By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) (23 page)

Kara tried to keep an eye on everything at once. She had the ScanEagle in an automated slow circle at its max altitude of twenty thousand feet, its cameras offering a wide-area tactical view. Tago had the controls of
Tosca
and was keeping his focus on the air base from twenty-nine thousand.

Willard Wilson was perched on a stool behind her. He’d been so busy hovering over her shoulder that she’d finally laid down a strip of red tape four feet behind her and Tago’s seats.

“You cross this, and I’m gonna kneecap you. You talk to me while I’m running this op, same thing.” To emphasize her point, she dialed open her small gun safe, then loaded and holstered an M9 Beretta. So far he’d believed her and kept both his distance and his silence. She didn’t wear her sidearm often, but SOAR had made sure she was damned proficient with it. Yet another piece of training she’d never appreciated before.

At four minutes after contact, midnight dark and four minutes, Justin was tucked away in his World Heritage hidey-hole.

Claudia’s Little Bird helo was a dozen miles west parked close beside the Egyptian border at the bottom of a canyon so narrow that only a Little Bird and an exceptional pilot could be parked there. That she did it at night just meant she was a member of SOAR’s 5D, because no one else could. A patrol would have to stumble on the position by pure chance to find her.

Now all they could do was wait.

Kara hated waiting.

They would either be signaled to come extract the action team—she found that phrase more comfortable than
kill squad—
or they’d depart two hours before first light and return tomorrow to wait once again in the depths of the dark desert.

It took nine full minutes for the first pair of alert fighters to make it off the Ramon runway. Fourteen minutes for the second pair.

Didn’t learn enough, boys and girls.
Americans took fifteen minutes—from full stand-down. If they had massive civil unrest in countries both to the east and west and then add on the Gaza Strip to make matters worse, U.S. Air Force would definitely be under the five-minute mark.

“Condition four,” she transmitted,
the IDF is in the air with four birds
. She received back nothing but silence from the two helos and one ground team. Now it was their turn to be silent under all circumstances as the Israelis searched downward for any sign of an intruder. Of course what they should be watching for were two tiny vehicles shrouded in a stealth casing and flying high above where the jets were looking. But they didn’t know that and she wasn’t telling.

The Humvee that they’d delivered to the air base had progressed out of the exercise grounds and was moving quickly along the roads as if it was also responding to the alert status. They had thought about painting a large X on the roof in infrared paint to make it easy to spot from above, but the Israelis had top-quality American night-vision gear and would see the marking. They’d finally opted for a narrowband, highly directional radio ping. A fifty millisecond burst every three minutes on a preprogrammed rotating frequency pinned down the vehicle’s location on
Tosca
’s tactical display.

All Kara’s players were where they should be. Now they had to get through the long, slow second lap of this horse race.

Horse race? Damn, Justin was ruining her.

* * *

“Okay, smoke ’em if you got ’em.” Not much of a joke; none of Justin’s team smoked, not with working around Jet A fuel as often as they did. Plus the peak physical fitness their jobs required. The least hint of impaired breathing would earn you a scratch from active flight duty; few SOAR and no one from the 5D was willing to put that at risk for a cigarette.

“Two on roving patrol. Danny and Raymond, you’re short straw.”

“Thanks, bro. Needed to stretch my damn legs,” Danny groused as he grabbed a radio and clambered down from the cockpit.

The man would grouse about winning the lottery, but he was an exceptional tactician. Justin was trying to teach him the bigger picture, but since Justin’s brain was also tactical, it was hard. However, it meant they flew together fantastically well. He clapped the man on the shoulder before he climbed down.

Kara, on the other hand, saw big picture strategy so fast and so completely that a mission must look like a single gestalt to her. She made him feel like a cow looking at a new gate. He just wished she didn’t do it quite so often.

Justin made sure the radio mounted in his vest was active, pulled off his piloting helmet, and almost stepped out into the night air.

