Specter

22

"Here they come, Boss."

Murdock looked up. A shadow moved in from the lake, slowing as it neared the castle, drifting above the courtyard, as black as death, the wind from its rotor wash blasting across the bailey like a hurricane. Orange flame spat from the Gatling in its starboard side, the cyclic so high that the gun didn't chatter, it moaned, a low-pitched groan that set Murdock's teeth on edge as it fired at some unseen target in the forest beyond the wall.

"Pave Low," MacKenzie said, almost reverently. "Come to Poppa, baby!"

The MH-53J — socially the Pave Low III — was a direct descendant of the Super Jolly Green Giants of Vietnam, a Sikorsky CH-53 updated for the '90s and extensively re-engineered. Equipped with infrared sensors and FLIR, inertial navigation, multi-mode radar, and a 7.62mm Gatling gun protruding from the starboard side behind the pilot's seat, the Pave Low could streak across the landscape at two hundred miles per hour in pitch blackness at an altitude of one hundred feet or less, navigating anywhere in the world through a GPS link. Its range was limited only by pilot fatigue, for the massive boom protruding forward from the starboard side of its nose could be used for in-flight refueling. A device called a hover coupler allowed the Pave Low III to perform that almost miraculous maneuver for a helicopter — a stable hover — even in darkness or in bad weather. By processing signals from five gyroscopes, an inertial guidance system, and a radar altimeter, the hover coupler literally took over the fine adjustments of pitch for both main and tail rotors, allowing the Pave Low to correct instantly for pitch, roll, yaw, and the effects of unexpected updrafts, downdrafts, crosswinds, and even the jolting change in weight as troops exited the aircraft.

One Pave Low III could carry thirty men. Four had been dispatched for the Alexander extraction, two under the code name Achilles, two under the name Chariot. There would be no aborted rescue mission this time, as there had been in the 1980 Iran hostage rescue, with the mission called off because too many of the helicopters developed mechanical difficulties on the way in.

The first Achilles Pave Low moved slowly across the sky until it was hovering forty feet above the castle keep, where Frazier and Papagos had only recently taken down the antenna array mounted there. The rear hatch was down — Murdock could see the green gleam of the go-light winking at him from inside the troop bay. Suddenly, a line spilled from the rear of the Pave Low, uncoiling to the tower roof, and then heavily armed men in black were fast-roping their way down, each hitting the tower, then moving aside as the next man in line dropped after him. Murdock had once participated in an exercise where thirty men had exited from a Pave Low in five seconds flat.

The first Pave Low hovered a moment longer, then moved off toward the south. A second Achilles chopper moved in, hovering above the bailey. A rope uncoiled, and men began spilling out, dropping rapidly and silently into the courtyard and spreading out with practiced efficiency, taking up positions around the castle perimeter. Seconds later, a SEAL in black combat gear and helmet, his face almost invisible beneath his camouflage paint, trotted up to Murdock. "Well, Blake," the figure said. "Been keeping yourself busy?"

Murdock didn't salute. SEALs don't in the field, not when an enemy sniper might be watching. "Busy enough, Captain Coburn," he said. Then he blurted it out, "One of my men is dead."

"I heard the report on the way in. The Slavic kid, Stepano."

"Yes, sir."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Yeah." SEALs expect to take losses in the field. People die in combat, and in a close-knit band of brothers like the Teams, those people were going to be guys you cared about.

Stepano hadn't been with Third Platoon long, but he was still one of them.

"You also saved the lives of one of our congressmen and her staff," Coburn said. "That was a damned fine piece of work. What's your situation here now?"

"No enemy contact since the Hornets arrived, sir. I've been in radio contact with Night Rider, and he's been keeping us posted on their movements. Looks like they're heading north just as fast as they can manage, with the Hornets snapping at their heels."

The second Achilles helicopter had moved off, joining the first in a slow, round-and-round circuit of Gorazamak, half a mile out.

Chariot came in next, another Pave Low III identical to the others, black and menacing. This time the helicopter moved in lower, barely skimming the castle's ramparts, turning slightly, then lowering itself toward the pavement.

It was a tight fit. Standard procedure for preparing a chopper landing zone called for clearing an area fifty meters across, with a further twenty meters beyond that cleared to within three feet of the ground. To do that, though, they'd have had to level the castle walls; the bailey was well over one hundred meters long but only about forty wide. The Pave Low III's fuselage was thirty meters long, and the rotors, when turning, reached twenty-four meters across. That left very little room at all for error.

The Air Force special-ops squadron pilots who flew the Pave Lows, however, were used to making the impossible routine. Besides, it was widely acknowledged that nothing could excite a helicopter pilot. Chariot One hovered briefly, aligned north and south to give it some takeoff room, while a SEAL with a pair of Chemlites gave instructions from the ground. Then gently… gently… the big machine settled onto the flagstone pavement, the rear ramp already coming down.

"Let's get the hostages out of there," Coburn said.

Murdock was already pumping his arm up and down, signaling to DeWitt. "Go!" Murdock shouted above the whopping sound of the Pave Low's rotor. "Move! Move! Move!"

