Raven Strike (31 page)

Chapter 2

Washington, D.C. suburbs

B
reanna took one last look at her daughter sleeping in the bed, then gently closed the door and slipped down the hallway.

It was just past 5:00
A.M.
; even her early rising husband wouldn’t be out of bed for another twenty minutes or so.

She grabbed the coffeepot and filled her steel insulated commuting cup. Then she went out to her car in the garage as quietly as possible, opened the door and headed for work.

If everything went well in Africa, the controversy would more or less blow over. Edmund could go before the Intelligence Committee and explain that Raven had crashed and had then been recovered.

He’d be out of a job shortly thereafter, but that wasn’t her concern.

The question was, what would happen to Raven?

As Breanna saw it, there were two possibilities: it could be abandoned, or it could be handed over to the Office of Special Technology.

Surely it wouldn’t be abandoned.

She cleared security at the main gate of the CIA headquarters complex, then drove to a lot about two hundred years from the Room 4 building. The building itself had no parking, even though there was ample room around it; it was one more way of confusing the ever more invasive satellite eyes and other data gatherers employed.

Downstairs, Breanna was surprised by the smell of strong coffee. Only one person made the coffee so strong that it could be smelled outside the electrostatic walls: Ray Rubeo.

Sure enough, she found the scientist himself sitting at the table in their main conference room with Jonathon Reid.

“Ray, what a surprise,” she said.

Rubeo accepted a peck on the cheek with his customary stiffness. “I thought I might be useful,” he said.

“Ray has been examining the Raven software,” said Reid. “Which our colleagues so reluctantly made available. I didn’t think you would mind.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“It is an extremely powerful core, with a great number of flaws,” said Rubeo. “One of which is the fact that they’re using a temporary interface.”

Rubeo waved his hand over the table and tapped down with his right thumb. This opened a panel on the wall at the far side of the room, changing the wall surface into a projection screen.

“Coding display one,” Rubeo told the computer.

A slide appeared. It was a “dump” of computer code.

“It was written in C++,” said Rubeo. “Inexplicably.”

“The point being that anyone can interpret it,” said Reid.

“Yes,” said Rubeo, drawing out the word.

Not anyone, thought Breanna—she certainly couldn’t. But the point was, anyone with a reasonable knowledge of programming could.

“I would guess that they did this for two reasons,” said Rubeo. “The first being that they didn’t want to risk the actual program. This is somewhat isolated from the core modules that make up the actual Raven program. The second is that they did it for expediency; this part of the program was developed very quickly. I would guess within a matter of weeks. Perhaps even less.”

“Why so fast?” Breanna asked.

Rubeo touched his earlobe, where he had a gold post earring. It was an old habit, usually signaling he wanted to make some difficult pronouncement.

“Politics,” suggested Reid before Rubeo could speak. “The timing suggests that Reginald Harker was interested in becoming head of the DIA. If he had successfully taken out a high priority target like Li Han, he would have had an excellent leg up.”

“Harker broke the law and risked a top secret development program so he could get a better job?” said Breanna.

Reid didn’t answer.

“Using this command module may have been seen as a safeguard,” said Rubeo. “It certainly isn’t as robust and manageable as I would imagine a mature interface is. Still, the core program must be recovered. If the Russian operative is able to make it from the camp—”

“He won’t,” said Breanna.

Chapter 3

Washington, D.C. suburbs

Z
en woke even grumpier than usual, surprised and yet not surprised that Breanna had already slipped out to work.

At least the coffee was still warm. He bustled about, getting Teri breakfast, then shaving and dressing himself. He left Caroline sleeping in the guest room and headed out, Teri riding shotgun in the backseat. After dropping her off at school, he swung over and picked up his aide, Jay, then went to the hospital, where Stoner was already in physical therapy when he arrived.

“Did you sleep at all?” Zen asked, wheeling himself into the exercise room.

“I’m good.”

Stoner pushed a set of free weights over his chest. He was lifting five hundred pounds, by Zen’s reckoning, and didn’t seem to be straining.

“Are we going to the game tonight?” asked Stoner. His tone was genuinely enthusiastic—the first time Zen remembered him sounding that way since he’d been rescued.

“Yeah, if you want.”

“I do.”

Zen watched Stoner pump the weights. He reached twenty, then put the weights down easily on the stands.

“I wish I could do it that easy,” said Zen.

“Then you’d have to take the whole package. Headaches, not really knowing who you are. Not trusting your body.”

“I know a little bit about that.”

Stoner nodded.

