Razor's Edge

by Dale Brown

  “Who says they don’t?”

  “Uh, everyone says they don’t.”

  “Everyone’s the CIA. Those spooks couldn’t read the writing on a billboard at twenty paces. Why in hell would the Iranians be attacking our planes?” continued the general. “We’re in Iraq. Why would Iran attack us?”

  “I didn’t say they did. I said the Iraqis—”

  “Brad says they did. Iranians, not Iraqis.”

  “He thinks they may have sold it to them. The Iranians as well as the Chinese have shown interest in Razor, and as a matter of fact—”

  “Lasers. Fancy Dan Bullshit.” Clearwater practically spit. He was a foot soldier at heart; last week he had lectured Jed for ten minutes on the value of a rifle that never jammed. But while he claimed he didn’t go for “fancy Dan bullshit,” the record showed that he’d made sure his men and women were equipped with the latest technology, including hand-held GPS devices, satellite phones, and laser-dot rifle scopes.

  “If there’s a laser, why haven’t the satellites seen it?” Clearwater asked, echoing the CIA’s main legitimate argument against the laser.

  “There’s only one launch detection satellite near enough to cover that part of Iraq,” said Jed. “And it’s not designed to detect laser bursts.”

  “Fancy Dan bullshit.”

  Clearwater turned the corner and entered a conference room. Jed followed along. There were six other people inside, none lower than a brigadier general.

  “You boys know Jed,” said Clearwater. “NSC sent him down to keep our noses clean.”

  “Well, uh, that’s not exactly my, uh, job, sirs,” said Jed.

  Admiral Radmuth, sitting next to Jed, gave him a wink.

  The men, who headed different commands organized under CentCom, apparently knew that Clearwater himself had asked to borrow Jed for his technical expertise—not to mention his backdoor access to the White House.

  “Gentlemen, let’s get this donkey cart in motion.” Clearwater slapped his hands on the table. “I want a full update, starting with what we’re hitting this axlehead Saddam with, and what we can expect in return. You have ten minutes. Then Boy Wonder and I are on the plane for Incirlik.”

  “On the plane?” Jed’s voice squeaked involuntarily.

  “I’m going to Turkey?”

  Clearwater turned and smiled at him, probably for the first time ever. He clicked his false teeth, then turned back to his lieutenants. “Gentlemen, I believe pride of place belongs to the Air Force. We have nine and a half minutes left.”

  Aboard Raven,

  over Iraq

  2345

  CAPTAIN FENTRESS LEANED TO THE RIGHT WITH THE Flighthawk as he came out of the turn, nudging the throttle slide to max. The Flighthawk picked up speed slowly at first, but once it got through 330 knots, it seemed to jump forward, slicing toward the target building. The metal warehouse sat to the left; as he approached, Fentress saw that the sides were missing from one of the two trailers, revealing what looked like a pair of generators. The Flighthawk whipped past, following Fentress’s prompts as it slid above the empty roadway parallel to the building. He backed off the thrust and began to turn, misjudging his speed and ending up far wider than he’d planned for the next, lower run over the area.

  Piloting a Predator typically took four people, and that was a slow-moving, low-flying aircraft, relatively forgiving of mistakes. Light-years more complicated, in some ways the Flighthawk was actually easier to fly—its sophisticated flight control computer, C3, did myriad things for the pilot. But in other ways piloting the U/MF at speeds close to Mach 1 was as demanding as doing a binomial equation in your head while pushing a tractor-trailer through an uphill maze. His thoughts were consistently a half second behind the plane, and his reactions another second or two behind that.

  Not bad for a rookie, maybe, but the six men in the Bronco needed him to be a hell of a lot better.

  He’d die if he screwed up. Just die.

  C3 noodled him, showing how far off course he’d gone with a dotted red line. Fentress brought it back, kept his speed low, getting a look at things.

  “Whiplash team is ninety seconds away,” said Alou.

  “We’re patching your feed through.” Fentress felt his heart pound.

