The Mercenary (8 page)

But the big blond finally realized that the girl
was leaving.

“You fuckin' bastard!” He growled, and jumped to
his feet. “You . . .”

The Sandman's arm shot across the table and
stiffened fingers jabbed into the American's eyes. Staggering, the blond
bellowed in pain, grabbed at his eyes and collided with a waiter carrying a tray
of drinks. Pivoting on a heel, the mercenary simultaneously shoved the girl
further back and backhanded the redhead across the face. The powerful slap
knocked the redhead off his chair but he rolled quickly to his feet.

“Now you shit,” he wiped his face. “Now you get
yours!” he sidestepped right, faked a punch and swung a huge left haymaker. The
mercenary smiled a little and slid easily under the man's arm.
Amateurs.

He jabbed two short punches into the exposed rib
cage and felt the redhead flinch in pain. As the man stumbled forward, the
Sandman simply rolled around the American's back and drove his elbow hard into
the man's kidney. He gave a queer little froglike leap and crumpled to the
floor.

Spinning around, the mercenary saw the blond lunge
to his feet, wiping frozen daiquiri from his face. The Sandman's foot flicked
out and caught the big man in the kneecap.

“Ahhh . . .” he moaned and toppled
sideways against another table before crashing to the floor.

Backing toward the girl, the mercenary kept his eye
on all three men and watched the crowd for any others. He picked up his scotch
from the table with his left hand and took Sidra's elbow with his right.

The redhead was sitting up but holding himself
oddly. The blond with the popped kneecap was swearing profusely and not moving
at all from the floor. The third man was out cold.

“You fuckin' bastard,” the blond spat at him, his
eyes bright with pain and hate. “Our buds'll find you and put your French ass in
the ground.”

The mercenary calmly took a sip of scotch and
kicked him in the face.

“Oh, I don't think so. Trailer trash like you is
easy to see coming.” He smiled. “And easy to smell.” The American-accented
English was unmistakable.

Eyes wide with pain, the man was shocked. “You're
. . . you're American!”

“You owe the lady an apology.” The Sandman regarded
him with indifference. “Give it, and I won't stomp you like the cockroach you
are.”

“But we're fightin' for you!”

“The most dangerous thing you do is go to the
shitter every day. And if you three are the best America has to offer, then al
Qaida has nothing to worry about.” He took a step closer and both men shrank
away from him.

“Now apologize.”

The two men looked at each other then back at the
mercenary. He hadn't exerted himself in the least and all three of them were
down. Even now he just stood there, no swearing or blustering. Dark and
quiet.

The redhead swallowed and lowered his eyes. “I'm
. . . I apologize.” He looked away in shame.

“To the lady, you ignorant sack of douche. Not to
me.”

The man raised his face, eyes swimming with pain.
“I'm sorry . . . miss. I . . . we didn't mean anything by
it,” he mumbled.

The blond tried to sit up again. “You go fuck
yourself.” His face was flushed and there was a deep gash on his cheekbone.
“You—”

The mercenary's left leg flicked out again and
caught the man on the end of his chin. The sailor's head snapped back and
thudded against the floor. Wide-eyed, the redhead watched the stranger step
toward him. “Please . . . mister . . . don't do anything
else. I . . .”

But then the bouncers arrived. Five of them. All
big men dressed in black who pushed their way through the crowd. Two of them
pulled the redhead to his feet and muscled him toward the door. The other three
picked up the other two Americans and dragged them toward the exit as well.

All around the dancers clapped and the music
started up again. One man, who looked to be the manager, surveyed the scene and
approached the table.

“Sir”—his English was badly accented but
understandable—“I apologize for this. Those men should never have been permitted
in the club.” He righted the fallen chair. “I hope you will allow me to cover
your bill.”

“
Ma feesh miskallah
,”
the mercenary replied in colloquial, educated Arabic. “Not a problem. Thank
you.” He was backing into the crowd. The last thing he wanted was a public
event.

“Ah . . . but
sir
!” The manager looked horrified. It was one thing to have a
wealthy foreigner involved in a problem but quite another for an Arab.

“It's all right,” the Sandman waved a hand
deprecatingly. “Simply imprison them and call the Yankee embassy. I”—he took
Sidra's hand and gently moved toward the door, —“do not wish to be involved with
such as this.”

“But of course,
sidi
.”
The manager looked around. “But . . . but . . .”

“I do not wish to be involved.” he repeated firmly
and pressed a hundred-dollar bill into the man's hand. “You understand?”

The manager's face cleared instantly. “But of
course. I will take care of everything,
sidi
. And I
hope you will return when . . .”

