by Joshua Hood
Hayes raised the pyrotechnic gun toward the oncoming missile and adjusted his aim, so the barrel was pointing a good four inches above the target. His goal was to use the heat from the flare to trick the seeker head off target—get it to change course, thinking there was a closer target.
However, to pull it off, his timing had to be perfect.
If he fired too soon, the sensors would have time to reacquire the Provider—too late, and it would race right past it.
So he waited until he estimated the missile was two hundred yards out, and then he pulled the trigger.
Compared to the Igla’s solid-state rocket motor, the flare’s propellant that launched the magnesium projectile toward the oncoming warhead was woefully underpowered, and Hayes worried that it wouldn’t even get there.
“C’mon . . . c’mon,” he begged.
Finally, the projectile reached its target, the place in the sky five feet above the onrushing warhead. It had been in the air for less than a second and the flaming ball of magnesium was burning white hot—and just as Hayes had hoped, the sudden heat source so close to the warhead proved irresistible to the IR sensors.
With the sensor locked on to the new target, the guidance system took over and made the necessary adjustment to the tail fins, sending the warhead climbing skyward—away from Hayes and the Provider.
“Hell, yes!” Hayes screamed, pounding his fist against the skin of the aircraft in triumph.
But his relief was short-lived, and in the next instant turned to dread.
Just as Hayes had feared, the Igla was too fast, and after blasting past the flare and finding nothing but cool air on the other side, the sensors began searching for a new target, sending the contrail doglegging back toward the aircraft.
Hayes pulled himself back into the cargo hold, dumped the flare gun, and went racing to the cockpit. He dove through the opening, screamed a warning to Vlad, and was trying to pull him from the seat—get him away from the window—when the Igla’s proximity switch detonated the warhead four yards short of the engine cowling.
The over-pressure slapped the plane, the shock wave punching through the copilot window. The spray of razor-sharp glass and slivers of metal hit Vlad in the side of the face and he slumped against the controls, dead as a hammer.
The Provider pitched forward, its nose dropping back toward the earth. Hayes wiped the blood from his eyes and scrambled into his seat. He grabbed the yoke and tried to pull the plane out of the dive, but with Vlad’s deadweight wedging the controls forward, it was impossible.
“Sorry, buddy,” he said, reaching over, unhooking the Russian’s harness and pulling him off the yoke.
For a moment Vlad stayed upright, but without the harness or active muscles to hold him in place, his body listed, before crashing to the floor.
Hayes had read the Provider’s flight manual from cover to cover, so sitting behind the yoke, the instrument panel flashing like a Christmas tree, he finally understood why the first line of “Section V: Operating Limitations” clearly stated, “the minimum number of crew required to safely operate the Provider in a non-tactical situation is a pilot and copilot.”
It was a rule he’d broken before when he soloed from Monrovia to Morocco, so he knew it was possible to operate the aircraft with only one pilot under normal conditions—but these were anything but normal conditions.
He looked down at the control panel, trying to get a sense of how bad the Provider had been hurt, but the gauges and lights were too obscured by brain tissue and blood to see clearly. He used his sleeve to wipe the gore from the control panel, the blinking of red warning lights and bouncing needles on the now-visible gauges overwhelming.
“Just take it one problem at a time,” he told himself.
Taking a deep breath, he glanced at the altimeter. They were at thirty-five hundred feet and he knew the first order of business was to get the stricken bird on the deck before it took any more damage.
He pushed the yoke forward and to the left, trying to put the Provider into a banking dive, but the aircraft responded like a barge with a stuck rudder—the shake of the yoke in his hands and her sluggish response told Hayes that the control surfaces were shot to shit. He leaned forward, craning to get a look at the left wing where the sight of the bullet-riddled aileron confirmed his suspicion.
“C’mon, girl,” he begged, kicking the rudder pedals left and shoving the throttles to their stops.
Finally the Provider responded, and he twisted her into a screaming dive, jaw set as he plummeted through the spiderweb of tracer fire. But the rebels had him dialed in and opened up with everything they had, the bullets against the aircraft sounding like hail on a tin roof.
Hayes gritted his teeth and watched the altimeter spooling down—two thousand feet, fifteen hundred, a thousand—when a final burst found the port wing, the bullets shredding the engine cowling.
The port engine stuttered and backfired like a shotgun, a flash of orange, followed by the bright-red blink of the fuel gauge, oil pressure, and hydraulic warning lights on the panel.
He was reducing the power when the master fire light blinked red on the upper-left-hand corner of the copilot’s instrument panel. Hayes looked out the window to find the port engine smoking like a diesel train.
Shut it down.
It was the right call.
The only problem was he wasn’t sure if he could make it over the sandstone cliffs guarding the end of the valley five miles to his front with only one engine.
