Cyclops One - Страница 45

Duke’s communications specialist, who was maintaining contact with the Osprey and F/A-22Vs, slid over to the captain and told him that two Indian helicopters had been reported about twenty minutes away. They were being escorted by fighters. Meanwhile an armored vehicle was making its way up the road from the west; it would reach their position in another few minutes.

It was possible McIntyre was still in the industrial building, but if they were going to check it out, they were going to have to do it now.

“Tell the Osprey and the Velociraptors to stay close,” Duke told the como specialist. “As soon as we check that building, we’ll bug out.”

Chapter 21

McIntyre stared at the phone. It was ringing.

It was ringing.

He pushed the Talk button and held it to his ear. “Yes?”

“McIntyre, our guys are looking for you,” said Brott. “Are you in the building?”

“No,” he said. “I–I’m up the road about a mile. There’s a house — Wait.”

He heard something coming behind him, something big.

“Something’s coming for me.”

“We’re tracking you down,” said Brott. “Keep talking. We’re very close to you. I have somebody who’s connecting with the ground people now. You’re looking for a guy named Duke.”

“You’re breaking up,” said McIntyre. “My battery is dying.”

“Leave the phone on. Just—”

Brott said something else, but it was garbled. The tank was close now, very close.

McIntyre threw himself down. The heavy stutter of the diesel shocked the ground. He concentrated all of his energy on wishing it away, wishing it past him. As the sound began to fade he turned his head up just enough to see that there were soldiers walking behind it.

One of them shouted.

McIntyre jerked up, drew the gun to his side, and began firing. The dozen or so soldiers in the road dropped down, unsure at first how large the enemy force was.

Chapter 22

Timmy had his cursor zeroed in on the armored personnel carrier, waiting for a decision.

“What we doing, Bird One?” he asked Howe over the short-range radio, checking his speed and altitude.

“We’re hanging tight,” replied Howe. “They’re checking the building now. They want to see if he’s inside.”

A moment later Brott’s excited voice, filtered by static as it was relayed across the globe, broke into his helmet.

“There’s a tank — something — men firing at him. He’s a mile up from the building. He said there was a house.”

“I have a BMP,” Timmy said, referring to the infantry fighting vehicle leading the attack. Its turret and tracks made it look like a tank. “I’m going to take it out. Tell our guy to kiss dirt.”

Howe started talking to Brott, trying to get better details on the location. The Osprey chimed in, but Timmy was so intent on the target, the babble of voices didn’t register as one of the mini-bombs slid out from the belly. Guided by a GPS steering package, the bomb’s warhead struck within an inch and a half of the center of the BMP’s turret. Though the bomb weighed roughly half what an old Mark 82 did, the combination of its shaped high explosives and precision accuracy made it arguably as effective as a thousand-pound bomb, possibly even more.

In any event, such fine points were lost on the truck’s crew. The bomb blew through the thin armor skin as if it were the top of a tuna can, incinerating the men. Fragments from the shell of the personnel carrier flew into the squad of men who’d gathered behind it for protection, downing them all. Timmy had no idea of the casualty count; he just saw that he didn’t have a substantial target.

“Osprey, I see you,” he said, running over the road. He saw a lot of bodies down on the road, and a man running to the left. “Hot down there. Hold off!”

The MV-22 appeared over a ridge as he banked, the rotors on its long arms already pointing upward as it slapped down for a landing. The chain gun began spitting slugs in the direction of the flattened BMP.

Must be an Air Force pilot,Timmy thought to himself.Doesn’t like to take orders.

Chapter 23

The aircraft appeared in front of him, its two arms held up in the sky as if it were descending a ladder. There was a gun at the chin, moving.

An Osprey.

His rescuers.

McIntyre threw down his rifle and held up the cell phone, desperate to make them see that he was on their side. But the gun blinked anyway, its roar so loud that he lost his balance.

He was dead, he knew he was dead.

Gradually he realized that the bullets were landing well behind him, back at the road. The gunfire stopped abruptly, the Osprey whipping around overhead, now behind him, now on the side, once more in front. McIntyre, his eyes filled with dust and his whole body vibrating, got to his feet. The plane stuttered in the air in front of him, then dipped forward.

