Razor's Edge

Chapter 130

As Mack proceeded through his inspection of the Bronco, Garcia followed along behind him, waxing elo-quent about what the addition of five-bladed, infinite-pitch propellers and supercharged turbo engines would do to the aircraft’s performance. Mack had mustered gen-uine admiration for the OV-10, but it paled beside Garcia’s lust. The pilot would have liked nothing better than to help the techie try some of his improvements, but he was in something of a hurry to get going. He’d been ordered to return to Brussels posthaste and prepare a brief on the recent air campaign. This meant considerable work, though not necessarily the kind he enjoyed — he’d have to listen to CentCom commanders brag until his ears fell off. On the other hand, it also meant serious career chits. No doubt it would help push his campaign to win assignment as squadron commander back onto the fast track.

“A few tweaks here and there, Major, this becomes the best COIN aircraft in the world,” Garcia said as they walked toward the rear. “There’s an opportunity here. We stick some of the Flighthawk sensors on it, do a mondo upgrade to the engines, telemetry tie-in with the Whiplash team. Add microrobots to extend real-time viewing. Gonna serve somebody—”

“Another song lyric, huh?” Mack ducked beneath the tail. The worn paint was becoming familiar. “Am I going to make Incirlik?”

Garcia looked at him as if he’d just asked if the world were flat. “Well, yes, sir.”

“How about Brussels?”

“Assuming you refuel, not a problem.”

Mack gave the crewman a thumbs-up. If no one at Incirlik actually asked for the aircraft, well, it wouldn’t be right to just leave it in a hangar there. He was personally responsible for its safety. That meant he’d have to take it with him, all the way to Brussels if necessary.

Maybe that French aerospace consultant would like a ride. He’d personally tuck her in.

Hell, at this point he’d settle for Patti Good Teeth.

Mack pulled himself into the cockpit. Helmet on and straps cinched, he gave Garcia the thumb and cranked the engines. The plane tugged at its brakes as he completed the preflight. He still had no weapons, but Garcia had wrung a few more RPMs out of the engines and, even more important, adjusted their whine so they sounded very much like a pack of vintage Harleys tearing down the highway. There was loud, and then there was loud; Mack never minded a few decibels as long as his eardrums got pounded in style.

Cleared by the tower, Mack began trundling toward the far end of the runway. Just as he made his turn and went to gun the throttle, a familiar voice broke over the long-range radio.

“We have a helicopter down by friendly fire,” said Breanna Stockard. “Repeat, Whiplash Hind is down.”

“Shit,” said Mack. He whipped the turbos and raced down the mesh strip. Climbing out swiftly, he banked south, veering off his flight plan.

“Quicksilver, this is Wild Bronco, ” he said. “What’s going on, Bree?”

“The Hind was hit about twenty miles south southeast of the border. Whiplash team is aboard.”

“You have a visual?” he asked.

“Negative. We don’t have an exact location. Just com-mencing a search.”

“Copy that. Give me what you’ve got, beautiful. I’m on my way.”

Chapter 131

Fentress’s heart pounded in his ears, but otherwise he felt almost relaxed, his hand moving the joystick smoothly left as he began the new search pattern. He had the infrared view selected; the sensors should have no trouble locating the warm body of the helicopter in the cold air. The computer had already been instructed to highlight possible wreckage “clusters,” as they were referred to by the programming.

Pushing the Flighthawk through the long, jagged valley, Fentress imagined he heard Zen telling him to slow down. The slower he went, the better the odds of seeing something or being seen.

As he neared the end of the search grid, Fentress pushed a bit farther west and made a wide, looping bank onto a new search track. He backed the throttle down, forward airspeed nudging toward 200 miles an hour. Flying the Flighthawks fast wasn’t very hard; they were bullets with stubby wings. Flying them slow, however, took patience and grace. You had to concentrate on what you were doing, and yet you couldn’t get so caught up in the details that you started to fight the computer as you bucked through the eddies.

Fentress narrowed his eyes on the screen, trying to keep his concentration. He had to find his guys.

Bree pulled Zen to the floor and they started to dance. His legs hurt but they kept dancing. He pushed his arms tighter around her, holding himself up, resting, but the music got faster and faster. She broke free and danced wildly. He did the same, though his legs were hurting.

It was good that his legs hurt. They hadn’t hurt for so long. He’d known in the hospital that they didn’t hurt, knew what that meant, though he’d tried not to face it.

Zen fought to walk. Giving that up — and yet not giving up everything else — that was the impossible thing. Accepting his paralysis without accepting that it doomed him — had he ever really done that?

It was only when he decided he wouldn’t walk, that he had to concentrate on getting back any way he could, that he made real progress.

He’d give up everything to walk again. Everything.

Bree? Not Bree. Bree he wouldn’t give up.

She danced in front of him. The dream began to fade.

His legs continued to hurt.

Chapter 132

Dog put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder, steadying the young man as he worked the com gear and flicked back and forth between the different feeds, trying to locate the helicopter wreckage. There wasn’t much more they could do from here.

“Feed pending from General Magnus,” the lieutenant told Dog.

“Yes, I see. Keep it there. Don’t open it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door to the secure room opened and Major Cheshire entered, carrying a tray of coffee and dough-nuts. “Hey, Colonel,” she said lightly.

“Major.” Dog stared at the screen.

“Lost the connection with the general,” said the lieutenant.

“What’s up?” asked Cheshire.

Dog took the coffee and filled her in. “We’re hoping they survived,” he said, his voice soft. “Only one missile at long range. It wasn’t even certain that it hit.”

“Friendly fire,” she said, a comment, not a question.

“Definitely.” Dog glanced back at the screen at the front of the room, which showed a satellite image of the mountainous terrain. At maximum resolution, the houses on the hillsides looked like small cubes of sugar.

