Razor's Edge

by Dale Brown

  “That’s too much weight.”

  “We’re taking him back, Major. One way or the other.

  I’ll strap him to the wing if we have to.”

  “Shit, Danny—”

  “You’re telling me you’re not a good enough pilot to get this crate off the ground, Major?”

  “Hey, fuck yourself,” said Mack, but Freah had already disappeared. He kicked the dirt once, then turned back to the airplane.

  This wasn’t like driving a truck. Weight was critical, especially if they were going to make it over the mountains. He’d worked it out to the pound before the flight, figuring they’d carry away only two hundred pounds of gear.

  No way they were going to hold it to two hundred.

  Shit. They could start an electronics shop with this stuff.

  Grousing to himself, Mack reached into the cockpit for his flight board. An experienced Bronco pilot would know where he could cheat, but he had to rely on the specs.

  The Iraqi added how much? Another 150.

  Hopefully.

  The tanks were another problem. The explosion had pockmarked part of his runway. Stinking idiots did that on purpose, just to make his life difficult.

  Mack worked over the numbers, trying to make sure he could make the takeoff on the small runway. The problem was, he had to climb almost right away, and had no face wind to help. He wasn’t going to make it. Had he screwed up his calculations before? He was close to 500 pounds too heavy.

  There had to be more margin for error. Somewhere.

  Drop the Sidewinders. That’d do it.

  Shit, fly naked?

  Who was he kidding, though? The only thing he could use the heat-seekers for was as booster rockets.

  Mack turned back to see two of the Whiplash people hauling a sack forward. They were almost on top of him before he realized the sack was a person.

  “Hold,” he said, walking to them. “How heavy is he?” The two troopers were wearing helmets and apparently couldn’t hear him. He grabbed hold of the Iraqi, whose eyes were so wide and white they looked like flashlights.

  He held him up, shaking him a bit.

  A hundred fifty, maybe a little more.

  “You’re lucky,” he told the EPW after dropping him on the ground. “Few more pounds and we woulda had to cut your leg off to get airborne.”

  Aboard Raven,

  over Iraq

  30 May 1997 0012

  THE COMPUTER FLEW HAWK ONE IN THE ORBIT AROUND the area at eight thousand feet as Fentress took a break.

  His heart wasn’t beating so crazily anymore and he felt good, damn good—the ground team confirmed that he had nailed the tanks.

  Actually, they’d turned out to be armored personnel carriers. Same difference.

  Zen would be proud of him.

  “Bronco is ready to take off,” said Alou.

  Fentress retook the stick and began to come back north. Smith grumbled something over the open circuit about wanting wind. Fentress banked, watching as the Bronco struggled to get airborne, its nose bobbing up and down violently as it approached a curve in the road. Fentress felt a hole open in his stomach—he’d never seen an airplane crash before, not in real life.

  He didn’t now. The Bronco kept going straight, apparently airborne, though just barely.

  “Bronco is up,” he told Alou.

  “Good. How’s your fuel?”

  He checked his instruments, running through a quick scan before reporting back that they were right on the mark as planned. They traded course headings, double-checking the positions the computers plotted out for them as the Bronco slowly began picking up speed.

  “I didn’t think he’d make it,” Fentress told Alou. “Take off I mean.”

  “Mack Smith always cuts it right to the bone,” said Alou. “That’s the way he is.”

  “A little like Zen.”

  “In a way.

  “Mack helped develop the Flighthawks,” Alou continued. “He’s never flown them, but I’d guess he knows them as well as anyone, except for Zen. He helped map the tactics sections.”

  “Why didn’t he fly them?”

  “Doesn’t like robots.”

  Fentress had Hawk One flying above and behind the OV-10, following the slow-moving plane much as he would follow a helicopter. He would arc behind at times to maintain separation, while still keeping close to his escort. At the same time, he had to stay relatively close to Raven, which was flying a kind of spiraling oval back toward the base at high altitude.

