I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (29 page)

Kee handed him the photo and the half-full bottle of water. He studied it while he drank. That thoughtful face frowning suddenly.

“They were pregnant.”

Kee nodded. “They never had their family. It was taken from them. And now I’m supposed to…” She couldn’t say it. If it were her, she’d bomb the living hell out of the SCO.

“Did you notice the markings on the jet?”

Kee shook her head.

“Uzbekistan. They aren’t trying to start a world war with a Russian jet as we’d guessed. Russian design, yes, but Uzbek military. If the Uzbek military is seen killing the leaders of the organization’s members, the other five members of the SCO will shred Uzbekistan. Dismantle it one piece at a time until nothing is left. Until Afghanistan looks like a luxury vacation spot. It will never again be a legitimate country with its own government. Evans and Arlov are very smart. Their vengeance is very, very targeted. They are using the SCO to get back at the Uzbekistan government who decided to kill their pregnant wives.”

“We should let them.” Kee couldn’t believe the words even as she spoke them, but it was true. It was right.

“Kee.”

Here it comes. The order from First Lieutenant Archibald Stevenson III. The command to honor country and flag. The command of the military.

And from his perspective, he’d be right.

“It changes everything, doesn’t it?”

Of course Archie wouldn’t hit her with the expected. But he was right. Kee kicked at the ditch wall.

It did change everything. And that was the problem. She understood herself as Sergeant Kee Smith. She understood the woman who had climbed from the streets to SOAR. Even, as much as she hated to admit it, she understood the girl who grew up fighting for survival on the streets, becoming hard and self-sufficient.

The woman who curled up with the same man night after night was a mystery. One who enjoyed every second that a little girl clung to her side. One who begged to be told she was loved. That woman had come from another planet.

“Alien abduction.”

“What?” he said with a laugh.

A soft, friendly sound that surprised Kee. She couldn’t bring herself to explain it.

“Okay, Sergeant Smith.” But it wasn’t the Lieutenant speaking, it was still Archie. “It is up to you. I couldn’t make that shot, even if my arm didn’t have a perforation running clear through it and hurt so much it keeps making my eyes cross. Yes, Evans and Arlov were shafted. A lousy, undeserved deal. And yes, Washington and the President’s orders are very far away. We’re the team on the spot, and you’re the one with the ability. So, here’s my question to you, it’s the same one I ask myself each time I fly. If you let them go, let them continue the killing in the name of revenge, is that something you can live with?”

Kee pictured Archie’s face if she didn’t at least try for the shot. He’d be furious.

“They killed Dilya’s parents, and their plan will kill many, many more.”

That hurt her heart so badly she was half afraid it would stop beating.

“Either way,” he continued, “you will feel awful for them, family is so important to you. But if you let them kill more families, I question if you are strong enough to live with that.”

He knew her so well. She had killed Anna’s killers. Immediate blood satisfaction. Instant vengeance. She still believed she’d had been right to do it. And the killing had stopped there. If she’d instead hunted them and their families, she’d have sparked a turf war that might have taken down dozens. Here it would be millions. The killing had to stop somewhere.

He must have read her face for he nodded. “Just because the choice sucks doesn’t make it wrong.”

Kee and Archie crawled back to the upper edge of the ditch. She checked on Dog One and Dog Two in the scope. The fuel truck had pulled away. They were climbing the ladders on either side of the plane. They sat side by side in their jet. A pair of crewmen pulled the ladders away.

That cockpit worried her. She’d be trying to penetrate the canopy at an awfully long distance. The bullets might be so spent by the time they reached the jet that they’d bounce off the glass rather than punch through. But she had an image in her head and hoped that the desert heat was on her side.

The area behind the jet shimmered as they started the engines. A wave of heat ripples rolled back from the jet’s twin exhaust cowlings. In moments they were rolling toward the far end of the runway.

And they were rolling with the canopy hinged up. Now the question came. How long would they leave it up? Closed, the heat would pummel the men until they were moving at flight speed. She was banking on them leaving it open as long as possible, closing it only as they took off.

