“I’m coming to you,” he told Talcom, raising his body. He took a crouching step toward the sergeant’s chocolate-chip fatigue, then another, then trotted ahead and slid in.
“I can get over them,” said Talcom, pointing upward. A jagged rock face rose above nearly fifty feet. There looked to be few if any handholds.
“Hell of a climb.” said Freah.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” said the sergeant. “We’ll trade weapons. You just cover my ass if they come for me.”
Danny eyed the rock wall doubtfully, but then gave Talcom the MP-5, which was shorted and much lighter than the SAW. He helped him snug it against his back.
“Wish I brought my climbing shoes,” said the sergeant, starting upward.”
“Powder’s going to try to get some height on them,” Freah told the others. “Liu, you and Floyd hold on until Powder’s up. Nurse, you on the circuit?”
No answer. The Dreamland-engineered radio system had a good range, but perhaps they were asking it to do too much with the jagged terrain.
“Hernandez, you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Cap.”
“You see Liu?”
“I can see them, but I can’t hear them,” Hernandez hissed into the miniature microphone. “Nothing, Captain,” he said finally.
“Can you get close enough to tell them to hold on until Powder’s in position?”
“Gotcha, Cap.”
Danny glanced at the firing mechanism of the gun, as if reorienting himself to the machine gun. Powder had already climbed nearly halfway up the rock. Slowly, Freah began to crawl to his right, coming around the face where he could have an angle at anyone trying to attack his man.
The communicator suddenly cracked with an ungodly noise. A submachine gun began firing from the other side of the hill and something exploded upward. Danny pitched up the barrel of his gun, and had already begun firing at the dark shadows above before he realized what was going on.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” he said.
The crackle over the radio was laughter.
“Buzzards,” Powder was saying. “There’s a fucking nest of vultures on the ledge. Liu toasted three of them, but another got away.”
“I thought he had a marksman badge,” somebody said with a laugh as Danny’s hearbeat returned to normal.
Zen was in Hawk One’s cockpit now, barely twenty feet over the tallest building in downtown Tripoli. He flung himself back toward the outskirts of the capital, feeding live video back to the JSTARS and from there to the SEALS, already en route from the Mediterranean. The route had been carefully chosen, with intricate zigs and zags to avoid defenses; whoever had laid it out had done a damn good job, because he didn’t notice anything deadlier than a water pistol. Nudging his sticks left, Zen put himself on a direct line to the bunker, now less than three miles away.
As critical as the video was for the SEAL team following him in, a good hunk of Jeff’s attention was pasted on the threat indicator in the bottom left visor screen. He was whizzing through green and yellow fingers, ducking an array of radars as he came in. the jammers weren’t set to go on until the SEALs were almost overhead.
A large ring of concrete appeared on his left. A lollipop of a road led to it, lined with tanks and missile launchers.
“SA-6 radar active, attempting to lock,” warned the computer. “Scanning.”
Thirteen seconds to his turn point. He had to crisscross the to of the bunker, catching two air-exchange units with the camera. Then he’d jump to Hawk Two, concentrating on antiair guns at the west end of the complex.
The computer continued to count down the programmed course for him. He took the turn, pushing the throttle for the last ounce of thrust.
Everything was a gray blur, even the bunker facility. He clocked past, noted a set of missiles that hadn’t appeared on the satellite.
“Computer, Hawk Two optical feed in visor,” he said, pushing the computer disengage switch at the stick base as he did. “Computer, take Hawk One on programmed course.”
The images instantly switched, and he saw the world again, as if he’d jumped back in time, not location. A large 57mm gun loomed straight ahead, turning. A row of antiaircraft weapons were arrayed at ten o’clock in the view screen, looking like sewer pipes in a supply yard.
“Team One is inbound. Thirty seconds,” reported Cascade.
The guns started to move.
“Jamming now,” said Raven’s operator.
“They’re firing,” reported Jeff.
Two Navy Prowlers as well as Raven clicked on their fuzzbusters. The interference was so severe the U/MF control computer immediately complained, giving him a red light on the radar altimeter and then warning that it was having trouble maintaining the connection with Hawk One.
“Raven, I need us closer to the Flighthawks,” said Jeff, switching back into Hawk One as Two completed the run of the antiair guns. He flew up the coast, the plane responding well to his controls despite the computer’s admonitions that the signal was degrading.
Somewhere offshore in the JSTARS, the operations coordinators were studying Zen’s feed to make sure they had all of the SAM sites properly targeted. They were like defensive coordinators sitting in the press box during a football game, checking to make sure the blitz they’d called would work.
It did. With a vengeance.
Jeff caught the shadows of laser-guided missiles closing in on the SAM sites as he began to turn Hawk One south. The Libyans hadn’t had a chance to launch.
Secondaries.
Turbulence.
A lot of shit down there.
He was between the two planes, spreading out over the coast. Fuel good, heavy air, almost stormy. His controls felt a little sloppy. Maybe it was the computer reacting to the wide spectrum of ECMs.
He could handle it. Zen nudged the stick up. The signal bar on Hawk One flittered into the red area, got strong again.
“Jeff, they’re asking for another pass on the bunker,” said Jennifer. Her voice seemed to descend from the clouds.
Zen told the computer to bring Hawk One closer. Then he pulled Hawk Two back in the other direction, away from Raven under a heavy cloud of black smoke and exploding tracers. Helos were coming from the northeast; he saw a pair of Sea Cobra attack helos letting loose with rockets on an official building a half mile from the bunker. Jeff hunkered down, pushing his head into the windscreen, backing off the throttle, slowing down for the longest possible look at the bunker.
The east side of the facility was defended only by an armored car. He tilted his wing and banked off, the assault helicopters right behind.
He circled, watching them land. Raven was almost overhead now, beginning to orbit back. Hawk One flew in its set position behind the left wing. Jeff pushed Two around, came in on the bunker once more as the SEALs blew the cover on the southwest air-exchange portal. They immediately began disappearing down the large vertical shaft.
A second Seahawk came in over the back entrance of the bunker. An armored car moved toward them.
Zen was nearly lined up for a shot with the U/MF’s cannon. He prodded the throttle slide but before he could activate his cannon, one of the Sea Cobras obliterated the vehicle.
“They’re in!” shouted someone over the command circuit.
“How’s the trial going now?” said Breanna sarcastically.
“It’s still going,” said the weapons officer, surprised.
Zen saw the main entrance to the bunker implode as he began a fresh circuit. Three satellite dishes collapsed with the dust as the front half of the football-side-sized upper building collapsed.
Had he said the trial was still going?