by Dale Brown
“Hawk,” he said, lining up on a Hip.
On the ground in Iraq
2030
DANNY MANAGED TO SLIDE TO THE GROUND BEHIND THE rocks as Gunny shouted; the tight report of the spotting round was followed by the heavier thump and whiz of the 83mm rocket from the Marine’s SMAW. Danny pushed up in time to see the rocket plow through the windshield of the pickup truck, exploding in a hiss of steam. The dozen men packed into the rear were caught as they tried to jump; they burst out of the dust cloud in pieces.
The other truck jerked right but stayed on the wide road, avoiding the wreckage of the first pickup and gunning its engine. Three or four men began firing Kalashnikovs over the cab.
“Well, we got their attention,” said Gunny, throwing the now empty SMAW down and pulling up his light machine gun.
As the Iraqi gunfire began pinging into the nearby rocks, Gunny poured 5.56mm slugs into the front end of the truck. The white pickup kept coming for about twenty feet, then rolled over in flames. A second explosion shot debris everywhere; Danny felt something whack against his chest and arm as he ducked. He saw or felt Gunny pushing off to his left, trying to swing his gun up; Danny threw himself around and opened fire in that direction.
Something shrieked, then cried in pain. Danny continued to fire, spraying bullets left and right. Iraqis were less than twenty yards away, maybe closer.
“All right, all right, all right,” Danny yelled, telling himself to stop firing, to get discipline.
Hunkering down, he reached for a fresh clip and slammed the new bullets home. The Marine sergeant was curled against a rock to his left, no longer firing.
God—did I shoot him?
Danny looked to the left up the slope, saw nothing. A bullet ricocheted off one of the stones behind him. He threw himself flat on his stomach, then crawled back toward the road. There were at least two Iraqi soldiers in a ditch paralleling the highway about twenty feet from his position. The truck smoldered behind them; there might be more men sheltered there, though it was impossible to tell.
He knew they’d have a good line on Gunny. He’d have to drag him to cover.
As he got up, one of the Iraqis in the ditch opened fire.
Danny dropped. The bullets just missed.
The Iraqis’ line of fire only extended about five or six yards up the slope; Danny knew he could probably make it past them, thanks to his body armor. But carrying Gunny would slow him down considerably. He’d have to take out the bastards first.
“Gunny!” he yelled.
No answer.
Jesus, he thought. If I killed him, what will I do?
Aboard Quicksilver,
over Iraq
2035
AT 25,000 FEET, QUICKSILVER WAS WELL ABOVE THE ACTION, though thanks to the continually updated photos from the Dreamland mini-KH satellite, they had a ring-side seat. The Flighthawk was fencing with the Iraqi helicopters; two were down but the other two were now within two miles of the pickup zone. The rescue Blackhawk MH-60 raced toward the site, balls-out; he’d get there maybe sixty seconds after the Iraqi helos.
“Quicksilver to Hawk leader. Stand off. We’ll get the Hips with our AMRAAMs,” she said.
Her copilot didn’t wait for the command, opening the bay door as he zeroed in on the target.
“Hawk leader?” she repeated. “Stand off. We have to nail those helos now. Zen?”
“Zen’s not flying the Flighthawk,” Ferris said. “Fentress is.”
Aboard Raven,
over Iraq
2040
THE HELICOPTER GREW FAT IN HIS CUE. AS FENTRESS pressed the trigger, he heard Breanna’s hail.
He hesitated a second, just long enough for the helicopter to cut right and drop, avoiding him. He tucked right, began shooting anyway, lost the helicopter. He had to throw the Flighthawk left to avoid a looming cliff face—if the rocks had been covered with moss, he would have scraped it off.
“Shit!” he cursed, flailing right after the helo.
“Stay within yourself,” said Zen.
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can.”
“Zen?”
“It’s me. Hold on— Quicksilver wants you to stand off.
They’re targeting with AMRAAMs.”
He pulled back. “Hawk leader to Quicksilver. Acknowledged. They’re yours.”
“Fox One!” said Chris Ferris, the copilot in Quicksilver, announcing the missile shot.
In the next second the AWACS controller broke in.
