Gideon's War/Hard Target (14 page)

Chadeev mumbled to himself in Russian as he lifted the top edge of the television and set it down against the base of the stove while Gideon stared down at the screen. Wolf Blitzer was moving his lips silently. Behind him was a file photo of an oil rig. The words crawling across the bottom of the screen stopped Gideon cold. OBELISK SEIZED . . . He recognized it as the rig where Uncle Earl was waiting for him to bring Till-man. But Gideon felt a wave of cold realization when he read the rest of the crawl: . . . PIRATES LED BY ABU NASIR DEMANDING COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. FORCES FROM THE REGION.

“See?” Chadeev looked down sadly at the television. “There is your brother.”

Gideon found the remote control and thumbed up the volume. “Remote control—another great blessing of Allah, praise be unto him.”

Wolf Blitzer’s voice echoed in the empty room. “President Diggs is expected to comment shortly on the seizure of the rig and its connection to the unfolding civil war in Mohan. But we do have information from the video put up on YouTube by the terrorists showing one of the hostages—”

Chadeev grabbed the remote. “All right. You see enough.”

Chadeev changed the channel. A woman with lots of blond hair and a bright red dress that looked like>Wo±€† 1980 came on the screen.

“Look!” Chadeev crowed. “Dallas! Is excellent show. You know who is big fan of Dallas TV show? Osama bin Laden. Seriously. He love Dallas. He got whole series on DVD.”

“Wait! Go back!”

“Go back? No way. Is Dallas! You know how long since I watch Dallas?” Chadeev held the remote protectively against his chest.

“Go back!”

“Fock you, man,” Chadeev said. “Look. Is ‘Who Shot JR?’ episode. Most famous episode in history of—”

“Give me the remote,” Gideon said.

“No.”

Gideon snatched the remote from the crazy Kabardian, changed the channel back to CNN. A grainy video now filled the screen. Standing before a group of masked and armed men was a woman wearing a brilliant yellow jumpsuit. She was in her early thirties, her long auburn hair framing a face that was beautiful even without makeup. She looked frightened but defiant as she read from the terrorists’ script.

“My name is Kate Murphy. I am the executive in charge of the Obelisk, which is now under the control of Abu Nasir . . .”

Gideon couldn’t quite process what he was hearing, some part of him still clinging to the possibility that there had to be another explanation. But then he saw one of the masked gunmen lift his arm to adjust his mask, and the denial he’d been clinging to fell away. On the back of the gunman’s wrist was a small tattoo. Gideon had seen that tattoo before. It was two numbers: an 8 and a 2. His brother had tattooed an 82 on his wrist the day he’d finished jump school with the 82nd Airborne Division. Gideon felt the truth twist and writhe in his gut. Tillman had betrayed him. He’d been behind the ambush and the subsequent attacks along the river. And now he had taken the rig and was threatening to kill dozens of hostages, including Uncle Earl.

“I want Dallas!” Chadeev said, grabbing feebly at the remote.

If the situation weren’t so bizarrely horrific, it would have been funny—two grown men fighting over a remote control in the middle of the jungle.

“Give me a minute,” Gideon said. “Then you can watch all the Dallas you want.”

Chadeev knelt next to a dead man. Draped over the dead man’s shoulder was an AK-47, held on by a worn leather strap. Chadeev yanked on the gun, but the strap caught on the dead man’s belt. Chadeev put his foot on the dead man’s neck and heaved.

On the television, Wolf Blitzer had replaced the beautiful hostage. “The South China Sea has seen a sharp increase in piracy over the past year, but this latest situation clearly has broader geopolitical implications. The consensus among foreign policy experts is that any capitulation to Abu Nasir would be seen as a victory for the insurgency—”

“Give me remote.” Chadeev had finally freed the AK-47 from the dead man and was pointing the barrel at Gideon’s head.

“You’re gonna shoot me over . &±€†Dallas?” Gideon said.

“Remote!” Chadeev screamed, a tiny bead of spit flying from his mouth. “Give me focking remote!”

Chadeev smiled broadly and changed the channel to Dallas. Chadeev set the gun down on the floor, then squatted in the middle of the room full of bodies, a placid grin on his face, and began to drink another beer.

