Top Hook (49 page)

“Anna, bud. I met…”

Dukas staggered up and forward even as Harry tried to restrain him. He fell to his knees beside Shreed, who was still watching Chen, his eyes open and unglazed.

“George Shreed, I arrest you for the crime of high treason—”

“Who—shot—Chen—?”

“—against the people and nation of the United States—”

“Who the—fuck are—you—!”

“—crimes of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit treason—”

“Partlow—fucking parade—”

“You have the right to remain silent—”

Alan watched it with his vision tunneling, and it
seemed as if Mike Dukas was a priest saying last rites over a dying man. Harry had moved next to Dukas, trying to tend his wound, but Dukas knelt there, his badge out, blood running down over his belt in back. Alan tottered forward, unsure, confused, losing blood.

Then Dukas had completed his rites. He let Harry reach a hand down his back, winced when Harry came to the exit wound, and slumped.

“Hey, buddy, you up to slapping a compress on Mike while I apply pressure?”

Alan tried to cross the distance back to Harry. Harry was right there and needed help. He focused himself.
Compress
. In the little pack on his hip. His good hand went there, moved around, found something wrapped in paper, emerged. Harry had the wound bare, the whole track of the bullet's course around the neck clear under the skin. Blood flowed at both ends of the wound where the collarbone had split the bullet. Alan slapped the compress on, and his smart hand, the right, went back for tape. Harry cut pieces off the roll and they managed to stuff the ends of the wound with gauze. The focus helped. Alan emerged a little from the tunnel of his own wound.

“How's Shreed?”

“Who cares?” Harry looked over at the man by the prayer screen. “If I thought he might live, I'd shoot him myself.”

“We have to get out of here.”

Harry paused, cut lengths of tape all down his arm, and looked at his watch.

“Plane comes by in twenty minutes.”

“Need to get a car down—to the road.”

“Give me a minute here.” He was putting tape over the other tape ends, running tape all the way over
the compress and around Mike's neck and down his back.

“Mick?” Shreed asked with perfect clarity. “That you, buddy?”

Mick? Alan's father's name.
Alan thought of the George Shreed who had been shot down in 1972 in Nam, and of Alan's father, Mick Craik, flying top cover for him beyond the point of no return, until the choppers came and his dad had had to land an A-6 on a dirt road. George Shreed, who had been part of his life since he was a child. Who had tried to help him, in a twisted way, when his father had died, and who had betrayed them all. Harry, Rose, Alan himself.

There were things he had to know.

He fell on his knees beside Shreed, as close as Dukas had been.

“It's Alan, not Mick.”

“Alan Craik.” Shreed smiled, the old smile, malevolent, bitter. “Here?”

“Why? I want to know
why
. Why did you do it?”

“Do what?” Still the smile.

Betray your country
, Alan wanted to shout. He wasn't sure what to say. The man was probably dying, and all Alan felt was rage, rage that pushed him out of the tunnel and on to the cold plane of reality.

“
This
.”

“This op?
Because I could.
None of those other dickheads had—intestinal—” Shreed rolled a little as if to rise on his elbow and gasped, falling back so hard his head hit the rock.

“You weren't running an op. You betrayed people.
People died!
”

“China—won't trouble—us—”

“What the hell—China—!”

“Dickheads. Idiots.” His lips moved, and he pushed his head up. “Like Partlow! Bureaucrats!”

“My wife. You framed Rose.”

“What?” Shreed was weak. Whatever lift he had got from talking to Chen, seeing Chen die, was going. Still, he had the strength to laugh. “Your wife!” It was real laughter. Then the laughter ended, and he muttered, “She bought me some—time.”

“What did you bring the Chinese?”

Shreed looked at him, struggling to concentrate.

“Chinese?”

“You ran to the Chinese.
What did you take them
?”

Shreed gurgled, turned his head, and spat against the wall. The saliva had red in it. His eyes lost their focus; behind Alan, Harry and Mike were as concentrated on Shreed as he was. Dukas began to rifle through Shreed's pockets. Harry searched Chen.

“Poison.”

“What about poison?”

“Brought Chen—poison—”

“Isn't he your control? He's running you?”

“Bastard—never—”

Dukas leaned over. “Never what? Never controlled you? Tell me another one.”

Then Shreed almost shouted, with sudden clarity, “How'd you get here, boy?”

“We followed you.”

Shreed closed his eyes. His chest moved up and down rapidly, and it came to Alan that he was laughing again. He wheezed and coughed. His eyes sprang open, focused, a clear blue untouched by frost, staring right into Alan.

“You taking me home?”

