I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (28 page)

Kee focused on the terrain ahead and didn’t like what she saw. Not one bit. This sucked on so many levels.

Closing her eyes, she clamped her teeth down on the side of her tongue. The pain brought clarity and focus even as it brought the taste of blood. She’d been clamping down since the moment she’d seen Archie leaning against the wall calling her Helen of Troy through a haze of shock. She knew her nerves were shot, and now it was all up to her.

Focus, damn it.
She pulled her rifle off Archie’s shoulder and removed the caps from the scope. She’d mounted the day scope when she’d grabbed the rifle. There was just enough light to see.

They were atop a nice rise, well hidden but much too far from the airfield. The hedgerow they’d been following curved away to the left. Where she’d expected to see another irrigation ditch, she saw a wall. The satellite photo had shown a geometric line, just like the ditches. And she hadn’t had time to inspect it more carefully. A dozen feet high and nearly as wide, built of concrete and stone. She followed the wall with her scope, a lone guard tower stood almost a mile away.

“That’s where I’d like to be.”

Archie unslung his own rifle and used his much-lower-power scope.

“I see buildings beyond it. Would be very tricky.”

Kee smiled to herself. The Lieutenant had just told her very tactfully that it was a fast way to commit suicide.

“How about there?”

Kee glanced to the side to see where Archie’s scope was aimed. She swung her own rifle until she spotted it.

A small shack, very isolated. Maybe two-thirds of the way from their position to the airfield. She didn’t like the angle, or that it was almost a thousand yards on the other side of the wall across a low field, young wheat perhaps, but she didn’t see any other options.

“Let’s go.”

This time she ran, ran hard. And found the groove. They covered the distance to the wall fast. As she hoped, the wall was older and needed work. In moments they were both up and over, digging boots and fingers into crumbling cracks in the concrete.

They sprinted for the shack, staying as low as they could. No windows on the side they approached from. They lay their backs against the wooden frame. Kee reslung her rifle and pulled out a knife and her handgun. Quiet. They had to do this quietly.

Archie did the same. Then they traded a nod and peeled off around opposite sides. No windows.

They met at the door. She didn’t waste time trying the handle, simply laid a shoulder into it and the wood gave way with a puff of dry-rot dust.

The tiny room was filled with racks of equipment, and two men. She jammed her knife under the first one’s chin even as his hands grabbed for the rifle leaning nearby, the point driving up and back.

She heard a muffled shot as Archie took down the other.

But Archie was holding his knife.

He looked at her strangely.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “You?”

“Fine.” She inspected the room.

Racks of electronics right out of a ’50s mad-scientist movie. Not powered up, maybe the end of the shift. No one likely to check on them any time soon.

She looked back out the door and liked it less. The runway was awfully far away. The night breeze, which had been from the east, continued. So Evans and Arlov would be starting their roll at the far end of the runway and coming toward her. They’d be rotating for takeoff a mile away. At that distance, she needed a .50cal Barrett, not her H&K.

Archie watched her.

Kee could look all she wanted, but the answer would be the same. She shook her head.

He ran out the door without even a nod of acknowledgment. If Kee said no, then it was no. She followed, trusting to whatever next step he saw that no one else could.

Wide open. They were running in the wide open. She didn’t need to squint to make out all of the planes. The guard tower that stood west along the wall now towered barely half a mile distant, etched clear against the predawn pink of the sky. The last of the stars had gone, and still they ran.

He dodged and weaved for no reason she could see, better to run straight line, but she followed and did the same.

Then Archie disappeared and Kee dove to the ground. Crawling forward, she spotted the end of a drainage ditch. Archie lay in the bottom of it, barely four feet down.

Kee took her knife and began harvesting the young wheat all around her. She tossed it down in large handfuls. When her nerves could stand it no longer, she rolled over the edge and landed hard against Archie.

His grunt of pain was out of all proportion to the hit.

He began scooping dirt on her. Kee squeezed her eyes shut and did her best not to sneeze. Now she was the same color as the trench. Good thinking. They’d use the wheat as additional cover when it was full daylight.