Gideon walked out into the ruined camp, reeling from what he’d just seen and heard, yet still unable to completely shake the hope that there had to be some other explanation, some missing piece of information. Whatever that might be, he knew there was only one place he would find it. On the Obelisk.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

GIDEON SCOURED THE SMOLDERING village until he found a military-grade shortwave radio in what had until recently been a communications room. The casing was scorched and cracked, but when he turned the switch, it crackled to life. He thought briefly about General Prang, who was supposed to have given him a radio but had only managed to give him a map before he’d been killed. Written in grease pencil on the reverse of the map was the emergency frequency Gideon was supposed to hail if he needed to order an emergency evacuation.

Gideon dialed the frequency on the radio, then spoke into the microphone.

“This is Gideon Davis. Can you read me?” he said.

“Clear this frequency,” a man’s voice said, followed by a long silence. Finally the voice came back. “Please give us the confirmation code.”

Gideon squinted at the code Prang had scrawled on the back of the map. “Circuit Alpha Nine Zero One Zero Seven. I repeat. Circuit Alpha Nine Zero One Zero Seven.”

Another pause. “Confirmed,” the voice said.

A second voice came on. “Mr. Davis. We thought you might be dead.”

“Who am I speaking to?”

“I’m with the home team.”

“Tell me what’s happening on the rig.”

“We’ll brief you in person. Please give us your location.”

“Dammit, just give me the sitrep—”

“Your location, sir,” the voice insisted.

“I’m in Kampung Naga.”

“Are you injured? Do you require medical attention?”

Gideon realized he’d have to wait for any answers about the status of the rig. “I’m fine.”

“Are you under fire?”

“No.”

“Are you aware of any hostiles in the vicinity?”

Gideon’s mind went to Chadeev. “Negative.”

“Please stand by, sir. We’ll have a chopper to you in one hour, sir.”

The voice was replaced by white noise. Gideon listened to the static as he released a deep breath he’d been holding in his chest. The moment he sat down, he felt himself being swallowed by fatigue. Adrenaline had been masking the physical toll the last twenty hours had taken on his body, but even more draining for Gideon was his increasing disorientation. Rather than finding answers, he’d only gathered more questions.

The chopper hit the ground fifty-six minutes later. It didn’t bear military markings, but Gideon recognized it as a military model. A tall black man wearing a tropical suit stood in the doorway, an MP5 submachine gun in his hand. He beckoned furiously with his hand for Gideon to come toward him, but Gideon needed no prompting.

“We were afraid we’d lost you, sir,” the man with the MP5 shouted over the whine of the twin turbojet engines. “I’m Gary Simpson, cultural attaché from the embassy.” Cultural attaché being an obvious CIA cover.

They shook hands, but before they exchanged any more pleasantries, Gideon wanted some answers. “Who hit this place?”

Gary Simpson frowned, but didn’t answer.

Gideon pointed his finger at the CIA man. “And don’t give me any shit about how you don’t know.”

Simpson relaxed his defiant posture. “It was the Mohanese air force.”

“Did this happen after my brother made his deal with the Sultan?”

“No, sir. Before. Your brother contacted us after the air strike. We thought it was the thing that finally turned him around. Apparently we were wrong.”

Gideon studied the man, measuring his sincerity. Satisfied that the man was telling the truth, he said, “Tell me what’s happening on the rig.”

Simpson hesitated. “How much do you know?”

“Just what I saw on CNN. That my brother seized the rig and now he’s threatening to kill hostages. What’s the time frame?”

“Eighteen hours, twenty-five minutes.”

“What’s the President doing about it?”

“He’s deployed Deltas from Hawaii to take back the rig, but they may not be able to get in under the weather.”

“What weather?”

Simpson told Gideon about the typhoon, which had changed course and was limiting the possibility of an aerial assault.

“The president must be doing something.”

Gideon climbed into the chopper, which rose into the air over the ruined village of Kampung Naga. Through one of the roofless buildings, Gideon could see Chadeev sitting cross-legged on the ground, still watching Dallas, surrounded by a litter of beer bottles.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE TROUBLE STARTED BEFORE the boat had even launched.

