Razor's Edge

by Dale Brown

  As they moved him to the stretcher, a second radio fell from his hand. His face had been bruised badly during the ejection, and his right hand burned; besides the leg there were no other outward signs of injury. Liu had his enhanced stethoscope out, getting vitals. The stethoscope had a display screen that could be used to show pulse rate and breathing patterns; intended for battle situations where it might be difficult to hear, the display also helped convey important information quickly to a full team. The downed airman’s heart beat fifty-six times a minute; his breathing code was yellow—halfway between shallow and normal.

  “Leg’s busted,” said Nurse. “Compound fracture.” He checked for a concussion by looking for pupil reaction, then listened to make sure the pilot’s lungs were clear.

  “Cut by something, but if it was a bullet, it just grazed him. Looks like that’s the worst of it. Not too much blood lost. Cold, maybe hypothermia. He’ll make it.” Powder jumped up and trotted a few feet away, scooping something up from the rocks. “Pencil flares. Musta meant to shoot ‘em, then the bad guys came.”

  “Grab the radio and let’s get,” Danny told him.

  Nurse secured the pilot with a series of balloon restraints, as much for cushioning as a precaution against back and spinal injuries. Danny took the back end of the stretcher and together they began making their way to the Osprey.

  The Marine sergeant met them about halfway.

  “Let’s go, ladies!” he shouted. “Uh, you too, Captain.

  Something big’s kicking up some dirt up the road. Your pilot’s starting to get some twists in his underwear.”

  Aboard Quicksilver,

  over Iraq

  1655

  ZEN PITCHED THE FLIGHTHAWK BACK SOUTH WHEN HE NOTICED the three vehicles leaving the village on the dirt road. He was moving too fast to target them.

  “Vehicles on the highway, coming out of the village,” Zen told Breanna. “Alert the Osprey. I’m rolling on them.”

  “You sure they’re not civilians?” asked Breanna.

  “What do you want me to do, ask for license and registration?”

  “I don’t want you to splash civilians,” said Breanna.

  “Hawk leader,” he said.

  Zen didn’t want to kill civilians either, but he wasn’t about to take any chances with his people on the ground.

  The rules of engagement allowed him to attack anything that appeared to be a threat. He tucked Hawk One into a shallow dive, angling toward the lead truck. When it came up fat in the crosshairs, he fired.

  One of the most difficult things to get used to about flying the robot plane in combat was the fact that the cannon provided no feedback, no shake, no sound. The pipper changed color to indicate the target was centered, and blackened into a small star when the gun was fired—that was it. He couldn’t feel the momentum-stealing vibration or the quick shudder as the gun’s barrels spun out their lead. But at least he could see the results of his handiwork: the lead vehicle, a four-door pickup truck with three or four men in the back, imploded as the bullets split it neatly in two. He nudged his nose upward and found the second truck, this one a more traditional military troop carrier; a long burst caught the back end but failed to stop it. Zen broke right, regrouping; as he circled west he saw the Osprey on the ground two or three miles away.

  It had been hit. Black smoke curled from one of the engines. Zen tore his eyes away, looked for a target.

  The third vehicle, another pickup, left the roadway, spitting along the riverbank. Zen swooped in on it from behind, lighting his cannon as the letters on the rear gate of the pickup came into focus. His first shell got the circle on the second O in Toyota; his next two nailed something in the rear bed. After that he couldn’t tell what he hit—the truck disappeared into a steaming cloud of black, red, and white. Zen flew through the smoke—he was now down to fifty feet—and had to shove himself hard left to avoid running into the Osprey, which despite the damage was lifting off, albeit slowly. As he came back toward the road, he realized the second truck he’d hit had stopped to let out its passengers. They were spreading out in the sand, taking up firing positions. He double-clutched, then put his nose on the clump closest to the MV-22 and pulled the trigger. His bullets exploded in a thick line across the dirt; he let off the last of his flares as he came over them, hoping to deke any shoulder-launched SAMs.

  “Osprey is away,” Breanna was saying. “Osprey is away.”

  “Hawk leader acknowledges. Osprey is away. They okay?”

