The Mercenary (25 page)

“Scar . . . we're bugging out!”

A small knot of men burst from the outbuildings and ran for the bridge. Even as he watched, an Iraqi personnel carrier spotted them and began careening down the street.

Bastard's trying to cut them off . . . the pilot's eyes narrowed and he immediately flipped the jet over and dove out of 10,000 feet. The little group had made it to the bridge but they weren't going to make it across before the APC caught them. It was about a half mile up the road and coming fast.

Three thousand feet and dropping fast. He pulled the throttle back and stole a glance at the Maverick video display . . . focusing back on the HUD, he put the big bore cross on the truck and released his thumb. It wandered off and went sideways.

Two thousand feet. He cracked the throttle back more. Sweat ran down from his forehead and into his right eye. Blinking furiously, he squinted and tried to lock the Maverick again.

Passing 1,000 feet he suddenly caught a flicker of movement from the right side of the road. Two multi-wheeled vehicles bounced out of the rocks and up the embankment to the road.

Shit. . .

Instantly adding power, the pilot pulled back hard on the stick directly toward them. Bristling with gun barrels, both ZSU-23-4s, called Zooces, slid to a stop.

Bunting forward, he booted the rudder and lined up the Maverick cross on the nearest Zooce as its turret lurched to a stop. Mouth dry, he released the switch and the missile locked around the vehicle. As the four guns began to lift, he mashed down on the pickle button and the Maverick kicked hard off the rail.

Rolling hard left, the pilot slammed the stick forward and his helmet thudded hard against the canopy. Reversing and pulling back, he shoved the throttle into afterburner as both Zooces started firing. Bunting wildly, the first deadly streams of 23mm tracers passed over and behind him. At 400 feet, he popped the F-16 up and yawed it sideways to keep the Triple-A guns in sight. pressed hard against the cockpit bulkhead, he called up the second Maverick, rolled the jet on its back and pulled toward the other Zooce. As the jet's nose lined up on the dirty brown vehicle, the pilot snap-rolled upright and the first Zooce disappeared in a nasty orange-and-black flash. In a freakish moment of time distortion, he saw the intact turret catapult into the air, flipping end over end into the desert.

Fingers dancing, he wriggled the fighter's nose until the big missile pointing cross touched the remaining Zooce. Slapping the throttle back out of burner, he let off the Gs to stabilize the lock and saw the turret spin in his direction.

Eyes flickering between earth, HUD, and the Zooce, he released the switch passing 300 feet. . .

Son of a bitch! It wandered off and he immediately slewed the cross back and tried to re-acquire as the guns roared to life. Letting go of the stick, he smacked the bulkhead countermeasures button and chaff shot out behind the jet. Kicking hard left, the F-16 skidded sideways as the Zooce opened fire. Bunting savagely, the pilot bounced off the bulkhead and pulled straight up for half a second, then bunted forward again and reversed to the right. Tracers passed exactly through the place he'd just been and tired to correct—like a water hose. rolling out, he released the cross and saw it hold steady on the Zooce. The tracers were walking back to him and he saw the bright orange balls pass over the wingtip. . .

Now!

The last Maverick came off the rail but as he started to pull, violent blows struck the F-16 and rocked him sideways. Icy fear shot through him and he tried to pull up . . . up away from the earth and the firing Zooce . . . up . . . but the jet continued mushing toward the ground, smoke filling the cockpit.

“WARNING . . . WARNING . . .”

All the caution lights were lit up.
ENG FIRE . . . OVR HEAT
. . .

The horizon vanished as the ground rushed up. The Zooce was pointed directly at him as acrid black smoke watered his eyes. As the Zooce fired, he pulled the ejection handle and tensed. . .

Nothing. . .

Oh, my God . . . he groped for the arming lever but it was down where it should be. Oh, my GOD . . . the fighter was coming apart as the guns fired and he pulled again . . . nothing!

In rage and desperation, the pilot opened fire with his own cannon as the shattered jet fell out of the sky and the Maverick hit the Zooce. Brown earth . . . people running and fire everywhere. Bushes, rocks. . .

“Ahhhhhh . . .” he screamed as the F-16 pancaked into the ground, cannon spitting shells. . .

“Ahhhhhh . . .” The Sandman rolled out of bed, covering his face with his arms and thumping onto the floor, breathing hard. Gulping for air, he scrambled into the corner and tried to press himself against the wall.

Firm and cold. Dark.

The faint hum of air conditioning. A heavy thumping in his chest.

No fire. No Zooce. No smashed jet and mangled body in the desert.

