“Target the HAWK vans”
“Yes, sir.” The copilot groaned.
“You okay, McNamara?” asked Dog, ready to bring up the targeting screen himself.
“No:’ he said. “But I’ll nail those mothers with my toes if I have to.”
As the Megafortress slapped downward, Zen struggled to keep his Flighthawk straight and level. He had to fight against his instincts to do this; his stomach told his head they were in a spin, and his head wanted to move his hand and legs to get them out of it.
His legs.
The idea taunted him, a devil just out of reach as he held the stick steady. A black cloud began to rise around him; Zen felt himself choke, and waited to hear the Megafortress’s alarm indicate that they were on fire.
He coughed again. The cloud started to recede.
The Flighthawk was nearly head-on for the HAWK missile battery.
“Targeting screen,” Zen told the computer. A pipper appeared in a shaded area before his eyes. “Dish,” he said, telling the computer what he was aiming at. The pipper immediately turned from gray to yellow, indicating that he was close but not quite on target.
Zen moved his hand slowly toward the screen. The pipper began to blink yellow, then changed to red.
He pushed down on the trigger and bullets streamed from the front of the robot plane. He moved the stick very gently left and right, cutting an oval pattern through the metal before pulling off.
“Zen, we’re taking out the HAWK batteries with our bombs:’ said Dog.
“Hawk leader,” he acknowledged, pulling the Flighthawk up and away from the airport.
Chapter 56
Mack crouched on the cement, watching as the black shadow of the Flighthawk darted across the empty field to the south, going after the radar dish that guided the anti-air missiles. The front of the tiny aircraft blossomed red; a moment later he heard the quick stutter of the plane’s cannon. By the time the sound died the wedge-shaped aircraft had flickered upward, from this angle seeming to rise straight up, a puppet pulled by the strings of heaven.
“Out of here,” Mack yelled. “Away from the military side of the airport:’ He got up, saw Sahurah still on the ground near the Megafortress, then reached back and grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling him to his feet.
They’d gotten about thirty yards when the first bomb exploded. The target was a good distance away, but the shock of the five-hundred-pound warhead threw Mack abruptly toward the pavement. He got his left arm out, skidding across the concrete. Cursing, he stumbled back to his feet just as another bomb hit. He saw a geyser of smoke rising over the area near the HAWK trailers.
Something grabbed at Mack; he turned and found Sahurah clutching him. Blood ran down his hands. Mack instinctively picked him up, hauling him over his back and starting to run toward the terminal building. After a few steps his pace slowed to a walk.
He heard the whine of an approaching Flighthawk and threw himself down as it passed. Sahurah’s weight pressed against his upper body and made him slam his chin against the concrete. Mack cursed, rolled over to his back, and edged up on his elbows, dazed and unsure now where the hell he was.
Danny surveyed the dock area from the ladder, using the range-finder in the smart helmet as a measuring tool. The dock was eight feet wide, which would make it a precarious perch for the helicopters. Nor did the sections look particularly stable or long. There was no way they were getting the helicopters down here.
“Freah to Quick Bird One. Jack, you guys better head back,” he told the pilot. “We’ll do an assessment on that roof. In the meantime, come up with a plan to shore it up. Worst case, you can fly the grid in overnight.”
The grid was a portable landing area that could be set up over either the deck or the housing area.
“I was thinking we could land on derrick two,” replied the pilot. “The backup platform.”
“Negative,” said Danny. It was more than a mile away and they’d have no way of getting back and forth until the MC-17 dropped their zodiacs along with additional supplies. “Let’s just do this the way we drew it up”
“You got it. We’ll be back.”
The helicopters banked low, saying good-bye before heading off. The Whiplash team would be on its own for the next several hours.
Danny came up the ladder and joined Liu on the lower deck, where they had found a generator and a barrel of diesel that the sergeant estimated would last at least forty-eight hours. The motor balked at first, but within a few minutes they had it up and running, and the interior lights came on in the building area and around the platform. A floodlight came on below, illuminating the dock-area; Danny went back to look for a switch; he found one inside a metal box near the hatchway to the area below. The switch was stuck, and when he tried prodding it with his knife the handle broke off, leaving no easy way to turn the light off. Frustrated, he decided to climb back down and see if he could unscrew the light; if not he’d just shoot the damn thing out.
Danny had to get down to the dock and then climb up a nearby support beam, but once he did he found another switch box with a control inside that was considerably easier to use and the light snapped off. He shimmied back down to the dock and started to go back to his men. As he did, he noticed a thick black shadow about a hundred yards from the southwestern leg. His first thought was that it was an oil slick, but the edges seemed too linear. Then he thought it must be some sort of optical illusion, a shadow cast by the platform in the dim predawn light. He took a step up and then down, trying to puzzle out how it was formed.
And then, as he watched, the shadow began to move.
“Liu,” he said softly, “come down to the dock area real, real quiet. I’m on the ladder. Take one other person with you. Everybody else, hold your positions and be real quiet.”
Chapter 57
“No way that was anything but an unguided, lucky shot,” said McNamara, talking about the missile that had nearly clocked them. “They may have gone to the K-band range-only-radar when we jammed but I’d bet they had a general direction and just launched.”
Dog, completing the system check with the computer, didn’t respond. Lucky shot or no, the HAWK anti-aircraft system wasn’t something you could operate merely by throwing a switch. These weren’t raw kids they were dealing with. Whoever had been in the guidance trailers knew what they were doing.
They were also now dead. Both GBU-30s — also known as JDAM or Joint Direct Attack Munitions, bombs that steered themselves to specific GPS points — had struck their targets dead-on. The five-hundred-pound warheads had obliterated the guidance trailers and everything nearby.
“What’s the situation down there, Zen?” Dog asked.
“The trailers are fried. More missiles on the launcher at the south side. First launcher fired all three I think. Couple of gun batteries but they haven’t done anything. Hang on,” added the pilot, turning his small craft around for another survey.
“What about the Megafortress on the ground?” Dog asked.
“Same as before. The people who were going toward it ran back for the terminal. One of them was definitely Mack, but I think the person with him was a local, or maybe one of the guerillas. There are a bunch of guys in white clothes near them. I had an idea,” he added.
“What’s that?”
“Why don’t we eliminate the fuel trucks so the Megafortress can’t be refueled,” said Zen. “Keep it grounded for a while without doing any damage. Brunei Air Force only has one tanker. That was one of Mack’s big gripes. There are six over on the civilian side but they’re all parked by an auxiliary building. I can shoot up the pumping apparatus as well, but I’m not sure if there’s a backup.”