The Fourth War (31 page)

Bradley swore and moved forward, grabbing Angra by his shirt. One of the guards swung his nightstick and smashed it into Bradley's ribs. The blow bent him over, and he struggled to breathe. He held his cracked ribs, then forced himself straight once again.

“What were you thinking?!” Angra mocked. “Sending a girl! What did you think we would do! And you say we don't care about
our
women. But do we send our daughters into battle? Do we send them to fight, knowing they will be the first to suffer and die!?

“Now, let me tell you how it is. I'm going to kill you, alright! I suspect your death will be slow, based on what I have seen, but it doesn't matter, quickly or slow, you will die all the same. And before you slip away, before I relieve you of the pain, you will tell me everything that I want to know. You might think I can't break you, but I promise I will.”

“You will answer to my country,” Bradley mumbled in pain.

“Fool! Stupid pilot! Haven't you heard
anything?
Your country thinks you are
dead!
There is no hope for you, American. You are completely alone. Your fellow pilot, she's dead now, which leaves just you and me.

“I won't lie to you, pilot, or give you false hope. This isn't a situation where if you talk you will live. You are walking dead now. That is the simple truth. But there are some things we need you to tell us, things that we want to know. So here is my offer. Talk, make it simple, and I'll shoot you in the head. You won't feel a thing. It's
bang!
and you're gone.

“But fight me, American, and I will prolong your misery long after you have told everything. You will beg me to kill you. Think about that awhile.”

Angra stared at Bradley, then grunted, turned, and walked from the cell. “Give him water,” he commanded as he passed through the door. “I want him comfortable when I come back for him.”

 

Sometime later, the guards brought him food and a jug of warm water. The colonel stared in stunned hunger as they shoved the food through the door, then he scurried toward it and shoved a piece of black bread in his mouth.

Lyangar Airfield
Southern Tajikistan

That night the door to Bradley's cell opened again and Angra strolled into the room accompanied by his usual guards. He wore a jacket over his uniform, hiding the gun that was strapped to his chest. Colonel Bradley pushed himself up as Angra walked through the door.

“I want to see Captain Lei,” Bradley said.

Angra snorted angrily. “You are so concerned about this woman. What was she to you?”

“I am her commander!”

“She was beautiful, yes.”

“She was an officer!”

“You were lovers I think.”

“We were soldiers. And I am asking nothing that I wouldn't ask for anyone else.”

“She was
your woman
?” Angra snorted, surprise in his voice.

“She was my
responsibility!
” Bradley answered defiantly.

“Ah,” Angra mocked.
“I am Captain America. I must protect the women and children!”
He laughed in disgust. “Alright then,” he snorted, “I will show you!”

He nodded to one guard, who hesitated until he saw the look in Angra's eye, then turning quickly, he disappeared down the hall. Bradley heard a door open, then a shuffle, then a soft, dragging sound. He stood anxiously, the bile rising in his throat. As the sound grew nearer, the rage built inside.

They dragged in her body like it was a bag of soiled rags. He looked at her beaten face and nearly screamed out in rage.

What animal could do this!
“Tia!” he cried.

Falling to his knees, he reached for her hand, holding it gently and feeling its cold.

Angra nodded to a guard as he pointed to the corpse. “Get it out of here. Go and burn it,” he said.

The guard bent over, grabbed the body and dragged it away.

Bradley drew a sharp breath as he clenched his fists at his side. The three guards moved toward him and Angra stepped away. Bradley stood and turned, then suddenly lunged for the monster, who stepped quickly out of his way. One guard lifted his rifle and brought it down with the force of a bull, but Bradley saw it coming and rolled out of the way. He pushed himself to his feet and faced the three guards again. Angra cowered behind them, then disappeared through the open cell door.

The squad leader stepped forward and pulled out his club. He was a small man with flat ears and hard, empty eyes. “Back down, American,” he whispered. “It is not time yet to die!”

Bradley didn't move and the guard swung his club savagely. Bradley took the blow, feeling nothing as something snapped in his mind.
“Come on!”
he screamed wildly.
“Come and get me!”
he cried.