Shit, the bastards got him! Shit!

McIntyre felt himself pulled forward. He was running; the aircraft was there, intact and unharmed. One of the crewmen was alongside, someone helped him in, they were moving, moving, whipping upward into a surreal swirl, his mind and body twisting in a frenetic mélange.

For a while he seemed to lose consciousness. Not that he blacked out — his brain just couldn’t process information. Then McIntyre found himself sitting along the wall of the aircraft, next to a man in a wrinkled business suit.

“I’d give you a cigarette,” said the man, “but this is the nonsmoking section.”

McIntyre blinked. He knew the man, though the part of his brain that would have connected his face to his name was temporarily out of order.

Andy Fisher.

“So, what do you know about Jolice Missile Systems, anyway?” asked Fisher, smiling and giving him a cigarette despite what he’d said earlier.

Chapter 24

Howe took a pass over the road as the Osprey cleared. The SF contingent was already set for a pickup near the building. The Indians, somewhat confused about what was going on, were rushing down the road toward the BMP Timmy had splashed, bypassing the building.

Howe cleared through the pass, then circled back as the MV-22 rendezvoused with the ground team.

Two more Indian troop trucks were coming out from the village. Howe saw them stopping, men pouring from the back.

The lead truck was in the middle of his tactical screen. He hesitated for a second, but it was no contest: A shoulder-launched missile from there could easily splash the Osprey, and even an automatic rifle could do enough damage to take it down.

The small-diameter bomb spun out from his belly, zooming toward the truck. He dished a second one into the other vehicle, at the same time telling the Osprey what was going on. The MV-22 pilot thanked him; ten seconds after the second one exploded, he was airborne.

The Pakistani radar had turned itself off.

“Do we take out the MiGs?” asked Timmy, referring to the Indian planes coming north to help in what they thought was a firefight with Pakistani guerrillas.

“They’re not a threat. Hold off,” said Howe.

“Damn.”

“I love you, Timmy, but sometimes you’re a bit much,” said Howe, snapping his Talk button off.

Part Five
Heroes and Villains

Chapter 1

Howe listened to the windshield wipers slap as the driver made his way through the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Pentagon. The rain came in wind-driven sheets, as if it were pieces of plywood thrown down from the clouds. Like everything else around him for the last forty-eight hours, it seemed completely surreal.

The cease-fire that had been declared between India and Pakistan was holding, and both countries had corralled, at least temporarily, the radical elements that had driven them to the brink of nuclear winter. India’s army had booted out what the spokesmen called “a parcel of radicals”; Pakistan was talking about elections. Meanwhile a committee of diplomats from both sides was discussing Kashmir.

That was just the start. Israel and the Palestinians had scheduled a conference to focus on Jerusalem’s future, and there were rumors that the president of South Korea was planning a visit to North Korea to discuss unification.

To hear the talking heads on TV speak — and Howe had spent yesterday in a hotel room doing almost nothing but — the world was entering a new reality, a place where permanent peace was possible. America had stopped a war. That had never happened before. There was awe in people’s voices, deservedly so.

Howe, who’d been there — who’d not merely seen the results but actually was responsible for them — couldn’t quite process it. He thought of Megan, dead in Cyclops One: Why hadn’t she shot down the missile targeting her? It would have been child’s play, an easy shot.

Easy, maybe, if you weren’t there.

Why had she taken the plane in the first place? Why was she a traitor, a liar?

The questions were a numbness now; he didn’t really ask them, didn’t ponder them. At the moment no one was really sure she’d even been in the wreck; DNA analyses of the recovered remains had not been finished.

The car stopped. There were umbrellas outside. Howe saw the umbrellas but not the men holding them. He got out of the car; people were smiling at him, congratulating him. He started to walk with them. He forced himself to smile, laughed at a joke about being escorted into the Pentagon, not out. An admiral met him just inside the door, began pumping his hand. Howe fell into place, walking down the corridor. He’d been in the building many times before, but this was different, very, very different; it was almost like being plucked from the stands of a football game, hustled down to the locker room, and suited up to play quarterback.