by Mike Maden
Pearce leveraged his free foot against the saddle and pulled on his pinned thigh with his hands. His luck held. His leg was trapped beneath the dead camel’s shoulder, near the neck. Otherwise, he might have been trapped for good. A few moments later, he worked his injured leg free. It was sore like a bad sprain, but he tested it and it was still mostly functional. He suddenly realized Judy was screaming in his earpiece.
“Troy! Troy!”
“Judy?”
“Thank God! You’re alive!”
“Apparently.”
“Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m south-southeast of the airstrip, about two hundred meters, about even with the hangar.” Pearce limped over to Mossa’s camel. It knelt down next to its master’s corpse like a grieving dog.
“Yes, I see you now. I’m coming in.”
“No! It’s too dangerous. There’s a fast-attack vehicle down here.”
“I see it. It’s heading north, about three hundred meters north of you. Plenty of room.”
“Don’t argue with me, damn it. I said wave off.”
“Sorry, Troy, but she’s following my orders,” Myers said. “Hope your bags are packed. How soon can you be at the hangar?”
“Two minutes.”
“We’ll be there.”
Pearce approached Mossa’s camel. It opened its huge mouth and growled.
“Shut up and ride!” Pearce threw his good leg over the beast and it complied, rising up quickly. Pearce grunted “Het-het” and got the camel galloping back toward the hangar.
—
The bullet-wrecked DPV flew over the crest of the dune and slid to a halt on the far side about a kilometer north of Guo’s position, out of sight of the hangar as per Guo’s instructions. Guo remained in his sniper hide beneath the reflective cover, waiting for the Americans to clear the area. He didn’t want to give Pearce the satisfaction of a last-minute Hellfire missile strike with victory in his hand. Guo had killed Mossa, so his primary objective was achieved. Capturing Pearce was only a desired outcome, not a mission priority.
There was one more mission objective to be achieved. There were several options to achieve it. With Zhao’s permission, he’d initiate the most necessary one.
—
Judy surveyed the wreckage in her windscreen. She was still five hundred feet off the deck. Three smoldering DPVs were to her right, and the smashed Hummingbird airframe blocked the end of the runway. Judy would have to get up a good head of steam if she hoped to clear that wreck on takeoff. The Aviocar needed four hundred meters of runway to get airborne. That would be cutting it darn close, but that was the least of her worries at the moment.
“There he is,” Myers said, pointing to the east. Pearce was up ahead, a hundred yards from the tarmac, galloping toward the hangar, his head still wrapped in the indigo tagelmust. Myers called in her headset. “We see you, Troy.”
His voice crackled back. “Last one to the hangar buys the beer.”
“He looks friggin’ cool. I want one of those,” Kavanagh said.
“The camel or the turban, Colonel?” Myers asked.
“Both.”
Judy set the Aviocar down smooth as silk on the cracked runway but couldn’t avoid the debris scattered on the tarmac from the smashed Hummingbird. The Aviocar’s heavy rubber wheels threw chunks of metal against the fuselage. She prayed the wheels hadn’t been punctured or the airframe damaged. She’d have to check before they tried to take off again.
“Nice landing,” Kavanagh said into the headphone mic, grinning behind his aviators. “Your dad would be proud.”
“If our luck doesn’t hold, you might be meeting him sooner than you think.”
She taxied past the burning wreckage of the two DPVs taken out by Ian’s Reaper. Judy ordered Kavanagh to feather down the engines while she braked the plane, parking in front of the hangar, leaving the two motors running at low RPMs.
Judy waved at Mann crouching in the shade of the hangar. He smiled and waved back, his other arm draped protectively over the Italian woman Pearce had described earlier as his wife. She looked like she’d been through hell and back after six days of desert travel and the nightmare that had just transpired here, but she still looked gorgeous. It wasn’t fair, Judy thought.
