Siege of Lightning

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CONFLICTING BELIEFS

“So the Defense Department gave you the order to pull back?” snapped Pruett over the radio as the Skipper of the Blue Ridge gave him a status update on the mission.

“Yes, sir.”

“And do what? Wait?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Ah, no, sir. We got visual confirmation that the target was destroyed, but in the process it destroyed one of the rescue helicopters with its crew of four. Two pilots and two Marines. The second helo hovered around the area for a few more minutes but couldn’t see a thing. He reported that the entire side of the compound was ablaze, including the area where our unit was supposed to be.”

“Have you tried communicating with them?”

“Repeatedly, sir, but got no response. The pilot claims to have picked up an emergency distress signal on radar. It’s possible that some of the men have made it out alive from that inferno with partially functioning radio gear, but that’s just a guess. It could also mean the enemy got ahold of a radio and is trying to draw us back in. Hard to tell without proper communication with the surviving troops, again if any of them’s still alive.”

Pruett rubbed his eyes and massaged his burning chest. He had achieved his mission, but at what cost? Four men confirmed dead, and no confirmation on ground casualties. For all he knew, the entire team could still be intact on the ground with busted communications gear. Pruett frowned. He knew he had to proceed from that assumption. Those men, at least some of them, could be alive and on the run, and it was his job to get them all out. How could Stice call the helo back? It should have remained in the area and then refueled midair. Damn that Stice!

“All right,” Pruett responded. “Call me back immediately if you hear anything. In the meantime have the returning helicopter refueled and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Got that?”

“Yes, sir!”

Pruett passed the mike to the radio operator before looking at Cameron and Marie. “Got all that?”

“Why would Stice do something like that?” asked Marie.

“I’m not sure, but I intend to find out immediately.”

Cameron nodded. “You gotta get a helo to them and get them out. Every second counts.”

Pruett nodded and reached for the phone on the wall. He dialed the White House.

Crowe walked away from the decelerating rotor as the crew tied the Sea Stallion onto the flight deck. Although he had hardly slept in the past twenty-four hours, the adrenaline kept him frosty, fully awake. His thinking was clear, his determination firm. He spotted Davenport coming up to meet him.

“What the hell happened, Kenny?”

“What do you think happened, Skipper? I was ordered to leave American soldiers behind. That’s what the hell happened! And that damned rocket blew up in our faces. Why didn’t you tell me that a launch was in progress? Our approach would have been different! Jesus Christ, Skipper, why the secret? And why in the world did we leave them there? I had them in sight!”

“Calm down, Kenny. We all follow orders around here, and no, you thought you had them in sight. You didn’t have any confirmation.”

“Well, sir. Whoever gave you that order not to let me rescue them is a fucking moron! You tell him that. You tell him that his idiotic decision will cost the lives of American servicemen. Those men won’t last—”

“Just who in the fuck you think you’re talking to? I will tell you one last time, Commander. Keep your damn mouth shut and do as I tell you to! If I tell you to fucking plunge your helo into the ocean you will do it because that’s an order. You go that, mister?”

Crowe didn’t respond. He could see Davenport’s arteries throbbing in his neck. Crowe lowered his gaze and stared at the flight deck.

Davenport exhaled. “Look, we all know that we should have stayed in the area a little longer and looked for survivors, but orders are orders. What’s the matter with you anyway? Every operation has its risks, especially covert ones. You of all people should know that. You were in Vietnam, weren’t you?”

Crowe inhaled deeply through his mouth, clenched his teeth, and slowly exhaled through his nostrils. Davenport was right. In covert operations, standard procedure was not to acknowledge the team until it had left enemy territory.

“Now tell me,” Davenport continued, “you’re sure about the blip on your screen?”

Crowe closed his eyes for a brief second and then stared into Davenport’s intelligent blue eyes. “It was for real, Skipper. It lasted ten minutes and slowly disappeared as I left the Guiana coast.”

Davenport didn’t respond. He simply turned around and walked back toward the bridge. Crowe followed him. “Sir, what the hell is going on?”

“Get your craft ready to go at a moment’s notice, Kenny. You’re dismissed.”

