Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER SEVEN INDIAN COUNTRY

Stealth jogging.

Yes, she thought, that was it. It had a nice ring to it. Maybe she could use it someday in a paper or a lecture. It described what she was doing this very moment — hightailing it through the Yemeni hills like a hunted fugitive.

Which, of course, she was.

She wished she had her running shoes, the ones with the air soles that weighed eight ounces each. She’d be flying over the rocks instead of clumping along in these clodhopping boots.

B.J. jogged along the shaded slope of the ridgeline, stopping every minute or so to listen. She needed to put distance between her and the valley where the Tomcat crew was caught. Keep moving, stop and listen for the bad guys, keep moving. Stay out of sight.

If she got out of this place, she thought — and then instantly corrected herself. Forget if. No more ifs. When you get out. You are getting out of this place. And after you do you will sit down and write one hell of an authoritative paper about escape and evasion. Maybe get it published in Naval Institute Proceedings or some such journal. Why not? Who else would know more about being on the lam in a garden spot like Yemen?

It was luck that she hadn’t been injured in the ejection. She’d punched out at high speed — something over four hundred knots, she guessed — barely beating the fireball when the Hornet blew up. She’d been in the chute only seconds, just long enough to smack down onto a rocky hillside, landing with an ungraceful thud and rolling twenty feet down the slope before she could disentangle herself from the shroud lines.

She was okay, just some bruises and cuts from the rocks. She could run, which was the most important item in her set of skills. Run like hell. The stuff she didn’t want to carry — chute, helmet, raft, torso harness — she stashed beneath rocks and brush. She gathered the essential items into the survival rucksack and moved out.

Not until she’d gone a mile did she stop and try the radio. The emergency UHF transceiver was her ticket home. She could communicate with friendly aircraft, give her location, call in the SAR helo.

Overhead she could hear — and sometimes see — the multiplane furball that was still going on. At least one more fighter — she couldn’t tell whose — had been shot down. A spiraling trail of black smoke marked its death dive.

Crouching beneath a shrub, she tried the transmit button on the transceiver. Nothing happened.

She turned the power button off, then on again. Still nothing.

The radio didn’t work.

She stared at it. No little red power light, no static, nothing. She wanted to scream. The goddamned emergency radio didn’t work! Had it been damaged in the ejection? It looked okay, no dings or dents. Maybe the battery was kaput. For a long moment she stared at the black piece of inert hardware, suddenly hating it. All this goddamn useless technology. How could this happen? The most essential piece of survival gear in her kit didn’t work. B. J. Johnson felt herself overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness. She sank to the ground and wept.

After a minute, she began talking to herself. “Move it, girl. You’re going to get out of here even if you have to walk. Go on, move your butt.”

She moved.

Maxwell couldn’t believe it.

He put both hands on the conference table and leaned forward. “Excuse me, Admiral, did I hear correctly? We’renot sending in a search-and-rescue team?”

CAG Boyce, Admiral Fletcher, Whitney Babcock, and Spook Morse sat facing him at the long table. Half an hour ago Maxwell had landed back aboard the Reagan. He was still wearing his flight suit and torso harness, sweat-stained from the three-hour combat sortie.

“You heard the intel debrief,” said Admiral Fletcher. “The RESCAP jets lost communications with the F-14 crew on the ground just before the SAR helos showed up. They came under fire and had to withdraw. Since then, nothing has been heard from any of the downed pilots. We have reasonable evidence that the F-14 pilot and RIO were captured.”

“What about my downed pilot?” Maxwell said. “Are we giving up on her too?”

Fletcher gave him a baleful glare. “I’ll overlook your choice of words, Commander. I know you’ve been under strain. For your information, we’re not giving up on anybody. All the evidence we have indicates that the Hornet pilot was killed in action. As the Battle Group Commander, it’s my responsibility not to sacrifice any more pilots and airplanes trying to rescue people who are already dead or captured.”

Maxwell felt his temper flaring out of control. Before he could speak, Boyce cut him off. “Admiral, what Commander Maxwell and I don’t understand is why we’re letting this ragtag bunch of terrorists get away with this. Why don’t we just go in there with an assault force — marines and plenty of air power — and take out the whole mess? Get our people back and exterminate those murderers.”

Fletcher blinked, then looked to the end of the table. Whitney Babcock spoke up. “We can understand your sentiments, Captain Boyce, but you have to understand that more is at stake here than you probably understand. This is a national security consideration, not a simple tactical exercise.”