“You okay, Colonel?” asked Cheshire.

“I’m fine,” he told her. “General Magnus needs to be filled in. Probably, he’s not going to like it.”

Cheshire nodded.

“Lieutenant, see if you can get that line open to General Magnus.”

“Trying, sir.”

Dog looked back at the screen. From the perspective of the mini-KH, it looked almost like a little piece of heaven.

Chapter 133

No longer worried about the Iranian laser or Iraqi missiles, Breanna brought Quicksilver into an orbit at fifteen thousand feet, just high enough to avoid the mountain peaks. Chris worked the video cam in the nose, scanning for wreckage, while Habib snooped for Iraqi radio transmissions.

The Megafortress’s radar was not designed to sweep the ground, and even if it had been, the jagged peaks and cliffs would have made it difficult to sort through the clutter of irregular returns. Nonetheless, Torbin was giving it the old college try, routing the radar through his station and fiddling with the filters designed to find very low-flying planes in look-down mode. He was still somewhat tentative, unsure of himself in a non-Dreamland way, but Breanna saw that he seemed to be willing to try to figure things out; he flipped back and forth between override, manually tweaking the radar sweeps.

“How we looking, troops?” she asked.

“Village two miles off that main road,” said Chris.

“Otherwise uninhabited for miles. You sure this is the place?”

“These are the coordinates the F-15s gave us.”

“Maybe try farther north. Raven’s coming up from the south.”

“Mack’s going to take that.”

“East, then,” suggested Chris.

“We’ll give the track one more run, then we’ll try that.”

“Iraqi command radio,” said Habib.

He paused a second, then punched up a location two miles to the south of them. The coordinates flashed on a grid map in Breanna’s left multiuse display area.

“What are they saying?” she asked.

“Coordinating some sort of attack.”

“Mention our helicopter?”

“Negative. I’m having a little trouble picking it up and translating on the fly.”

“You have anything, Torbin?”

“No, ma’am.”

“All right, let’s go see if we can put some pictures with Habib’s words,” said Breanna, changing course.

Chapter 134

For the longest time, Danny pushed against the metal and got nowhere. He clawed and he fought. He rolled to his stomach and then around to his back, but the Hind had twisted itself into a cocoon around him. He could hear voices nearby and felt, or thought he felt, the others moving, but it was impossible to see anything. He tried pushing his arms under himself and crawling forward; when that didn’t work, he began to shimmy sideways and got a foot or so before getting stuck again. Finally, he pushed his arms under his stomach and levered the front part of his body up with his elbows. His helmet pushed against something hard. He pushed back, slipped, tried again, felt something give way. Danny pushed again. Pain flashed through his injured knee and shin; he felt himself being pulled forward into fresh air.

“Jeez, Cap, we thought you got crushed,” said Powder.

The Whiplash trooper helped Danny upright. Liu ran over, tugging at Danny’s helmet to take it off as the captain began walking. They reached a large rock a few feet away; Danny patted it as he sat, resting and catching his breath. There were two or three inches of snow on the ground, a small, unmelted patch. Danny reached over and took a handful, smearing it on his face.

“Bitch of a landing,” said Powder. “Missile blew through the engine, just about, and threw us down like a frog getting its brains bashed in on a rock. Good thing Egg didn’t know how to fly too high, huh?”

“Egg’s legs are broken,” said Liu. “The Marine corporal’s got internal bleeding and isn’t conscious. Bison has a busted arm, maybe some other problems. Otherwise we’re cool. Helicopter isn’t going anywhere, though.”

“All right.” Danny, still dazed, looked over at his injured men, huddled near a cluster of rocks about ten feet away from the helicopter, which lay smashed against the hillside a few yards beyond them. It looked as if a large hand had grabbed its fuselage and crumpled the sides.

Danny couldn’t imagine how he’d made it out — or how no one had been killed.

Bison glanced over, then held up the Marine’s M-16 to show he was all right.

Danny realized that his leg didn’t hurt that bad anymore. In fact, it felt almost as good as new.

He decided he must be in shock.

“All right,” he said. “Survival radios — what’s working?”

“We’ve broadcast on everything we got,” said Powder,

“including an old Prick-90 Pretty Boy had stuffed in his ruck. Nothin’ comin’ back at us.”

“The spins — five minutes after the hour,” said Danny, referring to the broadcasts for searching aircraft.

“Gotcha, Cap.”

“Sooner if you hear anything. But remember, those batteries may have to last awhile.” Danny shifted his weight, again balancing against the rock. “All right. What do we have in the way of a perimeter here?”

Powder laid it out for him. The hill they were on backed a sheer drop of about two hundred feet; below that was another deep gully. Pretty Boy and Gunny were checking the base of the hill below them; they would report back in ten minutes.

“Gunny’s idea,” added Powder. “For a Marine, he ain’t too dumb. We gave him Egg’s helmet, but damned if he couldn’t fit his head into it.”

“Shoulda given him yours,” said Nurse.

Danny reset his own helmet and tried tapping into the Dreamland circuit but got nothing. It was impossible to tell whether it had been damaged in the crash or if he was just in a bad position to get the satellite.

The cold bit at his face as he pushed his way up the slope, trying to get a sense of where they’d crashed. A shallow ridge across the way blocked his view south, and he couldn’t lean far enough away from the rocks to see much east or west.

Liu and Powder, meanwhile, worked to extricate the stolen equipment from the belly of the helicopter. They began making a pile a few yards below the wreckage.

“Fuckin’ commie metal ain’t worth shit,” said Powder as he bent the Hind’s sides back to get more gear. “Where’s their quality control? Look at this — fuckin’ paper.”