They taxied to the far end of the runway and paused at the edge though no one else was around. Probably requesting clearance from the control tower. Making very certain they were seen, but that they didn’t set off any alarms. They needed to fly almost an hour to cross the five hundred kilometers to Tashkent without being suspected or intercepted.

Kee double-checked the seating of the twenty-round magazine in the rifle. She ran the bolt closed by hand to keep it silent. She propped the spare five-round magazine beside the gun just in case. She checked the flash suppressor. At least it would shroud any muzzle flash and bang. The supersonic crack of the bullet itself… Well, hopefully it would be lost in the jet’s engine noise. With a flick, she swung down the bipod beneath the barrel but didn’t rest on it yet.

“Here we go,” Archie whispered.

Kee spared him a glance and saw that he was watching the guard tower intently through his scope, rather than the jet. Exactly as he should. Kee turned back to her target, but kept listening.

“There’s no patrol along the inside of the wall. I see one guy asleep inside the tower in his chair. There’s another walking slowly around the balcony outside the upper story of the tower.”

Kee concentrated on the jet; they were moving into position now. Three thousand meters. In the stillness of the morning air, the windup of the jet’s engines reverberated across the field. A secondary echo sounded as a reflection off the perimeter wall.

“Rolling,” she called to Archie. Safety off, she held the impossibly tiny dots of the two helmeted figures in her sights.

“The outside guard has stopped on the far side of the tower to watch. Maybe he won’t hear us from there.”

Kee couldn’t worry about that now. She was in the zone. Noise faded. The jet’s whine, which would be getting louder as it approached, faded in her head. The only sound she heard was the beating of her own heart. Steady, unwavering, one second apart. She could see the scope crosshairs pop up ever so slightly with each beat of her heart.

She knew where her shot would have to be. Where they would cross into range. She only hoped the canopy was still open when they arrived.

Lowering her lead hand, she planted the bipod solidly on the soil and clicked the scope down for maximum range. Eleven hundred meters, theoretically possible.

The jet required a long takeoff roll. This was no American Hornet, but still they were gaining speed quickly. The canopy started coming down, slowly closing from the rear like a giant clamshell.

They were almost beside her now. Moving nearly a hundred miles an hour and still accelerating. Her mind calculated how far to lead them, and her hands instinctively shifted to compensate for the answer.

Through her scope she could see the face of the nearer one clearly. Colonel James Evans sat with his head up, looking directly down the runway. Picturing the last moment of his life, as they killed the SCO cabinet.

On the backside of the heartbeat, Kee fired. At this range, the round would take a second and a half to reach the plane.

On the next heartbeat she shifted her aim, and with the next beat she fired at the second pilot. Then she swung farther ahead of them and began dropping a round per heartbeat. Up. Down. Slightly ahead. Slightly behind. Trying to set up a cloud of lead for them to run into, but she knew it wasn’t needed. She’d done it solid the first time.

Evans’s head whipped sideways as the round caught him in the helmet.

Arlov turned to look just as his round came in and caught him in the face. Not centered, but Kee wasn’t complaining. The jet veered as Arlov collapsed.

Evans wasn’t dead. He clutched for the control and steadied the plane.

Then he caught up with one of the other rounds Kee had placed in his path. This one hit him in the neck and he collapsed on Arlov just as the canopy slid shut. She could see a couple of the later rounds bouncing off the canopy’s glass.

The jet continued to roar ahead at full throttle with no guiding hand. But she couldn’t trust it. If the jet merely ran off the runway and bogged down in the sand, too many people would recognize Evans from five years before. For this whole plan to work, no American could be found here. The rounds of NATO 7.62 mm ammunition she’d fired had to disappear, not appear in some autopsy. This had to simply be an unexplained accident.

She fired her last three rounds at the bombs hanging under the wing. Barely conscious of the motion, she dropped the magazine into the dirt and rammed the five-round mag into the gun. Even as she did, she could see the earlier rounds bouncing off the bomb casings.

“Archie. My left thigh pouch. Ten more rounds. Reload.”

Kee could feel the probing fingers along her side as she unloaded five more rounds into the bombs. The jet was past them now, the shots were becoming longer again. Less powerful.