On paper the boat that the Sultan had loaned to Captain Taylor’s SEAL platoon was an ideal fit for the mission. At 41 feet it was large enough to accommodate the platoon and powerful enough to fight through the massive seas—driven by a pair of intercooled, supercharged MerCruiser V-8s that put out over 750 horsepower apiece.

The problem was that it was a poser—a rich guy’s pleasure craft masquerading as a high performance boat. The decks and superstructure were heavy teak. Every cleat and hitch and light fixture was fashioned from brass. To make matters worse, the innards were protectively shielded by 3/8-inch hardened steel plate. It was made for going fast in a straight line, but its weight made the craft ponderous to handle and more than a little top heavy.

As long as they were blasting straight into a wave, they were fine. They powered up the face of one wave, throttled back at the top, surfed down the face of the next wave, and submarined into the next wave. Each trough brought a momentary heart-stopping thud as the wave broke over the bow and engulfed the craft, which shuddered before bursting up from the water like a breaching submarine.

The Obelisk was due northeast from their launching point, but the waves were rolling in from the east. For a while Taylor was able to head directly into the waves. Once he adjusted to a true north course, though, the waves began hitting the hull broadside. And that’s where the weakness of the Sultan’s boat began to show.

Every time the craft crested a wave, it heeled over to port, then rolled rapidly starboard as the wave passed underneath. The momentum of the wave and the weight of the armored hull made the boat just want to keep rolling.

Taylor stood in the wheelhouse at the shoulder of Petty Officer Derrick Winters, who concentrated as he silently piloted the craft. He faced a computerized helm rivaling the cockpit of a jet aircraft. Manifold pressure, oil pressure, boost, coolant temperature, bearing, depth, wind speed and direction, radar, sonar. But the one digital readout that kept drawing the captain’s attention was the pitch indicator, which showed how much the craft was rolling.

They crested a wave and the boat rolled to starboard. Eleven degrees. Twelve degrees. Fifteen. Sixteen. Finally the boat settled and began to roll back.

“Can she handle it?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, sir.”

But Taylor heard the uncertainty in Winters’s voice. “As much as I appreciate your optimism, I’d rather have your honesty.”

Winters didn’t answer right away. “We’ll find out soon enough, sir.”

A tle D‡voice suddenly interrupted. “She’s taking on water, sir.”

An inch or two of water had been sloshing from one side of the wheel-house to the other for at least ten minutes.

The boat’s wheelhouse was enclosed, but water was getting in from somewhere. “Mr. Kennedy, find a pump,” Taylor called back.

“Gaylord’s on it already, sir,” Kennedy shouted. “There’s only one, and he’s got it going full blast.”

“Very well,” Taylor said.

The water was washing over his boots now. He didn’t have to tell the men what they knew already: the more water they took on, the worse they’d roll. Enough water, or a big enough wave, and they would capsize.

“What’s our ETA to the rig?” Taylor said.

“Five minutes,” Winters said. “Seven tops.”

Taylor nodded.

They crested the next wave. The boat rolled again. Nine degrees. Twelve. Fifteen. Eighteen. Something fell over and crashed behind Taylor. The boat was still rolling. Nineteen degrees.

“Come on, baby. Come on.” Winters was riding the throttle and carving to starboard, making micro adjustments to keep the boat from rolling any farther.

Finally the boat began to settle. Taylor exhaled, but his relief was short-lived.

“Oh, Jesus!” someone said.

Taylor didn’t see it at first. In the dim light it was hard to make out exactly what was going on outside the craft. But then he saw what his men were pointing at. A gathering blackness was swelling, rising up before them. Suddenly, Taylor felt himself falling, as if he were on an elevator that had its cables cut. The boat let out a horrible, rending groan.

And then it was upon them.

The news that Gideon Davis was alive had boosted the president’s mood, but it didn’t diminish the helplessness or the anxiety he felt as he sat in the Situation Room, monitoring the SEAL operation. Because the cloud cover was so thick, the satellite could only send thermal images onto the wall-mounted monitor. The Sultan’s boat appeared as an orange triangle as it sliced through the blue-black space of the sea toward the Obelisk. Periodically a wave would crash over the boat and much of the orange triangle would disappear for a while. But it always came back.