“With all due respect, sir. I’m ready to go right away. Those men—”

Davenport stopped walking, turned around, and got within inches from him. His voice was ice cold. “You listen to me, and listen very carefully. I just gave you a direct order and I expect you to follow it to the letter. I know about those men out there, but I also know the proper chain of command. We need authorization to go back in and get them out. Got that?” Crowe stood mute. “I said did you get that, Commander Crowe?”

“Yes, sir. I got it.”

“Good. That’s all.”

Davenport turned and continued toward the bridge.

Crowe just stood there, flight helmet in his right hand. He looked over the dark sea toward the Guiana coast. Soldiers were there, American soldiers, most likely outnumbered and outarmed, and he was being asked to sit tight and wait for some Washington bureaucrat to make up his fucking mind about whether it was “advisable” or not to go back in. The old familiar pain returned. He hadn’t felt it for nearly two decades, yet it was there once again. The knot in his stomach he’d always gotten when soldiers suffered the ill effects of politicians trying to make military decisions; a feeling he became all too familiar with in Vietnam. He hated it with an overwhelming passion. In a burst of rage, he threw his flight helmet against the flight deck with all his might, startling several mechanics. Davenport, who was still on the flight deck, also turned his way. No words were spoken.

Crowe slowly walked toward the edge of the flight deck and simply stared at the dark sea. It looked so peaceful. The stars above lazily shed their minute light on the ship’s wake. He watched it in silence.

“But I need to talk to the President right away,” Pruett persisted. “You know as much as I do of the urgency of the situation.”

“I repeat,” Carlton Stice responded. “The President is tied up with the Middle East situation at the moment and cannot be reached. He left me in charge of the operation and I’m telling you to stay put. The target has been destroyed and we’re currently evaluating the situation to decide on the proper course of action.”

“Who is evaluating the situation, sir? Who are the analysts? How are they evaluating the problem? How can they know more than the pilot from the rescue helicopter? How? We sent those men out there, sir. We have a moral duty to—”

“I’m telling you to stay put until a decision is made! Is that understood?”

Pruett vigorously rubbed the palm of his right hand against his burning chest. He felt like strangling the little bastard with his bare hands. He was about to say something but the professional in him slammed his jaw shut. Telling Stice what was on his mind would be the fastest way to terminate his career, and it wouldn’t do those men out there any good. He breathed in and out several times, forcing his body to relax.

“Are you there, Tom?”

“Yes, sir,” he managed to respond by merely moving his lips.

“Well? You with me?”

“I’m always with the President and his decisions, sir.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

“Sir? If you don’t mind me asking. What is your time frame to respond on this issue?”

“You’ll hear from us in due time. In the meantime, stay put. Do not do anything!”

The line went dead. Pruett calmly hung up and reached into his right pocket for the antacid tablets. He popped two in his mouth, thought about it, and popped one more. He crushed them hard and fast as he walked outside the communications room, where Cameron and Marie waited.

“You okay?” asked Cameron.

“No, Cameron. I’m pretty fucking far from okay.” Pruett couldn’t believe the bad luck that always seemed to haunt him. No matter which Administration was in charge of the White House, he had always been able to explain his point of view to the President and most of his staff. But there were always some high-ranking persons who never saw it his way and seemed to enjoy messing up his plans. And now as too often before, it was one of those bureaucrats whom the President had left in charge. A moron who was obviously more concerned about saving face than about the lives of American soldiers in enemy territory.

“Why?” Marie asked. “What happened?”

“Stice put a hold on the operation.”

“What?” snapped Cameron.

“You heard me.”

“But — but there must be something you can do,” Marie said. “That place is nothing but swamps. No human can survive in there for long.”

Pruett pinched his upper lip with his teeth. There has to be a way.

Marie looked at Cameron. “There has to be a way. We can’t simply turn our backs on them, can we?”

Pruett did a double take on Marie, then said, “You two follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Cameron asked.

“To have a word with General Olson.”

Suffering from an overwhelming headache, Ortiz took the lead through the swamp. He waited patiently for the two additional extra-strength Tylenol he’d taken a half hour earlier to kick in. Zimmer followed close behind, Colt Commando up and ready. Nobody was going to mess with them, and if the enemy did, Ortiz was committed to take out as many of them as he could before he went down. Yes, the enemy might have more men and arms, but they lacked the skill. And they lacked the element of surprise. The enemy would have to come looking for Mambo, and when they did, they would pay dearly.