It was Boyce’s turn to seethe. He glared at Babcock. “If you mean decisions like that are above my pay grade, fine, I understand. But damn it, this is Yemen we’re talking about, not North Korea or China. We could occupy that joint in half a day if we had the balls to do it.”

Babcock gave him a patronizing smile. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. As the world’s only superpower, we have a responsibility to demonstrate our restraint.”

“So we’re not going to do anything more? Just let them keep their MiGs and missiles and our captured pilots and wait for them to hit us again?”

“You can rest assured that it’s being negotiated at the very highest levels. If any of our pilots are alive, they’ll be returned. As for letting them keep their weapons, we’ve already made our point. Their complex, as you saw in the intel photos, has been destroyed.”

Boyce had a retort, but he caught himself. He clamped his cigar in his jaw and turned to Spook Morse, sitting across the table. “Okay, intel officer. Where the hell did those MiGs come from? Why didn’t you guys bother giving us that little morsel in our briefing?”

Morse shrugged. “Take it up with the CIA. Or the National Security Agency. They provide our intel data, and I just give you what they give us. Al-Fasr’s group apparently managed to sneak the MiGs in between the flyover envelopes of our recon satellites. Nobody knew they were there. They have them concealed underground somewhere in the northwest quarter. They seem to be equipped with low-observable paint schemes and electronic countermeasures gear.”

“Beautiful. Where’d they get them and who’s flying them?”

“The MiGs came from Libya, according to our sources. The pilots were recruited from Russia’s clients, probably Libya or the former East Germany. Al-Fasr himself may be one of the pilots.”

“We nailed two of them, and one hightailed it. How many more are there?”

Morse shrugged again. “Very few, maybe none. If they have satellite tracking technology, which we suspect they do, then they know when we’re not looking. It’s going to be difficult to spot them.”

Boyce looked disgusted. “Until they show up to bite us in the ass again.” He fumed for a moment, then said, “Hard to believe, with all our advanced technology, those guys can catch us in the open like that. Almost like they knew we were coming.”

“They did know,” said Morse.

A heavy silence fell over the room. Boyce stared at Morse, not sure that he heard correctly. He removed his cigar. “Would you mind explaining that?”

“It’s very obvious,” Morse said, studying his fingernail. He looked up at all the expectant faces around the table. He let several seconds pass, the silence hanging heavy in the room. “They have an informer aboard the Reagan.”

Brown.

The color du jour. It was exactly what she had told all those bored pilots in her prestrike briefing. Earth, trees, rocks, buildings — everything in Yemen bore the same monochromatic shade of brown.

And so would she.

At the base of a hill she found a stand of six-feet-tall scrub trees. She crawled into the shelter of the trees and unzipped her rucksack. Among her survival items was one she had added on her own: a tin of brown greasepaint. She smeared the stuff over her face, around her neck, on the backs of her hands. No white skin was left exposed.

Then, another extra item — the camo-colored bandanna. She pulled her hair into a bun and tied the bandanna tightly around her head.

When she was finished she checked herself in the signal mirror. She almost laughed out loud. You look like a snake eater. She resembled one of those action-movie heroes crawling on his belly behind enemy lines. Actually, she thought, it looked pretty cool.

She was still regarding herself in the mirror when she heard the vehicle.

She clambered to the top of a rock-strewn promontory that overlooked a valley. She peered in all directions, looking for the source of the engine noise.

Then she saw them.

They were coming down the valley, in full view from either side, two men in flight gear. One, the shorter of the two, was supporting the other. He seemed to be injured. He was walking with difficulty, dragging one foot.

The idiots were still wearing their helmets and torso harnesses! B.J. wanted to yell at them, Get in the trees and hide, you meatheads!

She knew what they were thinking. They would just call in the SAR, get in the open somewhere, get picked up. No sweat, bubba.

It was stupid. These two were strolling along like tourists on a nature walk. They should have attended her in-country briefing about escape and evasion. B.J. started down from the promontory to intercept them.

Then it was too late. In the next instant she saw an armored personnel carrier burst into the valley, kicking up a column of dirt as it came churning toward the two aviators.

The two pilots turned back in the direction they had come. The crippled airman tried to run, but he stumbled and fell. Kneeling, he turned and faced the oncoming vehicle. The other pilot ran several paces, then stopped and ran back to the side of his injured companion. Both had their pistols drawn.

Brrraaaaaappppp! A single long burst of automatic fire came from the machine gun mounted on the APC. The kneeling airman toppled end over end like a rag doll.