“Rig some explosives to blow the gear,” Danny told them. “My gun anywhere in there?”

As he tried to duck down to see, he heard the rumble of an aircraft running through the mountains nearby.

Chapter 135

Fentress saw the helicopters as he turned westward. They looked like cockroaches scurrying across a dirty kitchen floor.

He could feel the adrenaline shoot into his stomach. He wanted to nail those suckers badly — too badly, way too badly. If he stayed this excited, he was going to fuck it up.

“Bandits in sight,” he said over the interphone. He tried to think of how Zen would say it, the offhand tone he’d use.

No, he wasn’t Major Jeff Stockard, war hero, fighter jock. There was no sense even trying. He had to be himself — a little too shy, a little too ready to salute. Hesitant at first, but once he was into it, damn good.

Damn good.

“Four Iraqi helicopters on two-eight-zero heading, edge of our box, right at the edge there, moving fifty knots,” he told Alou. “I’m positioning to engage.” He cleared his throat, pushed upright in his seat.

The computer gave a warning — five seconds to disconnect.

“Raven, please hang with me,” he said.

“Raven. Go for it, Hawk leader. I’m alerting the rest of the troops.”

Chapter 136

Mack chopped his power as close to stall speed as he could; gliders went faster than the plane was flying.

They flew higher too — he was less than two hundred feet over the rocks and scrubby bushes that passed for vegetation. The OV-10 Bronco had been designed for taking a close look at the ground; it was arguably one of the best forward air control aircraft ever designed. Still, picking things out from the air was a difficult art. Not for nothing were Bronco crewmen in Vietnam considered among the bravest guys in the service.

And just maybe the craziest.

Maybe he was looking in the wrong place. Mack held his course about a mile farther, then spun back. He began tacking west, checking the INS against the paper map he had spread over his right knee. He’d used a grease pencil to plot his search area; he double-checked it now against the coordinates he’d written on the canopy glass. From what he figured, he was maybe two miles north of the spot where the Eagle pilots had nailed the Hind. He plowed through the imaginary X, banked, and brought his speed up to 160 knots, close to what he figured the helicopter would be traveling.

Helo pilot is lower than this, he thought. Radar has him here, missile coming there, maybe he sees it and freaks.

Mack pushed his nose down, sliding even closer to the jagged rocks.

Missile tracking. Maybe the guy in the helo hasn’t seen it yet. Maybe the helo deked it a bit, because, let’s face it, the helicopter is what, twenty feet off the ground? Even an AMRAAM is going to have trouble in all this clutter.

So maybe it has to cut back, pilot tries to duck around.

Mack jerked his stick up as he came unexpectedly close to a rising slope. He pulled close to five g’s, blood suddenly catching in his throat. Another rift opened to his left, a shallow collection of brown hills topped by splotches of white snow, ice, a runoff stream, roads in the distance.

And a ruined helicopter near the top of a hillside five hundred yards on his left, three miles farther west than anyone thought it would be.

“Wild Bronco to Quicksilver—check that, to Coyote AWACS, to any allied aircraft. I have the wreckage in sight. Stand by for my coordinates.”

Chapter 137

Danny could tell there were aircraft nearby, he just couldn’t see them. Nor could they raise them on the radios. So when Gunny and Pretty Boy reported back that they had seen two trucks coming up the highway in their direction, he realized he had to find a way to make the team visible to the aircraft real fast.

“Liu, you and Powder go to the top of this hill, fire some pencil flares. Whatever is flying is probably ours, and even if it’s Iraqi, it’ll bring our guys. Once you can see the plane, the damn radios ought to work, even that Prick-90. Especially that. Gunny, you and Pretty Boy get the others ready to evac. Blow the laser shit if we can’t get it out.”

“Gotcha, Captain,” said Pretty Boy.

“Wait. Where’s that bazooka thing? You got any missiles left?”

“The bunker buster? The SMAW?”

“Yeah. I’m going to take the trucks out while you guys get picked up.”

“Fuck that,” said Gunny. “I’ll go.”

“They may need you here,” said Danny.

“Come on, Captain. Those pussies are wet for us down there,” said the sergeant, who scooped up the weapon as well as a Minimi and started downhill.

Chapter 138

Mack heard Alou say they were going to splash the Iraqi helicopters and cursed. The one thing he could probably — make that definitely — nail, and they were a stinking fifteen miles south. Two Sidewinders — pop, pop.

That would make their day. If only he had them.

Stinking wimp Iraqi bastards.

He passed low over the wreckage, circling around the peak and keeping the area on his right wing. He still couldn’t tell if those were people near it, but they sure as hell looked like people, and damn, what else could they be? Moving trees?

He fought the Bronco a bit around the peak, the mountain air beating the wings like a driver whipping the back-side of a horse. The plane drifted to the left but otherwise hung with him after he kissed the throttle. As he tucked back right, white light flashed in the distance, and for a long, cold second he thought they’d been wrong about where the laser was — he thought he was about to be fried.

Distracted, he came through his bank much tighter than he’d intended, and so passed directly over the peak before he could get a good look at the ground. As he turned back he realized the flash had come from glass or a mirror that had caught the sinking sun.

This time he had a good long look at the crash site.

Two men were standing on the slope above the helicopter, waving their arms. He dipped his wings, then clicked the radio to tell the others that he definitely had people on the ground. At the same time he changed course to find out what had caught the sun.

Chapter 139

The fact that he had to keep his speed back to stay close to Raven helped Fentress more than he would have imagined, corralling some of his nervous energy. Four helicopters were flying in an elongated and slightly stag-gered diamond pattern ten miles off his nose. He had a perfect intercept on the chopper on the east wing, the second in line. The computer had them ID’d as Russian-made Mil Mi-8 Hips, general-purpose troop-carrying birds that could also carriage missiles; his attack should be prudent but not overly cautious. The computer’s tactics section had a course plotted that would allow him to machine-gun the two wing helos, accelerating past and then around for a rear-quarter attack on the survivors.