  “Pressman says he lost an engine but he’ll get back before Boston wins the Series.”

  “Yeah, well, that could be a century from now at least.” Zen continued to climb, flying east of the mountains, well out of range of anything on the ground, before easing back on the throttle and looking for Quicksilver.

  “Fuel on ten minute reserve,” warned the computer.

  “Hawk leader to Quicksilver,” said Zen. “Bree, I need to tank.”

  WHILE ZEN BROUGHT THE FLIGHTHAWK UP TO TWENTY thousand feet for refueling, Breanna polled her crew, making sure they were prepared to resume the search for the SA-2 radar. O’Brien and Habib seemed to be champing at the bit, riding the high from having located the pilot and helping rescue him. Chris Ferris was his usual cautious self, advising her on fuel reserves and shortened flight times, but nonetheless insisting they should carry on with the mission.

  Zen was all for continuing. He’d fly the Flighthawks down closer to the ground, using the video input to check on any radio sources, and look for buildings big enough to house a laser. Jennifer Gleason, working on her sensor coding in between monitoring the Flighthawk equipment, as usual was almost oblivious to what was going on, agreeing to keep at it with a distracted, “Shit, yeah.” The normal procedure for the Flighthawk refuel called for the Megafortress to be turned over to the computer, which would fly it in an utterly predictable fashion for the U/MF. Six months ago the refuel had been considered next to impossible; now it was so routine that Breanna took the opportunity to stretch her legs, leaving Chris at the helm. She curled her body sideways, stepping out gingerly from behind the controls, stretching her stiff ligaments as she slipped back toward the hatchway. A small refrigerator unit sat beneath the station for the observer jumpseat at the rear of the EB-52’s flight deck; Breanna knelt down and opened it. She took the tall, narrow plastic cup filled with mint ice tea from the door and took a steady pull. Refreshed, she turned back toward the front of the plane and watched over Chris’s shoulder as he monitored the refuel.

  Zen had blown off her question about the trucks, but it was a real one. They were here to kill soldiers, not civilians.

  True, you couldn’t ask for IDs in the middle of a fight.

  And their rules of engagement allowed them to target anyone or anything that seemed to be a threat. But if they didn’t draw a distinction, they were no better than Saddam, or terrorists.

  Was that a distinction God drew? Did it matter to Him that only soldiers were in the crosshairs?

  Did it matter to the dead?

  “Refuel complete,” said Chris as she slipped back into her seat. “Computer has course to search grids. I’ve downloaded the course to Zen. He wants to launch the second Flighthawk about five minutes from the grid.”

  “Thanks.”

  Breanna flicked her talk button. “How are you doing down there, Zen?”

  “Fine. Yourself?”

  “I wasn’t trying to be testy about the civilian trucks.”

  “I know that. They were army or militia or whatever.”

  “The Kurds use a lot of pickups.”

  “Yup.”

  “You okay, Jeff? Do we have a problem?” Breanna realized her heart had jumped into overdrive, pounding much faster than it had during the action. She was worried about their relationship, not their job. A deadly distraction. She couldn’t work with him again, not in combat.

  “Major Stockard?”

  “Not a problem on my end, Captain,” answered her
husband.

  “Thank you much. Computer says we’re on course and ten minutes from your drop zone,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light.

  Iraq Intercept Missile Station Two

  1720

  MUSAH TAHIR SAT BEFORE THE ENORMOUS, INOPERATIVE screens, waiting. Kakii had called ten minutes ago, but Abass had not; it was possible that the planes had passed him by, but there had been no call from the airport at Baghdad, where the air traffic radar was still in full operation. The Americans might be attacking somewhere north or east of Kirkuk, but if so, it made no sense to turn on his units; they would be out of range.

  Tahir envisioned himself as a spider, standing at the edge of a highly sensitive web, waiting for the moment to strike. He had been entrusted with great responsibility by the leader himself—indeed, by Allah. Turning on the radars, even for a moment, was a matter of great delicacy, since the American planes carried missiles that could home in on them; the decision to initiate the search and launch sequence was dictated by his sense of timing as well as his computer program.

  Now?

