Outsourced (40 page)

“So what's that for? Something you failed to tell me?”

“The gearbox chip light came on.”

“Serious?”

“Could ground us. You get a lot of false readings in desert conditions, but it can also mean the tail rotor's gearbox is ready to go. I need to check it out.”

“Do that first. I need to know if she's airworthy.” Iggy turned to the rest of the crew. “Wilson, get that piece of crap off the probe. Monroe, Ashland, secure the perimeter. Stone, G
ENGHIS
, check if anyone was thrown clear. Look out for the electrical wires and the unexploded ordnance that's still cooking off.”

“If the aircraft checks out, is the mission a go, sir?” Hunter said, fully aware they were dancing on the edge of the go/no go parameters. He felt to make sure his sidearm was still in place.

“If there are survivors, we have to scrub and work out something else for tomorrow night.” Iggy shook his head. “This is going to hell fast and I can't leave men here to die.”

“Then call in the Cobra, bump the gunner and let me take the front seat. You can insert me tonight and I'll gather intel for a second shot tomorrow night. You know Stella might not have until then. Hell, she might not have until morning.”

Iggy ignored him as he put his hand on the fuel probe. The metal arm extended from the right front of the helicopter and was half the length of the crew cabin, but didn't go out as far as the rotors. The tip was mated with the metal basket and a couple meters of hose dangled from its end. Most of the rubber sheath had been stripped away from the steel hose.

Hunter stood staring at Iggy, waiting for a response. Iggy looked up at him.

“You go in there, Rambo, without support, you'll get yourself and Cam killed. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to get her.”

“Sending me in tonight might be her only hope.”

“We're not there yet.” Iggy reached for the metal basket and tugged. It slid off. He threw it as far into the desert as he could, then a transmission from the Cobra came over the headsets.

“T
IN
M
AN
this is D
RAGON
O
NE
. Be advised we are at joker.”

The Cobra had reached the fuel state where it needed to start thinking about getting onto the ground so the Hawk could refuel it. The Cobras were killer machines, but they had one critical flaw: they couldn't refuel in the air.

The burning wreckage continued to send out sporadic rocket fire and bullets. Iggy wanted to wait as long as he could to let the fireworks die down before bringing the Cobra in. They would have to stay in the air until their fuel situation reached critical—bingo. At that moment it didn't look like the mission would proceed and there was no need to risk another bird if he didn't have to. He keyed his mike, “D
RAGON
O
NE
, T
IN
M
AN
. Land at bingo. Caution high-voltage lines.”

The Pave Hawk lay on its side, its tail rotor broken off. Hunter could see bodies burning inside the airframe and he could feel the heat increasing. He and G
ENGHIS
walked around it, giving it a wide berth due to the popping ordnance. The fire crackled with gunshots as bullets aboard the downed craft heated up, but the electric lines troubled him more. When they were near the line, both he and G
ENGHIS
shuffled along, keeping their feet close together and in contact with the ground at all times to avoid electricity arcing through them. The flames were so bright they made his night vision goggles useless.

 

Beach Dog hurried to the tail and opened a panel so he could get to the intermediate gear box. Holding a penlight in his mouth, he pulled out the chip detector screen, hoping he wouldn't find metal slivers. The dipstick looked as if it had been rolled in glitter. Beach Dog smiled as it sparkled at him—sand. Sand had gotten into the system and magnetic particles in it were causing the false readings. The gearbox was fine.

“Iggy,” he called back, “she's good.”

Iggy spoke into his microphone to bring in the Cobra and hurry up with the fuel transfer so they could get moving. “D
RAGON
O
NE,
this is T
IN
M
AN
. Cleared to land at our eight o'clock. Caution high-voltage lines.”

 

Hunter and G
ENGHIS
had canvassed the area near the burning helicopter, then methodically expanded their search grid. Hunter heard the Cobra come in for the fuel transfer and knew he had to get back in the next five minutes to have a chance at persuading Iggy to send him on it. He was ready to break off from the search and return to the Hawk.

“You hear that?” G
ENGHIS
said.

The Cobra's engines stopped and Hunter could hear a faint moan that seemed to come from the desert, beyond where he could see with the light of the flames. He turned away from the wreckage, put on the goggles and cupped his hands over the sides to block out as much light as he could. As he scanned the desert floor, he was sure he heard someone.

“My ten o'clock, twenty meters out,” G
ENGHIS
said.

Hunter spotted the body and shuffled in that direction. When he was confident that he was far enough away from the power line, he sprinted. He smelled burnt flesh as he approached the man. Shining an infrared beam on him, he could see black crispy flesh and raw meat. The face was a grotesque Halloween mask, unrecognizable. His clothes had burned away along with most of his skin. The legs and arms were twisted and obviously broken from the fall. The moan grew fainter.

Hunter squatted down beside him and started to feel for a pulse in his neck, then decided it was better not to touch him and risk further injury. “Can you talk to me? What's your name?”

The guy groaned softly, giving no sign he comprehended anything. Hunter looked at G
ENGHIS
and shook his head. “You know even if we get the bird in the air, Iggy's gonna scrub the mission because of this guy.”

“I heard. You fly. Do you think they can fix it?”

Hunter took a deep breath. “We've been through quite a bit of sand and dust. I'd bet on a false read.”

Iggy's voice came over Hunter's earpiece. “S
ABER
T
OOTH
this is T
IN
M
AN
. Return to base. Any survivors?”

Hunter didn't respond, but stared at the charred casualty. If he allowed a dying man to keep him away from Stella, he would never forgive himself. He also knew he couldn't live with himself if he left a teammate behind.

