Raven Strike d-13 Page 10

  “I doubt anyone has this ability,” said Rubeo flatly. “We would see it in other weapons.”

  “So no one is this advanced?”

  “The Israeli drones can’t do a third of what the early versions of the Flighthawk could handle,” said Rubeo. “And I would use that as a measuring stick.”

  “What about us?” said Reid. “Could we do it?”

  Rubeo took another sip of his water, then set it down and leaned forward on the table.

  “Have we done it?” asked the scientist.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Reid. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m concerned about the implications,” explained Reid.

  “As well you should be.”

  “Can safety precautions be built into it? The paper says that they would be ineffectual.”

  “Potentially ineffectual,” said Rubeo. “I can’t make a judgment without knowing much more about the specifics of what we’re talking about.”

  Fair enough, thought Reid.

  “There would be physical limitations, depending on the hardware. And different contingencies. I’m sorry to be vague — the portability issue is not trivial, but it can be overcome. Conceivably.”

  “If it were up to you, would you allow such a weapon to be used?” asked Reid.

  Now Rubeo’s lips curled up in the faintest suggestion of a smile — a rare occurrence.

  “I don’t make those sorts of decisions,” he answered. “In my experience, it is a very rare weapon that, once created, is not used.”

  Chapter 12

  Duka

  Danny jumped up an instant after the explosives blew out the panel. It was a neat penetration, a literal door for the Whiplash team to run through. The first trooper inside tossed a flash-bang grenade in the direction of the lone occupant. The man fell from the chair where he’d been sleeping; two Whiplashers reached him before the room stopped reverberating. One put his boot against the man’s back and his gun against his head, just in case he had any notion of moving. The other trussed his arms and legs with thick zip ties.

  “Where the hell is the plane?” yelled Thomas “Red” Roberts, who’d been tasked to secure the UAV. “All I see is the pickup truck.”

  Danny nudged Red out of the way. He was right. The only thing inside the building was the truck.

  Danny flipped the shield on his helmet up. A single lightbulb near the front threw dim rays around the large room. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he pulled the signal receiving unit from his pocket and turned it on. The device was relatively simple — it beeped as it tracked the transmitter, the signals getting closer and closer together.

  It was a solid tone.

  He went over and peered over the back of the truck. There was a small jumble of what looked like debris near the cab. He picked it up — it was a hunk of plastic with some circuitry attached. Undoubtedly the tracking transmitter.

  Damn.

  “Movement in Building Two,” said MY-PID.

  “Two, three people moving to the front,” added Turk, who was watching the feed.

  “Osprey up,” said Danny. “Red, Marcus — search this damn place.”

  “Already on it, Cap,” said Marcus. He was another of the new recruits, a former Ranger, also trained as a helicopter pilot. Danny hoped to use that specialty in the future.

  There was a burst of gunfire from the front of the building.

  “Boston?”

  “They ducked back inside,” said Boston. “Didn’t look like they had weapons.”

  The Osprey’s heavy rotors pounded the ground as it approached. Red went to the passenger side door of the pickup truck.

  “Wait!” yelled Danny. “Check—”

  His warning was too late — the truck exploded as Red pulled open the door.

  Chapter 13

  Walter Reed Army Hospital

  Washington, D.C.

  The past was gone, erased and buried from his memory, shocked out of him, drugged away. The past was gone and the future was blank; only the present remained, only the present was real.

  Mark Stoner shifted in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

  What was the present, though? Working out? Getting better?

  Better from what?

  It was all a jumble, a knot of torn thoughts.

  Zen. Who was Zen?

  A friend. Someone he knew.

  But why was he in a wheelchair? And what was a friend, exactly?

  Someone he saw a lot.

  What was he supposed to say to him? What was he supposed to do?

  Stoner leaned to the side. Dr. Esrang had given him a radio. He turned it on and began flipping through the stations.

  “… Two out, and here comes Granderson. He flied out his last at bat. The former Yankee is batting just.230 this year…”

  The words were strangely familiar. Stoner tried to puzzle out what they meant.

  Baseball.

  He knew that. The game.

  He knew everything about it, didn’t he? He could picture what was happening in his head. He saw the batter swing and miss.

  A memory floated up from deep within his consciousness. He was at a game with his grandfather.

  His grandfather!

  There was a past.

  Baseball.

  Stoner folded his arms across his chest and listened as the game progressed.

  Chapter 14

  Duka

  The explosion blew Red back into Danny. Both men fell against the floor. The explosive charge was relatively small, and their body armor absorbed most of the blow. Still, there was enough of a shock to knock both of them out for a second. Danny came to with Flash leaning over him.

  “Cap, you OK?”

  “Yeah,” managed Danny. He got to his feet with Flash’s help. Red was shaken, but uninjured except for some cuts and bruises — the biggest one to his pride.

  “Nothing in here,” said Flash. “You want to evac?”

  “Right. Let’s get out of here. Take the prisoner with us. Both of them — get the guy Sugar knocked out.”

