“It’s junk. Some idiot tried to sell my dad a building like this when I was a kid. He laughed.”
They got out their screwdrivers and went to work. The panel was roughly three feet wide by ten feet long; the last six screws were too high for either of them to reach. They tried pulling the panel up as if it were a hinge. But the metal was too stiff to bend without a great deal of pressure, and Nuri realized that if he bent it, he was unlikely to get it back properly; the penetration would be noticed.
“I’ll have to boost you up,” said Nuri reluctantly. “Put your foot in my hands.”
“That won’t work. You’re too short.”
“You’re not exactly the Jolly Green Giant.”
“I’ll have to climb on your back.”
Nuri couldn’t think of an alternative. He leaned toward the building, bracing himself. “Take off your shoes,” he told her as she lifted her foot. “I don’t want them in my back.”
“Oh, don’t be a baby.”
She planted her boot on the small of his back and lifted herself up. He was a wobbly ladder.
“Hold still, damn it. I can’t get the screwdriver in.”
Even standing on Nuri’s shoulders, Hera could barely reach the last two screws. She raised herself as high as she could on her tiptoes, leaning awkwardly and holding onto the edge of the panel as she undid the screw. The panel slipped when she took out the next to last one and she started to lose her balance. She grabbed the panel, trying to hold on. The small screw gave way and she tumbled down, smacking Nuri in the head with the metal as she fell. He grabbed it, keeping it from crashing, but then spun and fell. Both of them tumbled to the ground in a pile, momentarily dazed.
“Ssssssh!” hissed Hera.
Nuri cursed angrily, but softly. He got up and examined his arm — bruised but not hurt too badly.
The room was to the left, separated from the panel they had removed by an interior wall, whose stud they had revealed by pulling away the metal. A hallway sat in front of them. Nuri increased the magnification on his glasses, making sure there were no sensors guarding it. There weren’t.
The panels were fixed to the barn’s structural posts by a network of narrow one by ones. The wood members were too close together for either of them to squeeze past. Nuri pushed against one; it gave way with a snap.
“You’re going to set off the alarm,” said Hera.
“There’s a wall between it and us. We’re good.”
“Well, be quiet, then.”
Nuri pushed at the next piece of wood, breaking it off, then slipped inside.
He stopped short. There was a video camera directly above his head, covering the hallway.
They must really have something to protect here, he thought. But what?
27
Danny dove to the ground as Red Henri began firing. Within seconds soldiers on all three sides had begun blasting away. Both Colonel Zsar and Uncle Dpap shouted at their men to stop firing, but their voices were lost in the din.
Danny told the Voice to have two of the Catbirds strike in the space between the rebel groups, hoping to discourage Red Henri and give enough cover to Zsar and Dpap’s forces so they could retreat. The explosions only added to the confusion. Worried that the others would be overrun, Danny told the Voice to launch the remaining UAVs against the spearhead of Red Henri’s force as it rallied around the trucks. The four explosions crated six vehicles — but still didn’t calm the fighting.
“Captain!” yelled Boston over the radio, reverting to the title he had used for so long. “Where are you?”
“I’m here,” said Danny, pressing against the dirt. “The Sudanese have helicopters on the way. Somebody tipped them off. There are two gunships, four transports. You’re going to have to shoot the gunships down.”
“You sure you want to do that?” Boston asked.
“Do it.”
The choppers were already close enough to be heard over the gun battle. Boston jumped out of his truck and ran to the rear, throwing the door open as the firing continued. He pulled out a metal box about the size of a carry-on bag and opened it on the ground.
Danny and Nuri could have purchased a dozen SA-7 shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles in Ethiopia if they wished; they would have been more than adequate to deal with the choppers. But the Whiplash team’s hip-launched Rattlesnakes had a far greater range.
“Hip-launched” was a bit of a misnomer; the missile was typically fired from a standing position with the launcher about chest high, so the operator could sight the target on the display at the top of the launching unit. The description had been coined because the missile and launcher assembly were about a third the size of the SA-7 and other traditional shoulder-fired weapons.
The name Rattlesnake — officially the weapon was known as the AIM-19x — was a tribute to the Sidewinder family of air-launched missiles. The AIM-19x was a derivative of the late model Sidewinders, with a smaller warhead propelled at extremely high speeds by a two-stage rocket motor. The first stage, which included two sets of maneuverable fins and a variable thrust mechanism, brought the missile to its target. As the projectile was about to hit, the second stage ignited, pushing the warhead through with devastating effect.
The weapon was intended to be used primarily against helicopters, though the warhead was an equal opportunity shredder of engines and other metal. Besides its terminal velocity, the secret of its success was a guidance system that could home in on heat sources, electronic signatures, or a radar reflection — or all three simultaneously. Once locked and launched, the tiny chip that constituted its brain was smart enough to see through decoys, ignoring hotter heat sources if they did not correspond to the data picked up by the other detection methods. This made defensive flares — the most common antimissile defense — useless.
A fact the Sudan gunships were about to discover.
The aircraft were flying in a staggered formation in front of the troop ships, aiming to part at the point of attack. They would sweep in opposite directions around the gathered rebels, machine-gunning their positions after launching rockets at the vehicles.
Boston zeroed in on the lead chopper and fired just before it began its attack. The Gazelle pilot’s first warning that he was in trouble were the sounds of a clunk and rip above him, as if a bolt had shot down a long metal tunnel and then torn it in two. Punctured, the engine immediately stopped working, leaving the rotor to spin on sheer momentum. Fuel flooded into the turbine chamber, where it ignited from the heat of the damaged metal. The explosion blew apart the rear portion of the cockpit with so much force that the spine of the helicopter snapped in two. The chopper fell forward, bent like a paper clip. The pilot tried frantically to pull it up, not realizing what was happening. Within two seconds the Gazelle lay in a burning heap on the ground.
Defensive flares began cascading from the choppers. The second gunship unleashed its rockets, setting two of the vehicles in Red Henri’s fleet on fire and cratering two others. Boston drew a bead; a moment later the helicopter went down, crumbling only a few yards from one of the trucks it had just destroyed.
Danny began crawling back toward what he thought was Colonel Zsar’s position. He’d gone about five yards on his belly when he realized he was heading toward Uncle Dpap’s Jeep. He started to change direction but a burst of bullets from one of Red Henri’s machine guns stopped him.
Rebels were screaming and firing indiscriminately. The troopships were landing on the perimeter. The gun battle was already a chaotic swirl, and it was only just beginning.
Sensing that staying low wasn’t going to protect him much longer, Danny jerked to his feet and ran, racing toward Uncle Dpap’s vehicle. As he ran, a pair of bullets slapped at his ribs, twisting him around. One hit the back of his vest, the other the side. Three more bullets flew at him as he fell. One smashed straight into his chest.