Raven Strike (20 page)

Chapter 12

Duka

D
anny managed to keep the car on the road as both tires on the passenger side blew out. He rode the rims for a few hundred yards, wrangling it more or less into a straight line, before the back of the vehicle lifted with an explosion. Someone in the shacks behind them had fired a rocket-propelled grenade; fortunately, it hit the road far enough behind them that most of the blast and shrapnel scattered harmlessly. But the shock threw the car out of Danny’s control, pushing it into a ditch.

“Everybody out!” he yelled.

They flew through the doors a few seconds ahead of the next grenade, which turned the Mercedes into a fireball. Danny could feel the heat as he scrambled through the field, trying to find cover. Nuri was on his left, Boston and Flash somewhere behind them.

It took him a few moments to orient himself. He checked his rifle—locked and loaded—then reached for his ear set, which had fallen a few feet away.

Boston and Flash were calling for him.

“I’m here,” he told them. “Forty yards south of the car. Nuri’s near me,” he added. Nuri was hunched over the control unit for the MY-PID a few yards away.

“I see ya,” said Boston. “Ya got three tangos coming down the road on your right as you look back at the vehicle. We have shots. What do you want to do?”

Once slang for terrorist, “tango” had become a generic word for any hostile.

“You have them?” Danny asked. “Take ’em.”

Two quick bursts and all three fell dead.

Danny crawled over to Nuri.

“Our missing CIA officer and the women are in a field over that little ridge,” said Nuri, pointing. “On the other side of this farm building. MY-PID says one of the women is in labor.”

“Labor?”

“The trucks are moving up from that direction, and there are men on foot coming straight up this way. We’re in the middle of deep shit, Colonel.”

“You’re a master of the obvious, Nuri,” said Danny, starting down in Melissa’s direction.

T
he baby was definitely coming. Its mother squatted in the field, bent low but still on her feet. Melissa, on her knees, cradled the woman’s head as Bloom worked on the other end, clearing the brush down and rolling the mother-to-be’s dress back so she could see what was going on.

“Crowning!” said Bloom. Her voice was steadier than before, braver, as if by attending to the woman she was finally able to push away her fear.

Melissa’s training for birth consisted of a single twenty minute lecture with a quick simulation involving a plastic doll. She held her breath as the woman pushed in response to another strong contraction.

“Almost, almost!” said Bloom. She switched to Nubian, pleading with the woman to push. The woman was beyond instructions, acting instinctually; her body tensed, and Melissa gripped her, knowing she was about to convulse.

The outside world had slipped away. If there was gunfire, if the mortar shells were still falling, Melissa heard none of it. She was oblivious to everything except the pregnant woman’s body as it pushed a new life into the world.

The mother fell back against Melissa. Bloom held up the bloody, gasping infant.

“I need a knife!” she said.

“I don’t have one.”

“Here!” yelled a voice in the field a few yards away. “I’m coming!”

It was Danny Freah.

Chapter 13

Duka

M
ilos Kimko lowered the field glasses and rubbed his forehead.

“Very good, these mortars, no?” said Girma. “You see how we crush our enemies.”

“These were your allies, weren’t they?”

Girma waved his hand. He was still in the middle of a khat jag; Kimko doubted he had slept in the past forty-eight hours.

There were at least three firefights in the city, two on either end of the main street and another up in the area where most of the Meur-tse Meur-tskk followers lived. Kimko hoped Li Han was hunkered down well.

“By tonight we will own Duka,” said Girma proudly. “And from here, we make our mark—all of Sudan.”

“You’re not to target any building near the railroad tracks and the old warehouse, you understand?” snapped Kimko. “Or you will get no more weapons.”

“You give me orders, Russian?”

Girma’s eyes flashed. For once Kimko forgot himself. Seized by his own anger, he balled his hand into a fist. Only at the last moment was he able to hold back—there were too many of Girma’s followers nearby.

“I need what the Chinaman has if I am to get you more weapons,” said Kimko. “If it is destroyed, I will have a very hard time.”

Girma frowned, but turned and said something to the men working the mortars.

Be patient,
Kimko told himself.
Once you have the UAV, you can leave. Take it back to Moscow personally—the hell with the expert Moscow is sending, the hell with the SVR, the hell with everyone but yourself.

“I need a jeep,” he told Girma.

“Where are you going?” yelled Girma. “Are you trying to betray us?” He grabbed the pistol at his belt.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Kimko. “My country wants the aircraft. I have to meet the Chinaman. It’s almost dusk.”

Girma pointed the pistol. Kimko, his own weapon holstered, felt the strength drain from his arms. But he knew that the best way to deal with Girma was to remain defiant and bold; these Africans hated weakness.

“Shoot me and you’ll never get another bullet,” he told him Girma. “My employers will come and wipe you out.”

