by Bob Mayer
But this other stuff that his G-2—intelligence officer—had put together. Add it all up and it didn’t make any sense. The message to the Pan-African forces ordering General Nystroom to halt prior to Cummings’s own halt. The follow-on plan to seize the diamond areas.
And now this information on a Russian booster rocket coming down in Angola back in May, connected with SATCOM traffic in the same place now.
“All right.” Cummings raised his voice and everyone in the War Room ceased his or her activity. “I need a total reevaluation on the situation in Angola. Drop your preconceptions about the strategic scenario. Look at all this new information and give me some possibilities. If this disease is man-made I want to know who made it. Who stands to gain by it. And I want options to bring some hurt down on the heads of the sons of bitches if we can pinpoint them!”
Northeast Angola, 17 June
Raindrops pelted Quinn. He had quit using his night vision goggles because nothing could help a person see in this. He was back to the basics he’d learned as a young lieutenant in the Canadian army: compass direction and pace count. He looked down, then knelt and felt with his hand. Dirt, no grass. He squinted into the dark. It appeared that the runway ran perpendicular to their path.
“We’re here!” he yelled, reaching out and grabbing the back of Trent’s backpack. The signal was passed and the four men gathered in close.
“How will we know when the aircraft lands?” Bentley asked.
Quinn was shivering now—a down spike in his fever—as water rolled down his body. “If I knew what type of aircraft, that would help. We might have to wait until this thunderstorm passes and the pilot gets an opening. When it lands,” he pointed, “we’ll see it. Don’t worry. Let’s just hope it gets here.”
He hadn’t told Bentley about the FM frequency. Quinn had his survival radio in an ammo pocket on his vest. He was using the same earplug that he did for listening to SNN. So far nothing. His stomach twitched and he leaned over as he vomited into the mud.
The pilot of the Gull was circling on the edge of the thunderstorm, just above stall speed, creeping east with this part of the storm. There was another thunderstorm behind him and he estimated he’d have about a five-minute window to hit the landing strip, make the pickup, and get back in the air.
Eight kilometers to the east, Riley and the others in the helicopter listened to Colonel Harris relay the information from the NSA about the rocket booster.
“Could this thing be some sort of space bug?” Conner immediately asked. They all turned and looked at Dr. Kieling.
“Any bug would have burned up coming down,” Kieling said. “Besides, the space program has never.. .” He paused as a thought struck him. “Zero g.”
“What?”
“Zero g,” Kieling repeated. “Things work differently under zero gravity. Biology—physics—at the molecular level the rules change.” He was tapping his forehead. “I read a paper—I’m trying to remember who wrote it. It was about manipulation of the RNA.
“There’s a thing called ‘transduction.’ A virus infects a bacterial cell that has a toxin...” Kieling shook his head. “Forget about all that, it’s not important right now. But this is starting to make some sense. The blisters on the red rashes. I think that’s the way the virus moves—the blister explodes, the virus goes into the air. And Z is different than, say, Ebola because it lasts in the air. It holds together under ultraviolet light longer. And zero g would be the only way to manipulate the virus to get that effect. You could...” Kieling came to another halt. “Yeah. It all fits. I see it now. I see it.”
“Does that mean you can cure it?” Sergeant Lome asked, caught up in Kieling’s excitement.
“Uh, well, no. But—”
“But shit!” Lome yelled. “What the fuck are we doing, then?”
“Shut up,” Riley said.
“Fuck you!” Lome stood, as well as he could in the cramped space of the helicopter. He leaned over Riley. “Fuck you. Fuck all you assholes. We’re dying! Don’t you understand that?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Riley said.
“I don’t care—” Lome began. The anger on his face changed to surprise as Riley uncoiled from his seat, left palm leading in a strike right into Lome’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.
Riley didn’t pause, following that with another similar blow with his right palm, causing Lome to double over. Riley then smashed his left elbow into Lome’s right temple and the team sergeant was out cold.
“Strap him in,” he ordered. He put his headset back on. “Anything from the Spectre?” he asked Lieutenant Vickers.
“Negative.”
“Keep the engine running.”
In the Spectre gunship the storm didn’t matter in the slightest. The four powerful turboprop engines cut through the wind and rain and the men in the inside were on task, particularly the targeting officer, watching his TV set. The thermal imaging also wasn’t affected by the weather. He could see as clearly as if it were broad daylight.
They were flying low, doing shallow S-turns. They’d started at the Black Hawk and were ranging out in a cloverleaf pattern, always coming back and then back out at a slightly different angle.
In the back of the AWACS, a young technician stared at her screen. She played with her computer for a little while, then she reached up to the rack above it and pulled down a three-ring binder. She flipped through, searching. Finding what she was looking for, she tapped the man next to her. “Hey, Parker, align with me.”
Parker switched to the same radar frequency. “What do you have, Cordelli?”
“Just watch.”
They waited. “What am I looking for?” Parker asked after a minute.
“There! See it?”
“A shadow,” Parker said. “There’s a thunderstorm outside, in case you didn’t notice.”
Cordelli ignored him. “Look what happens when I let the computer project a cross-section based on the shadow.”
