Abruptly, as they came out of the turn, Flynn spotted a twin-turbine helicopter, a Russian-manufactured Mi-17 medium transport, sitting parked on the sand not more than a hundred yards from the Super Hercules’s torn fuselage. Oddly, its desert camouflage paint scheme showed no obvious national markings or other identifiers. Several Western-looking men in civilian clothing were visible around the helicopter and the C-130 wreckage. Some carried a mix of small arms and wore military-grade body armor.
“Son of a bitch,” Kasper muttered. “We’ve got company.”
A new voice crackled over the helicopter’s ARC-210 communications system. “Wizard One-One, this is Rocking Horse Six. Suggest you land on the other side of the wreck. We’ll confer further once you’re down.”
“Copy that, Rocking Horse,” Kasper acknowledged tightly. Her fingers danced across her multifunction display, inputting the call sign they’d been given. She switched back to the intercom. “The computer confirms that ‘Rocking Horse’ is legit. But that call sign belongs to an OGA.”
Flynn snorted. OGA was military jargon for “Other Government Agency.” In practice, that usually meant the CIA’s clandestine service and its paramilitary contractors.
“You know anything about these guys or what they’re up to out here, Nick?” Dykstra asked, making small adjustments to the helicopter controls to veer off and circle back around toward the suggested landing site. “Wearing your other hat, I mean?” That was a not-so-subtle reference to Flynn’s covert status as an Air Force intelligence officer.
“Not a doggone thing, FX,” Flynn said truthfully. His hands moved to the quick-release buckle on his seat straps. A rotor-whipped cloud of swirling sand and dust billowed up as the HH-60 flared in and then settled lightly on its main landing gear. His eyes narrowed in concentration. “But I can promise you that’s about to change.”
Two
All three U.S. Air Force crewmen aboard the downed aircraft were dead. Confirming that had required Zalewski and Camarillo to painstakingly work their way into the half-buried nose of the big cargo turboprop, first digging through compacted sand and then carefully cutting through jagged layers of impact-crushed metal. Once they’d gotten close to what was left of the C-130’s cockpit, they’d spotted the broken remains of its two pilots and loadmaster wedged in amid the twisted wreckage of instrument panels, wiring, consoles, and seats.
“How’s it look, Zee?” Flynn asked when Zalewski wriggled back outside to report.
Stretching cramped shoulders, the big pararescueman shook his head gravely. “Bad, sir. A real mess. It’s gonna take a hell of an effort to get the bodies out.” He stripped off his helmet and gloves, then rubbed a weary hand through his short-cropped, sweat-drenched hair before taking a long swallow through the tube of his hydration pack. Under the late afternoon sun, it was well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and it was even hotter inside the C-130 wreck’s tight, confined spaces.
Flynn nodded. He lowered his voice. “So what do you think? Was this crash an accident? Or enemy action?”
Zalewski’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “If I was a betting man, sir, I’d put my money on bad guys,” he said at length. “The Herc’s forward section is all torn up. Even more than I’d expect from the impact when it smacked into this sand dune.”
Flynn frowned. “Like maybe the plane was hit by a missile?”
“Either that, or else somebody set off a bomb right behind the cockpit,” Zalewski suggested. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the C-130’s tail section. “Once we get ’em back to the tech experts, info from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders should pin down exactly what happened.”
“Yeah.” Flynn glanced away along the top of the massive, miles-long dune, which rose a couple of hundred feet above the crash site. His jaw tightened. About a hundred yards away, a handful of figures in white robes and head coverings crouched on the crest, watching all the activity around the wrecked airplane with undisguised curiosity. The first locals from the nearby oasis had appeared while Camarillo and Zalewski were cutting their way into the cockpit. More seemed to be arriving with every passing minute. He turned back to the big PJ. “You know, I think it’d be a good idea if you and Camarillo got those black boxes out soonest. Before this place turns into Grand Central Station at rush hour.”
“That will not be necessary, Captain,” someone said from close behind him.
Flynn turned around to find one of the civilians who’d flown in ahead of them aboard the unmarked Mi-17 helicopter. The other man was almost skeletally thin. He’d introduced himself earlier as Anderson White — a name that was almost certainly fake, but which certainly matched his pale, washed-out eyes, gray crew cut, and thin, almost colorless lips. Whoever he really was, he was definitely the one calling the shots for the black ops team.
“And why is that, Mr.… White?” Flynn asked, adding a deliberate pause to show that he wasn’t buying the other man’s obvious alias.
“My team will retrieve those data recorders and make sure they get to the right people,” White said flatly, ignoring the dig. “I suggest your people focus on recovering those remains. It would be best if you leave everything else to us. This is not your show.”
Flynn didn’t like the sound of that at all. He deliberately allowed a little more of his native Texas drawl to slide into his voice. “Maybe y’all are forgetting this was a U.S. Air Force C-130.”
“Flying under my agency’s orders,” White countered smoothly. “And carrying a cargo we provided. Which makes everything on that aircraft aft of the cockpit solely our jurisdiction.”
Flynn fought down a scowl. Virtually the only piece of information the OGA black ops team had provided was that the Super Hercules had been coming in so low over this part of the desert because it was on approach to an old Libyan Air Force runway south of the Wath Oasis. A quick check of the map and data files loaded into his field tablet showed that was part of a base Gaddafi had built inside the Aouzou Strip — a sixty-mile-wide swath of territory along Chad’s border with Libya. Rumored to be rich in uranium deposits, the Strip had been the spark for nine years of military clashes between the two countries back in the late 1970s. It was just the kind of disputed turf that seemed likely to draw in some of the world’s bad actors, especially those interested in acquiring potentially fissionable ores for full-fledged nuclear weapons or improvised dirty bombs.
Right after they’d landed, he’d grabbed a quick look inside the C-130’s largely intact cargo compartment. Within a couple of minutes, one of White’s tough-looking paramilitary security personnel — whose tats and beard marked him as ex — Special Forces — had not so gently backed him out again. But not before Flynn got the chance to check out a few of the crates the big turboprop had been carrying, discovering what looked like a shitload of Russian-made small arms, ammunition, RPGs, and land mines.
He raised an eyebrow at White. “Your jurisdiction? Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning that you’re going to stand back and let my team complete its work without further interference,” the other man replied. He checked his watch. “From what I’ve been told, they should be done rigging the cargo and the aircraft with explosives in approximately one hour.” His lips thinned even further. “Which is why I suggest you rev your own unit into higher gear and get those bodies out, ASAP. Once our charges are set, we’re not going to sit around waiting on you and your people.”