“Well, the army’s particular worry is that they see the super-cavitation technology in a smaller, bullet-sized projectile that could pierce the armor of the Abrams M1. More important, it could penetrate the armor of our new lighter, faster Stryker vehicles, which have gained so much favor in the Pentagon after the army brass realized just how—‘constipated’ is the word General Freeman once used — the big M-1 is when trying to travel on non-American roads. The tank weighs in at seventy tons, and on any other highway system than our own or on the German Autobahns, it becomes a dinosaur, no matter how well armored and upgunned it is. Which is why we need to get that disk back. And quickly.”
“How’s Freeman’s team doing?”
“FBI says that the sheriff at Sandpoint has told them that there’ve been reports of a helo going down in the area, possibly brought down by a MANPAD shoulder-fired missile, but—” She paused, exhausted, so much so she asked the president if she might sit for a moment.
“What — oh, of course.” But Eleanor had no sooner sat, her feet resting on the border of the plush round blue oval carpet that bore the Great Seal of the United States, than the president was asking, “Freeman’s team okay? Functional?”
“Yes, sir,” Eleanor replied, catching her breath. “The moment the Navy’s Hawkeye lost contact with the helo and tracked its down position, the local sheriffs and air rescue in Coeur d’Alene were alerted. Then Freeman’s team came through on their infantry radios. Freeman says it’s well in hand, and he doesn’t want more troops in there confusing the issue. Says it’s a case of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth.’ Says he’s closing in on the beeper via the radar contact the downed helo still has with the beeper that was planted in the disk.”
“Okay,” said the president. “I’d prefer to send in more men, but Freeman’s the man on the ground. If he feels he’s closing, there’s no point in us getting in his way.” The president turned to the large map of the Idaho panhandle that had been wheeled into his office. “I can see Freeman’s point. Must be some of the densest part of the country up there. Even so, I want the nearest army battalion on standby just in case he needs a last-minute assist.”
“That’s already been taken care of,” said Eleanor.
The president turned from the map to her. “Next thing, Eleanor, is for you to be driven home and not come back here for twelve hours. That’s an order. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” she said gratefully, but not without a feeling of guilt that she should stay.
“Go on now,” he ordered. “Scram.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Everyone on the team — Choir, Johnny Lee, and Freeman on the eastern side of the road, Tony Ruth, Gomez, and Murphy on the western side — saw Prince stop short, pine cones flying in front of his paws. The weight of his armored vest was starting to tell, his panting more rapid than it had been when they left the helo, but the rest of him was rigid. He was pointing. They froze. Freeman knelt on the soft earth and fallen leaves on the road’s shoulder, and Tony Ruth could see the general’s gloved right hand switch his AK-74 from the “off” position. Everybody else had done the same.
The disquieting noise of their controlled breathing could be heard above the stillness of the forest from which a white mist bled. Prince was pointing into the woods from the road at a barely discernible opening in the wall of trees and brush only a few yards from the road’s shoulder. Had the terrorists’ rear guard anticipated his move, wondered Freeman, and also raced through the woods from the lakeside to reach the road? Both sections of Freeman’s team had automatically adopted CAF, covering arcs of fire, so that they could engage the enemy and guard each other.
He saw the silhouette of an AK-47’s front sight above the trail and fired. Both of his sections opened up, using the falling corpse, a U.S. Army uniform, as their central aiming point. The air was ripped apart by the sudden fury of the firefight, but it was all one-way, the enfilade from Freemen’s men having the crucial advantage. Anyone behind the first man they’d killed would be unable to get past him easily on the narrow trail and forced to ground amid timber and brush that was now the recipient of concentrated fire, 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm rounds pouring into the woods in a narrow cone. If the screams and Arabic curses of the dying were anything to go by, all six of the terrorists were either down, dead, or badly wounded, Prince growling ferociously at the mere gall of the interlopers.
“Johnny, Tony, Choir!” Freeman shouted. “Come with me.” He then told Eddie Mervyn and Gomez to “clean up then catch up,” as he and the other three, with Prince leading, continued their forced march north on the deserted road. Freeman, on point as usual, spotted a faint gleam of metal in the woods off to his left. It was a downpipe from a creeper-covered cabin set well back, about a hundred feet, in the forest. The general led his men in through shoulder-high salal that formed the perimeter of a small clearing, mist enveloping the surrounding timber like malevolent layers of swamp gas. A thin, lazy plume of smoke issued from the cabin’s stone chimney. A beat-up Ford Explorer, its left rear fender badly rusted and strips of duct tape holding in a rectangle of transparent plastic that had replaced the back window, stood forlornly a few yards from the rear of the cabin, its tires’ tracks disappearing into the overcast green of salal.
Freeman extracted one of DARPA’s “products”—or “goodies,” as the Special Forces called them. It was a matchbox-size scanner-remote-key that, upon activation with one push of a man’s thumb, scans for the solenoid opening frequency of a vehicle and unlocks it. A more civil approach, knocking on the cabin door, explaining the dire need for the vehicle to catch up with the terrorists, to overtake them, had occurred to the general, but the very thought of the disk being in enemy hands was chilling enough, the possibility of Americans being attacked by such weapons evicting any idea of social niceties.
A woman inside the cabin was screaming and a man in a tie-dyed nightshirt came running out with a baseball bat.
“Stop!” yelled Freeman. “U.S. Army Special Forces. We need your vehicle. We’ll pay you compensation. Give me the keys.”
“What the—”
“The keys! Quickly!”
The man, dropping the bat, ran back into the dimly lit cabin, followed by Freeman. The general watched him go past a potbellied stove to a small table by a creeper-covered window. “Here!” He tossed the SUV’s keys to Freeman.
“Thank you, sir,” said Freeman as they came out. “Stay inside. Bad day to be out.”
“You’re as bad as the guys you’re after!”
Freeman lobbed the keys to Choir, and glanced back at the man. “What other guys?”
“Guys who done the same as you to Mick Sutter.”
“When?
The man’s sense of outrage was increasing. “’Bout twenty minutes ago. Busted into his shed, stole his car. Tried to call the cops but they’d cut his line. Smashed his cell too. Just charged in like you guys.”
“If his phones were taken out, how come you know about it?”
“He walked down the road a ways to a neighbor’s. He called us.”
“You have any description?” Freeman asked him, adding, “We’re on your side.”
“Huh,” said the man derisively. “Funny way of showin’ it.” But Freeman could tell the man believed him. “They was dressed like you guys. Battle gear. Dark eyes, Mick’s wife said. Middle Eastern guys. Like A-rabs. They looked wet — like they’d been out on the lake.”
“What kind of car did they take?” asked the general.