“We have to move!” yelled Gunny. “Move!”
“Move!” echoed Jackson, trying to urge the others to stop returning fire and retreat to the Chinook. “We’ll cover you.”
The far end of the ditch burst with an explosion. Gunny cursed, falling forward and hitting his chin on Jackson’s boot.
“Damn it,” he said, starting to pull himself up. “Down! Down! Incoming!” yelled Jackson.
Something roared above them and the armored car hissed. Red metal flew through the air.
“The Chinook’s moving!” yelped Jackson.
“Go! Go!” yelled Gunny. Above them one of the F-16’s was wheeling through the sky, trying to cover their retreat. The Somalians had temporarily turned their attention to it, throwing everything they had into the sky.
“You got balls,” Gunny told the F-16 as he burned a clip in the direction of the Somies. “Even if you are a pansy-ass Air Force pilot.”
KNIFE WAS OUT OF GBUS AND ABOUT HALFWAY through his store of cannon shells, slashing and dashing the Somalian forces as the Chinook tried desperately to round up the last members of its fire team. The helicopter pilot’s aircraft had been hit and he was worried about making it back to Ethiopia, but the man didn’t want to leave without every one of his passengers aboard.
Somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Knife had told the pilot that he’d hang in there as long as needed. Somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Mack had decided he had to stay close and help keep some of his guys alive. And somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Major Mack “Knife” Smith had realized that he was flying maybe twenty feet over the trees and taking a hell of a lot of risk with all this metal flying through the air, not to mention the damn fireworks from the still-exploding missile stores.
Flames from the two vehicles he had smashed gave him a clear view of the remaining troops firing on his Marines. Smith swooped in for a low-level cannon attack. The Chinook stuttered to his left as he rode in, the barrels on his M61 beginning to churn. He cut a swath through the Somalians, then picked up his nose to bank around for another pass. As he did, he saw a pair of wheeled vehicles moving forward behind the far building. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw an H-shaped shadow at the top of one of the vehicles—a missile launcher maybe, but he was beyond it too fast. His RWR stayed clean.
“Poison One, this is Poison Three, we are moving to engage four bogies at this time,” snapped the lead pilot of the second group of F-16’s. “Repeat, we have company. MiGs. Possibly Libyan. They’re coming south and they are hot!”
“Copy,” said Knife. It was past time to call it a day. “Pelican, get the hell out of there,” he told the Chinook pilot. “Go! Now! Go!”
He banked around to cover the helicopter’s retreat. He hunted the shadows for the two vehicles he’d seen, his forward airspeed dropping toward two hundred knots. He saw something loom on his left; by the time he got his nose on it a tongue of fire ignited from the top.
Missile launcher. Probably an antitank weapon or something similar, but he felt sucker-punched as the missile sailed toward the helicopter. He began to fire his cannon, even though he wasn’t lined up right; he pushed his rudder to swing into the shot, but was too high and then too far to the right. He thought he heard a stall warning and went for throttle; rocketing upward, he realized he was low on gas.
The helo was still hovering. The missile had missed.
His RWR bleeped. The MiGs were on them already. Shit.
“Pelican! Get the fuck out of here!” he screamed.
He plunged his aircraft back toward the remaining vehicle, again firing before he had a definitive target. Meanwhile, Poison Three called a missile launch; things were getting beyond hot and heavy.
Knife reached to put the throttle to the redline, already plotting his escape southwest toward Poison Two.
Something thudded directly behind his seat. He felt the Viper’s tail jerk upward, and in the next instant realized the control stick had stopped responding.
“I’m hit,” he snapped. And in the next instant he pulled the eject handles, just before the plane tore into a spin, its back broken by not one but two shoulder-fired SA-16’s.
GUNNY AND JACKSON WERE STILL FIFTEEN YARDS FROM the Chinook when it started to pull upward. But the old sergeant had been prepared for this—he’d removed the flare pistol from his vest pocket to signal them.
Before he could fire, something exploded above him. He jerked his head back and saw the plane that had been covering their escape erupt in a fireball. Something shot into the air; a second or two later he realized it was the pilot.
Gunny turned around.
“Gunny, Sarge, shit. Helo’s this way,” said Jackson, grabbing his arm. “Come on.”
“We got to go get that pilot,” Gunny said.
“Fuck that.”
“Here,” Gunny said, pressing the flare gun into his point man’s hand. “I’ll catch up.”
“The hell you will,” said Jackson. The corporal tugged the older man around.
“I’m giving you an order to get the hell out of here,” said Gunny.
“If you’re stayin’, I’m stayin’. I got point,” said the Marine, pushing past in the direction of the parachute blossoming in the firelit sky. It was falling over the low hill to his right, away from the Gulf of Aden.
It was probably a moot point by now, since the Chinook was thundering off in the distance. Still, Gunny appreciated the sentiment.
“I hope to hell that pansy-ass pilot’s got a radio,” he grunted, following up the hillside.
IV
Whiplash
Dreamland
21 October, 2000 local
COLONEL BASTIAN WALKED THE TWO MILES FROM HIS office to the base commander’s “hut,” the wind chilling his face. He’d shipped the summary of his report via the secure e-mail link and packed off the full package, committing himself before he could change his mind. You were supposed to feel good when you followed your conscience, but he felt as if he’d just stabbed a friend.
A lot of friends. Not to mention himself.
Dog paused near the entrance to the low-slung adobe structure that was his temporary home at Dreamland. The guard assigned to his premises had taken shelter in a blue government Lumina parked a few yards away; Dog nodded in his direction, then turned his eyes toward the old boneyard that began twenty or thirty yards away. Surplused aircraft and failed experiments sulked in the darkness, watching him with steely eyes. Among the planes were craft once considered the nation’s finest—a B-58 Hustler, some ancient B-50 Superfortress upgrades, three or four F-86 Sabres. They were indistinguishable in the shadows, tarped and in various stages of disrepair. But Dog felt their presence like living things, animals driven to cover.
Time moves on, he thought to himself.
He waited for something more profound before finally shaking his head, realizing he was freezing out here. The desert turned cold once the sun was gone. He trotted toward his front door, deciding to throw himself into bed and rest up for the inevitable storm tomorrow.
The phone was ringing inside as he opened the fiberglass faux-wood door. He picked up the handset, bracing himself for an angry blast from one of the many generals and government officials connected with the F-119 project.
But the caller was his own Sergeant Gibbs.
“Colonel, we need you back at the office,” said Ax. “What’s going on?”
“You need to make a secure call back to D.C.,” said the sergeant. “Whiplash has been activated.”