“Got a problem,” he told Howe.
“Come east, Timmy,” Howe told him. “Break ninety: Turn, damn it! You’re running back into his gunfire.”
Timmy couldn’t get the plane to turn fast enough to avoid the bubbling black mass as it rose in the sky. Wings peppered by flak, he fought desperately just to stay level. It didn’t matter how hard he pushed against the stick or throttle — the controls were electric, not hydraulic — but he muscled them anyway, as if his strength might somehow flow out to the control surfaces and buoy the plane.
From super shit to stuck in shit, all in less than sixty seconds. The cockpit looked like a Christmas display, warning lights flashing. Timmy heard something howling in his ears.
“Out,” Howe was saying. “Out!”
“Yeah, baby,” said the pilot.
He put his hand down to grab the yellow and black ejection handle. As he gripped it the last SA-N-5 from the patrol boat exploded just under the back end of the plane. Timmy pulled the handles. but it was already too late: He felt a sudden surge of heat behind him; then the world turned black and incredibly, instantly cold.
Howe saw his wingmate’s plane explode and felt his hand once more tighten involuntarily around the stick. He stared at the hurtling ball of metal, plastic, and fire, waiting, hoping, expecting the canopy to shoot off and the seat to appear, Timmy hurtling away with his good-ol’-boy chuckle. Howe got ready to note the location, follow the chute down, vector the SAR assets in.
Slowly he realized that wasn’t going to happen. The stricken Velociraptor disintegrated before his eyes, imploding from its many wounds. Howe flew on, finally forcing his eyes down to the tactical screen, pushing his head back into the game where it had to be.
The Russian ship was dead in the water, two miles from the island. Black smoke unfurled from the middle of the vessel. He pushed down, looked at the cue in the holographic HUD, the computer automatically drawing the dotted line for him.
“Fire,” he said, pressing the trigger as well.
One of his first bullets hit the Styx launcher on the port side; by the time he let off the trigger and began to climb, the rear half of the boat had vaporized.
“The helicopters and patrol boat are down,” he said over the shared frequency for the C-17. “If you’re coming, now’s the time to do it. I’ll rake the field.”
Chapter 16
Fisher leaned over the seat on the flight deck, trying to hear what Tyler and the pilots were saying.
“Once around to see what the layout is,” suggested the Special Forces captain.
“That just gives anyone on the ground a shot at us,” said the pilot. “Best bet is either parachute in or land right away. One or the other. They fired at least one missile at the Velociraptors. We’re a much easier target.”
“We’ll land, then,” said Tyler. The captain turned to Fisher. “We’re going to land.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
Tyler looked at him as if he hadn’t understood, then pushed past to go down to his men. Fisher took his place.
“Hey! Don’t touch anything there!” said the copilot, proprietary all of a sudden.
“Stay away from the plane,” Fisher told the pilot. “They probably have it rigged for explosives.”
“Okay,” said the pilot. “But there’s not too much to work with. Strip’s narrow and short.”
“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” said Fisher.
Chapter 17
Luksha cursed as the transmission from the patrol ship ended in a hiss. The American jets had obviously found the boat; the helicopters had not been able to lead them away.
He suspected that his reinforcements were under fire as well. He’d heard nothing from the transport or its escorts; he had to assume it had turned back.
He still had the four small speedboats they’d used to get to the island, as well as the helicopters waiting on the island thirty miles away, but none of them were big enough to carry off the weapon.
“The pilot,” he told his sergeant. “Get her and bring her here.”
As the sergeant ran off toward the boat landing, two of the men who were working on dismantling the laser emerged from the plane, carrying a large gray box housing computer gear. Luksha ran to them; one of the men, an engineering specialist, began to explain the significance of the box but Luksha cut him off.
“Put it back in the plane. We’re going to fly out of here.”
“General—”
“Throw it back in the plane,” demanded Luksha. “Then get down to the boats.”
One of the Russians jerked Megan to her feet. For a second she thought he was going to push her over the side of the rocks to the water ten feet below; instead he tugged her up the trail back toward the landing strip.
The plane sat exactly where she had parked it over the charges. If she had a few minutes, she might be able to figure out how to set them by hand, or find a backup device.
She could just as easily grow wings and fly away. Two Russian paratroopers met her guards, forming a cocoon around her as she walked. Rather than going to the bunker as she expected, they took her toward the aircraft.
There were planes overhead: Velociraptors, she thought.
Howe?
God, what if it was him?
The two men in front of her stopped abruptly, standing aside as a Russian officer approached. It was the same one who had informed her earlier she was a prisoner.
“This is Russian land. You are a trespasser,” he told her. His accent was thick and it took her a second to cut through it. “You are subject to serious penalties, including death.”
Megan guessed what was coming and said nothing.
“Fly us out of here and you are free. You have ten seconds to decide,” said the Russian. He reached to his belt and unholstered his pistol.
It was a gift, really: She could take off and crash the plane.
“We need fuel,” she told him. “There is an underground pumping system. It’s automated, though. We can do it easily. All right?”
His answer was drowned out by the roar of an aircraft approaching the runway.
Chapter 18
If they were going to have any chance of getting the weapon and plane intact, Howe had to be careful about where he used the bombs. He didn’t have much of a target anyway: As he came across the island, he saw perhaps a dozen soldiers scurrying toward the parked Russian jet. There were boats on the other side of the island, but he decided to leave them alone; no sense cutting off their escape if what he really wanted was for them to leave.
Howe gave a few winks from his gun and shot off flares, hoping to suck off any shoulder-launched SAMs they might have left on the ground. He cruised over the strip at roughly seventy-five feet.
“Dozen or so ground people, maybe more,” he told the C-17 and Gorman. “They didn’t fire any SAMs at me, but that’s no guarantee.”
“We can get down on the ground and hold them there,” said Tyler, the assault team leader. “I can’t guarantee that they won’t blow up the plane, but the C-17 will block the runway and they won’t get off.”
“Good. We have reinforcements right behind you,” said Gorman. “No more than an hour away.”
“Tell them to move faster,” said Tyler.