The Archimedes Effect (26 page)

He opened his cell phone. NO SIGNAL, it said. Good.

“Okay, boys, rendezvous at my place tomorrow morning, 0600. I’ll bring the hardware. Get some sleep, I want fresh eyes and trigger fingers, come the dawn.”

The other three nodded.

 

They had the decoy car set up—one that Hill swiped and switched plates on—and they were well hidden in the woods. Hill and Russell had overlapping fields of fire, using M-16s, though if it went the way they figured, they would only need those for mop-up.

They were in place and ready an hour before Lewis made the call to Al-Thani. The meeting was set for four hours after that, but it would only take maybe half that long for Al-Thani to drive there, assuming he was in or around the District, and if Carruth had been him, he would have pushed that to make it even sooner. But ninety minutes was way more time than they needed, since they were ready to rock now. . . .

Carruth had the Dragon, and the plan was simple. As soon as Al-Thani and his troops arrived, he would put a rocket through the windshield of whatever vehicle they were in and cook ’em. Bye-bye, boys.

If anybody survived that and managed to get out of the car alive, Hill and Russell would chop them down with automatic-weapons fire, and the dance would be over.

It would be a bit noisy, but by the time anybody got curious and came to see what all the thunder had been about, Carruth and his troops would be long gone.

They just might be smart enough to have a second car following, and if so, the shrapnel exploders would spray that sucker with hard sleet and Dexter would run a couple magazines of ammo after it, with Hill coming to add his fire as soon as they were done here.

It didn’t get much simpler than that. See the bad guys, cook the bad guys, and see ya, boys—we’re outta here. . . .

The four of them wore short-range, low-power LOSIR headsets that wouldn’t carry for more than a klick, and any changes that were necessary could be conveyed instantly. Carruth was wired, feeling speedy from the adrenaline rushing in his body. That’s how it always went when you were getting ready for war. Everything tuned up to full alert and hammers circulated in your blood . . .

It was forty-five minutes later when things stopped going according to plan.

It was Dexter who heard it first. They all wore shooters’ earplugs, designed to stop loud noises and to amplify normal sounds, but Dexter had always been able to hear a mouse twitch in the next room.

“Incoming helicopter,” Dexter said.

After a second, Carruth heard it, too. Well, damn!

He didn’t believe for a second it was a coincidence.

Crap. He hadn’t figured they’d be that well equipped.

He went over the terrain in his mental map. The nearest clearing big enough to land a chopper was three hundred meters to the south. They’d put the bird down there; the troops would alight and try to ghost through the woods, to set up on the barn. Once they hit the ground and spread out, that would be bad—Carruth and his men might well be outnumbered and the advantage of surprise would only go so far. They needed the targets in a bunch.

“Go, go, the clearing to the south!” Carruth ordered.

It was a bitch running in a gillie-suit, all that crap flapping in the breeze, and the Dragon was heavy enough to start him breathing fast after a hundred meters, but the sound of the chopper was getting louder. Walking wasn’t going to get it done.

It seemed to take forever, but they reached the edge of the clearing while the chopper was still a couple hundred meters up. Looked like a Sikorsky S-series to Carruth, a 76 or maybe the S-76A. Those would hold six or eight passengers and two pilots comfortably, with gear, but you could stuff as many as a dozen people into one and still get it into the air. Even if the pilot stayed with the craft, that could mean as many as ten or eleven pairs of boots on the ground, and that was way too many against their quad.

“Fan out,” Carruth ordered. “Don’t nobody get behind me.”

Somebody laughed.

Carruth sat, perched the rocket launcher on his shoulder, and lined it up on the gently settling helicopter.

There came the big
whoosh!
of exhaust back-blast blowing leaves and bushes apart behind him, and the missile zipped away.

The pilot must have seen the flash or the back-blast and recognized it; he tried to turn and power up, but it was too late. Carruth kept the crosshairs on the craft’s body amidships, and almost instantly the rocket lanced into the copter and blew up, making a hellacious noise that his earplugs cut out. Mostly cut out, anyhow.

The main rotor ripped loose from the impact. The tail rotor then spun the bastard like a top as the Sikorsky dropped like a brick soaked in flaming fuel—which is what it had become.

From two hundred meters, it wasn’t likely anybody was going to survive the impact, but Hill and Russell tracked it to the ground. When it hit, it rocked Carruth like an earthquake. Fiery gas spewed in all directions, arcing sheets of flame up and out in a ragged circle as the frame crunched and collapsed in on itself.

Hill and Russell ran toward it, but couldn’t get any closer than twenty meters because of the intense heat. Carruth could see their suits stirring under the force of the radiant heat.

If you couldn’t get any closer than that, then anybody
in
there was already quick-barbecued by now, Carruth knew. If the fall hadn’t killed them, the fire sure had.

Thick, roiling, black smoke erupted into the clear sky in a great cloud, and even if there was a car coming later for backup in an hour or so, Carruth and his men sure as hell weren’t going to be here to see it. This much smoke in the woods was a bad thing, and the locals would be heading this way to check it out in a hurry. Which meant Carruth and his troops needed to be leaving for the car
right this minute.

Carruth triggered his LOSIR transmitter.

“Dex, grab the explosives, crank up the decoy car, and head out. Rest of us’ll take the primary vehicle. Don’t stop until you get to the rendezvous.”

“Copy.”

“Let’s go, boys. We’re gonna have company if we stick around here.”

They ran for the hidden van.

The FAA would show up sooner rather than later, too, and it wouldn’t take them long to figure out that a helicopter full of armed guys hadn’t fallen out of the sky due to pilot error. Well, except that he was stupid enough to be flying out here where Carruth was with his rocket launcher.