Very slowly, the mercenary lowered his forearms and opened his eyes. Staring into the semidarkness, he saw lights from outside reflected on the big flat-screen TV. Carpet. He was sitting on carpet, not the rocky soil of Iraq. Gradually his eyes focused and his breathing slowed. Drapes, television . . . a big bed.

Hotel.

Then he remembered. Of course it was a hotel. The Ritz Carlton in Atlanta. Exhaling, he straightened his legs and leaned his head back against the wall as the thumping subsided.

Closing his eyes, the mercenary lifted a hand to his forehead and wiped away the sweat. For several long moments he sat perfectly still and listened. It wasn't the worst dream he had but it was close—a nightmare combination of a real mission with real fears and his mind's horror at what
could
have happened.

“ . . . and we're up! Good Monday morning to you, Atlanta!” The clock-radio alarm burst to life and he glanced at the glowing red numbers: 2:35. “Weather today will light rain giving way to scattered clouds and, you guessed it, humidity. Temps will—”

He turned it down and stretched. Walking to the blinds, the mercenary pulled one side back and stared outside. Low clouds covered the tops of neighboring buildings and even at this hour there was traffic on the streets.

The dream.

Sighing, he pushed it back down and felt the last clinging horror leave him. It was, he'd decided long ago, some sort of psychological price for the life he'd led. In any event, it didn't interfere with life now or with what he had to do next.

Showering, he shaved and dressed in the new jeans and deck shoes, and slipped on the dark windbreaker over a black T-shirt. His bags were packed and waiting by the door, so after tugging on a Chicago Bears cap, the Sandman left the room. Taking a newspaper from a table by the elevators, he kept his head slightly down and read. Crossing the lobby, apparently engrossed in the headlines, he left by the side entrance and ambled casually across the parking lot.

Minutes later he accelerated onto I-75 south back toward Atlanta. With little traffic the mercenary followed the yellow lights around the city and merged onto Interstate 20 heading east toward the South Carolina border. It was 3:20
A.M.

Chapter 18

G
overnments employ all sorts of people for the special skills they possess. Hackers, smugglers, arms dealers, and of course mercenaries. They also employ forgers.

Everett Womack was one of these. Raised during the computer revolution, he was a Gen Xer through and through. Physically unimpressive, with weak blue eyes, large hips, and narrow shoulders, he was the sort you see in alternative bookstores and coffee shops. The kind of misplaced and misunderstood genius who either makes a fortune or works in a convenience store.

Shy and introverted, Womack had never formed a close friendship, played no sports, and never had a real girlfriend. His father, a mining engineer, had little tolerance and even less use for a boy he didn't understand. Everett left home at eighteen and never went back.

Unlike most of his kind, he also loved art. He'd studied commercial art during his brief college career but dropped out and returned to his native Denver, Colorado. Working as night janitor at the Denver Mint, he'd amuse himself by sketching new designs for coins on the production floor. He did beautiful multi-dimensional renditions in plain chalk, then washed them off as he cleaned.

One night the assistant supervisor for Dies and Engravings worked late and watched, dumbfounded, as the sloppy young man in coveralls created line drawings, by hand, for a proof set of coins.

Recognizing the talent for what is was, the supervisor promptly arranged for the young man's career change. Everett learned computer-aided drafting, a smattering of metallurgy, and the latest biometric security procedures. Astounded that some good luck had come his way, he happily continued working at the mint, designing and manufacturing the dies.

Finding a girl, he was actually content for once in his life. That is, until the mint became a private enterprise in 1995 and he was let go. The girl left him and in the span of few weeks he found himself out of work and alone.

Bitter and unemployed, Everett remembered several high-profile counterfeiters that mint employees had been warned about. One of them, after paying his debt to society, actually lived in nearby Evergreen, Colorado. Everett Womack paid the man a visit one day and his life was never the same again. The counterfeiter no longer actively worked but was still angry enough to help the younger man. More important, he still had contacts, and Everett Womack, with his computer and artistic skills, was suddenly in business.

His specialty was documentation. Driving licenses from any state, national identity cards, academic transcripts—whatever was needed to build a “legend,” a complete alternate persona. There are many forgers but what made Womack so valuable was his ability to forge electronically. Perfect copies of documents were all well and good until the computer age but now a document can always be verified against a database somewhere. Everett could not only create perfect paper, but he could also hack into virtually any database and create the supporting files.

And so he did. Working from a small but meticulously equipped studio outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, Everett Womack developed a small but regular clientele who needed the best—and would pay for it. Having just finished a set of documents for a regular customer, Womack had decided he'd made enough to live comfortably and anonymously for the rest of his life.

