Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) (27 page)

He felt Connie freeze, even though his back was mostly turned to her. In seconds everyone stopped moving and turned to look at her without actually turning.

She remained frozen, one arm elbow deep in the bomb’s guts.

John slid up to her and looked down at the blinking green light on the bomb.

“What?” He hadn’t intended to whisper.

“I don’t know.” She was definitely whispering back. He didn’t like that at all.

She pulled out the phone very slowly and tossed it to Colonel Gibson, who caught it midair.

“Speed dial 1. Blinking green light on the flight circuit board after I jostled the blue wire on the protective cap over the detonator.”

John didn’t move. He wanted to run, but no way he’d leave a teammate alone here. And no chance he was going anywhere without Connie.

“Model?” Gibson relayed the question back to her.

“How the fuck should I know?” Her hiss was beyond anger. “It’s big, it’s nasty, and it’s lying here just dying to kill us.”

John rested his hand on her shoulder. “Remember, we’ve been through worse. It’s just a sling-load of freezing water falling from the sky.”

She started nodding. Slowly at first. Then stronger.

“John, grab the nose cone.”

***

Connie trotted to the Hawk and fetched the electric screw gun and set to work. Screws. Better than rivets. But did they have to use so many? She couldn’t get to the detonator circuitry without removing the flight controller board. But she didn’t dare move the controller board again.

So, she’d pull the whole nose cone and come up the damn thing’s backside.

She began undoing the screws as fast as she could, the green light still blinking its unknown threat at her. One flashlight, two, then three aimed at her hands. She glanced up to see. Everyone stood in a circle around her, as far from her as they dared but not watching anything else.

If she screwed up, the bomb would fire, sweeping outward in a titanic wave. She and John would have one or two final milliseconds together while the trigger fired. After that it would all be over in the next microsecond or so. They, the circle of watchers, the two choppers, the house, and the lab would be gone by then. Another second and the initial fireball would be expanding in a supersonic shock wave. The mushroom cloud might take two whole minutes before it reached the stratosphere. Explosions were fast things.

No pressure. Shit!

She couldn’t get to the screws on the underside without craning the whole bomb off the cart. No time for that and she didn’t dare move it.

“Okay, John.” She set aside the screw gun and slipped her hands beside his. She was pretty impressed at how steady her voice sounded. “We’re going to lever the nose cone off, break it downward. But the instant it lets go, don’t let it drop. Whatever you do, don’t let it drop.”

She braced herself to help cushion it from a fall.

Gibson called out, “Williams says don’t do that. Not until he knows the model. Does it have—”

“Tell him to shut the hell up.”

She saw Gibson close the phone and shove it into a pocket.

John released his hold, the nose cone didn’t give much. He leaned on the nose cone in stages, pressing downward but keeping his fingers beneath to catch it.

Connie laced her fingers under the nose cone, focusing on the catch, letting John do the bending.

The cover shifted to reveal a narrow gap along the upper edge. John slipped his fingers into the crack for leverage. If he slipped, it would pop back into place and sever his first two knuckles all the way across.

Gibson moved forward, but she waved him back with a shake of her head. There wasn’t room for a third, not and be sure of their footing.

John grunted as he leaned into it, heaving. He braced a foot on the undercarriage. She could practically hear his muscles groaning under the strain.

Then it gave, ever so slightly. The half-dozen screws on the underside of the housing couldn’t take the immense pressure and torque and started working more like a hinge.

It let go all at once. Heavier than she expected. It took both of them to the ground, but they stopped it before it hit the hangar floor.

John stood, shifted, got his stance, and then cradled it half torn open.

At his tight nod, she knew he had the nose cone’s weight, but she shouldn’t be too long about it.

“John. The old bird. Not the Huey. Medevac, Korean War. You know, like in MASH.”

“Angel of Mercy, the Bell H-13s.”

“Right. This looks like those radios.” She poked around for a moment. “But I can’t figure out the green light. It’s still flashing.”

“They. Always copying. Our circuits. Describe.” It was a grunt. This time Gibson did move up and help John ease the load. But there was no way Gibson could hold it by himself. No way for John to move forward and look.

So she described it. Half homemade bread-board wiring, half circuit board. “There’s technology here I haven’t seen since my Dad’s Huey. The green light isn’t even an LED. It looks like a big, fat Christmas-tree light.”

“I’d wire it like the Bell 212.”

Connie cursed under her breath. “I never touched one of those.”

“The detonation cap is hooked up how? Blue and red to the det cap, green to the frame?”

“Yes.” She traced them but didn’t touch.

“Bet the green is loose. Don’t wiggle it. Push it into the clamp on either end.”