That would expose him to possible antiair fire from only one of the aircraft while maximizing the damage on the formation. But Fentress realized that might not accomplish his main objective, which was to protect the ground team — the first helicopter would be within four or five miles of the wreckage at intercept; by the time he recovered and caught up, it would be in a position to disgorge its troops.

So he decided on his own plan. He’d take a few quick shots at the wing helo, but then concentrate on the leader, slashing close enough to the formation to scatter it, at least temporarily. The computer acknowledged, dotting the course for him and then stepping into the background as he closed. Fentress tried to deepen his breathing, pacing himself through the long wait — all of twenty-three seconds, counted down by the computer.

“Raven, I’m about to engage.” He had the wing helo on visual.

“Raven. Kick ass, Hawk leader.”

“Nail the mothers, Curly.”

Zen’s voice caught him by surprise. Before he could turn to see if he had truly heard him, the computer gave him a prompt, claiming it was in range to fire.

Objects flew around Zen’s head without any logical sense. He saw Breanna dancing, saw himself walking, saw his wheelchair tumbling as if lost in a zero-gravity orbit around his head. He fought to get away from riddled unconsciousness, swam toward reality, the seat on the Flighthawk deck of Raven. Fentress was there somewhere. Fentress needed his help.

Fentress stood with a pair of Colt .45s, taking potshots on the shooting range. Clay pigeons morphed into real pigeons, which morphed into hawks, which morphed into helicopters.

Helicopters, enemy helicopters.

“Nail the mothers, Curly,” he shouted. “Lead helo first.

Knock the others off course. Go!”

As the firing bar flashed red, Fentress remembered Zen’s advice about the computer being slightly optimistic. He started to count off three seconds to himself, but his adrenaline got the better of him; his finger depressed the trigger after one. Just under a hundred 20mm bullets perforated the engine and then the cabin and then the engine of the Hip; the chopper dipped and then fell below his target pipper. Fentress let off on the trigger, pushing right for the lead helicopter. The cannon’s recoil had stolen some of his momentum, but he managed to turn tightly, and found his target on his right wing. The bar flashed red and he began firing immediately, the bullets trailing downward as the Hip jinked left. Flares shot from the rear of the helicopter. Fentress managed a quick angle shot but couldn’t hope to maneuver behind the helicopter.

He hit the gas and boogied away, gaining speed and altitude for a second run. Turning his wing for a dive back, he saw one of the helicopters streak across his view to the left, and he hesitated a moment, surprised that it had managed to get by him. The hesitation cost him a shot on a second Hip, which came at him from less than half a mile away, chin gun blazing. Reflexes took over; Fentress tucked over and dove for the ground, spinning into a tight turn to put his nose back in the direction the helicopters had taken. At the same time, the AWACS controller warned that the rescue chopper, an MH-60 spec ops craft, was zero-one from pickup.

“Hawk,” he said, lining up on a Hip.

Chapter 140

Danny managed to slide to the ground behind the rocks as Gunny shouted; the tight report of the spotting round was followed by the heavier thump and whiz of the 83mm rocket from the Marine’s SMAW. Danny pushed up in time to see the rocket plow through the windshield of the pickup truck, exploding in a hiss of steam. The dozen men packed into the rear were caught as they tried to jump; they burst out of the dust cloud in pieces.

The other truck jerked right but stayed on the wide road, avoiding the wreckage of the first pickup and gunning its engine. Three or four men began firing Kalash-nikovs over the cab.

“Well, we got their attention,” said Gunny, throwing the now empty SMAW down and pulling up his light machine gun.

As the Iraqi gunfire began pinging into the nearby rocks, Gunny poured 5.56mm slugs into the front end of the truck. The white pickup kept coming for about twenty feet, then rolled over in flames. A second explosion shot debris everywhere; Danny felt something whack against his chest and arm as he ducked. He saw or felt Gunny pushing off to his left, trying to swing his gun up; Danny threw himself around and opened fire in that direction.

Something shrieked, then cried in pain. Danny continued to fire, spraying bullets left and right. Iraqis were less than twenty yards away, maybe closer.

“All right, all right, all right,” Danny yelled, telling himself to stop firing, to get discipline.

Hunkering down, he reached for a fresh clip and slammed the new bullets home. The Marine sergeant was curled against a rock to his left, no longer firing.

God — did I shoot him?

Danny looked to the left up the slope, saw nothing. A bullet ricocheted off one of the stones behind him. He threw himself flat on his stomach, then crawled back toward the road. There were at least two Iraqi soldiers in a ditch paralleling the highway about twenty feet from his position. The truck smoldered behind them; there might be more men sheltered there, though it was impossible to tell.

He knew they’d have a good line on Gunny. He’d have to drag him to cover.

As he got up, one of the Iraqis in the ditch opened fire.

Danny dropped. The bullets just missed.

The Iraqis’ line of fire only extended about five or six yards up the slope; Danny knew he could probably make it past them, thanks to his body armor. But carrying Gunny would slow him down considerably. He’d have to take out the bastards first.

“Gunny!” he yelled.

No answer.

Jesus, he thought. If I killed him, what will I do?

Chapter 141

At 25,000 feet, Quicksilver was well above the action, though thanks to the continually updated photos from the Dreamland mini-KH satellite, they had a ring-side seat. The Flighthawk was fencing with the Iraqi helicopters; two were down but the other two were now within two miles of the pickup zone. The rescue Blackhawk MH-60 raced toward the site, balls-out; he’d get there maybe sixty seconds after the Iraqi helos.