  “Hawk leader, this is Whiplash,” said Danny. “The vehicles on the east side beyond the parking area of that second building—can you take a pass so we can find out what they are?”

  Vehicles? He hadn’t seen any.

  “Roger that.” Fentress slammed the Flighthawk into a turn so abruptly that the computer gave him a stall warning. He eased off, took a breath—it wasn’t a big deal; Zen got those warnings all the time. The computer was just a big sissy.

  He knew that Zen would have fried his ears off for that.

  But Zen wasn’t here.

  Concentrate, he told himself.

  Fentress told the computer to switch the viewing mode on the main screen from starlight to IR, which would make the vehicles easier to spot. He found his course, following the dotted line drawn up by the computer, and dropped through five thousand feet, nudging his speed back until he was just under 200 knots. Running toward the site from the northeast corner, he saw nothing but a flat field and a torn fence, but as he pulled overhead and began to turn he spotted two tanks dug into the ground about a hundred yards from the building, right near the road the Bronco was supposed to land on.

  He’d have to take out the tanks.

  “Hawk leader, this is Whiplash.”

  Fentress could get them both in one pass, but it would be easier, surer, to take them out one at a time. Go for the sure thing.

  Zen would agree.

  He was already lined up.

  “Weapons,” he told the computer. The screen changed instantly, adding crosshairs, targeting data, and a bar at the bottom that could automatically indicate whether he should fire or not once he designated the target.

  “Hawk leader?”

  Something buzzed into the top left of his screen.

  Fentress felt the blood drain from his head directly to his legs. He was nailed, dead.

  No—it was the Bronco!

  “Captain Fentress?” said Alou.

  “Tanks, two tanks, on the road, dug in,” he said.

  Tanks? Or the Razor clone?

  Tanks—he could see the lollipops on top.

  By the time he had it sorted out, he’d overflown them.

  He started to bank.

  “They’re definitely tanks,” said Fentress. “Nothing else down there, nothing big enough for Razor, at least outside of the building. I’m going to take the tanks.”

  “Whiplash copies,” said Danny. “We’ll hold for your attack.”

  Fentress banked to the right, sliding toward the warehouse to get it in view of the sensor. As he did, a yellow light erupted from a low hill on the right.

  “Flak!” yelled a voice he hadn’t heard before. It had to be the Bronco pilot, also plugged into the circuit.

  Flak, a Zeus firing 23mm slugs. Not even—something lighter, a machine gun.

  Take that out too, after the tanks. People there, another vehicle.

  Razor? Razor?

  Calm down, damn it. Just a pickup.

  Fentress pushed on, scanning the warehouse through his turn before starting for the tanks. He got his nose onto the first one, tried to ignore the pounding of his heart. His target bar flashed red.

  Fire, he thought. Fire.

  His fingers cramped. He couldn’t move them.

  He was beyond the tank.

  “What’s going on, Hawk leader?” demanded the Bronco pilot.

  “Targeting tanks,” said Fentress. He cut southward, came back quickly—too fast. The tanks blurred.

  Just fire!

  He pressed the trigger and bullets spewed from the front of the Flighthawk. Extended bursts took quite a bit of momentum from the small aircraft, but the computer compensated seamlessly.

  Beyond it. He was be
yond it. Had he missed?

  Get the other one.

  “Hawk leader?”

  “Keep your damn shirt on,” he told the Bronco as he looped back to get the second tank.

  Aboard Wild Bronco,

  over Iraq

  2350

  DANNY GRABBED THE SIDE OF THE COCKPIT AS THE PLANE wheeled away from the gunfire. He tried to ignore Mack’s voice over the interphone and concentrate on the view in the smart helmet, which showed bullets flaring and then erupting in a fire.

  “Any day now, Fentress,” said Mack.

  “Relax,” Danny told him, watching the screen as the Flighthawk circled back over the road. Both tanks had definitely been hit. There was no one near the building, as far as he could see.

  “Let’s get down,” Danny told Mack.

  “About fuckin’ time. Hold tight—there’ll be a bit of a bump before we stop.”