Then he thought about Kara and how upset she’d be if all his “Texas leaked out” in the heart of the Negev Desert. He reached back for his cowboy hat before popping open his door and stepping down. The shortest projection was that they’d be three hours on the ground. He grabbed a battery-powered night-vision rig just in case and tucked it into his vest above where the folding FN-SCAR MK17 combat assault rifle hung across his chest.

Outside, the desert night was cool, moonless, and alight with stars. The desert air was even clearer than Amarillo. It was also so achingly dry that he’d need a water bottle before long. He wanted to ask Kara how much rain fell in the Central Negev just to hear her voice. She’d probably know too—would certainly be on top of tonight’s forecasts, though shining stars and a sharp desert chill answered that one clearly enough. But he couldn’t risk the transmission, and not talking to her about anything other than the mission had grown plenty annoying.

“So…” Sergeant Carmen Parker’s silhouette materialized beside him in the darkness, a shadow among shadows. “Should I be singing the ‘Wedding March’?”

“Should you what?” He kept his voice down because it was so quiet that it felt like the whole desert was listening. And because the shock had knocked the wind right out of him.

“Oh, c’mon, Captain, we all want to know. You and Moretti are so cute together that it makes our friggin’ teeth ache. I bet you hold hands when you walk around in your civvies. We’ve got a pool going on when you’ll pop the question. You haven’t already done it yet, have you? If you have, Talbot will take the pool.”

Justin was fraternizing with a fellow officer, and she was asking about wedding plans?

Wedding plans?

Shit! He needed to sit down. Being in love with Kara was one thing; stepping into marriage was serious business that was going to take some thinking. He really wished his dad was around so Justin could ask how he’d proposed.

Justin almost laughed aloud. He’d bet Kara’s new boots that Annie Landau Evans had done the proposing.

“We haven’t talked about such things yet.”

“Well, you better, Cap. You don’t get a move on, she’s likely to ask you first. You at least got an answer for when she does?”

Justin snaked out an arm and snagged it around his starboard-side crew chief gunner’s throat and hauled her into a loose choke hold. He rapped his knuckles atop her head, then kissed her on the crown of her head.

Her elbow shot out and bounced off his vest armor.

So he kept her in a friendly headlock a few moments longer.

“Tell you what, Carmen. You can fight with my sister and Danny for which of you gets to be best man. But if you lose, you’re gonna have to sing at the ceremony. Solo.”

“Deal, Cap.” Then her voice softened. “It would be a privilege.”

“Right back at ya.” How could he not be weak in the head for this crew? He let her loose.

Marriage? He really hadn’t gone there.

Marriage with Kara Moretti? Easy to picture that woman in a form-hugging gown and cowboy boots.

Kids with Kara Moretti? Now that was an image he could really see.

Took his damned breath away like a quarter horse in a full-mile race.

* * *

On Kara’s tactical display in the coffin, she could track the Israeli jets. The first pair of them were running along the Egyptian border scanning for any sign of breach or aggression—probably close enough to the border to be freaking out their neighboring country. Though it was probably safe enough because the Egyptians were embroiled in their own problems; they were on their fifth or sixth government in half as many years.

The second pair of jets were drawing and quartering the Negev Desert. Twice they came close to Claudia’s Little Bird hidden deep in the canyon by the Egyptian border. They never went anywhere near the Avdat World Heritage Site. Why would they? It was too nearby, just eight klicks away from the air base. You could probably see the ruins from the air base control tower.

Thankfully no one thought to look straight up, not that there’d be much to see. The ScanEagle was full stealth and the Gray Eagle was rated as “very low” for radar signature. Even if they thought to look straight up, she was probably secure, as long as the jets didn’t climb up to her altitude and start nosing around.

Kara’s main concern for now was the Humvee roaming across the active compound. The Gray Eagle’s powerful camera made it easy to zoom in tight and keep a close eye on it.