Then, several months ago, the old counterfeiter, his mentor, asked him to complete one further contract. Several wealthy and discreet individuals needed documentation, they claimed, for a financial venture in South America.

Womack did a masterful job and delivered the Bolivian passports, entry visas, and beautifully executed InterPol clearance letters one month ago. The only problem was that both men were ICE agents, and for the second time in his life, Everett Womack had the floor fall out from beneath him. America after the 9/11 attacks became nationally paranoid regarding terrorists and terrorism. A man such as Everett Womack, who could create untraceable false identities, was viewed as a high threat and a danger to the security of the United States. Instantly cooperating, he'd even turned over a partial client database. It didn't appear to matter to the Feds, however, because he was still sent to the U.S. Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado. Deemed high risk, he was placed in the USP (High) facility to await trial.

This facility is adjacent to the Florence ADX, or Supermax, as it's also known, home to the most dangerous prisoners and having the tightest controls in the United States. Described as a “cleaner version of Hell,” ‘Supermax' was home to Timothy McVeigh before his departure to the real hell. Former FBI agent and traitor Robert Hanssen is an inmate, along with assorted terrorists, drug traffickers, and Mafiosi. Humiliated and terrified, Everett Womack lived a nightmare every day. He would've gladly killed himself if there had been a way to do it, but even that opportunity was denied.

However, once in a great while, even at the bottom of a hole, something unexpected happens to restore a spark of hope. And so it was for Everett Womack on this bright Monday morning, when two federal agents, accompanied by another man and a woman, flashed their creds and walked into the holding area where he waited. Since his capture, Womack had nurtured the hope that someone in the government might decide he was more useful to them on the outside than rotting in a cell.

“Morning, Everett.” The taller agent sat on the edge of the table and took a sip of coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “We'd like to talk about your client list.”

Everett blinked several times. Maybe, he barely allowed himself to think, maybe this was it. He thought about green grass and sunlight. Maybe even a real hamburger again.

Actually, he knew, this was better.

T
he Sandman passed south of Lake Murray and entered the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina, at 6:15. Stifling a yawn, he considered stopping for breakfast but decided to beat the morning rush hour first. Taking the I-26 loop around the city, he followed the signs for I-77 and took the Garner's Ferry Road exit east of Columbia.

Stopping to fill up, he paid cash for the gas and sat down at the attached diner for breakfast. It was surprisingly good: eggs over crisp toast, lean bacon, and a perfect cup of black coffee. No grease, grits, or hash browns. The others at the long counter were a mix of hardworking locals, truck drivers, and several men in suits. They were all chatting amiably enough amid the clinking of dishes, hiss of frying bacon, and the low babble of the television.

The Sandman remembered mornings like this. On his way into the base he'd sometimes stop at a diner for a breakfast. How right everything had seemed with the world then—at least his world. He'd been at the top of a profession he loved, had a wife and child and a pretty good idea of what he was doing with life.

It was a long time ago. Forcing himself back to the present, the mercenary pushed the memories back before they bubbled up. Now was not the time. Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he left a tip and slid off the seat. Once again, no one took the slightest notice. Pulling out, he continued east on Garner's Ferry Road through the low-country swamps of central South Carolina. It was ten minutes till seven.650.

“G
reat day to fly, isn't it?”

Colonel “Lucky” Mike Halleck, the 20th Fighter Wing commander, looked up from his desk. Scott Richards, the Vice Wing commander, was leaning against the doorjamb with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.

“Damn straight. And of course, today we get to cancel everything on the schedule to play war.”

Richards nodded glumly. A hurricane that pummeled the Caribbean had left several weeks of bad weather in its wake and shattered the complex training schedule that all flying wings lived by. The 20th was badly behind their yearly numbers and needed good weather to make it up. Good weather that happened to coincide with an Operational Readiness Inspection, or ORI. Air Combat Command (ACC) Headquarters loved them. They were supposed to give a quantitative assessment of a wing's ability to go to war.

“Are the evaluators here?”

Halleck leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “They got in last night. Skip Cranston is running their show.”

“You know him?”

“Not since we were captains.” The commander shrugged. “He was a good guy then but who knows now? People change.”

Scott Richards, himself a full colonel, watched Halleck thoughtfully. That, he knew, was very true statement. No one should be more aware of it than the man sitting at that desk. They'd known each other for years and, though professional colleagues, certainly weren't friends. They'd flown together in Europe and the Far East, slowly moving up the endless ladder of promotions and better jobs. Their paths diverged when Halleck had been selected for the Fighter Weapons School and Richards did a flying exchange with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Lucky had stayed on at Nellis after getting the Patch, the mark of a graduate, as an instructor.