  “On it.”

  They left through the hole at the side. Boston and Sugar joined them as they crossed over the railroad tracks, running into a small clearing where the Osprey could land and pick them up. Danny could smell the exhaust in the wash from the Osprey’s rotors as the aircraft swooped toward them, its engine nacelles angled upward in helicopter mode.

  His head was pounding. He paused as the aircraft settled down, counting his men to make sure they were all there. Flash had cut their prisoner’s leg restraints away, but he held his man by the arms as they moved double-time toward the rear of the Osprey. The prisoner was small and skinny, a young teenager.

  Sugar had the other POW on her back. This one was tall — close to six feet — but just as skinny as the other.

  Both were probably useless, Danny realized. Whoever had booby-trapped the truck probably figured they were disposable.

  “We’re all here, Cap,” said Boston, taking up the rear.

  “All right, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What happened?” asked Boston as they ran up the MV-22’s ramp.

  “They booby-trapped the door of the truck and we missed it,” said Danny. “We were lucky. And sloppy.”

  Chapter 15

  Duka

  Li Han crouched at the edge of the culvert, watching as the Osprey rose. Its wings began to tip forward; it seemed to stutter to the right, and for a moment he thought it would crash. But the stutter was an optical illusion — the aircraft pivoted, turning away smoothly as it accelerated into the distance.

  He had a clear shot for a Stinger missile.

  But even if he’d had an antiaircraft weapon ready, it would have been foolish to attack. The aircraft was undoubtedly equipped with a detector and countermeasures, and even if he did succeed in taking it down, he’d be telling them he was still nearby. Better to remain a mystery.

&
nbsp; Afraid he might be given away by the locals, Li Han had slipped out of the warehouse with Amara and most of the others, taking over a house about a quarter of a mile away and working on the UAV there. But even that had seemed too close, too small a precaution — as soon as he’d heard the explosion, Li Han had taken Amara with him and run from the building, using a door in the basement.

  Now he felt just a bit like a coward.

  But caution was always in order, especially when dealing with the Americans.

  “What now?” asked Amara behind him.

  “We’ll go back inside the house,” said Li Han, thinking. “They won’t attack again tonight.”

  They would be watching. He’d have to lay low for a while.

  What if he sold the UAV back to the Americans? They’d certainly be motivated buyers.

  Amara might be able to broker the deal. He was a little puny physically, but he was smart. And the sight of Swal being shot hadn’t unnerved him; he’d disposed of the body quietly. He seemed to realize that Li Han had done it for him, to reinforce his authority with the others.

  “Are we going?” asked Amara. “How long can we stay in this city?”

  “Your English is getting better all the time,” said Li Han.

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  Li Han smiled to him, then turned and led the way back to the house.

  Chapter 16

  Room 4, CIA Campus

  Reid flicked off the viewer as the Osprey took off. He didn’t like monitoring the missions; there was too much temptation to micromanage. When he was in the field, he would never have allowed it.

  But times were different now. The best he could do was not interfere.

  He was about to call Breanna when the computer announced that she was holding on the line.

  “You’re psychic,” he told her, picking up the phone. “I was just about to contact you.”

  “Do we have it?”

  “Regrettably, no. The tracking transmitter was removed from the body of the UAV. It was booby-trapped, but we had no injuries.”

  “Well that’s something, at least.”

  “We’re reasonably sure that the UAV itself remains in Duka. But at the moment I think even that’s a guess. Nuri is planning to go in tomorrow and check around. I don’t know that there’s much alternative.”

  “The replacement satellite should be on station in a few hours,” said Breanna. “In the meantime, I’ve found a Global Hawk to augment the Tigershark so Turk can get some rest. We’ll have surveillance, but no connection to MY-PID.”

  “That shouldn’t be an immediate problem.”

  “We may need more force there,” added Breanna. “And I’m going to get more of their equipment over there. This is more serious than we thought at first.”

  “The military side is your prerogative,” said Reid. “But I can’t emphasize enough that we have to be very quiet about it. If the Iranians or the Chinese or anyone else sees we’re making a big fuss, they may get nosy. Even if we recover Raven at that point, we may have jeopardized the weapon.”

  “I understand, and Danny does, too. Did you talk to Ray Rubeo?”

  “I did.” Reid stopped pacing. “I’m going to talk to Edmund again. Based on that conversation… Based on that conversation, I may have to talk to the President. A number of things trouble me.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “I think under the circumstances it would be best if I handled that myself,” said Reid. “I still don’t have the whole picture. Whether Edmund will give it to me or not remains to be seen.”

  Chapter 17

  Duka

  Milos Kimko stood in the shadow of the small hut, watching the aircraft fade into the distance. He was nearly three miles from where it had landed, but even without his binoculars he could tell it was an Osprey: only the American aircraft could move so quickly from a hover.

  And what were the Americans doing in this forsaken corner of Africa? Taking sides with one of the two rebel groups who shared control of the town? Simply meeting with them?

  Possibly. But what to make, then, of the explosion that had woken him?

