On board the Apache, the gunner armed his missiles, while on the Nighthawks, the men dressed in black locked and loaded their weapons.
"Hold in place," Kiril ordered into his radio, keeping his men under cover in the swamp. The Jet Ranger was now overhead, a hundred feet up.
Kiril looked up into the rotor wash. He was growing weary of these games. There was plenty of room for the helicopter to land where it had before.
A spasm rippled down his throat. His nose burned. His hand grabbed for his radio mike as he realized he was already as good as dead.
His fingers squeezed the send button, but no words came out of his mouth, only the gagging reflex as his lungs refused to work. He felt pain rip up his spine and he staggered back two steps, then dropped to his knees. His head was still angled up, staring at the chopper overhead, but everything was moving in slow motion now. He could even see each blade turning, so slowly, it seemed.
Kiril pitched face forward into the gravel between the rail lines, dead. The SAM-9 man managed to arm his missile before he too was hit by the VZ. He died, desperately trying to pull the trigger and failing as his nerves seized up faster than his mind could issue the order. Kiril's entire patrol was dead within thirty seconds.
"Chopper is still airborne," the voice of the radar operator on board the AWACS repeated.
"What are they doing?" The Director had taken over Hancock's chair, relegating the CDA chief to a position standing next to him.
"Probably checking the area out," Hancock answered.
"Sir!" Dilken's alert was unnecessary, as they could all see the red dot moving east.
"Did it land at all?" the director asked.
"No, sir," Dilken answered.
"They might have done an airdrop of the VZ to the Serbs," Hancock said, but he knew as the words left his mouth that they were ridiculous. Only a complete buffoon would do such a thing to such a deadly cargo, when they could just as easily land the helicopter to off-load. He caught Dilken's attention. "Tell the DAT to go!"
Dilken relayed the order.
"What the hell is going on?" Parker demanded.
Gereg was watching the action on the display and listening to the orders being given with growing alarm. "I think it's not developing exactly the way Hancock planned."
As the Apache and one of the Nighthawks raced off to the east, running down the Jet Ranger, the remaining Nighthawk halted above the place where the other chopper had hovered. The body of a man was clearly visible on the tracks below.
"I've got more bodies in the swamp." The copilot had a pair of thermal goggles on and he was scanning the area.
"Oh, shit," the senior man in the rear of the helicopter muttered. "Suit up!" he ordered. He keyed his radio. "We've got bodies here. Looks like a bio or chem weapon was used."
The director turned the seat slightly and stared at Hancock. "What's going on? I thought you said this was to be a transfer of VZ."
"It was." A nerve twitched on Hancock's left temple. "We've got it under control."
"Under control?" The director stared at Hancock. "If that report is right, VZ was just used!"
"The Apache will take out the chopper and the Nighthawk with it will secure the VZ. My other team will clear the site," Hancock said. "We can keep a lid on this."
"You'd better," the director warned.
One the blue-suited men peered through the plastic face mask at the display of the machine in his hand. The reading, along with the nature of the bodies, left no doubt aboutwhat had happened here. He had only seen this in a training lab at the army's Chemical Warfare Center on Johnston Atoll. And then the bodies had been monkeys.
"It's VZ!" he reported over the FM radio to the commander in the chopper hovering above. Two ropes, one from each side of the helicopter, dangled to the ground, where a half dozen men in environmental suits were combing the area.
"How hot?"
"We're clear now," the man reported. "VZ has a time on target of less than a minute."
"Stay suited and sealed," the commander warned.
"No shit," the man on the ground muttered as he dug the plastic toe into one of the bodies, noting the obvious signs of a painful death on the man's face. He pulled a small plastic container off his combat vest and sprinkled the powder inside over the body, covering it from head to toe. Then he pulled a thermite grenade off his vest, pulled the pin, and dropped it onto the body. With a hiss, the grenade began burning, igniting the powder, consuming flesh.
Twenty miles to the east, the Apache was closing on the Bell Jet Ranger, the Nighthawk right behind. The Apache pilot slid his finger over to the transmit button on his radio and the signal was relayed through the AWACS to Langley.
"We have visual on the target," he reported.
"Put it down," Hancock ordered.
The gunner, seated in front of the pilot, had several options with which he could follow out that order. Slaved to his helmet, the 30mm chain gun under the nose of the helicopter followed each movement of his head. He also had Hellfire missiles loaded in pods under the short, stubby wings that he could lock on target, fire, then forget about as they tracked whatever they had locked on to.
A small flip-down sight was over the gunner's left eye on which his firing data was displayed along with the crosshairs for target designation. He put the center over the rear of the Jet Ranger, his finger curling around the trigger for the 30mm cannon.
The gunner pulled back and the Apache vibrated from the recoil of the gun located just below the nose of the craft. A string of rounds crossed the distance between the two helicopters and ripped into the rear of the Jet Ranger.
"Target is down," the pilot reported as the Jet Ranger nosed over and smashed into the ground. A fireball consumed the wreckage and the Apache and Nighthawk came to a hover two hundred feet overhead.
Gereg turned off the computer feed from the Direct Action operations center. "He did it."
"What can we do?" Parker asked.
"The only thing we can do is throw ourselves on the mercy of the director," Gereg said. "With no proof, it isn't the recommended course of action." She shrugged. "But if we do nothing, you can be sure Hancock has more cards to play and I'd rather upset his timetable than let him play them when and where he wants."
She pointed at the folder. "If Mr. O'Callaghan is involved, he is the one who took a shot at Sergeant Major Dublowski at Camp Mackall. You can be sure that Hancock won't leave any loose ends."
"He's killed people," Parker said.
"We have no proof of that," Gereg reminded her. "I don't trust Hancock and I'm not even sure he's behind any of what has happened."
"I'm not going to sit by and do nothing," Parker said.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The magnesium burned hot, keeping the Nighthawk team from getting close to the remains of the Jet Ranger for over thirty minutes, even though they used fire extinguishers to put out most of the flames.
Working his way between the still-smoldering wreckage, the team leader approached the remains of the Jet Ranger's cabin. There were two bodies smashed up against the instrument panel, dark green flight helmets partially melted, flight suits charred black.
Using the tip of his MP-5 submachine gun, the team leader pried back the helmet on one of the bodies. The face revealed was battered and burned, but still recognizable. The team leader stared at it for a few seconds, then did the same to the second body.