“Close enough to count.”
He told the British soldiers about the building. They agreed it was the likely source, though from where they were they could see only a small corner of the roof.
“May be why they’re missing,” said Rodent.
“You sure that mosque is clear?” Grizzly asked Turk. “It has that whole road covered.”
“I didn’t see anything there. You?”
Grizzly didn’t answer. He told the SAS troopers to keep their heads down, then dialed his Maverick into the building Turk had ID’ed as the sniper nest.
Ten seconds later the building exploded.
Rodent called in to say that they were moving. More gunfire erupted on the street, coming from behind a parked car. This time the target was obvious. The Brits took cover, and Turk put a Maverick into the vehicle, setting it on fire and killing or wounding the two gunmen behind it.
“You sure that mosque is clean?” asked Grizzly.
Stop with the mosque, thought Turk. But he answered calmly. “I don’t see anything there.”
“We’re moving,” said Rodent.
There were a few more shots, but the pair made it to the northern fork and then ran down the hill. They were clear of the village.
“Helicopter is inbound,” said the controller.
“Let’s take a pass between the landing zone and the village,” said Grizzly. “Make sure things are cool.”
Turk got behind him. Grizzly told the controller and the helicopter what they were doing.
“You sure that mosque doesn’t have anything?” asked Grizzly.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bet that’s where they came out of. Those places are nests.”
Grizzly went across the top of the hill. Turk got his Hog a little lower. His airspeed kept declining; he was barely over a hundred knots, very close to getting a stall warning.
“Looking clear.”
A large black bug appeared on the horizon. The SAS men ran toward it. As the Blackhawk swooped in, the two A–10s flew east to west across the village, between it and the SAS troopers.
“Something on my left,” said Grizzly as he cleared west. “You see that?”
“I’ll look for it.”
“Two or three people.”
Turk saw the figures on a small path at the side of the knoll. There were four—at least two were children.
“Just kids,” he told Grizzly.
“You sure?”
Turk slid his aircraft left. He could have fired at them if he wanted.
But they were kids.
“Yeah. Just kids.”
“You see a weapon?”
“Negative.”
The helicopter touched down. Within thirty seconds it was back in the air, Brits aboard. Grizzly took another pass, running between the village and the Blackhawk. As he did, there was a puff of smoke from the hillside.
“Flares! Break right, break left!” called Turk, even before the missile launch warning began blaring. “Missile! Turn hard! Left! Flares! Flares!”
Something sparked in the sky. Turk looked to his left, where the other aircraft should be, but there was nothing there.
He jerked his head around, afraid. But Grizzly was there—he’d gone right.
Turned toward the damn missile.
There was a dot of red in the pale blue. Two dots.
Decoys, thought Turk. He’s past.
“I’m hit,” said Grizzly a moment later.
2
Southern Libya
Driving away from the radar complex, Rubeo zipped his jacket against the cold and considered something one of his professors had told him.
Only thought experiments fully succeed in science.
As a pimple-faced teenager extremely full of himself, he had considered that an exaggeration. He’d pulled off dozens of experiments that were one hundred percent successful. As time went on, however, he saw the truth in his professor’s remark. And while he had come to appreciate that the failures were almost always more interesting than the successes, at this particular moment the limits of science were a challenge.
Even though the UAV gathering the electric data had been shot down before completing its survey, the map it provided of the devices at the complex was fairly complete. The aircraft’s sensors had found the main generators and the trailers with the radar control units. The detail was good enough for an eighty-five percent certainty on the ID of the radars that detected planes and controlled the missiles.
Eighty-five percent was considered more than enough; the matching algorithms were extremely exacting. Additionally, the radars had already been identified by the receiving unit independent of the Mapper, so the match confirmed that the system was working properly.
The next stage was more difficult. The computers at Rubeo’s headquarters compared the diagrams with known circuitry maps of the “stock” radars. They found them exactly the same. Since modifications would be needed to interfere with the UAVs, Rubeo could now be certain that hadn’t happened.
Or rather, that those units hadn’t done it. Because there was still a portion of the complex that had not been mapped. The section included a small shed and a trailer. The electronic map implied some sort of activity there—there were two power lines leading in—but the rest was open for interpretation.
Or imagination. Unable to rule anything out, most people tended to think of the worst. It was an interesting human prejudice, Rubeo knew, but one even he couldn’t escape.
Would a jamming unit fit in the trailer?
Absolutely. The devices the Russians had deployed near the Georgian border to deter spying UAVs were about that size.
If they were there, wouldn’t the Libyans have used them to deter the attack?
Perhaps. But that was just it—a guess, not definitive proof.
“Guys could use some rest,” suggested Jons.
Rubeo turned to him. He’d been concentrating so fully on the problem that he forgot where he was.
“Halit up there keeps nodding off,” added Jons. “If we stop out here, away from the town, we’ll be a little more secure. Sleep until the afternoon. You wanted to see the place in the day.”
“Yes,” said Rubeo, coming back fully to the present. “Let’s find a place.”
3
Over southern Libya
Grizzly’s plane was ahead of Turk, to his right, just below eleven o’clock. It looked OK, rising in the sky.
He escaped.
He got lucky.
A black smudge appeared on the left side of the plane. It grew exponentially, surrounding the engine.
Flares floated below. Smoke trailed down to them, black and gray billowing in a mad stream.
“Grizzly! Get out!” Turk yelled over the radio.
“I have the plane,” replied the other pilot.
“Your left engine—there’s black smoke pouring out of it.”
“Yeah, I got a problem there. You get those guys?”
“Negative.” Turk was in no position to take a shot at them and wasn’t about to leave the other pilot simply to get revenge.
“I told you to watch those people on the hill.”
“They were kids. They weren’t the problem.”
“I’m coming through one thousand feet,” said Grizzly. “Still climbing.”
“Think about getting out,” said Turk. “Are you sure you got it?”
“I got it.”
Turk told the controller what was going on. He wanted the helicopter that had just made the pickup to stand by in case the Hog went down.
Grizzly jettisoned the last of his missiles, lightening his load. He was at 3,000 feet, still climbing, though slowly.