Girma frowned. Slowly, he put his thumb on the hammer of the pistol and released it.

“You are lucky I like you,” he said.

Chapter 14

Duka

D
anny folded the umbilical cord against the edge of his combat knife and pushed hard, slicing clean through. The baby seemed pale but breathing.

The shelling had stopped, but there was still plenty of gunfire in the distance. A black swirl of smoke rose from the center of the city.

“They’re fighting on both ends of town,” said Nuri. “Sudan First has some men and trucks moving up the road in that direction. The last of the Meurtre Musique men will be down there in a few minutes. Our best bet is that way,” he added, pointing northeast.

“Any action where Li Han is?” asked Danny.

“Not even a guard posted,” said Nuri. “Two brothers are in a building about a quarter mile closer to the village.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’re inside. Maybe they’re sleeping.”

“They sleep through this shit?” said Boston.

“They’ve probably slept through worse,” said Nuri. “They’re two miles out of town,” he added. “As far as they’re concerned, the fighting might as well be in L.A.”

“What about the building where he was yesterday?” asked Danny.

“The two brothers that went back are still inside. The trucks are around back.”

Danny rubbed his chin.

“Whatcha thinkin’?” asked Boston.

“I’m thinking we hit that building first,” said Danny. “It’s close enough to the fighting that they’ll be distracted. We take out the trucks, get in there, see what’s what. Then we go and get Li Han.”

“When are we doing this?” Nuri asked.

“It’ll be dark in an hour,” said Boston.

“You think we should wait?” asked Nuri.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Boston. “But the Osprey is an easy target in the day—if it comes down now, they can hit it with RPGs, let alone a missile.”

“We’ll take the women someplace safer,” said Danny. “We’ll have the Osprey come in when it’s dark, if we can wait that long. They pick us up, and we’ll go directly to the raid.”

“What do we do about the women?” asked Nuri.

“We’ll take them with us. Evac them as soon as we get a chance.”

“All right,” said Nuri. “Fighting’s going to stoke up in a few minutes. The two sides are just about close enough to see each other.”

“C
ome on,” Danny told Melissa.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re going to get out of this mess—the forces are moving together across the way in a field about a half mile from here. One or both of them will probably try flanking in this direction. We want to be out of here.”

“Then what?”

“My Osprey will come in and pick us up. Depending on the circumstances, we’ll have it evac the civilians as well. I just don’t know where to put them.”

“All right.”

Danny smirked at her.

“What?” she said.

“You’re approving my decision.”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Colonel, I keep telling you—this is my operation. You’re just helping.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Sooner or later you’ll believe it.”

B
oston eyed the woman who’d just given birth.

“I don’t know, Colonel. Moving her. I don’t know.”

“We don’t have a stretcher,” said Danny, “and we’re not leaving her.”

“I can carry her, that’s not the problem,” Boston told him. “But I don’t know about moving her. She’s lost a ton of blood.”

“She’ll lose a hell of a lot more if they put a bullet through her,” snapped Nuri.

That settled it for Boston. “Boost her on my back and tell her to hang on.”

Nuri and Danny helped her onto Boston’s back as gently as they could. The woman was exhausted and barely conscious. Boston grabbed her forearms to hold her in place.

Flash, meanwhile, had doffed his armored vest and pulled off his shirt to wrap the child. Bloom put the baby into the shirt and tied off the bottom, swaddling it, then snugging it against her chest. She folded her torso over the infant, protecting it as much as possible.

The baby boy’s round eyes looked at the world with unabashed inquisitiveness, undoubtedly wondering what the hell he had just descended into.

Flash started to put his armored vest on Bloom.

“No,” Danny told him. “You have a point. You need the vest.”

“She’s got the kid.”

“They won’t be in the line of fire. Don’t be a hero.”

Slowly, the small group began moving through the field, Flash at the front, Danny at the rear, Boston, Nuri, and the women in the middle. Melissa had the toddler in her arms; the two other patients who’d been in the clinic flanked her, each holding onto the back of her shirt.

As they crossed the road, they heard grenades and gunfire from the direction they’d come from.

“Keep moving,” said Nuri. He repeated it in Arabic and then the local language, helped by MY-PID. “Get across the road and move west.”

Chapter 15

Washington, D.C.

W
hen Christine Mary Todd was elected President, the pundits and chattering class had declared that her main attention would be on domestic affairs, issues like unemployment, health care, and education. She’d expected as much herself. Having spent years focusing on the world’s problems, the time seemed ripe for the U.S. to turn its attention homeward. There was an enormous amount of work to be done in the country. America was recovering from a deep recession, and while the war on terror seemed never-ending, it had been wrestled into a manageable if still tricky state—or so it appeared from a distance.