“The doctor says some of what they did to me might help you,” said Stoner.

“Me?”

“Is that why you’re hanging around?”

“You mean my legs?”

“Exactly.”

The enthusiasm had been replaced by something else—anger.

“No,” said Zen. “I’ve been down that road. A lot. They’ve done a lot of things trying to help me to walk again. None of them worked, Mark. This is what I am. This where I am. It’s just the way it is.”

“That’s too bad,” said Stoner.

The silence was more awkward than even Stoner’s question.

“I come to see you because we’re friends,” said Zen, trying to fill it. “You saved Breanna, remember?”

“Yeah,” he said after a very long pause. Zen wondered if he really did.

“And we were friends before,” said Zen. “Remember that?”

“Vaguely,” said Stoner.

“And . . .” Zen hesitated. “I was . . . sorry I couldn’t protect you and the others in that helicopter. I always felt . . . as if I should have done something more. I should have gone against orders and figured something out. Whatever. Something . . .”

Stoner looked at him for what seemed an eternity. “It’s OK,” he said finally. “I understand.”

Then he went back to pumping more iron. Zen glanced at his watch. He had to leave.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

“I’ll be ready.”

H
e did remember. Everything.

Mark Stoner sat on the edge of the weight bench, thinking about dying, remembering how it had all happened.

It wasn’t Zen’s fault at all. Zen wasn’t anywhere near at the time. Even if he had been, there was no guarantee he could have done anything. None.

He himself had accepted the risks. That was the nature of the job.

Zen had risked his life to get him back here alive. They were more than even, the way those things worked.

It was good to have a friend.

He rose and took two more plates from the rack, slipping them on the bar one at a time.

It would be good to go to the game. Baseball was a good thing.

Even if the hot dogs gave him heartburn.

Chapter 4

Southeastern Sudan

T
he Brothers were called to prayer as the sun set, joining Muslims around the world in turning toward Mecca to fulfill the requirements of their faith.

Just as the prayer was ending, a trio of small rockets arced over the advanced lookout posts and struck the guard posts at the main entrance. A split second later a half-dozen more struck the gutted bus used as the gate, obliterating it.

The rockets looked like Russian-made Grads. Which they were. Mostly.

Ordinary Grads were extremely simple weapons, mass-produced and exported around the word, including to Hezbollah, which used them against Israel. As originally designed, they sat in a tube and were fired. In the original version, the tubes were massed together and mounted on the back of a truck.

These three rockets were fired from tubes on the ground. But their rear sections included stabilizers and steering gear that made them considerably more accurate than the originals. The mechanisms were interlaced with explosives, which meant they disintegrated when they landed.

The real alteration was in the nose, where the explosive used an aluminum alloy mixed with a more common plastic explosive base to produce an explosive power some eleven times more destructive than the original warheads.

A tenth missile—this one unguided—flew a few feet farther, landing harmlessly on the roadway behind the post. The charge in it was stock, or at least appeared so. It failed to ignite properly, fuming but not exploding. This in fact was its intent: evidence for anyone who had a chance to see it that the attack had been launched by a rival group.

A dozen men died instantly. The other fighters in the camp reacted with indignation, grabbing their rifles and rushing to defend the camp and avenge the insult to their beliefs. They were met with a hail of gunfire from the Marines, who had spent the past two hours creeping up the hills into position. At roughly the same moment, another dozen rockets were fired at two sniper posts and four gun positions overlooking the camp. The sniper positions were essentially depressions in the rocks, and firing so many missiles at them was arguably overkill; the resulting explosions caused small landslides, not only obliterating the men there but turning the positions into exposed ravines that could no longer be used for defense.

Even as the dust from the rocket strikes was settling, the first mortar shells began raining down on the positions. These were standard-issue, Marine Corps high explosive M720 rounds, armed with M734 Multioption fuses set for near surface burst—not fancy, especially compared to the weapons Whiplash was deploying, but extremely effective. Fired from a range of roughly 3,000 meters, the rounds exploded behind the first wave of enemy troops, then walked inward toward the defenses, in effect sweeping the enemy toward the front line.

Danny had a bird’s-eye view of the explosions as they rocked the southern side of the camp. He and the rest of the Whiplash team had jumped from the back of an Osprey moments before the first rockets were launched. All were wearing glide suits, which allowed them to guide their free fall into precise routes specified by the GPS module in their smart helmets.

In contrast to the noisy action at the “front” of the camp, the Whiplash team’s descent was entirely silent and, in the dark, practically invisible.

