By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) (8 page)

* * *

“Yankee Four,” crackled over the speakers inside the coffin, barely powerful enough for Kara to pick out of the noise threshold of static.

Yankee Four?
Wilson had said the team and the mission were named “Ya’akov Blue”—Jacob Blue.

Oh. Four Americans. Exactly the number there were supposed to be, and elegantly communicated. They wouldn’t know that the rescue pilot would know their code name.

Kara narrowed the frequency and almost ate a lawn chair at sixty knots during her moment of inattention.

“Roger, Ya’akov Blue.” Two could play that game. “Is extract required?”

There was no response.

Tago flashed up a Gray Eagle track of her own ScanEagle flight. He dropped a circle on where she’d received the transmission. She did a loop-the-loop right over the top of the three-story building that she’d been circling and plummeted back toward where she’d picked up the signal the first time.

“Roger, Ya’akov Blue. Is extract required?”

“Immediate!” snapped right back.

Kara stared at the screen, almost too long, only managing to twist the tiny RPA out of the way of a small shack by inches. If the structure had a chimney or antenna, she’d have tangled her bird in it and gone down.

“Roger,” she told them and scooted back toward the perimeter fence—and the anonymity of the desert.

“Extract,” she called out to the others in the coffin. “I need a solution. Now.”

“Circle back. Tell them to listen at 0200,” Justin replied. “And they need to be ready to move
very
fast.”

She did as he told her, and then scooted once more for the fence after receiving back a microphone key click in acknowledgment.

Not until she was five kilometers outside the perimeter fence and Tago had reported no activity on base did she set the ScanEagle to do an auto-circle around a barren chunk of desert sky.

She turned her chair, ignoring Wilson.

Justin sat close behind her; with them both turned, they were nearly knee to knee. She wished she could have turned away from the screen for a sec to see what he’d done to Major Wilson to silence him. She’d wager it was good. Justin had big, strong hands, the kind that you’d expect on six-foot-two of cowboy—exactly the sort a girl always hoped for but never actually happened in real life.

Had it really been just three days since she was certain she’d never have anything to do with him?
Time flies when you’re having fun.

“Okay, whatta you got for me, Justin?”

His sky-deep blue eyes made a few suggestions that were exactly what her body had in mind, if not her schedule.

“I can be there in two hours—half an hour prep, ninety-minute flight. The
Calamity Jane
moves over twice the speed of your ScanEagle. She may not be stealth, but she’s got all of the quieting technology they could bolt onto her including a radar suppressant skin. Let me go fetch them.”

“You want to land one of the largest helicopters in the U.S. inventory in the middle of an IDF base?”

Justin just grinned at her. “Land? Nope, not for a single darned second.”

* * *

Kara had sent Lola’s DAP Hawk as a backup, because helicopters didn’t travel alone in case of mechanical failure. That wasn’t something Justin worried about much anyway. SOAR’s mechanics didn’t believe in downtime on a craft. They had the highest aircraft availability stats in the entire U.S. military—if you didn’t count Air Force One, which boasted a hundred percent with zero failures ever.

He liked the feeling of the most lethal weapons rotorcraft ever developed having his back. Delta Force Colonel Michael Gibson had also loaded aboard with his sniper rifle, which Justin found doubly comforting. Man like that had your back, you
knew
your back was covered.

At 0200, the ScanEagle had gone back over the razor-wire-topped perimeter wall to pass on the operational plan to the trapped team.

At 0210, Justin was hovering close over the dirt five kilometers and ninety seconds to the northwest of the airport. Unlike the impossibly fine sands of Afghanistan that blew up into massive brownouts of dust, this dirt was good, old dirt. It blew around a bit, but it stayed on the ground like dirt was supposed to, a big relief.

Lola hung an extra three minutes farther back; this was the
Jane
’s show.

“Who feels the need for a song?”

Carmen started a rap, which wasn’t music by any definition Justin ever had.

Along come the
Jane
, flyin’ ever so low,

Tellin’ the old IDF, just what they can blow.

Talbot picked it up at the port gun.