  The Russian rubbed his eyes. He was tired, physically worn by his job to assess the rebel movements in eastern Sudan. The SVR — Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, or Foreign Intelligence Service — had sent him to Khartoum a few weeks before, and he’d been traveling in the brush ever since.

  He had a cover, and a side job, as an arms dealer. It was an excellent entrée to the locals, given the prices he was able to offer. The SVR subsidized the price; in fact, Kimko suspected his supervisors were keeping a portion of the money he sent back for themselves.

  The sound of the Osprey’s engines faded. Kimko debated with himself. Should he go and see what they’d been up to now, or should he wait for the morning?

  He’d been planning on continuing north at dawn, but that could be changed; it wasn’t like anyone there was setting their watches by him.

  But why not take a look around now? He had nothing better to do, truly. The fresh air felt good.

  It would also take his mind off the fact that he desperately wanted a drink.

  Kimko went back inside. The round hut was tiny, a one room refuge that combined a bedroom, sitting area, and primitive kitchen in the space of four or five square meters. He went to his knapsack on the far side of the bed and took out his gun and holster; he picked up his thick sweater from the floor where it had fallen. He was still losing weight — even with the sweater and the shoulder holster, the jacket hung from his shoulders like an oversized bathrobe, two or three sizes too large. Not long ago it had been tight.

  But that’s what Africa did to you. It shriveled you to nothing. It was terrible to foreigners, but just as hard on the natives; everyone he met had an empty look in their eyes, as if their souls had drilled through their skulls and fled.

  A pile of clothes lay at the foot of the bed. Kimko took a five euro bill from his wallet and dropped it on the clothes. Hopefully, the woman who owned the clothes would be gone before he returned.

  Chapter 18

  Western Ethiopia

  The Whiplash team was quiet the entire way back to Ethiopia. Even Sugar, who normally could have been counted on for a dozen wise cracks and half as many put-downs, said nothing.

  Red, who’d been closest to the IED when it went off, had been cut in several places and badly bruised, but was spared more serious injury by his helmet and armored vest. A large piece of shrapnel had sliced past the outer fabric into the carbon-boron layer, exposing the intricate web of the protective material. He stared at the slice the whole trip back.

  “I’m sorry, Cap — I checked for wires and didn’t see anything,” he told Danny after they hopped out of the Osprey. “I looked underneath, in the back — I didn’t see explosives in the seat or anything — I just — I don’t know.”

  “Forget it,” Danny told him. “Focus on the mission.”

  “Lettin’ him off easy,” said Boston, watching Red head toward the hut the team had taken over for quarters.

  “The bomb kicked him harder in the butt than I could,” answered Danny.

  “I doubt he checked it right,” said Boston. “His helmet should’ve picked something up, even if it was a grenade.”

  “I’m sure he forgot to reset it inside,” said Danny. “He won’t forget next time. That’s what counts.”

  The Whiplash helmets had embedded chemical sniffers designed to warn of IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. But these could easily be confused in a combat situation, where the detection threshold was fairly high — you didn’t want your own grenade or explosive pack setting off the alarm. So the settings could be dialed back, or what the designers called “normalized,” with a reading taken before the actual operation. That reading was supposed to pick up the presence of the chemicals already in the group making the assault. That reading set the threshold for subsequent readings. Roughly speaking, the gear would see that the team had
twelve ounces of PETN before the action, and the chemical sniffers would sound the alert only when a thirteenth was detected.

  In the situation inside the warehouse, the helmet should have been reset before the truck was examined. This took up to ninety seconds, and in the heat of battle was often forgotten. But there were other reasons the explosive could have missed, and Danny saw no point in calling one of his team members a liar.

  “Whoever set the bomb was pretty smart,” he told Boston. “He’s a couple of steps ahead of us.”

  “I guess.”

  “Has to be their Mao Man, Li Han.”

  “I agree.”

  “Put the prisoners in separate tents,” Danny told him. “I’ll get Nuri and we’ll talk to them.”

  “You got it, Cap. Hey, heads up — storm headed our way.”

  Boston pointed toward the small huts. Melissa Ilse, right arm in a sling, was striding in their direction, moving at a speed that clearly indicated she wasn’t pleased.

  Danny kept up his own deliberate pace toward the main building. “Ms. Ilse, what can I do for you?”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “I didn’t know I was your alarm clock.”

  “Listen, Colonel…”

  She took hold of his right arm. As Danny turned toward her, Melissa’s glare reminded him of a look his wife had given him when he told her he wasn’t running for Congress. Ever.

  Not a good memory, that.

  “I’m in charge of this operation here, Colonel,” said Melissa. “This is my op.”

  “No, Ms. Ilse, I’m afraid—”

  “Melissa.”

  “Right. This is a Whiplash operation. I’m in charge.”

  “You’re supposed to help me. Help.”

  “I really don’t care to argue.”

  Danny started walking again. She fell in next to him.

  “Obviously, you didn’t recover the UAV.”