Wings of Fire pm-10 Page 28

  But it was not such a journey this time. Instead of traveling himself in a different world, dimension, or time, he was a spectator this time, watching events happen. That was unusual-certainly not impossible or unheard of, since the soul has no beginning and no end-but why couldn't he watch it as well as experience it?

  He awoke with a start-also not an usual occurrence. He glanced at his watch and realized with relief that his meditation lasted almost exactly twenty minutes, as it should have. So why did he feel so odd?

  He knew why he felt that way-he felt it for a long time now, ever since the Turkey-Ukraine-Russia conflict over the Black Sea, ever since die raid against Pavel Kazakov's base in Romania. He knew what was happening.

  "Patrick," he spoke.

  MUNKHAFAD AL-QATTARAH LOWLANDS,

  THIRTY-TWO MILES SOUTHWEST

  MERSA MATRUH, EGYPT

  THAT SAME TIME

  The gas had run out, both in their vehicles and in the men themselves. Patrick and the rest of the Night Stalkers had taken shelter in yet another complex of oil wells-these appeared to be bombed out rather than run dry. They provided minimal cover: Chris Wohl had the men dig foxholes in the burning sand to conceal themselves as much as possible and wait for rescue.

  They were all exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Patrick told them about the detonation over Mersa Matruh. They had received no other reports from anyonethe electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear device had electrified the atmosphere so badly that no satellite transmissions could get in or out…

  "Patrick."

  Or so he thought-apparently now the satellite transceivers implanted in then" bodies were up and running again.

  He recognized the voice immediately, of course-and his next move was also immediate: "Cancel Thorn to Patrick." And the voice went silent.

  It was the one thing that kept Patrick and the other Night Stalkers out of prison after their first series of raids the year before: They were still tied into the subcutaneous microtransceiver system they had received while working at the Air Force's High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center in Nevada-and the President of the United States got one too, a tiny rivet-sized wireless biotransceiver injected into a shoulder, powered by a radioisotope power supply worn as an anklet. The satellite transceiver allowed global communications, tracking, biofunction monitoring, and data transmission, although the user could selectively cut off individual functions.

  This was the first time the President of the United States had activated his transceiver-and it startled Patrick completely. But what surprised him even more was to hear: "Patrick. Talk to me." Even though Patrick had instructed the transceiver satellite server to cut out the President, he was still coming through!

  "What is it, Mr. President?" Patrick finally responded.

  "I'm sorry about Paul," Thorn said. The transmission was scratchy, but the emotion in the President's voice was still evident, still genuine. "I know you loved him, and that it hurt you to have him go into battle with you."

  Patrick immediately recognized the subtle query-he was hunting for information-but Patrick didn't have the energy to try to resist an interrogation right now. "Someone had to go in and stop the Libyans," he responded. "You won't do it."

  "What else happened, Patrick?" Thorn asked. "Why didn't you come home with your brother?" No reply. The President's eyes narrowed, thinking hard-and then they widened in absolute horror. "My God, not Wendy. Was she caught in the attack on your ship? Was she… oh, no… was she one of the prisoners sent to Mersa Matruh? Oh God, Patrick…"

  "Mr. President, soldiers are resting here, preparing for battle," Patrick said woodenly. "You know the old saying-lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way."

  "And you think Kevin Martindale is your leader?"

  Patrick had to close his eyes against the pain of the dart thrust through his heart. "Damn you, Thorn!" he cried against clenched teeth. The other Night Stalkers turned toward him, but no one approached-they seemed to instantly know whom he was talking with. Patrick knew that, again, Thomas Thorn the hippie-dippie president had cut right to the heart of the matter.

  Patrick didn't believe in this fight. They were fighting for money, and that was not a reason to kill and die. Worse, he had accepted the assignment, even though he had not only the power but the responsibility to refuse it. Even worse than that-he had allowed his wife and his younger brother to follow him. Now one was dead, and the other was missing and probably dead in the nuclear explosion at Mersa Matruh. He would burn in hell for all eternity for what he had done-and he knew it, and Thorn knew it too.

  "I'm sorry, Patrick."