The vehicle made it over to the special project buildings where she’d discovered Tom’s men hiding the first time. The four people of this action team wore standard U.S. gear to blend in. Such gear included small IR reflecting patches on their shoulders that made them stand out in one of her views despite the five-mile-high altitude she was cruising at. In minutes they were inside one of the buildings. Two minutes later they were back, except there were five of them; four with shoulder patches, one being escorted none too gently.

The five figures piled into the Humvee, but it didn’t go anywhere. For six long minutes, through two blinks of the every three-minute locator strobe, they remained immobile.

Kara tried not to imagine what was going on in the back of the Humvee. Maybe it just had to do with some kind of secret truth serum that took time to work.

She shared a look with Tago. All color had long since drained from his face and he was swallowing hard. Yeah, about what she figured as well.

It had been over an hour since the Humvee had pulled into the American Camp at the northeast corner of the base and Kara’s team of four had exited the vehicle. No sign of Mr. Passenger Number Five.

She fought down a wave of nausea. Maybe it was better not to know. For once she truly appreciated not being on the forward action team.

Kara checked the other two teams. Claudia had been overflown several more times by the Israeli jets but remained undetected.

Two of them were now on a long approach back to the air base, swinging wide over the Central Negev before turning onto the final leg of the runway’s landing pattern.

She watched the jets sliding side by side across the night sky, clear of Avdat and Justin’s position by a bare kilometer.

Even as she watched, one of the jets dissolved in a massive fireball.

“What the fuck?”

The other jinked to the side, but not before a bright streak intersected its wing. The wing blew off.

At over three hundred miles per hour, it tumbled the last five hundred feet to the ground in just over a second.

No parachutes.

“Shit! Tago, wind it back.”

He scrolled the flight recording backward in time.

The jet hauled itself back off the desert floor and regained a wing.

The other one imploded from fireball back into a jet streaking on short final back toward home.

Now she could see the two lines of light that had taken out the jets faster than their pilots could react. They came from just out of frame on the Gray Eagle’s close-up camera.

“The ScanEagle!” She toggled over to the ScanEagle’s controls.

With a few practiced flicks, she had its wide-area video feed on her central screen. She found the two flame-filled craters in the desert that moments before had been IDF F-16Is. Zooming in, she centered on the two fireballs and then hit rewind.

Once again the jets rematerialized and the bright streaks of attack moved away from them. She tracked the streaks back along their path.

Minigun tracer fire, very different from a missile’s track. She’d seen it enough times to recognize it instantly. On the infrared vision the tracer fire looked like dual streaks of green flame, making it easy for the gunner to steer his weapon using night-vision gear, but otherwise close to invisible.

Green tracer fire, like the kind shot by the U.S. military.

It had arced up from below and sliced apart the jets’ underbellies. At four thousand rounds a minute, it might as well have been a buzz saw, hitting a bomb or fuel tank on one jet and cutting off the wing on another.

She continued back along the path until she found a helicopter, a model she recognized instantly. It was an MH-47G Chinook twin-rotor, just like…

“Justin?”

She fast-forwarded the recording, staying centered on the helicopter this time.

The helo flew down low over the burning jets, raking them with additional fire.

“He’s gone renegade!” Wilson shouted from behind her. “He just killed two Israeli jets.”

“No way.” Kara words felt dreamy as the helicopter she was watching took another run at the downed jets, apparently finding a fuel tank or unexploded bomb as a fresh explosion erupted from the wreckage.

“He has! Just look, goddamn it. Where’s he going now? Is he going in to kill my team?”

The helo was on the move, lumbering through a turn.

“
Jane
.” She finally remembered that she had a radio. “This is
Tosca.
Break off. I repeat, break off.”

She was answered by static.

“He’s going to kill my team! You gotta stop him, Moretti. That’s a goddamn order. Shoot him! Shoot him now!”

Kara couldn’t make sense of it.

She tried again, still no radio response.

She zoomed back. The helo dipped and swerved, but finally centered on Ramon Airbase and began moving forward.

Someone was screaming at her.