Thick, hardened mud covered his face and neck, cooling the multiple cuts and scrapes left after the removal of the annoying leeches. They didn’t hurt anymore. He had overcome the pain as he had overcome the deep burning in his legs from the non-stop retreat. Ortiz pushed on, glancing back briefly at Zimmer, also naturally camouflaged by thick, smelly mud. Neither wore night goggles any longer. Ortiz and Zimmer had opted to bury them in the swamp when their batteries died, along with all the other gear — and bodies — they could find. They’d selected specific landmarks as references, and decided that the possibility of bodies shifting was minimal based on the thickness of the swamp. Theirs was a covert mission, and they were to leave no sign of their country of origin. No traceable evidence that the enemy could use to embarrass their nation.

Ortiz looked up at the sky and contemplated the stars. He used them to move northwest, back toward the easily defendable clearing, surrounded with thick jungle, at the edge of the swamp. The jungle would give them the mobility and protection they so desperately needed to survive what he expected would be an overpowering attack. In the jungle they would be safe, but they had to reach it before dawn. Their chances of survival during daytime in the swamp were negligible. In the large clearings between clusters of trees they would be openly exposed to the enemy.

No, Ortiz decided. They had to push themselves. There was no other choice, no other way. He kicked even harder with renewed determination, closing the gap between themselves and the safety of the jungle.

“You mean to tell me he called you already?” Pruett asked in sheer disbelief. Stice had not only stopped the rescue, but had already contacted Olson and had the entire operation cancelled. Cancelled? Is Stice out of his fucking mind? And why would Stice deliberately lie to him about “calling him back later”? Was that just a ploy to keep Pruett quiet until it was too late to do anything about it?

“He called less than twenty minutes ago, Mr. Pruett,” responded a very sleepy Olson as he rubbed his eyes. “He called the operation a success and asked me to write personal letters to the families involved. He said that Mambo had shown what heroes were made of.”

“And you buy that crap, General?”

Olson grunted. “Not for a second.”

“You know as well as I do that there are a few of Mambo’s men out there right now, if not more than a few. Obviously without means of directly communicating with us, but they’re out there. Probably waiting and wondering where in the hell we are. Are you going to tell me that you’re just gonna sit there and do nothing?”

Olson’s face hardened. Pruett knew Olson’s reputation as a fair officer. The rumor was that he’d single-handedly dragged two wounded soldiers out of an ambush and into a rescue helicopter during the Korean conflict, a heroic act that had made him popular among the troops and dramatically boosted his career. Pruett knew Olson had to care about his people, but he was still a soldier, and as such he was compelled to obey his superiors, even during times when he probably strongly disagreed with them. Pruett was banking on the chance this was one such time, that Olson disagreed with the order but had no choice since it had come directly from the Defense Secretary.

“Have you any — any fucking idea what it feels like to lose a soldier? Have you?”

Pruett stared him in the eye for a few moments. “I was never in the military, General, but I have lost many good field agents. I think the feeling is similar. It eats you up from inside. You feel that you have failed them. That if somehow you had planned things better, they would still be alive. Yes, General. I’ve been there many times, and it stinks. But in this case it doesn’t have to stink all the way. There’s still time to do something about it. Do something about those men stranded in Guiana… stranded in that hell.”

Olson studied him at length. Pruett knew the old general was weighing the odds. He had obviously dedicated his entire life to the Armed Forces, and was not about to throw it all away on an impulsive move, a spur-of-the-moment decision arrived at from an emotional instead of logical perspective.

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Pruett?”

Pruett smiled inwardly. Olson was no fool. One did not get to become a two-star general in the Armed Forces by being a fool. Olson was biding his time, waiting for Pruett to make a move. If that didn’t get Olson where he wanted to be, Pruett knew the general would wait for other moves. The question was, where did the general want Pruett to go? Pruett felt certain the answer to that depended on how he responded to the general’s question. He leveled his gaze on Olson’s.

“I want to get them out. I think I know a way to get in contact with Mambo and get them to a prearranged spot at a specific time and airlift them. That’s what I want to do.”

