“The Sudanese army is sending helicopters to attack us,” he said loudly. He turned around. “They’re two minutes away!”
“This is a trap!” yelled Red Henri. “I’ll kill you all before I kill them.”
He threw the microphone aside and underlined his thoughts by picking up his rifle and firing through the window.
26
Blemmyes Village, Sudan
NURI WALKED AROUND THE BACK OF THE BARN. THERE WERE several windows, but all opened into small rooms protected by motion detectors.
The motion detectors worked by sensing infrared energy in front of them. He had a can of compressed air he could use to temporarily freeze the sensors, but to use it he’d have to get relatively close and move very slowly. And only one of the rooms looked vulnerable.
“What we want to do,” said Hera as he stared through the window, “is go through the wall.”
“We can open the windows,” said Nuri, confused by what she was saying, “but once we’re in the room, getting close to the sensor is tough. I need a much longer pipe, and we have to cool it down. It may be better to just bag it tonight and come back.”
“We go through the wall where the detector is,” she told him. “We stay behind it.”
“How?”
“The detector in that room is in the corner,” she said, pointing to the window at the extreme right of the building. “We get past that, and we’re in.”
“Assuming there’s no detectors on the other side.”
“Why would they bother putting one inside if they have the perimeter guarded?” said Hera.
“All right. But how do we get through the wall?”
“They’re just metal panels. Screwed in. Look.”
Hera leaned against the side and put her thumb into one of the small boltlike sheet metal screws that secured the panel to its post. The screw, barely three-eighths of an inch long, popped out within a few turns.
“It’s junk. Some idiot tried to sell my dad a building like this when I was a kid. He laughed.”
They got out their screwdrivers and went to work. The panel was roughly three feet wide by ten feet long; the last six screws were too high for either of them to reach. They tried pulling the panel up as if it were a hinge. But the metal was too stiff to bend without a great deal of pressure, and Nuri realized that if he bent it, he was unlikely to get it back properly; the penetration would be noticed.
“I’ll have to boost you up,” said Nuri reluctantly. “Put your foot in my hands.”
“That won’t work. You’re too short.”
“You’re not exactly the Jolly Green Giant.”
“I’ll have to climb on your back.”
Nuri couldn’t think of an alternative. He leaned toward the building, bracing himself. “Take off your shoes,” he told her as she lifted her foot. “I don’t want them in my back.”
“Oh, don’t be a baby.”
She planted her boot on the small of his back and lifted herself up. He was a wobbly ladder.
“Hold still, damn it. I can’t get the screwdriver in.”
Even standing on Nuri’s shoulders, Hera could barely reach the last two screws. She raised herself as high as she could on her tiptoes, leaning awkwardly and holding onto the edge of the panel as she undid the screw. The panel slipped when she took out the next to last one and she started to lose her balance. She grabbed the panel, trying to hold on. The small screw gave way and she tumbled down, smacking Nuri in the head with the metal as she fell. He grabbed it, keeping it from crashing, but then spun and fell. Both of them tumbled to the ground in a pile, momentarily dazed.
“Ssssssh!” hissed Hera.
Nuri cursed angrily, but softly. He got up and examined his arm—bruised but not hurt too badly.
The room was to the left, separated from the panel they had removed by an interior wall, whose stud they had revealed by pulling away the metal. A hallway sat in front of them. Nuri increased the magnification on his glasses, making sure there were no sensors guarding it. There weren’t.
The panels were fixed to the barn’s structural posts by a network of narrow one by ones. The wood members were too close together for either of them to squeeze past. Nuri pushed against one; it gave way with a snap.
“You’re going to set off the alarm,” said Hera.
“There’s a wall between it and us. We’re good.”
“Well, be quiet, then.”
Nuri pushed at the next piece of wood, breaking it off, then slipped inside.
He stopped short. There was a video camera directly above his head, covering the hallway.
They must really have something to protect here, he thought. But what?
27
Murim Wap, Sudan
DANNY DOVE TO THE GROUND AS RED HENRI BEGAN FIRING. Within seconds soldiers on all three sides had begun blasting away. Both Colonel Zsar and Uncle Dpap shouted at their men to stop firing, but their voices were lost in the din.
Danny told the Voice to have two of the Catbirds strike in the space between the rebel groups, hoping to discourage Red Henri and give enough cover to Zsar and Dpap’s forces so they could retreat. The explosions only added to the confusion. Worried that the others would be overrun, Danny told the Voice to launch the remaining UAVs against the spearhead of Red Henri’s force as it rallied around the trucks. The four explosions crated six vehicles—but still didn’t calm the fighting.
“Captain!” yelled Boston over the radio, reverting to the title he had used for so long. “Where are you?”
“I’m here,” said Danny, pressing against the dirt. “The Sudanese have helicopters on the way. Somebody tipped them off. There are two gunships, four transports. You’re going to have to shoot the gunships down.”
“You sure you want to do that?” Boston asked.
“Do it.”
The choppers were already close enough to be heard over the gun battle. Boston jumped out of his truck and ran to the rear, throwing the door open as the firing continued. He pulled out a metal box about the size of a carry-on bag and opened it on the ground.
Danny and Nuri could have purchased a dozen SA-7 shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles in Ethiopia if they wished; they would have been more than adequate to deal with the choppers. But the Whiplash team’s hip-launched Rattlesnakes had a far greater range.
“Hip-launched” was a bit of a misnomer; the missile was typically fired from a standing position with the launcher about chest high, so the operator could sight the target on the display at the top of the launching unit. The description had been coined because the missile and launcher assembly were about a third the size of the SA-7 and other traditional shoulder-fired weapons.
The name Rattlesnake—officially the weapon was known as the AIM-19x—was a tribute to the Sidewinder family of air-launched missiles. The AIM-19x was a derivative of the late model Sidewinders, with a smaller warhead propelled at extremely high speeds by a two-stage rocket motor. The first stage, which included two sets of maneuverable fins and a variable thrust mechanism, brought the missile to its target. As the projectile was about to hit, the second stage ignited, pushing the warhead through with devastating effect.
The weapon was intended to be used primarily against helicopters, though the warhead was an equal opportunity shredder of engines and other metal. Besides its terminal velocity, the secret of its success was a guidance system that could home in on heat sources, electronic signatures, or a radar reflection—or all three simultaneously. Once locked and launched, the tiny chip that constituted its brain was smart enough to see through decoys, ignoring hotter heat sources if they did not correspond to the data picked up by the other detection methods. This made defensive flares—the most common antimissile defense—useless.