Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (75 page)

 
          
“All
right,” Elliott said, “put it in your report, along with a plan on how to deal
with Salazar and his flyers and I’ll take it directly to the Vice President.
But no Lone Ranger operation against Salazar or Verrettes until we get the
word. We’d be defeating ourselves and the Hammerheads if we go off without
documented authorization. He paused, then asked, “How’s Sandra?”

 
          
“Hurting,
but I think she’s okay,” Hardcastle said. “The bullet didn’t penetrate the
Kevlar, and the steel shock plate minimized the impact injuries. She’s going to
have a bruise the size of
Pittsburgh
, but otherwise they say she’ll be fit for duty in a couple of days.”

 
          
“I
wish I had time to see her but I want to get this information to
Washington
soonest. Give her my best.” And he limped
out the door to his waiting plane.

 
          
Hardcastle
pounded a fist on the desktop and slumped in his chair. “What’s his problem?
When I first met the man he was all fire and gung-ho. Now, it seems he’s so
cautious about everything we do—”

 
          
“Not
so,” McLanahan said. “He believes in this organization. He knows he’d be responsible
if something he did undermined or destroyed—”

 
          
“But
he put together this Russian fighter routine in just a few hours . . .”

 
          
“After
he got the okay from the Vice President to execute. Believe me, he wants to get
these guys as badly as you do. But he doesn’t think with his gut, he thinks
with his brain—”

 
          
“Unless
the Veep blows in his ear,” Hardcastle murmured.

 
          
“Right.
And be glad of it. You saw the directive, the classified replies—you were in on
the paper trail, the planning and recovery operations. You think that was just
coincidence? Believe me, with his organization and resources he could have
destroyed
Haiti
and plenty more. He does it by the book, at least until the fight
starts.” McLanahan paused, a half-grin on his face. “After that he’s been known
to shake some people up.”

 
          
Hardcastle
still looked skeptical. “Well, Brad will be landing in
Washington
in about three hours,” he said. “By then I
need a plan to deal with this Salazar character. I’ve some ideas, now I just
have to flesh them out—”

 
          
“Let
me show you something I’ve come up with,” McLanahan said. “It will be tough and
risky, but I’ve seen too much amazing stuff in the past year to say anything is
impossible. J. C. Powell and I came up with some ideas flying back to the Zoo.
I told you, Powell can’t wait to get back at Salazar for that pig-sticker in
his arm. Anyway, I think we’ve hit on a way to take care of the fighters and
the air defense units so we can get a few AV-22’s in. After that we attack any
aircraft on the ground and get out of Dodge. I transcribed our notes into the
computer, we can access it—”

 
          
“Well,
what are we waiting for?” Hardcastle broke in. “Let’s do it.”

 
          
The
intelligence-operations center at Aladdin City was a separate, smaller facility
than the master command-and-control center in which it was located, although
the tall, wide viewing windows with the one-way glass gave people in the center
a clear view of the three wall-sized computer monitors in the master command
center while those outside could not look in. Here in the soundproofed,
electronically sealed room, information from federal, military and worldwide
police intelligence-gathering units was assembled, analyzed, and presented to
tactical commanders and field units. The room had space to brief several dozen
persons—even benches and weapons lockers for military personnel. It was
the
place to plan a strike mission.

 
          
McLanahan
double-checked the security of the center’s doors and windows, then activated
the computer database and unlocked his data-storage area. “As I said,” he
began, “those fighters at Verrettes are our biggest worry. We assumed that they
had four MiGs and four Mirages there. With four missiles and three hundred
rounds of ammo per fighter, and all dead-eye shots, each fighter could destroy
up to eighty aircraft ...”

 
          
“So
we’d need at least sixty-four aircraft to counter their fighters?” Michael
Becker asked. “We don’t have that many AV-22s . . .”

 
          
“No
we don’t, but we do have that many Seagull drones.”

 
          
“You’re
going to send in
drones?”

 
          
“It’s
what the drones were designed for in the first place,” McLanahan said.
“High-speed surveillance, reconnaissance and attack against heavily defended
targets. We’ve got the means of controlling an entire flight of Seagull drones
from a single Hawkeye radar plane or from an aerostat radar-data link towed
from a Hammerheads cutter. We send in the Seagulls to lure the fighters out,
and then engage them. They’ll waste a lot of their fuel and weapons on the
drones, I hope. When they go back to refuel we hit them on the ground. We use
the drones, Seagulls or Sky Lions, to map out where their air-defense units are
deployed, then take them out with small, mobile ground troops or tactical air
attacks. Once we offset their fighters’ effectiveness and take out their
air-defense systems, we or whatever unit we link up with should be able to move
in on Verrettes.”

 
          
They
put the file material into one encrypted data file, formatted for high-speed
transmission, and less than two hours after locking themselves into the Zoo’s
intelligence center Hardcastle hit the XMIT button on the electronic
computer-data transceiver and sent the document, complete with
computer-generated maps and estimates, to the facsimile machine on board
Elliott’s Border Security Force jet heading to Andrews Air Force Base near
Washington, D.C.

 
          
“It’s
a risky plan,” Hardcastle admitted, “but it might just work. It depends on how
fired-up these pilots of Salazar’s get when they see us coming.”

 
          
McClanahan
nodded. “Their alert birds, the two MiGs and probably the two Mirages will be
airborne and gunning for us when we get inside of fifty miles of their base.
Those pilots are good—I can attest to that. They might have put their planes on
round-the-clock alert after our little visit today, in which case they’ll
launch when they see us heading toward them . . . It’ll be no picnic.”

