Armageddon (37 page)

He thought he heard Kick’s voice behind him somewhere. He looked around but didn’t see him. There was another shout, and he crawled to the side of the plane.

“Lieutenant, you better get off that plane,” shouted the Air Force Special Tactics soldier from the edge of the runway. “You’re an easy target up there”

“My friend—Kick, the other Flighthawk pilot. He went back inside.”

“No, sir, he’s down here”

“He is?” Starship climbed down the front of the smashed up windscreen and bashed nose, jumping to the ground. His knees gave way and he crumpled in what seemed like slow motion. As soon as he hit the ground he rolled back up and started to run to the side of the field.

“Kick, Kick, you idiot, where the hell are you?”

The Air Force Special Tactics soldier caught him from the side with his tree trunk arm.

“Lieutenant. Your friend—”

Starship turned and looked at him. The soldier shook his head. Starship shook his head as well.

“He can’t be dead. I pulled him out,” said Starship.

“I think he was dead when you pulled him out,” said the man. “Listen, we have to fall back to the bunker area until reinforcements come in. We don’t know how many more of these bozos are out there in the jungle. We’re down to six guys who can handle a weapon, not counting you and me.”

“I can’t leave Kick,” said Starship. “Where is he?”

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave him,” said the soldier. “Or you’re going to be dead, too.”

“He can’t be dead.”

“This way,” said the sergeant, starting to trot up toward the bunker.

Starship stared after him for a moment. Then, against his conscious will, his legs propelled him to follow.

Southeastern Brunei
Exact location and time unknown

The man with the gun prodded Mack down the pathway past a cluster of small houses to a turnoff that led to a long wooden platform above the slope. At the far end of the platform sat a small building constructed from chipboard. Inside, Mack found several women holding or sitting with children on the floor of the single room. The far wall was a screen overlooking a rock-strewn slope down to the stream Mack had walked along earlier. A man with a pistol stood in front of the screen; he glanced nervously at Mack as his escort left him, then went back to watching out the side.

Unsure of the situation, Mack decided that his best course for now was to say nothing until he could puzzle out whether the men with the guns were terrorists who had invaded the settlement, or if they were the husbands of the women trying to protect them. But no one said anything, either to Mack or each other, outside of an occasional soft whisper to children who were fidgety.

“Are you for the government?” asked Mack finally. No one answered.

“Sultan?” he asked. But that didn’t draw a response, either.

“U.S.A?”

Nothing.

“Could I have some food?”

Still nothing. Mack propped his hands on his knees and leaned forward, baffled by the situation.

North of Meruta
1348

Dog heard the whispery jet engine approaching from the north and realized it had to be a Flighthawk. He pulled the PRC radio from his pocket and switched it to voice.

“Colonel Tecumseh Bastian to Dreamland Flighthawk. You’re approaching my position,” he said.

The only response was static. Dog cupped his hand over the earphone as he broadcast and listened again.

“Dog, this is Zen. I should be just crossing overhead,” said the pilot finally.

“Yeah, I see you,” said the colonel as the black dart came overhead. “We were ambushed further up on the road. The terrorists got one of our guys.”

“I saw the Hummer. Danny is en route with a helicopter.”

“Danny?”

“He’s about fifteen minutes away. Pilot wants to claim a new speed record for an A-6,” said Zen. The transmission crackled and faded but then came back. “Can you find a good place for him to land?”

“Plenty of roadway,” said Dog.

Zen said something, but it was wiped by static. Dog asked him to repeat it but didn’t get an acknowledgment.

“You’re talking to the plane?” asked Lang, coming back. “Yeah. They have a helicopter en route. It’s about fifteen minutes away”

“We have to keep moving,” said the soldier. “They’re only a few hundred yards behind us, on the other side of the road”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. They’ve been following all along and now they’re starting to catch up. Come on”

Dog started to tell Zen that they were being pursued. He got only two words out of his mouth when the by now familiar rattle of an AK47 sounded through the nearby jungle.

