Support and Defend (40 page)
Read Support and Defend Online
Authors: Tom Clancy,Mark Greaney
S
UPERVISORY
S
PECIAL
A
GENT
D
ARREN
Albright pressed himself tight against the frozen highway. There was no cover from the helicopter above him, so all he could do was fire on it with his pistol and attempt to make himself as small a target as possible out here in the open.
Another man from the HRT team went down just feet away, and bits of road kicked up around him.
The helicopter made a slow pass over the road, still flying sideways. Albright dumped an entire magazine from his pistol at the threat, then he scooped up the fallen tactical officer’s rifle. The helo spun around quickly to come back for another pass, and Albright flipped the fire selector switch on the rifle to semiautomatic. He aimed on the tail rotor of the aircraft, and it squeezed of a carefully aimed round. Then a second, then a third.
After another shot at the tail rotor, Darren knew he had to take cover behind the SUV on his right, because the blue helo was heading right for him. He lowered the rifle and started to run, but out of the corner of his eye he saw a man on the hill by the side of the road. It was one of the men from the van, and Albright spun his rifle toward him just as the gunmen got him in his sights of his pistol.
Albright felt the blow to his right shoulder, well above his body armor, and his gun flew out of his hand. A second round hit his vest, but the third shot slammed into his pelvis, breaking it and buckling the FBI man to the highway. He fell on his back, his eyes to the sky as the helicopter flew directly overhead on another gun run.
I
NSIDE THE
E
UROCOPTER,
two of the Lyon cell men were dead, shot by FBI HRT men and still strapped in their seats with their heads bobbing along with the movements of the aircraft. A third man had been hit in the right hand, but he continued firing on the road below with his left hand, until he and the others saw the Iranians move up the hill to the road and walk between the human forms lying still there.
Ajiz ordered the pilot to land, and Henri did as he was told.
A
S THE HELICOPTER TOUCHED
down Mohammed Mobasheri climbed to his feet behind the van at the bottom of the hill. He pointed his pistol toward Ethan Ross, who remained on the frozen ground in the fetal position.
“Move!” Mobasheri ordered.
Ethan stood slowly, his hands in the air, and Gianna Bertoli stood up with him. Together they walked up the hill with Mohammed bringing up the rear.
T
HE
F
RENCH PILOT LOOKED
to Ajiz while they sat parked on the highway. Through his headset he said, “I want to speak to my daughter.”
“Why?”
“She knows the highway down here. She can help us get away. I only fly up on the mountains.”
Ajiz looked over his shoulder. The woman’s wrists were bound with the straps cut from of one of the seats, and she was buckled into another seat. There was blood across her face, but it was blood from one of the dead Hezbollah men and not her own. She sat next to a headset on the wall behind her. He motioned with his pistol for her to put the headset on.
She did so, and before she could say anything, Henri spoke to her in Italian. Henri and his daughter were French, but they both knew Italian. He could only pray the Middle Eastern man next to him did not know the language.
“When we leave I will fly low over the mountains. If you can do it . . . you must get out.”
“But what about you?”
“These men won’t let us live. Believe me. I want you to survive. I will try to survive myself, but only if you are safe.”
“I can’t leave you—”
He snapped at her. Ajiz glanced at him, but assumed they were arguing about the route through the valley. “Then we both die today.
Please
, Claudette. You are the one who can give us both a chance.”
Their eyes met, she nodded slightly, and then they discussed the route they would take to the south.
T
HE STRETCH
SS26
NEAR
the idling helicopter was a scattered scene of bodies, blood, and damaged vehicles. Four or five civilian vehicles had stopped in each lane; the drivers had missed the shooting and saw merely what they at first perceived to be a horrific automobile accident and a rescue helicopter. The rotor wash of the helicopter blew the already whipping snow into a blinding torrent and added to the chaos and confusion. Only the first car facing each direction saw the guns and the fact the men standing were doing nothing for the men lying in the road.