  “Mack was in the air when Jeff had the accident that cost him his legs,” said Alou. “Not that they got along too well before that. But, uh, I’d say there’s still some bad blood there.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. Not the sort of thing you want to bring up in casual conversation with either one of them, I think.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alou laughed. “Hey, relax, kid. You’re one of us now.

  You kicked ass down there. Zen’ll be proud of you.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, uh, right.”

  Alou guffawed.

  Fentress tucked the Flighthawk’s wing toward the ground, rolling around and back to the south before circling back. He scouted the valley as he flew; at eight thousand feet, he was lower than many of the mountain peaks ahead. The Bronco, weighed down with its passengers and climbing to get through the hills, continued to lag behind. Just as Hawk One drew back into its trail position, the RWR blared.

  “Zeus ahead,” Alou warned Mack. “Can you get higher?”

  “Not without divine intervention.” A green and yellow flower blossomed in the darkness before him, then another, then another. An upside-down cloud rose from the ground—there were a half-dozen Zsu-23s down there. Fentress accelerated over the exploding shells. “I’ll take out the flak dealer,” he told Mack.

  “I’m counting on you, Hawk boy,” said Mack. “Get ‘em quick—I don’t want to waste any more gas turning around.”

  Fentress tucked left, zigging as another emplacement opened up. He was about two thousand feet over the effective range of the guns—though probably close enough for a lucky shot to nail him. The radar operator on the flight deck warned that there were at least two other guns farther up the valley that hadn’t started firing yet.

  Shells exploded above him—heavier weapons, Zsu-57s maybe. Unguided but nasty, their shells could reach over twelve thousand feet, about twice as high as the Zsu-23s.

  Fentress realized he was boxed in by the antiaircraft fire. He started to dive on his first target anyway.

  “I’m going to run right past them, real low,” said Mack.

  “Keep their attention and—”

  The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the warning tone of the RWR. A new threat screen opened up—the passive receiver had found a helicopter radar ahead.

  “Bogey,” Alou told Mack. “Low. Closing on you. It just came out of nowhere.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Fentress, flicking his stick left as C3 marked out the contact as a Russian-made Hind helicopter. He began to accelerate, but as he went to arm his cannon, his screens went blank.

  Aboard Wild Bronco,

  over Iraq

  0042

  THE MUSHROOMING ARCS OF GREEN-TINTED ANTIAIRCRAFT fire suddenly flared red. There was a flash of light so bright that Danny Freah thought a star had exploded.

  “Jesus, what was that?” he said.

  “Something just nailed the Flighthawk,” said Mack Smith.

  “Shit.”

  “We got other problems. Hang tight. This is going to be a bitch.”

  “We’re flying through the flak?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  IT WAS A WORTHLESS GESTURE, BUT MACK POUNDED THE throttles for more speed, hoping to somehow convince the lumbering aircraft to get a move on. The air percolated with the explosions of the antiaircraft guns; the wings tipped up and down, and the tail seemed to want to pull to the right for some reason. Cu
rsing, Mack did his best to hold steady, riding right through a wall of flak.

  The helicopter was dead ahead, four miles, and coming at him, fat and red in the Bronco’s infrared screen.

  Served him right for leaving the damn Sidewinders on the ground, he thought. Son of a bitch.

  “Bronco, stand out of the way so we can nail that Hind,” said Alou.

  “Thanks, Major, but where exactly do you want me to go?”

  “Circle.”

  “Fuck off. I can’t afford the gas, and sooner or later these bastards are going to nail me.” The Bronco bucked upward, riding the currents into a clear space beyond the flak. Another ball of tracers puffed about a mile ahead.

  “Take out the guns,” said Mack.

  “Helo’s first,” said Alou. “They’re stopping the flak—they don’t want to hit him.”

  “How sweet,” said Mack, tucking his wing to the left as sharply as he dared, then back the other way as the helicopter closed. He could feel the plane’s weight change dramatically and tried to compensate with his rudder, but the plane slid away from him. They flopped back and forth, the OV-10 alternately threatening to spin, stall completely, or roll over and stop dead in the air. The helo began firing, barely a mile from his face.

