Raven Strike (21 page)

Chapter 16

Duka

N
uri led them to a group of dilapidated brick buildings tucked into the side of a rolling hill. Even though they didn’t stop, it took nearly forty minutes to get there, weaving across the fields and down a pair of narrow, crooked paths. The fighting remained behind them. While the sun had pushed below the horizon, a glow could be seen from the center of town; MY-PID said much of it was on fire.

The only good news was that neither Li Han nor his people had moved since the battle had begun. Hera, in charge of the assault team waiting with the Osprey, reported that they were ready to move whenever Danny gave the order.

Even though MY-PID declared the cluster of buildings clear, Danny decided he wasn’t going to take any chances with the women and the children. He had Flash run ahead and make sure there were no lookouts hiding in the brush. Then he went to check the buildings.

There wasn’t much left of four of the five. Their roofs were collapsed, and in one case two sides had been completely removed, the clay bricks salvaged for some other project in town. Hiding in the ruins would be better than nothing—but only just.

The fifth building was two stories tall, with a large, boarded-up window on the second floor facing the direction of the railroad tracks. The door at the front was boarded as well; there were no other openings.

The wood blocking the door was nailed tight. Flash took his knife and began prying out nails, sliding the blade in and then working the edge near the hilt under the heads until he could get them with his fingers. Getting the first board was slow, tedious work, but once it was off, he found he could pry out the board directly below it, and then the next, making a space large enough to crawl through. Flash hit a button on his uniform sleeve, activating an LED flashlight sewn into his cuff.

“Looks clear,” he told Danny from inside.

Dropping to his knees, he pulled down the visor on his helmet and slipped into the building. Danny turned around, making sure no one was following them.

“Jesus,” Flash muttered over the radio.

“What’s up?” said Danny.

“Looks like a torture chamber in here. Damn.”

“What?”

“Take a look.”

Danny slipped his visor down as Flash shared his image over the Whiplash circuit. A small window opened in the lower left-hand corner of Danny’s screen. Instantly it filled with images from Flash’s helmet infrared sensor, giving him a hazy view of the interior of the building.

There were rings in the walls. Chains hung from various points, including two beams that ran across the ceiling.

“Is the place clear?” Danny asked.

“Of people, yeah,” said Flash. “Probably filled with ghosts. There’s a trench in the floor, and a drain. Shit.”

“It’s a slaughterhouse,” Danny told him. “For animals. Food.”

“Oh.”

Flash swept the interior. Besides the large main room, there was a corridor and a set of smaller rooms on the west side of the building. All were empty.

Danny signaled to the others to come up. In the failing daylight they seemed to take forever.

“Let’s get them inside the building,” Danny told Nuri. “Get them safe and figure out what we’re going to do.”

“They don’t want to go inside,” said Melissa.

“What?”

“Marie says they think it’s unclean. It was a slaughterhouse.”

“Tell them it’s the only safe place for them.”

“They want to go back to their homes.”

“No way,” said Danny. “There’s fighting all through the city.”

Melissa nodded and went over to talk to Bloom. The two women huddled with the patients they’d rescued from the clinic for several minutes, trying to persuade them that the building was the only safe place for them.

Danny looked at the overhead images of the city. Much of the downtown was either on fire or destroyed. There was a running gun battle in the cluster of huts at the western end of Duka. The two sides were slowly being drawn to each other, converging in the residential area. There must have been at least a hundred dead by now; he avoided asking MY-PID for an estimate.

T
he pregnant woman was in shock, staring blankly into the distance while clutching her baby. Melissa didn’t entirely understand what the other two women were telling Bloom—the slaughterhouse was unclean or haunted or both—but the gist of it was obvious: they weren’t going inside the building under any circumstances, including gunpoint.

“They won’t go inside,” Bloom told her. “They just won’t. It’s taboo. They want to go back to their families.”

“It’s impossible. The city’s in flames.”

Bloom argued with the women some more, but it was no use.

“They want to go back and get their families,” added Bloom. “They’re insisting.”

“They’ll be killed,” said Melissa.

“I’m trying to tell them that. I suggested a camp—they won’t even go there.”

Melissa gave up.

“I can’t get them to budge,” she told Danny. “They want to go back to their houses. Despite everything.”

“Look, we’re just going to leave them here,” he told her. “There’s a jeep heading for the building where Li Han was holed up. The Russian’s in it. We have to go.”

“All right.”

“You can stay with them if you want, but—”

“I’m not staying,” she told him. “I’ve helped them as much as I can. Now I have to take care of business.”

