“Otherwise they’re clean and we have to let them go,” she told them.
“I don’t think so, Colonel,” objected Beast.
“What you think does not count, Captain. Pauly, you’re on my six.”
“The place everyone wants to be,” said Paulson.
Beast and Turk climbed and circled above while the squadron leader took another two passes at the trucks. The vehicles were moving slowly, but it couldn’t be said suspiciously. They didn’t react to either pass, not even shaking their fists.
As Turk turned in his orbit north, he saw a dust cloud in the distance.
“I’m going to get a better look,” he told Beast.
“Go ahead, little brother. I’m right behind you.”
Turk nudged the nose of the hog earthward. The more he flew the plane, the more he liked it. It was definitely more physical than the Tigershark. While the hydraulic controls had been augmented with electric motors to aid the radio-controlled mode, the plane still had an old school feel. He knew what older pilots meant when they talked about stick and rudder aircraft and working a plane. You got close to the Hog when you used your body. She was like another being, rather than a computer terminal.
The cloud of smoke separated into three distinct furls. They were made of dust, coming from the rear of a trio of pickups, speeding across the desert.
Now that seemed suspicious. Turk reported it.
“Weapons on them?” Ginella asked.
“Don’t see anything.”
Turk felt himself starting to sweat again as he got closer. He pushed the plane down closer to the ground, through 500 feet, then hesitated, looked at the altimeter clock to make sure he was right. The dial agreed with the HUD.
His airspeed had been bleeding off, and now he was dropping through 150 knots — very slow with weapons on the wings. But the Hog didn’t object. She went exactly where he pointed her, nice and steady.
Turk came over the trucks at barely 200 feet. Sensing that he was pushing his luck, he gunned his engines, rising away.
“Nothing in the back, not even tarps,” he told Ginella and the others.
His thumb had just left the mike button when a launch warning blared — someone had just fired a missile at him.
RUMORS OF REMORSE
1
Turk’s first reaction was: Are you kidding me?
He said it out loud, nearly insulted by the audacity of the enemy to fire at him.
Then learned instinct took over. He hit the flare release, pounded the throttle, and yanked the stick hard, all at the same time.
The decoys and sharp turn made it difficult for the missile to stay on his tail. At such low altitude, however, the harsh maneuver presented problems for him as well. In an instant his plane’s nose veered toward the dirt and threatened to augur in. He pulled back again, his whole body throwing itself into the controls — not just his arms, not just his legs, but everything, straining against the restraints.
“Up, up, up,” he urged.
The Hog stuttered in the air, momentarily confused by the different tugs. Finally the nose jerked up and he cleared the ground by perhaps a dozen feet.
“I have a launch warning,” he told the others belatedly. “Missile in the air. I’ve evaded.”
“We’re on it,” said Ginella. “Come south.”
“The trucks—”
“Didn’t come from the trucks,” said Beast. “Came from that hamlet south. It was a shoulder-launched SAM.”
Turk swung his head around, first trying to locate his wingman — he was off his left wing, up a few thousand feet — and then the hamlet he’d mentioned.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself. He’d been ready to splash the trucks, blaming them for the missile.
He angled the Hog to get into position behind Beast. Ginella, meanwhile, called in the situation to the controller. The missile was shoulder-launched, surface-to-air, sometimes called a MANPAD, or man-portable air-defense system. While the exact type wasn’t clear, more than likely it was an SA–7 or SA–14, Russian-made weapons that had been bought in bulk by the Gaddafi government.
The hamlet where the missile had been fired was the same one that had reported being attacked by mortars — a fact Ginella pointed out rather sharply when she got the controller back on the line.
“Is this a rebel village or a government village, Penthouse?” she demanded. “Are we being set up?”
“Stand by, Shooter.”
“Screw standing by,” said Beast. “I say we hose the bastards.”
“Calm down, Beast.” Ginella’s voice was stern but in control. “Are you there, Penthouse?”
“Go ahead, Shooter One.”
“We’re going to overfly this village and find out what the hell is going on down there,” she told the controller.
“Uh, negative, Shooter. Negative. Hold back. We’re moving one of the, uh, Predator assets into the area to get a look.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“Listen, Colonel, I can understand—”
“By the time you get a UAV down here, we’ll be bingo fuel and the bastards will be gone,” she told him. Bingo fuel was the point at which they had just enough fuel to get home. “I’m not sure they’re not gone now.”
It took nearly a half minute for the controller to respond. “Yeah, you’re OK. Go ahead and take a look.”
By that time Ginella had already swung toward the town. The Hogs spread out in a pair of twos, each element separated by roughly a mile.
Flying as tail-gun Charlie, Turk kept watch for sparkles — muzzle flashes — but saw nothing. A white car moved on the main street, but otherwise the place seemed deserted.
“What do you think about that car?” Beast asked as they cleared the settlement.
“Didn’t look like much,” said Turk. “All buttoned up.”
The Hogs circled south, building altitude. The car left the village and headed for the highway. Beast suggested they buzz it, but Ginella vetoed the idea.
“Waste of time,” she said.
“Probably has the bastards who shot at us,” said Beast.
“Unless they’re stupid enough to take another shot,” said Ginella, “we’ll never know. And we’re almost at bingo,” she added. “Time to go home.”
2
Three years before, members of the coalition of rebels had chased Muammar Gaddafi progressively south. Now history was repeating itself, with the new government being pushed farther and farther from the coast. There were certainly differences this time around — different factions of the government had broken away from the main leaders and established strongholds in neighboring Algeria and Niger — but the parallels were upmost in Kharon’s mind as Fezzan drove him south from Tripoli. It seemed some places were stuck in a cycle of doom, and would just continue spiraling toward hell until finally there was nothing more to be consumed.
Most of the journey south was boring, a long stretch of empty highway flanked by even more desolate sand and waste. Two checkpoints made it worth the money he paid Fezzan, however — clearing the barrier ten miles south of Tripoli, manned by rebels, and stopping at the gates to Birak to the south.
Getting past the first barrier just before dawn had been easy: Kharon slipped the first man who approached a few euros and they were waved around the bus that half blocked the highway.
The gate at Birak several hours later was another story.