Flat Ears swung again, catching Bradley in the ribs. The pilot's eyes blazed with the fury of a violent and mindless craze. He saw nothing but Tia, her broken body and bloody face. Baring his teeth, he snarled like a dog. He didn't care if he died, he didn't care if he lived. He wanted to kill him. He wanted revenge.
“Come on!!”
he screamed, taking a step for the guard.

Flat Ears fell back. “Get him!” he cried. The other guards moved forward. Bradley rushed the nearest one, catching him on the back of his feet. The guard brought down the nightstick, but it was too late.

Bradley pushed him back, knocking him against the concrete wall. The guard exhaled with a huff of stinking breath and Bradley pushed against his ribs again. He heard the guard curse and felt the primeval lust for first blood. The guard swore and leaned forward to bite Bradley's neck, but Bradley felt his teeth and pushed back, knocking the guard's head against the hard wall, feeling the stinging pain of the nightsticks beating on his neck and back. A furious blow hit his head and he went crazy with pain.

It was killed or be killed! He would accept either one!

He smashed the guard's head against the wall again, blood and saliva splattering over his face. He held the Arab suspended, not letting him fall. The man reached for his pistol and Bradley lowered his shoulder and pushed with all his might. The guard huffed in great pain and Bradley felt his ribs crack. A powerful grip grabbed his shoulder, but he pushed it away. Reaching for the nightstick, he twisted violently, wrenching it from the broken man's hand. The guard moaned and went limp, sinking like a rag doll as Bradley turned and smashed the nightstick into the nearest guard's face, then reached out and slashed his dirty fingernails across his wide eyes. The guard screamed, dropped his club, and lifted his hands to his face as Bradley brought the stick down just behind his ear, feeling a
crunch
as the bone collapsed in his skull. He then turned to Flat Ears, but it was already too late.

Angra emerged in the doorway, holding his gun in his hand.
“Get back!!”
he screamed.
“I will kill you right now!”

Bradley turned toward him in a fury, his mind numb with pain.

“Get back!”
Angra screamed.

Another guard appeared, standing at the open door, a look of great surprise and fear on his face. Angra screamed to his subordinate, who scrambled forward and pulled the unconscious man across the floor. The second guard stumbled forward, still holding his eyes, following the sound of his comrades' voices toward the cell door.

Bradley took a step forward.

“I'll kill you!”
Angra screamed.

The colonel eyed him coldly. “I'm ready to die!”

Angra winced and stepped back, reaching for the door. He passed over the threshold and the last guard slammed it closed.

The sound of ringing metal echoed between the cold cement walls. It was silent and dark. Bradley held out his hands in the darkness. They were sticky and wet. He couldn't see the blood, but he knew it was there. His entire body was on fire; every bone, every muscle nothing but throbbing pain. He moved his head slowly, feeling the bloody cuts on his neck, then fell back, almost stumbling, bracing against the back wall as he slowly and painfully lowered himself to his knees.

He didn't realize he was crying until he tasted the salt on his lips.

He knew it was over. They would come back for him. They would come back to hurt him. It was personal now. And the beating he had suffered was nothing compared to what they would do to him now.

Yes, he knew it was over, but he no longer cared.

Then he thought about Tia and lowered his head as he moaned.

Reno Predator Security Compound
Islamabad, Pakistan

The commander of the Predator squadron was visibly shaking, his hands constantly moving with nervous energy. Doctor Washington sat beside him, his face sagging from jet lag and the “Pakistani gut,” an intestinal virus that savaged most visitors. Outside, the wind howled like a pack of angry wolves, bringing moisture down from the mountain in an early and cold winter storm. Beside the air force major was a six-inch stack of photos; almost a thousand photographs he hadn't had time to go through. To the right of this pile were nearly five hundred minutes of digital video—this backlog despite the fact he had been working twenty hours a day.

“I have fourteen frames you need to look at,” the major said as Washington leaned toward the screen. “They were taken on the night that our Predator went down. The area we are looking at is a few miles south of Lyangar, a tiny airfield just over the border in Tajikistan, but you'll have to look very closely, for the pictures were taken from almost ninety miles away.”

