By now it was going over a hundred kilometers an hour. It sailed right over the tank ditch and pummeled over a second, shorter fence partly hidden in the dirt. Boston flew against the metal rail, then back against the dashboard, as the bus plunged onward. He looked at his hand and realized he’d lost the lighter.
Then he looked up and saw that the rag in one of the bottles was burning.
With a shout, he threw himself down the steps and out of the bus as it careened through the second fence. He landed in a tumble, arms crossed in front of his face, temporarily blinded by the smoke and dust.
The Molotov cocktail exploded, setting off not just the other two, but the fumes that had gathered in the rear of the vehicle. The bus turned into a flaming mass of red, an arrow shooting across the empty plain.
Boston pushed himself on all fours for five or six yards, swimming more than crawling, flailing forward through a tangle of smoke and dust. Finally he hit a clear patch and realized he was going the wrong way. He jerked himself to his feet and began running as quickly as he could back toward the others.
The Ethiopian soldiers had watched the spectacle with disbelief. As the bus finally ground to a halt and began exploding, one of the officers directed a squad to investigate. A fireball shot up; he sent a full company, then ordered the rest of the troops to take up a defensive position as he consulted headquarters.
Up on the hill, Sugar held her breath until she saw a second spray of smoke erupting near the damaged border fence. She realized that had to be Boston, letting off another smoke grenade; he was OK. Sure enough, he emerged a few moments later, sprinting in a wide arc back toward their position.
She went back over to the laptop, which was displaying the image from their last airborne UAV. The Ethiopian soldiers were responding to the bus exactly as they had hoped, moving away from the refugees.
She also saw something they hadn’t counted on — a motorcycle followed by four pickup trucks filled with men, coming toward them from Sudan.
The mercenaries had followed them from a distance the whole way, and hadn’t given up hope for revenge.
58
Landing the MC-17 at Dire Dawa was easy enough. The airport was used primarily as a military base, but Ye Ityopya Ayer Hayl — the Ethiopian Air Force — had only a token presence, with most of its very small force of combat aircraft stationed at the capital. The local squadron consisted of four MiG-23 fighter-bombers dating from the 1960s. None of the planes had been flown in the past six months, due to a shortage of pilots and spare parts. Aside from the MiGs, there were two Hueys in good condition, along with an Antov AN-12 transport.
The controller directed Captain Frederick to park near the MiGs. This was at the far end of the complex, isolated from the main buildings; it suited them just fine.
Greasy Hands was waiting with the loadmaster as the pilot brought the aircraft to a halt. The Ospreys were loaded onto a skidlike trolley, which could be operated by a single man. It took less than three minutes for the first aircraft to be pushed out of the bay onto the tarmac.
Setting up the Ospreys took a little more time. Much of the process was automated on the newest attack version of the aircraft — including the unfolding of the wings — but Greasy Hands still had to personally oversee the computer running through the checklists. This meant sitting in the cockpit while the computer went through the processes at its own speed. While streamlined for battle, the procedure still took twenty minutes before the first aircraft was ready to fly.
While he was working on the tarmac, Breanna was talking to Reid, who’d just got off the phone with the President and the Ethiopian prime minister.
“Very interesting conversation,” said Reid. “The prime minister grants us his permission to cross the border without problems. And then he says he’s not sure the army will honor that permission.”
“What?”
“One of their periodic political breakdowns,” Reid told her. “I’ve got two generals trying to get ahold of their generals to get the order carried out. Meanwhile, their army’s mobilizing against Sudan. They’re sick of the rebels, and the government. Not that I can blame them.”
The pilot tapped Breanna on the shoulder and pointed out the windscreen. A trio of Ethiopian officials were just stepping out of a car.
“Looks like the air force wants an explanation of what’s going on,” Breanna told Reid. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Very good.”
Breanna met the head of the delegation — a lieutenant — on the runway.
“You have an emergency?” he asked.
“Oh yes.” She launched into a cock and bull story about an onboard fire in one of the Ospreys, which required them to be off-loaded and checked. Her story was so convincing that the lieutenant had the base fire truck come over on standby. While he went to alert his superiors, the loadmaster got two fuel trucks to fill up the Ospreys before starting to top off the C-17.
“Number one is ready to fly,” Greasy Hands told Breanna. “But it’ll take another half hour to get the missiles on the launching rails and all the weapons systems checked out.”
“We can’t wait that long. We’ll launch One now,” she told him. “I’ll fly it. Put the missiles on Two. You can follow.”
“Me?”
“The computer flies it. You just have to tell it what to do.”
“I don’t know, Bree. I don’t know.”
“Are you telling me you can’t fly it, Chief?”
Greasy Hands frowned. It was true that the automated systems flew the aircraft — the ones that patrolled Dreamland did so with no crew aboard, responding to verbal instructions from the Whiplash security team’s base station. Still, there was something about sitting in the pilot’s seat that made the old crew chief hesitate.
“Frederick has to stay here with the C-17,” said Breanna. “So it’s either you or the loadmaster. You have a hell of a lot more experience with the aircraft and its systems. What do you say?”
“I can do it,” he grumbled.
“Good.” She started off the flight deck, then turned at the door. “And don’t break my aircraft.”
It was a line Greasy Hands had used countless times when turning an aircraft over to Breanna, and hundreds of other pilots. Now he didn’t think it was funny at all.
When he was commander of Dreamland, Breanna’s father had insisted that every pilot on the base familiarize him-or herself with all of their aircraft types. Breanna had flown an Osprey a few times, but only as the second officer or copilot. She would not have been able to handle the tricky tasks of taking off vertically and converting to level flight without the help of the computer.
Breanna manually entered her service ID into the control panel, then identified herself to the computer over the interphone system. It was like old times — even her verbal password was unchanged.
“Acknowledged,” said the flight computer. “Welcome, Breanna Stockard.”
“Assume autonomous pilot mode,” she told it. “Begin preflight checklist.”
The aircraft went through its checklist faster than a human pilot could have, giving itself a pat on the back as each system was reviewed and found in the green. The autopilot section in the center portion of the control panel flashed, declaring itself ready to go.