The four Quds Force operatives still alive climbed into the helicopter after unfastening the two dead Lebanese men from the Lyon cell and letting their bodies fall out onto the frozen highway.
Ross boarded as ordered, he was shoved into a seat in the back and strapped down.
Mobasheri himself was in the back of the group boarding. As the men loaded up, he realized there would not be enough room for everyone, he pushed past Gianna Bertoli as she tried to board, and she was happy to let him take the final place, thinking he would let her go.
But as soon as he took his seat Mohammed turned to Gianna. Over the booming rotor noise, he shouted, “Unfortunately for you, I need Ross, and I need these men. I no longer have any use for you or ITP.”
His pistol rose quickly and he shot her through the forehead at a distance of six feet. Her head snapped back, her curly black hair flew over her face and she dropped onto her back on the highway.
Ross saw the Swiss woman die, he screamed in shock, and the helicopter lifted off into the snow.
A
S
D
OMINIC RACED TO
the scene he heard the low-flying helicopter churning the air right over his head. He looked up, but he could make out only a slight lightening in the clouds from the aircraft’s running lights as it flew by. He still couldn’t imagine how in the hell anyone could get airborne in these conditions.
Within seconds he was driving his bike through the after effects of the battle. There were bodies lying motionless on the road. He passed the unmistakable form of Gianna Bertoli, she was on her back and snow had already blown across her jacket, dusting it with white.
He found Albright lying on his side by one of the shot-up silver Expeditions. Dom parked the BMW and ran to the man, rolled him onto his back.
Albright was alive, but there was blood everywhere. He’d been shot in the shoulder and the hip, he groaned in agony, but he was conscious. He reached out to grab for his mobile phone, which had been knocked several feet away in the gunfight. Dom scooped it up and handed it to him. “Is Ross gone?” Albright nodded. He grunted in pain again, then said, “Helicopter.”
“I still hear it. It’s heading southwest.”
“Farsi.”
“What’s that?”
“They were speaking Farsi. They’re Iranians.”
“That figures,” said Caruso.
“We’ve got to let the Italians know,” Albright said, and groaned.
Dom pulled a med kit out of the closest vehicle and returned to Albright, who was dialing a number on the phone with his bloody fingers.
Dom knelt to treat the man’s wounds, but Albright waved him off. “Check the others first.”
M
OHAMMED
M
OBASHERI
was not satisfied with the pilot’s performance, they seemed to be flying too slow, though it was difficult to be certain in the near white out conditions.
The Iranian put on a headset and crawled between the Lyon cell men just behind the pilot’s seat. “Go faster!” He looked to Ajiz in the copilot’s seat, and the Hezbollah man waved his pistol in the man’s face.
The pilot did not seem to notice. He was covered in sweat and his eyes were locked on the multifunction display in front of him, worry evident on his face.
Ajiz, who had been flying alongside the man for a halfhour, noticed a change in the man’s behavior.
“What is it?”
“A problem.”
Mohammed held his own pistol to the pilot’s head. “You lie! You will fly this helicopter south. To Genoa.”
The pilot spoke into his mike. “It’s the tail rotor.”
“What is wrong—”
“It’s not responding properly.”
Mobasheri screamed at the man. “No! You are lying!”
He struck the pilot in the head, but the man did not react, so carefully was he watching his gauges. After several more seconds, Henri said, “It’s getting worse!”
Henri did feel an abnormal oscillation in the tail rotor, but he was not, in fact, losing control. He used the opportunity to bank to the right, following the moving map display in front of him to fly along the snowy ridgeline at the top of the valley.
He decreased altitude and lowered his speed. The Middle Easterner next to him screamed at him, and the man between the seats behind him shouted as well, but Henri focused on what he was doing. Right as he arrived at the top of the ridgeline, he shouted into his headset.
“Claudette!”