When the dirt shower stopped, she pointed up the side of the ditch. They popped their heads up and over the edge. It was a good position. From here she had a decent line on most of the runway. She tried not to glance over her shoulder and see how good a view the guard tower had of them.

She couldn’t resist. Actually, it wasn’t bad. Whoever dug the ditch had left more dirt on the southern bank. They were fairly well hidden. Fairly. She pointed.

But Archie wasn’t beside her. He was back in the bottom of the ditch holding his arm with a hand, with a very red hand.

***

She slid down beside him.

“Are you hurt?” Stupid question. She pulled out a switchblade and flicked it open. In moments she’d cut back the
hajib
and exposed his flight suit. More red. In seconds she was down through that as well.

“Archie, you’ve really got to stop getting shot. It’s not good for you.”

“Noticed. That. Mysel—Ow! Shit!” A whispered hiss. “That hurts!”

She found the entry hole. Very little blood there, as it was naturally clamped by his arm held tight against his body.

“He got me. Under the arm. Feelsh wrong.”

Kee didn’t like the sudden slur in his voice. She shifted his arm. He went sheet white and clamped his teeth on a groan.

“It feelsh more than wrong.” She imitated his slur trying to make something that scared her so much at least a little bit funny.

She found the bullet lying against the back of his shoulder. It had punched through, and been trapped against him by his body armor. Dozens of tiny white shards of bone were scattered through the bloody mess. The fact that there was no pumping blood was the only good thing about the whole situation.

She yanked her medical kit free and opened it. She pulled out a field ampule of morphine.

“No.” Archie caught her wrist. “Not yet. I need to think still.”

“Well, this is gonna hurt like a bitch.”

“Just do it. You know. You love. Causing me pain.”

Kee scrambled to the edge of the ditch and scanned the airfield quickly. No activity, but she didn’t dare look at the sky. It was plenty bright enough to see what she was doing without a flashlight. Time was running very short. If it was going to hurt him, better to do it fast.

She used tweezers to pick out most of the bone shards, rinsed the holes with antiseptic, and hit them with a little glue to close the wounds. Then she slid a rolled bandage up between his arm and body and tied it tight over the top. A quick flip with a triangular bandage and she had him in a sling. Then she pulled out her Vetrap and began binding his arm, sling and all, to his body. He looked near to passing out. She asked him a question to keep him conscious.

“What about the two bodies we left back there?”

He flopped his head until he faced in the direction of the hut, though it remained hidden from view. He blinked rapidly a few times as she continued wrapping his arm.

“Maybe we could pretend that Evans and Arlov did that. It will be the least of today’s mysteries we leave behind if this all works.”

“And what are the chances of that?” Kee didn’t actually want an answer to that question, but she wanted to keep his attention. If she lost him right now, she didn’t know what she’d do. He’d battered down most of her defenses, defenses that had served her well for six years, and she’d need time to put them back in place. If she could even resurrect them after the holes he’d punched through them.

Archie clearly struggled to concentrate, but his guess was as bad as hers and she could see him trying to hide his thoughts. Their chances were lousy, really lousy.

When she finished, he nodded, sweat streaming down his face. He pointed to the south edge of the trench and the stalks of wheat scattered about them.

She didn’t even have to be told. They remained in sync. Kee grabbed a handful of the wheat. Crawling up the south side, she reached a hand over the edge and began planting the stalks upright in the soil. Another dozen inches of shield. In moments, a line of waving stalks blurred the sightlines of the guard tower.

Kee returned her attention to the field. Still no plane on the runway. They weren’t too late. So many jets were parked here, dozens, maybe hundreds sat along the taxiways. It was hard to decide where to look. Tires. She tried to identify the ones with flat tires so that she could discount them. Even through her scope, the heat shimmer already rising off the runway and the flat angle of sight made that impossible to see. Besides, the dozens of dome-shaped hangers could be hiding anything.

