I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (27 page)

Emily circled them around the back of the grove of trees. She hated this. Far too many things could go wrong, already had gone wrong.

A downed jet in the middle of the desert could be written off as an accident. One parked on the tarmac with two head-shot pilots aboard couldn’t be so easily ignored. The heat that would land on them would be horrendous. Any attempt to fly home, day or night, was going to be ugly beyond imagining.

She’d had Archie bounce a call to the Hawkeye observer. He’d explained their plan briefly. And all she’d gotten back was, “Abort at pilot’s discretion.”

Completely useless. If she aborted now, she’d hit daylight an hour and a half before she hit the border. So, they’d have an international incident, right before these two goons started the next world war.

Lousy option.

She slid over the tops of the trees and found a hole to settle into. Trees blocked the view on three sides. A barn blocked the view straight ahead. Off to the right, through a gap in the trees, what had appeared to be a small house on the aerial photo was actually three hovels.

What they needed was a squad of D-boys. What they had were four Night Stalkers and a little girl.

Emily cycled down the engine quickly. She’d debated about keeping it hot and ready to go, but they needed to hear. And they didn’t want to attract more attention than they already had.

Kee, Big John, and Archie spilled out the doors and moved toward the hovels, rifles at the ready. Less than one more hour of dark. They had to secure the helicopter and then move Kee five miles northwest to the airstrip.

Emily dropped to the ground and hurried to catch up with them. They were moving ahead in two-by-two formation. Archie and Kee rushing ahead, then squatting with weapons raised. She and John rushed by and did the same behind minimal cover.

In two minutes they’d surrounded the first building. In thirty seconds more they’d confirmed the three small rooms were empty and moved to the next.

At the next, she could smell last night’s cooking. A sharp tang of a curry still lingered in the still air. At a window, Archie popped his head up for a moment then ducked back down. He held up four fingers and pointed where they were, huddled in a corner. The night wasn’t cold, they were probably awake and afraid. The Hawk was quiet for what it was but still made a huge racket on a quiet country night. That fear could work to their advantage, getting everyone to hide in the same place.

Emily pointed at Big John, then made a slashing motion toward the third building. The moment he moved, the sharp crack of a bullet passed by her head.

“Close. Damn close,” one part of her mind thought. The other part dived and rolled behind a water trough.

John hit the dirt, but his roll showed he hadn’t been hit.

Kee knelt with her rifle pointed back in the direction of fire. Even as Emily looked over, a spray of muzzle-blast shimmered forth from the point of her barrel. The loud crack was followed by a very abrupt and brief scream.

“Go! Go! Go!” Emily shouted. They rolled into the house as one. Emily and John securing the startled family, a boy, two women, and a couple girls, who were indeed huddled together in one corner cowering. Kee’s attention remained out the door, she knelt in a marksman’s squat, her rifle still aimed and ready. Her position mostly shielded by the doorjamb.

Big John checked the back two rooms. Everyone was in here.

Everyone except Archie.

***

Archie leaned against the wall below the window and did his best not to breathe, because the whole breathing thing didn’t feel good at all. Not in the least. Nope. He’d just lie here for a while. Maybe it was just shock. He’d been shot a couple of times before. The armor in his flight suit had always deflected it. Afterward you were numb and sore from the impact.

When Kee had wrenched his shoulder, that had hurt, too.

This hurt worse.

He really wished Kee were here. She’d know what to do.

A face loomed up out of the dark in front of him.

She couldn’t hide from him that easily. Helmet, safety goggles, chin strap, flight suit, and enough gear to hide Helen of Troy couldn’t hide his gal.

“Hi, Helen.”

“Who the hell is Helen?” She knelt and began poking him.

“You are. My own personal Helen of Troy.”

“Can you move?”

“Don’t know. That was seriously loud, Helen. Wow!”

“I have to move you.”

Before he could protest, she had him by the harness and was dragging him around the corner and into the house.

“Where are you hit? Where?”

Suddenly two lights were dancing over him. His vision was clearing, until someone shone a light in his eyes.

“Ow! Cut that out!”

Emily whistled low. “Look!”

Both lights focused on his face.

“Ow! I—” One of them knelt on his chest. Hard.

“Be still!” Kee. Of course. His own personal mistress of pain.

She unclipped his helmet and slid it free. She tipped his head to the side.

“Hey, Emily?” Her voice, he couldn’t read his condition in her voice.

