Bring On the Dusk (26 page)

* * *

Michael was glad that the cabin was dark enough that she couldn't see him flinch. He literally was in the dark. His PNVGs were turned off to conserve their batteries, and he wore the wrong type of helmet to plug into the Little Bird's ADAS camera gear. All he could see were the faint lights of the console, tuned to work with her night-vision gear, not his unenhanced eyes.

Claudia was racing them along a bare ten feet over the Georgian soil. In moments they were flying the ridges and valleys of the mountains that lined the Black Sea. Helicopters would be rare at night here, but not impossible. The Georgian Air Force owned approximately a hundred helicopters, though none would sound like a stealth-silenced Little Bird. Thankfully, the average person on the ground wouldn't know that their unique sound signature indicated a foreign power aloft. This first leg of the mission was considered low risk.

With no visual reference points, Michael had to clench his jaw against the nausea. Claudia was jerking and twisting the craft to retain her flying altitude.

Cut
the
bullshit, Gibson.
It wasn't the flight that was making him feel sick to the pit of his stomach.

It was Claudia, and there was no point fooling himself. She really thought they had a future. And why wouldn't she? He hadn't said anything to disabuse her of the notion. They'd even talked about children, for crying out loud!

She nosed over a ridge and plunged down the far side, leaving his stomach still gaining altitude somewhere behind him.

He had to face it. He didn't dare let her get any closer, because he knew he was losing his survival edge, slowing down. Someday soon, maybe tonight, at some critical instant, he'd no longer be the fastest one. A kid with a tenth his experience but possessed of a nervous system wired up on speed-texting and full-immersion video games would be that hundredth of a second faster, and it would all be over for him.

There was no way that he could do that to Claudia. And yet she deserved to be told. Soon. He knew enough about soldiers to know that now was even a worse time to come clean than while she'd been planning the mission. She needed to be out on the edge if they were going to succeed.

Unlike Trisha who thought “edge” was a place you were supposed to live every minute of your day, even unlike a D-boy who hunted for “edge” as surely as he hunted the Taliban, Claudia used “edge” as a tool. Like a knife sharpened and honed, she had built up layers of skills and planning until she was so ready that “edge” would emerge at the moment it was needed.

If he told her they were over, he'd blunt that edge past recovery, at least for this mission, hopefully not for longer. If they were going to survive this, it wasn't because of his and Bill's skills any more than it would be Trisha or Claudia's flying. If they survived, it would be the perfect wielding of Claudia's intense mental edge.

“How fast we moved makes my head spin too,” he told her. The bitterness of the half-truth was very hard to swallow.

* * *

Claudia focused on the flying. Her helicopter's systems included a highly accurate terrain map of the entire region that was synchronized and superimposed with what she was seeing. The stored map showed as a line-figure glimmer behind the night-vision infrared reality. There were problems with it though. Unlike Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the map had holes. There were gaps where no analyst had reviewed and resolved conflicting readings. It was also several years since the file had been updated for Georgia and Azerbaijan as they were “friendly” nations. New buildings, bridges, power lines, and the like weren't necessarily on the map.

So, she flew more by instinct, following the terrain she could see rather than anticipating her route from a map she didn't dare trust.

It was a good analogy. She and Michael had moved into a new phase of their relationship. He'd begun as a lover but had shifted over to the role of protector as if they were a committed couple. It had occurred so smoothly and seamlessly that she hadn't even noticed the transition point.

She'd always been her own protector, and to have someone else in that role was surprising. It would take some thinking about. She'd been a loner for thirty years, the only child of a pretty checked-out family, her safety and her education mostly in her own hands. Fitting in had been just another skill, one learned at Annapolis that had transferred to the Marine Corps as easily as to SOAR.

Yes, she wanted to be with Michael so badly her body ached with it even now. But they needed to work out a few things, just so that she was clear about them.