But the Sandman was already leaving away. In a
daze, Sidra had been guided toward the exit as the people around them backed
away from her escort. The cool night air had cleared her head and as they waited
for a cab she'd turned and stared at her companion. He was watching her, a faint
smile on his calm, hard face and she knew she didn't want to be alone that
night.

Now, looking across the bed at him, he seemed
perfectly composed. He certainly hadn't been upset at the nightclub. And,
although he'd brought her off three times during their two-hour sex session, it
had been almost mechanical. He'd been forceful, urgent . . . but not
passionate.

Sidra hadn't been asleep when he'd bolted from the
bed. He'd startled her but she'd been too upset to notice. Something had
frightened him. And what could do that? she wondered.

“Please,
cudush
, come
back to bed.” Sidra patted the bed and rolled provocatively toward the edge.
Like a splash of milk in coffee, her dark skin caught the faint shine of light
through a crack in the heavy draperies. He should leave. But, he reminded
himself, it would likely be a while until his next woman. She sat up again and
stared at his dark outline.

“Please.”

The mercenary stared at her naked body, then
reached down and twisted a nipple between his fingers.

“Ummm,” she moaned with pleasure. “More.”

He smiled in the darkness. He had time.

Chapter 6

D
oug Truax stepped over to the edge of the dock and thought about the mercenary. He wasn't convinced the man actually existed, or if he did, that he wasn't a Russian or Chinese pilot. They weren't supposed to be able to fly like that but it was possible that there was one ringer amongst all the other clueless bastards.

However, assuming it
was
a westerner, then who could it be? Each year alone, enough pilots retired or separated from the U.S. military to start an air force. Of course, it wouldn't be just a pilot. To do what this guy had done meant he had to be a fighter pilot, and not just any fighter pilot. This one obviously had a low-altitude night background, among other things.

“So who could do something like this?” John Lee prompted.

Axe rubbed his chin. “Fighter pilot obviously. LANTIRN qualified.”

Low Altitude Navigation Targeting InfraRed Night. A special training program for specially equipped F-16s and F-15Es. The idea had been to penetrate enemy air-defense systems, called IADS, and strike high-value targets with precision weapons. It was hair-raising, to say the least. It had also gone out in the mid-nineties, when the Air Force decided they'd never have to fly at low altitudes again. After all, Iraq had been conquered without going low, and in keeping with the tradition of always fighting the last war, LANTIRN had been discontinued. Besides, UAVs couldn't do it.

“Something unnatural about flying through mountains at one hundred feet at night,” Jolly said. “Never did it myself.”

“I did.”

“I know. And since that mission went away at the end of the cold war, anyone LANTIRN qualified would have to be our age, at least.”

“Not necessarily.” Axe leaned against the railing and folded his arms. “We got our NVGs in the late nineties . . . you can fly low off of those.”

“But the punks these days never fly low like we grew up doing,” Jolly persisted. “The Air Force went to the medium-altitude mind-set way back during the first Gulf War.”

“And wasn't that a great idea . . .” Axe snorted. “They said there'd never be a reason to go low again.”

“You avoid Triple-A.”

“Anti-aircraft artillery is the least of my worries.” Truax was a Wild Weasel by trade. He was supposed to get shot at. “You force me to medium altitude and now every swinging dick surface-to-air missile can see me. Never say never.”

“Still makes sense . . . as long as we've got precision munitions.” Jolly was a party line kind of guy. And that was Air Force Party Line Number Two.

Axe was disgusted and it showed. “And after the fourth day? When we run out of precision bombs? What then?”

“Anyway . . . LANTIRN.”

“Yeah. But it would take more than that.”

John Lee looked at the gray patch on Axe's left shoulder. It was shield shaped with a yellow bull's-eye in the middle and black lettering.
GRADUATE – USAF FIGHTER WEAPONS SCHOOL
.

An elite school for the best fighter pilots in the USAF. At least it had been when Axe went through. Maybe two instructor pilots per year from each fighter wing were selected to attend. Jolly was well aware that the course had been cheapened when it opened up to the bomber community and to nonflyers. Why does an intelligence officer need a patch? What are bomber “tactics”? This was a typical Air Force initiative to force equality. After all, who needed fighter pilots anymore? There was always the Space Command to win future wars.

Even John Lee, party line kind of guy, had trouble with that one. So the end result was the creation of the USAF Weapons School. Everyone is happy. Right. Bottom line was that it definitely did not produce the same caliber of person it once had. Slowly but surely, the Air Force was breeding out the aggressive ones and killing the warrior spirit.

