to duck the latest tempest in a teapot — there’s your bag.”
Breanna grabbed it off the carousel, and with a well-practiced flick of her wrist, extended the handle.
“Jay’s in a no-parking zone out front,” said Zen, spinning around to lead the way.
“Just because you have government plates doesn’t mean you can park where you like,” scolded Breanna playfully.
“Sure it does.”
She laughed. “So what controversy are you ducking?”
“Some big blowup about a CIA program. Something called Raven. Ernst has a bug up his ass about it.”
Breanna was silent. Zen glanced up at her. Her face had suddenly gone white.
“Bree?”
“Where did you park?”
“Is there something I should know about?” said Zen. “Do you have something to do with Raven?”
“Why?”
Crap, he thought. Breanna had to be the worst liar in the world.
“Bree—”
“Maybe I’ll grab a cab and head straight for the office,” said his wife.
“Whoa, hold on.” He grabbed the bag handle — it was the only thing he could reach as she started to pull away. “Truce, OK? No work discussion. None.”
“I have to get to the office.”
“We’ll drop you off.”
“That might not look right.”
“Breanna, what’s going on?”
They were stopped right in front of the doors. People swerved around them, a little more indulgent than they might have been as one of the obstacles was in a wheelchair.
“Jeff, I can’t discuss it. You know.”
“Come here,” he told her, motioning with his head to the side. “Come on.”
She went over, clearly reluctant.
“Listen,” he started, “just to fill you in — Ernst has heard all sorts of rumors about this CIA program. Supposedly it’s some sort of unauthorized assassination deal. You know Ernst, you give him a whiff of something to bash Ol’ Battle-axe with and he’s off to the races.”
Ol’ Battle-axe was one of Zen’s nicknames for the President. It was considerably more benign than many of his others.
“If you’re involved in this,” he added, “you really oughta tell me.”
“Raven is not an Office of Special Technology project.”
“You’re lawyering up.”
“Jeff — don’t push me.”
Zen put his elbow on the chair rail and leaned his forehead down. When he had urged her to take her job — and he had urged her — he promised they would keep their private lives separate.
It was the sort of promise that always came back to kick him in the butt, time after time.
“I’m not going to push you,” he said. “Let’s grab something to eat. Just you and me.”
“I have to get back to the office,” she said, pushing away.
“I’m glad you’re back!” he said as she went off.
The sentiment was sincere, but so were the curses under his breath as he wheeled around and headed for his van.
Chapter 30
Duka
There were no parallel roads to the highway leading out of town, and the hills would make it hard to flank the house quickly. Danny decided it would be best to race past the house to the south where some of the brothers were and go directly to Li Han’s. MY-PID would track Li Han if he escaped; his lack of a vehicle meant he couldn’t get very far.
There was gunfire from the lower house as they passed, but neither of the trucks was struck. Two troopers jumped from the back as they passed, securing the road in case the men there decided to interfere. The rest of the team sped on to the target.
By now Danny had a bad feeling about the house and Li Han. MY-PID was powerful but not infallible. He hypothesized that there might be a tunnel deep enough and long enough for the bastard to have escaped.
No one fired as they pulled up and surrounded the place. They blew out the front door and went in with flash-bangs and guns ready.
Li Han was lying exactly in the middle of the floor, dead. The flight computer and missing circuitry for the Raven was nowhere to be found.
“Looks like somebody did your work for you,” Danny told Melissa when she rushed in.
Blowback
Chapter 1
Room 4, CIA Campus
Breanna arrived at Room 4 just in time for the tail end of Danny’s update. He was speaking from inside a truck as he drove to the Osprey; his face, projected by a camera embedded in his helmet, looked worn. His voice was hoarse. The fighting in the city had died down, even the victors decimated and exhausted.
“I never asked MY-PID to analyze whether Li Han was dead or not,” Danny said. “The computer just responded to my questions. I should have.”
“Would it have changed anything, Danny?” asked Breanna. “If you knew he was dead earlier?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
They hadn’t seen him killed, and the slow loss of temperature over time was hard to detect through the thick thatch of the roof. But Breanna knew that Danny would in fact blame himself for missing what he considered a key piece of information.
“That may be one area to improve MY-PID’s programming,” she said. “Having some sort of prompt if a subject is dead or wounded.”
“Yeah.”
“How bad is the damage to the aircraft?” Breanna asked. “Can you evacuate?”
“The backup Osprey just refueled in Ethiopia and is en route,” said Danny. “The crew says they can get Whiplash One airborne if necessary. They’ve been talking to Chief Parsons.”
“Good,” said Breanna. Parsons, a former maintainer and chief master sergeant at Dreamland, was her personal assistant, a troubleshooter for all things mechanical.
Danny believed that they had enough weapons and ammunition to hold off anything the locals could throw at them over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, which would give them more than ample time to figure out what to do about the damaged MV-22.
The real problem was finding Raven’s guidance system. While they had to recheck all the places they had raided and get the Russian, Danny believed that the most promising theory was that one of Li Han’s guards had taken it. That would explain why he had been shot.
“If it is in the Brothers camp, can you get in there and search?”
“I need to study the place,” said Danny. “We won’t be able to just go up and knock on the door.”
They spent a few minutes discussing logistical matters, B
reanna making sure they were well supplied. If they did hit the camp, Danny wanted some equipment from the States as well as more personnel.
“All right. Get some sleep,” she told him when they were ready to sign off.
“When I get a chance,” said Danny. He tried to smile, but it only made him look more tired.
* * *
“I felt I had to inform the President,” Reid told Breanna. “There was no other choice.”
“I know.”
“The rumors may have come from her staff, but more likely they came from the Agency.”
“Why would Edmund leak it?”
“I doubt it was him. Not everyone in the organization appreciates his leadership.” Reid paused. Anyone in a position of authority anywhere in government had many enemies. “He hasn’t been particularly forthcoming with me.”
Reid reiterated what Rubeo had told him, and what he had heard about the software. But the lack of information from Edmund was frustrating; he simply didn’t know how dangerous Raven was.
“In theory,” he told Breanna, “Rubeo believes it could take over any sort of computing device, adapting and changing itself to fit the medium. But how far along they are in actual fact and practice, I simply don’t know.”
Breanna pushed the hair at the side of her head back, running her fingers across her ear. The gesture reminded Reid of his wife when she was younger.
“Did you tell Danny this?” she asked.
“I haven’t shared Dr. Rubeo’s assessment, no. There’s no need, operationally. Clearly, he knows it’s not just a board of transistors, based on our concern. I don’t know how much the CIA officer on the ground has told him. Or what she even knows, for that matter.”
“Could she be in the dark as well?” Breanna asked.
“Hard to say.”
“Why in God’s name—”
“They probably felt that, because it was Africa, there was no risk. That would be a common perception.”
“Misperception,” said Breanna.