19
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
It was seven p.m. at Langley, and Carpenter was exhausted, his stomach churning from one too many cups of coffee. He logged off his computer, and after removing his ID card from the reader, opened the top drawer and retrieved the roll of Tums he’d bought earlier in the week. There were two left. He popped them into his mouth and got to his feet.
As a younger officer, the long days and short nights hadn’t fazed him. Like a toddler, he viewed things like sleeping and eating as a distraction, something that kept him from the work at hand.
But his days of being able to survive on vending machine food and four hours of sleep were long gone. These days all he had to do was look at a carton of takeout and he’d be up all night with heartburn.
Getting old is a bitch, he thought as he looped the lanyard connected to the ID card over his head.
Carpenter crunched on the antacids on his way to the door, grimacing at the chalky aftertaste they left at the back of his throat, and grabbed his coat from the rack. He was looking forward to a quiet ride home and maybe a beer or two before bed, but when he stepped out into the anteroom and saw the illuminated lamp at the corner of his secretary’s desk, he knew it wasn’t happening.
At its core, the CIA was a giant bureaucracy, a clandestine corporation run by pencil pushers—nonoperational administrative types who were more concerned with improving productivity than national security. While Carpenter and those under him were busy trying to keep the free world from imploding, the people above him were busy issuing memos reminding everyone to use the correct color coding for internal files and memos. The idea was to allow men like Carpenter to separate the important from the nonessential, but all it did was create more work.
He cursed under his breath, annoyed because he had to sort through the blue-and-white low-priority files to get to the reds.
“Damn folders,” he said, as he stuffed them into the outside pocket of his briefcase.
When he had everything he needed, Carpenter stepped out into the lobby and crossed to the express elevator that took him down to the parking garage, where his driver was waiting in a black-on-black Suburban.
“Rough night, chief?” he asked.
“Is there any other kind?” Carpenter answered, retrieving his AirPods from his jacket pocket.
He pressed the wireless headphones into his ea
rs, unlocked his phone, and scrolled through the apps until he came to a white tile with an orange ball in the center. Carpenter launched the app and waited for it to load, remembering how skeptical he’d been when his wife, Erin, first introduced him to it.
The life of an Agency wife wasn’t for the weak or faint of heart. It took a special woman to put up with all the bullshit—the travel, long hours spent at the office, and even longer months away when Carpenter was deployed overseas, which was why most of his coworkers were on their second or third marriage.
But Carpenter had gotten lucky when he met Erin, which was why he pampered her and put up with the endless string of fad diets and hobbies she dragged him into. The latest was yoga, so he wasn’t surprised when she started talking about meditation.
“An app for guided meditation. You’re serious?” he asked.
“It helps with stress and sleep. You will love it, I promise,” she beamed.
She was right.
Carpenter hit the play button and settled back in his seat, listening while the soothing voice instructed him to “close your eyes and take a cleansing breath.” He was just settling into the meditation, allowing the stresses of the day to “drift past your conscious mind like clouds in the sky” when the voice was interrupted by the ding of his phone.
He cracked an eyelid and glanced down at the screen, any chances of achieving Zen vanishing when he read the text.
Found something you are going to want to see.
On my way home, can it wait? he replied.
No. Come to Site Tango ASAP!!!
This better be GOOD! he typed back.
Better than Christmas morning.
“Change of plans,” Carpenter said, fingers flying over the keys.
“What’s up, chief?” his driver asked, glancing up at the rearview.
“South Capitol Street Heliport,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Carpenter called his wife and told her that he wasn’t going to make it home for dinner. He returned the phone to his pocket, the last line of the text still sending a lightning bolt of exhilaration up his spine.
Better than Christmas morning. The code to drop everything and get here as fast as possible. But what had she found?
* * *
—
The Airbus H155 was sitting on the pad, rotors already turning and burning when the Suburban arrived at the heliport. The driver badged through the gate and pulled up beside the helo, tires still rolling when Carpenter threw open the door and hustled aboard.
“Let’s roll.”
“Roger that,” the pilot said, advancing the throttles.
The torque of the rotors squatted the helo on its wheels, the whine of the turbines barely audible thanks to the Bose noise-canceling stereo system built into the cabin. Then they were airborne, zipping low over the 14th Street bridge.
Carpenter turned his attention to the window and the darkened terrain below.
The Monongahela National Forest was as remote as it was inhospitable. Nine hundred and twenty-one thousand acres of lung-bursting heights and ankle-breaking valleys choked with blueberry thickets, highland bogs, and swift-running rivers.
It was the kind of place where you could walk for days and never see another soul, which made it the perfect place for the CIA’s newly funded Training and Application Lab.
The helo clattered north, the rock face narrowing until the exposed granite was less than a foot from the rotor’s edge. But the pilot was an old hand and expertly adjusted to the rush of thermals that battered the bird and continued climbing until they were over the towering firs that guarded the summit of the ridge.
On the far side of the tree line, their destination sat on a hill in the center of a clearing—an antebellum Classic Revival mansion—its two-story portico supported by fluted Corinthian pillars reminding him of something from Gone with the Wind.
