“All right,” Danny told her. “Move as quickly as you can. “Boston, you’re the last line of defense here. Garcia and I are going to go down into the jungle off the road. This way if that patrol comes up in your direction we can cut them off before they get close enough to do any damage. We’ll hold them off long enough to get the LADS vehicle launched and you guys out”
“We’re not leaving without you,” said Jennifer.
“Yeah, Captain, no way.”
“It won’t come to that,” said Danny, turning and running back to Garcia.
Aboard EB-52
Indianapolis (“Indy”),
over Brunei
2320
Kick finished the refuel and ducked away from the Megafortress, gliding back to the southwest. He could see the Quick Bird that had deposited the LADS team off on his right as he descended toward the jungle to update the Whiplash people on the situation.
“Hawk Four to Whiplash leader. Looking for you,” said Kick, trying to orient himself. He banked and got the road on his right. He had two people at the top of his screen—the LADS team, getting ready to inflate the lighter-than-air vehicle.
The response from the ground was garbled and partly overrun as Major Alou gave an update on
Indy’s
position, flying north so it could cover one of the government’s strongholds as well as the Whiplash operation. Kick double-checked his Flighthawk’s position to confirm for Alou that he would remain in communication range. He lost his bearings again; as he banked he temporarily lost sight of the road. He came westward and realized he was completely disoriented, now nearly two miles south of the team’s position. He found the road again and flew along it, following the curve back in the direction of the LADS unit, which had just activated a radio beacon as part of its start-up.
Some figures moved through the brush a few hundred yards south of the launch point.
The soldiers threatening the team.
His heart thumped as he put the Flighthawk into a wide turn so he could position himself for a run back at the enemy. The Flighthawk cut a lollipop in the sky, its altitude dropping as he came around.
“I have two, three figures, in the jungle, near the road, very close to the team, in a threatening position,” he said. “Can’t see them too well.”
“Make sure they’re not our guys,” said Starship over the plane’s interphone circuit.
“No shit.” He clicked back into the Dreamland channel. “Ground, we got somebody just about on top of your guys.”
“Where?”
“Northwest.” Kick activated his weapons screen and pushed his nose down, running toward the road area in a diagonal from the northeast. Something moved on the left but he was going too fast to get a view, much less fire; he cursed and pulled off, trying to wing back and get another angle from the south. The geometry just wouldn’t work and he cursed himself again as he came out of the turn far too fast. He could feel his chest starting to pump with his quick, shallow breaths, and tried to force himself to breathe more slowly.
Zen had told him that the trick to flying the small aircraft in combat was to relax and keep your adrenaline level down. It was only by remaining relatively calm that you could process the information being given to you, and punch the right buttons.
“Let the computer do the frenetic stuff,”
Zen had advised.
“You’re like the CEO, checking off the options.”
“Northwest?” asked Danny on the ground.
“Looking at them—I have one blur. They’re in range of your people.”
He brought the Flighthawk around, putting the road on his left wing. He couldn’t see anything for a moment. Finally he got a target. His heart jumped, and his body moved reflexively to nail down the targeting pipper.
The computer didn’t let him. In the next second he realized he was looking at the Whiplash team. Fortunately, the signals from the smart helmets had registered in the computer system and the safeties wouldn’t have permitted him to fire without an override.
If I’d been piloting an A- I OA, Kick thought to himself, I might have splashed my own guys.
Shit.
“Hawk Four to ground team. All right, I have it all sorted out now. There are five, six men, uh, three hundred yards from where you are.” Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Kick’s hand began to tremble. “I can take them out.”
“Negative,” responded Danny. “Hold off. We’re still not sure if they’re friendly or not. Just hold your position.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, banking around.
Near Labi, southern Brunei
2330
Danny studied the blurry infrared in the left-hand side of his helmet’s visor, still trying to figure out if the people coming toward him were terrorists or government troops on patrol.
Since they were off the road, was it a reasonable assumption that they were terrorists?
“Getting closer, Captain,” said Garcia, who was crouched about ten yards to his left.