“Quicksilver, Raven, Wild Bronco—break ninety immediately! Bandits off runway at A-3. MiGs! Break!
Break!”
Aboard Wild Bronco,
over Iraq
2045
MACK SMITH SAW THE PICKUP TRUCK BURST INTO FLAMES as he sailed by. There were a couple of guys at the foot of the hill near the crash site, maybe four or five hundred yards down the slope; they had to be Americans. He tried to radio their position to the AWACS but got overrun by all the excitement. The Iraqi Hips were now less than two miles away, and smoke filled the lower left quadrant of the horizon as he turned back toward the site.
The Flighthawk and Quicksilver were taking potshots at the Hips, with what sounded like little success; he couldn’t help thinking he would have nailed every single one of the suckers if he’d just had guns on his damn plane.
Because it was one serious hellcat, if you had the balls to stick and rudder it. He put his wing just about straight down as he turned, getting the American position in view.
“Thunder One, this is Wild Bronco,” he said, trying to reach the MH-60G rescue helicopter on its own frequency. “I have one maybe two Americans on the slope near the road. You guys hear me?” No answer. He could see the helicopter, an angry-looking Pave Hawk specially modified for Special Forces work. A man hung out the door over a machine gun as it came in; someone on the ground moved. The helicopter skimmed into a hover, then touched down a few yards from the wreckage of the Hind.
Gunfire ripped from the road. There were half a dozen Iraqis down there. Something flared—a shoulder-launched SAM?
Shooting at him?
That did it. Mack pushed his stick in and pirouetted in the sky, kicking out diversionary flares. He’d run the motherfuckers over if he had to.
On the ground in Iraq
2050
THE ROTORS OF THE MH-60G PAVE HAWK SPEC OP HELO continued to spin as the Whiplash wounded were loaded in. The rotors made an odd whirling sound, a kind of low whistle, as if the Sikorsky herself were telling them to get a move on.
Powder helped Liu shoulder the litter into the helicopter as the door gunner let loose another burst in the general direction of the Iraqi ground troops. Something whizzed behind him, and Powder threw himself to the ground. The mountain shuddered, and the helicopter, hovering less than a foot off the dirt, reared to the side.
“Mortars!” he shouted. “Fucks have mortars!” He jumped up, saw Liu in front of him and grabbed him.
“Into the helicopter!” he shouted. He scooped up his gun from the ground. “Go! Go!”
Liu started to say something, but Powder just pushed him toward the Blackhawk. He heard another round of in-coming and dove forward down the slope.
“Get the helo off,” he yelled. “It’s a sitting duck!”
Aboard Wild Bronco,
over Iraq
2055
THE BASTARDS DUCKED AS HE CLOSED IN, BUT AS MACK approached the ground a mortar shell shot up toward the slope.
If he only had a stinking gun.
“Coyote AWACS—this is Bronco. Get that helo off the ground! Now! They’re going to get roasted. Go. Come on. No time to be a hero. Go! Take off. Jesus,” said Mack, still talking as he rolled back north.
“Bronco. There are two MiGs headed for you,” answered the AWACS controller. “Get out of there!”
“Hey, screw yourself,” said Mack, though he didn’t press the send button. “Think I’m a wimp or something?”
&n
bsp; On the ground in Iraq
2057
DANNY COULD SEE WHERE THEY WERE FIRING THE MORTAR from. He had a fragmentation grenade and thought he might be able to reach the mortar if he could get any sort of weight behind the throw. But that would expose him to the Iraqis in the ditch.
Stand up, toss the grenade as quickly as he could, duck back down, he told himself.
That would leave him with two smoke grenades. Use one to cover his retreat up the hillside. Use the other to deke them, give him a clear toss at the mortar.
A fresh burst of AK-47 bullets kicked through the nearby dirt. As the mortar whizzed again, Danny lobbed a smoke grenade in the direction of the ditch, waiting for it to land, judging—hoping—the Iraqis would see it and duck. He counted two seconds, then rose and wailed the fragmentation grenade at the men with the mortar.
His knee buckled with the throw. The grenade sailed only about twenty yards. As he fell his arms sailed out, spread-eagle, a rush of pain coming over him.