 
          
Becker
reported to the duty controller that he was on his way to the Hammerhead One
platform for the start of his twelve-hour shift—which because of the attack on
GefiFar would probably grow to a full-day shift. Hardcastle logged off-duty on
the computer terminal and punched in his pocket phone’s number for the
computerized message center. Like McLanahan he had been on duty for well over
twenty-four hours; he was bone-tired and was going “home”—in this case, out to
the Hammerhead Two platform—to get some rest before . . . before the next
crisis. “I hope they do come for us,” Hardcastle said as he left the office
with the young navigator.

 
          
“They
will—they won’t be able to stop themselves,” McLanahan said, then added, “of
course, the first person to shoot us down may very well be the President of the
United
States
.”

 
          
It
was nearly dark outside when the evening AV-22 shuttle flight arrived from the
Hammerhead Two platform. Hardcastle watched the off-going crew exit the plane,
the ground crew refuel and service the big tilt-rotor aircraft, and watched the
night-shift flight crews change over, all the time eyeballing the amazing Sea
Lion aircraft with undisguised awe. This particular bird was used mainly as a
crew shuttle and cargo carrier—its Sea Stinger missile and thirty-millimeter
cannon pods had been removed to make room for more airliner-style seats and
cargo—but, Hardcastle thought, it was still a deadly yet beautiful work of
flying art. Even with the ominous-looking FOLLOW ME signs, the infrared scanner
ball under the nose and the steerable searchlights poking out in every
direction, it was still beautiful.

 
          
At
a PA announcement from the crew chief, the on-going crew began filing into the
Sea Lion and Hardcastle followed along, noting the surprised expressions on the
crewmen’s faces at seeing the platform commander riding along with them. The
Sea Lion could carry twenty-four passengers in relative comfort in the thinly
padded seats, plus a three- or four-person flight crew and a few thousand
pounds of cargo in the rear; at times the Sea Lion would also sling a
ten-thousand-pound pallet of supplies or fuel bladders underneath on the cargo
hooks along with full interior cargo. The cargo bay’s insulation and
soundproofing—plus the fact that the engines and rotors were way out on the
wingtips instead of directly overhead as on a regular helicopter—made the
interior noise level easily tolerable.

 
          
The
night crew on both platforms was usually the most upbeat, high-spirited group
of the two shifts, since this was when most of the serious no-shit intercepts
occurred. Despite the stringent crackdowns by the Hammerheads, a few daredevil
smugglers still tried to sneak past the sophisticated radar cordons—at night
when they believed their chances were better—and were usually apprehended by
night crews. Crews were, therefore, rotated about once every three or four
weeks to give everyone a chance to prosecute an intercept. This night shift was
in particularly good spirits, and Hardcastle worked to try to make himself as
inconspicuous as possible during the flight.

 
          
He
was offered one of the front starboard side-seats, coveted most by the
passengers because of the big observation window on the right entranceway door
and because it was close to the galley and the coffee pot; but he gave it up to
one of the newcomers on the night shift and took one of the backseats near the
aft-cargo ramp. He wadded up a spare jacket as a pillow and quickly fell asleep.
It was one of the few times he had ever sat in the back of a Sea Lion: usually,
by right of rank or position, he claimed at least the instructor pilot’s jump
seat and usually managed to get in some stick time. He didn’t waste one minute
of the forty-minute flight out to the platform—he pulled his seat belt tight,
turned off the overhead light and was sound asleep before the hybrid
airplane-chopper leveled off at eight thousand feet five minutes later.

 
          
Dozing
ofif, he had an intimation that his dreams would be disturbing, and he was
right on target. He dreamed that he and not J. C. Powell had gone on that
mission to Verrettes, and worse, that he couldn’t keep his cool as well as the
young Air Force pilot had. He’d been shot down by Salazar’s men, and McLanahan
had been taken out of the rear cockpit of the Sukhoi-27 and shot after he,
Hardcastle, spoke English to him and gave him away. He saw this Salazar as a
giant skull-headed figure with blazing red eyes, bony fingers and a black cloak
who recognized Hardcastle right away and ordered his execution. He tried to
make a run for the Sukhoi, to get out and warn the Hammerheads, but no matter
how hard he tried, Salazar was right there, eyes blazing red, a huge knife
clutched in his fleshless hand. His feet moved in slow motion, bogged down by
sticky globs of blood from McLanahan’s battered body. The skull-faced
apparition hurled his knife, and it imbedded itself deep into his left arm,
making it go numb. He tried to pull the knife free but it stuck there—the
tighter he grasped the hilt the more it held on, threatening to saw off his
whole arm . . . Suddenly the sky was filled with fighters and bombers and
transports strafing and bombing the Hammerheads Two platform. Some of his
crewmen were running around the platform pointing to the sky and calling out to
him to stop the attacking planes but he could do nothing except try to pull the
stiletto from his arm. The skull-faced Salazar was close, in his face, telling
him to die like a man, let go of his miserable life, let go, let go . . .”

 
          
“Let
go, Admiral. C’mon, sir, wake up.”

 
          
Hardcastle’s
eyes snapped open. Lee Tanner, the oncoming duty controller on the Hammerhead
Two platform, had one hand around Hardcastle’s left arm, trying to shake him
awake, and Hardcastle had a tight grip around Tanner’s hand trying to pull it
off. Hardcastle was huddled down in his seat. He quickly uncoiled himself and
straightened up. “What the hell is it, Lee?”