“Still blinking. Oh damn, John, it’s blinking faster. I don’t like this.” She wanted—so much. Somehow she could see so much of it, today, tomorrow, some time, a lot of time. But a blinding light washed across it. She’d wanted. A wash of glaring fire. But now it was too late.

All was gone but the light of an explosion.

The light of a burning helicopter tumbling out of the night sky.

“Connie.”

Someone was calling her.

“Connie, goddamn it.”

“Dad?” A whisper that didn’t even reach her own ears.

“You aren’t going down the way your father did. You can fix this.”

She grabbed for a breath.

John.

Connie managed to blink the nightmare from her eyes. Saw her hands were still steady on either end of the wire, even if she wasn’t.

“You with me, girl?”

“I’m with you, John.” And she was. He was right there. “I’m with you.”

“Okay.” He blew out a breath hard. “Okay.”

“The rest of you get the goddamn extra rockets downstairs. Twenty-minute timer on four C4 packs. Go.”

Connie could feel it get just a little bit easier. John was there. He’d help. Twenty minutes, that was good. They’d either be ten minutes away and moving fast or they’d be in the center of the first nuclear cloud on Eastern Bloc soil since 1990.

“Talk to me, Johnny.”

***

Emily had almost stroked out when Connie froze with her hands deep inside the bomb.

“Talk to me, but make it fast.” Connie’s voice was shaky, but it was there.

That told Emily what she needed to know. If anyone could solve it, they would. If he hadn’t healed her with a word, he’d certainly helped her. Held her with his voice. They were a team. The two of them were far more capable together than either separately.

Twenty minutes. That made John’s plan completely clear and he was right. Either they’d be clear or blown to hell. Time to really get moving.

They’d set the excess explosives on the elevator and move them down to the lab, trigger them on a timer, and watch the whole place go up in the ADAS rearview.

Emily got the others moving the last of the excess weapons onto the elevator. She considered stripping the weapons off the Hind.

When she leaned down to inspect it, she saw the C4 already planted there. Standard issue. “Nice work, team,” she whispered but didn’t call out because she didn’t dare risk distracting them. Emily had four more in the pouch slung over her shoulder. On her next trip by, she snagged the control from John’s thigh pocket.

So, there was a reason to smile tonight. Her crew was a step ahead. Right where you wanted them to be.

They were still talking it through, John and Michael holding the nose cone in place, Connie now up to her elbows inside it.

Emily ganged a pair of the C4 packs on the floor directly beneath the chopper. It should blow a big hole in the floor. Then the helicopter with all of its weaponry would fall through the hole, taking two, maybe three seconds to reach the lab level. The pack that Connie and John had placed would blow up the helicopter during its fall, so that it was really burning before it blew itself apart. Finally trigger the pile of weaponry in the lab to finish the job. Shouldn’t even be enough left behind to identify any U.S. military goods. Between their weapons and the Hind’s, it was going to be a very hot fire.

Once the missiles were piled up in the lab, she slapped her last two bricks of C4 right in the middle and ganged them together. Emily quickly keyed in the numbers and set the three timers for twenty minutes.

She pressed her stopwatch first, then started each of the three in turn. She’d take the extra second of advantage of her stopwatch being a beat ahead of the first explosion.

Clay was holding two flashlights for the bomb crew. Emily grabbed Gerta and the spare D-boy by the shoulder, and between them they got the load sling rigged. She wanted to be ready to lift the bomb the second it was disarmed. They finished in time to hear John say:

“Now, take that section of orange wire you just cut out and short it between the high side of the big, fat capacitor on the right and ground. There’s gonna be a hell of a spark.”

Connie looked at John. But it wasn’t a question.

It was an answer.

One that Emily rarely witnessed, even among the most tightly knit flight crews.

Perfect trust.

Emily half expected the girl to mouth a good-bye of some sort, but her trust in John was too big for that.

They nodded in unison, then Connie shoved the wire ends down into the bomb’s innards. A spark of actinic white flashed so brightly that Emily had to shield her eyes and look away.

Wrong choice!

But it wasn’t.

They were still standing there.

John was the first to laugh, pure relief echoing out into the night.

Connie laughed as John and Michael let the nose cone fall free.

They all whooped, loudly for a moment, then hushed. Then it built again. The normally reticent D-boys pounded each other on the back. Emily hugged her copilot.

Gerta gave voice to a deep Russian belly laugh.

Connie grabbed John even as he flexed his fingers to get the blood moving back into them. She dragged his face down and kissed him a good smack.

He scooped her into his arms and swung her in a circle until it felt like she was flying.

She heard the sharp, ripping sound right next to her ear. A bullet flying through where her head had been a moment before, then a loud, “Thwack!” against the helicopter behind.