“Can you see their weapons?”
“I can’t tell.”
“How we doing back there, Boston?”
“Two more minutes. We’re doing the pre-launch countdown while we’re still inflating. This girl’s a whiz.”
“Good”
“Two hundred yards,” said Garcia. “They heard the Flighthawk that time—they stopped when it came around.”
“Hawk Four, this is Freah. Can you take a really loud pass at them?”
“Not sure what you mean, Captain.”
“I’m trying to get more time. When you cross overhead they stop. If they hear you again, we’ll get the last few seconds we need to launch the blimp.”
“Uh, I’ll give it my best. You want me to fire my cannon?”
“Negative for now.”
Danny could hear the Flighthawk come overhead. Sure enough, the patrol stopped.
“We’re launched,” said Boston. “I’m setting out the radar disrupters right now”
The disrupters were small, backpack-sized units that jammed radars in the vicinity of the blimp.
“Garcia, let’s move back up toward the road,” said Danny. “Swing up through that gully to your left.”
He waited until his sergeant had reached it before he started up himself. “We need another pass, Flighthawk.”
“Hawk Four.”
Danny moved slowly, climbing over several tree trunks as the Flighthawk took another run. His foot slid down into the muck as he got over the last tree; as he leaned back and pulled his leg out he heard a shout.
“Shit,” said someone over the Dreamland circuit.
Then the jungle lit up with gunfire.
JENNIFER TAPPED THE ARROW KEYS ON THE LAPTOP, steering the small airship to the north, away from the gunfire. She had the power set low so it would be very quiet; unfortunately, that made its speed slower than a person walking.
As the bullets continued to fly, she moved the throttle command to max. Even so, the blimp couldn’t move very quickly; it walked rather than ran away.
“Come on,” said Boston, pushing on her shoulder. “Let’s get across the road to some cover.”
“I can’t leave the unit right now,” said Jennifer.
“I’ll carry the transmitter,” said Boston. He started to reach for the antenna, which looked like a small satellite dish with a rectangular collection of tubes at the center.
“No,” she told him, grabbing him. “It’s not meant to be portable. I don’t know what’ll happen if we change the transmitting location. The blimp has to be above a thousand feet before it’ll go on auto-guide.”
“Well I know what’ll happen if we get shot,” said Boston. “We’re not going to get shot. Danny has it under control.”
“He’s not Superman,” said Boston, but he let go of the antenna and instead went and crouched between her and the area that the firing was coming from.
Aboard EB-52
Indianapolis (“Indy”),
over Brunei
2335
Starship came off the refuel early and winged back toward the Whiplash team. The ground action was a mishmash, and while he had a general idea of what was going on, the two sides were so close together it was difficult to figure out exactly who was who.
“Get up to the highway and we’ll pepper the tree line,” Kick told the ground team.
Starship didn’t catch the acknowledgment—he was too busy ducking out of the way of the blimp as it rose to the north of the team. He banked back and came down just over the road, identifying the four members of the Whiplash ground unit and turning his nose just to the side of the highway as he lit his cannon. His forward air speed dropped and he had to break off; as he did there was a flash on the ground and he got a warning that a shoulder-launched SAM had been fired. He unleashed decoy flares and tightened his turn. The missile sniffed one of the flares and flew north, exploding about three-quarters of a mile away.
Near Labi, southern Brunei
2340
Danny and Garcia pulled back toward the blimp launch point as a second Flighthawk made a run at the enemy position, splashing it with cannonfire.
“Yo, get into the trees on the other side,” Danny yelled as he ran toward them.
“We’re almost ready,” replied Jennifer. “I’ll be able to transfer control to the central unit in another minute or two.”
“Put it in auto mode,” said Danny.
“I can’t until it’s at a thousand feet.”
“Just let it go”
“Sixty seconds,” protested the scientist.
“Boston,” said Danny. “Move her.”
“Urn, yes, sir, if you say so.”
The sergeant physically picked up the scientist and began dragging her off the road.