Washington stared at the images on the computer screen, which showed a tiny blur in a dark desert sky. A rim around the image glowed almost imperceptibly white.

The major sipped at his coffee, his eleventh cup of the day. Washington grunted as he studied the screen, seeing nothing of interest at all.

The major watched him, frustrated, then typed at his computer, commanding it to enhance the photographs. The MATDIS, or Mobile Advanced Tactical Digital Image Spectrograph—essentially a high-end Dell with a sturdy gray frame and highly classified software—doubled, then tripled the pixels per line.

Washington watched. The image became brighter, but his face remained blank. A tiny wrinkle of white was all it looked like to him.

“Here!” the major said as he traced the outline with his finger. “There
is
something there, moving to the north at a very high rate of speed. And it's also descending, dropping like a rock from the sky.”

Washington scowled. It could have been a shooting star. It could have been dust on the lens. It could have been a bird on the horizon or almost anything.

“Can't you see it?” the major exclaimed, tapping the screen with his finger. “Faint tongues of fire blowing back in the sky. And a line of white heat? The leading edge of a wing. Now look at this.” He typed again. “When I bring up the radar overlay we get nothing at all! There's something there in the photos, but we get
no radar return.
Now, what else could be out there but not bounce back radar energy!”

Washington's hands shook. “Are you saying…?” he muttered.

The Predator intelligence officer finally smiled and nodded his head.

 

Three hours later the major sat next to one of his Predator pilots, the former F-16 jock who flew from the back of a van. Washington sat quietly behind them, watching the two men as they worked.

The pilot threw the Predator into a tight left turn, banking it up to forty degrees to circle over the target area for the third time. Lyangar airfield lay twenty thousand feet below him. The skies had cleared, though there were mountain-wave clouds rolling over the peaks to the east, smooth waves of lenticulars formed by the turbulent air. The crew had already searched with the optical cameras, scanning the airfield from one end to the other, but despite all their searching they found nothing suspicious to note. There was only one aircraft on the ramp, an old Chinese YAK, and a herd of white goats grazing on the midfield grass. Two men, local herdsmen, walked behind the goats, moving them toward the taller grass on the east side of the field. A flock of pigeons strutted across the tarmac, leaving scattered spots of white, as an old woman, a goat herder, bathed in a small stream.

The Predator, the voyeur, was watching them all.

The major zoomed in on the hangars, looking through the half-open doors. The pilot hunched his shoulders. “Check this out,” he said. The camera looked through the hangar door, catching a glimpse of an old MiG 21. The paint was faded and chipped and dark oil spots stained the hangar floor under the engine bay.

“Yeah,” the major answered. The old Soviet fighter was not of interest to him.

“Think it flies?” the pilot asked.

“Probably. Lots of these warlords have old Russian jets.”

The major focused his lens on the north overrun, where there was a huge overgrowth. Something about the foliage just didn't look right to him. The trees were too perfect, too uniform, too high. “Does that area at the end of the runway look unusual?” he asked.

“Looks almost like…camouflage,” the pilot replied.

“Do you think…?”

“I think it could be.”

The two men were quiet again.

“But look at the size of that runway! It's too short,” the officer said. “There's not a pilot in the world that could land a B-2 down there!”

Washington leaned forward. “Colonel Bradley could,” he said.

The two men glanced back.

“No way,” the major snorted. “That runway's too short.”

“Bradley could land there if it was a choice between landing or dying.”

The major grunted again, then shot a quick look to the pilot.

The captain brought his throttle to idle. “I'm going down,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I'm taking it down.”

“Taking us to a lower altitude won't help us see anything.”

“I'm not descending to a lower altitude. I'm going to land.”

The major looked over, his eyes wide and bright. “No you're not, Captain!”

“Watch me,” the pilot said.

 

The sound came over the first ridge of the mountain, out of the setting sun. It was deep and throaty, a mix of low-throttled engine and high, spinning blades. Then the Predator appeared over a fold in the mountain, skimming across the terrain. It climbed quickly as it turned, seeming to pivot on its wing, then dropped toward the runway and throttled back to land.

