“How long until linkup?” Duncan asked.
“Three hours for Alpha with the mothership. A half hour later for Bravo at the talon.”
Duncan watched the tower of fire go higher and higher.
CHAPTER 18
“Okay, okay,” Waker said as he read the intelligence request. He was pumped. He was hooked in to his electronic network, everything coming in and dancing in front of his eyes in letters and symbols his brain automatically translated.
“Perfect timing,” Waker muttered. The KH-12 had picked up the SATCOM transmission as it was being made. Within thirty seconds it had come up on Waker’s screen. And now, three minutes later, someone on the ground in South America wanted the location of the transmitter.
This time, though, he was talking direct back to the man in the field, and that gave Waker a rush. It was as close as he was ever going to get.
He typed, each finger slamming down on the key with authority.
TO: TURCOTTE
FROM: NSA ALPHA ONE ONE
TRANSMISSION SENT BY SAME SATCOM LOCATION UTM GRID 29583578
Waker hit the send button.
“We’ve got an AWACS on channel two,” the pilot of the bouncer informed Turcotte.
Putting a headset on, Turcotte switched to channel two. “This is Bouncer Two. Over.”
Circling two hundred miles to the northwest, just outside of the international boundary of Colombia, an Air Force plane was always on station, its mission to catch drug traffickers, part of an electronic wall put in place.
At 45,000 feet, over eight miles, above the Pacific, the Boeing E-3C Sentry AWACS — airborne warning and control system platform — could “paint” a picture of everything within a three-hundred-mile radius using the thirty-foot radome above the center of the fuselage.
Colonel Lorenz was the officer in charge (OIC) of the rear compartment. Most of his crew were veterans of the Gulf War and numerous missions over both the subsequent no-fly zone and this drug zone south of the United States. There was no real threat to the plane itself on this mission, but that didn’t mean Lorenz let things get slack as they “rode the southern fence,” as the drug mission was known among the AWACS crews.
Lorenz spoke into the boom mike in front of his lips as soon as he received acknowledgment. “Bouncer Two, this is AWACS Eagle. We have new coordinates for you.”
The point man stumbled and fell. Faulkener was quickly at his side. The man reached up, grabbing Faulkener’s arm.
“Damn!” Faulkener hissed as the man vomited over his arm.
Toland came up and looked at the man. He was a mercenary who had served with Toland for the last two years. “Can you go on?”
The man groaned and rolled on the ground. Faulkener stood, flicking his arm to shake off the black vomit.
Toland rubbed his forehead. He brought up the Sterling. The man raised an arm weakly. Toland fired twice, then his arms slumped to his side, the Sterling hanging by its sling.
“Let’s go.” Baldrick said.
Toland thought of the two dead drug runners in their poncho stretchers. Two million dollars. Would he make it out of here in time to buy help? “Let’s move.” As they went forward in the darkness, he noted that for the first time Faulkener had not added up their suddenly higher shares.
“Lock and load,” Turcotte yelled. The bouncer came in fast, the pilot using the craft’s superb turning capability to keep them just above the treetops.
In a small open area, less than a hundred meters short of the location they’d been given by the AWACS, the pilot touched down. Turcotte was out of the hatch, followed closely by Yakov and Kenyon. The bouncer lifted and hovered ten feet overhead.
Turcotte scanned the area, but he saw nothing. He began moving forward, and Yakov grabbed his arm.
“What’s up there?” Yakov was pointing with the muzzle of his MP-5 upslope at a tree that had been sheared off halfway up its trunk. Turcotte ran up the slope and crested it. A pile of twisted metal lay at the end of a trail of torn-up earth.
“The satellite,” Yakov said as he knelt next to the wreckage. The scene was lit by a bolt of lightning. Thunder rumbled a few seconds later.
Toland had his small band of survivors moving. He checked out the sky as everything was brilliantly lit. He’d seen this before. Heat lightning, soon to be followed by a torrential rain. Perfect. There was no way they would be found, no matter how close their pursuers were.
“Here!” Kenyon called out.
Turcotte ran over, the others following. A body lay in the grass. Yakov shined a light down and they immediately saw the blood and the bullet holes. But there was also the sign of the disease. Black welts crisscrossed the man’s exposed skin.
“We’re exposed,” Kenyon said.
“Everyone will be exposed sooner or later,” Turcotte said. He was tired of hiding in the suits. There was no way they were going to track down the source by hiding.
Turcotte looked out into the dark. The wind was picking up, and he could feel dampness being carried with it. “Weather’s changing,” he called out. “Back to the bouncer.”
CHAPTER 19
The pilot checked his map one last time, then carefully folded it so that the portion he needed was faceup. He used a band of elastic to attach it to his kneeboard. He had no electronic devices on board other than the engine, windshield wipers, and the rudimentary instrument panel, so this truly was going to be a seat-of-the-pants navigation job. He did have a small FM radio to be used to contact the people on the ground when he got close. The pilot was used to such missions and felt confident he could find the target runway. He looked like Baldrick’s brother — tall, his six-foot-two frame crammed into the cockpit, with straight blond hair and brilliant blue eyes.
He’d been waiting here for two days, the aircraft — a specially designed, top-secret prototype named the Sparrow — under camouflage nets at a deserted airstrip as close as he could get to the target area without actually entering the suspected infected zone.
He flicked the on switch and the engine coughed once, then smoothly started. It was a specially designed rotary engine, quieter than a conventional piston engine and mounted directly behind the cockpit in a large bubble. The propeller shaft extended forward from the engine, over the pilot’s head to the high-mounted propeller, supported by a four-foot pylon mounted on the nose. The long shaft allowed a high reduction ratio for the prop, and the very large blades — over eight feet long — turned very slowly. The resulting sound was no louder than a moderate wind blowing through the trees.
The Sparrow was made by a South African company off of designs stolen from Lockheed’s Q-Star (Quiet Star) program. The company was a subsidiary of Terra-Lei. The entire aircraft was designed with two factors in mind: reduced noise and radar signature. It wasn’t built for speed or endurance, but the target was only sixty miles away. The pilot knew he would be there in less than forty minutes.
The runway was dirt, and the rain had further complicated what was going to be a difficult takeoff with no lights. The pilot released the brakes and the plane began rolling. Peering through the Plexiglas with his night-vision goggles, the pilot ignored the sweep of the wipers and concentrated on staying straight. In two hundred feet he had sufficient speed and pulled back on the yoke, lifting off. As soon as he cleared the trees, he turned due west.
Colonel Lorenz had moved the AWACS until they were now farther south along the coast, opposite Peru. The only aircraft on his screens was moving in this direction, because he had ordered it to.