Olson’s lip curved up a little. “Let’s assume for a moment that your decision is the right thing to do in this situation. Under that assumption answer this: How, Mr. Pruett? How do you propose doing that? Of course, without me knowing about it.”

Pruett also smiled. Olson was playing ball. The general would go along by simply looking the other way. If anything went wrong with Pruett’s plan and heads began to roll, Olson would be out of reach since he was not involved in it. Pruett was merely acting of his own accord. If Pruett succeeded, Olson would emerge smelling like a rose. If it backfired, then only Pruett’s ass would be on the line, not his. Pruett slowly nodded, accepting the unwritten terms of Olson’s conditional help.

Thirty minutes later Pruett shook hands with Olson and walked outside. He checked his watch. Dawn was just over the horizon. He spotted Cameron and Marie sitting on the hood of their jeep.

“Hmm… that was long,” Cameron said as he yawned and stretched. “What did the general say?”

Pruett smiled. “Do you still remember how to jump out of a plane?”

“What — wait a second, wait a fucking second. You’re not serious about me going—”

“That’s the only deal I could make with the general, Cameron. He has agreed to give us a lift to Guiana and look the other way, but he would not commit any more of his men.”

“Look, Tom. I’m not the same Special Forces soldier you recruited fifteen years ago. The game has vastly improved since then and I haven’t been keeping up. I know my limitations. I’m telling you, I’m not qualified. Those new Special Forces teams like Mambo can run circles around me. They’re much better trained than any team in ‘Nam.”

“Yes, but none of them has experienced battle. You have.”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“Everything. I think there’s another reason you don’t want to go. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Cameron glanced at Marie, lowered his gaze, and remained silent.

Pruett continued. “Actually, I don’t want to hear your motives for going or not going. All I can tell you is that either you go and make contact with these guys, or we leave them behind. There’s no time for hesitation at this point. We might already be too late.”

Cameron took a few steps away from the jeep and quietly watched an F-4E Phantom taking off on full afterburners. He had dedicated his entire life to the military and the CIA at the price of writing off his personal life. And all for what? Have I really made a difference? Do I really want to end up ill and alone like Tom? With Marie, Cameron knew he had a chance at really living again. Why risk his life any further? He glanced back at Marie. She walked to his side and held his hand.

“You have to do what’s right in your heart,” he heard her say as he watched the white-hot tail of the Phantom disappear in the dark sky. Cameron closed his eyes and saw another phantom appearing in his mind. Go, Cameron… I’ll be all right… you can make it on…

Cameron opened his eyes, turned around, and looked at Pruett. “All right. I’m in.”

Michael Kessler stared at the stars but in his mind he saw the sea. The tranquil, blue sea. Kessler smiled when he spotted flecks of light reflecting off the swells. It was so vivid, so perfect. In his mind he was there, back on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Constitution, back on the number-one catapult staring at the cat officer wearing the standard yellow jersey and solemnly waving his green flashlight wand at him. The blazing sun slowly disappeared below the horizon, transforming the orange-stained sky into one with a less vivid hue. Back inside the cockpit of an F-14D Tomcat, gently applying full throttle in response to the cat officer’s hand signals, Kessler felt the plane tremble as it endured the overwhelming stress just before ferocious Gs piled up on him, jamming his very soul against the flight seat…

Then Kessler saw Jones struggling to eject out of his wounded bomber. He heard the Air Force captain scream in agony as the F-111B’s cockpit filled with flames, killing the navigator. Kessler had failed them. He had arrived too late. Jones left the blazing aircraft and shot upward under the power of his ejection seat’s solid-propellant rocket.

I’m sorry, CJ…

Kessler’s mind jumped to the moment in time when he had to eject after losing his first dogfight. He involuntarily held his breath as the frightening memory overwhelmed his senses. For a second, perhaps two, he felt consumed by the terror of not being able to reach the ejection handles. The he finally did, pulling them as hard as he had ever pulled anything in his life. Then came the explosion. The canopy flew up and he followed. The wind tore at him. His body was thrown up, to the side, and flipped upside down. The earth and sky changed places over and over again as the Gs pushed down on him with titanic force. Then the peace of free-falling at 130 miles per hour descended upon him. He welcomed the feeling of isolation. Kessler had never felt more alone than at that moment. Until now.

