Net Force

40

The three Chechen vehicles skidded to a halt as Howard and his troops piled out of the Huey and spread out, weapons held ready but not locked on targets. The Chechens had the advantage as they bailed from their rides — they could use their vehicles for cover. There were fifteen, maybe eighteen, Chechens in military gear, and they deployed, pointing their weapons from behind the Jeep-clone, the van and the police car.

Howard's men were in the open, and the pucker-factor here was extremely high. A car body would stop a lot of small-arms fire; thin air would not.

"Marcus!" Howard said, quietly enough so he hoped his voice wouldn't carry to the Chechens. "Get the package into the bird and then get out here."

Behind him, the squad hustled Plekhanov toward the Huey. Marcus was the language expert, and as soon as he had the Russian onboard, he hopped back out and came to stand next to Howard.

Sixty meters away, somebody in the Chechen force began yelling in Russian. Howard had a few words and phrases, enough to recognize a "Who the hell are you?" query when he heard it.

"What is the name of their secret police force?" Howard asked Marcus, sotto voce.

"ZhalitKulk, sir."

"Tell them that's who we are. Tell them we're on a secret mission. Tell them to get the hell away from here or we'll have their balls for breakfast." Howard didn't think they'd buy it, but they'd have to think about it. What if it was the truth? Could they take the chance?

"Sir." Marcus turned and loudly rattled off a fast string of Russian.

Howard kept his voice low, but loud enough for his troops to hear over the Huey's twin engines. "Fall back into the transport by twos. Last out, first in."

As the first pair of his troops climbed into the Huey, the Chechen commander yelled something, and his men took more precise aim with their weapons.

"I don't think they want us to leave," Fernandez said.

Howard's belly was suddenly full of dry ice and liquid nitrogen. He nodded. But the longer they stayed here, the more dangerous it got. Somebody might get nervous, his finger might slip, and the first round that went off would trigger a fusillade from both sides.

Slowly and carefully, Howard triggered his com headset, opened the opchan to the second Huey. He hoped they weren't too far away to hear him on the portable. "C2, this is Alpha Wolf."

There was a moment of dead air.

"C2, respond."

"Copy, Alpha, this is C2."

Howard repressed the urge to sigh in relief. "We need a distraction here. There's a big van with a flashing blue light about sixty meters north of our position next to Cl. I would appreciate it if you would approach from the north and have somebody lean out and put a couple of magazines of hardball into the roof of that vehicle."

"Consider it a done deal, Alpha. We're coming in."

"Give me an ETA."

"Forty-five seconds, sir."

They hadn't gone far, a thing for which he was extremely thankful at the moment.

"We are leaving, troops," Howard said, loud enough for his force to hear. At this point, he didn't much care if the opposition heard him. "On my command, by twos, as fast as you can."

He saw a few of the Chechens glance away from their sights, looking up and behind. They'd be able to hear the oncoming Huey's engines — the big Pratt and Whitneys could put out almost 1200 horsepower in a pinch, and at full bore, quiet they were not.

"Stand ready…" Howard said.

In the reflected light from the Chechen vehicles and the yellow sodium lamps outlining the oil tanks, Howard saw the Huey roar in and swing into a drifting broadside turn eighty feet up. After a beat, the rapid yellow-orange flashes of two or three submachine guns blasted from the open doorway.

His troops could shoot. The roof of the van rattled under the jacketed hail.

The Chechens turned to face the new and more active threat.

"Go, go, go!"

Howard's troops piled into the Huey—

The Chechens opened up on the hovering copter—

The last of his troops scrambled into the grounded bird. Only Howard and Fernandez remained outside.

"Get in, Julio!"

"Age before beauty, sir."

Howard grinned, and leaped for the copter. Fernandez bumped him from behind as he cleared the door.

"Lift, lift!" Howard yelled.

The pilot powered up, and the Huey lurched into the sky.

The Chechens realized the attack from the air was a diversion. They turned their fire in two directions. Jacketed bullets chunked into the copter.

"Keep their heads down!" Howard yelled.

Fernandez, closest to the door, opened up, waving his H&K back and forth like a garden hose. The Chechens ducked behind their cover. Bullets hammered their vehicles.

The command Huey canted and fell away at a sharp angle, climbing slowly and spiraling upward. A couple more incoming rounds hit and clanged, but a moment later, they were clear.

"C2?" Howard yelled into his mike.

"Right behind you, Alpha."

"Casualties your way?"

"Negative, sir."

"Sergeant?"

"Anybody hit?" Fernandez yelled.

Apparently nobody was.

Howard blew out a big breath and grinned. They had done it! Man!

"This is kidnapping! You can't do this!"

Howard regarded the indignant Russian. He felt a cold hatred fill him as he looked at the man.

"You fools will create an international incident! I have influential friends! You cannot expect to get away with it!"

Howard stared at the man. "We already have gotten away with it."

The Russian began cursing, in Russian. Howard recognized a few of those words, too. He was not disposed to listen to them. He held his hand up for silence. The Russian fell silent and frowned at him.

"Mister, you killed a man I liked and respected. If you don't shut up right now, you might accidentally fall out of this thing. At this speed and height, you will bounce like a rubber ball when you hit the ground."

The Russian apparently decided he had nothing else to say.

The phone rang in the conference room. Alone, Michaels grabbed it. "Yes?"

"Sir, patching through Colonel Howard," said the voice.

"Commander?"

"Right here, Colonel."

"Mission accomplished, sir. We're in the air and on the way home."

Michaels felt an immense welling of relief. "All right! Congratulations, Colonel. Any problems?"

"Nothing to speak of, sir. A walk in the park."

Toni came back into the room. Michaels looked at her, pointed at the telephone's receiver and gave her the thumb-and-forefinger sign for "okay."

"We should see you in about sixteen hours, Commander, give or take."

"I will look forward to it. Congratulations again, Colonel. Well done."

Michaels broke the connection and grinned at Toni. "They got him. On the way home. Be here tomorrow."

"I'll give Jay Gridley a call," she said. "He wanted to know how it came out."

"Do that."

"So, now what, Alex? If you're right, we have the man who killed Steve Day, even if we can't prove he did it. The woman who muddied up the waters is dead."

"Back to business as usual, I guess," he said. "If I survive the meeting with Carver when I tell him what I did."

"You will. The Director looks at the bottom line. This is like Bush's Noriega deal, or that Iraqi snatched from Baghdad during the last days of the Clinton Administration. Our current President wanted this guy caught, he's caught. He's the DOJ's problem now."

"After we have a few words with him."

"Of course. But basically, it's all over."

"Yes," he said. "All over. And all in all, we didn't do too bad, did we?"

"No. We didn't do too bad."

They grinned at each other.