And while the old Negev, could really use some snow,

It’s not the sort of place, you’d ever want to go.

Justin gave a shot at a chorus.

Here and gone before the morning’s glow,

The Night Stalkers come to smash your toe.

He didn’t need Danny’s snort from the copilot’s seat to tell him he’d missed the mark this time. Not that he’d risk an extraneous transmission to Kara even if it had come together. The Israeli Defense Forces were neither deaf nor stupid.

One branch of the U.S. military was about to invade a friendly country’s air base to rescue four of The Activity’s recon spies. The fact of the U.S. Air Force’s residence on the base didn’t pertain, as they hadn’t been notified by the Army’s Night Stalkers. Nor were they likely to be.

At least not if everything went well. Creating an international incident was not on tonight’s schedule.

At 0213, Justin tipped down the nose of the
Calamity Jane.
He pulled up on the collective with his left hand to pitch the blades and create as much lift as the twin Lycoming T55 turboshaft engines could provide, dumping ten thousand horsepower into the rotors. With his right hand, he kept easing the cyclic forward, tipping the helicopter nose farther and farther down, converting all that power into speed.

He hit the never-exceed speed in the first twenty seconds, driven down into his seat by accelerating at half-g the whole way. To an observer outside the craft, if there had been one, it would look as if the giant helicopter was moments from diving into the rocky desert soil. Actually she was tipped that far nose down so that her rotors were lifting her almost straight ahead.

Oh two hundred fourteen and thirty seconds, he emerged from the last wadi through the steep hills surrounding the base, running dead level and half a meter above the soil. Moving just under two hundred miles per hour, his first view of the Ramon Airbase opened before him.

At two in the morning the lighting was minimal, except for the perimeter. The main runway was blacked out to avoid being a target until the next flight of F-16s needed to use it.

Exactly what he’d been counting on.

“Weapons free,” he called to the crew, “but y’all really try to hold your trigger fingers.”

“Shooting locals, bad,” Carmen noted.

“Loud noise of shooting locals attracts even more locals,” Talbot offered. “Very bad.”

He and Danny focused on the flight path they’d chosen. Kara had flown in from the northeast twice now, close to the American Camp and the unknown cluster of buildings where she’d found The Activity team.

The
Calamity Jane
rolled down out of the northwestern hills like a bad flood hauling ass down an arroyo. They were moving so fast that climbing to clear the perimeter fence was barely more than a flick of the wrist.

Once over the fence—with his wheels and the tips of his rotor blades low enough to skim the brush, had there been any—he carved a hard turn, trading speed for change of direction.

Halfway down the paved runway, a vehicle was racing toward him. If all was happening per plan, it was The Activity recon team. It looked like a Humvee, which was going to be a very tight fit inside his Chinook.

He spun around and in moments he was flying at a sixty miles per hour, due west along the centerline of the runway.

Please let this work.
There was no time to land, load, balance, and secure the Humvee. Every second spent inside the perimeter fence was one second closer to detection and death.

“Vehicle at two hundred meters,” Danny called out.

It had better work or Wilson might get Kara after all.

“One hundred. Initiating rear ramp.”

The Open Ramp indicator flickered to life on the console. Justin eased down so that his rear wheels were actually rolling on the runway, barely.

“Fifty meters.” Danny.

“Ramp down,” Raymond reported calmly from the most dangerous position of this whole operation. Raymond’s life now depended on how good The Activity agents actually were as drivers, not as recon.

“Twenty-five.”

Justin was suddenly aware of a hundred things at once. The feel of the cyclic control, slick in his hand, smoothed by so many hours of flight. The sharp smell of the cold desert so different from Amarillo. Amarillo might be sparse, but it smelled of life. Ramon Airbase was stark and smelled of runway tar and death so close to the Egyptian border. He could still taste Kara’s kiss and feel how her body had pressed up against his.

And he could feel that he had to nose up on the collective a little or he’d be blowing the rear tires that had never been designed to roll at sixty miles per hour down a rough runway.

“Five,” Danny called.