“If we make it.”

Shreed said something too quietly for Alan to hear. He bent over and noticed that blood was again spurting from the wreckage of his hand. It seemed to be happening a long way away. Shreed tried to push him away and spoke clearly.

“You think you're heroes, but you don't—understand—”

Harry leaned in, his dark head between Alan and Shreed.

“You'll hang.”

“I'll have—monument like—Casey. You'll see—who the hero—is—”

Shreed's mouth worked a little, but no more sound came out. It was as if Harry's voice had broken a spell. Alan stood slowly, the almost forgotten rip across his knee springing to new pain.

“I'm going to get a car down to the road to signal the plane,” he said. “Harry—take care of—”

“I'll watch Mike. And I want to find…the other shooter.”

Dukas looked up at him, his lips white.

“He doesn't have anything.” He looked dazed. “Maybe—maybe in the car…”

Alan nodded.

Alan drove Shreed's white sedan down the dark track, feeling the first hit of a morphine injection and its false security as it crept through his system. He looked at his watch and drove the car out on the road, shifted hard and pushed the pedal down until he was flying past the ridge, past the turn where their own abandoned vehicle sat off the road, on and on for more than a mile until a bright red-and-yellow sign flashed past. The wind was from the south, right in his face. It would make a landing
easier. He slowed the car with the gears and the brake and backed it in a K turn until he had it pointed north, his left hand smearing the wheel with blood. Then he turned it off, rolled the window down, and waited. He could see headlights shining at the top of the hill. Harry would be getting Dukas and Shreed into one of the Chinese trucks up there.

Alan pulled Harry's cellphone out of his pack and wedged it between his knees while he turned it on, waited for a signal, and pressed the auto-dial for Harry's computer office in DC. It was answered on the third ring.

“Ethos Security.”

“Valdez?”

“Who's this?”

He had to brace himself. “Alan Craik.”

“Jeez, Mister Craik, you don't sound too good.”

“Valdez, I need you to pass a message—”

“You guys okay? Where are you?”

“Tell the Navy, Valdez. Get to the highest level you—can and tell them—we got him.”

“The guy you were after.”

“And
I don't think he had time to pass anything
. That part is—very important—” He had trouble keeping his voice loud enough.

“You got the guy, he didn't pass anything.”

“I can't swear to that, Valdez. But we got him meeting the Chinese…” His voice faded a moment, and he rallied himself. “And no one left that meeting alive. You got that? Do it now.
Now.
Very important—”

“Mister Craik, you sound like shit, pardon my French.”

“Just—do it—”

Alan pressed the cutoff switch.

He heard the vacuum cleaner noise first. It sounded
intermittent and far away, and he was surprised by the flash of the landing lights in front of him, only a mile distant. He flicked the car-lights three times, a long pulse each time. The engine noise dwindled away to a whine, and then he saw the plane clearly, lined up and only a few meters above the road. It passed over his head in a rush and was gone, and then he heard the engines go to full power and it turned west, out over the valley, and came around. He lost the engine noise then and watched Harry stop where the village road met the highway. Harry's lights did a good job of marking the start of a runway, and Harry probably didn't want to risk running down the road when the plane was on approach.

The landing lights came on again to the north, and Alan thought that Stevens looked too low, too early, but the plane came on and on, past Harry's lights, and it was down, and the engines roared as it braked itself, taxiing, and rolled out. The S-3 stopped well north of him. He cut his lights, cranked the engine, and turned them back on, and then, his vision coming and going as if a light was being turned on and off, drove to the edge of the jetwash, rolled the car to the shoulder, and parked it.

Harry was already strapping Dukas into the SENSO seat. The front of the cockpit was illuminated red and green by the gauges, the back end darker with both tactical screens down. Soleck unstrapped and bounded past him, pausing to try to shake his hand, then seeing him stagger.

“Jesus—Commander—”

“Shreed's in the truck,” Harry said. “He's still alive.”

Alan put his good hand on Harry. “You'll have to ride in the tunnel.”

“I'm not coming with you.”

“I'm not leaving you here!” Leaning back against the aircraft, not able to bear his own weight, Harry fading—

Harry held him up. “I'll be long gone in an hour.”

“Harry—no way you can hide. Never make it on your own.”

“I won't be on my own, old boy. I'm going over the mountains to Tashkent.”

Alan tried to see him.

“Anna,” Harry said. He smiled and tapped gently on Alan's shoulder. “Who do you think shot Shreed's control? God?”