The Red One team sensor operator called in. “Colonel, you’ve got company heading your way.” He was patched into everyone’s headset. Kavanagh had ordered the second Reaper at Karem AFB into the air and both teams on duty. If he was going to go out in a blaze of glory, he wanted all hands on deck to witness the folly.
“What is it?”
“Three bogies coming in hot and low on the deck—about ten meters.”
“Fighters?”
“Cruise missiles.”
“ETA?”
“Three minutes, tops.”
“You heard it, people,” Kavanagh said. “Let’s get this train loaded and rolling.”
“Troy? Did you catch that?” Myers asked.
“Yeah.” He was breathless in the headphones.
Wolfit pushed the cargo door open and jumped out, M4 at the ready, just as Pearce’s camel thundered past the plane’s rudder.
Myers, Kavanagh, and Judy scrambled out after Wolfit. Everybody ran for the hangar except Judy, who ducked beneath the plane to check for damage.
Pearce halted the camel at the hangar entrance and slipped off before the camel had a chance to kneel. He slapped its flank and it bellowed in protest, then trotted into the hangar where the two remaining camels knelt.
Cella ran up and threw her arms around Pearce’s neck. Myers ran up, too, with Wolfit and Kavanagh at her side.
“Troy, we’ve got to go,” Myers said.
“Mossa?” Cella asked. “The others?”
Pearce shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Cella swore bitterly.
“You’re coming with us,” Pearce ordered.
Cella glared at him, then softened, nodding yes.
“Good.” He turned to Myers. “Take her, please.”
“What about you?”
“Not without Mikey.”
“Where is he?” Myers asked.
Pearce ran as fast as his limp allowed back toward the tower, Mann beside him.
“There’s no time,” Myers said.
“You two get back to the plane. We’ll hustle him back, I promise.”
Kavanagh nodded at Wolfit, and the two of them chased after Pearce and Mann while Myers and Cella dashed for the plane.
Judy was still underneath the Aviocar. She didn’t find any damage in the fuselage, but the starboard wheel was leaking air fast. “C’mon, you guys!” she barked in her headset.
—
Pearce was the last one up the tower thanks to his limp. The colonel knelt by Early’s corpse and was covering his bloody neck stump with his own civilian shirt. The staircase was narrow. Wolfit handed Pearce his weapon and took Early’s feet, Kavanagh the shoulders. Pearce noticed the colonel’s knees were soaked in blood. Everybody’s boots were slick with it, too. Mann led the way down, and Pearce followed the rest.
They cleared the stairs and dashed for the plane.
“ETA one minute, Colonel,” Red One reported. “Advise you leave now.”
“Working on it, son. Thanks for the tip.”
Judy had already strapped back into her seat and revved the engines, keeping her feet pressed hard against the brakes. The plane shuddered in protest.
Mann ran and leaped into the cargo area as Wolfit approached. Wolfit stepped up into the bay effortlessly and swung around, the two of them pulling Early’s heavy corpse in behind them, deep into the cargo area. Kavanagh walked Early’s broad shoulders in, then jumped in behind him.
Pearce limped as fast as he could. Myers shouted at him. “Looks like you’re buyi
ng the beer!”
The air cracked.
Pearce spun like a top, then dropped to the tarmac, blood spraying from his head.
59
Aéropostale Station 11
Tamanghasset, Southern Algeria
15 May
As soon as he saw Pearce drop, Guo called the DPV for a pickup. He had to evacuate quickly—no time to savor the killing of the two Americans today. The cruise missiles would be arriving within moments to sterilize the battlefield. He was under strict orders to leave no evidence of Chinese presence behind, and with five smashed vehicles and ten dead operators in the field, there was only one way to burn away the evidence. The mobile missile launch platform in Mali had already fired on his command. He designated the COMPASS locators in three of the DPVs as the targets.
The surviving DPV slowed just enough for Guo to leap into the passenger seat. He shouted, “GO!” but it was hardly necessary. The driver smashed the gas pedal to the floor. The rail threw big sand and fishtailed as the Chinese raced due north, away from the coming holocaust.
