“You and I agree one hundred and ten percent,” said Danny.
21
By the time Rubeo reached the first rock and started up the incline, the bot had caught up. It moved to the right of him and began trudging up the hill, moving at a slow but steady pace. The gunfire had stopped, and the helicopters appeared to have moved off.
Rubeo told the bot to pause as it crested the summit of the second hilltop. He reached it a few moments later, caught his breath, and then had it follow as he climbed over the last hill separating him and Kharon.
The young man blinked at him as he came down the slope. Pain lined his face.
“They’ll be here any minute,” said Rubeo.
“Don’t shoot me.”
“I’m not going to. Don’t worry,” said Rubeo. He glanced self-consciously at the gun, which was pointed at the ground.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’ll go to the hospital.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” Rubeo shook his head. “I’ll help you.”
“Why?”
Rubeo couldn’t answer the question, not even for himself. He had only a sense that it was the right thing to do — not because of logic, but because of emotion. And even that was vague.
Something shrieked overhead. Rubeo turned his eyes upward, sure it must be the Tigershark. Then there was a loud clap nearby, and the ground seemed to shatter.
“Something is firing at us,” he told Kharon.
A second shell whistled nearby. This one was even closer; dirt and debris rained across his back.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Tanks are firing!” Turk told Danny.
“Take them.”
“Yeah. I’m on it.”
He was already on a direct line for one of the tanks, roughly three miles to the west. He zeroed it in his targeting screen, corrected slightly, and fired.
A slug sped from the aircraft, hurtling into the fat turret of the tank. Unsure of the result, Turk fired twice more, then pulled off.
The bullets put three large holes in the top of the tank, disabling its main gun and the engine. The T–72 jerked to an abrupt stop, disabled though not in fact destroyed. The almost surgical gunfire had left the crew hatches undamaged, and within a few seconds the three men who had been manning the tank scrambled away from it, undoubtedly stunned and unsure what would happen next.
“Tigershark, this is Shooter One. Are you engaging the tanks?”
“Affirmative Shooter. They have commenced firing.”
The sitrep map showed Turk all four Hogs, IDing them by their call signs and squadron identifications. Ginella was flying lead.
Her wingman was Li.
“We can engage,” said Ginella. “We’re just coming into range.”
“I have the one to the north, that one leading on the road,” said Turk. “You can have the rest.”
“Roger, Tigershark, we copy. We’re going to take the others.”
“Copy.”
Turk swung north to line up his shot. As he did, the RWR began to sound — the MiGs that were supposed to be intercepted by the French planes had turned in his direction. But it wasn’t him they were targeting; it was the A–10s.
Danny Freah took a long, slow breath, ignoring the cacophony of protests in his headset. He leaned forward between the two Osprey pilots, trying to spot the trucks in the distance.
“I’m being told to turn back north,” the pilot told him. “The air commander is trying to reach you.”
“You’re under my direct orders,” Danny told him calmly. “You have no responsibility.”
“Sir, I’m going to save our guys, too. Screw everything else.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“We have more vehicles coming up the road,” he told Danny. “Looks like a scout car, and a couple of pickups. Those pickups usually have fifty cals on the back. I’d like to engage them.”
Even without the allied order to stand down and avoid combat, engaging the vehicles was highly questionable. They had not fired at either the Osprey or Rubeo, and in fact had done nothing overtly threatening. But the situation now was simply too chaotic, and their mere presence was a threat. The Osprey couldn’t land close to a fifty caliber, let alone three of them.
“Fire some warning shots and see if they stop,” Danny told the pilot.
“If they don’t?”
“Then splash them.”
Rubeo heard the roar of the Osprey’s engines in the distance, but the shells were still raining down, passing overhead. He guessed they were being aimed at the road, but that was hardly a consolation — any second now he expected one to land short and wipe them out.
“I can’t carry you,” he told Kharon.
“Leave me!”
“That’s not what I meant. Come on.” Rubeo hooked his arms under the other man’s shoulder’s. “I have to get you on the bot.”
Kharon screamed in anguish. Rubeo hesitated, but the whistle of another shell going overhead convinced him to continue. He half lifted, half dragged Kharon to the nearby bot, cringing as the younger man howled in pain.
“We’re getting out of here,” Rubeo told him, putting him down as gently as he could manage on the rear bed of the bot. Kharon twisted, grabbing hold of the spar.
“Diomedes, follow me,” Rubeo told the bot, starting out of the small hollow where he’d taken shelter.
He’d taken exactly three steps when he felt himself pushed from behind, thrown forward by a force he couldn’t fathom.
22
Turk zeroed his gun on the tank and fired six bursts, the bolts leaping from the gun in a sharp, staccato rhythm that seemed to suspend the Tigershark in midair. The line of his bullets was tighter this time, and there was no escape for the men inside — the first slug ignited one of the tank’s shells, and secondary explosions ripped through the tight quarters of the armored vehicle, mincing its occupants. The rest of the bullets simply sliced through the fireballs.
As soon as he let off the trigger, Turk turned his attention to the MiGs. They had separated into two groups, one duo diverting toward the French interceptors and the other coming at the Hogs.
The A–10s were easy targets for the MiGs, but to their credit they remained in their attack patterns, closing in on the tanks.
“Shooter, I’m on those MiGs,” Turk told Ginella. “I have them.”
“We appreciate it.”
There was a launch warning — the MiGs were firing.
“Four missiles,” reported the computer. “AA–10 Alamo. Semiactive radar.”
“Plot an intercept to missiles,” said Turk. He could line up and shoot at the missiles with the rail gun.
“Impossible to intercept all four.”
“Best solution.”
A plot flashed up on the screen.
Three targets. Two were heading for Ginella’s aircraft, Shooter One. The other was going for Beast in Shooter Three.
“Identify target of remaining missile,” Turk said.
“Missile is targeted at Shooter Four.”
Li’s plane, on Ginella’s wing.
“Recalculate to include missile targeting Shooter Four.”
The computer presented a new solution, striking one of the missiles on Ginella as well as Li’s sole missile. But Beast was completely unprotected. Before Turk could decide what to do, four more missiles launched. The computer began running a variety of solutions, but Turk realized that none were going to completely protect the Hogs.
“Choose Solution One,” he said, moving to the course queue as it snapped into his heads-up. “Shooter squadron, you have missiles inbound.”