“What? Am I hit? How bad? Is there an entry wound?”

Kee clapped a hand over his mouth as she drawled, “Emily, you got a Band-Aid on you?”

The Major opened a pouch on the front of her vest and handed one over with a tube of salve. The salve was cool on his temple, though it stung like a son of a bitch.

Then Kee taped it.

He sat up as Kee dropped back onto her butt. “How bad?”

Emily handed him his helmet.

It took a moment, but he found the bullet’s path. A deep crease through the foam alongside his temple, a tiny tear in the fabric. He ran a hand across the back of the helmet and found a distinct bump where the bullet had lodged.

He laughed. It was half a choke, but he laughed. So did the others, though they were all shaky. They sounded almost as relieved as he did.

Then Kee went white as a sheet, turned for the corner and barfed her guts out.

***

Archie looked around the main room of the little building. A single chair, father’s place of honor, probably. A low table. A few belongings and a dirt floor. A woman and three children crouched in the corner whimpering with fear. He would too if he were sitting at the wrong end of Major Beale’s carbine.

“Where’s Dilya?”

“Waiting at the chopper or I’ll skin her alive.” Kee’d found her voice, though she didn’t move from where she’d been sick.

Archie looked to the door as Dilya slipped in from the dark night and stood in the shadows. Had she seen him shot? A new nightmare for her, or just another body in her world filled with death? Maybe he’d rather not know.

John came in right behind her hauling a thin man by one arm. A battered Russian SKS rifle with a shattered stock in his other hand.

He flung the man toward the cowering family. He fell to the dirt floor even as the family gathered him in. He nursed a hand that the older woman started binding in a bit of rag. John brushed her aside and opened his med kit to tend the man’s wound.

“You shot him in the rifle, Kee. I think you dislocated two of his fingers because he tried to hold on too tight. Good thing he had it across his chest or you’d have drilled him in the heart. How do you do that kinda shit?”

“We’re running out of time here, folks.” Major Beale had her rifle casually aimed toward the cowering family to cover John. “So, what’s the plan, Lieutenant?” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the whimpering of the family.

Archie didn’t have much of a plan. Well, no plan at all really. If his head would just stop ringing, maybe he could come up with one. Until then, they’d do what came next and he’d keep hoping he didn’t run out of next steps.

“Kee, go get your sniper’s rifle from the chopper. John, Major, check the third building. Dilya.”

Kee spun to face the girl. Then she blanched white, and leaned back hard against the wall. She probably would have gone to the ground without the support of her flight suit.

“Come here, girl.” Archie waved her over.

“You talk?” And he pointed to the family whose worried tones were reaching clamorous in the small space.

At her first words, they went quiet. The eldest woman answered her quietly as the rest of the crew slipped back into the night. The father, recovering from his shock, took over the conversation. He and Dilya back-and-forthed a couple of times in a rolling lilt of Uzbek that picked up to normal conversation speed in moments.

“The Kee make father ouch. All dogs here.”

The man spoke some more.

“Father tell me story.”

“Story?” he asked as much to fill the time as from any understanding. He really needed to think of a plan.

“Story. Like I tell to Winnie-ther-Pooh. Him that kind of bear.”

Archie looked up at her, but her face looked absolutely serious in the dim spill of the flashlight he had laid on the floor.

Kee must be teaching her English from
Winnie-the-Pooh.
He wondered how far they’d gotten.

“What story?”

“Father know only one reason to make buzzing noise.”

Buzzing noise. Bees. Bees had made buzzing noise for Winnie. Bees or helicopters.

“What did father know about buzzing noise?”

“Bad men. Uzbek men.”

Government men. Great. The father had shot Archie and then nearly been killed by Kee because he thought they were government oppressors.

“Tell them to be quiet and relax.”

“Quiet. Relax.” Dilya said the words slowly, trying on the sounds, her hands fluttered before her as if testing the shape of them. Clearly she didn’t know what they meant.

Major Beale ducked back through the door with Big John close behind. “House and trench are clear, how’s the patient?”

“The man thought we were Uzbekistani raiders. Trying to defend his family.”

“How do you know that?”

“Dilya talked to them. Now let me think.”

He checked his watch. Not enough time. Even at a run.

“We really need a car or truck.”

“There’s one in the barn.”