  Aboard Raven,

  over Iraq

  0050

  SOMEWHERE FAR ABOVE HIM THE FLIGHT CREW TRADED snippets of information on the location of the helicopter and the triple A. There was a warning—an AMRAAM flashed from the belly of the Megafortress.

  Fentress had only a vague sense of the world beyond the small area around him. His eyes were focused on the gray screen in front of him, his consciousness defined by the two words in the middle:

  CONTACT LOST.

  He was dead, nailed by the flak dealer.

  Aboard Wild Bronco,

  over Iraq

  0050

  MACK SMITH SAW THE GAUGE FOR THE OIL PRESSURE IN the right engine peg right and then spin back left. It could have been tracking the weight distribution of his plane—he could feel the assault team rolling back and forth in the rear with his maneuvers.

  “Tell your guys to stop screwing around back there,” Mack told Danny.

  The captain made a garbled sound in reply, either cursing or puking into his mask.

  Mack wrestled the stick to try to get back level. The Hind passed off to his right, its gunfire trailing but missing.

  The stinker was probably going to fire heat-seekers next.

  So where the hell was Alou and his magic missiles?

  They weren’t that stinking close, for cryin’ out loud.

  Mack pushed the stick forward to throw the Bronco into a dive. He tossed diversionary flares. A second later something whipped past his wings, trailing to the right after a flare. Something else exploded well off to his left.

  A fresh volley of tracers kept him from gloating. The helicopter was still on his butt.

  Mack slapped the stick and jammed the pedals, pushing the plane almost sideways. The Hind shot past, arcing to the right so close that Mack could have taken out his handgun and shot the bastard through the canopy. Instead he lurched left, figuring the helicopter was spinning for another attack. He tucked his wing and picked up a bit of speed and altitude north before tracers flared on his right once again. He thought he heard something ting the aircraft, but it could have been one of the Whiplash crew kicking against the side.

  “Hey, Alou—any fuckin’ time you want to nail the raghead is okay with me,” he said, slapping the plane back left.

  As he did so, a sharp downdraft pitched his nose toward the rocks. An AMRAAM from the Megafortress had found the Hind.

  “Hey, there’s two more helicopters on the ground down there,” said Freah.

  “We’ll save them for next time,” said Mack, pulling the plane level.

  Incirlik

  0100

  JENNIFER TURNED FROM THE EQUIPMENT CONSOLE AND put her head down to the laptop screen, rechecking the sequence she had to enter. She typed it without looking, cursed as she made a mistake, backspaced, then reentered. The others on the flightdeck—Breanna, General Elliott, the handsome but somewhat stuck-up colonel from CentCom, and the RIO they’d borrowed to help work the gear—all stared at her.

  “Just a second,” she told them.

  “We’re waiting for you, young lady,” said the CentCom colonel.

  General Elliott looked like he’d strangle him. She’d always liked him.

  Jennifer studied the map again, then entered the last set of coordinates. She hit Enter; the laptop spit back the numbers without hesitation.

  “So?” asked Breanna.

  “It was definitely a laser flash. The gear got a pretty good read. But it wasn’t in that building Whiplash targeted,” Jennifer told them.

  “Where was it?” asked General Elliott.

  “According to the data, fifty miles inside of Iran.”

  V

  Allah’s Sword

  High Top

  30 May 1997 0154

  DANNY FREAH PRIED HIMSELF OUT OF THE BRONCO’S cockpit and walked to the back of the plane, where several Marines were already helping with the prisoner. The Iraqi had to be held upright; while he offered no resistance, the flight had turned his legs to jelly, and even with help he moved across the old asphalt like a toddler taking his first steps. The man kept looking to the sky, obviously unsure of where he was.

  Then again, the same might be said of the Whiplash team, shuffling gear back and forth tipsily as they got out of the plane.

  “You’re green, Powder,” Danny said.

  “I ain’t never flying in an airplane ever again, Cap.

  Never. No way. Not unless I’m pilot.”