The pilot flared over the front lawn and set the helo down before advising Carpenter that he was heading north, to Elkins, to refuel. Carpenter nodded, grabbed his bag, and climbed out, waiting for the Airbus to take off before starting toward the woman waiting near the front of the house.
At five-foot-four with dishwater blond hair and wide, curious green eyes, there was nothing threatening about Victoria Arno. But Carpenter had seen her file and knew that while Arno might look like a librarian, she, like all of Shaw’s creations, was a predator posing as a house pet. Which was precisely the reason Carpenter had put her in charge of Site Tango.
“Well, you got me here,” he said.
“And I promise you won’t regret it,” Arno purred, slipping past the two heavily armed guards posted on either side of the door and stepping inside.
The first time Carpenter visited Site Tango, an army of contractors were in the process of modernizing the interior, a daunting task considering the mansion was built before modern conveniences such as electricity and running water.
Anyone else would have gone broke trying to make it habitable: ripping out the rotten wood, tearing up the sagging floors, not to mention all the security upgrades that were needed before it could be certified as a Level IV secure site.
If it had been up to Carpenter, he’d have torn down the place and started from scratch—not giving a damn how it turned out as long as it was functional. Arno, on the other hand, was required to live on-site, which meant the mansion had to be both functional and livable.
Compared to the rugged, inhospitable wilds that surrounded the property, the eggshell-white walls, distressed hardwood floors, and exposed white oak rafters gave the interior a light, almost airy feel.
“Like what you did with the place,” he said.
“Amazing what you can do when money is no object,” she replied, leading him down the hall and into her large office.
“So, what is so damn important?”
“This,” she said, taking a folder with EYES ONLY printed in blood-red letters across the front.
“Feels awful thin,” Carpenter said, taking the folder from her hand.
“You might want to take a seat before you start reading.”
“I’ve been in this game a long time,” he smirked, “and I doubt there is anything in here that’s going to blow my skirt up.”
“Have it your way, sir.”
Carpenter opened the file and managed to make it halfway down the first page before the realization of what he was reading turned his knees to water. “Y-you’ve got to be . . .” he said, hand shooting out for the desk.
“Hayes and Shaw . . . has this . . . ?”
“Been verified? Yes, sir,” Arno said.
“Please tell me you got a location ping,” Carpenter said, his heart pounding like a bass drum in his chest.
“He’s in Grand-Bassam.”
“I want a team ready to roll in the next twelve hours,” he said.
“I’ve got just the man for the job,” she replied. “But, sir, if I may . . .”
“What is it?”
“Director Shaw, he is obviously helping Hayes, and if he finds out what’s going on . . .”
“You find me someone who can kill Adam Hayes,” he said. “I’ll take care of Shaw.”
20
KORHOGO, IVORY COAST
While the ground crew fueled up the gunships, General Dábo called the pilots and assault team leaders over and opened the envelope Cabot had sent.
“I have satellite imagery of the target area,” he said, pulling out the five high-definition stills and passing them around.
While the Ivorian army didn’t have their own surveillance satellites during the civil war, Dábo had been able to use his contact in France to gain access to tactical imagery. Usually the photos were weeks old, the quality of the shots so poor that they bordered on unusable.
Cabot’s, on the other hand, were crystal clear, and not only ha
d they been taken within the last twelve hours, but someone had marked every rebel position at the airfield.
“These poor bastards don’t stand a chance,” the lead pilot grinned.
“Good, because the president wants the airfield in our hands in two hours.”
“Two hours?” Captain Koffi said. “B-but the helicopters aren’t even fueled.”
“You worry about coming up with an attack plan,” Dábo said, pulling his gold-plated .45 from its holster. “Let me worry about the helicopters.”
Fifty minutes later the gunships were ten miles south of the airfield, Dábo frowning at his watch. He’d cursed and threatened the ground team, promising to kill them all if they didn’t get the gunships fueled and in the air in twenty minutes. While his strongarm tactics had worked, the pair of gunships had been forced to reduce their speed to accommodate the slower Mi-17.
Dábo glanced out the side window and found the helo still lagging in the distance.
The hell with this, he thought, keying up on the radio and ordering the pilots into attack formation.
“Roger that, sir.”
Due to the relative flatness of the terrain and the active radar at the airfield, Dábo had instructed the pilot to fly nap-of-the-earth and reached up for the handhold hanging from the roof.
“Better follow the general’s lead,” the bulky sergeants shouted to the captain, “these fucki—”
But the words were muted by the banshee scream of the turbines as the pilot throttled up and shoved the stick forward.
The gunship dove toward the ground like a hawk after its prey, the pilot twisting the bird hard right, angling for the two-laned highway that would lead him to his target.
“Sissé, don’t you dare fucking puke in front of the general,” the sergeant yelled at a young machine gunner whose face had taken on a pale shade of green.