She dropped that magazine and he slapped the refilled mag into her open palm. How far had he strained himself to do that? Kee couldn’t spare the time to ask. She rammed the magazine home and pulled the bolt to load the first round into the chamber.

Still no joy. No hit on the munitions that mattered.

“Aim for the rocket motors.” Archie’s voice sounded soft. Strained. But his brain still worked.

The jet would be starting to fly now if there’d been anyone at the controls. It was nearing the end of the runway. From her rearward angle on the massive jet, she could see the target Archie had picked out.

Kee didn’t aim at the bombs, but at the drive motor of one of the missiles. She emptied the magazine, shooting on the down stroke and the up stroke of her heartbeat. The third round did it, but she kept firing. She was releasing round eight when number three struck. She sent the last two on their way and her magazine was empty, but it no longer mattered.

The fuel for the missile’s drive motor exploded. In a cascade reaction, the missile went off, which triggered the bombs. They in turn blew off the wing, and a thundercloud of fire rolled upward as the wing tanks of jet fuel were breached.

She slid back, even as she fired the last round, down into the ditch. Archie wasn’t lying beside her. She grabbed his boot and dragged him down to the bottom of the ditch with her.

The ground shock hit them first, a basso thump that filled the ditch with dust so thick Kee could barely breathe. She covered her face with the long cotton sleeve of her native garb.

Then the sharp “Krump!” of the plane’s explosion. Seconds later a heat wave led a wall of dust over the trench and Kee half feared they’d catch on fire themselves. Her exposed hands stung with the sudden heat. But the wave rolled over them and departed for the perimeter wall as quickly as it had arrived.

When she dared uncover her face and open her eyes, Archie still lay at the bottom of the trench. She crawled up the south side of the trench. Her shield of fake wheat was gone. Scorched back to the earth. Thankfully, there were no fires on the fields, the crops hadn’t dried out for harvest yet.

Kee swung her rifle over, then, remembering the ammunition was gone, tossed it aside and fished for the SCAR carbine. In the shock and dirt it took her a moment to find it and bring it to bear. She had to blow on the scope twice to clear it enough to use.

The blast had blown all the glass out of the tower windows. Both men up and moving, but pointing at the jet, not at her ditch. Not reaching for their guns. Okay. They hadn’t been seen.

A glance in the other direction attested to the complete destruction of the jet. Bits of metal were scattered for hundreds of yards, none bigger than her hand. And a tornado of burning jet fuel swirled skyward from what little was left of the jet.

She slid back to the bottom of the trench.

“Hey.” Kee held up a dust-caked hand and inspected both sides. “I can barely see us.”

Archie didn’t answer.

She rolled him quickly onto his back, a puff of dust by his nostrils affirmed he was breathing even before she bent down to listen.

His eyes fluttered open. “How’d we do, Helen?”

Helen. Damn the man
. “We done good. Quiet now.”

He tried to sit up, leaned on his bad elbow and groaned.

“Sorry about this, Archie.” She dug around until she found the med kit. Pulling out the morphine ampule, she snapped off the cap and jammed it against his bare arm, just below the shoulder. In minutes, he settled into quiet sleep.

She retrieved their weapons and settled in to wait.

“So I collected the spent rounds to avoid any evidence, covered ourselves with wheat, and waited out the daylight.” Kee knelt beside Archie and watched John redo his bandaging. Archie lay still on the dirt floor of the hut, but his color was good under the flashlight’s beam. It had been a long, brutal walk back, but they’d managed. She’d had to rig a rope from their three rifle straps to get him over the wall.

Beale wanted to come fetch them when they radioed in, but Archie had mumbled that he’d rather walk. Didn’t dare the risk of flying so close to the still humming air base.

“This is one ugly field dressing, Smith.” But there was good humor in it. Good enough, it had kept the blood in and the arm immobile.

The saline drip feeding into his arm would help more.

John poured some antiseptic over the wounds and began rewrapping it.

Kee kept to herself how she’d spent those fourteen hours of daylight hiding in the ditch. Holding Archie’s hand as they lay in the middle of a hostile air base they’d just attacked. Because it appeared to be an accident, only a few patrols had come near them. And the only soldier to even glance into the dry irrigation ditch in the middle of the airfield didn’t see them lying there beneath the wheat and dust. In between, she’d fought off the hysteria of fear that she might have to go through life without Archie.