The hardened hangars. Once more she slid out the photo of the two happy couples, the two pregnant women. The oddly shaped hills in the background hadn’t been hills. They were the hardened hangars, dirt mounded over each structure to protect it from gunfire and smaller bombs. Scrub trees growing on them to stabilize the soil. The four of them had stood right on K2 air base for the photo. She propped it in the face of the trench. No doubt about it, her two dogs were here somewhere.

The heart of the base lay at the west end of the field and the town of Khanabad to the north. Now she just needed two crazy pilots and their plane.

She checked her watch. One hour until the start of the breakfast meeting in Tashkent. Three hundred miles away, dignitaries, presidents, and premiers would all be rolling out of bed and showering, having no idea they could well be starting the last hour of their lives.

“Is that them?” Archie had crawled up beside her one-handed, with his rifle scope clutched in his fist. His attention was directed far to the west end of the field.

Kee swung her rifle, not too fast. She didn’t want to draw attention.

There. Two men climbing up ladders on either side of a massive jet. Damn, the thing was huge. How was she supposed to take that down? It stood as tall as a two-story building. Its swept-back wings were longer than the Black Hawk’s rotor span.

“She looks a hundred feet long.”

“Only seventy-four,” Archie replied between gasps of breath.

“Oh. That makes me feel so much better.” She wanted to check him. She wanted to drag him to the nearest hospital, Uzbekistani or otherwise. She wanted to shout and cry. None of which would help her find the calm zone necessary for a hard sniper shot. Hard? Hell! Impossible was more like it.

“Can’t you get them now?”

Kee gauged the seventy-four feet along the horizontal crosshair.

“Not a chance. Over two thousand meters. We need to be under twelve hundred. If I want any real chance, under a thousand.”

“And less would be better.”

“And less would be better,” Kee agreed.

“Too bad we didn’t bring along the 30 mm cannon.”

“Too bad.” It weighed more than Kee did, and that was without the ammo or the electrical supply to run it.

Kee watched the two helmeted men working over the plane. A couple of ground crew helped them. Probably with no idea they were helping prepare for the cataclysmic attack. Either they had men on the inside, or they’d presented very convincing credentials. Just as Evans had pulled strings for the free ride from SOAR. It made sense that Arlov would have those connections after four years as the base commander. Able to pull in favors from a few other people who’d hated his fall from good fortune.

They appeared so calm from this distance as they inspected the bombs being underslung. The calm of knowing that they were so close to their goal. Certain death was the accepted end for these men. Perhaps it was a relief, knowing they’d soon be joining their wives. If Archie died, Kee couldn’t exactly see immolating herself. If she lost Archie and Dilya in the same instant, she might be pissed enough at the world to do it anyway.

Kee knew to stop watching. She couldn’t stay on scope, fully alert for more than fifteen minutes. Snipers were trained to lie low for hours, days if necessary. But they were also trained that once the scope came to their eye, they were on full alert. Her body had been taught over and over what to expect when she finally sighted her weapon. That’s why it was best to have a spotter. Someone to keep out a detailed eye until she was ready to shoot. Then someone to watch her back while she did. Her absolute concentration on her target would allow an elephant to trip on her before she noticed him.

She slouched in the bottom of the ditch and drank some water. They would be ten minutes at least. She couldn’t trust Archie’s ability to spot for her now, so she’d have to risk a longer alert.

Once more she stared at the photo perched on the ditch wall. She could remember most of the faces she’d ever taken down as a sniper, but she’d never before had a picture to study at length. Normally her assignments were in the heat of combat, like clearing the machine gun nest above Naopari. Unlike the Hostage Rescue Team or Black Ops, she rarely hunted an individual.

Long ago, these two men had wives. Children on the way.

She closed her eyes and pictured once more Archie and Dilya. But this time she saw them dead. Splattered on the floor of that tiny three-room farmhouse in the Uzbekistan desert.

“They’re still checking their systems. The fuel truck just drove up.”

But Archie was here, here beside her.

“They never had a chance.”

“A chance for what?” Archie slid down beside her. “That should keep them busy for a few minutes.”