“Target area,” Danny told the helmet. The view changed to a square roughly fifty by twenty meters at the eastern end of the cluster he was assaulting. A red box appeared around two shadows at the left side of the box—armed men who might present trouble. They had just manned a bunkered security post.

“ICS, target and eliminate enemy in designated box A3,” Danny said, this time talking through MY-PID to the integrated combat system aboard the AB-2C that had joined Whiplash for the operation.

The AB-2C was a specially modified version of the B-2A, prepared under Office of Special Technology supervision as part of the Air Force program to investigate replacements for the AC-130. The AB-2C was essentially just a test bed for the weapon system; it was very likely that the final design would be completely automated. But in the meantime, the two men and one woman aboard as crew relished the chance to show what they and their aircraft could do.

Unlike her conventional gunship forebears, the modified stealth bomber carried no howitzers or cannons. Instead, there were two laser weapons in what had been the Spirit’s bomb bay. Descendants of the Firestrike weapon first developed by Northrop Grumman, the lasers were capable of sending a directed beam of just over 100 kW into a target.

The forward laser of the AB-2C burned holes in the skulls of the two mujahideen manning the post in a matter of milliseconds. The crew then sought other targets, concentrating first on the prepositioned machine guns, cooking off their ammunition so they couldn’t be used against the Marines.

Meanwhile, Danny did one last check of the target area and the descending squad before manually deploying his parachute. Though not absolutely necessary, the chute allowed for a softer, surer landing—and not coincidentally, was a hell of a lot easier on his knees.

“I’m in,” said Sugar, landing just to his left on the roof of the building in the center of the targeted compound.

Danny touched down a few seconds later. He quick-released his chute gear and sprinted toward the rooftop defense position. Sugar had already secured it, ramming what looked like a small stopper in the mouth of the machine gun in place there.

“Fire in the hole!” she yelled, somewhat dramatically.

Danny turned away as the charge in the stopper ignited. The blast ripped back the barrel of the gun, rendering it impotent. The sound was lost in the crescendo of the attack near the front gate.

“Let’s go inside,” said Danny as the other two members of his fire team reached the roof.

M
elissa was thrown against her restraints as the Osprey pitched hard to get on a new course, avoiding the MC-17 swooping in low over the compound. As the black cargo aircraft came in, two large containers trundled down the interior rail system to the rear bay doors. The large rectangular boxes looked like smaller versions of the shipping containers that carried so much freight around the world. Long droguelike parachutes deployed as the boxes left the aircraft, slowing their descent just enough to allow the cushioned bottoms to properly absorb the blow from the fall.

The flat screen at the forward station in the Osprey’s hold received input from the MC-17’s target-drop system; it declared the boxes had hit exactly 13 and 27 centimeters from their “optimum” positions.

“Good enough for government work,” joked the crew chief, watching over Melissa’s shoulder.

As they hit the ground near the larger citadel, the sides of the large crates unfolded, revealing a quartet of TinkerToy-like objects on a platform. These odd contraptions, known to the Whiplash team simply as Bots, could be configured for a variety of tasks. The eight that had just landed were all equipped with M-134 Gatling guns, essentially the same weapons fired by a door gunner in a helicopter or a crewman on a riverine boat. Moving on tanklike treads, the bots fanned out around the larger of the two central compounds, taking up predesignated positions.

As the last bot reached its destination, all eight began to fire, peppering the exterior of the half-dozen buildings with a barrage of gunfire for exactly twenty-two seconds. As the last bullet hit, a dozen small munitions, launched from the “arms” of the Osprey Melissa was riding in, struck their targets, removing the roofs from the buildings.

Melissa jerked up as the crew chief tapped her on the shoulder.

“Be ready to land in zero-five,” said the chief.

She gave him a thumbs-up, then keyed the screen to show the area Danny was attacking to the northwest.

D
anny came in through the door as the flash-bang grenades exploded, his visor automatically adjusting for the burst of light. Something moved on his left; he turned and tapped his trigger, killing a Brother gunman instantly. This was a “full prejudice” mission—no holds barred. The rules of engagement allowed anyone inside to be shot. Everyone in the compound had already declared themselves a member of the Sudan Brotherhood, and the unit’s alignment with al Qaeda made them a legitimate enemy of the United States.

The team moved through the room quickly, reaching the exterior hallway. The next two rooms were unoccupied—the walls were so thin they could see the heat signatures on their helmet screens—and they reached the hallway in seconds.

“Fire in the hole!” yelled Nolan.