  "You have access to the same information we do!" Patrick cried out. "You know what's going on out here! And yet you decided to do nothing! I did it because there's a battle that needs to be fought over here, Thorn! What are you waiting for?"

  "I hope one day you'll understand why," Thorn replied. "I'm still not going to do anything, not unless the people of Egypt want our help."

  "What about leadership, Thorn?" Patrick retorted angrily. "What about justice and freedom and the strong protecting the weak? Basic stuff we both learned in kindergarten! How about believing in something and standing up for it?"

  "That's exactly what I'm doing, Patrick," Thorn said gently. "Tell me: What do you believe in? You are out there in' Egypt or Israel planning more death and destructiontell me, General, what is it you believe in now?"

  "Go to hell, Thorn!"

  "General, I want you to come home-right now."

  "Why do you keep on calling me 'General,' Thorn? You fired me, remember? You involuntarily retired me."

  "Take care of the proper things first," Thorn patiently went on. "Bring your soldiers home-they're tired, you're tired, and the situation there is far too desperate for you to continue. Hold your son, bury your brother, mourn your wife, console your mother and your sisters, and try to explain to them what's going on. Then come to the White House, and we'll talk."

  "Trouble, Patrick," Hal Briggs called out.

  Patrick turned and saw a rising cloud of dust on the horizon to the east-heavy vehicles, quickly heading their way. The Egyptian border patrols had finally caught up to them. "We're pressing on," Patrick said aloud, not to Briggs but to Thorn, and he cut the connection. This time Thorn did not override it.

  What were they doing here? Patrick asked himself for at least the hundredth time in the past three days. What was the objective? Spy on the Libyans, find out if they had any designs against the Egyptian oil fields-well, that question was answered now, wasn't it? Did Paul sacrifice his life for nothing? So what if they found out that Libya had chemical, biological, or even nuclear surface-to-surface missiles ready to launch? Any smart defense planner in Egypt, Israel, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Algeria, Greece, or Italy would already assume that and be planning a counterstrike or retaliatory strike.

  Just closing his eyes seemed to take away some of the pain. Paul was dead-and he was not even buried yet, still on his way back home to Sacramento for burial beside their father. Wendy was missing, probably dead. How was he going to tell her family? How in hell was he supposed to explain it to their son? Your mother won't be coming home, son. Should he tell her she was in heaven watching over him? Should he tell him about war, about fighting, about death? How do you tell a four-year-old about something like that?

  He watched a vision of his life with Wendy Tork play in his mind's eye, from the time he first met her at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana during the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command Bomb Competition Symposium over twenty years earlier. She was a young and talented electronics engineer; he was a young hotshot B-52G Stratofortress bombardier who had just helped his unit win the coveted Fairchild Trophy for the second year in a row, along with a long string of other trophies and awards. The old saying "opposites attract" was true only with magnets-Patrick and Wendy were as alike as could be, and they became almost inseparable from that moment on.

  They had been shot at, shot up
, shot down, and they did their fair share of shooting. They had flown all over the world together, sharing adventures as well as themselves. Of all the dangers they had faced together, having a baby was their most dangerous-and most joyous-moment. But even after young Bradley James McLanahan arrived in the world and Patrick was unceremoniously, involuntarily retired from the U.S. Air Force, Wendy would notcould not-leave her husband's side when he went off to battle.

  Now, that dedication may have destroyed her.

  The vision playing in Patrick's mind shifted from past memories to possible futures, and none of them were pleasant. Patrick believed that reality was nothing more than a state of consciousness: Reality was whatever he decided it would be. But as hard as he tried, his mind couldn't play an image of a successful rescue or escape. He saw Wendy first being manhandled, isolated, imprisoned, even tortured; then he saw her incinerated in the fireball at Mersa Matriih. It was too horrible to comprehend.

  "Patrick?"

  His focus snapped back to the present. His armor's sensors were inoperative-he visually estimated their range at around two miles, well within main gun range. "Any contact with Headbanger?" Patrick asked.

  "No," Dave Luger replied. "EMP still has all communications shut down."