He pointed at Axe's shoulder. “You mean a Patchwearer.”

Doug Truax nodded. “I'm thinking that way. And not one of the SNAPs.”

Jolly chuckled in spite of himself. Sensitive New Age Pilot. Gen Xers. Punks.

“So again . . . someone from our age group or thereabouts. Patchwearer, LANTIRN guy . . . probably combat veteran.”

“Most definitely,” Axe agreed. “Why would they hire a guy that hadn't seen the Elephant?”

“They probably wouldn't. So we're not talking about a big gene pool here.”

“In theory. But who's to say this guy is even an American? The Canadians and Aussies have guys technically capable of this. Dutch, Norwegians . . . lots of others fly F-16s too. Could be any of them.”

“No combat time though.”

Axe sat back down and exhaled. “Okay. But just because he's American doesn't mean he's Air Force. Enough guys get out from the Navy and Marines who could fit the bill.”

Jolly opened up his satchel and removed a single piece of paper. “Defense Intelligence in D.C. was given the hot potato of tracking this down. They had help from the Office of Naval Intelligence, Security Assistance, and the CIA. The profile was a former fighter or attack pilot from any of the fast jet services.”

“Navy, Air Force, or Marines.”

“Right. We obviously discounted Army Aviation. We also threw out anyone who retired prior to 1990 . . . he'd probably be too old. We didn't limit the search to TopGun or Fighter Weapons Grads but most came back that way. We also threw out the guys who were strictly air to air. F-15 Eagles and Tomcat drivers. They wouldn't know a bomb if they tripped over it. And this guy put his cluster bombs through the PAC-3 door from a nighttime low-altitude pop-up attack.”

Axe shook his head. “That still leaves Strike Eagles, Harriers, all the F-18s, and even the BombCat version of the F-14.”

“So?”

“So?” Axe stood up again and walked to the railing. “So we haven't even discussed the F-16s. Do you have any idea how many Viper drivers are out there? Just in our Air Force? How about the foreigners? How about the Guard and Reserve? Every silly state militia has its own air force and most of 'em are F-16s.”

“Hardly up to a job like this though,” Jolly replied. “National Guard and Reserve pilots are second string at best.”

“Not all of them.” Axe snorted. “Where do you think the really good dudes you and I have known over the years are?”

“Delta, American, United . . .”

Axe sighed. “Yeah . . . you know what I mean. We can't discount them. And they're a lot harder to keep track of than a regular air force type.” He eyed the other officer speculatively. “You have some reason for thinking this guy, if he exists, is a Viper pilot?”

Lee was staring at his shiny toes. “Yeah.”

“Well?” Axe was beginning to perspire in the sun. And few things smelled worse to him than sweaty polyester.

Jolly looked out at the river. “No one saw anything at the Patriot site. Or if they did, they didn't live to tell about it.”

“How much was actually destroyed?” Axe interrupted.

“The BTOK was obliterated. Everyone was killed. The ICC van, the Engagement Control Station, missile storage facility . . . two of the three batteries were also wiped out. A fucking mess.”

Truax whistled.

Jolly nodded. “Yeah . . . the fact that someone zapped this place, from the air, and got away has all sorts of nastiness associated with it. But that's another story. Bottom line is that he got away. Air Traffic and Early Warning had nothing leaving the target area. Zippo. Nothing showed up over the water at all except airliners.”

“And they saw nothing?”

“Closest guy was a Delta flight on final to Chiang Kai-shek . . . he was pissed off about the fireworks but landed anyway.” Lee sighed. “The only possible clue we have is from our Navy.”

He pulled a copy of a map from the satchel. “A little before midnight the U.S.S.
Howard
nearly got run over by a fighter jet . . . about here.” He pointed to an empty blue area southwest of Taiwan in the Formosa Straits.

“What's the
Howard
?”

“Some kind of destroyer. She was screening for Carrier Group Seven out of Yokasuka, Japan. The
Stennis
and all her friends. Anyway, apparently this guy was below mast height and damn near took their rotating antenna off when he jinked over them.”

Axe chuckled. “And the U.S. Navy poops its pants again.” He stuck a piece of gum in his mouth and waited for Jolly to continue.

“So they start screaming at him, and get this . . . he acknowledges them.”

Truax shrugged. “If he hadn't they would've really shit a brick.”

“Right,” Lee agreed. “So he knows this. Which probably means he's American. So as cool as a fucking cucumber this guy chimes up in a deep southern accent, apologizes and gives them a song and dance about being a Viper outa Kunsan on a low-level night mission.”