The line of former hostages darted out from the main building, doubled over low as they passed beneath the shining arc of the helicopter rotors, the line kept straight by SEAL flankers, who stood to either side with weapons pointed at the sky, waving them along. Escorted by a determined-looking young SEAL, Congresswoman Kingston was first up the Pave Low's ramp. Her chief aide was next, then Colonel Winters, his head wrapped in white gauze. He looked tired and haggard, but when he glanced up and saw Murdock and Coburn watching him, he grinned and gave them a jaunty thumbs-up.

"Thought you might like to know," Coburn said as the rest of the hostages began filing past. "A Delta detachment hit Skopje Airport two hours ago. They took down five tangos and secured the Olympic aircraft, just like clockwork. The flight crew was still being held on board. They're all safe. The Yugoslav Macedonian government forces are in charge now. I imagine the headlines tomorrow will explain how Macedonian troops successfully stormed the aircraft. Our State Department will want to use the incident to strengthen Macedonia's hand in this region."

"So everyone's accounted for then?"

"Everyone."

"Hey, L-T!" DeWitt trotted toward them from the keep. He was holding a sheaf of manila file folders and what looked like a couple of videotapes. "Oh, excuse me, Captain."

"No problem, Lieutenant," Coburn said.

"Whatcha got, Two-Eyes?"

"Scotty blew that safe we found in one of the rooms. Thought you might like a look."

The videotapes were unmarked, but Murdock imagined that they would be important, if for no other reason than that they'd been found in a safe. He accepted the folders from DeWitt and began leafing through them. Most of the papers they contained looked like records, pay vouchers, muster logs, the usual paraphernalia of any military unit, though the entries were made in the Cyrillic alphabet, and the language, Murdock thought, was probably Serbo-Croatian.

One manila envelope tied shut with string, however, contained a stack of 8x10 black-and-white photographs. Murdock shuffled through several of them, then handed the stack to Coburn. "I don't recognize any of these people, sir. Do you?"

"Can't say that I do. I imagine there are some folks back at Langley who could identify them, though." He tapped one of the photographs. "Especially this guy."

All of the photographs featured one particular man, white-haired, in his fifties, perhaps. He might have looked distinguished had he been wearing clothes; as it was, he looked ridiculous, and a bit sad. The photos showed him in a variety of positions with a number of other people, male and female. Whips, leather, and chains were in evidence as well.

"Blackmail, L-T?" DeWitt asked.

"These were in a safe?"

"Yup. In Mihajlovic's office."

"Blackmail, then. Or insurance." Murdock slipped the photos back into the envelope. He felt dirty, having handled them. "In any case, these will tell us who Mihajlovic's man in the Greek government is. He had to have someone there to arrange for the DEA to be infiltrated the way it was. You know, at one point I thought Mihajlovic hijacked that plane in response to our op at the monastery. But he's had this under way for a long time."

Coburn accepted the files from Murdock. "It was probably coincidence that Mihajlovic showed up at the monastery. But I gather the intel boys have quite a bit of material on him. He was ambitious, probably had his eye on a seat in the Yugoslav parliament. Maybe he was aiming higher than that."

"Was he going to use the hostages to bargain with us?" Murdock asked. "Or was he going to stage a faked rescue, be a hero?"

"Maybe these papers will tell us. It's not really our business, though, is it? Our people were being held against their will, maybe being used as a part of Mihajlovic's power games. They could have been killed… and if things had gone bad, we could have ended up with World War III right here. Your people did an excellent job, Lieutenant. You did an excellent job."

"Thank you, Sir."

The last of the hostages had vanished up the Pave Low's ramp, which slowly closed after them. The aircraft paused there a moment, rotors spinning faster, and then the SEAL with the light sticks signaled and the machine raised itself, very slowly, off the ground. Moving up and a little forward, it cleared the castle's north wall with fifteen feet to spare, then banked sharply away toward the lake.

The second Chariot came in hard on the heels of the first, settling to the pavement. Almost the moment its ramp touched the pavement, four SEALs holding a stokes stretcher hurried across from the castle tower.

"Excuse me, Sir," Murdock said.

He trotted over to the medical team. Doc was lying in the stretcher, looking haggard, his face almost unrecognizable beneath the smeared greasepaint. "Damn it, Doc," Murdock said. "You're not supposed to be a patient."

"Hey," Doc replied grinning. "If God had meant us to jump out of perfectly good airplanes, he'd have seen to it that the damned things never got off the ground."

Murdock didn't want to hold up the line. "See you on board, buddy."

"Sure thing, L-T."

Four more SEALs were carrying another Stokes out of the tower now, the motionless form inside wrapped head to toe in a dark blue blanket. SEALs never leave their own behind. Never.

"The boys're ready to mount up," Mac said, materializing at Murdock's side.

"Let's get the hell out of Dodge, Mac."

Minutes later, Murdock was aboard the Pave Low as the special-ops helo lifted up out of the courtyard, banked over the northwest wall, and set a course west for Albania and, beyond that, the waters of the Adriatic.