“So we start this sometime later today?”

“Or tonight. Haven't decided yet.” Halleck shuffled some papers together on his desk. “We have to give them a minimum of forty-eight hours for the eval, but I want to get the morning meetings out of the way at least.”

Every military organization was suffused with meetings. And more meetings. The 20FW took care of all its administrative items for the coming week on Monday morning. There was another, shorter round of operational meetings on Wednesdays, but Monday was worse.

“I hate these things.” Scott Richards shook his head. “I always thought the Air Force should just do No Notice evaluations. It's always worse when we have some time to prepare—everyone starts overthinking things. What a pain in the ass.”

Colonel Halleck looked at his vice impassively. That attitude, he knew, was why Scott Richards would retire as a colonel. You played the hand you were dealt, realistic or not. Those who could do it wound up with stars on their shoulders. Those who couldn't faded into oblivion.

“Be that as it may, we will ace this pain in the ass. You might pass that along to the Ops Group commander and the others.” As if they didn't know it. He met Richard's gaze. “The consequences for fucking this up are career-ending.”

“Yessir. I think everyone's aware of that.”

Halleck's eyes were steady, black, and impassive. “See to it.” He reached for the phone. “And shut the door, please.”

Richards backed out of the doorway into the anteroom that separated his office from the wing commander's. Normally an executive officer, sort of a military secretary, sat here. He took care of protocol and ran interference for the commander. The anteroom opened onto a much larger outer office containing several leather couches and chairs—and Cynthia.

She'd been here probably since the Vietnam War and handled everything else relating to the business of commanding a fighter wing. No one got past Cynthia. She wasn't in yet, nor was the exec, so he got his own coffee refill, then entered his own office to QC the wing's response to the evaluation scenario. Somewhere along the way, Mike Halleck had changed from first-rate fighter pilot to careerist. The vice wing commander had never suffered at his hands but knew of others that had been walked over, stomped on, and thrown under a bus on Halleck's way up. Staring out of his window at the flight line, Colonel Scott Richards decided that he wasn't going to be one of them.

A
t 7:26 the Sandman came over a low hill and saw the overpass ahead. Joining the cars exiting to the right, he slowed down and stared at the main entrance to Shaw Air Force Base. There was a line of cars to his left going over the overpass that was met by another stream of vehicles coming to the base from the nearby town of Sumter. Inching up to the stop sign, he saw that the little strip mall he'd remembered to his right had expanded. Lulu's, an old familiar coffee and pancake joint, was hemmed in by a convenience store, a bar, and a bank outlet. As he watched, several officers in flight suits got out of a car and walked in for breakfast.

The mercenary followed a silver pickup slowly across the overpass. Most of the vehicles were SUVs of one color or another. There were also the Mustangs and Camaros favored by enlisted men mixed in with a few minivans. Officers were usually easier to spot in Audis or the odd Lexus. Then a black Porsche flickered in and out of traffic across the highway and darted into the front of the line. It was too far away to see the driver's face but one arm, with a flight suit sleeve pushed up to the elbow, rested on the open window. Some things never changed.

Coming over the rise, the Sandman started to pull out his ID card, then froze. Fifty yards ahead were two security policemen, as expected. What he didn't expect during rush hour was to see them passing ID cards under the their handheld scanners.

That would never do since the bar code on the back of his ID was gibberish. As the line crept forward, he ran through options in his head and only came up with one solution. Twenty yards before the gate there was a turn lane to the left that would put him back out on Garner's Ferry Road heading west. Rather than do a U-turn, which might attract attention, the Sandman eased over, signaled, and slowly accelerated back down toward the highway.

The digital dashboard clock said 7:39, so he still had plenty of time. But how to get on the base? There were two other gates, but he assumed that if IDs were scanned at one then they would be for all. Also, there were cameras everywhere around military bases and the same car turning around in front of another entrance would get someone's attention.

Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, he had an idea. Another half mile ahead was a turnabout connecting both sides of the highway and he took it. Heading back eastbound again, he pulled into a rest stop about a mile from the gate, turned the car around and backed into a corner facing the road. Traffic zipped by between the trees but no one turned in.

Yanking the larger of his two bags into the front seat, he pulled out the rolled-up flight suit and flying boots with plain white socks inside. Removing his jeans and docksiders, he left the black T-shirt on and slipped into the flight suit. Twisting sideways in the seat, he tugged on the socks, laced up the boots and straightened the undershirt. Zipping his pants and shoes into the bag, he pushed it into the backseat.