“What the hell is that?” Parker asked.
Cordelli handed him the binder. “You haven’t been doing your homework. Colonel Harris wouldn’t be pleased.”
Parker read. “The Lockheed Q-Star. It says here that it’s an experimental aircraft, and not in production. Hell, it says this thing was tested back in the early seventies.”
“That doesn’t mean someone couldn’t copy it and make their own,” Cordelli said. “And they didn’t have the radar technology and computer systems we have on this plane back in the seventies. It would be invisible back then. But it isn’t now.”
Parker handed back the binder. “Your find, you do the honors with the colonel.”
The Gull pilot knew he was very close now. He pressed the send button on his stick. “Horseman, this is Gull. Over.”
Quinn sat up, ignoring the pain in his stomach and head. He fumbled, then pulled out the radio. “Gull, this is Horseman. Over.” He squinted up into the rain. It was getting lighter. The worst was passing.
“Horseman, this is Gull. I’ll be down in three minutes. Be ready to load fast. Over.”
“Roger that. Out.” Quinn stood with difficulty. “Aircraft’s inbound. Let’s get ready.”
“Got him!” Colonel Harris called out. “Got them both!” He had the small airplane on screen for sure now and they had pinpointed the FM ground source.
“Direct in the Spectre and the Black Hawk,” he ordered.
Vickers had them in the air even before the message from the AWACS was complete. “We’ll be there in two minutes,” she said.
Inside the Gull, the pilot held the stick between his knees as he pulled the bolt back on the MP-5 submachine gun. He only had room for one man, and that man was Bentley.
The pilot of the Spectre gunship leveled off. “What do you see?” he asked his targeting officer.
“I’ve got them on the ground. Four people.” The man played with his camera controls. “I have the plane too. Off to our left. About a half a mile away.
”
“Eagle, this is One One. What are your orders? Over.”
Colonel Harris didn’t really understand what was going on, but the latest he was hearing from Washington was not pleasant. And there was the no-fly rule.
“Put it down. Over.”
The pilot of the Spectre blinked. “Say again. Over.”
“Shoot down the aircraft. Over.”
As far as the pilot knew, no Spectre had ever even engaged another aircraft, never mind shot one down. “Keegan,” he asked his targeting officer over the intercom, “did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” Keegan said. “Far out. We’re a fighter now. The jet-jocks will shit when we tell them this. Give me level flight, azimuth, two one seven degrees.”
The pilot of the Gull saw the edge of the runway through his NVGs, just ahead. He nudged the stick forward, descending. He had about a second and a half to try and figure out what was happening as a solid line of tracers appeared just in front of him before the plane—and him with it—was torn to shreds by a combination of 20 and 40mm rounds.
“What the hell is that?” Trent called out as they watched the tracers streaking overhead, parallel to the ground.
“Gull, this is Horseman,” Quinn called into the radio. “Gull, this is Horseman!” There was only static.
They all turned to look as a Black Hawk exploded out of the rainy dark and flew by.
“There they are!” Riley cried out. “Put us down!”
They landed hard, a hundred meters from the four men Riley had spotted on the flyby.
“What’s going on?” Bentley asked.
“Jesus, these fucking people want us bad,” Trent said.
The radio dropped from Quinn’s fingers into the mud. His head drooped on his shoulders for a long second, then came back up and he looked around. There was just the slightest hint of dawn in the east and the clouds appeared to be clearing.
The third man from Quinn’s patrol was lying in the mud, black vomit coming out of his mouth, blood seeping out of his eyes, nose, and ears.
“This is it,” Quinn said.
“It, what?” Bentley demanded.
“Ever wonder where you were going to die?” Quinn asked. “Well, this is it.”
Chapter 17
Northeast Angola, 17 June
“Do you have us fixed? Over,” Riley asked into the boom mike.
“Roger that,” the Spectre replied. “We’ve got the Black Hawk clear. We’ll track each individual as you come off. You have four people, about one hundred meters due south of your position. We can finish them for you. Over.”
“Negative,” Riley replied. “We need them alive. There is something you can do, though.” Riley quickly finished giving instructions, then signaled for the other men on the helicopter to move out.
Riley hopped off and slid through the ground fog and the half-light of a sun just clearing the horizon, weapon at the ready. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Comsky, Oswald, and Tiller on line with him. The sound of the Black Hawk’s engine was fading behind them as it shut down.
Riley sidled to the right, getting off the mud of the runway and into the waist-high grass. He got down on his belly and began slithering forward, his clothing immediately soaked by the wet grass, the others following.
When he had made about fifty meters, he halted. “Stand up,” he yelled. “Throw down your weapons and put your hands on top of your heads.”
“Fuck you!” A burst of semiautomatic fire ripped a few feet over Riley’s head.
Quinn looked at Trent. Trent returned the look with a glare. “I’m not going to be taken in like some animal.” The NCO fired another burst from his AK-47. “I can’t be locked up.”
“We’ve got a chance,” Quinn said. “They want to talk!” He looked at the third man. He was unconscious now, blood seeping out of every pore, covered in black vomit.
A noise caught Quinn’s attention. Bentley was turning a knob on one of the cases. “What are you doing?”