The second pilot stood motionless, yielding to the inevitable. He made a show of dropping the pistol and raising his hands.

Brrraaaaaapppp! The bullets caught him across the chest, hurling him backward. The pilot lay spread-eagled on the dirt, blood oozing in a pool around him.

B.J. felt sick to her stomach. From her vantage point two hundred yards away, she watched the APC pull up to where the two slain airmen lay. Half a dozen troops, each wearing desert-colored fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, climbed out the back hatch. They examined the bodies, rolling them over, removing the pistols and survival items. B.J. saw them studying the pilots’ equipment, talking among themselves.

They have the radios, B.J. realized. If they knew how, the bastards could listen in on the SAR frequency.

After they dragged the bodies into the APC, two of the troops stood gazing around the valley with binoculars.

She knew what they were doing. They were searching. They knew another pilot was out there. She hunched down behind the cluster of rocks.

“You want a drink?” said Boyce.

Maxwell shook his head. “No.”

“Too bad. You sure as hell need one.” Boyce flopped down in one of the two desk chairs in his stateroom and motioned for Maxwell to take the other.

Boyce didn’t mind breaking the Navy’s traditional ban on alcohol aboard ship, just as he didn’t mind firing up a cigar. Too much moderation was bad for you, he always said. He considered a highball after a hairy night of carrier ops to be good therapy.

But not tonight. Boyce busied himself scribbling notes on a yellow pad. Maxwell kept his silence, waiting for the boss to unload whatever it was on his mind.

He noticed that Boyce had aged in the past week. The wisps of red hair on his pate seemed to have grown thinner and grayer. He guessed that it was the stress of commanding the Reagan’s air wing. Or the pressure of dealing with the likes of Fletcher and Babcock.

Boyce ripped off the yellow page and handed it to Maxwell. “That’s the air plan for tomorrow. Starting at sunup, we’re gonna keep jets over the area full-time. HARM shooters, EA-6 jammers, a rotating CAP. I’m putting a Tomcat with a TARPS package over the area once an hour.” Each TARPS pod contained two cameras and an infrared scanner.

Maxwell studied the sheet. “Did the admiral sign off on this?”

“He doesn’t have a choice. Fletcher is a political animal, and he knows he can’t appear to give up on missing pilots, especially when the word gets out that one of them is a woman. I’m gonna keep reminding him of that.”

“What if Al-Fasr starts shooting again? What are the rules of engagement?”

“Anybody lights up — radar, SAM site, AA guns — we come down on them like the hammers of hell.”

“Babcock is not going to like that. It wouldn’t fit in with his negotiated settlement.”

“Maybe not, but he’s savvy enough to know how it will play on the evening news when America learns that one of our girl pilots might be held by a band of terrorists and we’re not doing anything about it.”

The thought of B. J. Johnson in the hands of Al-Fasr sent another surge of dread through Maxwell. “How long are we prepared to keep it up?”

A somber look came over Boyce’s face. He leaned back in his chair and rolled a cigar between his fingers. “You and I came up believing that nobody got left behind. We don’t give up on our people. We didn’t do it in Vietnam, not in Desert Storm, not in Bosnia, not in Afghanistan, and as long as I’m running the air wing, we’re not gonna do it in Yemen. If I send pilots into harm’s way, then they have to believe that I’ll come and get them if they get shot down. I’ll stay until we find them.”

“That may not be what they’re thinking up on the flag bridge right now.”

“Maybe not, but it’s our duty to do what’s right. Even if it means pushing the envelope a little.” His eyes narrowed and he looked at Maxwell. “Maybe more than a little. Do you read me?”

Maxwell nodded. Boyce was an old warhorse from another era. He had risen through the ranks in a time when orders were clear, missions were specific, and the enemy was identifiable.

Well, times had changed. Red Boyce had not. Thank God for that.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Perfectly.”

Spook Morse knew what was coming. He could see it in Fletcher’s face, the way he sat there drumming his fingertips on the table surface.

Fletcher waited until the air wing officers, Boyce and Maxwell, had both left. The only ones left in the flag intel compartment were Fletcher and Babock, Captain Vitale, and Spook Morse.

“Explain yourself, Commander Morse,” said Fletcher. “What the hell are you saying? Al-Fasr has an informer aboard the Reagan? You mean—”

“A spy? Yes, sir. I’m sure of it.”

The admiral’s face hardened. “May I ask why you haven’t bothered to inform me, the Battle Group Commander, about such a matter?”

Morse took his time. He knew Fletcher. He was blustering, making a show of gruffness to impress the civilian, Babcock.

