by Tom Clancy
“Anytime.”
* * *
With their rifles at the ready and targeting data streaming across their HUDs, Brent and his team hustled their way through the garage and down toward the main tunnel that would take them over to the Almas Tower.
Juma remained up top to meet the two squads he had called over.
When they were halfway through the tunnel, the warlord called to say that the choppers were gunning down the mystery fighters opposite the east and west entrances, and it seemed likely that Brent’s target would exit from one of those areas because the Cheetahs were clearing the path.
Brent could hear all the booming above and feel it in his legs. He told Juma to get as many vehicles as he could near those exits. Once the choppers neutralized the mystery force, only Juma’s men could slow down the Snow Maiden’s escape, while Brent and his Ghosts came in from behind.
Schleck and Voeckler checked in. They’d slipped into the main vault area for a quick recon, and Voeckler’s camera picked up a figure wearing an environment suit and kneeling over an old man whom Brent quickly recognized as Manoj Chopra. He used a finger gesture to widen the data box and watch as Voeckler confronted the figure, who turned out to be Hussein.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” said the Splinter Cell.
“I know,” answered the boy, his accent distinctly British. “Where are you taking me?”
“Someplace safe.”
“What about him?”
“We’ll come back when we can. Later…”
“Get him through the Silver Tower,” Brent ordered. “I’m charging both of you with keeping him safe. That’s royalty right there. Do you guys read me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Voeckler.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” added Schleck. “This kid’s got the best bodyguards in town. Moving out now.”
“Brent, it’s Juma! The choppers are backing off and the BTRs are coming out! Four of them now, turning up toward the highway. Still small-arms fire from a few stragglers, but they’re getting away.”
“Schleck, did she load the gold onto the BTRs?” Brent asked the sniper.
“Sir, I’m not sure. She’s still got the three cargo trucks, but I’m trying to pinpoint their locations.”
“Brent, it’s Juma again. One of my teams up near the airport says a cargo plane just touched down. It’s military, unmarked.”
“She’s got the gold in the BTRs, and they’re heading to the airport. Everyone, turn around, we’re getting the hell out of here! We need to get back up top! Voeckler, is Florida still available?”
“Negative, sir.”
Brent cursed. “Lakota, still no uplink?”
“Nothing. I’ve got a loop set to alert us the second we break the jamming.”
“Brent, some of the Euro armor is now moving in behind the BTRs, escorting them, and they’ve got the choppers covering by air. That has to be her.”
“Juma, what do you have in between here and the airport? Anything that can stop her?”
“I’m sorry, Brent.”
“Can your guys at the airport at least attack the plane?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
A new window opened in Brent’s HUD: His laser-based radar system (LADAR) had detected movement behind them, about a thousand meters back. The image revealed three contacts growing more distinct: the cargo trucks. Whatever people she’d left behind were probably making their escape as well.
Not five seconds later they came under heavy small-arms fire as headlights wiped into view and reached up the tunnel toward them.
Lakota screamed to take cover.
Brent threw himself toward the wall, dropping down and rolling back up with his rifle to fire on the lead vehicle as it roared by with a man hanging out the cab window and firing a steady stream.
The second truck roared by, and Brent ordered the others to hold fire—
He was blinded for a moment by the truck’s headlights, and then his mouth fell open.
He’d just caught a glimpse of the third truck’s driver. She might be wearing a suit and helmet, but he recognized those eyes. He’d studied them for too many hours.
Perhaps the gold was being shipped out on the BTRs, but Viktoria Antsyforov, the Snow Maiden, had another escape route in mind.
“Get on!” he screamed.
He and Lakota raced behind the last truck and launched themselves into the air, groping futilely for some purchase. They both tumbled to the ground as the exhaust washed over them.
Lakota rolled up with a grenade, about to throw it, when Brent looked down and saw them.
Four more grenades rolling toward them like baseballs, lobbed by the men in the trucks.
It was all he could do to turn around and throw himself back when the explosions tore through the tunnel, and the blast wave lifted him from the ground.
* * *
Chen Yi’s men had not reported any more Americans in the tunnel, and the Snow Maiden had felt the breath escape her as they roared by. That Haussler’s Spetsnaz troops had dropped a handful of grenades before the Americans could throw theirs was just luck, and as the booms echoed and explosions flickered in her side mirror, she called up to Haussler and told him how lucky they were.
As they reached the uppermost level, he reported that all three exits had been sealed off by explosions and debris, and only one path was available; it would no doubt be defended.
“Call off one of the choppers,” she told him. “Wait, no. Don’t do that. Just blast on through.”
“Are you sure? One of my lieutenants says two squads outside. Looks like only small arms, but we will take a lot of fire, maybe an RPG.”
“You’re right. Stop here. Call the chopper. Put some fire on those guys outside. Clear us a path.”
He pulled to a screeching halt, as did the truck behind him. They were at the far end of the garage, ground level, and out in the darkness she saw the shadows move — militiamen waiting for them. . or maybe even Green Brigade.
She glanced over at the Spetsnaz troop sitting beside her, a young, lean, dark-haired man with seemingly vacant eyes. “Where are you from?” she asked him in Russian.