“Quicksilver to Hawk leader. Stand off. We’ll get the Hips with our AMRAAMs,” she said.

Her copilot didn’t wait for the command, opening the bay door as he zeroed in on the target.

“Hawk leader?” she repeated. “Stand off. We have to nail those helos now. Zen?”

“Zen’s not flying the Flighthawk,” Ferris said. “Fentress is.”

Chapter 142

The helicopter grew fat in his cue. As fentress pressed the trigger, he heard Breanna’s hail.

He hesitated a second, just long enough for the helicopter to cut right and drop, avoiding him. He tucked right, began shooting anyway, lost the helicopter. He had to throw the Flighthawk left to avoid a looming cliff face — if the rocks had been covered with moss, he would have scraped it off.

“Shit!” he cursed, flailing right after the helo.

“Stay within yourself,” said Zen.

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can.”

“Zen?”

“It’s me. Hold on — Quicksilver wants you to stand off.

They’re targeting with AMRAAMs.”

He pulled back. “Hawk leader to Quicksilver. Acknowledged. They’re yours.”

“Fox One!” said Chris Ferris, the copilot in Quicksilver, announcing the missile shot.

In the next second the AWACS controller broke in.

“Quicksilver, Raven, Wild Bronco—break ninety immediately! Bandits off runway at A-3. MiGs! Break! Break!”

Chapter 143

Mack Smith saw the pickup truck burst into flames as he sailed by. There were a couple of guys at the foot of the hill near the crash site, maybe four or five hundred yards down the slope; they had to be Americans. He tried to radio their position to the AWACS but got overrun by all the excitement. The Iraqi Hips were now less than two miles away, and smoke filled the lower left quadrant of the horizon as he turned back toward the site.

The Flighthawk and Quicksilver were taking potshots at the Hips, with what sounded like little success; he couldn’t help thinking he would have nailed every single one of the suckers if he’d just had guns on his damn plane.

Because it was one serious hellcat, if you had the balls to stick and rudder it. He put his wing just about straight down as he turned, getting the American position in view.

“Thunder One, this is Wild Bronco,” he said, trying to reach the MH-60G rescue helicopter on its own frequency. “I have one maybe two Americans on the slope near the road. You guys hear me?”

No answer. He could see the helicopter, an angry-looking Pave Hawk specially modified for Special Forces work. A man hung out the door over a machine gun as it came in; someone on the ground moved. The helicopter skimmed into a hover, then touched down a few yards from the wreckage of the Hind.

Gunfire ripped from the road. There were half a dozen Iraqis down there. Something flared — a shoulder-launched SAM?

Shooting at him?

That did it. Mack pushed his stick in and pirouetted in the sky, kicking out diversionary flares. He’d run the motherfuckers over if he had to.

Chapter 144

The rotors of the MH-60G Pave Hawk Spec Op helo continued to spin as the Whiplash wounded were loaded in. The rotors made an odd whirling sound, a kind of low whistle, as if the Sikorsky herself were telling them to get a move on.

Powder helped Liu shoulder the litter into the helicopter as the door gunner let loose another burst in the general direction of the Iraqi ground troops. Something whizzed behind him, and Powder threw himself to the ground. The mountain shuddered, and the helicopter, hovering less than a foot off the dirt, reared to the side.

“Mortars!” he shouted. “Fucks have mortars!”

He jumped up, saw Liu in front of him and grabbed him.

“Into the helicopter!” he shouted. He scooped up his gun from the ground. “Go! Go!”

Liu started to say something, but Powder just pushed him toward the Blackhawk. He heard another round of in-coming and dove forward down the slope.

“Get the helo off,” he yelled. “It’s a sitting duck!”

Chapter 145

The bastards ducked as he closed in, but as Mack approached the ground a mortar shell shot up toward the slope.

If he only had a stinking gun.

“Coyote AWACS — this is Bronco. Get that helo off the ground! Now! They’re going to get roasted. Go. Come on. No time to be a hero. Go! Take off. Jesus,” said Mack, still talking as he rolled back north.

“Bronco. There are two MiGs headed for you,” answered the AWACS controller. “Get out of there!”

“Hey, screw yourself,” said Mack, though he didn’t press the send button. “Think I’m a wimp or something?”

Chapter 146

Danny could see where they were firing the mortar from. He had a fragmentation grenade and thought he might be able to reach the mortar if he could get any sort of weight behind the throw. But that would expose him to the Iraqis in the ditch.

Stand up, toss the grenade as quickly as he could, duck back down, he told himself.

That would leave him with two smoke grenades. Use one to cover his retreat up the hillside. Use the other to deke them, give him a clear toss at the mortar.

A fresh burst of AK-47 bullets kicked through the nearby dirt. As the mortar whizzed again, Danny lobbed a smoke grenade in the direction of the ditch, waiting for it to land, judging — hoping — the Iraqis would see it and duck. He counted two seconds, then rose and wailed the fragmentation grenade at the men with the mortar.

His knee buckled with the throw. The grenade sailed only about twenty yards. As he fell his arms sailed out, spread-eagle, a rush of pain coming over him.

Danny swam back through the dirt, grabbing his gun and steadying his aim on the ditch. His eyes narrowed down to slits, compressed by a fresh wave of pain at the top of his head. He felt as if someone had taken a nail gun and plastered a dozen spikes through the top of his helmetless skull. He heard a sound like a vacuum, thought it must be the mortar, and fired wildly. He saw an Iraqi as the smoke wafted clear. The man turned toward him with a pistol, and Danny leveled his MP-5 and fired. The bullets spun him back, his pistol falling at his feet.

The mortar lay on the ground, beyond another body.