“How close are they?” President Diggs said softly.

“Four kilometers.” The man from the National Reconnaissance Office didn’t glance up from his screen. His fingers flew as he kept the satellite tracking the fast-moving boat.

The president realized he’d been sitting there with his fist clenched in front of his mouth for five or ten minutes. It wasn’t a very presidential posture, he thought. His hand was getting sore, he’d been squeezing so hard. He looked at his hand, flexing his fingers a couple of times. When he looked back up at the monitor, there was nothing on the screen but a field of blue. The NRO man kept stabbing at his keyboard.

“BrinackÑ€†g them back,” the president said. “Where are they?”

The NRO man shook his head like a boxer shaking off a hard right hook.

“Find them!” General Ferry echoed the president. “Find my boat!”

The NRO man shook his head a second time.

“Don’t shake your head at me, young man!” General Ferry shouted. “Find my boat.”

The NRO man didn’t look up from the screen. “I can’t, sir.”

“Why not?” President Diggs said.

“Because it’s gone, sir,” a voice said from the back of the room. It was an admiral Diggs didn’t recognize, although he was clearly the oldest man in the room. His was the creased and rugged face of a man who’d spent most of his life at sea, and now it wore a somber expression.

President Diggs stared at the admiral for a moment. “I’m sorry, Admiral, what did you say?”

“They’re gone, Mr. President,” the admiral said. “Captain Taylor knew the specs on that boat were far from ideal in this weather, but he and his men believed it was worth the risk. Waves were just too high for that boat.”

Diggs looked over at Elliot Hammershaw. The chief of staff’s face had gone white. Neither of them needed to say anything because they both understood the math. The terrorists’ deadline was in fewer than twelve hours, and the storm wouldn’t pass for seventy-two hours. Their last chance to take back the rig depended on the Delta team threading the eye of needle.

Gideon glanced at Simpson every time he heard the sound. They were flying so low that the limbs of the tallest trees occasionally whacked against the undercarriage of the helicopter. Suddenly, the chopper pitched forward and went into a dive. Gideon’s stomach went up into his throat.

“Don’t worry, sir,” Simpson called. “We just hit the fall line.”

And out the window Gideon could see it. They were thundering down the face of the cliff, the entire airframe pitched over at what felt like an aerodynamically impossible angle. Just when Gideon was sure they would slam into the ground, the chopper steadied, pulled its nose up, and began barreling cross-country again.

Below them was an entirely new terrain, the thick rolling jungle uplands replaced by flat rice paddies and small villages.

Gideon waited for his equilibrium to return before he spoke again. “Simpson, you need to get me onto that rig.”

“Sir, there’s a jet waiting to fly you home.”

“I’m not going back to Washington.”

“And I’m under orders from Langley. The uplands are a no-fly zone now. We have to get out—”

Before he could finish his sentence the pilot called from the cockpit with a calm but urgent voice. “We’ve got a bird in the air.”

“Flares away!” the copilot said, as the chopper banked into a harp hÑ€†d turn. Through the window, Gideon could see the airport several miles in the distance, the blue sea glinting just beyond it.

The chopper continued its turn, tipping over sideways. The airport disappeared until all Gideon could see was a rice paddy below them. Snaking up through the air with frightening speed was a flaming object trailing white smoke.

Then it was out of view again.

A sudden thud came from the back of the chopper. Gideon felt the impact in his chest.

“We’re hit,” the pilot yelled.

The helicopter began to make a terrible rattling sound, like a pair of bowling balls in an oil drum.

“Brace for impact,” the copilot yelled. “We’re going down!”

The chopper may have been going down, but it wasn’t quite the crash that Gideon had anticipated. Instead the chopper bounced up and down and continued to fly. It was losing airspeed and slowly rotating. But the pilot was obviously extraordinarily skilled: he managed to keep the aircraft limping onward.