“Kunsan Vipers fly low-level night missions on the Korean Peninsula.” Axe stopped chewing. “Why would one be over water, hundreds of miles to the southeast?”

“I know. But the point is he said all the right words. Only someone like you or I would know the difference. He even used a ‘Wolf' call sign.”

“Did they track him?” Axe was interested now. “Don't those boats have all kinds of cool AEGIS things on board?”

“Ship, not ‘boat.' ” Jolly shook his head. “Nope. He came in on the deck and was gone the same way. Guess they had the gear secured for heavy weather and by the time they went to General Quarters he was gone. Besides, they bought his story.”

“So who smelled the rat?”

“The exec. He was on the bridge and saw the thing as it about took his head off. He remembered enough about fighter jets to know an F-16 only has one tail and one motor. Our mysterious friend here had two tails and two engines.”

Now that
was
interesting, Axe thought. The only twin-tailed twin-engined fighters in the U.S. inventory were the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning, the F-15 Eagle and the F/A-18 Hornet. The first two were Air Force jets, the last was flown by the Navy and Marine Corps. There were no air-to-ground Strike Eagles in the Pacific. And an air-to-air Eagle driver would shit his pants at that altitude.

“Could've been a gray Eagle from Kadena,” Axe said lamely. It was the only other alternative.

“Could be. Except that all their jets were accounted for that night. And why would an Eagle guy give himself a Kunsan call sign?”

“Latent heterosexuality?”

It was an old joke. Back in the 1980s an F-15 pilot was caught red-handed, so to speak, getting a little nookie from his crew chief. The only problem with that was that they were both guys. And it didn't help that the name of the fighter squadron was the Fighting Cocks. Much to the delight of every other fighter type in the Air Force, this escapade was revisited whenever possible to just thoroughly piss off Eagle drivers.

Jolly laughed a bit in spite of himself. “No . . . this guy is probably an American and almost certainly a Viper guy.”

Axe reluctantly agreed with him. It was an extremely specialized profession with training from only one place. So they weren't talking about a big field here.

“That means we might be able to find him.”

The other pilot pulled out three dark blue folders and held them up. “We've got some possibilities here.”

Axe reached for them but Jolly shook his head.

“Hang on. Before you read these you should know how we got them.” He pointed to one of the covered picnic tables next to the dock. “Let's go sit down.”

“We came up with twenty-one possibilities,” Jolly continued as they walked. “Eight Air Force, four Navy, and three Marines.” He handed Truax the three folders. “These guys made the final cut. One of each.”

They crossed into the shade and Axe sighed. Better.

“One each, huh? How ‘Joint' of you. How did you arrive at these three?”

The armed forces did everything together, or “Jointly,” these days, even if it didn't make sense. It perpetuated the illusion that the American military was all one big happy family. In reality, it rarely, if ever, worked at the operational level. It sounded good at D.C. cocktail parties though.

“Of the four Navy guys,” Lee continued, “You've got one there. One is a United pilot, so he's out, and the other is a defense contractor . . . Northrop Grumman, I think.”

“That's only three. Didn't they teach you to count at National War College?”

“They didn't teach me anything there. The other Navy guy is dead, so he's probably not a player.”

“Probably not.”

Jolly glanced at his list. “You've got a Marine and the other two work on the Beltway . . . verified. So they're out.”

“This leaves the good ol' U.S. Air Force.”

“Right. Three of these guys are airline pilots, one works for Lockheed Martin, one is dead, and two are in the Air National Guard.” Lee pointed at the folder. “You've got Number eight right there.”

Swell.

“And you really believe that this guy everyone wants is one of these three?” Axe waved the folders. “Or is this just a Cover Your Ass knee jerk to get the Air Force off the hook?”

Axe's cynicism was beginning to wear thin.

“I realize you don't always see eye to eye with the powers that be, Doug,” Jolly snapped, “but if this maniac did come from our corner of the world, then it's our duty to find him.”

“Why?” Axe dropped the folders on the table. “He didn't attack us. He didn't hurt any Americans or blow up any of our toys. If he wants rage around for the highest bidder, then how is that our fuckin' business?”

“It's our fucking business because this directly harms our national interests in the Pacific. All over the world too, if we look like dipshits!” Lee was mad now.

“C'mon, Jolly get a grip.” Axe shook his head disgustedly. “Our ‘national interests' a few years ago included selling guns and plutonium to Saddam. Before that we were buddy buddy with Tehran. Before that we propped up whatever banana republic South American piece of shit suited us at the moment . . . regardless of how many drugged-out kids it cost us. Before that . . .”