The Humvee hit the ramp, causing a scream as the metal lip was compressed down onto the tarmac. The roar of the Humvee’s engine filled the helicopter, drowning out the twin turboshaft engines.

The impact of the racing vehicle jarred through the length of the helicopter’s fuselage as several tons of vehicle slammed up the rear ramp and aboard.

Justin increased lift on the rear rotor to compensate.

Now the gamble was on the skill of the Humvee driver. He’d had to race at the vehicle’s top speed to pick it up, not a move that any of them had ever practiced before. And he had to stop before he drove over the two gunners, the two pilots, and, worse, totally overbalanced the nose of the
Calamity Jane
into the pavement.

Justin was never able to clearly recall the next two seconds of the rescue. When a helicopter took on a three-ton load, it was done carefully, patiently, with strict attention to center of gravity and load-point tie-downs, while sitting parked stably on a solid surface. All three of his crew chiefs were certified MH-47G loadmasters and darned good at what they did.

—and there wasn’t a moment for a single one of those worries.

He adjusted for the shifting load with both cyclic and rudders, moving to some state of hyperawareness that he’d only ever experienced during a bucking bronc ride at the Tri-State Fair. Every tiny shift in weight compensated, even anticipated.

And the
Jane
bucked just as hard as the wildest horse. Nose wheels screeched on tarmac for a long moment when the driver tromped on the brakes and threw the Humvee’s weight forward. It was a sound that would carry to every resident on the air base.

Then the opposite effect as the Humvee rocked back against the large tires’ grip on the steel grating of the Chinook’s cargo deck.

The ramp light blinking out told him Raymond was still with them. He must have practically climbed out the ramp gunner’s shooting window to avoid being hit.

Justin pulled back on the cyclic only to realize it was already in his lap.

“Carmen,” he shouted over the intercom, “he’s off center. I’m nose heavy. I can’t clear the fence like this.”

They were off the ground—by less than a meter. They still weren’t climbing.

Over the open mic on the intercom, he could hear Carmen getting the guy to shift the Humvee backward.

“No sudden moves. No big moves. Just back it up like there’s an old lady behind you.”

The pressure eased on the cyclic. Now he left the nose down to regain speed. It would make Carmen’s problem harder, but that didn’t worry him; she could handle it. And if the driver was a field agent for The Activity, he could as well…or they’d all be dead.

“Check left,” Danny called.

Lights were popping on along the far side of the base. The Israelis would hit the runway lights any moment.

The controls felt almost normal—close enough he hoped.

“Lock it!” Justin called back, and Carmen echoed his shout to the Humvee’s driver.

Of course there wasn’t time to attach the load tie-down straps. Hopefully the guy standing on his brakes would be enough, but there was no more time to wait.

Justin carved a hard right turn and aimed straight at the nearest section of the perimeter fence. At the last moment, he jerked back on the cyclic and
Calamity Jane
climbed skyward like the good girl she was.

He nosed over the top as the runway lights flashed on.

He was back down to the dirt before the fence lights fired off. And he was up the wadi into the Nahal Resisim due west of the air base before the outer lights were lit. He doubted that they’d pick out his pitch-black helicopter.

But he was still a hundred kilometers into Israel in all directions except one. And crossing from raiding an Israeli air base into Egypt could start a war, making that an absolute last-resort option.

He keyed the radio for the first time in the whole mission.

“Need a distraction, Kara. I’m clear, but I can’t outrun an F-16 or a Sidewinder.” He continued to beg the
Jane
for more speed as he slalomed his way up the twisting wadi.

* * *

“Sissy.” Kara had to make a joke. She was never afraid during a mission. But watching Justin struggle to control the Chinook in ways that were never meant to happen on a twenty-five-ton helicopter had been deeply…unnerving.

“Roger that.” His tone was as dry as her throat.

“Just be glad it’s not a Sparrow.” That was a nasty missile with an attitude.

“Oh yes, I feel so much better. Ten kilos of high explosive at Mach 2 versus forty kilos at Mach 4. Yes, that’s so much better.” Man had come within inches of dying half a dozen times in the last minute and he was joking.