“Excellent. Major, you and Dilya keep an eye on the family and an ear on the radio. If we scream, you may need to come and get us. And if we don’t scream…” He didn’t finish the sentence and Emily’s nod was tight, as if her neck wasn’t working quite right.

She nodded her understanding and her face made her thoughts easy to read. If they cried for help in daylight, Emily would come, but they’d all be dead before nightfall if not inside the hour. If they didn’t call, the results might well be the same.

“John, go see if you can start the truck. Then get a camouflage net over the Hawk as well as you can. You need to be back here, inside this house before sunrise. Clear?”

He nodded and headed out the door.

Kee entered even as John left. This time, her Heckler and Koch sniper rifle hung over her shoulder. Her carbine still dangled from her hand.

“Come on, Kee. We’ve got to scramble.”

She knelt down and hugged Dilya close for a moment then pointed to Dilya, to the Major, and then emphatically at the ground.

Dilya nodded understanding.

Didn’t mean that Archie wouldn’t be watching carefully to make sure they didn’t acquire a Dilya-sized shadow. He scrubbed a hand over the girl’s head and ruffled her hair enough to completely hide her face. Kee brushed it aside.

“Kee
qilmoq
dogs dead. Good?” Kee was asking the girl’s permission. She was so good with children. She’d be a natural mother one day. That would probably shock her to know, but he didn’t doubt it for a second. Assuming they got out of this one.

Archie could read the grim set of the girl’s jaw as she thought about her answer. He had to turn away. So young, yet she’d learned to kill, or at least thirst for it.

His gaze landed on a large wooden chest. Flipping up the lid, he unearthed a pile of clothes. The father started to protest, but then eyed the Major’s carbine that had swung to aim right between his eyes. He settled quickly enough.

The men’s shirt would never fit over his vest, but the loose
hajib
went on easily enough. He and Kee had to dump their helmets to pull on scarves, but they were able to keep most of their gear hidden. Maybe they could just stroll back to the hut in broad daylight.

Emily was grinning at him dressed up as an Arab woman. She controlled her expression quickly, then offered him a salute.

He returned it, hoping it wasn’t the last time he ever saw her. Her face sobered as she clearly had the same thought.

He and Kee turned for the door as he heard a truck roar to life in the barn.

“You’re driving.” Archie closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. His temple throbbed to remind him how close he had just come to dying.

“I have a headache.”

***

Dilya grabbed The Kee’s sleeve before she could leave. She had never seen The Kee kill before. But she had been in the dark, a dozen paces behind and listening when the father had shot the String Man. Only Dilya had seen him fall.

She’d opened her mouth to scream and then remembered. Her mother had screamed when the two Dogs shot her father. They’d struck her, shouted at her, but she wouldn’t stop. They had shot her to make her silent.

The Kee had turned so fast. The Kee had shot so fast. Dilya hadn’t had time to blink between the String Man being hit and The Kee shooting the father.

The family who knelt and shook in fear beside her had almost lost their father. If The Kee had, would they now hate The Kee? Hate her the way she hated Dog One and Dog Two?

Maybe. But the father had shot at the String Man with a gun. Her own parents had had no guns. No food. No water.

She tugged once more on Kee’s sleeve until she knelt again.

“Dilyana say Good.”

The Kee nodded. Clear-eyed. Nodded. Then rose and walked into the night.

Dilyana would wait. The Kee always came back. She hoped. She didn’t want to live with this family that shot people in the dark.

In the barn they found an old Russian truck, John under the hood. Even as they inspected it, the engine settled, ran smoother. A flatbed good for hauling hay, no doors or windshield, but the tires were wide and had large if worn tread. Should be okay on the sandy soil.

Now they were in business. Kee handed Archie her H&K sniper rifle, which he propped between his knees as Kee shoved the truck into gear. John dropped the hood and sprinted off to cover the helicopter with a camouflage net.

“We have half an hour to first light. Absolute maximum of an hour until they fly.”

He was talking to her but she had to concentrate to make sense of the words. He’d been a half inch from death. Less.
Focus, Kee, goddamn it. Focus
.

She got the old truck rolling and turned it down the track along the narrow tree line that wandered north and west. Must be a stream running along here whenever they received any rain.

She held her breath as she decided to risk second gear. It was rough, clearly little used, but it ground into place. The truck picked up speed from a fast trot to a solid run.

“So, Kee. How do you want to play this?” The trees ran out. In the dim headlights, she could still make out the streambed, so she followed that.