Alan thought of the Chinese officer's reeling back and then snapping forward. It all seemed unlikely and far away, as if Harry was telling him a fairy tale. Harry put a hand on his neck and slipped past him. When he returned, he and Soleck had a makeshift stretcher. It took all five available arms to get Shreed up through the hatch and back into the tunnel, and then Soleck wove parachute cord between tiedowns until Shreed looked like the victim of a giant spider. Alan leaned against the frame of the hatch with Harry. He wanted to lie down, and blood loss had taken the edges off his peripheral vision.

“Anna—” He was trying to think it through. “Do you—trust her?”

“Ask me in five days, Al.” Harry was rewrapping Alan's hand.

“When—I don't get—?”

“In the village. She needed professional help. I'm the help. I think she's looking for a side to be on. I'm willing to be the side. Tell you more at home, over a beer.”

Alan couldn't think of anything to say, so he took
Harry's hand and they embraced. In the cockpit, Soleck was already strapping in.

“You know how to close the hatch from outside, Harry?”

Harry nodded. Alan picked up his helmet. Stevens was shouting something at him from the front, and Alan could guess that it was about fuel and darkness. It was important, but what mattered to Alan was his friend Harry, filling the hatch. Harry, who was grinning like a maniac. Alan strapped himself in and bent down before attaching the shoulder straps.
Long time since Harry grinned like that
.

“Take care, man. Watch—yourself.”

“You're the one traveling with the viper, Al. Good luck.”

They held each other's eyes. The hatch started to close and then popped back. Harry's head came in.

“Tell them the price for Anna's stuff is now two million, bud.” He slapped Alan's knee and the hatch slammed shut, cutting off Alan's reply. Forty seconds later, the plane was rolling.

“Mister Craik's not responding.” Soleck hadn't spoken in an hour, and his voice was rough.

Stevens was groggy, waking disoriented, then stretching to ease muscles cramped by hours in an ejection seat.

“Not a lot we can do about that, Soleck.”

Soleck looked out the windscreen at the undulating landscape revealed by the first gleams of morning sun. He had the ESM system up and running on his tiny front-seat screen. He wanted Alan Craik back. The ESM took art to run and understand, and Soleck had to look up every hit on his kneeboard cards. Craik would have known most of the signals by heart.

“Tall King radar active at, uh, wait. That's west of Karachi; it's Sonmiah.”

“I'm not an intel geek, Soleck. What's a Tall King?”

“Air search radar. If I saw it, it saw us.”

“If we go lower, we run out of gas before we cross the coast.”

“I know.”

Stevens was wearier than he had ever been in his life. He felt stretched, somehow, his mind expanded to fit circumstances too wide for ordinary thought. He'd been flying for days, almost all of it at low altitude and a great deal of it in mountains. They'd been challenged
twice so far on the return flight, both times by local air traffic control. Stevens had talked gibberish the first time and not responded the second. If either of them had had any adrenaline left to give they'd have used it anticipating the surface-to-air missile that should have followed, but the S-3 had survived. They had no way of knowing how busy the Pakistani operators were that night, watching India.

Soleck had spelled him twice, each time for an hour, once on the flight north, once south. Soleck piloted the plane well, keeping them low, climbing ridges within hundreds of meters of the stony surface. He could do the job, but he couldn't keep the plane right down against the ground the way Stevens could. That kind of talent came with thousands of hours of practice.

Somewhere in Soleck's second hour, Alan Craik had ceased to communicate. Stevens had been asleep. Soleck hadn't been able to take his attention off the plane. Now that Stevens was coming back to life, Soleck wanted to go to the back end and check everybody there. He gave Stevens a minute to orient himself and then spoke.

“Ready to take her?”

“I've got her.”

“I'm going to check the back.”

Soleck unclipped the top of his harness, flipped the buckle on the center and stood, stooped by the cockpit's low overhead but still able to take a luxurious stretch after an hour of immobility. Below them, the Porali River unrolled in the dawn light to the west, the first sunlight sending a dazzle of sparkles off the surface.

The back end smelled of blood. Alan Craik's maimed left hand had a trail of dried blood that ran down the armrest and his knee and pooled in the steps to the hatch under his feet. His face was an unnatural white
in the dawn light filtering past Soleck from the cockpit. Even his lips appeared drained of color. Soleck laid his thumb along the carotid artery and felt the pulse. A bare flicker.

The NCIS agent, Dukas, was far down. He had a lot of morphine in him, and he was out cold. His dressing appeared to be holding. Soleck thought that he probably ought to try and get water into him or something, but he had no idea how serious the wounds were. He might have been gut shot. Best to let him be dehydrated.