  No. He must wait. Perhaps in a few minutes; perhaps not today at all. Allah would tell him when.

  Over Iraq

  1720

  ZEN TOOK HAWK ONE TO THE END OF THE SEARCH GRID, pulling up as he neared a cloud of antiaircraft fire from the Zsu-23. A pair of the four-barreled 23mm flak dealers had opened up just as he started his run; optically aimed and effective only to five or six thousand feet, they were more an annoyance than a threat. He came back south, running four miles parallel to Quicksilver. He would turn Hawk One over to the computer while he launched Two.

  “Anything, O’Brien?”

  “Negative,” said the radar detector’s babysitter. “Clean as a whistle.”

  “I have a cell phone cluster,” said Habib. “Several transmissions, coded. Twenty-five miles southeast of your position, Hawk One. “

  “Okay. Mark it and we’ll get down there later,” said Zen. “Jen? You see anything?”

  “Nothing interesting,” said the scientist, who was monitoring the video feed from Hawk Two, which was being flown by the computer. “No buildings large enough for a radar. There were two trailers parked beneath the overpass we saw, that was it.”

  “Yeah, okay, let’s check those trailers out. They used to hide Scuds under the overpasses during the war,” said Zen. He jumped into Hawk Two, which was flying approximately eight miles to the north of One. He started to descend, approaching a town of about two dozen buildings nestled in an L-shaped valley. The overpass was just south of the settlement.

  “Major, we’re getting down toward bingo,” said Chris Ferris.

  “Hawk leader. We have enough to get over to that area where O’Brien had the cell phones?”

  “We should,” answered Ferris.

  “I’m still trying to get a definite fix,” said the radio intercept operator. “Roughly thirty miles south of us. Map says there’s nothing there.”

  “That makes it more interesting,” said Breanna.

  “Roger that,” said Jeff, still flying Hawk Two. He dropped through two thousand feet, tipping his wing toward the overpass. The two trucks looked long and boxy, standard tractor-trailers.

  Undoubtedly up to no good or they wouldn’t have been placed here, but he couldn’t just shoot them up—as Breanna would undoubtedly point out.

  “Trucks look like they’re civilian types,” he said. “We can pass on the location to CentCom.” Zen turned Hawk Two back toward Quicksilver and told the computer to take it into a standard trail position.

  Then he jumped back into Hawk One, streaking ahead of the Megafortress as it angled southward toward the coordinates O’Brien had given. Breanna had pushed the throttle to accelerate, staying close to the U/MF.

  “I believe you’re ten miles north of the source,” said O’Brien.

  “Roger that.”

  The Megafortress flight crew, meanwhile, prepared their missiles for a strike, in case Zen found something worth hitting. The large bomb bay doors in the belly of the plane opened and a JSOW missile—a standoff weapon with a two-thousand-pound warhead that guided itself to a GPS strike point downloaded from the flight deck—trundled into position.

  “We’ll nail the son of a bitch if we have a positive target,” said Bree, talking to Ferris. Between the open bay doors and the uncoated nose, Quicksilver was now a fairly visible target to Iraqi radar, though at nearly thirty thousand feet and stuffed with ECMs and warning gear, she’d be tough to hit.

  The pilot they’d rescued probably thought the same thing.

  “Zen, do you have a target?” asked Bree.

  “Negative,” he said, eyes pasted on the video feed. A series of low-lying hills gave way to an open plain crisscrossed by shallow ditches or streams. There were no buildings that he could see, not even houses.

  “It’s exactly five miles dead on your nose,” said O’Brien.

  “I’m still looking for the building,” said Jennifer.

  Zen saw a large, whitish rectangle on his right at about three miles. He popped the magnification and began to tell Bree that they had something in sight. But he’d gotten no more than her name from his mouth before Quicksilver shuddered and moved sideways in the air. In the next moment it stuttered toward the earth, clearly out of control.

  High Top

  1750

  MACK SMITH RESISTED THE URGE—BARELY—TO KICK THE toolbox across the tarmac. “When is the plane going to be ready, Garcia?” he said.