Now was not the time. Too much of her concentration was needed to avoid flying them into the side of a barn, but after the mission maybe they could finish their interrupted leave. Then they would have a talk. And if it came out the way she expected—the way she hoped—it was going to move them to a whole new level.

She threaded through the dense population centers around Tbilisi without having to cross into Armenian airspace, then began descending into the flatter, more arid lands of Western Azerbaijan. At least Georgia was behind them. Azerbaijan was U.S. friendly and could probably be talked out of executing the task force if they came down on Azeri soil.

The main risk now was oil-well derricks. They grew thicker here than the desert grass. There were more than two thousand working wells within the Baku greater metropolitan area alone, and that wasn't counting the offshore rigs.

She couldn't climb. Anything over fifty feet and her detection avoidance system would start stuttering with intermittent traffic radar warnings. Near Baku, between the international airport and the military bases, she'd have to stay under twenty feet.

But the oil derricks were everywhere. She'd never seen anything like it.

She felt like she was flying a slalom course worthy of the Sochi Olympics after all.

Michael noted that they weren't quite on fumes, but Claudia was well into the extended-range gas tank by the time they slid into Karachala Airport fifty miles southwest of Baku. Kara Moretti confirmed no flights inbound or outbound from the small airstrip. It had no commercial flights at all, and only a few private craft were parked there. The airport was a Soviet holdover used by few and nearly forgotten.

But not totally, which Michael had been counting on since his buddy at the SAS had happened to mention it as a quiet, out-of-the-way spot he knew if someone—oh, he had no idea who—might just want to land a plane there.

Kara circled her Gray Eagle
Tosca
from six miles high down to three—low enough to confirm no human-sized heat signatures at the airport, though she did spot a small family of deer. As long as Claudia's team kept it quiet, no one should even know they were there. They could just steal some fuel and go. At least things were starting out well.

Claudia and Trisha slid the Little Birds into the airport from the north at barely five feet above the ground and then settled to either side of a fuel tanker truck that was parked beside the field. Kara was the one who'd spotted the truck parked close beside the hangar when they were reviewing the initial satellite images.
Tosca
's overflight had confirmed that the truck was parked in a different position than in the first reference photo. That meant it was still operational.

Michael flicked on his night vision and hit the ground running the instant the skids touched. He rapped his knuckles up the side of the large tank on the back of the truck as he trotted down the length of it. Over a quarter full. He tried not to think of how old this particular load of fuel might be.

While he hot-wired the tank truck, Bill climbed on top and began a survey of the surrounding neighborhood through his rifle's night scope. At ten at night, the closest light was a half mile distant. The air was still and the temperature was about seventy-five. They'd have accurate shooting to at least a half mile even without the sniper rifles.

By the time the truck was running, Trisha had spooled out the grounding safety line to make sure there were no sparks and Claudia followed close behind with the nozzle.

At her signal Michael hit the pump switch. It caused the fuel truck's engine to falter, then groan with a deeper note as it began pumping fuel from the tank into the
Maven
.

He climbed up onto the tank to help Bill keep watch. Ten minutes to max out the fuel in each bird. Twenty minutes on full alert. The pump was so damn slow—each wheeze and gasp of the old engine worried him—but they got a full load of fuel onboard both Little Birds with no sign of anyone being the wiser. Maybe they could use this stop on the way out as well. It was certainly one of the contingency plans that they'd discussed.

They'd also discussed ditching the helicopters off the Iranian coast, stealing a truck, and trying to drive out across the desert. A hundred scenarios had been reviewed and the best had been chosen. None had been wholly rejected. Flying back through Karachala was one of the better options, but driving across the Iranian desert was far from the worst. Far.

Once the fuel was loaded, Michael made sure to wind the hose and wire back so that they would look unused. He considered breaking the pump's readout for number of gallons in case anyone tracked it, but he saw that it was already broken. He pulled off his hot-wire tools. The engine idled to a stop, then released a backfire as loud as a mortar barrage. He locked the door and bolted for the helicopter.