The body in the back was still breathing. That was all the attention Soleck intended to pay it. Soleck stood over Shreed's bound body, held a plastic bottle to urinate, and then stowed the bottle back with the computers. He looked around at the three wounded men and shook his head. Soleck was a very young man. He had a vivid imagination, but the events of the last hours surpassed it. He was part of this, not an observer but a participant, and somehow that was wonderful, in spite of the blood and the pain.

Soleck went back and squatted by his commander, looking into his face. Craik was farther gone than Soleck, who had never been in combat, had ever seen. He chewed his upper lip, feeling a bubble rise in his throat.

“He dead?” Stevens sounded matter-of-fact.

“No. Lost a lot of blood.”

“He's full of surprises. He'll live.”

Soleck sat down in his seat and started to do up the straps.

“I just wish there was something I could
do
.”

“Flying the plane isn't enough for you?”

“He's going to die.”

“What's on the ESM?”

“Nothing. The Tall King hasn't radiated again, or we're back below its coverage. I think we're too low to have it see us.”

“Seventy miles to feet wet.”

“How far to the carrier?”

“No idea. If they moved into the box they planned on Sunday, another hour after we get gas. I'm going to break radio silence in three minutes.”

“We'll still be over Pakistan.”

“Yeah, but if there isn't a tanker waiting when we cross the coast, we're going to have to swim for the boat.”

“The tanker will be there.”

“It had better be.”

Soleck looked down at the little green screen, its characters obscured by the sunlight now washing across it. He held his hand to shade it. He looked away and then looked back to make sure he wasn't wrong. The information stayed the same, and, as he watched, the long vector changed and resolved into a diamond. The radar had a signature that he knew without reference to his kneeboard cards.

“Slot Back.”

“Where?”

Soleck pushed buttons and put his face right down on the screen. Passive sensors in the S-3 didn't give altitude and they weren't really accurate about range. The bearing was almost directly astern.

“At least one Su-27, astern. It has a search range of about one-fifty miles, so if we just detected them, let's call it between one five zero and two zero zero miles.”

“Does he see us?”

“We won't know until we see his radar lock.”

Stevens didn't take his eyes off the ground in front of the airplane.

“Call the boat.”

Soleck had a comm card three days out of date; the frequencies and call signs would have been changed. He'd have to start on the Guard frequency and hope that he wasn't alerting every Pakistani site within radio range to their presence.

“USS
Thomas Jefferson
, this is AH 902, over.” He watched the green diamond on his screen leap forward almost a centimeter. He keyed his mike again.

“USS
Thomas Jefferson
, this is AH 902, over.”

“AH 902, this is
Jefferson
, go ahead.”

“
Jefferson
, this is, ah, Ranger One. We need gas ASAP and have a—” Soleck read down the old comm card quickly, “Vampire, that's a Vampire, in close pursuit.” He remembered that the crypto might be no good; that he was talking in the clear.

“Ranger One, this is
Jefferson
, I copy need gas and Vampire in pursuit. Wait one.”

They'd be scrambling for the old comm card. Or maybe they were ready. The Su-27 moved again and this time the new diamond formed while leaving the old one still glowing a little behind. So there were two.

“Make that two Vampires.”

“Copy. Ranger One, go up to number four on your old card.”

“Copy. Roger.” Soleck tore his eyes off the little screen and read digits off his old comm card while pressing them into the radio.

“Ranger One, this is Tarheel One. Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear, Tarheel One.”

“Give me your location, Ranger One.”

Soleck read coordinates off the GPS and passed their altitude as well. He watched the ESM screen and then spoke to Stevens and the distant voice of Tarheel One at the same time. “I think Vampires have just gone to burner.”

“Roger.”

Stevens snapped his head around and looked at the sky above and behind them. Soleck did the same. Neither saw anything.

Stevens got his eyes down to an instrument scan and then up out of the cockpit, made a minute adjustment and watched the ground blur by beneath them.

“Ranger One, fly one eight zero. Texaco is waiting.” The voice sounded utterly calm, almost happy. “Stay in the clear and don't try going encrypted, Ranger One.”

Stevens smiled. Soleck measured the map by eye. Forty miles to the coast. Eleven miles past that to international water. The gas was going to be really, really close. The gauge wasn't accurate below two thousand pounds, and they were well below two thousand pounds.

“He's going to have to meet us low.”

“Roger, Ranger One. I'll pass. He'll come up when you start to close.”

The two Su-27s, invisible somewhere behind them, continued to close the gap on ESM, their range accurate to a margin that meant that they could be flying alongside or fifty miles behind.

“Tarheel, those Vampires are breathing down our necks.”

