Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (47 page)

 
          
Briggs
used his electronic visor to scan every vehicle. Traffic was starting to get
busy as they got closer to town, so everyone was slowing down together. There
were no militarylooking vehicles apparent.

 
          
“Annie,
this is Hal secure,” Briggs radioed. “Don’t answer. I can’t see your vehicle. I
need you to do something to distract the driver and make him swerve or slow
down or pull off the road. Scream, throw a tantrum, swear, anything. We’re just
a few seconds out.”

 
          
“Two
miles. You got them yet. Hal?”

 
          
“Nothing.
Every vehicle was in line. No one pulled off the road, no one swerved, no one
sped up or slowed down.”

 
          
“One
mile,” Luger reported. “Distance and speed are getting more unreliable, guys.
The system just isn’t precise enough to give you an exact bead on them. See
anything?”

           
“Nothing. Nothing that looks like a
prisoner transport, or a military vehicle, or anything unusual at all. A few
buses, a bunch of station wagons, a bunch of minivans.”

           
“Then we’ll have to do it the hard
way,” Chris Wohl said. “Rotate left, translate sideways.” As the pilot turned
the big chopper so it was flying sideways down the highway, Wohl leaned out the
starboard side cargo door, raised his rail gun, aimed, and fired. Both dual
left rear tires of a large passenger bus exploded. The bus swerved left,
blocking the highway and stopping traffic. “Make a low pass over the stopped
cars, and keep an eye out for a response.”

 
          
It
did not lake long at all. From a large but otherwise plain black sedan, very
much like dozens of others on the highway, Briggs saw a soldier in camouflaged
battle-dress uniform emerge with an AK-74 assault ritle in his hands, staring
at the low-flying helicopter. “Tally-ho!” Briggs shouted. “There’s suspect
number one! You got him covered. Sarge? Don’t let him get a shot off at our
ride.”

 
          
“Roger,”
Wohl responded. He already had the gunman in his sights, and Briggs hoped he
wouldn’t pull the trigger—a human body shot with a blunt one-pound projectile
traveling over three thousand feet per second would burst apart like an
overripe melon.

 
          
Briggs
didn’t wait for the helicopter to hover or position itself near the suspect
vehicle—he simply ran to the open port- side cargo door and leaped out, with
the helicopter still over a hundred feet in the air and flying about thirty
miles an hour. A fraction of a second before his feet hit the pavement, a burst
of jet propellant from his boots softened his fall. Another blast of propellant
flung Briggs through the air, and he landed right beside the flabbergasted
gunman. A lightning burst of electrical energy from an electrode dropped the
startled gunman before he could even think about leveling his rifle.

 
          
The
windows in the sedan were inch-thick bulletproof glass, but they were no match
for the electronically controlled armor that turned Briggs’s fists into
battering rams. He cracked open the left rear window first and peered inside.
The moment he saw two passengers wearing HAWC black flight suits inside, he
raced into action. He shot another burst of high-voltage disabling energy into
the second armed guard sitting in the aft- facing passenger seat. At the same
moment, another shot from Wohl’s rail gun disabled the sedan’s engine with a
tremendous
KA-BANG!
and flying pieces of engine block before the driver
could speed away through traffic. One pull through the broken window, and the
thick bulletproof door popped free of its frame.

 
          
Briggs
immediately found out why Annie couldn’t respond—she and Deverill were
handcuffed to the floor, their mouths taped shut, and a hood pulled over their
eyes. One quick yank, and the handcuffs popped off their floor bolts, and he
hustled the two fliers out of the disabled sedan.

 
          
“Stand
by, sir, we’re coming down,” Wohl radioed.

 
          
“Hurry
it up,” Briggs radioed back. But as he watched the sky while the Ukrainian
chopper came in for a landing, he saw something else that made his blood turn
to slush: four Russian Mi-24 gunships, armed to the teeth. At the same instant,
two Russian fighter planes screamed overhead, providing air cover for the
gunships.

 
          
The
game was up. The rescue mission was over. The gunships were bearing down on
them quickly, two staying high opposing the Ukrainian chopper, the other two
swinging wide apart, swooping in low to cover Briggs and the others on the
ground. The only thing they could do now was surrender. There was no way they
could—

 
          
Suddenly,
the two high Mi-24 gunships lining up on the Ukrainian helicopter swerved,
ratcheted back and forth across the sky unsteadily, then dove for the earth,
trailing a thick cloud of smoke. The two low Mi-24s swerved left and right,
popping bright decoy flares and ejecting bundles of chaff. The two heavily
armored Mi-24s were able to autorotate to hard but survivable landings several
hundred yards away. They heard loud
BOOOMs
across the sky as the MiG
fighters sped away, either running from or looking for a fight.

 
          
“Tin
Man, this is Terminator Two,” Briggs heard General Patrick McLanahan announce
on his personal satellite transceiver. “Splash two Hinds. We’re defensive with
two MiGs coming around after us. Get off the ground as fast as you can. We’ll
try to put these MiGs down and keep the other Hinds off your six.”

 
          
“Sweet
lord, someone’s looking out for us!” Briggs crowed. “C’mon, Sarge, get that
beast on the ground and pick us up now before our luck runs out.”

