“We’re aware of that, Tigershark.”
“I can get some, not all.”
“Whatever you can do for us,” said Ginella. Her voice was cold and flat, without effect. “Tanks will be down in a second.”
23
Danny Freah grabbed for a handhold as the Osprey pirouetted above the road, the chain gun in its nose tearing up the road in front of the approaching vehicles. The two trucks veered off to the side but the armored car kept moving forward.
“Stop the bastard,” said Danny.
The Osprey spun back quickly. The gun under its chin swiveled, and a steady rat-rat-rat followed. Danny leaned forward, watching through the windscreen as the gun’s bullets chewed through the rear quarter of the lightly armored vehicle. Steam shot up from the armored car. The right rear wheel seemed to fall away, sliding from the cloud of smoke and disintegrating metal. The rest of the vehicle morphed into a red oblong, fire consuming it in an unnaturally symmetrical shape. The red flared, then changed to black as the symmetry dissolved in a rage.
“People on the ground, coming up along the road,” said the copilot.
“Where are our guys?” asked Danny.
“Going for them now.”
Rubeo fell face-first into the side of the hill. His face felt as if it had caught fire and had been ripped downward at the same time; his head pounded with pain. He pushed back with his hand, then fell to the side, exhausted and spent.
What had Bastian’s advice been? What was his old colonel telling him?
Find out why it happened. For yourself.
He’d done that — Kharon had caused it, with the help of the Russians. He’d closed the circle of a crime committed years before. A crime Rubeo knew he had been completely innocent of, yet one he’d always felt guilty about.
How did he benefit from knowing that?
He should feel relief knowing he wasn’t responsible for the accident, and more important, for the civilian deaths. And yet he didn’t. He should feel horror at Kharon’s crime — he’d committed murder. Anger. Rage. But all he felt was pity, pity and sorrow. Useless emotions.
Was that what knowledge brought you? Impotent sadness?
The man who had built his life around the idea that intelligence could solve every problem lay in the dirt and rubble, body battered and exhausted. He knew many things, but what he knew most of all now was pain.
Up, he told himself. Up.
You know what happened. And what of it? Knowledge itself is useless. It’s how it’s put to use, if it can be used at all.
Diomedes idled behind him. He could feel the soft vibration of its engine.
Time to get up. Time to move on.
“Follow me,” he said, starting to move on his hands and knees.
The bot moved behind him, carrying Kharon and nipping at Rubeo’s heels.
His ears pounded. Rubeo realized belatedly that he couldn’t hear properly. The ground vibrated with something, but whether it was far or close, he had no idea.
Gradually his strength returned. He pushed up to his knees, then to his feet, walking unsteadily up the slope. The world had shaded yellow, blurring at the edges. Rubeo pushed himself forward, trudging across the side of a hill, then down to his right, in the direction of the road. The loose dirt and sand moved under the soles of his feet, and he felt himself sliding. He began to glide down the hill, legs bent slightly and arms out for balance; a snowboarder couldn’t have done it better.
The bot followed. Rubeo glanced at it, making sure Kharon was still on the back. Then he began moving parallel to the road. He passed the disabled trucks, continuing toward a flat area he remembered from earlier.
Kharon’s leg had gone numb, but he actually felt better. The shock had passed; his head was clear. He felt stronger — still injured, of course, but no longer paralyzed.
He clung to the crane arm of the bot as they rumbled across the terrain, the vehicle bobbing and weaving like a canoe shooting rapids. It settled somewhat as it moved off the hill onto the level shoulder alongside the road.
An Osprey, black and loud, approached from the south. Kharon stared as it grew larger. His eyes, irritated by the grit in the wind, seemed to burn with the image. The ground shook. The wings seemed to move upward, the control surfaces sliding down as the rotors at the tips tilted. Dirt flew everywhere.
The world began to close around him, becoming dark. He was a child, trapped in the closet, waiting for something that would never happen.
All these years, and he had never really moved beyond those long, terrible moments. Everything he had done, his achievements, his studies, paled compared to that dreadful time. Life had failed to lift him beyond the sinkhole he’d crawled into that night.
Such a failure. Such a waste. Even the one thing I lived for, revenge, proved unreachable. Rubeo wasn’t even the culprit. Rubeo wasn’t even the villain. The people who helped me were. They probably knew it from the start.
Nothing is left.
Danny moved to the door as the Osprey started to settle toward the earth. Boston was already there, gun in hand, ready to leap out. They had to move quickly; the Osprey was extremely vulnerable when landing and taking off.
Not to mention on the ground.
Something shrieked. The aircraft jerked upward.
“Incoming shells,” said the pilot over the interphone. “Evading — hang on.”
Rubeo saw the aircraft as it swept overhead. Dirt swirled from the wash of the propellers spinning. He put his head down, shielding it with his hands.
“Into the aircraft,” he said, speaking into the microphone for the bot. He still couldn’t hear; his voice in his head sounded hollow and strange. “Go to the ramp at the rear.”
The wind increased. Rubeo bent almost double and stopped moving forward. All he had to do now was wait.
They were out of this damn hellhole.
Diomedes poked him in the back. Rubeo turned, then fell as the wind peaked. He rolled onto his back, eyes and face covered by his hands. He spread his fingers hesitantly, then saw something black fleeing above.
The Osprey was scooting away.
“What the hell?” he yelled in anguish.
The ground shook. Rubeo jerked back to his feet and began shouting at the aircraft. A geyser of sand and dirt rose from the road about a hundred yards away.
“We’re being fired at,” Rubeo yelled to Kharon. He turned and saw Diomedes, which had stopped about twenty yards away, waiting in the spot where the Osprey would have landed. A fresh geyser rose just beyond the bot.
The explosions were smaller than before — a mortar or maybe two or three.
“This way,” Rubeo told the bot. He fingered the microphone cord and started south. The bot quickly followed. He heard something, a growl in the air — his hearing was returning.
“Mortar team behind those two trucks,” the pilot told Danny.
“Eliminate it.”
“With pleasure.”
The Osprey’s tail rose, tilting the gun in its nose toward the trucks. A chain of bullets began spitting from the aircraft, chewing the ground just behind the vehicle. The Osprey danced right. The bullets disappeared in a stream of debris. A cloud rose where they landed, growing quickly until it mushroomed over the trucks and everything within fifty yards.
The mortar fire stopped. But there were more vehicles coming out from the city. And the people who had come from the village were gathering along the road about two miles away. Whiplash had blundered into the middle of an uprising — troops who had deserted earlier interpreted the military action as an attack from the loyal troops, and were coming out to fight. The government forces, meanwhile, had seen the action as a rebel attack. And in the middle was the scientist they were trying to rescue.