“Just get us to the airport!” Simpson shouted. “The Sultan’s got two regiments stationed there.”

The pilot nodded curtly.

The ground below them rotated, like the view from a slow merry-go-round. They were away from the rice paddy now, moving over a commercial district of warehouses and industrial buildings. Each time they rotated so that Gideon could see in the direction they’d come, he could see a jeep full of jihadis driving after them. It had a large Soviet-era machine gun mounted on the back.

When the chopper’s rotation showed the view of their intended destination, Gideon could tell they weren’t going to make it to the airport. The corkscrewing of the copter was forcing them relentlessly northeast. The airport was due north, still a good five miles away.

Now they were facing the jihadis again, who were driving at a breakneck pace through the deserted streets below. They were getting closer.

The airport appeared again, then the sea, then the jihadis again. Now the insurgents were firing the machine gun.

Bullets thudded into the helicopter.

The jihadis disappeared. Airport, ocean, commercial buildings, jihadis. Closer still.

“You gotta go faster!” the CIA man shouted.

“I can’t,” the pilot shouted. “The hydraulics are leaking. We won’t make it much farther!”

And indeed the chopper was spinning faster and faster, causing its forward progress to slow.

The jihadis were still firing.

Gideon saw the gunner reloading a new belt of ammo from a full can. One more rotation of the aircraft and the gunner would tear them to ribbons. He couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards away. All the jihadis on the jeep were blasting away now. The machine gunner worked the feed handle, chambering a round from the new belt.

As the jihadis disappeared from view, Gideon braced himself,v hÑ€† then he felt a huge thud. Gideon’s first thought was that the machine gunner had hit the chopper—the fuel tanks or the fusilage. But the chopper seemed unaffected and was still spinning . . . ocean, airport, industrial buildings.

This time, though, the view of the jihadis had changed. Smoke spewed from the hood of their jeep, which swerved sideways and slammed into a wall.

“The Sultan’s troops!” Simpson shouted, pointing out the window as their view scrolled past an eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier, trailed by SMDF soldiers. Mounted on the top was a heavy gun which continued firing toward the jihadis.

Simpson allowed himself a tight smile reflecting his relief and satisfaction. We’re going to make it, he thought.

And with that, the chopper hit something—a palm tree? A billboard? Gideon was never quite sure, as the chopper nosed over and dropped like a giant brick, fifty feet to the ground.

For a moment there was no sound at all. Gideon sat, stunned. The entire helicopter had smashed nose first into the ground. The cockpit was a twisted mass of metal. Gideon and Simpson were now hanging facedown about ten feet above the wreckage.

Finally he regained enough presence of mind to unstrap himself. Next to him, Simpson was unstrapping, too.

“You all right, Mr. Davis?”

“Fine, fine.”

“We need to get out of here.”

Gideon thought that was a somewhat unnecessary comment. But he kept his thoughts to himself. He grabbed the back of his seat, his feet dangling just above the ruined cockpit. He dropped, landing on the twisted bulkhead. “You guys, okay?” he called toward the cockpit.

There was no answer. He leaned in through what had been the cockpit door and saw that neither the pilot nor the copilot had survived.

Gideon looked at Simpson and shook his head.

“Shit,” Simpson said. Then, apparently thinking he might have offended Gideon, he quickly added, “Sorry, sir.”

“Hey, the same word crossed my mind,” Gideon said drily.

Simpson freed himself from the seat, dropped down next to Gideon. He grimaced as he landed.

“Let’s go,” Gideon said.

“I think I caught one in the leg,” the CIA man said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“No more apologizing,” Gideon said. “Lean on me and let’s get out of here.”

They struggled out of the cabin and surveyed the wreckage. No longer recognizable as an aircraft, the helicopter was teetering on the edge of a road running alongside a small canal about two hundred feet wide. If it had fallen even a few feet closer to the airport, they would have drowned.

Gideon looked at Simpson, clearly sharing the same thought.

“We need to get to the airport,” Simpson said.

“Yeah. Except it’outÑ€†;s over there,” Gideon said, pointing across the unbroken strip of brown water, which fed out into the bay, and beyond it, the ocean.