“EB-52
Indianapolis
to Whiplash leader,” said Major Alou. “Danny, if you can put more distance between you and them I can launch a five-hundred-pound bomb”
“We’re working on it,” said Danny. “We’re going to go off the road to the northeast and get across that ravine there”
But as they started, gunfire raked the highway and the ridge. The guerillas were now on both sides of the road; Danny and his small band retreated along the pavement. Reinforcements were coming up from the southwest; another twenty had made it to the road about a mile and a half away and were trotting toward them. If the nearby group managed to bog them down, the Whiplashers might be overrun.
“I don’t know if we’re going to make it to that ravine,” Danny told Alou.
“Acknowledged. Hold on,” added Alou.
Danny’s helmet included a laser-dot pointer showing where his MP5 was aimed. He fired as three figures came up the road, hitting one and sending the others scurrying back.
“Danny, the Brunei air force is two minutes from your location,” said Alou. “They have napalm and want to know if they can help out.”
“Sounds like a great idea if you can get them into the right location,” Danny told him. “Maybe we can sneak the helicopter in at the same time.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
In the air, approaching Labi
2344
McKenna spotted the tail end of the little Flighthawk three hundred yards to her left as she approached the target area. The moonlight wasn’t strong enough for her to see more than a smudge, but the smudge was enough to get her on course.
“You see that?” she asked Captain Seyed, who was flying as her wingman.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right. Follow him into the target. Once the flare ignites I’ll come in and give them a good thrashing.”
Lacking high-tech night-vision gear and GPS locators, McKenna had fallen back on a strategy dating to World War II. Seyed, following the Nighthawk to the area where the American unit was under fire, launched a large parachute flare called an LUU-2 just as he passed overhead. Descending by parachute, the flare illuminated the darkness, a giant candle that descended slowly because of the heat of the flame. An old method—but highly effective.
McKenna swooped downward, nose at a thirty-degree angle as she cleared the narrow roadway. She saw four or five guerillas ducking behind the tree line, pushed them into her bomb screen, and dropped two of the napalm canisters. The bombs—which were probably nearly as old as her tactics—dropped down and ignited. McKenna didn’t stop to admire her handiwork; as soon as she pulled up she spun the Dragonfly back and dumped two 250-pound bombs behind the conflagration. Her right wing sagged as she started to recover; she’d been peppered with gunfire and one or more of the bullets had damaged the ailerons, elevator, and her rudder. She had to fight a bit, arm wrestling the wind gods to get the plane level.
“Commander, you’re on fire,” said Seyed.
Shit, thought McKenna. She started to climb to the north, trying to both get away from the terrorists and to get her plane high enough to bail out if she had to.
The helicopter, meanwhile, had swooped in about a half-mile away to pick up the Whiplash ground team. As she passed by it, she saw the shadow of the mountain rising quickly in front of her. McKenna pulled the stick back and slapped the throttle against the last stop, but the Dragonfly wouldn’t put her nose up. Realizing she wasn’t going to clear, she muscled the aircraft right. The controls began to buck, the stick jerking in her hand as if an elephant were jumping up and down on the control cables. McKenna glanced at the instrument panel and saw one of the oil pressure gauges spinning, as if it had decided to unscrew itself from the panel.
“Listen, Seyed, I don’t know that I’m going to make it very far from here,” she told her wingman.
“You’re on fire!”
“I don’t doubt it,” she said as another mountain loomed ahead.
DANNY COULD SEE THE AIRCRAFT FLAMING IN THE SKY AS their helicopter took off.
“We better follow her,” he told the pilot. “See if we can pick her up”
STARSHIP WATCHED AS THE FRONT OF THE DRAGONFLY CAME apart. It didn’t look like an explosion—it was more like a sneeze and then a disintegration, with the plane separating into large chunks. He steadied the Nighthawk and waited, watching the sky nearby.
“Got a chute!” he said finally. “Got a chute. Good chute. I’ll feed you a GPS coordinate.”