The Pave Hawk roared above somewhere. Other helicopters, other planes, gunfire — the noises jammed together. Danny stopped listening. Dirt tore at his eyes. He needed to rest; the sensation overwhelmed him.

Someone was behind him.

Danny spun so fast he lost his balance. An injured Iraqi had struggled to his feet two yards away. He held his hands out, weaponless.

Danny just barely caught himself from pressing the trigger. He wanted to — he felt no mercy, knew he’d be shown none if the situation was reversed. It was wildly dangerous not to fire, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill a man who had his arms up.

As Danny continued to stare at him, the Iraqi lowered his eyes. He kept his hands above his head.

A prisoner was the last thing he needed now. But he couldn’t shoot the SOB. Just couldn’t.

“Go,” Danny told him.

The man didn’t move.

“Go!” he shouted. He shot a few rounds into the air, yelling and screaming. “Go! Go! Go!”

The Iraqi, terrified, finally began to move.

“Get the hell away from here!” shouted Danny. “Go!”

The man finally seemed to understand. He began to run, looking over his shoulder after a few steps, ducking his head a bit as if in thanks. Then he put everything he had into his stride, running into the distance.

Okay, Danny thought. Okay. Now how the hell do I get out of here?

Powder reached Gunny as gunfire erupted a few yards farther away, down near the road. There was too much smoke to see anything, but he figured Captain Freah had just taken out the mortar. He turned the Marine sergeant over as gently as he could, staring at him until he saw that he was definitely breathing.

“Hey,” mumbled the sergeant. “Didja get the fucker?”

“Who?” asked Powder.

“One of those bastards tried to flank us.”

Powder craned his neck up. There was a body maybe ten yards across the slope.

“Any others?” Powder asked.

“Dunno. What happened to the captain?” Gunny gasped between the words.

“Probably around here somewhere.”

“Water?”

Powder gave the injured Marine a drink and looked over his wounds. He had been hit in the side and the arm and lost a lot of blood. How serious the wounds were was hard to tell, but it’d all be academic if they didn’t get the hell out of there ASAP.

Chapter 147

Mack tried to sort all the commotion out over the common radio circuit as he shadowed the highway. The MiGs had their afterburners lit and were two minutes away. Two F-15s had moved up to intercept but hadn’t gotten radar locks yet, the amateurs. The MH-60 had been hit but was still flying; its pilot proceeded to argue with the AWACS controller about what he should and shouldn’t do.

“Wild Bronco, you have your orders. Break ninety!”

“Bullshit. I’m not leaving guys there.”

Mack passed the mortar area, saw that it had been neutralized. One of the Iraqis had even been captured.

Hell, he could put down, pick them up, and get the hell out of there before the Eagles even found the stinking MiGs.

So why not?

Why not indeed.

“Wild Bronco to Coyote—send the Blackhawk home,”

said Mack. “I’ll pick up the rest of their passengers for them.”

Chapter 148

The staccato pounding in his skull gave way to the steadier drone of jackhammers as Danny edged back toward the road. He saw Powder in the distance, just beyond the edge of smoke, waving and yelling something.

What the hell was he saying?

“Duck, Cap! Duck!”

Danny whirled in time to see the Bronco hop once on the highway then beeline for him. He started to back up, then fell on his rump. Grit flew over his face; the next thing he knew, Powder was helping him up. Mack Smith leaned from the open canopy about twenty yards down the roadway.

Smith yelled something but it was drowned out by the whine of the motors. Danny ran through a cloud of dust to the plane, then realized he’d lost Powder somewhere along the way. As he turned to find him, he remembered Gunny, poor dead Gunny. He put his hands to his face, funneling away the noise and grit, getting his bearings.

They had to get the Marine out, give him a decent burial at least. He started back, then heard someone yelling behind him — Mack Smith maybe, telling him to get the hell into the aircraft.

“I can’t leave a man, even if he’s dead.”

“Ain’t no one dead, Cap,” shouted Powder. Danny spun around and saw the Whiplash team member with a large green sack over his shoulder. “We got to get!”

Gunny — in Powder’s arms.

Danny’s hands fumbled with the latch to the rear compartment. Finally inside, he pulled Gunny’s limp body up toward the primitive bench seat. There was no time to put on restraints as the aircraft began to move; he wrapped one arm around a strap and the other around the Marine, huddled on the floor as the aircraft suddenly became weightless.

“You saved my sorry ass again,” said Gunny in the darkness. “You got the son of a bitch.”

“Who?”

“The Iraqi that tried to flank us. Now I owe you again, huh? I thought I evened it out.”

“It’s all even,” said Danny.

“Sergeant, you touch anything else back there and I’m hitting the eject button. You got that?”

“You can eject me from up there?”

“Damn straight,” lied Mack. “You touch anything, no shit, boom, you’re outta here.”

“This plane’s got an eject button too? I thought only the Ruskies put them in. There was one in the helicopter I flew.”

“The Ruskies got it from us,” said Mack. “Keep your hands off the stick and enjoy the ride. And if you decide to puke, don’t lean forward.”

Chapter 149

Chris Ferris reminded Breanna that they had used their last AMRAAMs on the helicopters.

“Acknowledged,” she told him. They had the two ban-dits on their nose now at eighteen miles, closing quickly.

“Eagles still can’t find them.”

“We’re going to take them out, Chris,” she said.

“How?”

“We’ll suck them off and nail them with the Stinger air mines,” she said.

“Uh, Bree, we’re in Quicksilver, remember? We don’t have Stingers.”

“We’ll think of something. Hold on.”

The temptation to grab the controls from Fentress was overwhelming, but Zen knew the delay as C3 cycled through the authentication made it pointless. It was all up to Curly boy.

Curly, God. Like Girly. What a horrible name for the poor kid. Shit.