  THE ENGINES REVVED, THEN DIED. THE PLANE PITCHED forward and seemed about to flip over backward.

  Powder was sure he was going to die. Someone began to scream. Powder opened his mouth to tell him to shut the hell up, then realized it was him.

  The aircraft stopped abruptly. There was a loud crack on the fuselage and the rear hatch slammed open. Bison fell out of the plane and Powder followed, slapping down the visor on his smart helmet so he could see.

  “Let’s go!” yelled Captain Danny Freah. “Let’s go—the building’s there. Two tanks, road behind us—they’re out of commission. Come on, come on—Liu, Egg, Bison—run up the flank like we planned, then hit the door. Powder—you’re with me. This ain’t a cookout! Go!” Powder trotted behind the captain, his brain slowly un-scrambling. His helmet gave him an excellent view of the hardscrabble parking area near the building. A small white circle floated just below stomach level, showing where his gun was aimed.

  “Okay, flank me while I check the back of the building,” said Danny.

  Powder trotted wide to the right like a receiver in motion, then turned upfield. The building sat on his left. It looked a bit like the metal pole barn one of his uncles had built for a car shop back home, though a little less faded and without the exhaust sounds. Powder scanned the field behind it, making sure it was empty. He turned to the right, looking down in the direction of the road and the tanks.

  “Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves, Cap,” he said.

  “For ten minutes, tops. Watch my back.” Danny began making his way toward one of the two doors they’d spotted on the side of the building. Powder saw something move near the road out of the corner of his eye; he whirled quickly, then realized it was the airplane they had landed in, taxiing for a better takeoff position.

  Bastard better not leave them. Then again, considering the ride down, walking home might be a better option.

  “Powder?”

  “Yes, Cap?” Powder turned back toward the building, spotting the captain near the wall.

  “Flash-bangs. Window halfway down,” said Danny, who gestured toward it. “I’ll take the window. You go in the door on the left there. See it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t move until I give the word.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  On the ground in Iraq

  2355

  DANNY TOOK THE TAPE OFF THE GRENADE AS HE LOOKED AT the window. Best bet, he thought, would be to knock the glass out with the stock of his gun, toss, jump in after the explosion.

  Not a tight squeeze. Landing would be rough, though.

  He could hear Rubeo talking to someone back at Dreamland in the background on his satellite channel.

  The scientist had warned him that there ought to be at least a dozen technical types running the laser, maybe even more. Danny didn’t expect much resistance from them, but you could never tell. Some of the people at Dreamland could be pretty nasty.

  “Front team ready,” said Bison, who had come out around the corner to liaison.

  “Powder?”

  “Hey, Cap, this door isn’t locked. We might be able to sneak in.”

  “Bison, what about the front?”

  “Hold on.”

  As he waited, Danny switched to infrared mode and tried to see beyond the window inside. He couldn’t make out anything.

  Might be a closet. Would there be a window in a closet?

  How about a john?

  A top-secret facility without much security and an open back door?

  No way the laser was here. Danny felt his shoulders sag.

  “Front door’s locked, Cap. We’re going to have to blow it.”

  “All right, the way we rehearsed it.” Danny slid the window open and readied his grenade. “One, two—go!” he said, breaking the glass. He popped the grenade through, then hit the side of the building as the charge flashed. In the next second he rose and dove inside. A burst of gunfire greeted him. He leveled his MP-5 and nailed two figures about fifty feet away. As they fell, he realized the gunfire had come from the other direction; he whirled, saw he was alone—another automatic weapon went off. He was hearing his own guys, firing up the enemy.

  A pair of tractors for semitrailers sat alone in a large, open area. Otherwise this part of the warehouse was empty.

  Danny slapped his visor to maximum magnification.

  The tractors were just tractors.

  No laser.

  No stinking laser.

  Powder was on the floor to his right, working toward him on his hands and knees. They couldn’t see the others—there was a wall or something between them.

  Empty. Shit.

  “Wires all over the floor,” said Powder. “Phone wires and shit.”