Standing at the head of the stairs, the trooper dropped a frag grenade down. As soon as it exploded, the team descended to the first floor of the two-story building. Nolan stayed on the steps while the rest raced to check the rooms.

The walls were either thicker or insulated, and they could no longer count on their infrared images or MY-PID’s interpretation. They swept each room methodically, hitting them with grenades and then coming in. Each room looked like a classroom, with a small desk and a number of chairs—a finishing school for terror.

When the last room had been cleared without finding anyone, Danny checked in with the team that had landed on the building at the diagonal corner from them.

“Flash, what’s your situation?”

“Building cleared. Twelve enemies encountered, twelve down.”

“Move on.”

“Moving.”

“Got all the action over there,” quipped Nolan. “I picked the wrong team.”

Floor cleared, Danny was about to move on to the next building when he heard a shout from Sugar in the back room. He ran over in time to see her pulling a desk away from the side. She kicked the corner of the carpet behind it, revealing a metal trapdoor on the floor.

“Used a string to close it,” she told him. “Squeezed past the desk.”

Danny covered her while she opened it, revealing an unlit staircase.

“Drop a grenade,” he told her.

She did.

“Goes down pretty far,” she told him after it exploded. “Then in that direction, to the north.”

“We’ll have to come back and check it,” he told her. “Help me with the desk.”

They turned the desk on its side and slid it over the hole. Then Danny posted a pair of small video cams, one on the desk and the other at the side of the room, and had MY-PID monitor them for any movement. He also added a pair of charges near the hole so they could blow up anyone trying to escape by remote control.

MY-PID had apparently not discerned the tunnel because of the building structure and angle, which either by design or accident obscured the image on standard radar techniques. The computer calculated—with a 43.5 percent certainty, an admission that it was just guessing—that the tunnel was connected to a mine shaft some two hundred yards away, which had been seen by the radar.

“Target the mine shaft opening,” Danny told the Ospreys. “See if you can bomb it closed.”

In the meantime, the rest of Danny’s team cleared the second building, a one-story structure where three fighters attempted to hold out. Armed with AK-47s, all three were quickly overcome.

“Running out of buildings,” said Flash, reporting that his team had cleared its next objective.

“Keep moving,” barked Danny.

N
uri ducked as a sudden burst of gunfire bounced through the rocks just to his right. The bullets themselves were well off the mark, but they shattered the nearby rock outcropping, sending a fusillade of chips showering in every direction. Several hit his helmet so hard that he fell down. He had an instant headache—but it was far better than what might have occurred had he not given in to Pierce’s “extremelystrongpersonalrecommendation, sir!” that he don a Marine helmet to go with his Whiplash-issued armored vest.

Shaking the blow off, Nuri rose in time to see the Marines he’d been with pump several grenades into the position behind the flattened bus. One of the grenades hit a small store of ammo. This resulted in a cascade of shrapnel even larger than the one that had engulfed him, but it didn’t stop the Brothers who were several yards behind the position from firing.

The Marines countered with a heavy dose of lead from their M-16A4s. Nuri added some rounds from his own SCAR, then saw two of the enemy soldiers running down the hillside on his left. As he swung around to fire, one of the men dropped straight back, taken down by a Marine sniper.

The other tossed a grenade, big and fat, directly at him.

A
s the rest of his team headed to take down their third and final building, Danny diverted to check on the “spikes” that had been launched and planted just after the start of the mission.

The “spikes”—they had no official name beyond a series of letters and numbers—were a quartet of long metal tubes that were literally rocketed into the ground after being launched from the MC-17. After insertion, a network of small wires shot from the bodies of the spikes, creating a field of electric current—a virtual electric fence, or for the more sci-fi oriented, a force field. Anyone attempting to run through the area protected by the spikes would receive a massive jolt of electricity, roughly the equivalent of three hits from a commercial grade Taser.

The system wasn’t foolproof. A very determined enemy willing to sacrifice a few men could conceivably force his way through. And an enemy that knew what he was dealing with could punch a hole through the defenses by destroying two of the spikes. But in the dark, a confused and unsophisticated enemy would be surprised and stunned by the force of the blow: as evidenced by the two twitching men lying on the other side of the fence Danny saw as he approached.

With the assurance that the spikes were working, he took a quick detour to his left, running in the direction of the citadel cluster where the bots had landed. Here another set of spikes had embedded themselves between the closest ring of defenders and the buildings. Covering a wider ground, the spikes were backed by two of the bots. At least a half-dozen bodies lay on the other side of the virtual fence; from where Danny was, it was impossible to see if they were dead or merely stunned by the shock.