“Quicksilver will take the lead MiG,” Zen told him, staring at the main video screen. “Keep on your course.

You nail the second SOB when you close. Hang with it.”

“What if the Eagles get a lock?”

“Don’t worry about anybody but yourself,” Zen told him. “Breathe slower.”

Fentress nodded. Zen could smell the sweat pouring from his body. The kid was nervous as hell — but he’d done all right against the helicopters, and he was going to do all right here.

“Three seconds,” Zen said, anticipating the computer.

“I’ll tell you—”

“Yo, I got it, damn it.”

Zen felt his anger rile up — who the hell was Fentress talking to?

Then he realized it was the voice he’d been waiting to hear since the kid joined the program.

“Kick butt,” he told his pupil.

The mammoth plane tumbled over its wing, screaming toward the ground like a peregrine diving on a kill. At somewhere over 300,000 pounds with her fuel and passengers, she was more than ten times as heavy as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum she dove toward. But her sleek, carbon resin wings and long fuselage were as limber as the fighter jet’s, and her pilot’s skill more than made up for any difference in the sheer performance of the two planes.

“Changing course and coming for us,” said Chris.

“Now what?”

“Torbin, are you tracking that MiG’s radar?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Bring up the weapon board and lock the Tacit Plus on him,” said Bree.

“Um, can I do that?”

“You tell me.”

“Bree, that’ll never work,” said Chris.

“Do it, Torbin,” said Breanna.

“It’s asking me to override,” said the radar weapons officer. “I’m going for it. Yeah, we got it.”

“Open bay doors.”

“Bay,” said Ferris. “He’s firing.”

“Launch,” Breanna told Torbin. “And hang on!”

The MiG altered course just as he came within cannon range, cutting toward him. Fentress pulled the trigger and tried to follow at the same time, pulling softly at first then cutting harder as the enemy plane rolled downward in what looked like the start of a swoop to get into a turn behind him. But it was a sucker move — the MiG flipped flat and twisted back the other way. Fentress was caught flat-footed and pointed away from his target. Struggling to stay in the game, he threw his throttle to the firewall and began turning back toward the MiG.

“Stay within yourself and remember your objective,”

said Zen. “Keep him off the Bronco. You don’t have to shoot him down. You’re doing fine.”

“Right.”

“Think about what he’s doing. He’s flying away from them — where’s he going?”

Fentress felt the sweat rushing from his pores. But Zen was right — he checked his sitrep, found the helicopter ten miles north, hugging the hills.

The Bronco. Where was the Bronco?

“Eleven o’clock,” said Zen. “Get there.”

He had to be reading his mind. Fentress altered his course slightly, not even looking at the sitrep now, just going there.

The MiG was slightly below, a dot ahead, three miles, fading, four.

“Make it fast,” said Zen. “Bronco — flares! Jink, Mack, jink, you asshole!”

Mack cursed his dumb luck and tipped his right wing down, sliding across the rough air currents like a kid on a saucer scooting across an icy road. He’d reached reflex-ively for the flares maybe ten times in the past three minutes, only to remember he had none.

One stinking Sidewinder and the MiG would be dead meat. He’d suck him close, turn inside, goose the SOB

before he knew what had hit him.

But he didn’t have a Sidewinder. All he could do was wait for Zen and Breanna and Fentress and who-all to wax the Iraqi. And they sure as hell were taking their time about it.

He jammed his rudder and threw his weight into the stick, pushing the plane to pivot as he ran down into a rift between two large hills; a hang-glider couldn’t have turned harder or sharper.

“Yeah, no shit,” he acknowledged as Zen warned that missiles were in the air. “You going to take this sucker out or am I going to have to pull out my pistol and do it myself?”

Zen watched the bronco tuck away from the last heat-seeker. Much as he hated to admit it, Mack was a seriously good pilot — he deked the missile down into the hillside without even the help of a flare. Good and lucky — a tremendous combination.

“The MiG’s going to slow down now and go to his cannon. Back off your speed!” Zen told Fentress.

“I have him,” said Fentress, pressing the trigger to fire.

“Back off!”

Fentress let go of the trigger and slid his thrust down, but it was too late — the Flighthawk shot over the MiG, which threw up its nose to slow in a modified cobra maneuver. It was a fancier move than Zen had pulled with the Phantom drone in their training exercise, but with the same intent and effect: Fentress lost his shot and was now the target.

“Let him come after you instead of the Bronco,” said Zen. “Good.”

“I wish I did it on purpose,” said Fentress as the MiG began firing at him.

As the MiG’s bullets started sailing over his wings, Fentress slammed his nose up as if he were going to do his own cobra, then juiced his throttle instead, turning a tumblesault in the sky. The g forces would have wiped out a pilot, but the only thing Fentress felt was a small bubble of sweat diving around the back of his neck. The MiG sailed by as Fentress pushed the robot toward its tail.

“He’s still going for the Bronco,” said Zen. “He’s suicidal.”

“Yeah,” said Fentress.

Mack’s plane ducked and the MiG sailed off to the left, then turned to come back.

Fentress knew he could try a front-quarter attack.

Low probability. Get him from the side as he came in.

Even harder.

The Bronco popped up near the ridge ahead. The MiG dove down, guns blazing. Fentress pressed his trigger, even though he had absolutely no shot, hoping he might distract the MiG.

It didn’t work.

Breanna dropped Quicksilver straight down as Chris worked the flares and ECMs, desperately trying to avoid the heat-seeking missiles launched by the MiG.

They rolled through an invert, feinted right, jagged left, powered back in the direction they’d gone.

The Iraqi had fired two heat-seekers at them; one had a defective seeker and dove directly into the earth a few seconds after launch. The other came at Quicksilver’s nose, lost it momentarily, then sniffed one of the engines.