Ordering Tago to launch missiles.

The demands.

The noise.

Time moved so slowly that the words ringing off the steel walls of the coffin made no sense.

She could practically see each beat of the
Calamity Jane
’s rotors.

A glance at the wide area feeds. The other two Israeli jets were too far away. They’d flown nearly to the Gaza Strip in case that’s where the original attack was centered. They were turning back even now; the bright flares of afterburners creating sky-sized rooster tails of heat across her infrared vision.

She called the
Jane
again, knowing she’d have no response, but she had to keep trying.

“Goddamn it, Moretti!” A hand clamped down on her shoulder and shook her hard. Wilson. “Goddamn Roberts is one of the sleeper agents. Launch your fucking missiles!”

She pulled out her M9 Beretta, cocked it, flipped up the safety, and aimed it at Major Wilson’s forehead using his reflection in her main monitor. Kara didn’t aim for his knee, she pointed it right at the center of his forehead.

“What did I say about crossing the tape line and keeping your mouth shut?”

He stumbled backward, cursing as he stumbled over his seat and crashed to the floor.

She reset the safety and holstered the weapon.

And wished to God that Wilson wasn’t right.

Justin had gone renegade. He had killed two Israeli pilots and downed forty million dollars’ worth of jets.

Kara had four Hellfire missiles at twenty-nine thousand feet. Eighty pounds of high explosive. Running at Mach 1.3, a thousand miles per hour, she had a lead time of eighteen seconds. At cruise speed, the
Calamity Jane
would reach the air base in ninety seconds, just over a minute at never-exceed speed.

She allowed herself twenty seconds; all she dared spare.

Radio response was nil.

The two Israeli jets still returning from the Egyptian border were fully six minutes away despite having reached supersonic flight.

Based on their earlier response time, Ramon Airbase was still five minutes from launching any more alert fighters.

Who could she call for advice in the next fourteen seconds?

Michael Gibson was on the ground, probably unaware of what had just transpired deep in the Negev unless he’d been looking in the right direction to interpret the massive boom of destruction.

Captain Claudia Gibson was parked in a deep and distant canyon and would know nothing. No flash of light. No shock wave.

Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis would only know about his ship, the
Peleliu
, not about this highly classified mission being run from a steel box on his hangar deck.

Chief Warrant Lola LaRue was in transit from her leave in the U.S. She wasn’t due back aboard until midday and it was only midnight now.

And Justin.

Nine seconds.

She couldn’t ask Justin because he wasn’t answering his radio.

Six seconds.

Her only guidance was the Air Mission Commander, one Captain Kara Moretti.

Four.

She wanted to have faith that there was a reason Justin had broken cover to down two Israeli jets and was now turning to attack Ramon Airbase.

Three.

Kara wanted to trust him.

Two.

The
Calamity Jane
shifted direction. Not toward the Israeli housing, nor the main operations base of the air base. Instead, it veered toward the American Camp’s housing. Base personnel lived there. Families. Maybe children.

One second.

Kara centered the Gray Eagle’s targeting crosshairs on the Chinook helicopter.

She selected all four Hellfire missiles and hit the fire button.

Wilson gasped in shock or relief behind her; she didn’t care.

She held the laser guidance on the center of the helo and counted seconds until impact.

These weren’t some flares that would light up a hillside to spook the Turkish OKK during an exercise.

Her heartbeat stroking slow and steady, counting seconds in perfect sync with the timer.

A single Hellfire was a tank killer, able to punch through the heaviest armor.

She kept a thumb near the abort-destruct switch that would destroy the missiles prior to impact and called one last time on the radio, knowing it was in vain.

At fifteen seconds she removed her hand from the switch.

Four Hellfires…

At sixteen, she whispered into the mic that she loved him.

…striking a thin-skinned helicopter…

At seventeen, she still held the laser guidance steady.

…were annihilation.

At eighteen seconds, the Chinook disappeared from the sky in a massive ball of flame.