He just frowned at her.
“Do I offend you?”
“We know who you are. You betrayed your country. Our job was to bring you in. Haussler has other plans. My orders are to follow him. So I do. But I do not have to like it, nor do I have to talk to you.”
“Get out.”
He looked at her.
“I said, get out!” She drew her pistol and shoved it into his neck, just below the helmet.
He opened the door, climbed out, jogged to the next truck, and was let inside.
“Okay, three more minutes,” Haussler finally said.
“Tell that pilot to hurry up!”
* * *
When Brent finally looked up, he saw most of his team lying on the concrete floor. Copeland was already tending to Daugherty and Heston, who’d been nearest to the blasts, their helmets scorched, shrapnel jutting from all over their suits. Noboru and Park were assisting him, but they too looked dazed, covered in shrapnel, some of which had clearly penetrated the more vulnerable sections of their suits.
“Brent, I’ll stay down here with them,” said Lakota. “That was her, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he gasped.
“Then you have to go after her. We’ll link up with Schleck and Voeckler.”
He nodded, “Juma, she’s coming your way! Three trucks!”
“I know, I know,” cried the warlord. “But here comes the chopper!”
Even as he spoke, Brent heard the powerful whomping in the background. Then gunfire. Explosions. Screams.
“Lakota, Copeland will stay with them. You come with me.”
She shrugged.
“I need you, girl.”
“We’re hurting, Brent. We’re hurting real bad. I don’t know if there’s anything else we can do.”
“There’s one thing,” he sa
id. “We can try. Not give up. Not yet. Come on.”
They sprinted through the lingering smoke, rounded the next corner, then raced through the next leg of the tunnel, heading up to the deepest level of the parking garage. Somewhere above came the hum of idling engines.
Lakota slowed, stopped, then raised a finger to the ceiling. “Listen. They’ve stopped.”
He did. Nodded. Then urged her on, just as Juma’s voice broke over the channel. “My squads are dying out here, Brent. We have to pull out. Here come the trucks. They’re coming now!”
Brent tensed and picked up the pace. This was it. He was going to lose her. Again.
TWENTY-FIVE
Silver Tower
Business District, Dubai
Fires raged through the ground-floor windows of the building where the militiamen had holed up. Those pathetic dolts thought they had a perfect firing line on the Silver Tower’s remaining exit, but the Enforcers Corps chopper and its gunner had routinely ruined their plans.
Now Haussler, still at the wheel of the lead truck, hit the gas, and the Snow Maiden followed him. They bounced over the concrete curbing, left the garage, and rumbled onto the street, with the chopper still hovering above.
Within two minutes they were headed southwest along the desolate highway, bound for Mina Jebel Ali, guided by night vision and, well, to be blunt, vengeance and greed.
Patti contacted her over the suit’s radio and said that their ship, the NYK Line’s Leo Leader out of Panama was pulling into the dock and would be ready within a few minutes to receive them.
“How did the Americans get here? By land? Or by sea. . if there’s a JSF ship out there — or a submarine — this could all be for nothing. Do you understand?”
“Viktoria, there’s no need to remind me of that again.”
“Well, if you haven’t taken care of that, then I can’t promise you anything.”
“I understand. And you should understand that linking up with Haussler was beyond foolish.”
“You gave me no choice. Your Green Brigade friends couldn’t stop him. So I earned his trust by killing the Chinese. Are you happy?”
“What will you do with the German now?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure.”
* * *
The Range Rover was parked just behind a pile of concrete rubble on the north side of the tower. Juma turned over the car to Brent and Lakota. He was going back into the tower to find his cousin, who was with Schleck and Voeckler. The rest of Juma’s men had sought cover in the Almas Tower, but ironically, the chopper had broken off to escort the telecom trucks. Juma said the convoy was heading south down Sheikh Zayed Road.
Brent took the wheel, with Lakota at his side. He checked the gauges. Half a tank of gas. They had to assume the Snow Maiden was meeting someone. The farther south she drove, the stronger the radioactive fallout became. She might be moving the gold out of Abu Dhabi, but probably not much farther south than that.
“Brent, I just got a call from my men at the airport,” said Juma over the radio. “They’ve been putting some fire on that cargo plane, but one of the choppers is keeping them pinned down.”
“See if they can disrupt the convoy of BTRs. That’s about all we can hope for now. I’m thinking the gold is with them.”
“Okay, Brent.”
He turned onto the highway and put the pedal to the metal. One headlight was out, and the engine wailed against his coaxing. He turned off that headlight and used the suit’s night vision.
“Ghost Lead, this is Copeland,” called the team’s medic. “Heston and Daugherty are stable but took some serious shrapnel hits. The suits administered pain meds before I could do anything. Heston’s fuel cell is out, damaged by the grenades, and Daugherty’s is shot, too. We need to evac a-sap.”
Copeland’s camera view filled a window in Brent’s HUD, and he glimpsed his men sitting up against the tunnel wall, both grimacing.
“All right, hold position till I can get you out of there. Noboru? Park? Go back for Riggs and Schoolie.”
There were few jobs more grim than retrieving the bodies of your fallen comrades.