Doc's Stokes had been slung in a rack designed to carry medevac stretchers. Murdock leaned over the injured SEAL.

"You going to be okay?"

"Ah, sure, Skipper. Just a sprain. You don't think a little thing like that'd keep me away from a party, do ya?"

"Not you, Doc. But you had us worried. I thought you'd gone AWOL. We were taking bets on whether you'd shacked up with some local girl or with a sheep."

"Shit, L-T. Don't lay money on the sheep. You know I never do sheep unless they're really good-looking."

"Good-bye, Macedonia," Roselli said. He was standing nearby, leaning against the Pave Low's fuselage and staring out through one of the few side windows. "Shit, L-T, look at 'em burn!"

Murdock joined Roselli, peering aft. The Pave Low was now well out over the lake, and he could see the eastern shore all the way from the castle to the city of Ohrid, in the north. A good third of that line was dotted with orange points of light, the funeral pyres of burning vehicles. He couldn't see the attack aircraft that had wreaked that destruction, of course, any more than he could see the Navy Tomcats that would be flying a protective umbrella over the Pave Lows all the way back to San Vito. The scene looked deceptively peaceful from here.

He couldn't see the castle either, or the two Achilles Pave Lows. The SEALs of First and Second Platoon would hold the perimeter until both Chariots were well clear, and then they would board the last two choppers and extract as well. They would leave the fortress of Gorazamak behind them untouched, the explosives Scotty had rigged in the ammo storage area disconnected; over forty JNA prisoners were locked up inside the keep, and indiscriminate slaughter was not part of the SEAL repertoire.

Murdock managed a smile at the thought. SEALs specialized in only the most highly discriminating slaughter

Naredink Andonov Jankovic looked up from the snowbank in which he'd been lying. When the major's command car had been pitched over onto its side, he'd been hurled here to the side of the access road, less than ten meters from the ravine bridge and perhaps another twenty or thirty meters from the castle's main gate. The walls loomed high against the forest and the night, illuminated by the ruddy sky-glow.

Burning vehicles. Half of the motorized regiment must be in flames by now, stretched along the road from here halfway back to Ohrid. The air stank of burning rubber and diesel fumes and other, less pleasant smells.

The last of the American helicopters rose steadily above the walls, a huge, ominous black insect silhouetted against the glowing sky. It hovered there a moment as though sniffing the air, searching for any last, lingering survivors like Jankovic. Then it nodded, as though convinced the job was done, swung to the right, and with a droning flutter of its rotors, headed off toward the east.

With the last helicopter gone, the sounds of the battlefield rose all around him — the crackle of fires, the shouts of men calling to one another in the woods, and most horribly, the piercing shrieks of men in agony, the cries for voda — water — the moanings and pleadings of the dying.

Some minutes ago, Jankovic had been astonished to find that he was unhurt. He'd continued to lie there in the snow, however, unmoving, convinced that the Americans would see him if he so much as twitched. Now that they were gone, he slowly stood up.

The major who'd put him under arrest lay nearby. Jankovic recognized him by the uniform; his head was missing.

Jankovic staggered back down the access road, coming at last to the intersection with the coast road along the lake. North, burning vehicles littered the highway. He could see other soldiers, other survivors, moving among the wrecks, helping the wounded or simply wandering about in a shell-shocked daze.

What now?

The accumulated horror hit him in that moment, and Jankovic was violently sick, vomiting into a ditch on the side of the road. When he pulled himself erect again, he felt a little better.

He also knew what he had to do.

Only Solidarity Can Save the Serbs. The hell with that. Andonov Jankovic had had enough of war. He was sick of a bullying and inefficient army, sick of power-hungry and manipulative politicians and officers, sick of rape squads and ethnic cleansing and concentration camps and a war that long ago had lost any point, any vestige of the holy righteousness he'd once thought it possessed.

He'd had enough.

North on the coast road was Ohrid. The survivors of the JNA units at Gorazamak would be rallying there.

South, the coast road wound along the lake to the border with Albania. A side road split off to the left, wound up over the mountains, and eventually rejoined M26, the main road between Ohrid and the southern city of Bitola. From Bitola, it was a short twelve-kilometer walk to the Greek border.

The jeep he'd seen earlier, the one scoured by a booby-trap blast, was still sitting nearby, its engine still idling. It would let him stay ahead of the military police at least as far as the main road. After that, he could find some civilian clothes, maybe find a farmer who'd be willing to smuggle him across the border. Anyway, things were going to be hellishly confused in this corner of Macedonia, while the Serb military tried to figure out just what had hit them.

Yes, he would go to Greece. And after that?

Jankovic bore the Americans no ill will. Mihajlovic had provoked them by holding their people hostage; the Americans had struck back with overwhelming and devastating might. He was sure now the commandos had been Americans. No other nation on Earth had such magical technology. Or such warriors.

That was it. Once he'd reached Greece, Andonov Jankovic would look for an American consulate. There would be one at Salonika. He wondered if they allowed Serbians to become citizens of the United States of America.