“Osprey will be here in two minutes.” Danny spun around. “Nuri! Take my rifle. You and Boston stay with the women. We’re going to go get the Russian at their meeting place.”

Chapter 17

Duka

T
he city was a bloody, Third World disaster, the two rebel groups savaging it as they tried to get at each other. There would be no winners here, only survivors who’d be left to crawl through the rubble, and probably ultimately abandon it.

Kimko hated them all, including and especially Girma, who sat behind him in the open-top jeep, AK-47 in his hands, bouncing up and down on the seat with khat-fueled excitement and adrenaline. There seemed to be no getting rid of him.

They were nearly to the warehouse when Girma leaned forward and yelled instructions to the driver. He immediately slammed on the brakes and began making a U-turn.

“Where are we going?” Kimko demanded.

“Ha-ha, we have blown up Gerard’s house,” said Girma, holding up a two-way radio. “I want to see it burn. I have heard on my radio.”

“I need to be at my meeting.”

Girma frowned. “First we see the house.”

“Damn it, Girma, I need to get there!”

Girma’s frown morphed into something more threatening. “I am in charge,” he said. “You are a salesman. We will go where I want. Then you can get your trinket.”

Kimko cursed to himself. These people were animals. Worse.

They veered through the city square where Girma had started the war the day before. The pavilion lay in a pile of rubble. The buildings on either side had been gutted by fire; there were pockmarks in the facade. Across the way, the clinic that Girma’s people had run was now destroyed; part of its front wall lay scattered along the road. But that didn’t stop the wounded from gathering there; two aides were ministering to them, overseen by a pair of fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds with Kalashnikovs.

Small fires were burning everywhere. The air smelled like burnt grass and acrid dust, mixed with cordite and the scent of burning metal. A pack of dogs ran down the street, dragging something between them.

A corpse.

They swung west, moving into a district of traditional round huts with their cone-shaped roofs. It was here that most of the tribesmen belonging to Meur-tse Meur-tskk lived. Bodies were scattered in the yards. The majority were women and children. Dead animals lay along and in the road; the driver made no effort to avoid most of them, simply speeding over the remains.

Girma, meanwhile, chewed his khat leaves.

Two men with guns stood in the street ahead, waving their arms as the jeep approached. Kimko put his hand on his holster, ready to pull the pistol out if needed.

Girma stood up, holding onto the roll bar. He raised his rifle and fired a burst in greeting.

The men ran to him, jabbering. Girma leaned forward and pointed the driver to the right.

“Too many enemies down road,” he told Kimko. “We’ll see them later. Dead.”

Chapter 18

Duka

W
ith the Russian heading to the west of the city rather than Li Han’s house to the north, Danny decided not to commit his small force or risk the aircraft getting close to the fighting yet. He told the pilots to hold back; in the meantime he and the others would proceed to the stationmaster building and set up an ambush.

“I want to hold the Osprey off as long as I can,” he told Melissa. “It’s a straight shot for us through that field and then up the hill and over. Flash and I can get there pretty fast. Can you keep up?”

“I can keep up.”

Danny led the way at a strong trot. The circuitry in the night vision screen on his helmet could turn the dull dusk as bright as day if he wanted, but Danny found that too distracting: it looked so real that it was hard to remember it was just being synthesized by the sensors; in his opinion, that made it easier to subconsciously miss something. So he stayed with traditional night vision mode, which made it clear that he wasn’t seeing the entire picture; the difference could be critical.

When they reached a narrow dirt road on the other side of the field, Danny picked up his pace, sprinting about thirty yards to a stream that emptied into a small pond near the railroad tracks about a quarter mile away. The streambed was rocky, and he had to pick his way, glancing back every so often to check on Melissa behind him. Her breathing was labored but she was keeping pace.

“Subject jeep has stopped in residential area,” declared MY-PID.

“Why?” asked Danny.

“Insufficient data, operand uncertain,” said the Voice, getting technical on him.

“Display jeep video feed in lower screen one,” said Danny.

The image from the Global Hawk popped into the lower-left-hand side of his visor. It was grainy, magnified beyond its optimum size. Danny couldn’t make out much more than an indiscriminate crowd.

He slowed, then stopped so he could focus on the image. He was worried that Li Han was there.

“Subject identified as Milos Kimko—confirm he’s at the jeep site,” Danny told MY-PID.

“Confirmed.” A box appeared around the figure in the passenger seat of the jeep.

“Is Li Han there? Subject code-named Mao Man—is he at the jeep site?”