He tossed a look to Lakota. “There’s just the two of us, some small arms, and a few grenades. How do we stop a convoy of trucks with a big lead?”
“Somebody told me you drove Corvettes when you were younger.”
“Maybe.”
“Then just drive, baby, drive!”
He drove his foot deeper into the pedal.
“That’s nice!” she cried.
Brent flicked his gaze to the right, saw Villanueva’s door just a few feet away, both Corvettes neck and neck now, their Borla exhaust systems thundering as they raced up the four-lane road.
He blinked again and saw Lakota. She looked at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure we take out those trucks. She doesn’t get away this time. Not this time.” Her voice did not falter, and he knew she would keep her promise or die trying.
The telecom trucks were running with lights out, so it took both Brent’s night vision and zoom lens to finally glimpse them in the distance, range 2.23 kilometers and falling.
“I can’t get this piece of crap to go any faster.”
“It’s no Corvette.”
He snorted. “Yeah.”
“Whoa. Hold,” she said. “We don’t have to catch them.” She spoke rapidly to someone else on another channel, her voice muted by the helmet.
He tensed. “What?”
“You know the old saying, if it becomes a sensor it has to talk to all of us?”
“Yeah, yeah, that thing about situational awareness, but what’s that have to do with—”
“Voeckler’s sending stuff to me since he knows you’re driving. He’s regained temporary contact with Florida. Andreas says he’s talking to Colonel Grey, passed on word of what’s happening. Florida’s just launched a predator drone from one of her modified tubes. Drone’s in the air now. Check it out.”
A window irised open in the upper right-hand corner of Brent’s display to stream video from the unmanned reconnaissance drone as it arced high over the road. He spotted their Range Rover and the three trucks gliding like blips in a video game display across the dark road. The drone’s camera panned right and focused on a long series of docks. A flashing red label appeared with the words Mina Jebel Ali. Another quick zoom revealed a ship. After a pause, a second glowing label IDed her as the Leo Leader, a hulking blue cargo vessel with a huge bay entrance constructed at her stern. Ramps were just now lowering so that the Snow Maiden could drive her trucks directly into the hold without stopping.
“All right, I’m confused,” Brent confessed. “She might be heading to the dock, but is she taking the trucks because it’s just faster?”
“No, because she’s also got the gold,” finished Lakota. “And the BTRs are just the decoy. We assumed the gold was in the better-defended vehicles, and we played right into her hand.”
“She’s crazy.”
“And so are we.”
“Ghost Lead, this is Hawk’s Honor, up top at nine thousand feet, over.”
A new window in Brent’s HUD showed a rotating file image of a JSF Boeing 747 that was operating out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The image switched to the pilot, who wore a narrow headset with attached monocle similar to Brent’s Cross-Com. A bar below him indicated that his aircraft was equipped with a YAL-1 laser cannon attached to the jet’s nose cone. The 747’s chemical oxygen iodine laser was primarily an air-to-air missile defense weapon, but the YAL-1 had recently been modified to take out ground targets.
Two smaller windows opened on Brent’s screen to show the 747’s escort: a pair of carrier-based F-35s operating from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group.
Brent could barely contain his excitement.
He’d already resigned himself to losing her, but now he had a real chance, with good intel.
“Hawk’s Honor, this is Ghost Lead,” he began, trying to calm d
own. “I need a strike on those three telecom trucks observed via predator. If you can take out the engines with minimal collateral damage, the beers are on me. I’d like to take my target alive. Also, I’ve got a cargo plane at the airport. Need that taken out, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Roger, Ghost Lead. We have your ground targets in sight. Stand by. .”
Brent switched channels. “Juma, can you get me some people out here? We’re going to stop the trucks, but I need help! Pick up my guys at the Silver, then come on out!”
“I’ll call my people from the Almas, but we only have two cars left. I can call some more from the north.”
“Do it!”
“I will, Brent. And good news. My cousin is okay.”
Brent sighed. The Snow Maiden probably could have killed the boy. He doubted she had a soft side. She’d left him alive because that benefited her in some way — but how?
* * *
The stench of fuel and burning rubber filled the truck’s cabin, and the temperature grew unbearably hot for a moment before the engine began to cough and protest. The Snow Maiden didn’t notice the basketball-sized hole in the hood until smoke began wafting from it.
Haussler’s truck pulled over to the side of the road, followed by the second truck, and then the Snow Maiden joined them, the engine finally dying altogether.
She was aghast as she climbed out of the truck, glanced at the sky, then got on the radio to Patti. “You told me you jammed their uplinks here.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, they’ve taken us out with a laser, melted right through the engine blocks. The gold is sitting here. Either you come and pick me up, or it’s over. I still have the oil-reserve data. Time to cut your losses, you hear me?”
“We need that gold, too.”
“Get me out, or I’m walking right now!” she screamed.
Haussler ran over to her. “What now? You want us to carry the gold to the ship?”
Several of the Spetsnaz troops slid open the rear doors and hopped down from the truck. They ran ahead of Haussler and the Snow Maiden, then began pointing down the road. One whirled back. “Vehicle coming. Looks like militia.”