Seventy miles ahead, Chris Donitz turned slightly so his nose was pointed directly at the S-3 somewhere to his north. His wingman followed him through the turn. He
called the air wing commander on Strike Common and hoped the new crypto was good.

“Permission to go nose hot?”

“Granted.” That was Captain Rafehausen on the S-3 tanker.

Donitz's RIO fired up the AWG-9, kept in standby for the duration of the flight to hide their activity. The S-3 appeared low, a big radar reflector. The two hostile contacts, tracked passively until now, leaped to the screen. They were twenty miles astern of the S-3 and pressing fast.

“Big Eagle, this is Tarheel One. Twenty miles and closing. Permission to press?”

Big Eagle looked at his watch. 0303 GMT. He smiled grimly under his oxygen mask.

“Players, this is Big Eagle. Open your envelopes.” Throughout his strike package, pilots or their navigators would be fumbling through the process of loading the new crypto. It should, according to the CNO, work now. It was a new set of codes. He waited a moment and then hit his “ENCRYP” button on his comms and then watched his ops display to see who was in the new crypto link. He watched planes appear like fireflies on a summer evening, and the second he had Tarheel One, he made the call.

“Tarheel One, this is Big Eagle. Go get 'em.”

“Missile firing!” Soleck thumbed the chaff/flare trigger and started to spray the sky with decoys. Stevens pulled hard on the stick and rolled the plane into a tight turn, adding power and spending their precious fuel like a prodigal. He turned east, straight into the rising sun.

The first missile, diving from high above them, lost
track against the ground clutter and missed them by hundreds of feet. The second missile didn't buy the first chaff cloud, was misled by the second, and detonated. A giant fist slammed the underside of the plane. Soleck scanned the instruments, felt the new vibration in the yoke, and looked at Stevens.

“We're still here!”

Lots of new experiences for Soleck.

Donitz crossed the coast on full burner, above twenty thousand feet and descending slowly. The Su-27s were below ten thousand, still well north. Donitz wanted to focus their attention on his F-14 Tomcats immediately. Beyond-visual-range engagement would at least break up their formation, giving his flight the possibility of engaging the newer, faster Flankers one at a time.

He got a firing solution with his “Buffalo” AIM 54Cs and fired one.

“Fox One.”

The half-ton missile dropped off the wing and then leaped forward with a roar that vibrated through the Tomcat even at full speed. After five seconds he fired a second missile.

“Fox Two.”

The range was not extreme; under ideal conditions, the AIM 54 could score a kill at one hundred nautical miles, and, given the front aspect and the altitude advantage, conditions were approaching the ideal.

Then he called his wingman.

“Tarheel Two. Snot, bracket left.” How a lieutenant named Breslau had earned the nickname “Snot” was lost in history.

“Roger.”

“Commit. Take the guy to the east.”

“Roger.”

The approaching fighters were now turning away from the AIM 54s and probably jinking. The Tomcats had their opponents in their front quarter and needed only minor maneuvers to keep their AWG-9 radars on the targets. The AIM 54 does not go into self-guidance mode until the last few miles of an intercept, but given the range and altitude difference, the Su-27s had limited maneuver options and couldn't break lock with a simple turn. The long-range shots and the surprise of coming under fire while hunting a lone S-3 had wrecked their formation.

Donitz thought that at least one of them was very new. Now they were down around four thousand feet, several miles apart and forty miles away. The S-3 was off to his left, so low that he'd be invisible to their radars. Snot, Donitz's wingman in Tarheel Two, had rolled to the left and separated the two Tomcats by over a mile. Tarheel Two was adding to the confusion with his own long-range missile at the eastern Flanker.

“Fox One.”

AIM 54Cs cost the taxpayer one million dollars a round. They'd just bought the S-3 a new lease on life for three million dollars.

“Our Tomcats! They're firing. No lock from the Slot Back.”

“They'll never see us again!” Stevens sounded as if he was swearing a vow. He pulled the nose back to the south and throttled down as far as he dared. They descended a few feet lower, so that Stevens's flying began to seem like a roller-coaster ride. He was low enough to make surface effect winds an issue. His face was covered in sweat.

The fuel gauge dropped below a thousand pounds and the numbers started to reel off.

“Snot, break left!”

The two Su-27s were well separated coming out of their maneuvers to avoid the AIM 54s. None of the three missiles had hit, but the two Flankers were miles apart and the engagement could now develop as a series of two-on-one engagements rather than a heads-up two-on-two fight. Donitz didn't want to test the Su-27s in a dogfight; he wanted to beat them with tactics before their superior design and newer, stronger airframes could tell.