“Until now it was only a suspicion, Admiral. For that matter, I still have no proof, just some deductive reasoning and circumstantial evidence.”

“Don’t give me that intelligence community line about deductive reasoning. I’m your boss and I want some straight talk. Do you know who the informer is?”

“I can narrow it down to a dozen candidates.”

“How would somebody get classified information off a carrier at sea without our knowing it?”

Morse wondered again how someone as clueless as Fletcher rose to flag rank. Idiots. “Lots of ways, Admiral. Using our own comm gear, if he knew what he was doing. Several million bytes of data get transmitted from the Reagan every day, and much of it is classified.”

“Who are these suspects you have in mind?”

Morse didn’t answer for several seconds. His eyes moved around the table, pausing on Vitale, then dwelling for several seconds on Whitney Babcock. Babcock returned his gaze while he played with a ballpoint pen.

“The list includes everyone who sits in on our top-secret briefings. That includes me, of course, and you, Admiral Fletcher, Mr. Babcock, Captain Vitale, Captain Boyce, and the strike leader, Commander Maxwell. Beyond us, there are half a dozen possible suspects who work in sensitive jobs.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a spiral notepad. He ripped off the top sheet and handed it to the admiral. “These are listed in order of likelihood. For your information, I’ve had each of their phones and their e-net lines monitored. Not that that will turn up anything unless our player turns out to be a total amateur.”

Babcock spoke up from the end of the table. “I don’t like the sound of this. Does this mean you’re eavesdropping on us?”

“It’s the system, Mr. Babcock. Nothing is exempt in counterespionage. I didn’t say that any of us was a suspect, but no one should be off-limits.”

“Including you, Commander Morse.”

“Yes, sir, including me. I have more access to classified data than anyone aboard the ship.”

At this, Babcock became silent. He sat at the end of the table, seemingly deep in thought.

Fletcher put on his reading glasses. After he perused the list, he said, “This is hard to believe. Why would any of these people be working for Al-Fasr?”

Morse shrugged. “If we figured out what turned people into agents and double agents, we could identify spies before they did us any damage. Some do it for money, obviously, but usually it’s more than that. They see it as a romantic cause, or some sort of idealistic crusade. Sometimes they just get blackmailed into it.”

Fletcher was still staring at the list. “What do we do about them?”

“Well, as a stopgap, we can reassign them while we keep monitoring their activities. Five work in sensitive intel and comm areas. Three officers, two senior enlisted, one warrant.”

“What about the media people? Aren’t they possible suspects?”

“We can’t rule them out. None have access to discrete communications facilities that we know of, but one could have his own dedicated transmitter.”

Babcock came out of his reverie and said, “They shouldn’t be allowed this close to the operation. Even if they’re not giving away secrets, they’ll put their own spin on things, and we’ll get smeared in the press just like they did to us in Somalia.”

Vitale said, “We’ll get smeared if we throw them off.”

“It’s the lesser of the evils.”

“What do we tell them?” asked Fletcher.

“The truth. This is war and we’re offloading all noncombatants.”

Fletcher nodded and turned to Vitale. “You heard him. Do it.”

Claire stepped onto the flight deck. Even through the padded cranial protector and the float coat, she could hear the thunder of the jet engines, feel the thirty-knot gale that swept over the bow. The C-2A Greyhound turboprop was parked beside the island, its back clamshell door open and waiting for her. The other reporters had already boarded.

“I’ve never been kicked off a carrier before,” she said. “Was it Babcock?”

“Probably,” said Maxwell. “The actual order came from Admiral Fletcher. He says no more media coverage of the Yemen operation.”

“Until something happens that makes him look good.”

“You said it, not me.”

“There’ll be another strike, won’t there?”

Maxwell put on his blank face. “I don’t know.”

She studied him for a moment. There was that hard look, his eyes glowing like coals. He was burning inside.

“You still want revenge,” she said. “An eye for an eye.”

His expression didn’t change. “I do what I’m ordered to do.”

She saw the crew chief waving to her from the back of the C-2A. “Sam, please get over it. You can’t bring Josh back. Come back to me alive, promise?”

He looked at her, and for a moment the hard lines in his face seemed to soften. He smiled and said, “Okay. I promise.”

She gave him a quick kiss, then trotted to the C-2A and climbed aboard.

It was nearly dark when she spotted him. Or when he spotted her. Each was taken by surprise.