Danny swam back through the dirt, grabbing his gun and steadying his aim on the ditch. His eyes narrowed down to slits, compressed by a fresh wave of pain at the top of his head. He felt as if someone had taken a nail gun and plastered a dozen spikes through the top of his helmetless skull. He heard a sound like a vacuum, thought it must be the mortar, and fired wildly. He saw an Iraqi as the smoke wafted clear. The man turned toward him with a pistol, and Danny leveled his MP-5 and fired. The bullets spun him back, his pistol falling at his feet.
The mortar lay on the ground, beyond another body.
The Pave Hawk roared above somewhere. Other helicopters, other planes, gunfire—the noises jammed together. Danny stopped listening. Dirt tore at his eyes. He needed to rest; the sensation overwhelmed him.
Someone was behind him.
Danny spun so fast he lost his balance. An injured Iraqi had struggled to his feet two yards away. He held his hands out, weaponless.
Danny just barely caught himself from pressing the trigger. He wanted to—he felt no mercy, knew he’d be shown none if the situation was reversed. It was wildly dangerous not to fire, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill a man who had his arms up.
As Danny continued to stare at him, the Iraqi lowered his eyes. He kept his hands above his head.
A prisoner was the last thing he needed now. But he couldn’t shoot the SOB. Just couldn’t.
“Go,” Danny told him.
The man didn’t move.
“Go!” he shouted. He shot a few rounds into the air, yelling and screaming. “Go! Go! Go!” The Iraqi, terrified, finally began to move.
“Get the hell away from here!” shouted Danny. “Go!” The man finally seemed to understand. He began to run, looking over his shoulder after a few steps, ducking his head a bit as if in thanks. Then he put everything he had into his stride, running into the distance.
Okay, Danny thought. Okay. Now how the hell do I get out of here?
POWDER REACHED GUNNY AS GUNFIRE ERUPTED A FEW yards farther away, down near the road. There was too much smoke to see anything, but he figured Captain Freah had just taken out the mortar. He turned the Marine sergeant over as gently as he could, staring at him until he saw that he was definitely breathing.
“Hey,” mumbled the sergeant. “Didja get the fucker?”
“Who?” asked Powder.
“One of those bastards tried to flank us.” Powder craned his neck up. There was a body maybe ten yards across the slope.
“Any others?” Powder asked.
“Dunno. What happened to the captain?” Gunny gasped between the words.
“Probably around here somewhere.”
“Water?”
Powder gave the injured Marine a drink and looked over his wounds. He had been hit in the side and the arm and lost a lot of blood. How serious the wounds were was hard to tell, but it’d all be academic if they didn’t get the hell out of there ASAP.
Aboard Wild Bronco,
over Iraq
2059
MACK TRIED TO SORT ALL THE COMMOTION OUT OVER THE common radio circuit as he shadowed the highway. The MiGs had their afterburners lit and were two minutes away. Two F-15s had moved up to intercept but hadn’t gotten radar locks yet, the amateurs. The MH-60 had been hit but was still flying; its pilot proceeded to argue with the AWACS controller about what he should and shouldn’t do.
“Wild Bronco, you have your orders. Break ninety!”
“Bullshit. I’m not leaving guys there.” Mack passed the mortar area, saw that it had been neutralized. One of the Iraqis had even been captured.
Hell, he could put down, pick them up, and get the hell out of there before the Eagles even found the stinking MiGs.
So why not?
Why not indeed.
“Wild Bronco to Coyote—send the Blackhawk home,” said Mack. “I’ll pick up the rest of their passengers for them.”
On the ground in Iraq
2104
THE STACCATO POUNDING IN HIS SKULL GAVE WAY TO THE steadier drone of jackhammers as Danny edged back toward the road. He saw Powder in the distance, just beyond the edge of smoke, waving and yelling something.
What the hell was he saying?
“Duck, Cap! Duck!”
Danny whirled in time to see the Bronco hop once on the highway then beeline for him. He started to back up, then fell on his rump. Grit flew over his face; the next thing he knew, Powder was helping him up. Mack Smith leaned from the open canopy about twenty yards down the roadway.