—
Three ground-hugging Chinese cruise missiles streaked across the Algerian desert, flying just meters off the deck to avoided radar detection and air defense systems. Onboard TERCOM and COMPASS navigation systems maneuvered autonomously around obstacles while keeping the missiles zeroed in on their targets. They had been launched just minutes before from a single portable launcher now deployed in Mali by Dr. Weng and Zhao, with more missiles for reloads stored in a Chinese-secured Bamako warehouse.
The CJ-10 “Long Sword” cruise missile had been largely designed from reverse-engineered American Tomahawk cruise missiles salvaged by the Pakistanis from failed cruise missile strikes against the Taliban in the late 1990s. Like the Tomahawk, these weapons were designed for surgical strikes. Tomahawks were the weapons of choice for many American presidents before the advent of drone technologies like the Predator, and sometimes after. President Obama launched over two hundred Tomahawks against Gaddafi’s military in 2011, helping to topple his murderous regime. In fact, the Americans had launched two thousand Tomahawk strikes against other nations without declaration of war since 1983—ample precedent for today’s action, as far as the Chinese were concerned.
The Long Swords locked onto their respective targets just one kilometer away, their 500 kg warheads set to ignite with devastating precision.
—
Sergeant Wolfit slammed the cargo door shut as the plane lurched forward.
Cella hovered over Pearce’s unconscious body, medical bag open, cutting away at the tagelmust still wrapped around his head. Myers straddled his legs to steady him against the shuddering fuselage streaking down the runway.
The tagelmust finally gave way. Myers gasped. Pearce’s face was slathered in a mask of indigo and surging blood.
“It’s just a scalp wound,” Cella shouted. She smiled at Myers. “He’s alive.”
“Thank God,” Myers whispered.
—
Judy slammed the Aviocar’s throttles as far forward as they could go, but the boxy little plane still wasn’t hitting maximum speed, thanks to the deflating starboard tire. The smoldering ruins of the Hummingbird loomed large in the windscreen. They weren’t going to make it—
“Now!” she barked.
She and Kavanagh yanked back on the yokes together, pulling them hard into their guts. The Aviocar leaped into the air like a thrashing marlin.
The plane shuddered as metal screamed against metal, the belly of the fuselage scraping hard against the twisted remains of the A-160. Judy felt the Aviocar twist—and for a fleeting second she was sure they were going to crash. But the rugged transport plane corrected under Judy’s deft rudder and yoke work, and seconds later they were in a steep-banked climb with nothing but hazy blue sky filling her windscreen.
“Yee-haw, baby!” Kavanagh shouted. He flashed a huge grin at Judy. “You wanna fly A-10s sometime, you look me up, you hear?” His voice boomed in Judy’s headset. She was glad for the distraction and grateful nobody else in the cargo area was online. Early was back there, dead, and Pearce shot in the head. Kavanagh’s caterwauling was all she could handle for now.
—
The three cruise missiles each struck within half a meter of their designated targets, guided by the COMPASS locators on the DPVs. The fuel-air explosions produced a massive concussive blast followed by a boiling cloud of searing fire hot enough to melt the desert floor. Anything not vaporized by the initial pressure wave was consumed by the engulfing flames. One square kilometer of the Earth’s surface had just been wiped clean of organic life and any evidence that it ever existed.
The force of the blast waves rocked the Aviocar as it clawed its way past two thousand feet, shaking everything inside that wasn’t strapped down.
“Jimminy Christmas!” Judy shouted as she white-knuckled the yoke for a second time, wrestling the plane back into line. How the Aviocar managed to keep flying was beyond her.
“You must be living a clean life, Hopper. That was damn near miraculous.”
“I’d say it was good engineering.”
“I was talking about the flying, not the plane.”
Judy allowed herself a smile. “Thanks.”
“I can’t wait to see how you handle an Algerian fighter.”