B.J. was trotting along a path that traversed a cultivated hillside. Halfway down the hill she noticed rows of some sort of scrawny crop — sorghum, millet, something like that. She tried to remember from her homework what kind of subsistence farming they did up here in the highlands.

When she glanced up from the terraced hillside, back to the path ahead, there he was. Twenty yards away, he wore the ubiquitous kaffiyeh and a baggy shirt and trousers made of coarse sackcloth. Dangling from his belt was a scabbard, which she knew contained his jambiyya, the curved dagger Yemeni men carried in this part of the country.

He stood transfixed, staring as if he were seeing an extraterrestrial. She returned his gaze. For nearly a minute they stood like that, neither moving, regarding each other warily. He was a farmer, she guessed. Maybe a shepherd. One of those dudes she had warned the other pilots about in her briefing. Don’t expect the peasants to be friendly. Their only loyalty was to themselves and their families and to whatever small-caliber sheik ran their local village.

She wondered if he had another weapon, a revolver or an automatic pistol inside his baggy clothes. Guns were a way of life here. That was in the briefing too. Peasants who couldn’t afford shoes here owned AK-47s.

She thought about the Beretta in her shoulder holster. He could see the pistol. And he could figure by her costume where she had come from. Everyone who lived in these hills had seen and heard the air battle that raged over their heads this afternoon.

Okay, let’s break the stalemate.

She smiled at him.

He stared back, his face expressionless.

She took a step toward him, holding her hands in front of her so he could see she meant no harm. She tried to recall one of her Arabic expressions. Maybe she could persuade him to —

He turned and ran.

Wait, she wanted to call out. Maybe she should run after him. She would make the dumb sonofabitch understand that she was friendly.

Forget it. What would she do if she caught him? Wherever this guy was running to, there would be others like him, armed to the teeth. In any case, the word would spread like wildfire about the woman snake eater running loose in the hills. There might even be a reward for her.

She turned and trotted back down the path up which she had come. She kept up a brisk pace, staying in the shadows, pausing every few minutes to listen for pursuers. When she came to a dry streambed, she turned and followed the twisting, sand-filled bottom. After a mile, she left the streambed and began climbing the steep, brush-covered slope of a towering promontory. From such a high perch, she could survey the best routes out of this place.

Most of the hillside was in shadow now. The setting sun bathed the landscape in an orange-brown hue. The temperature had dropped by a good ten degrees. When darkness came, it would get cold.

When she was still a hundred yards from the summit of the promontory, she heard something. She stopped, crouching in the shadow of a rock formation. For half a minute she sat motionless, listening. At first she heard only the wind, the low buzz of insects in the brush. Then, something else.

The distant whop-whop of rotor blades. A helicopter.

Ours or theirs?

She pulled one of the colored smoke flares from her rucksack, checking it to make sure she could yank the ring when the time came. She would throw the flare, then run into an open area where the helo could land or hover while she got into the sling.

The whop-whopping grew more distinct, coming from the north.

B.J. was getting a bad feeling. North was not a good direction. The good guys would not come from the north.

Without warning the helicopter burst over the ridge, flying directly toward her. As she rolled into a fetal position, trying to meld herself into the rocks, she glimpsed the streamlined profile. It wasn’t one of the big Sikorsky SAR helos. This was a French-built Dauphin.

She saw the gunner in the open hatch. He was wearing the same desert-colored fatigues as the troops who had killed the Tomcat crew. She prayed that her own camo flight suit, the glop she had daubed on her face, and the nylon scarf over her head would make her invisible.

The noise of the rotor blades became a throbbing pulse. The concussion hammered on her ears like giant drums.

She lay motionless. The scrub brush around her flapped in the downwash from the blades. Puffs of brown dirt kicked up like miniature dust devils.

She closed her eyes. The throbbing pulse changed in intensity.

The rotor noise lessened. The scrub brush stopped flapping.

Keep going, B.J. prayed. Please go away.

The sound didn’t change. They weren’t going away.

She forced herself to look. There it was, no more than fifty yards away, hovering over a flat clearing on the hillside. As she watched, men in camo fatigues jumped from the hovering helicopter onto the ground. One, two, three in all. Each carried an automatic weapon.

The leader peered around, checking his bearings, then looked in her direction. He barked an order at the other two; then they trotted single file away from the helicopter.

Toward her.

B.J. sprang from her hiding place. Down the hillside she bounded, taking great flying leaps, somehow keeping her feet beneath her as she landed, bounding again.

Behind her she heard the men pounding down the hill. The throb of the helicopter intensified again. They were coming after her.