Aboard
“Penn,”
over Malaysia
1352

“I didn’t get a good location,” Breanna told Zen. “I think his battery’s dying”

“They may be under fire,” he told her. “I see something popping down there. Something’s going on”

She flipped on the feed from the nose of the Flighthawk and watched as the small robot made a tree-top pass over the road. There was a flash off the right wing, but the robot plane went by so quickly it was impossible to tell exactly what had fired at it.

“I’d try raking the trees with the gun,” said Zen. “But I just can’t tell where they are”

“I have a better idea,” said Breanna. “Let’s show them we’re here and maybe they’ll back off.”

“Bree, they may decide we’re a good target—” said Zen, but she’d already started the aircraft downward. The Megafortress cleared the treetops by maybe five feet.

“Trying to break their eardrums?” Zen asked as she climbed.

“If it’ll help,” she said.

Southwestern Brunei, near the Malaysian border
1352

McKenna put the MiG-19 into a steep descent and got ready for her landing. She had to bleed off speed but keep the engine up in case she blew the approach in the unfamiliar plane; even a veteran MiG pilot could find the combination challenging on a rough field. The tiny runway came up quickly in her windscreen as she descended; she glanced at the dial tracking her engines’ rpms, making sure she had enough power to abort if necessary.

The MiG’s air speed plummeted from 325 knots to just over 200 as she dropped toward the hard-packed surface at the edge of the runway. Her flaps were open all the way and she was committed now. The craft sank abruptly, threatening to pancake. She got past it, the tail twitching slightly but her nose right, flaring up so the plane could help itself slow. But she reached prematurely for the throttle to throw it into neutral—a minor mistake in another plane, a potential catastrophe in the MiG-19 on a short runway. Cutting the speed so sharply caused the back end of the plane to slip downward abruptly once more, this time perilously close to the ground. She felt her heart thump, and then in the next instant felt something kick her from behind—her father, she thought, telling her not to be a jerk.

That was all it took. She managed to get the rear wheels down solid without scraping her butt on the runway. With her nose still up to increase drag, her speed quickly fell; when she slipped under 130 knots she dropped the front of the plane and went for the brakes and chute and brakes.

And brakes and brakes and brakes. She stopped with her nose over the end of the field.

“Never a doubt,” she said as she climbed out of the plane.

“My MiG!” exclaimed Prince bin Awg, materializing from the back of the crowd that ran out to greet her.

“She’s a beauty,” said McKenna.

“How did you rescue her?”

“She kind of called to me,” said McKenna.

The prince looked at her, then smiled. “For your bravery, you deserve a present.”

“I’ m not much for medals, Prince,” she told him. “Besides, it was mostly the Dreamland people. The terrorists made a move to the Megafortress and they decided they had to keep her on the ground. They took her rear stabilizer off and wiped out the fuel truck they’d brought in from outside the city somewhere”

“The Megafortress was destroyed?” asked the prince.

“Temporarily disabled. They blew the back section of it off. It’ll fly again someday”

“And my planes?”

“I saved this one,” said McKenna. “Best I could do.”

The prince nodded grimly, as if lamenting the passing of a dozen old comrades—which in a way he was. “You deserve a reward,” he said. “It is yours.”

“What is?”

“The MiG.”

“Really?” McKenna looked back at it. “No kidding?”

The prince looked at her solemnly. “My uncle owes you his life. I would give you twenty such planes”

“I’ll settle for this one and a new set of brakes,” said McKenna. “Mind if we get some grub? Those Dreamland people were nice, but the only thing they had to eat were MREs. One more peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a tube and my stomach would have hit the eject button.”

Brunei International Airport
1352

Sahurah watched as the men pulled the last of the metal from the wrecked hangar entrance. Two of the hangars at the prince’s side of the airport had been completely destroyed, but only the doorway to this one had been blown up. A large aircraft sat untouched a few yards away.

“It may be of use,” said Yayasan, the pilot who had deserted from the sultan’s air force. “It hasn’t been used often, but it was flown recently. The Russians called it a Tu-16. The Western nations referred to it as a Badger. This model was used for maritime patrols, and some bombing.”

“Could we use it against the sultan’s forces?” asked Sahurah.

“Certainly. There are machine-guns, those racks are there for bombs or missiles. Missiles, but we could use bombs.”

“Can you fly it?”

“I have never done so.”

“That is not my question.”