Wouldn’t take the feds long to figure out what had done the trick, either; he didn’t have time to clean up, they had to cut and run. If they found pieces of the rocket, and they would, there was the wire stretched out right there, it’d be like a fingerprint, so they’d know it was from a Dragon, and it wouldn’t take a big brain to figure out where
that
had come from, either.

Who had gotten shot down and why? That might be harder, but probably they’d figure out the dead guys were on some list. Maybe one terrorist faction was going after another, and let Homeland Security try and sort through
that
.

Not that it mattered. Carruth and the boys wouldn’t be here.

Lewis probably wasn’t gonna be too thrilled about this, either. Chances were, the head honcho had been in the chopper—the backup car, if there was one, wouldn’t have been the way for the boss to travel. Carruth couldn’t be positive—maybe the guy was afraid of flying or something—but probably he was in the copter, which was mostly melted into slag by now and anybody inside it would be a crispy critter. No way they were gonna be able to stick around and get IDs, though. He mentally shrugged. It was what it was. You did the best you could with what you had. Anything else, fuck it. . . .

“Boss?”

Thorn looked up and saw Jay in the doorway. “Jay. What can I do for you?”

“I just got an urgent priority report from Homeland Security and the FAA—probably a copy heading into your in-box right now. A helicopter blew up and fell out of the sky over in Nowhere, Virginia. Killed nine people.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“It gets better. The guys in the copter were hauling enough guns and ammo to start a small war. M-16s, AK- 47s, and hand grenades, at the least. HS has ID’d a few of them, and those were on the don’t-let-’em-in-the-country-and-shoot-’em-if-you-see-’em list.”

“Terrorists?”

“ ‘Suspected’ is what HS says officially. Off the record, though, they absolutely were terrorists of the worst kind. A couple are from Qatar, one from Iran. They traced the pilot. He was a Saudi, no IDs on the others yet. The bird was a rental.”

Thorn shook his head.

“Here’s where we come in—the FAA guys said the copter was brought down by a rocket, and that it came from an FGM-77 Dragon. They found some kind of wire and bits of the rocket that confirm it.”

“As in the same kind that was stolen in the raid in Kentucky.”

“Oh, yeah. As in
exactly
the same kind. Odd coincidence, huh?”

“I’m sure.” Thorn frowned. “So, why is whoever stole the launchers using them to shoot down armed terrorists?”

“Got me. Patriots, maybe. Or maybe they are bucking for jobs in Homeland Security?”

A chime on Thorn’s computer alerted him to an incoming priority message. Thorn waved his hand, and a security-encoded text appeared, repeating what Jay had just told him.

“How did you get this before I did?”

“Friends in low places.”

Thorn sighed. “You will see what you can find out about this, won’t you?”

“In my copious spare time, sure.”

“Thanks, Jay.”

“No problem, Boss.”

But after he was gone, Thorn sat there thinking about it. It was a problem. That the missile had been used against the bad guys was good, but they still had two left, and the next one could just as easily be shot in another direction. Or not. He wanted to run these thieves down and make sure they didn’t get another shot off in
any
direction. . . .

His assistant said, “General Hadden is on the phone.”

“Of course he is,” Thorn said. He shook his head and reached for the receiver.

Lewis listened to the story without interrupting. At the end of it, she nodded. “Couldn’t be helped. Even if you’d known they had a chartered helicopter, you would have still had to take it out. Bringing the rocket launcher was smart.”

Somebody fed money into a jukebox by the pool tables. A country and western song started playing in the background. A twangy-voiced woman singing something about a lyin’, cheatin’ man.

Carruth nodded. “I’m guessing our boy was on it, and unless he melted down to butter during the fire, they’ll eventually get around to identifying him.”

“Already have,” Lewis said. “And he
was
killed in the fire. Good news for us. He doesn’t appear to have any more blood kin in the terrorist business, so maybe we are done with that.”

“Must be nice to have access to all that,” he said.

“It is. And to have them giving it to you because you are helping protect them from yourself? That’s even better.”

“You hate the Army, don’tcha?”

She blinked at him. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m maybe not the brightest bulb on the string, Captain, but I’m not completely stupid. I
can
hear. It comes out every time you talk about the service, there’s a nasty edge in your tone. Contempt.”

She didn’t speak to that. It wasn’t supposed to show, though. If Carruth here could see that—and he wasn’t exactly a candidate for Mr. Sensitive—then somebody else could. She would have to work on that. It wouldn’t do at all for people on the inside to be looking at her squinty-eyed. Certainly not Mr. Jay Gridley.

“So, now what?” he said.

“We’re back to one decent buyer. If he’s legit, we talk deal. If he pans out, we’re done. If not, we keep trolling the waters.”

“Think ole Benny is gonna want another token of our ability to deliver?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Whatever it takes. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

“Yes, ma’am. You do that.”

 

After she was gone, Carruth ordered a beer and listened to the jukebox. He liked country music, and a truck-stop bar was as good a place as any to have a beer. Truckers and cowboys, though most of the guys in Western gear here would be all hat and no cattle. There might be a few real ranchers who dropped by—they still had farms and ranches in this part of the world. Carruth had grown up in cattle country, at least partially, outside of Denver, and he had some good memories of that time. First girl, first woman, first beer, first bar fight, all as a teenager. One of the reasons he went into the Navy had to do with the last of those bar fights, in which a loudmouth asshole had bought himself a week in the local hospital when he pissed Carruth off. The judge, an ex-Marine, thought that the service was a good place for boys who liked to mix it up, and Carruth agreed with him—given the other choice, which had been doing a few months working on a road crew out of the local jail.