As it changed course for the third or fourth time to follow Breanna’s jinks, it sensed one of the flares and started after it. A half second later it realized this was a decoy and went back for its original target. But the hesitation had cost it; sensing that its target was accelerating out of range, it self-detonated. Shrapnel nicked the top of the Megafortress’s fuselage, but there was simply too much plane there for the small shards of metal to do real damage; Quicksilver shrugged the pain away like a whale ignoring a tiny fishhook.

In the meantime, Quicksilver’s radar-homing missile shot toward the Iranian MiG at about 600 miles an hour.

The MiG pilot threw his plane into evasive maneuvers, rolling and plunging away behind a hail of flares and tinsel. The missile followed gamely; while it wasn’t nearly as maneuverable as an air-to-air missile, it had extremely long legs — the Iraqi’s RWR continued to warn that it was gunning for him, even after he went to the afterburner and galloped back toward his base. As far as he knew, the Americans had launched a superweapon at him, one that refused to be fooled by anything he did.

“We’re clear,” said Chris finally. “MiG is out of the picture. Tacit’s still following him,” he added, a chuckle in his voice. “We may nail him yet. Good shot, Torbin.”

“Thanks,” said their newest crewman. “Uh, that standard operating procedure, firing ground missiles at airplanes?”

“It is now,” said Ferris.

“We aim to be creative,” said Breanna. “Welcome to the team.”

A stream of tracers shot over mack’s canopy as he plunked his nose down again. He cut his throttle and coasted half a second, making sure the Iraqi would over-shoot. Then he gunned it and whipped back onto the other side of the mountain.

Mack laughed as he caught sight of the MiG flying parallel to him. Idiot! One stinking Sidewinder and it’d be fried Iraqi for dinner.

He could do this all day, all day.

Mack’s laughter turned to a roar as the MiG turned ahead of him, completely out of the game.

At least for the next fifteen seconds.

Chapter 150

Zen watched fentress as the MiG cut in front of the Bronco’s path. The kid’s hands were steady, even if his voice was jumpy and high-pitched.

But he was nearly out of bullets. And the MiG pilot now had an angle on the Bronco, realizing that his best bet was to fire from the edge of his range rather than closing in where the Bronco could easily throw him off by turning or changing speed.

Mack was doing a hell of a job, but sooner or later he was going to get nailed. His plane was too overmatched.

Fentress had enough bullets for maybe one more try.

Zen knew he could nail it. But by the time he grabbed control it would be too late.

Helpless. Like when he lost his legs.

His legs — he remembered the dream or hallucination or whatever it was, the fleeting memory of feelings that had just rummaged through his brain.

This had nothing to do with that.

He looked at his pupil.

“Get him on this pass, Curly. Nail the motherfucker and let’s go have a beer,” said Zen.

Zen’s voice drove the frustration away. Fentress drew a breath, then blew it out his mouth with a long, slow whistle. He’d ride the Flighthawk into the damn MiG if he had to.

That wasn’t a horrible idea. He had a straight intercept plotted. If his bullets didn’t nail the MiG, he would.

Not a conventional solution, but better than letting the Bronco get waxed.

The OV-10 flailed to the right and the MiG snapped back to follow. Fentress’s targeting bar flashed red.

Too soon to fire, he told himself, counting.

Mack pounded the pedal, trying to throw all his weight into his foot, and pushed the Bronco back the other way. He could feel the plane stutter, though whether it was because he’d been hit or because it was getting tired of the acrobatics he couldn’t tell. The right engine freaked and now he had trouble holding the plane in the air.

The MiG had him fat in its pipper.

“Suck on this, raghead!” he shouted, pushing the OV-10 into a desperation dive as the left engine gave out and the emergency lights indicated it was on fire.

The computer tried to get him to stop, but he was balls-out committed now. The cannon clicked empty and the MiG kept coming and Fentress could see the Iraqi pilot hunkering over his stick, so intent on nailing his quarry that he didn’t even see the Flighthawk closing in.

The screen flashed and C3 gave him a verbal warning as well as a proximity tone, but all he could hear was Zen’s calm voice.

“Nail ’em. Now.”

The Iraqi pilot saw something and turned his head toward the side, leaning back in the direction of the Flighthawk.

Then the screen went blank.

Zen fell back in the seat, as exhausted as if he’d flown the plane himself. He let his head go all the way back, staring at the compartment ceiling.

It wasn’t exactly what he would have done — it wasn’t, quite frankly, as good as he would have done. But Fentress had saved the Bronco.

“Wild Bronco to Hawk leader.”

Zen turned toward Fentress, who sat stone still in his seat.

“Yo, Hawk leader. Nice flying, Zen boy.” Mack was laughing, the SOB.

“Hawk,” said Zen. “But that was Fentress who nailed the MiG.”

“Fentress, no shit. Good shootin’, nugget boy.”

Fentress said nothing, pulling off his helmet.

“What’s your status, Bronco?” Zen asked.

“Lost an engine. Probably got a little wing damage.

Nothing we can’t live with. We ought to get some of these planes at Dreamland,” Mack added. “Best stinking plane I ever flew.”

Zen turned Mack over to Alou so they could discuss the course home. In the meantime, Fentress eased his restraints and leaned back in the seat. He looked white, beat as hell.

“Hey, that was a kick-ass move,” Zen told him. “You used your head.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it,” said Zen. “You did good. You saved the Bronco.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“Listen, we can come up with something besides Curly. How about Hammer or Sleek or something?”

Fentress shrugged, then turned his head toward Zen.

He looked tired, and sweat had soaked his curly locks.

But he still smiled. “Curly’s okay. Kinda fits.”

“You did okay, kid,” said Zen. “You did okay.”

Not only did he mean it, he actually felt a little proud.