“Why do you say that?”
Kavanagh pointed high in the windscreen. “Take a look.”
A MiG-25 jet fighter streaked across the sky. She guessed fifteen thousand feet. Its flight path perpendicular to their own. She glanced at her warning switches. No antiaircraft missile lock.
“He must be texting his girlfriend. He doesn’t see us.” Judy nudged the Aviocar lower to the ground. At least make it harder for the MiG pilot to see them if he changed his mind after all.
“And if he does see us?”
“Hope you’re a praying man, Colonel. This Aviocar has the speed and firepower of a postal truck.”
Fiero residence
Washington, D.C.
The small manila envelope arrived at the Fieros’ home late in the evening by private courier. She glanced at the return address. Part of a prearranged code. She tried not to panic. Fiero thanked the mysterious young man in golden dreadlocks, tossing him a fifty-dollar bill to get him quickly off the porch and on his way. Her husband was at their home in California. She would have preferred to open this in his presence. He liked to face bad news head-on. She hated it, but avoided the temptation to Skype him as she tore the envelope open.
Inside, a three-by-five index card. A wafer-thin 32-gig flash memory card was taped to it, along with the phrase “1 of 2” constructed from multiple magazine cutouts, like an old-school kidnapper’s ransom demand.
This was bad. The double entendre clear, as per their arrangement. Previous arrangement, Fiero corrected herself. This card meant that her relationship with Jasmine Bath was over. She had worked with Bath for years, using her husband, Anthony—The Angel—as an intermediary.
The intel on this flash card was a double-edged knife. On the one hand, it would contain information Fiero could use to protect herself against her enemies. The republic was founded on the principle of checks and balances. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” Madison said. But Madison was only half right. Greed and ambition were the two sides of the scale that kept things in balance, but fear was the fulcrum. Bath’s data was like a thumb Fiero could press on either side of the scale to tip things her way. Greed and ambition were her best protections with Bath on her side.
But the other flash card, still in Bath’s hands, contained intel that could also ruin Fiero and her husband if Bath was feeling threatened by her. Bath was saying that the memory card was one of two, but also that Fiero was one of two—both of them held weapons that could destroy their enemies, as well as each other. Bath was allowing Fiero to protect herself but was sma
rt enough to protect herself against Fiero.
It was a smart play. Bath had been inaccessible for the last forty-eight hours. Fiero’s first assumption was that she had bailed out, and her first impulse was to find the bitch and kill her. Bath was the only person in Washington with the kind of inside information that could put her in a steel cage to die of old age. That made Bath a threat, and Bath knew it. But Bath also knew that keeping those secrets secret were her last, best defense in the event Fiero ever found her. Keeping Fiero safe was Bath’s best guarantee of remaining safe. So it was a stalemate.
The only problem was, Fiero hated stalemates. She only wanted to win. But this time she’d have to live with her frustration. She could imagine a life behind bars far more frustrating than this turn of events. At least she still had her power, her money, and her freedom. She could still even win the White House. And who knows? She may yet get the better of Jasmine Bath, whether in this life or the next.
Karem Air Force Base
Niamey, Niger
Pearce awoke two days later. His body had needed the rest as much as his brain needed the time to heal itself.
Myers hadn’t left his bedside. His eyes fluttered open. Saw her smiling face. She wore camouflaged Air Force ABUs.
“Welcome back.”
“How long?”
“Two days. You had us worried there for a while.”
Pearce smiled. “Sorry about that.”
“Did you go toward the light?”
“Yeah. And it was a train.” He winced with pain. “A damn big one. Where are we?”
“Back at Karem.”
“Arrested?”
“Anything but. Colonel Kavanagh is taking good care of us. No one in D.C. knows we’re here and the base is on full alert. We’re safe, for now.”
She raised his bed. He saw himself in the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. Lightly touched the white gauze bandage wrapped around his head.
“I thought you looked more dashing in the blue one,” Myers joked.