 

Iggy's voice came over their earpieces again. “Repeat, any survivors?”

Hunter stared at the man and knew what he had to do. He squatted down to pick him up. “Give me a hand with him.”

“Sure thing.” G
ENGHIS
pulled out his sidearm and fired.

 

Hunter and G
ENGHIS
returned to the Pave Hawk to see the flight engineer retracting the hose. The refueling was complete. “She airworthy?” Hunter said to Beach Dog, dreading the confrontation with Iggy if she wasn't.

“Itching to go back up there and visit her tanker friend for more juice,” Beach Dog said. “She's a go.”

 

As G
ENGHIS
climbed into the helicopter, Iggy grabbed his arm. His face was stormy. “You pulled the same thing you did in Libya, didn't you?”

G
ENGHIS
stared at him for a few moments without saying anything, then twisted his body away from Iggy and climbed into the helicopter. Iggy gripped Hunter's shoulder as he got in. “The truth, Stone. Any survivors?”

Hunter strapped himself into his seat before speaking. He despised G
ENGHIS
for what he'd done, and at the same time felt enormously grateful to the son of a bitch. He looked straight ahead and said, “There are no survivors.”

“I thought so,” Iggy said with a grunt as he slid the door shut. “Beach Dog, get us the hell out of here. We've got to get to that tango camp before Camille kicks all their asses without us.”

Shangri-la

Al-Zahrani was taller and thinner than Camille had expected; he had mysterious brown eyes, peaceful eyes which at the same time had glints of mercy and flashes of vengeance. A cleric in a white skullcap read from a Koran while two guards pointed AKs at her. Back home in the Ozarks, they called this a shotgun wedding, except she wasn't pregnant and the groom wasn't the one with the guns pointed at him.

Al-Zahrani held her gaze. For a moment she thought he was trying to tell her something.

The young man who had earlier brought her the water and clothes translated the cleric's words, cheating whenever he could read the same verse from an English translation of the Koran. “And among His signs in this, that He created for you mates, from among yourselves, that ye may dwell…”

She didn't have much tolerance for religious writings in any language and quit listening while she assessed the tactical situation. Two guards pointed AKs her. It was a poor choice of weapon for the circumstances and she considered baiting them to shoot her just as she maneuvered in front of al-Zahrani so they hit him as well. It wasn't her best option since she couldn't guarantee that he'd be killed, but it might be the best she could do.

Her wrists were tied in front of her, but her legs were now free since they intended for her to spread them soon. No one had bothered to search her since they'd thrown her into the shed. The long nail concealed in her sleeve was an awkward weapon, but it was the best she had found. She figured her best chance was to spike it into the soft spot behind his ear just before he tried to enter her. The thought was so disgusting. What a way to die, shot by bodyguards while being raped by the world's most wanted terrorist. At least Muslims seemed to bathe a lot.

“The Holy Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, made the
mut'a
marriage
halal.
” The interpreter stumbled through the translation. She couldn't figure out why the hell they were bothering, but she guessed it was part of their screwy ethics.

On the way over she had heard a generator, but al-Zahrani's tent was lit by several oil lamps. They seemed to reserve the power to run their phones and communications and the few lights outside. She hoped al-Zahrani liked to do it in the dark. Like her Night Stalker buddies always said, “Death waits in the dark.”

She hoped the damn thing would get a move on. At least they had fed her before the ceremony and she guessed that was her dowry. They could at least have given her the whole goat. She made a mental note not to serve boiled goat if she survived this and ever married.

After stifling several mini-yawns she managed to get her eyes to tear up, then she caught al-Zahrani's gaze and made herself smile at him.

He smiled back.

Dumb fuck
.

Soon the peace and blessings of Camille Black would be upon him—god help his soul.

41° 59' 40.88 N, 63° 07' 04.49 E (Uzbekistan)

Despite the snafu with the last air-to-air refueling, the next one didn't make Beach Dog nearly as nervous as Iggy did, whipping out his laptop and revising the mission plan on the fly. He'd seen it happen many times and he had learned long ago that when things started sliding south the next thing he knew he was waking up in an alley in Tijuana with no wallet and no pants, smelling of booze and puke.

Beach Dog descended and began to hug the ground as closely as he could in case the tangos had some kind of radar warning system, even though he guessed it probably consisted of pie tins tied to a clothesline. He was using FLIR the entire mission, but only through the Afghan-Uzbek border region did he fly close enough to the ground to really need the navigational system. Now it was time to show off why Night Stalkers ruled the darkness. He flew five feet above the dunes, too fast to kick up a trail of sand.

“Five minutes to the LZ. Wax up them boards, dudes,” Beach Dog said as he passed over the south rim of the open pit mine, pointed the nose down and plunged two hundred and fifty feet in seconds. He pushed the speed to one hundred sixty knots and boomed through the man-made canyon, a few feet above the floor. “And hang on. We're going to be flying the Pipeline.”

For the next several minutes the helicopter lurched sharp to port, then to starboard, up, down, sudden drops and immediate climbs.
Man, this is flying
.

Beach Dog saw a mound directly in front of them and threw the Hawk hard right, but the canyon wall was dead ahead. Beach Dog spun the Hawk in a Bat-turn, rotating one hundred eighty degrees. He slalomed around the hills, throwing the crew left, then tumbling their stomachs to the right.

“You know what Night Stalkers say,” Beach Dog yelled to anyone listening.

“‘Night Stalkers don't quit,'” several men said in unison.

A vertical cliff popped up out of nowhere. Beach Dog yanked back on the cyclic and shot straight up and onward at warp speed. “NSDQ is so true, but I was thinking, ‘Death waits in the dark.'”