  “Cut ‘em,” said Danny. “Cut the fuckers. Two guards up there, maybe someone else beyond the wall.”

  THE EXPLOSIONS HAD PIERCED MUSAH TAHIR’S DREAM AS he slept on the cot not far from his equipment, but his mind had turned it into an odd vision of water streaming off the side of a cliff. He saw himself in the middle of a large, empty boat on a bright summer day. A calm lake stretched in all directions one second; the next, the water turned to sand. But the boat continued to sail forward. A large pyramid came into view, then another and another.

  It began to rain, the drops suggested to his unconscious mind by the gunfire outside.

  Tahir bolted straight up. Gunfire!

  His AK-47 was beneath the bench near the computer tubes. He needed to get to it.

  There were charges beneath the desk. He could set them off if all else failed.

  As Tahir pushed out of bed, something incredibly cold and hard slammed into his chest. As he fell backward onto the cot, he saw two aliens in spacesuits standing before him. They held small, odd-looking weapons in their hands; beams of red light shone from the tops of them.

  The alien closest to him said something; too frightened to respond, Tahir said nothing. One of the men grabbed his arm and pulled him from the bed, and the next thing he knew he was running barefoot outside, pushed and prodded toward God only knew where.

  “GOT AN IRAQI, CAPTAIN,” DANNY HEARD LIU SAY. “THREE guards, dead. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else. Screens, black boxes, whole nine yards. This must be the computer center.”

  “Record everything you see, then pull whatever you can for the plane. Computers especially. Look for disk drives, uh, tape things, that sort of stuff. Go!” said Danny.

  “What do we do with the Iraqi?” asked Liu.

  “Bring him with you. We’ll take him back and question him.”

  “Hey, Cap, no offense but where’s he going to sit?”

  “On your lap. Go!”

  Dreamland Command Center

  1600

  “WHY TAKE A PRISONER?” SAID RUBEO. “IS HE SUPPOSED to be our consolation prize?”

  The others stared at Dog from their consoles. The feed from Danny Freah’s smart helmet, relayed through the tactical satellite and the Whiplash communications network, played on the screen at the front of the situation room. It showed him searching the large
warehouse behind the scientist.

  “He can tell us what they’re doing there,” Dog said.

  “If he’s not the janitor,” said Rubeo. “It’s a parking garage.”

  “I believe it’s a covert communications facility,” said one of the scientists. “The trenches outside indicate large cables. The work stations—”

  “We have more complicated systems working the lighting,” said Rubeo. “Obviously, we made a mistake—this isn’t a laser site.”

  “The section at the left of the bench area included two radar screens. This must be where they’re coordinating the missile launches from,” insisted the other scientist.

  “Don’t be so dismissive.”

  “I’m being a realist,” hissed Rubeo. “Missiles didn’t bring down those planes. They’re merely wasting them, just as we are wasting our time here.”

  “Bull.”

  “All right, everybody take a breath,” Dog said. “We’ve got a ways to go here. We’re not even off the ground.”

  Aboard Wild Bronco,

  on the ground in Iraq

  2400

  MACK LEANED DOWN FROM THE PLANE AS DANNY FREAH ran up, the props still turning slowly. He had what looked to be the CPU unit of a personal computer in his arms.

  “So?” he yelled to him.

  “We got a prisoner and some gear. We’re grabbing all the computer stuff we can grab. I’m going to throw this on the floor of my cockpit.”

  “You have to secure it or it’ll shoot around the cockpit when we take off.”

  “I’ll sit on it.”

  Shit, thought Mack. These Whiplash guys were all out of their minds. “So are we taking the laser or what?”

  “There’s no laser here. It may be some sort of communications site, maybe not even that. Can you get the plane closer?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Wait—what do you mean, a prisoner?” demanded Mack.

  Freah ignored him, tossing the computer piece into his end of the cockpit.

  Two of the assault team members ran up with pieces of equipment. They looked like looters who’d hit an electronics store during a power blackout.

  “Where we going to put this prisoner?” Mack shouted.

  “Shove him in the back with the guys,” said Danny.