“Yankee Two, do you read Boomer?”
It was a new voice on her radio. B.J. was instantly suspicious. The SAR frequency had become a party line. “Who is Boomer?” she asked.
“The marine whose butt you just saved. Great job of forward air control, Yankee. Can you make it to our perimeter?”
“It depends on how many — Uh-oh. Stand by, Boomer.”
She lowered the radio and peered down the hillside.
Something down the slope moved — a glint of metal, a patch of the wrong color.
She waited, watching the bushes and boulders.
There it was again. Coming toward her. Taking their time, being stealthy, using the rocks and shrubs.
How many? How did they know she was here?
Easy, she realized, looking at the orange smoke that was still gushing upward. They saw the smoke and heard her calling targets on the SAR frequency. A no-brainer.
Across the valley, Maxwell’s Hornet was making another pass on the retreating Sherji. She considered calling a strafing pass on her own hillside. Forget it. The guys coming up the hill were already too close to her position.
“What’s going on, Yankee?” came the marine commander’s voice. “Are you in trouble?”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’ve been in trouble for the last twenty-four hours, sir. This is just more of the same. Sorry, I’ve gotta go now.”
She stuffed the radio back into her satchel and surveyed her escape routes. The Sherji owned most of the real estate on the hillside that sloped toward the marines’ perimeter. Behind her lay an undulating series of gullies and then a terraced slope that someone had cultivated with rows of sorghum. At the far end of the gullies, about three hundred yards distant, rose another wooded hillside punctuated by craggy rock formations.
Throwing the satchel over her shoulder, she scuttled up the path toward the gullies. The Sherji might get a glimpse of her, perhaps even take a shot. So be it. She would do what she did best — run.
In a sprint she reached the shoulder of the hill, then dropped into one of the gullies and headed toward the woods. At the end of the gully she ducked behind a boulder and stopped to look back.
No Sherji. At least none on her heels. For a moment she stood still, listening. She didn’t hear anything coming her way. Just the sound of her own raspy breathing — and the throaty whine of the jets overhead.
The Super Hornets were still shredding the Al-Fasr position. She saw a Hornet skimming in low over the ridgeline, flame spitting from the muzzle in the long slender nose. As the Hornet came off target, B.J. noticed something else.
A smoke trail, going straight up. It was the same squiggly, erratic kind of trail she had observed when the Cobra gunship was destroyed.
She fumbled for the radio in her satchel. While she punched the transmit button, her eyes followed the wispy column of smoke.
The Hornet was in a hard right bank. The smoke trail was following it.
“Flares, Runner!” she yelled in the radio. “Smoke in the air! You’re targeted.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
MERCENARY
He heard the warning at the same time he picked up the telltale smoke. It was coming from the grove of trees near where the guns had been concealed.
Maxwell’s thumb went for the flares/chaff switch on the throttles as he yanked the Hornet into a seven-G turn. Speed and Gs were his best defenses down low. He was only five hundred feet above the terrain. A Hornet moving at four hundred knots was a hell of a lot tougher target than a hundred-mile-per-hour chopper. Hitting such a target with a shoulder-launched weapon was a nearly impossible task. Unless the shooter got lucky.
A sudden concussion passed through the airframe of the jet like a hammer blow. Maxwell felt a vibration that seemed to come from the tail of the fighter.
So the shooter got lucky.
The jet was still flying. Maxwell tensed, ready to pull the ejection lanyard. How badly was he hit? He rolled the Hornet out of its right bank. The fly-by-wire flight control system was still working. The damage seemed to be in the tail section, maybe the stabilators. If it wasn’t too bad he could —
“Engine fire left!” It was the voice of Bitchin’ Betty, the robotic aural warning. Her irritating monotone cut like a knife through the cockpit. “Engine fire left!”
He yanked the left throttle back, then punched the illuminated fire light, discharging the extinguisher.
The red light remained on. The vibration worsened, sending a tremor through the jet.
The jet was rolling to the left. He had the stick to the full right position — with no effect. The electronic inputs to the flight control system were gone.
The Hornet was slicing toward the brown hills below.
Like all fighter pilots, he had visualized this moment. During all the years he had flown fighters, he had never been forced to eject. Given a choice, this wasn’t the way he’d do it — high speed, low altitude, hostile territory.
No choice.
He shoved his helmet back against the headrest. Closing his elbows tight to his sides, he gripped the ejection lanyard between his legs with both hands and yanked the handle.
The shock was greater than he expected. It felt as if he were being shot from a cannon. The wall of air hit him, blurred his vision, ripped at him like a beast. He was an unguided missile hurtling through the sky at half the speed of sound. Dimly he felt the drogue chute slowing him, sensed the automatic release from the seat.
With a violent jerk, the main chute opened.
He knew he was close to the ground, but he couldn’t tell how close. He felt himself make one pendulum swing beneath the deployed chute, then sensed in his dimmed vision the earth rushing up to meet him. He crashed through the foliage, limbs snagging and snatching at him. He dropped in a heap at the base of a scraggly tree.
For nearly a minute he lay there gathering his senses. The parachute canopy was snarled in the tree. Something was jammed into his face. It hurt like hell. He realized it was his oxygen mask, skewed up over his nose from the wind blast.
Still dazed, he detached the mask, then unhooked the seat pack from his harness. His hands trembled as he worked the fasteners on the harness.
He did a quick assessment, moving each limb, one at a time. No broken bones, no major sprains, at least that he noticed yet. He was bleeding from a small gash in his forearm. There were some abrasions, probably from the plunge through the tree.
He tried pulling the parachute canopy down from the branches. The more he yanked, the more snarled the canopy became. To hell with it. He didn’t like leaving the thing there, but he couldn’t waste time getting it down.
He had to gather the essential equipment, then put some distance between him and the parachute, which was flapping in the breeze like an outdoor advertising sign. The Sherji would know exactly where to start looking. Maxwell had no illusions about the treatment he would get from those he had just finished strafing.
He checked his sidearm — the Colt .45. It had survived the ejection, still strapped inside the leather shoulder holster. He retracted the slide, then quietly eased it home, feeding a round into the chamber. He stuffed the pistol back into the holster. He shoved the helmet and mask beneath a shrub, along with the torso harness and life raft and other equipment he wouldn’t need.
First he would find a hiding place, then break out the radio and make contact with the recovery team.
The terrain sloped upward to the west. That would be the best course. Head that direction, put a few miles between him and the telltale parachute. Then he’d —