John must have heard it too, because the next thing Connie knew, the air had been slammed from her body and she lay on the hangar floor beside the bomb, beneath John.

A cry! Under the bomb cart, she could see someone crashing to the ground. Not even raising his hands to catch himself. A brutal slap against the concrete.

John rose to one knee above her, his rifle lined over the top of the bomb, seeking a target.

Behind him, Colonel Gibson stood upright, sniper rifle up, night scope casting a green glow across his features.

Connie could hear each bullet come in. The sharp snap of near misses, the sudden tap of rounds that hit something hard, metal or concrete.

Another cry. She couldn’t see who.

She saw Gibson fire a quick double-tap. Then one more.

She had her pistol out and was rising to kneel beside John, but she heard nothing.

For a moment, she thought her hearing was gone. That had happened to her once in training. She’d never heard the instructor shout “Stand down!” signaling the end of the exercise because she’d been in full-on combat mode. Sound had become extraneous as she’d focused her mind on the practice of a hostage rescue raid. The instructor had not been pleased at the simulated round in his back.

But no one else was moving or firing.

Then she heard Major Beale’s voice, “Crap! Mark is going to be really pissed at me.”

The D-boys were gone into the night. No question who had gotten the shooter. Colonel Gibson had drilled him twice in the heart, once in the forehead.

A car had arrived unnoticed at the other side of the house. Someone coming back uninvited. Maybe a shift change. Who knew.

It appeared he came alone, but the D-boys had gone to make sure.

Connie wrapped the blanket around Clay. She’d have patted his face good-bye, if he’d had one. Two rounds, maybe three, to the back of the head had blown out the other side. Gerta folded the blanket closed. Between them they managed to lift his body into the back of the chopper.

Then she returned to check on John and the Major. He’d cut a big flap out of the back of Emily Beale’s pants and her underwear.

“Damn! I liked these pants.”

“Shut up, Major!” Connie called out. “Quit whining.”

Connie got back the bark of laughter she’d hoped for. It was hard, bitter, but it was a laugh. That’s what Connie wanted. Needed, because she could see John’s hands shaking. He was the best medic among them, but that someone had shot Major Beale was… wrong. The Major, always invulnerable, the proof that
Vengeance
would always triumph, had been shot. Blood was dripping down the backs of her legs and staining her pant legs with far too much red.

The bullet had entered from the side. Thankfully passing through clean. It bled out of the entry and exit wounds, but not hideously. Not arterial. The bullets had been hollow-point. It was the only thing that explained what had happened to Clay. If it had hit the Major’s hip, the bullet would have mushroomed inside her and created a damage path that would leave nothing they could do for her. Instead, a purely meat shot had passed through both buttocks leaving four neat holes.

As it was, John smeared antiseptic, then a dab of glue to seal each hole. Best they could do in the field. He tapped some cotton patches to keep it clean.

Major Beale shifted slowly upright, testing her leg, her bandaged butt out in the wind.

“We need to get out of here,” the Major called out.

Connie nodded. Even shot up, the Major kept her sense about her. The timers were running. She glanced at them, they didn’t need to be stopped and reset. There was enough time to get gone. The two on the floor still showed twelve minutes.

So fast. In the last eight minutes, they’d disarmed a nuclear bomb, Clay had died, the Major had been shot and bandaged, and the shooter had been taken down.

Connie shied away from Clay’s death. They’d all be miserable soon. They’d all been in the services long enough to know the crushing doubt of why the bullet chose the man next to you and the deep guilt that had often made her wish she’d been the one to take the round. Even knowing the cycle wasn’t going to spare her. But the time wasn’t now. After the mission would be time enough for grief and guilt.

Connie moved in. Pulling the Major’s arm over her shoulders to support the weak side where the bullet had drilled deeper into the muscle, Connie helped her hobble toward the chopper.

“Can you fly?” The Major’s voice was low, low enough to be private from those around them.

“I can get around an airfield. No more than that.”

“Good. That’s more than John. I need a copilot.”

“Why?” The question slipped out even though it made some sense. Maybe she’d need help on the pedals with a shot-up butt.

“Because I’ve been a bit dizzy since I got shot in the head at the first airfield. Whacked it again pretty hard just now when I fell. Don’t alarm the others, but I need someone beside me in case it’s a concussion.”

“You’re alarming me!” Connie tried to keep it light, but that didn’t work so well. She wasn’t even close to qualified to handle a DAP Hawk on a low-level flight across foreign soil. None of them were, other than the Major. And they were probably two hours of hard flying from safety.

“You’ll do fine, Connie. You may be the most capable woman I’ve ever met.”

Connie helped the Major up into her seat after she spread a blanket for her to sit on as an extra cushion.

“After me, that is.”