A single glance back as they pulled aloft and scooted off to the north showed several houselights flicking on in the distance. Maybe coming back this way wasn't the best option. Either way, they had their fuel and had made it through the first leg of their inbound journey.

* * *

Claudia hated this next part, but it was the best idea they'd come up with. It was time for the boys to go swimming and steal a submarine.

The port at Baku's south bay was a naval military base. And as paranoid as the Azeri were about possible attacks, it would be well guarded. Maybe not to U.S. standards, but certainly better watched than the airfield at Karachala they'd just raided.

Now she felt as if she was letting Michael go on without her. Three miles off Baku harbor, she and Trisha settled down to the wave tops. With no heavy weather anywhere on the Caspian Sea, the waves were barely a foot high.

They'd considered skid floats for the helicopters to perform this part of the operation. It would have allowed her and Trisha to wait right where they were. It would also have allowed them to land safely on the Caspian in an emergency. But they simply couldn't justify losing the extra hundred and thirty pounds of ammunition to rig the inflatable pontoons. That would have emptied the seven-rocket launcher. They'd already sacrificed one of those to the extended-range fuel tank. At least that choice of the hundreds she'd made had been an easy one.

She hovered inches off the water while Michael climbed out onto the skid and retrieved his pack from behind his seat. He pulled out goggles and snorkel, and slid out a small rebreather tank.

Then he pulled out something she hadn't seen last night that he'd stowed behind his seat. It was a cylinder about as long as his arm and big around as his leg—a bulbous housing, two handles at the sides, and a caged propeller. It was a DPV, diver propulsion vehicle. Its little electric motor could tow them quietly to their goal faster than they could swim. They also wouldn't be tired out when they arrived at the sub.

He noted her attention in the light of the tiny red flashlight he'd clamped to his swim goggles. “Under four hundred dollars; I bought them online. They have the range we need for this mission.”

Claudia had been really worried about the plan of dropping them so far from shore. Michael had kept insisting it was no problem without explaining why. Because he had planned from the beginning to use a DPV and simply not thought to tell her. And Emily said she'd managed teams up to eight people? Twice this many variables and four times the amount of communication required. The woman was amazing.

Claudia stuck her tongue out at him for not telling her.

He winked and then fell over backward into the water. The last she saw of him was two-raised arms making a circle around his head in a “diver okay” signal before he disappeared under the water.

It was a good moment. Claudia refused to think that it had at least been a good
last
moment. They'd get through this. They had to—there was too much waiting for them on the other side.

She lifted the
Maven
to five feet over the waves and Trisha did the same, which meant Bill must have gotten off as well. It was a short flight to Vulf Island, where they landed on the deserted strip of mud well off Baku harbor. The far end of the island had a small radar installation and a couple of the inevitable oil derricks. But the radar was watching outward for others attacking Baku, not someone parking a bird on the Baku side.

They landed and prepared to do the thing she hated even more than worrying. It was time to sit and wait.

Trisha shuffled her way across the sixty feet of oil-blackened fine sand beach separating their helicopters and slouched down into the copilot's seat, dragging on the headset Michael had been wearing moments before.

“This had better work, Casperson. I'm gonna be really ticked if Billy comes home dead.”

“Me too,” was all Claudia could think to say in response. She understood Trisha's humor, but it was unnerving. The image of her life if Michael suddenly wasn't in it was one she didn't like.

“Well, if anyone can live through this, it will be those two assholes. Can you imagine how insufferable their egos are going to become if this whole thing succeeds?”

“As big as ours?” Claudia offered.

Trisha laughed. She had the greatest laugh, and it was easy to join in.

They sat in silence and watched the distant lights of Baku. It was barely 2200, and they'd have hours of darkness yet to decide if they had to spend the fuel to retreat back into the desert and hide out through the daylight hours. The earliest they were likely to see the boys was around 2:00 a.m.

“This sure is something,” Trisha remarked softly.

It sure was.