But since she’d been in office, Todd had found that more than sixty percent of her time and an outsized amount of her energy were spent on international affairs. China and Iran were openly hostile, North Korea threatened war with the U.S. as well as South Korea, the Germans were making noises about rearming in the face of a rising Russian defense budget, and the war on terror grew more intricate every day.

At the same time, the tools Todd had to deal with these problems were unwieldy. They also came with complications of their own, the latest being the CIA and its clandestine Raven program.

It wasn’t clear when rumors of the program’s existence had first begun circulating, much less where they originated. But literally within hours of her ordering Edmund to tell her everything he knew about it, word of its existence seemed to have reached every corner of the D.C. establishment.

That word, of course, was wildly inflated and focused on the sensational; the rumors had the U.S. attempting to assassinate world leaders and even using the program domestically. The lack of hard data encouraged the wildest speculation and attracted the most diverse political agendas possible. The fact that the computer software at the heart of the program wasn’t mentioned was hardly reassuring. It wasn’t surprising that as soon as word reached the Senate Intelligence Committee, they voted to call Edmund in.

“I don’t think everyone in Washington has heard.” National Security Advisor Dr. Michael Blitz shifted uneasily in the chair in Todd’s working office, a small former cloakroom next to the cabinet room in the West Wing. The President liked to work there, like most of her predecessors, reserving the Oval Office for meeting visitors and ceremonial occasions. “I think what we have here are a set of older rumors being given some fresh wind. I would bet that someone on Edmund’s staff gave the information to Ernst. Once he got it . . .”

Blitz made a fluttering motion with his hand, mimicking a bird taking flight. “That will just make things worse.”

Todd pushed herself up out of her chair. She’d never liked sitting for very long, and this job required a lot of it.

“You can’t let him testify before Congress,” said Blitz. “Not until the weapon is recovered. Assuming what Reid told you is true.”

“I realize that.” Blitz’s mention of Reid bothered her—she was hoping to somehow protect him as the source of her information. But she’d had to tell Blitz where she’d gotten the assessment of Raven in the first place, otherwise he wouldn’t have taken it as seriously as he should.

If it were up to her, she’d let the committee roast Edmund for having gone ahead with the program without proper authorization. In fact, she was planning to fire him over this—as soon as Raven was safely in hand.

But in the meantime she couldn’t take the chance of word getting out and the terrorists in Africa discovering exactly how potent the weapon was. In theory, Edmund
might
be able to limit his testimony artfully enough so the real purpose and value of Raven would remain hidden. But she wasn’t willing to take that risk.

“Very possibly this weapon isn’t as effective as anyone believes,” said Blitz. “You know how these things go. The contractors pump them up—”

“We can’t really take that chance.” Todd paced around the very small office, literally moving only a few feet each way. Finally she sat back in her seat. “I can’t have him testify until Raven is recovered. His schedule will have to be full for a few days, that’s all.”

“That will get them talking all the more,” said William Bozzone, her politcal advisor. Bozzone was a lawyer and former congressman who held the official title of Counsel to the President, but was well known in Washington as her personal ward healer.

“I understand.”

“There’s another problem, you know,” added Blitz. “Senator Stockard. Maybe you should brief him before his wife does.”

Todd frowned. Zen was an ally on some matters and an antagonist on others. The fact that his wife headed the Office of Special Technology worked in Todd’s favor, to an extent, even if he abstained from matters relating to it. Still, he could be a potent critic, all the more so because he knew what he was talking about, unlike people like Ernst.

“I don’t think there’ll be any pillow talk,” said Todd.

Blitz raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“I don’t.” The president liked Breanna Stockard; she reminded her of herself twenty years before.

“Irregardless, you want to keep him on your side,” said Bozzone.

“I can’t tell one person on the committee and not the others,” said Todd. “Even Zen. I know he’ll be discreet, but even so—you see how far this has gone already.”

Todd folded her arms. The committee had voted to ask Edmund to appear
immediately
. Washington’s definition of “immediately” was a lot looser than most; even so, she doubted she could delay Edmund’s appearance for more than two or three days without some political ramifications—and undoubtedly a new round of rumors. Reid had assured her that Whiplash was moving ahead with the recovery operation, and expected to have the UAV in hand by the end of the day. But she didn’t want any word of the weapon’s potency reaching the committee—or more specifically, Ernst and his rumor mill—until after it was back in the U.S., which would add another twenty-four hours.

Two days. Surely that was understandable.

“His calendar is going to have to be full,” Todd said finally. “And I’ll find something for him to do for the next day. Then he can go before them. If I haven’t fired him by then.”

“They may subpoena him. Cause a big stir.”

“We’ll quash it.”

“Ernst would love that,” said Bozzone. A subpoena would only be for show—but in Washington, the show was as important, if not more so, than the substance.

“Too bad Raven didn’t target him,” said Blitz.

“Don’t even joke,” said Todd.