“Orders,” Bentley said.
“Everyone just fucking freeze,” Quinn hissed. “I’m in charge here and I’ll make the decisions.”
Bentley didn’t stop. Quinn rolled twice to get close, then slapped Bentley’s hands away from the case. “I said stop.”
“Skeleton—” Bentley began.
“Skeleton isn’t here,” Quinn said.
“I ain’t going in, mate,” Trent said. He began to stand. Quinn grabbed him and pulled him down.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I won’t be captured! You know that. We agreed.”
Quinn nodded. “Yeah, I know we agreed. But we aren’t captured yet, so cool your jets.” He looked down. His own hands were shaking.
Quinn didn’t have time to dwell on his hands, though, because Bentley began fiddling with the case. Quinn finally understood that he was working on a small keypad—activating a destruct device. Quinn drew his knife, grabbed Bentley’s right hand, and slammed the knifepoint through the center of the palm, pinning it to the ground.
“Hands up!” the same voice called out, as Bentley screamed, which caused Quinn to smile at the absurdity.
“Who are you?” Quinn called out.
“U.S. Army.”
“Why do you want us? We have nothing against you.”
“We want to talk!”
“Talk?” Quinn returned. “You shot our plane down.”
“We’ll shoot you if you don’t put your hands up.”
A line of tracers came down from the sky and tore into the earth less than ten meters away from Quinn’s position.
“Next burst is on top of your position,” the voice called out.
“We’re fucked,” Trent said.
“We were already fucked,” Quinn amended. He reached over. The third man was dead.
“You can’t surrender that case,” Bentley said through a grimace of pain.
“Oh, yeah,” Quinn said. “So we blow it up and then we don’t have shit to deal with these people.”
“You can’t deal this!” Bentley said, his one good hand reaching for the case.
“Skeleton’s got you brainwashed,” Quinn said. “Diamonds aren’t worth that much.” He raised his voice. “You want the imagery, we’ll give it to you, if you’ll give us free escort to the border.”
Riley looked at Kieling, who had come up during the exchange. “Imagery? What’s he talking about?”
“I don’t know what they might have,” Kieling said. “But we need to see it, whatever it is.”
“All right,” Riley called out.
“That was too easy,” Trent noted. “They could just kill us and take the cases.”
“Maybe they don’t want to damage it,” Quinn said. “Or maybe they’re afraid we’ll blow it up like smart-ass here was trying to do.” He could hear the drone of an airplane overhead and knew there was no way out. “We have no choice.”
“You can’t!” Bentley cried out. “It’s not what you think.”
Quinn reached over and with one move withdrew the knife from Bentley’s hand. “Next time, I won’t be so nice,” he said. Bentley tucked his bleeding hand into his stomach. “Move and I’ll kill you,” Quinn continued.
“Stand up!” Riley called out again. He was relieved when a man stood, a Sterling submachine gun in his hands.
“Put the weapon down,” Riley called out.
“You’ve got the big gun in the sky,” the man said. “All we’ve got is our personal arms. You want to talk, we talk like we are now.”
Riley glanced at Kieling, who shrugged. “Your call,” Kieling said.
“I’ll meet you halfway.” Riley stood up. He let the M-16 hang by its sling and noticed that the other man did the same with his Sterling. Riley walked forward—the other man doing the same—until they were five feet apart.
“I’m Quinn.”
“Riley.”
Quinn looked Riley up and down. “I don’t see a uniform.”
; “I don’t see one either,” Riley replied. The other man looked ill, with the beginning of a red rash running down one side of his neck— which didn’t surprise Riley. Everyone out here seemed to be sick. Was sick, Riley amended in his mind.
“You want the imagery?” Quinn asked.
Riley didn’t have a clue what he wanted other than answers. “Yes.”
“What assurance can you give me that you’ll let us go?” Quinn asked.
“What assurance could I give?” Riley asked in turn.
Quinn smiled despite his pain. “Good answer, Yank.”
Riley had had enough with sparring. He also was surprised at Quinn’s attitude. Where did the man think he was going to go now? The border with Zaire was closed. The world was now aware of the quarantine on Z. If Riley was in Quinn’s place then—it suddenly clicked in Riley’s brain. He had been in Quinn’s position before. And when he was there he had not been told the truth about what was going on.
“You know you’re sick?” Riley asked.
Quinn frowned. “Yeah.”
“Do you know how sick?”
Quinn hesitated. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“You’ll be dead inside seventy-two hours,” Riley said. He was surprised when Quinn nodded.
“Aye. I expected as much.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a picture. He handed it to Riley. “We hit some rebels on the eleventh. She was being carried. I knew something was wrong then.”
Riley looked at the young woman, ravaged by disease and bullets. Six days ago—just about right.
“The booster you were just at,” Riley said. “We think it had something to do with the disease.”
This time Quinn did show surprise. “Booster? I was told it was a satellite.”
“Who told you?”
Quinn looked over his shoulder. “You say this has something to do with the disease?”
Riley nodded.
Quinn turned. “Come with me.”
Riley hesitated. “Can I bring someone?”
“Who?”
“A scientist who specializes in viruses.”