Their childhoods had been so different. Yet they’d both ended up in the same ditch, skin shaded to the same color with layers of desert dust that still clung to them.

Now, kneeling on the dirt floor of the hut, Kee looked down at the unconscious Archie and wondered how slow she’d been to really see him. How many times had the man said he’d loved her? She hadn’t kept count at first, then she’d tried to but failed. Her mind couldn’t stay in a “keeping tally sheets” mode when they were together.

Kee now truly understood how strong a woman Emily Beale was. Her man was down, and still she’d flown. She caught the Major watching her. Yes, her man was hit and she’d still done the job.

A brief nod. A nod and a smile. That warm smile. Not the one she’d offered Dilya, nor the sappy sweet one she sometimes aimed at her husband. It was the warm smile of a friend. Of an equal. They were all in this and Kee had proven her place on the team.

“Well.” Big John tucked in the tail end of the bandage. “That was one heck of a thump you set off. It shook the walls here, we were showered in decades of dust and crap.” John wasn’t joking. He, the Major, and Dilya were gray with bits of an ancient Uzbekistan hut still, though they had clearly washed their faces and hands.

Kee held the hand on Archie’s uninjured side and watched him breathe. Dilya leaned against Kee’s back, with her chin resting on Kee’s shoulder. The girl’s arms clasped loosely around her neck, as they both looked down at him.

“I gave him another half dose of the painkiller,” Big John told her. “If he’s too wakeful, we’ll hit him with more.”

“Good. That’s good.” Kee watched him sleeping. She had never so enjoyed watching a man sleep. Though this wasn’t the contented nap after sex, it was another side of the same man. Calm. At peace with himself. At peace with his choices.

And he’d made it clear, she was one of his choices.

“Kee.”

“Yes, Emily?”

John startled and looked at her then the Major.

“Could you two translate for me? John, go to the chopper. Bring back a portable stretcher and all of the Uzbekistani
som
from the bug-out bag.”

“All of it?”

“Yes, we’re going to buy a truck.”

***

It had taken some work, but Kee managed to translate Emily’s messages through Dilya to the family.

“Best for you if you don’t mention you saw us. Sorry about the truck.” And Kee sketched a map in the dirt floor showing where to find it. Maybe they could salvage it. If not, there’d been two thousand dollars worth of
som
, enough for a new truck or at least a couple of years’ income.

The man, still flexing his injured hand, though John had reset the dislocated fingers, moved slowly to retrieve his shattered gun. They all watched him closely, but he held it sideways and gave it to the Major to take away. She nodded solemnly as she took it.

They took their final leave and turned for the helicopter when she noticed that Dilya no longer shadowed her side. She trotted back to the main house, now lit by a single candle. Her throat closed in panic. Panic of what?

Her eyes stung as she imagined Dilya choosing to stay with her own people. A family who spoke her language.

Dilya knelt before the smallest child, a girl of barely five. The child looked back at her wide-eyed, her features could well have been Dilya’s half a lifetime ago. Were they kin or merely the same race? There was no way to ever know.

Dilya reached inside her coat and pulled out Archie’s cat. She held it close for a long moment, then slipped it into the little girl’s hands.

“
Sebiya
.” Dilya told the girl her cat’s name.

“Young girl. Little sister.” Kee translated in her head as she faded back into the night, to give Dilya the privacy of her gift.

When Dilya joined her a moment later outside the door, Kee made certain to give her a tight hug and a kiss on the head. They ran hand in hand to catch up with the others.

Near midnight, they were aloft, twenty feet above the ground, and moving fast. Major Beale flew alone while Kee and Big John sat at the miniguns.

At the border, they picked up an escort of Major Henderson and the Chinook. Henderson had limped home, loaded into Clay’s bird, and turned right back around to be there waiting for them. He’d been flying twenty of the last thirty hours and had five more to go.

Kee glanced forward, wondering whether to ask permission to sit with Archie. Even as she decided not to push her new friendship, Emily turned and mouthed one word at her.

“Go.”

She went.