The White House Situation Room,
Washington
,
D.C.

That same time

 
          
“I’m
afraid. Mr. President,” Robert G. Goff, the
U.S.
secretary of defense, said solemnly, “that
this might be the worst peacetime military incident since the Francis Gary
Powers U-2 spy plane affair.”

 
          
Secretary
of Defense Goff was giving a late-night report to President Thomas Thom in the
White House Situation Room, which was very much like most conference rooms
anywhere except for the sophisticated communications capabilities—the President
could pick up the phone in front of him and talk to virtually anyone on the
planet, even those aloft or afloat. Arrayed around Thom were Edward Kercheval,
the Secretary of State; Air Force General Richard W. Venti, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff: and Robert R. Morgan. Director of Central Intelligence.
Vice President Lester R. Busick was seated beside the President.

 
          
“I’m
sure it’s not that bad, Robert,” the President said in a soft voice. “As far as
we can detect, the world has not stopped spinning on its axis. Run it down for
us.”

           
For most folks, the President’s
quiet tone and demeanor, his soft-spoken attitude, and his almost constant
level of energy were a calming influence. But with these men, in this
situation, it was beginning to get annoying. For Robert Goff, his friend the
President’s constant lack of... alacrity, for lack of a better term, was
beginning to get infuriating.

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Goff began, after taking a deep breath. “The rescue mission for Siren was
a success. Unfortunately, just before exiting Russian airspace, the EB-1C
Vampire bomber used for air cover was shot down by Russian air defense forces.”

           
“Maybe this Vampire wasn’t as
survivable as we were led to believe,” the Vice President scoffed.

           
“The best-laid plans, Les, the
best-laid plans,” the President said, gently admonishing his vice president.
“The only real failure is the failure to try.”

 
          
Busick
hid a scowl and fell silent. It was obvious to most of the nation that Thomas
Thom and Lester Busick were definitely two different men; if given a choice,
most folks in the know would never pick these two men to work together in the
White House. Thom was a complete
Washington
novice; Busick was the archetypical
Washington
insider. Busick worked best when operating
in crisis mode; Thom treated every incident, from the lowliest political flap
to the most serious world crisis, with the same quiet, understated coolness. He
had a sort of Jimmy Carter innocence about him and a seemingly Ronald
Reagan-type detachment from the seriousness of a particular incident, but at
the same time his finely tuned mind kept his staff and advisors well
coordinated and moving generally in unison.

 
          
For
many years, Lester Busick had seen himself as the ultimate
Washington
puppetmaster, the man in the wings pulling
the strings of power—but with the advent of Thomas Nathaniel Thom on the
political scene, he could tell right away that he was being outclassed. The
difference was that Thom pulled the strings without seemingly lifting a hand.

 
          
“What
about the Vampire’s crew?” the President asked.

           
“Sir, Air Force Lieutenant-General
Terrill Samson was in charge of the cover mission—he’s with us on a secure
videophone link. I’d like to bring him in on our discussion.” Thom nodded, and
an aide activated the link. Samson was seated in his battle staff area at
Dreamland, along with Major John Long. “General Samson, this is Secretary Goff.
I’m here with the President and the National Security Council in the Situation
Room. Who’s with you. General?”

 
          
“This
is Major John Long, operations officer of the 111th Bombardment Squadron, the
unit that the aircrew and aircraft were assigned; he is the acting commander.
The unit commander, Colonel Furness, is the aircraft commander of the backup
aircraft and is en route back here.”

 
          
“Very
well, General. What’s the latest on the crew?”

 
          
“Both
crew members are alive,” Samson said. “One crew member is still unconscious.
The crew was captured by local Russian militiamen and transferred to the Border
Police, who are taking them to an unknown location, presumably a Border Police
regional headquarters, possibly
Belgorod
.”

 
          
“The
plane was destroyed in the crash, General Samson?” the President asked.

 
          
“Our
telemetry indicates that the plane was completely destroyed, sir,” Samson
replied.

 
          
‘Telemetry?”

 
          
“We
monitor hundreds of different parameters of every weapon system involved in our
missions by satellite, sir.”

           
“Too bad you can’t monitor your
human ‘weapon systems’ the same way, General,” Busick quipped.

           
“In fact, sir, we can,” Samson said.
“We’re in constant voice contact with all of our personnel, and we monitor a
range of readings on each one constantly by satellite.”

 
          
“You
do?” the President asked incredulously. “You know where they are, what they
say, whether their hearts are beating or not?”

 
          
“Exactly,
Mr. President,” Samson said. “My staff has been monitoring them continuously
during this mission. We are not currently in voice contact, but we are
monitoring life signs and they are alive. We can also plot their positions
w'ith some degree of accuracy, and we’ve determined that they are indeed on the
move.” Thom’s eyebrows arched in amazement. “Their situation appears to be
quite desperate I’m afraid they’ve been captured and will be in the Russian
military prisoner system shortly.”

 
          
“Amazing,”
Busick gasped. “So you know exactly where they are right now? Why don’t we just
go in and get them, then?”

 
          
“My
thoughts exactly,” Defense Secretary Goff said enthusiastically. He turned to
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “General Venti?”