The Arab guard was situated in a blind on the west end of the runway, a camouflaged hole dug into the hard ground. He peered through field glasses as the drone approached, his jaw hanging open in a look of fear and surprise. The aircraft lined up on the runway only a quarter mile out, then descended at a shallow angle and touched down with a puff of white smoke. It bounced once then continued down the runway at a very high speed, it's shiny metal skin catching the last rays of sun.

The Predator slowed at the end of the runway, near where three guards were hiding under another camouflage net. They all drew their weapons as the aircraft approached. The Predator came to a stop, the propeller whirling noisily from the back of the wing. The stunned guards watched in silence as a black eye swiveled from side to side. Then the eye stopped, staring at them, less than forty feet away.

“Will you look at that!” the pilot muttered under his breath.

“What
are
you doing!” the major cried. “Captain, you've got ten seconds to get that bird back in the air!”

“Look! Look!”
the captain answered as he pointed at the screen.

The major ignored him. “I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, get that bird in the air!”

“What do you see?” Washington interrupted, placing a calming hand on the major's left arm.

“Look!”
the pilot said as he jabbed at the central screen.

The visual display showed a small group of soldiers in dark uniforms hiding under a camouflaged net, all of them watching the Predator with dumbfounded stares. “Those are Taliban soldiers,” the pilot cried. “And look: there behind them!” The captain leaned forward in his seat. “When the wind catches this netting: look! There it is!”

The major gripped the pilot's chair until his knuckles turned white. The picture lurched and swiveled as the aircraft turned ten degrees. And there it was: black tires, thick pistons—an aircraft landing gear! Overhead the pilot saw the glint of the thick flying wing.
“There it is!”
he cried.
“We just found our B-2!”

 

The soldiers stared at the Predator's black, glaring eye as the evening wind blew, catching the corner of the dark camouflage. “What has the devil sent us!” the nearest soldier whispered. “Is there nothing this Satan cannot see, cannot do!?”

The black eye on the aircraft focused on the soldiers again. The youngest of them flinched, then lifted his grenade launcher to his chest. He aimed quickly and fired just as he closed his eyes.

The RPG knocked the soldier back and acidic smoke filled the air. The grenade hit the Predator at the root of the left wing and exploded with a burst of yellow heat. The fuel in the plastic tanks burst into flames, rocking the aircraft up on her wing before dropping it down and collapsing the landing gear. Smoke and fire enveloped the wreckage in a yellow fireball.

 

Washington sat forward. “That's the B-2!” he cried.

The captain swore pleasantly under his breath.

Then came a quick flash of yellow light and the camera went black. The three Americans stared in silence at the row of blank TV screens. The drone pilot turned to his commander. “Bingo!” he said.

“What happened to my drone!” the major cried.

Washington slapped both men on their shoulders. “Good work!” he said.

Camp Cowboy
CIA Paramilitary Base Camp/Operations
Northern Afghanistan

Peter Zembeic was asleep in his tent, a small camouflaged rigging he had tucked under an outcropping of rock on the south end of the camp. He woke as he heard footsteps crunch through the light snow outside. He looked up, seeing his tent sag from the light snowfall's weight.

A young sergeant stopped outside the flap. “Sir,” he said in a hurried voice.

“Yeah?” Peter asked.

“Got a call from a friend of yours down with the Predator squadron. He wants to talk to you right away.”

“Who is it?” Peter asked.

“Doctor Washington, sir.”

Lyangar Airfield
Tajikistan

Hours after the beating, Bradley slowly woke up. He lay without moving, wondering if he were dead, but the pain that enveloped his body assured him he was alive. For some time, he didn't know how long, he suffered in the silence of his cold cell, the room spinning in circles, his heart pounding in his ears. Then he pushed himself up and crawled to a half-empty jar of water he had stored along the back wall. Pouring the water over his body, he washed as best as he could, pouring the water over his open sores, then shuffled to a corner of the cell and huddled against the two walls.