Smith yelled something but it was drowned out by the whine of the motors. Danny ran through a cloud of dust to the plane, then realized he’d lost Powder somewhere along the way. As he turned to find him, he remembered Gunny, poor dead Gunny. He put his hands to his face, funneling away the noise and grit, getting his bearings.
They had to get the Marine out, give him a decent burial at least. He started back, then heard someone yelling behind him—Mack Smith maybe, telling him to get the hell into the aircraft.
“I can’t leave a man, even if he’s dead.”
“Ain’t no one dead, Cap,” shouted Powder. Danny spun around and saw the Whiplash team member with a large green sack over his shoulder. “We got to get!” Gunny—in Powder’s arms.
Danny’s hands fumbled with the latch to the rear compartment. Finally inside, he pulled Gunny’s limp body up toward the primitive bench seat. There was no time to put on restraints as the aircraft began to move; he wrapped one arm around a strap and the other around the Marine, huddled on the floor as the aircraft suddenly became weightless.
“You saved my sorry ass again,” said Gunny in the darkness. “You got the son of a bitch.”
“Who?”
“The Iraqi that tried to flank us. Now I owe you again, huh? I thought I evened it out.”
“It’s all even,” said Danny.
“SERGEANT, YOU TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE BACK THERE AND I’m hitting the eject button. You got that?”
“You can eject me from up there?”
“Damn straight,” lied Mack. “You touch anything, no shit, boom, you’re outta here.”
“This plane’s got an eject button too? I thought only the Ruskies put them in. There was one in the helicopter I flew.”
“The Ruskies got it from us,” said Mack. “Keep your hands off the stick and enjoy the ride. And if you decide to puke, don’t lean forward.”
Aboard Quicksilver,
over Iraq
2115
CHRIS FERRIS REMINDED BREANNA THAT THEY HAD USED their last AMRAAMs on the helicopters.
“Acknowledged,” she told him. They had the two bandits on their nose now at eighteen miles, closing quickly.
“Eagles still can’t find them.”
“We’re going to take them out, Chris,” she said.
“How?”
“We’ll suck them off and nail them with the Stinger air mines,” she said.
“Uh, Bree, we’re in Quicksilver, remember? We don’t have Stingers.”
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“We’ll think of something. Hold on.”
Aboard Raven,
over Iraq
2124
THE TEMPTATION TO GRAB THE CONTROLS FROM FENTRESS was overwhelming, but Zen knew the delay as C3 cycled through the authentication made it pointless. It was all up to Curly boy.
Curly, God. Like Girly. What a horrible name for the poor kid. Shit.
“Quicksilver will take the lead MiG,” Zen told him, staring at the main video screen. “Keep on your course.
You nail the second SOB when you close. Hang with it.”
“What if the Eagles get a lock?”
“Don’t worry about anybody but yourself,” Zen told him. “Breathe slower.”
Fentress nodded. Zen could smell the sweat pouring from his body. The kid was nervous as hell—but he’d done all right against the helicopters, and he was going to do all right here.
“Three seconds,” Zen said, anticipating the computer.
“I’ll tell you—”
“Yo, I got it, damn it.”
Zen felt his anger rile up—who the hell was Fentress talking to?
Then he realized it was the voice he’d been waiting to hear since the kid joined the program.
“Kick butt,” he told his pupil.
Aboard Quicksilver,
over Iraq
2128
THE MAMMOTH PLANE TUMBLED OVER ITS WING, SCREAMING toward the ground like a peregrine diving on a kill. At somewhere over 300,000 pounds with her fuel and passengers, she was more than ten times as heavy as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum she dove toward. But her sleek, carbon resin wings and long fuselage were as limber as the fighter jet’s, and her pilot’s skill more than made up for any difference in the sheer performance of the two planes.
“Changing course and coming for us,” said Chris.
“Now what?”
“Torbin, are you tracking that MiG’s radar?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Bring up the weapon board and lock the Tacit Plus on him,” said Bree.
“Um, can I do that?”
“You tell me.”
“Bree, that’ll never work,” said Chris.
“Do it, Torbin,” said Breanna.
“It’s asking me to override,” said the radar weapons officer. “I’m going for it. Yeah, we got it.”