Nothing. She searched her head, but all she could see was Archie lying against the outside wall of the hut, clearly injured.

“It’s pretty flat out here.” Archie’s words were slowly coming into focus. “I’ve taken SERE, but I never took the sniper course. How do you hide on flat terrain?”

Kee looked up and out where the windshield was supposed to be, squinting at the landscape.

They crossed a dirt road. Kee was about to turn onto it when Archie spoke.

“Don’t. There’s another line of trees ahead. We’ll run north along that.”

Kee shifted back down to first as they crawled over the rough field. When they hit the tree line, which was actually a sandy ditch with tall bushes, they turned right.

“Cross it where you can. We need to be on the other side before we hit the irrigation channel.”

The truck wallowed but made it through.

Kee knew that Archie had only about fifteen seconds to memorize the map back at the Hawk. She’d had about the same when she went back for her weapon. She’d seen the layout and the distance to the airfield. It was all a blur. Archie had seen a tactical landscape to be crossed. She’d only seen the vast expanse of flat all around the runway. How was she to get close enough for the kill shot?

“At the channel, about five hundred meters, turn left.”

His voice. She’d just focus on his voice. Keep listening to that.

“Hurry.”

She spared a glance at the night sky. Still dark, but the fainter stars were disappearing.

She took the left and continued. Rough or not, she put it in second and stayed there. Thankfully there was a trail along the channel. More a wide goat path than a road, but the truck tackled it gamely enough. They were moving faster than a dead run. Not much, but enough to matter.

“In another mile, you’ll run into a cross ditch. Drive down into it.”

The edge was so abrupt that Kee almost went down into it unintentionally. Only by standing on the brakes and stalling the engine did she manage to stay out of it.

“We won’t get out of that.”

“Do it. Then turn left at the bottom.”

“But…” Kee checked the compass in her head. “Left is away from the airfield.”

“I know. Do it.”

She took a deep breath. They were now operating within Archie’s specialty, not her own. She hated the out-of-control feeling, but you had to trust your team.

The engine fired off very reluctantly, she nudged the truck over the edge and down the steep bank. It was deeper than it looked, turning left trickier than it sounded. By what miracle she avoided rolling the truck, she didn’t know, but it stayed upright.

They rode in silence for another hundred yards.

“Kill it.”

Kee stopped the truck. “If I shut off the engine, it doesn’t sound as if it will restart.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t need it again.”

Kee looked out the side where the truck doors should have been. Only a few feet to either side rose the banks of the ditch. The truck would be well hidden from the fields above. It was aimed away from the air base and had been driven that direction. So if someone did find it, they’d look south, not north toward the air base. Smart.

“How are we getting home? Never mind.” If they were alive, they were walking. Four, maybe five miles back up the irrigation channel. They’d only used the truck because they were out of time.

“Let’s go.” Kee was speaking to herself. Archie had already jumped out of the truck. Kee checked that they’d left no clues behind and jumped down herself.

He was already trotting up the ditch. Kee recognized the pace, not the fastest, but a steady mile-eater that you could run for hours if need be. She fell in behind Archie wondering at that. Time was essential. Why not a full run?

Another piece of her training clicked in. Even more essential than time would be getting Kee into position and still physiologically able to fire. That’s why the fast jog-trot.

In a mile, they turned left and followed a hedgerow.

Her nerves were sparking. She unslung her SCAR rifle and kept checking behind them. No one. Not even a rooster yet, though a faint lightness now sketched the entire horizon in that shimmer of predawn light.

Archie stopped so abruptly that Kee almost ran into his back.

“What?” She had to gasp it out between breaths.

Archie squatted and pointed, barely breathing hard. She had to get control of herself. She was breathing wrong, running wrong.

Ahead of them lay Karshi-Khanabad Air Base. No runway lights, all silhouette and shadow. A long strip of runway. On the far side, the rounded mounds of the hardened hangars rose almost like Hobbit hills. As her eyes adjusted, she made out the smaller shapes. Dozens, maybe hundreds of jet fighters were parked along the taxiways.

And she’d suggested shooting down one in the air? Why had anyone listened to her? If they’d followed the original plan and done that, they’d have faced a hundred fighters so fast they’d have died on the spot. Even if
Viper
were still with them.

Kee swallowed hard.

At the last report Major Henderson was safely south of the border and limping his way home. Her own chances were feeling less certain with each moment.