  "Won't the crew see the Egyptians coming after us and launch the Wolverines?" Hal Briggs asked.

  "They should-if their gear survived the blast, if our datalink is still active, and if the Wolverines can fly through the EMP," Patrick said. "It should all work, but it's not. I just spoke with President Thorn, but we can't raise the Megafortress-the EMP is really screwing up transmissions."

  "What did Thorn want?"

  "For us to come home and bury our dead," Patrick said. Unfortunately, they might be among the dead soon. "Master Sergeant, any advice?"

  "We first send the men out as fast as possible away from the area," Chris Wohl said. "Then we take out as many of the big tanks as we can and engage the other threats as best we can."

  "Do it," Patrick said. Wohl immediately ordered the Night Stalkers to retreat west. But no sooner had they started off than someone yelled, "Sir! Tanks behind us, coming in fast!"

  Patrick turned, and his blood ran cold-another line of heavy armor, this one smaller than the line to the east but coming on twice as fast, had appeared as if from nowhere. A company-sized force must have managed to speed across the desert and surround them. Before he could react, some of the small tanks to the west opened fire with their main guns.

  "Take cover!" he shouted. "Chris, Hal, take the tanks to the east! I'll take the ones to the west!" But even as he swung his electromagnetic rail gun west to attack the newcomers, he knew he was too late-he could hear the shells whistling closer and closer..

  … but they didn't hit their position-instead, the shells started impacting near the Egyptian tanks. Their accuracy wasn't that great, but it didn't seem to matter: The Egyptian tanks took immediate evasive action, and Patrick could see the gun barrels elevating and turning, changing targets to the oncoming, unidentified vehicles to the west.

  Whoever they are, Patrick thought, they're on our side, at least for the moment. He swung his rail gun back to the east. The targeting sensors weren't operable, but at this close range it didn't seem to matter. The newcomers created lots of smoke and confusion; Chris, Hal, and Patrick hit a few of them with the hypervelocity projectiles, and that's all it took. The remaining Egyptian tanks reversed direction and scattered. The Night Stalkers immediately turned their attention to the newcomers from the west.

  With the threat from the Egyptian tanks over for now, the newcomers raised a large flag from the lead vehicle. It was a green banner trimmed in gold with a strange and unidentifiable crest on it, with crowns on top and a crown atop a circle ringed with nine stars with a crescent and star inside. "Who are they?" Hal Briggs asked. 'Turks? Algerians?"

  The newcomers moved in swiftly. They had a collection of all sorts of vehicles, from aged M60 tanks to Russian BMPs to Humvees to Jeeps, armed with an even wider variety of weapons: heavy cannons, machine guns of all sizes, even older ex-Soviet antitank rockets and antiaircraft missiles. Their uniforms didn't help identification either: They wore everything from Bedouin robes to World War II-era Nazi-style desert uniforms to American "chocolate chip" desert cammos.

  "What do you want to do, sir?" Chris Wohl asked.

  Patrick hesitated, but only for a moment: "Lower your weapons."

  "Are you absolutely sure, sir?" Wohl hated the idea of lowering his weapon while anyone, especially unidentified hostiles, had theirs aimed at him or his men.

  "Do it, Master Sergeant," Patrick said. Patrick lowered his rail gun to port arms but did not shut it down. The others did likewise.

  The scene looked like something from a bad remake of the TV show The Rat Patrol. As soon as the convoy of vehicles reached the oil wells, several of them jumped off their vehicles and motioned for them to drop their weapons and raise their hands. Their personal weapons were a mix of hardware from half the world's arms manufacturers spanning four or five decades. "I'm not surrendering to these guys, sir," Wohl warned Patrick in a low voice. "Do something, or I will."

  "You Americans?" one of the men who stepped out of the lead Humvee said. He had an Egyptian accent, but it was very slight-he could've been an Arab conveniencestore clerk from Boston. "Who are you guys?"

  "We're escapees," David Luger said. "We were detainees at Mersa Matruh."