“Negative.”

“Confidence level?”

“Confidence level 98.3 percent,” said the computer tartly.

“Where is he?”

The building two miles east of town was highlighted.

“Confidence level?”

“Confidence level 98.2 percent,” snapped the computer.

M
elissa saw Danny stop a few yards ahead. Even though she was straining, she waited until she caught up to him before slowing. She huffed for a few moments, trying to get her breath back.

“I thought you’d tire eventually,” she said to him.

He turned toward her. With the shield on his helmet down he looked like a space traveler.

“What’s that?” he asked, pushing the shield up.

“You’re tired?”

“Just checking to make sure we got the right place.”

“Do you always run to your targets?” Melissa asked. The front of her thighs were suddenly stiff. She pumped them slowly, knowing she had to keep them loose.

“If necessary.” Danny gave her a tight yet disarming smile. “Once we bring the Osprey in, the Russian will know something’s going on. If word gets to Li Han, we’ll spook him.”

“I see.”

“There are two possible buildings,” he told her. “We’re not sure which one they meant, but they’re close to each other. We’ll check them out, then set up an ambush. Ready?”

Not really, she thought, but there was no way she would admit it.

D
anny set out again, this time at an easier pace. They crossed the stream and trotted down in the direction of the abandoned warehouse area.

The two buildings MY-PID had marked as the possible meeting place were located right next to the tracks. One was small and squat, little more than a locker. The other, about thirty yards away, was a three-story shell, a ruin that towered over everything around it.

Danny slowed to a stop about two hundred yards from the building. The back of the house where Li Han had been when they left the bug was to his right, nearly a quarter mile away. The warehouse they had raided was in the complex, a half mile to the east, directly on his left as he looked at the three-story building.

“What do you think, Colonel?” asked Flash. “We close enough?”

“Big one first,” said Danny, magnifying the image the helmet was projecting. If people were around, they were well hidden. “We check them, bug them, then swing around to the other side and wait. This way, when the Osprey comes in, we’ll have the far side covered.”

Danny lifted the visor and looked at Flash. The trooper nodded. Melissa was a few feet away, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath.

“You all right?” Danny asked.

She held up a hand, waving at him.

“Does that mean yes or no?” he asked, coming over.

“I’m good,” she gasped. “You set a pretty quick pace.”

“I like to run, I guess.”

“So do I.” She looked up and smiled. “At least I thought I did.”

“Can you breathe?”

“I can breathe,” she snapped.

“Come on around this way. We’re going to check the buildings. If they’re empty, we’re going to bug them, and then duck back to a spot over there where we can cover them both.”

“What if they’re not empty?”

“Then we’ll deal with it.”

Chapter 19

Duka

T
he body they dragged through the yard of the house and into the dirt road was barely recognizable as a human being. It had been battered and its clothes almost completely torn off, except for the shoes. As Kimko approached, it looked more like a collection of meat held together in a mesh sack.

Remarkably, the man was still alive. He writhed and jerked, arms flailing. Kimko watched as the men pulling him let go, ducking away as if afraid of his blows.

Two men nearby held torches; they threw a yellow hue around the semicircle of tormentors and victim. Half a dozen Sudan First soldiers stood in a loose circle watching the man as Girma walked over and laid his boot into his midsection. He placed it there gently at first, letting it rest easily on the man, who paused his writhing to stare up at him. Girma grinned, then stomped. The man curled around the blow, gasping.

Kimko saw the man’s face clearly as he turned in his direction. It was Gerard.

A shudder of revulsion ran through Kimko. If the man had any true courage, he would have died fighting rather than letting himself be captured and humiliated.

Animals.

“How great are you now, Gerard?” yelled Girma. “Now that your bodyguards and lackeys are gone? Where is your haughty manner?”

Girma kicked him in the head. Blood spurted onto Kimko’s boot. This enraged him; he stepped back, than lowered his AK-47 and fired point-blank into his enemy’s skull. The men nearby shielded their faces against the bits of flesh and blood that splattered toward them.

“Let the dogs have his body!” yelled Girma. He fired into the dead man’s midsection to emphasize his point.

A woman screamed inside the hut on the other side of the road. Gunfire quickly followed. Kimko turned in time to see three soldiers, none older than fifteen, emerge from the hut. It took absolutely no imagination to realize what they had done.

“We are in control!” yelled Girma, clapping Kimko on the back. “Come! We will go and get your airplane. You are our hero. You have made all of this possible, with your weapons.”