B
EHIND HIM,
H
ENRI’S DAUGHTER
took her opportunity. She unhooked her seat belt, dove onto the blond-haired man by the back door, then she kicked her legs out over the side. Shiraz recognized what she was doing, he lunged for her, desperate to take hold of any part of her clothing. The coiled wires of his headset pulled tight just as he got his hand on the cuff of her ski jacket, but gravity was stronger than his grip, and she was out of the helicopter, disappearing over the side.
The other men in the back saw the movement, but they were too late to do anything more than lean out over the side and watch her disappear into snowy trees. Her fall was no more than fifty feet, with hundreds of branches to slow her before she hit the powdered drift on the ground.
She would break bones and lie in pain for hours, but she would survive.
Henri turned back around in his seat when he heard the shouting in Farsi. As he turned he prayed he would not see his daughter in the cabin, but at first he could not be sure. He saw nothing but arms and legs and blurred motion of angry men crawling over one another. More screams in his headset told him the men were agitated, so he had reason to hope, but he could not see the seats directly behind him. It was possible Claudette had been moved. It was not until the men on the starboard side looked down into the trees below, shock and anger and even some fear registering on their faces, that he knew she had done it.
His beautiful, brilliant, brave daughter had
fucking
done it!
His heart had been pounding in terror unceasingly for the last hour, but now it pounded with a father’s pride.
Henri turned back to the windscreen in front, and he flew the helo over the peak, picking up speed as fast as he cold. The little winding valley disappeared below him, and these men would never be able to find it again. Claudette was, if not safe, then at least safe from these murderous terrorists.
Now he steeled himself to be as brave as his little girl. He turned to his right and eyed the man called Ajiz, then looked over his shoulder at the little man with the boyish face. They called him Mohammed. He appeared to Henri to be truly the least likely in the group to be in charge of anything, much less these other brutes. Mohammed had been focused on the activity in the back, he shouted what were obviously admonitions at his men, only two of whom were wearing headsets and able to hear him.
Now Mohammed stopped talking suddenly, and he spun his head to the pilot.
Henri stared back at him, a thin, determined smile on his lips.
The Iranian’s eyes widened. He shouted,
“Non!”
Henri’s smile grew with the terror evident on Mohammed’s face.
“Oui,”
he said, grinning now.
Henri turned back to the windscreen, and sucked in a chest full of air, and he slammed the cyclic forward, while pushing the collective to the floor.
The Eurocopter pitched down and dove toward the undulating landscape hundreds of feet below. Mohammed screamed in sheer terror, while Henri closed his eyes and found himself at peace, thinking about how damn lucky he had been to have lived his life in such a beautiful place as this mountain.
M
OHAMMED LOOKED
away from the pilot toward a sudden darkness that filled the right half of the windscreen in front of him. A craggy mountain wall was directly in the path of the Eurocopter, a violent jolt from behind told all on board the tail rotor struck the rock face. The rotor disintegrated and the helo spun hard to the left. The main rotor dug into trees and the aircraft slammed into a forested hillside and tumbled down.
D
OM HAD FOUND
two Americans still alive in addition to Albright, though both men were badly injured. Several cars full of civilians had appeared at the scene with their own medical kits, and they began treating the wounds to the best of their abilities. Caruso had just returned to Albright and knelt down to help him when he heard a sound to the southeast.
It was far in the distance but unmistakable. It was the low muffled thump of an impact.
The faint but persistent rotor noise of the distant helicopter stopped abruptly.
He stood up quickly and spun toward the noise. “They crashed! The helo just went down!”
Albright was holding the phone to his ear and gauze against his bloody hip. He’d heard the noise, too. He looked at Caruso. “Go get that asshole. I can treat myself.”
“You sure?”
Albright shouted now. “Go!”
The FBI senior special agent put down his phone and lifted his pistol for Dom to take. But Caruso ignored it. Instead, he scooped up one of the dead HRT team member’s carbines and dropped the magazine to check the round count. It was fully loaded with thirty rounds, and there was a 3.5 power scope on the rail.
