“I could clip its wings,” said Breanna, even though she knew that was wildly improbable.
“Go to the radar and track it?” suggested Chris.
“They’ll be lost in the ground clutter,” she said. She banked to the west; even with the FLIR at maximum resolution, the small plane was difficult to make out in the hills.
“Due west. Going to the Sudan,” said Chris. “Or Libya.”
“Alert Madcap Magician,” she said. “Maybe they can scramble something to follow it.”
Breanna leaned back against her ejector seat, the last vestiges of her energy starting to drain out. “All this way, and we missed them.”
“If it was them,” said Chris.
“Aw, come on,” she said, trying to force a smile into her voice. “I trust your woman’s intuition.”
“Plotting new course,” was his only reply.
V
TV time
Ethiopia
23 October, 1540
YOU COULD SMELL A COMBAT BASE. PART OF IT WAS the sweat in the air. Part of it was spent fuel, and the ammo being packed.
Another part was fear.
Zen smelled it as he worked his way down the Mega-fortress’s stair ramp, levering himself sideways down each step, aware that he was being stared at—or actually, that people were pretending not to stare at him. He used his arms and shifted his weight carefully as he lowered his butt; he wanted to come down on his own power, but he also didn’t want to fall on his face.
It had been more than five years now since he’d been on a combat base, not counting his brief rotation in Turkey to enforce the no-fly zone in Iraq. This felt different for all kinds of reasons. For one thing, he’d probably had more sleep on his flight over than his whole time during the Air War.
And for another, well, he hadn’t had to use his arms quite so much.
Sergeant Parsons held the wheelchair for him on the tarmac. Zen came off the side into it, managing to swing himself upward and fall perfectly—almost perfectly—onto the chair.
“I’m getting too heavy,” he told Parsons. “Have to lay off the ice cream.”
“You find ice cream here, you let me know,” said the sergeant. “Let me go check our birds.”
Parsons ducked under the wing to examine the Flight-hawks, which were attached to the inner wing spars of Raven. Zen pushed himself a few feet away, taking stock of the crowded air base. Tensions had continued to escalate during the night. There had been raids against bases in northern Somalia. The Iranians had sunk a ship in the Red Sea. Two U.S. aircraft carriers were steaming from the western end of Mediterranean. The Saudis and Egyptians were furious about U.S. overflights and reconnaissance missions, to say nothing of the President’s decision to use Israeli airports as refueling stops.
Four C-130 Hercules, two painted black and two in dark green jungle camouflage schemes, were lined up near the Megafortress. Beyond them were a parcel of Black-hawk and Huey helicopters, along with a pair of large Pave Lows. Three F-117’s and five F-16’s were also lined up at the edge of the strip, parked dangerously close together.
The runway had been expanded, but Cheshire had still had to dump fuel before landing. Taking off was going to be a bitch; Jeff wondered how the F-117’s managed it, since the bat planes typically needed a good long run to get off the ground.
“God, Zen, is that you?”
Zen spun his chair around and saw Hal Briggs, hands on hips, frown on face, standing behind him.
“Hey, Major.”
“You brought the Flighthawks?” said Briggs. “You’re here to fly them?”
“Who’d you think would fly them? Rubeo?”
Briggs frowned, but at least he didn’t offer the usual “sorry about your legs” routine. Zen waited while Briggs greeted Sergeant Parsons and the others. Major Cheshire came down onto the runway; Hal began filling her in on the situation, walking with her toward his Humvee. Zen followed, listening to Briggs explain why he believed the captured Americans were in the Sudan. They were mounting a comprehensive search mission, he told her; Raven would be an invaluable part. Briggs and Cheshire got into the vehicle. Zen pushed to follow.
“Whoa! Whoa!” he yelled as Briggs started without him. “Yo! I’m not in yet.”
“Uh, sorry, Major,” said Briggs. “There’s food and a lounge inside this building here. We’re going over to our command center.”
“Yeah, no shit. That’s where I’m going.” Jeff pulled open the rear door, working the wheelchair as close as possible. It was too long a stretch, but at this point he didn’t care.
“Well,” started Briggs. “No offense, but—”
“I’m in charge of the Flighthawks,” Zen told him. “Since I’m going to be working the major part of the mission, I sure as shit ought to be in on the planning, don’t you think?”
“First of all, the drones aren’t in the game plan.”
“They’re not drones,” said Zen. “They’re scouts and escorts.”
“I agree that Major Stockard ought to be involved,” said Cheshire.
Briggs, obviously pissed, said nothing. Zen pulled himself up into the Hummer, pushing and yanking his body along. Major Cheshire got out of the Humvee and folded his wheelchair for him, handing it inside. Zen answered her weak, apologetic smile with a curt nod, pulling the chair nearly on top of himself. He wasn’t exactly comfortable, but he would be goddamned if he was going to admit it.
This is better than pity, he thought to himself. I can deal with this.
When they stopped, Jeff managed to slam the chair out and then slide into it without any help. Not that it was pretty.
Nor was it easy getting into the building. Fortunately, there was only one step and it was barely two inches high. Zen managed to get up by coming sideways, building a little momentum, and practically jumping upward. For a moment he thought he was going to land on his head.
He took the fact that he didn’t as a good sign. He wheeled through the door, teeth grinding but determined to get past the frowns and stares. Moving quickly, Jeff followed Cheshire toward the large map tables where the commanders of the operation were clustered. Briggs introduced them, then turned over the briefing to a Navy commander, who was coordinating the search components.
“The Antonov was tracked approximately to this point,” he said, dispensing with preliminaries as he poked his thumb on a topo map of northeastern Africa. “We estimate the plane’s range before refueling at one thousand miles, which gives us this semicircle here. You’ll note that’s a wide area. A lot of Sudan is involved. We have relatively high confidence that the aircraft did not take off after landing. We believe they’re waiting for nightfall. F/A-18’s and a Hawkeye from the Kennedy will be responsible for this area here,” he added, his pinkie circling a crosshatched swatch of northern Sudan near Egypt. “Another flight will patrol Libya. That leaves southern Sudan, below the Libyan Desert. It’s a low-probability area, but it has to be covered.”
“What about Egypt?” said Zen.
The commander made a face. “We don’t have permission for overflights.”
“All the more reason to watch it.”
“Zen, please,” said Briggs.
“We’re aware of the possibility,” said the Navy commander. “We’re compensating to some degree, but obviously there are limits. We have some under-the-table help from the Israelis.”
“Where’s the Kennedy?” Cheshire asked.
“That’s one of our problems,” admitted the commander. “All of these planes are operating at the far end of their range. It’s dicey, I don’t deny that.”
“Major Cheshire, you have this swatch here,” said Briggs, pointing to the southernmost area of the Sudan. He then turned to the F-16 commander. “Havoc Flight’s F-16’s will patrol here and here. We’re waiting for a KC-135 inbound to refuel you.”