All was quiet aboard Lightning. Too quiet. Deathly quiet. Only the sound of his own breathing interrupted the silence. It seemed amplified in the silence of space. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Kessler’s mind grasped at the edge of consciousness as he struggled to remain in control, despite the fact that his suit’s oxygen supply had been nearly consumed. He thought about switching suits but decided against it. The air inside the crew module had also reached a hazardous level long ago. Besides, removing the space suit was no longer an option. Incapable of moving, he had lost physical control of most of his body, as he slowly asphyxiated in his own carbon monoxide. But his mind refused to go. It refused to take the final jump into the unknown that Kessler had always been reluctant to accept. In his opinion there were no unknowns. Everything had a simple, logical explanation. There was nothing complex in life. All was either black or white. For Kessler, the definition of life was not written in long, convoluted sentences. Life was expressed in simple terms. Simple words like freedom, loyalty, decency, friendship… love. That’s what life was all about. Simple, logical, yet very human. Unlike most people he’d known, Kessler had always tried to remain in close touch with real feelings. With the real emotions usually found deep below self-imposed layers of pride and mistrust. He refused to take that final step, refused to leave a world he’d grown to enjoy, a world that still had so much to offer to him. There were still so many feelings he had not experienced, so many feelings he longed to make a part of his life, that the mere thought of never having the chance to savor them sent chills across his weakened, exhausted body.

He floated gently inside the flight deck, too tired to report to Houston that he was still there, still alive. Still hopeful something would happen. Something that would save him from what seemed to be his destiny. Kessler had never been very religious, but he believed enough in a Higher Authority to know that he would somehow be judged for his life on Earth. He could feel it. Perhaps it was the reason his life was quickly flashing before his eyes.

Am I already dead? Is this just an illusion? He wasn’t sure any longer… but there was the breathing. He had to be alive. He had to hang on.

He shifted his gaze toward the stars and smiled, not at the peaceful, crystalline cosmos visible through the front windowpanes, but at his own life. At the scenes that continued to flash vividly past him. They were gone as fast as they came, but he remembered them all. Every single one of them contributed to the way he felt; like a small leaf on a large tree, every person, every feeling, every encounter had added something to his life.

Kessler felt a hard object against his left leg but could not see what it was. He had closed his eyes and could not open them anymore. He tried once more but failed. It was hopeless. Then all began to fade away. His mind became too cloudy, too irrational. He could not control his thoughts any longer. He fought violently but it was no use. He had lost the battle and decided to surrender gracefully.

“I found the second one,” reported Valentina Tereshkova as she snagged Kessler’s leg and pulled him toward her.

“Is he alive?”

“Can’t tell for sure. There are some readings on the front of the suit but I don’t know what some of them mean. The oxygen level appears to be extremely low, though.”

“Bring him in.”

“Yes.” Tereshkova clipped a woven line to the side of Kessler’s suit and dragged him down to the mid-deck compartment where Strakelov was examining the readings on the small panel on the side of Jones’s rescue ball.

“This one appears to be in good shape, at least as far as I can tell. Let’s put them both inside the air lock.”

Wearing their Orlon-DMA suits, Strakelov and Tereshkova placed Jones and Kessler inside the air lock and closed the hatch. The American vessel was well built, Strakelov reflected. It had a huge air-lock section to suit up in and a large hatch for EVA activity, larger than the one on Kvant-2. Strakelov depressurized the air lock and then opened the exterior hatch leading to the payload bay.

He went out first and briefly glanced up toward the Mir complex floating a hundred feet above, between them and the Earth’s surface. He shifted his gaze back toward Tereshkova and held up his right hand. “Wait, Valentina.”

Strakelov gently pushed himself toward the Ikar bicycle and backed himself against it. After securing the suit on the backpack system with the side straps, Strakelov powered up the system. Two locator lights came on, a red one over his left shoulder and a green one over his right. The idea behind the color scheme was to be able to identify which direction a spacewalker was heading. Green on the left and red on the right meant the cosmonaut was approaching the observer. The opposite scheme meant the cosmonaut was moving away from the observer. The idea was copied from the red and green lights on the wingtips of aircraft.