Dom ran back to his motorcycle without another word.
M
OBASHERI FOUND HIMSELF FACEDOWN
with his forehead buried in snow and his body lying on a broken Plexiglas windscreen. He pushed himself up, rising slowly to his knees, and he shook his head to fight the daze from the crash. Looking himself over he saw that his coat was torn the length of the right arm, and he felt a gash above his elbow.
Somehow he had managed to end up outside the torn fuselage of the helo. The wind blew into his face, snow melted in his hair.
At first he thought it was nighttime, the light was poor, but a quick look around showed him the helicopter had come down in a heavy forest on the hillside. High trees blocked off much of the light above.
There was no fire, which surprised Mohammed, but he remembered learning in his brief military training long ago that helicopters’ gas tanks are designed to resist puncture and rarely explode like they do in the movies.
His mind recycled back to his mission, and he felt inside his coat for Ross’s microdrive. It was there, right in the zipped pocket where he left it, so he looked to the left and right searching for Ethan Ross. He found him still strapped into his seat and suspended sideways in the twisting wreckage. Blood dripped off the American’s forehead, but his eyes were open and he looked around in confusion, and a wash of relief muted Mobasheri’s pain.
The Iranian crawled over to Ross, pushing his way back into the wreckage to get to him. While he moved closer he saw that some of his men were moving, either unbuckling themselves from their seats or already out of the twisted EC145, crawling through the snow.
Others lay limp, arms and legs askew.
Mohammed unfastened the American’s harness and Ross slid down a few feet, crumpling slowly into a mass of twisted metal and wires.
“Get up!”
Ross’s unfixed eyes and pasty white skin gave Mohammed the impression that mild shock had set in, but he did as he was told. As soon as he put weight on his legs to stand, however, he cried out and dropped back to the ground.
Mohammed looked down and saw plainly that Ross’s right leg was broken four inches above the ankle.
The Iranian screamed in frustration.
“Madhar jendeh!” Motherfucker!
He began calling out to the men around him, he didn’t know who was alive and who was dead, and he didn’t ask who had been injured or incapacitated. He just ordered his people to drag the American from the wreckage.
When he finally separated himself from the chaos of the interior of the shredded helicopter, he was able to take stock of his situation. He’d lost one of his Quds Force operatives, it was Kashan and he was hanging upside down in a nearby tree with a branch impaling his lower torso. And one of the Lyon men was caught in the wreckage and near death, unconscious and breathing shallowly.
But three Quds and three Hezbollah remained, including Ajiz, who had also been thrown out the door of the helicopter into the trees but was not badly hurt and had been the first man on his feet.
Mohammed joined Shiraz and Ajiz on the hillside a few feet from the wreckage, and together the three of them surveyed the crash site. The location looked impossibly remote. They were on a steep, forested incline, with no sign of a road or of any man-made structure in any direction, although they could not see very far. They were surrounded by pines, all of which save for the ones involved in the crash site had over a foot of snow on their branches.
As there was no fire, only steam from the hot engines’ contact with the snow threatened to reveal their position, and since the storm continued and the isolated hillside was completely enshrouded in clouds, Mohammed thought it likely the wreckage would stay hidden until the sky cleared.
Mohammed trudged and climbed to get around to the front of the helicopter, where he looked through the windscreen. The pilot was alive but bloodied and badly wounded, half buried under snow and earth and the front of the helo.
It was no matter, Mohammed didn’t need him anymore.
Ross was the big problem. He ordered two of his men to heave the American out of the snow and move him, he told them—in Farsi, of course—that he didn’t care if the man was in agony, he just needed to get out of the area.
Three minutes after impact, Mohammed had his men and his prisoner were moving away from the crash site, albeit painfully slowly. Before he himself left the scene, Mobasheri walked back over toward the pilot, drawing his pistol as he did so.
The Frenchman knew about Genoa, so he had to die.