  “That’ll be the day,” said Nurse.

  “Inventory and tag the gear; we’re routing it to the NSA,” said Danny, who’d already received the order to do so from Colonel Bastian. “Isolate the prisoner in an empty tent, then find out if the Marines have an Arab speaker. I’d like to see what the hell he does before we hand him over to CentCom.”

  “As soon as the place stops spinning, I’m on it,” said Powder.

  High Top Base now looked like a small city, albeit one made almost entirely from tents. Whiplash’s two bulldozers, along with a small Marine vehicle, were working on the southern slope, grinding it down into a depot area to accommodate some of the supplies two C-130s had brought in for the Marines. Gators—revved-up golf carts with military insignia—charged to and fro with stacks of gear. Two platoons of Marines were extending the defensive perimeter along the road below; another company was erecting a temporary metal building twice the size of the Whiplash HQ trailer at the far end of the aircraft parking area to be used for maintenance work on the planes.

  The runway would soon total three thousand feet; CentCom was hoping to use it as an emergency strip. In the meantime, air elements of the MEU(SOC)—six Harriers and six Cobra gunships—were due in late tomorrow or the next day to provide support for any Marine ground action in the Iraqi mountains to the south.

  That might come soon. The rumble of artillery could be heard in the distance. The Iraqis were moving against their civilian population in the north. Unlike 1991, there had been no exodus of Kurds from the towns—an ominous sign.

  Besides the Marines, a dozen technical people from Dreamland were due; they had been rerouted to Incirlik on the MC-17 to look after Quicksilver. As Danny understood it, the damage to the plane was much less than it might have been; the laser had managed to catch it with only a short burst, probably at the far edge of its range.

  The experts believed this confirmed that it was using a barrage pattern to saturate an area based on minimal or primitive radar coverage. They also said it was possible that the laser had been thrown off by the partly stealthy profile of the big plane, or even the presence of the Flighthawks. In any event, Quicksilver would be back at High Top and available for action within a few hours.

  Danny made his way to the medical
tent, blinking at the bright lights inside. The EPW, or enemy prisoner of war, stood before the empty cot, eyes shifting nervously around. He either didn’t understand the corpsman’s gestures or declined to take off his clothes so he could be examined.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Danny told the prisoner.

  The man gave no indication that he understood anything Danny was saying; it wasn’t entirely clear that he could even hear.

  “Can you examine him like that?” Danny asked the corpsman.

  “I guess. He doesn’t seem to be hurt.”

  “Get him something to eat and drink. Try and be as friendly as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you guys have an Arab speaker?” Danny asked the corpsman.

  “Not that I know of, sir.”

  “All right. Go easy with him.” The man looked like he was in his late thirties or forties, but Danny suspected he was somewhat younger; he clearly didn’t eat well and probably didn’t have much opportunity to take care of himself. Danny had seen in Bosnia how war and malnutrition aged people.

  The man held up his shirt gingerly as the corpsman approached with his stethoscope. His ribs were exposed; he had several boils on his back.

  “Take pictures,” Danny told the Marines. “I don’t want anybody accusing us of torture.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the corporal in charge. “What do we call him?”

  “Call him ‘sir.’ Be as nice to him as possible. Nicer.

  Treat him like your brother.”

  “I thought I was supposed to be nice.” Danny left the tent, heading toward his headquarters to update CentCom and then Dreamland Command on their arrival back at the base. He had just checked on the arrangements for a Pave Low to evacuate the parts and prisoner when the lieutenant he was talking to was interrupted. Another officer came on the line, identifying himself as a Major Peelor, an aide to CinC CentCom.

  “Are my people hearing this right?” said the major.

  “You have an Iraqi?”

  “That’s right,” said Danny. “We’re shipping him to Incirlik so you and the CIA can debrief him. It’s all been arranged through—”

  “You went into Iraq and kidnapped an Iraqi citizen?”

  “I captured a prisoner. We believed he was part of the laser operation. Our guys think his site may have been coordinating the radar operations, but it’s too soon to—”