He used the hand controls to thrust himself back toward the open air-lock hatch. The four primary rear thrusters of the 440-pound cosmonaut-mobility unit puffed compressed air in one direction and gently pushed him in the other. The Ikar backpack system had a total of thirty-two compressed-air thrusters, sixteen primary and as many backups. In the event of one thruster system failing, the cosmonaut could safely maneuver the unit back to the space station by switching to auxiliary control.

Strakelov slowly came to a halt as he got within five feet of the hatch. Tereshkova passed him a long woven line, already attached to both Kessler’s suit and Jones’s rescue ball. He clipped his end to a stress point on the side of the Ikar and turned himself around using the four thrusters on each side of the backpack system.

“Ready, Valentina?”

Tereshkova finished pushing both astronauts though the hatch and then floated toward her Ikar. She backed herself into her backpack system and clipped the other end of the woven line to her suit. “Ready, Nikolai Aleksandrovich.”

Strakelov lightly applied thrusters to put tension on the line. He felt a small tug. Swiftly, he pointed himself up toward Kvant-2 and fired the thrusters for three seconds. That was enough to get his caravan heading in the right direction. The short trip took less than a minute.

When Strakelov estimated they were thirty feet from Kvant-2’s opened hatch, he spoke in his voice-activated headset.

“Fire reverse thrusters.”

Tereshkova, who was at the other end of the caravan, fired a two-second burst on all four primary forward-facing thrusters. Strakelov felt the rear tug as they slowed down. From there on it was a true team effort, with Strakelov firing his thrusters from one end and Tereshkova from the other to keep tension on the line as they slowly maneuvered their way to Kvant-2. Strakelov got within a foot of the outside wall and clipped his end of the line to the handle next to the hatch. He then piloted the Ikar to the external docking station, where he easily backed into the electromagnetic locking mechanism. The system engaged, securing the Ikar to the side wall.

Strakelov unstrapped himself and carefully crawled on the side wall back toward the forward hatch. Tereshkova did the same from the other end. Between the two of them they pulled both astronauts inside the air-lock/workshop module and closed the hatch. Strakelov pressurized the chamber, and quickly removed his suit and helped Tereshkova with hers.

They removed the helmet from Kessler’s suit and unzipped Jones’s rescue ball. They checked for vital signs. They were weak.

“Baikonur Control. Mir here.”

“Hello, Nikolai Aleksandrovich. Status?”

“Both astronauts are alive. The mission was a success.”

“Congratulations, Nikolai and Valentina! We shall relay the information to our American colleagues.”

“We will take the astronauts to the medical bay. We will update you on their situation as soon as we can.”

“Acknowledged, Nikolai. Good job.”

Strakelov shifted his gaze toward Tereshkova, who had already unlocked the metal ring connecting the upper and lower torso section of Kessler’s space suit. He smiled. Their suits were very much like the American’s. He leaned over and pulled Jones out of the rescue ball.

In full camouflage gear, Cameron quietly sat next to Marie while staring at the red light above the StarLifter’s paratrooper door. Pruett had not come along this time. His stomach was in havoc. Cameron understood.

“You okay?” she asked while holding his hand.

“Well, the last time I did this was over fifteen years ago in Vietnam. I hope it all comes back… it better come back, and fast. I have the feeling that things are gonna get nasty down there.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Cameron briefly closed his eyes. “I don’t have a choice. I have to do it. It’s the only way, not just for Mambo, but also for myself.”

She pressed her side against his, resting her head on his left shoulder. “I know.”

The door leading to the cabin swung open. A large soldier, also dressed in camouflage fatigues, approached them.

“One minute, sir!” The soldier unlocked the paratrooper door. The light over the door turned yellow.

Cameron got up. “It’s time.”

“Please be careful. Please.”

Cameron ran a finger over her right cheek and felt her overpowering stare reach deep inside him.

“Twenty seconds, sir!” The soldier opened the paratrooper door.

With Marie’s hair swirling in the wind, Cameron put on his goggles, strapped his automatic weapon to his right leg, and silently stared at the fingers of the soldier’s right hand counting from five to one.

“Go, go, go!” the soldier screamed.

Cameron took one final glance at Marie before he jumped into the abyss.