“This is Lisa Duncan. I’m the President’s science adviser to UNAOC. You will order two F-117’s to escort the Black Hawk heading for the coast,” Duncan said, “and the other two go help the second chopper. Is that clear, Colonel?”
“Quite clear.”
Zandra had made no attempt to regain the mike.
Harker took a deep breath. He let it out. “Are you ready?”
“Roger that.”
Harker took a deep breath and held it. He pulled back on the trigger and the submachine gun spoke. He hit his first two targets before the rest had gotten under cover. The return fire was intense, green tracers racing by in all directions.
O’Callaghan had the Black Hawk down very low, cut short in his attempt to go straight to the mountain by the interception of the Chinese helicopters. O’Callaghan was skimming along just above the surface of the streambed Turcotte had crossed not too long before. While he was down lower than the enemy could go, he was forced to go much slower than the Chinese helicopters at a higher altitude. As he took a left-hand bend in the river he glanced back. He could see the running lights of the lead enemy helicopter only eight hundred meters back. There was no way he could go to the other two men and pick them up without getting nailed.
“Arm the Stingers,” O’Callaghan ordered. He had his attention split between the course he was flying, the firefight on the mountain to his left, and the Chinese helicopters closing.
“Armed,” Spence replied.
O’Callaghan pulled back on the cyclic, kicked his left pedals, and swung the Black Hawk around 180 degrees to face the two oncoming Chinese helicopters.
As the Chinese pilots started to react to this startling maneuver, O’Callaghan pressed the fire button once, then a second time. Two Stingers leapt from the side of the helicopter. The lead MI-4 Hind took the missile straight in its air intake just below the blades and blossomed into a fireball. The trail MI-4 started to turn, but the supersonic missile lanced into the side of the engine.
Turcotte keyed the intercom. “Let’s get our guys and get out of here.”
O’Callaghan pulled up out of the riverbed and accelerated.
Harker turned and stared to the north at the ball of fire that had been ignited in the air down there. Then there was a second one. A burst of automatic fire from ahead caused him to turn his attention back to matters closer at hand. He fired another magazine, scattering rounds all over the hillside, keeping the Chinese at a distance.
“There. Ahead and to the left. Did you see those green and red tracers?” Turcotte was leaning forward, pointing between the two pilots. “The red is our people.”
“No shit I see them,” O’Callaghan said. “The problem is, are they gonna see us? That’s a hot landing zone.”
“We’ve got a solution for that,” Turcotte said as he turned back to the cargo bay.
Harker heard the rotor blades coming toward them. At first he didn’t see anything. He quickly pulled his goggles up and turned them on.
“Get your harness buckled!” Harker yelled out. DeCamp turned in surprise. “We’ve got a Black Hawk inbound.” Harker turned his infrared strobe on and held it up.
On board the helicopter, Turcotte slid the left door open while Howes slid the right open. Each held a 120-foot nylon rope in a deployment bag in his arms. O’Callaghan flared the Black Hawk to a halt eight feet above the tumbled ground surrounding the IR strobe. The two bags were thrown out and hurtled to the ground.
“I’ve got this one.” DeCamp yelled as he ran forward and secured the rope. He pulled the deployment bag off and hooked the loop tied in the end through the two snap links in the shoulders of his combat vest. Twenty feet away Harker did the same. The two ran together and linked arms.
There had been no shots fired yet by the Chinese soldiers. They probably still didn’t understand what was happening and assumed the helicopter was one of their own.
“We’ve got them,” Turcotte yelled as he peered off the deck of the cargo compartment. O’Callaghan snatched in collective and quickly pulled the helicopter onto an easterly heading.
Harker and DeCamp felt their vests tighten around them as the rope became taut. Their feet came off the ground and they were savagely swung out to the west by centrifugal force. Harker gasped for breath as he and DeCamp held on to each other.
O’Callaghan straightened out the chopper and turned to the east.
“Find someplace to land. We’ve got to get them in.” Turcotte watched tracers from the ground make a pattern around Harker and DeCamp and pass by the helicopter.
“We can’t. There’s no time. Pull them in!” O’Callaghan yelled back.
DeCamp felt his rope jerk. He looked up and saw someone hanging over the edge of the deck signaling him to separate from Harker. He shook Harker and pointed up. They both began pulling themselves hand over hand up the ropes, even as the ropes were being pulled in.
DeCamp was pulled into the cargo compartment. Harker was hanging less than twenty feet below, slowly being pulled up. That was good enough, O’Callaghan figured. He dropped down close to the earth and raced off to the east as fast as he could push the chopper.
CHAPTER 32
Twenty miles to the east, lying on the floor of the cargo bay of the first Black Hawk, Professor Nabinger had his eyes closed. His mind was absorbed with the images he’d received from the guardian inside Qian-Ling. There was much he didn’t understand, but one thing was clear to him: He had to stop Aspasia!
Then he remembered something else. The central tunnel in the tomb that was guarded by the holograph and the ray! He knew where it led and what was down there. And he knew how to get in there! No matter what happened, Nabinger knew he would have to come back to Qian-Ling.
He pulled out his leather-bound notebook and began writing furiously.
At Osan Air Force Base in South Korea, Zandra and Duncan were listening to the radio traffic from the AWACS when there was a beeping noise from Zandra’s laptop.
She quickly turned in her seat and entered a code. She read the message on the screen, then rapidly typed out commands.
“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked.
“Foo fighters,” was Zandra’s succinct answer. “Two of them are heading for China.”
In the Cube at Area 51 Kelly Reynolds knew nothing of the drama being played out over the skies of China, but she could follow the progress of the foo fighters. They were almost at the end of the Pacific and nearing the coast of China.
“What’s going on?” she asked Quinn, who had been hooked in to the military’s secure MILSTAR communications net.
“They’re pissed in the Pentagon. They lost a lot of men on that sub.”
“But they interfered…” Kelly began, stopping as she saw the look on Quinn’s face. She suddenly realized that perhaps not everyone was as anxious to have Aspasia land as she was. And that those who had died on the submarine were more than just numbers to a lot of people.
“They think the foo fighters are going to intercept the choppers,” Quinn added.
“Why would they do that?”
“That’s a good question, isn’t it?”
“Splash four,” the pilot of one of the F-117’s laconically reported over the radio to the AWACS, as if it were an everyday event. The F-117’s had launched four air-to-air missiles from over forty miles away. The Chinese pilots had never even known they were targeted when their planes exploded.