Sahurah looked into the pilot’s face, filled with fear. Sahurah knew from his own experience how difficult a foe fear was. He wished he had the ability to inspire others to face it, but realized he did not. Sahurah turned and started to walk away.

“I will try, Commander,” said the pilot behind him. “I will try.

North of Meruta
1402

Dog tried the radio again, but once more all he got was static. The terrorists had stopped firing their weapons but they were still in the jungle somewhere across the road.

“I think they’ll follow us all the way to the coast,” Dog told Lang as they crouched in the weeds, catching their breath. “They’re persistent bastards.”

“No, they won’t go that far,” said the sergeant. He pointed to the south. “There’s another group coming up on our side. Look.”

Dog saw the last man in the small column as he ducked over a hilltop in the brush about a quarter of a mile away.

“Shit,” said Dog. He picked up his radio to broadcast again. “Wait,” said the sergeant. “Listen.”

Dog raised his head and heard the chopper approaching from the distance.

SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE QUICK BIRD AS IT whipped toward the area where Colonel Bastian had been located, Danny caught a glimpse of the Flighthawk darting back and forth in the sky. It looked like a crow protecting its young from a prowling cat.

“I see you, Zen,” Danny said over the Dreamland satellite circuit. “Are you in contact with them?”

“On and off. I haven’t had anything from him in the last ten minutes, but I have a rough idea of the location. The terrorists are very close by.”

He gave him GPS coordinates, and then described the spot as just west of the highway, about a hundred yards from a sharp bend.

Danny discussed it with the pilot, who thought their best bet would be to take the Quick Bird directly in while the Flighthawk laid down some covering fire near the terrorists. The pilot told Danny they could hover above the highway; if Dog came out they could pick him up, and if the bad guys came out they could fire at them themselves.

It was a risky plan, but the pilot claimed he’d done things twenty times as dangerous when he was flying with the 160th SOAR, the Army’s special operations helicopter regiment. Danny didn’t doubt that he was telling the truth.

They flew south a mile and a half, then made a wide turn on the side of the jungle where Zen thought Dog was. They dropped low and hovered over the road as the Flighthawk dipped down toward the trees, looking for something to shoot up.

“There,” said Boston. “On the left, your left, just in the ditch near the road.”

“And there,” said Danny, pointing ahead. “Terrorists at two o’clock”

DOG WATCHED AS THE HELICOPTER WHIPPED OVER THE ROAD behind them and then started to turn. Before he could get up and run for it, it began firing at the row of trees to the north. The terrorists there answered, one of them firing a rocket-propelled grenade. Dog watched in horror as the grenade flew toward the cockpit of the plane and then seemed to disappear inside it. Fortunately, it had actually sailed to the side, curving like a baseball hit down the line. By the time it exploded in the jungle, the Quick Bird had unleashed a pair of TOW missiles into the tree line.

Lang began firing his M4, and Dog whirled around just in time to see six or seven terrorists throwing themselves down about three hundred yards away to the south. He too began to fire; as he did, something darted down overhead and he heard a roar and a grating sound, the kind of thing a garbage truck might make it if digested a load of steel.

“To the road, to the road,” Lang shouted, pulling him away as another grenade flew through the air. Dog fell backward; bullets flew nearby and he seemed to be breathing dirt.

“Stay down, stay down!” Lang yelled. The Flighthawk roared right overhead, its cannon roaring.

“The helicopter,” said Dog.

Lang didn’t reply. Dog raised his head, then felt something push it down as a fresh gunfire erupted nearby. Something hot creased the back of his neck.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” yelled Lang, and Dog found himself running up onto the road. The helicopter appeared on his left, moving along slowly with its skid a foot from the ground. One of the Whiplash people, dressed in his black body armor and helmet, leaned out and started firing his gun toward the rear, while someone else leaned from the front of the cockpit. Dog threw himself toward the helicopter, grabbing for it; as he did he felt it lifting away from him. His M4 slipped away but he knew better than to fish for it; he felt himself falling to the rear and his stomach revolted for a moment. Green and black swirls passed before his eyes and his head rattled with the roar of the engine. He saw something green below his feet and realized he was not quite inside the helicopter, even though they were lifting up above the trees.