Finished spooking the camels, A-Bomb pulled off and swung in for his own drop.
Doberman began to climb in a spiral intended to keep him away from both the helicopters and his wingman; in the dark good flight discipline was particularly important and he hit his marks precisely, climbing quickly, for a Hog, to ten thousand feet. Their straight-forward plan called for the two Hogs to remain in the area for thirty minutes, which hopefully would be long enough for the two helos to refuel and get underway.
Once the helicopters cleared, they could waste the triple-A battery and go home, where bed was waiting. Doberman’s body ached for rest, even if it was on a cramped cot stolen from the Special Ops Forces troops.
There had been no fireballs. That was a good sign.
If you believed in luck, this was exactly the sort of gig that depended on it. Rigging a bizarre plan, flying to a point on the map with a notoriously inefficient INS system, then hooking up with helos that had already been flying for hours on a course so convoluted they were coming south— only to have the whole thing almost screw up because of a group of wayward camels.
Luck?
Bullshit. How about giving credit to tons of skill, with great technical people coming up with a creative solution to an impossible problem? How about great navigational skill on his part, making mid-course corrections and dealing with an unexpected glitch in the shape of an anti-air gun? And give a little credit to impromptu finesse from A-Bomb, scaring the crap out of the camels to herd them away from the drop zone.
Luck was bullshit.
Doberman felt his leg starting to numb from inactivity. He danced it up and down, twisted his muscles and shook his knees around, trying to ward off the pins and needles.
Rosen and Tinman had done a hell of a job, conjuring up this drop-tank thing. Of course, Tinman had probably done this sort of thing before, like maybe for the Wright Brothers.
Silver crosses. Jeee-zus.
Rosen, though, she was pretty damn smart for a girl.
Check that. For a woman.
She was a woman. There was something sincere in her eyes, something warm, as if she really cared if they made it on their mission.
The refuel took longer than planned, and Doberman decided to wait until the helicopters were in the air before moving on. He played with the variables, but couldn’t quite squeeze enough time and fuel to allow the A-10s to splash the batteries after the choppers left. Reluctantly, he spun the Hogs onto their go-home course.
“Six is clean as a scared camel’s rear,” said A-Bomb.
“Very funny. You watch I don’t put you up for a medal for that.”
“Hey, I got the only medal I need, courtesy of Tinman. You notice that gun opened up on you, not me.”
“How’s your fuel?” snapped Doberman.
“Not a problem,” said A-Bomb. His words were almost lost in what seemed to be an uncontrolled chortle.
“You laughing at me, A-Bomb?”
“Hell no,” said A-Bomb. “I’m just thinking of those helicopter crews when they landed. There must have been a ton of camel shit everywhere. Got to be more toxic than anything Saddam could load into a Scud.”
CHAPTER 30
The more Dixon walked, the less tired he felt. Whether it was because he was so far beyond fatigue that he’d become numb, or whether something biological had kicked in, Dixon couldn’t say. All he knew was that he was more awake and alert than he’d ever been in his life. The night was a little lighter than last night had been; whether because of that or some shift in his senses, he could see Turk and the way down to the road almost as if it were high noon.
The sergeant led him back to the road, then across and parallel to it. After about a tenth of a mile, he pointed out a rock that marked the edge of the minefield on the far side. Just beyond it was a dirt road that curved between two crags in the hills.
“The entrance off the road is down further,” the sergeant explained. “But this is shorter.”
Dixon followed silently. They quickly came to a pass and walked about twenty yards into the quarry. A rock face loomed ahead; they’d seen the top from the position where they’d taken the sergeant, but hadn’t been able to see its base because of the angle.
And the base was definitely worth seeing. There was a large metal door, the kind that might be used on a factory or warehouse.
“Old mine?” Dixon asked.
“Check it out,” said Turk, handing the lieutenant his NOD. “Brand new combo lock. Got to be hiding something, don’t you think?”
It wasn’t just a combo lock— it had a high-tech digital face and a massive panel.
“Probably booby-trapped,” said Turk. “Got a slot for a key, so you can’t just fudge the combination either.”
Dixon’s mind conjured up different possibilities: the Mother of All Scud Bases, Saddam’s own secret palace, or a vast underground base for the Revolutionary Guards. He saw the same end for each— a raid by Devil Squadron to send the bastards to hell.
Another vision mixed with the others: the memory of his mother’s funeral. It had been a bright, sunny day, perfect in every way but the most important.
She’d chosen the Job reading herself. For years his mother had cared for his dad, who suffered just like the biblical figure. Cancer had long ago left him an invalid; by the time he was twelve Dixon had reconciled himself to his father’s death.
Yet his father hadn’t died and in fact was still living at the nursing home Dixon had put him in when his mother suffered her first stroke.
His mother never talked of death, not the countless times it seemed likely that his father would pass away, and certainly never of her own. And yet he found the passages all noted in her top drawer, written perhaps years before, too long for any premonition, surely.
“What do you think?” Turk asked.
Dixon handed the viewer back.
“Underground bunker, or some sort of storage facility,” said Dixon. “Way out here, my bet would be a chemical or biological warehouse. Maybe even nuclear. NBC.”
He started to take a step forward but Turk caught him.
“Could be mined,” said the trooper. “The way I’m thinking about it, that minefield we stumbled into is set up for defense, so they don’t need too many men to guard the place, see? Things get tricky, you send a team in. You can locate your posts there and there, not worry about your flanks. And this way, too.”
Dixon nodded. He took the viewer back and began scanning the rocks, looking for a ventilation pipe. As he did so, he remembered that the trucks had been heading in this direction.
A coincidence?
You couldn’t drive them through the door; it was too small. The shadows thrown by the rocks might hide them temporarily, though.
Hard to tell. He scanned first for another entrance, then for a ventilation system. Finally he spotted a thin pipe a good forty yards back on the hillside, around in the opposite direction from the hill where they had placed the sergeant. He oriented himself, realizing that the bunker’s hill was connected by a long ridge to theirs.
“Intelligence people don’t know about this,” said Turk. “Otherwise they’d have told us. Hill wasn’t even named on our maps. Nothing special to them.”
“Yeah,” agreed Dixon. “But it’s real special now.”
PART TWO
SUGAR MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER 31
They moved down from the rocks so slowly and carefully that Dixon felt as if he were walking backwards. He held his submachine gun in front of him like a stubby balancing bar. Twice they stopped because vehicles were approaching on the nearby highway; each time they retreated back to the rocks, waiting until the trucks sped by.