"You can't do it. It's suicide." He paused, studying his electronic visor and downlinking the status of Patrick's battle armor system. "You only have ten minutes of power remaining, and that'll get sucked away fast inside that inferno. My power is down to three minutes. Let's go back to the exfil point and recharge the suits. By then, maybe the fire will have been knocked back, and we can all go in and find Paul."
"No. I'm going in."
"How are you going to find him in thatT
"I don't know, but I'll find him." Patrick didn't know what was guiding him-it wasn't any sensor scan or transponder beacon. He had always believed there was some sort of bond, like a telepathic link, between him and Paul, but it was something he always dismissed as simply two guys being raised together in a house full of women. Whatever it was, Patrick was relying on it now. As Hal Briggs and the amazed and terrified Libyan soldiers looked on, Patrick jet-jumped into the hellish flames.
System warnings flashed in his electronic visor, and his skin felt as if it was going to vaporize right off his body, but he kept going. Moving inside the fire was actually easier than he had thought. His battle armor's sensors detected any large debris around him, so he was able to sidestep the pieces of vehicles and buildings without walking into a burning trap. The multiple blasts had leveled most everything, so all he had to do was avoid the larger pools of burning rocket fuel and continue on. Three or four jumps, and he was in the center of the inferno.
His power was nearly gone. The last estimate he had was five minutes remaining, but the estimate just a minute before that said ten minutes, so in reality he had only a few minutes to get out before the battle armor completely shut down. Patrick knew if that happened, he would be instantly baked alive inside the armor like a potato in a microwave oven-crispy on the outside, well-done on the inside.
One more jump, and he found him-or, rather, what was left of him. Patrick could only stare at his brother, not in horror but in sorrow. He had to have been right atop the SS-12 when it detonated, because the blast had torn right through the Tin Man battle armor. It had been all but peeled off his body, stuck on here and there like clumps of dirt. The intense fires had taken care of the rest. Patrick lifted the body of his younger brother as gently and as completely as he could, then jetted away to the east vlarthe shortest way out of the flames.
The Libyans were getting meaner and bolder now. As Patrick jump-jetted again just a few dozen yards from the perimeter fence, he felt heavy-caliber bullets hitting him from his sides and back. He had commanded the selfdefense electrical beams not to fire to save energy, but his power was all but exhausted. One more jet propelled him over the fence, and the last of his energy reserves drained away.
The fence kept him and the Libyans separated for now, but that didn't last long. Already troops were streaming out, angry voices piercing the night sky, drowning out even the roar of the huge fires behind them. Their blood lust was evident-they were out for revenge and retribution, not capturing prisoners. Patrick had nothing left with which to fight. He could not avoid capture now….
Suddenly, there was a string of explosions between him and the advancing Libyans, stirring up the desert floor like an instant sandstorm. Without the protection of his fully charged armor, Patrick was knocked off his feet as he was pelted with supersonic-blasted sand and rock. Stunned, he lay on the desert floor, knots of pain dotting all around his body. Writhing in pain, he saw the dark profile of his dead brother lying beside him. Both McLanahans, killed in one day, on the same mission. Shit.
He heard a loud roar and felt, rather than saw, more sand being kicked up. The Libyans were closing in, this time with helicopters or armored vehicles, hunting down Wohl and Briggs. The mission was a success, but they might all be wiped out, Patrick thought wearily. Once captured, their bodies put on display along with the remnants of their armor, the Night Stalkers would be dead, the United States would be embarrassed again, and…
"Patrick?" He willed his eyes to open and was surprised when they worked. He was looking directly at the alienlooking helmet worn by Hal Briggs. "You okay, man?"
"Am I shot?"
"You sure as shit got fragged pretty good by the Gators, but I don't see any holes," Briggs said. Patrick moved his arms and legs and found they all functioned, so he struggled to his feet. "Wendy sent in FlightHawk Two right in the nick of time, and she laid down a carpet of cluster bombs and mines right in front of about a hundred Libyan regulars. The armor protected you from the fragments. We're safe right now, but we gotta move." Briggs quickly got to work, snapping a fresh battery pack onto Patrick's backpack. He looked down, examining the body lying in the sand. "You got Paul out. Good work. I'm so sorry, my friend. I'm gonna miss working with him. He's a hero."
Patrick reached for the secure latches to his helmet, but Briggs stopped him. "Better not, man," he said seriously. "FlightHawk One has detected radioactive and chemical agents in the area." He motioned toward the Libyan soldiers lying dead in the aftermath of FlightHawk Two's raid. "If the mines hadn't got them, the radioactivity or nerve agents would have. That replacement battery pack should give you enough juice to hop out of here and be far enough away for the Pave Hammer to safely pick us up. We'd better go."
Patrick nodded, thankful to be alive. The noise Patrick heard was not a Libyan helicopter or tank, but the CV-22 Pave Hammer, making a high-speed pass over the area to check for pursuit. He reached down to pick up his brother again, but Chris Wohl carefully, gently pushed him away, and picked up Paul's body. Together the three commandos and their dead partner jetted eastbound into the desert.
They unearthed one of their prepositioned resupply caches a few minutes later. Fifteen minutes later they were far enough away so that radioactive and chemical weapon residue levels disappeared. Only then could the CV-22 land and extract them, first eastward into Egypt and then northwest out over the Mediterranean Sea.
It was a long, sad, quiet flight back to the Catherine.
"What in hell are you whining about now, Zuwayy?" the Russian shouted on the secure satellite channel. "This had better be important."
"My missile base at Samah was attacked and nearly destroyed by commandos! American commandos!" President Jadallah Salem Zuwayy of Libya shouted in passable Russian. He was wearing a polyester blue and red warmup suit, with no shoes-the clothes that had been thrown to him as his security officers burst into his bedroom and snatched him literally out of bed into a waiting helicopter. At first, he thought it was an assassination squad-rampant fear was finally being replaced with white-hot anger as he realized he was safe. "They have set eighteen of the missiles on fire! There are nerve agents and radioactive materials spreading all across my desert!"
"Zakroy yibala! Shut your fucking mouth and stop blabbering on this line!" the voice shouted back. "This may be a secure channel, but if the Americans are indeed running an operation on you, they may have figured out how to crack the encryption codes. After all, they built the system we are using."
"Did you hear what I said, tovarisch!" Zuwayy retorted. "I am under attack! Thousands of square kilometers of my desert have been contaminated! Hundreds of my soldiers are dead! And the Americans certainly know all about those missiles and where I got them!"
"They know nothing of the sort," Pavel Gregorevich Kazakov responded. Kazakov was sitting at a desk in a small, private apartment in Akranes, Iceland, a few kilometers north of the capital Reykjavik, sipping a cup of tea that an assistant had just fixed for him. His aide, a beautiful young Russian former army officer named Ivana Vasilyeva, deputy chief of staff to the former chief of staff of the army of the Russian Federation-who was just as talented on the pistol range and in a judo dojo as she was in bed-set a tray of sweet rolls and honey on the desk, gave Pavel an enticing smile, then departed. "If they knew anything at all, they would have destroyed the entire base. Just a few commandos-they could have come from anywhere-Israel, Algeria, even your so-called allies Sudan and Syria. Now, shut up and calm yourself."