  “I’m working on it, sir,” said the technician, hunkered over the right engine. “You’re lucky I took this apart, Major. Big-time problem with the pump.”

  “Just—get—it—back—together.”

  “I shall be released.”

  “And if I hear one more, just one more line that sounds like a Dylan song, that could be from a Dylan song, or that I think is from a Dylan song, I’m going to stick that wrench down your throat.”

  “That’s no way to talk to anybody,” said Major Alou, walking over to see what the fuss was about.

  “Yeah,” said Mack.

  “Louis, I need you to look at Raven,” said Alou. “The pressure in that number three engine—”

  “No way!” yelled Mack as Garcia climbed down off his ladder. “No fucking way. He’s working on my plane.”

  “The Megafortresses have priority here,” said Alou.

  “Garcia works for me. You’re a guest, Major. I suggest you start acting like one.”

  “Yeah? A guest, huh? A guest?”

  Mack booted the tool case in disgust. A screwdriver flew up and nailed him in the shin.

  Aboard Quicksilver,

  over Iraq

  1750

  BREANNA FELT HERSELF THROWN SIDEWAYS AGAINST HER restraints, the Megafortress plunging out from under her like a bronco machine on high speed. Pitched in her seat, she pushed her stick gently to the left, resisting the urge to jerk back and try to muscle the plane back level.

  The plane didn’t respond.

  She bent forward, right hand on the power bar on the console between the two pilots. The front panels looked like Christmas trees ablaze with caution and problem lights.

  The engines were solid, all in the green.

  Rudder pedals, stick, she thought. Stick, damn it.

  “Computer, my control,” she chided.

  The computer did not respond.

  ZEN’S HEAD SPLIT BETWEEN THE FLIGHTHAWKS AND THEIR plummeting mothership. Hawk Two had snapped out of trail, aware that the EB-52’s actions were not normal. Zen pulled Hawk One back toward the stricken plane, setting its course on a gradual intercept. Then he jumped into Hawk Two, tucking it down to get a visual on whatever damage had been done to Quicksilver. In the meantime, he checked the radar, scanning to see if they were followed or if other missiles were in the air. The threat bar was clean; somehow, that didn’t seem reassuring.

  Quicksilver was still descending rapidly, her right wing tilting heavil
y toward the earth. Two streaks of red flared near the front fuselage.

  They were on fire.

  Hawk Two passed through five thousand feet; Quicksilver was about a thousand feet ahead. If they were going to bail, they were going to have to go real soon.

  “Quicksilver? Bree?” he said.

  There was no response.

  UNTIL NOW IT HAD FELT LIKE A SESSION IN THE MEGAFORTRESS simulator in the test bunker. Breanna sniffed something—the metallic tang of an electrical fire—then decided the computer had either gone off line or malfunctioned. She hit the hard-wired cutoff, initiating the backup hydraulic system. The backup control gear had been installed thanks to a malfunction she dealt with some months before. Something clunked beneath her, as if she were driving a very large truck that had been switched on the fly into four-wheel drive. The stick jerked against her hand so hard she nearly lost her grip.

  “My control. We’re on hydraulics,” she told Ferris.

  She wrestled the plane for a few seconds, momentum and gravity working against her. The EB-52 began to shudder—the plane was approaching the speed of sound.

  The rocks below grew exponentially.

  Breanna felt herself relax as the pedals jerked against her feet. She ignored the panel of instruments, ignored the warning lights, ignored everything but the immense aircraft. It became part of her body; her face was squashed by gravity, her sides compressed by the buffeting wind. She brought herself to heel, leveling off at a bare two thousand feet, clearing a mountaintop by thirteen feet.

  It was only when she came level that she realized they were on fire.

  “Chris?” she said calmly. “Chris?” When he didn’t respond, she turned and saw him slumped forward against his restraints. Bree looked over her shoulder—O’Brien was fighting off his restraints.

  Long, thin ribbons of smoke filtered from one of the panels at the rear of the flight deck.

  “Stay where you are,” she told O’Brien over the interphone circuit.

  Either the circuit wasn’t working or he didn’t understand. Breanna waved at him emphatically; he saw her finally and settled back down.