  "You're very well armed for escapees," the stranger said. He looked over at Patrick and the others in their Tin Man battle armor. "Very well equipped-more like attackers than escapees." He motioned to Patrick. "If I didn't know better, I'd say those were electromagnetic weapons that fire hypervelocity projectiles."

  "What?" Luger was completely surprised, and he showed it. "How do you know about hypervelocity weapons?"

  "You think because I live in the desert I don't know about such things?" the man asked. "I read Popular Science and Aviation Week & Space Technology. I read about the exoskeleton your friends over there are wearing in the London Times. I didn't know they actually came out with something, though. Very interesting."

  "Who are you?"

  "It appears we're not doing names today," the stranger said, "so I don't have an answer for you now. What I do require of you is to put your weapons down on the ground and raise your hands."

  "That will not happen," Chris Wohl said.

  "By the sound of it, I think you must be the noncommissioned officer in charge of this team," the stranger said. Patrick noticed then how young the man was under his black Kevlar helmet wrapped with a white turban, chocolate-chip battle dress uniform, green Nomex flying gloves, and thick-soled heavy-tread knee-high tanker boots. When he moved, Patrick actually noticed a black shirt underneath his BDUs, with a white shirt underneath that made it appear as if he were wearing a cleric's collar. "But you will be silent now. I am in command of this area, and you are the trespassers." He turned to Luger, shook his head. "And you, sir, are not the commander of this force." He looked over to the others. "I will speak to him now."

  Patrick stepped forward. "What do you mean, you are in command of this area? We're in Egypt."

  The man turned, and Patrick noticed a smile on his youthful face. "I assume I am addressing the infamous Castor. Finally."

  "You are very astute, sir," Patrick said. "Who are you?"

  "Since we are now talking in code words, I am called Dabbur-the wasp," the stranger said. "We are called the Hubub-the sandstorm. And this is my desert. It has been so for nearly two hundred years. We have protected it for that long. It is not about lines on a map or governments."

  "Your intelligence system is effective-Your Highness." The man smiled, which made him look even younger than he looked at first. He issued a command in Arabic, and his men lowered their weapons.

  "Who is he, Muck?" Hal Briggs asked.

  "His Royal Highness, Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan as-Sanusi, the true king of Libya," Patrick said. The man
smiled, shouldered his weapon, and bowed in thanks for the recognition and proper address. "The sword of vengeance of the Sahara and leader of the 'Sandstorm,' the Sanusi Brotherhood."

  "You got it," Muhammad as-Sanusi said. "And who are you-other than trouble of the first magnitude around here?"

  "Friends-as long as you don't align yourself with Jadallah Zuwayy."

  "You mean my 'sixth brother,' Jadallah the Brave, the protector of Islam and the savior of the people of Libya? Give me a break," Sanusi said disgustedly. He took off his helmet and poured water from a canteen on his face. He had a thin, triangular face, wide eyes, and a ready smile, even while deriding someone. "But what pisses me off even more is that the people of Libya really bought his bucket of bullshit." He looked carefully at Patrick, then nodded. "You know my good 'brother,' then? So I assume you're the devil robot that nearly destroyed Jaghbub and scared the living shit out of him?"

  "Maybe. How do you know about that?"

  "Zuwayy's men blabbed it all over open channels all last night-you couldn't shut it off," Sanusi said. "I think your impromptu nose job improved his looks. And of course, we saw your fireworks show from twenty miles away. Very impressive. Some of my radar outposts picked up traces of an aircraft still orbiting west of here-your air support, I gather?"

  "We came close to taking out your men here with our air support."

  "Unless you have EMP-proof radios, I doubt it," Sanusi said dryly. "We lost contact with all our patrols the instant that device went off. God in heaven, I always suspected Zuwayy had nukes, but I never thought he'd be stupid enough to actually use them."

  "You don't talk like an Arab, Your Highness."

  "Oh, I can talk Arab just fine when I need to," Sanusi said. "But I've lived in the States for the past five years, and I picked up the lingo pretty well." He held out his canteen to Patrick. "Can you drink water through that thing?"

  "Yes," Patrick said-but then he disconnected his helmet, pulled it off, and accepted the canteen. "But I prefer not to." He grimaced at the canteen.