Whiplash (23 page)

Teri certainly thought so, even though, if asked, she would not have been able to put her feelings precisely into words.

“I’m fine,” said Teri.

Her angry tone annoyed Breanna, who snapped back. “Then put your toothbrush back where it belongs.”

Teri grabbed it, practically flinging it into the holder. Breanna closed her eyes as her daughter stomped to bed—she hadn’t meant to be a scold.

“Hey listen,” she told her daughter when she caught up to her in the bedroom. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go to the hospital for you. Dad said he could.”

“You had to talk to the President.”

“That’s right.”

Teri frowned.

Part of her thought she was making too much of this, but another part of her was just angry and didn’t care. “Listen, Teri, what I do is very important for a lot of people.”

“I know that.”

“Well…good.”

Breanna couldn’t help thinking back to her own childhood. Her mother had been on her own, and had to work full-time. They were not poor—her mother had just become a doctor—but there were many, many nights when Breanna tucked herself into bed…after having come home, made dinner, studied, and cleaned up, all without having anyone home or telling her what to do.

She didn’t want Teri to repeat that childhood, but at the same time, Breanna wanted her daughter to realize how good she had things.

There seemed to be no magic formula to make that happen.

“All right,” said Breanna. “Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

Breanna leaned down and kissed her.

“Send dad in,” said Teri sharply as Breanna turned off the light.

“O
H, SHE’S FINE
,” Z
EN TOLD
B
REANNA AFTER TUCKING
T
ERI
in. “Just a little spoiled.”

“Are you saying I spoil her?”

“Hell, no—
I
spoil her.” Zen rolled his wheelchair to the refrigerator and got out a beer. “But it’s not fatal. She’ll get over it.”

“I don’t think she’s spoiled,” said Breanna.

“And I don’t think you have to be there for her every second of every day,” said Zen.

“She does.”

“She’ll get over it.” He wheeled over to the cabinet for a bottle opener. “Believe me. Another couple of years, she’ll be saying we never leave her alone.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Me, neither.”

Al-Quazi

E
VEN THE DIRT IN
A
FRICA WAS DIFFERENT THAN IN
A
MERICA
.

It had the texture of pulverized rocks, even in a light rain. It didn’t so much meld together in the rain as dissipate; the mud was more slimy than sticky. If you were crawling through it, as Danny Freah was, you noticed how it slipped into your clothes, and how it seemed to swim onto your face. You felt the rocks curl around you as you moved across the minefield, and the sting of blotches of mud as the drops splashed.

The ground had a specific smell to it, too, a scent unlike others you’d ever crawled through, either as a child or a soldier. Many times, dirt smelled like death, or the precursor to
death, hot sulfur and electrified metal. Sometimes it smelled of chemicals, and other times of rot and refuse. This dirt smelled like impervious stone, absorbing nothing, and obscuring the senses, just as the rain made it difficult for the night glasses to work properly.

“Turn twenty degrees to the right and proceed forward ten yards,” said the Voice.

Danny altered his course. Flash, Hera, and McGowan were behind in the minefield, moving forward slowly, not so much because they were afraid of the mines—though a healthy fear was always in order—but because they didn’t want to do anything to attract the attention of the guards in the post about forty yards away. The guard was sitting in the machine-gun nest under a poncho, trying to keep dry, and not paying particular attention to the minefield alongside him. Still, the four Whiplashers were in an extremely vulnerable position, surrounded by mines on both sides, with their guns tucked up over their shoulders and secured by Velcro straps against their rucksacks. If for some reason the guard decided to get up from his post and take a walk around in the rain, he might easily see them.

The mines around the Sudanese army post where Tarid and the other prisoners were kept had been laid in a complicated pattern. They’d also been placed very close together. Most soldiers would have found it impenetrable; indeed, at least two would-be saboteurs and a smuggler had been blown up in the fields over the past twelve months.

But the Whiplash team had an advantage other infiltrators did not—the Voice had mapped the mines by looking at infrared satellite images from the past few nights. The mines were all slightly warmer than the surrounding ground when the sun went down, making them easy for the computer to spot. By watching Danny and the others move through the field with the help of an Owl, it gave him precise directions, warning him when he or one of his people was getting too close to a mine.

“Turn now,” said the Voice.

Danny dug his elbow into the dirt, marking the turn so it would be easy for Flash to find. As long as they all stayed in line, they’d be fine.

“We’re in position,” said Nuri over the radio circuit.

“Roger that. We’ve still got a ways to go.”

“The guard change is in ten minutes.”

“Roger. Ten minutes. We’ll be ready.”

Danny looked up. He was a good thirty yards from the perimeter fence, and they need to be inside it when Nuri began the “attack.” He started moving faster.

The prisoners were being kept in an open pen about thirty yards from the perimeter fence. Tarid was there. So was Tilia.

She’d been shot twice in the leg, but it wasn’t until she ran out of ammunition and passed out from the blood loss that the soldiers had captured her. They threw her in the back of a captured rebel pickup and drove her to the compound, unconscious; her leg was bound but otherwise left untreated. In a way, she was lucky—if she hadn’t been recognized as one of Uncle Dpap’s lieutenants, she would have been killed on the battlefield.

After being raped. So far, she had been spared that as well.

When Danny reached the fence, he pulled himself up into a crouch and looked back. To his horror, he saw that McGowan was off course by several feet.

“McGowan, stop,” he hissed. “
Stop!
”

Everyone stopped, not just McGowan.

“What’s wrong?”

“You went off course. Don’t move.”

Danny pulled out the control unit for the Voice and told the computer to plot the mines near McGowan.

“You went right between two mines,” he told him after studying the image. “You’re about six inches from the next mine. And there’s one right behind you.”

“You sure?”

“No asshole, he’s just trying to scare the crap out of you,” snapped Hera.

“All right. Let’s all relax. Flash, come on forward. Follow the lines I made.”

“It’s getting hard to see with the rain,” said Flash.

“Yeah, I know. Do it, though.”

Danny waited until Flash reached the fence before signaling Hera to continue. She crawled through the dirt and mud quickly, sliding her body through the markings he had left as if she were swimming an obstacle course.

“All right. You two get working on the fence,” Danny told them. “We’ll be right with you.”

He took off his rucksack, leaving it and his rifle on the ground near the edge of the minefield. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and started back for McGowan. The rain was becoming heavier, washing away the markings he and the others had left. The water also started to soak the field, making it more slippery. Even with the Voice to guide him, he had a difficult time staying on course.

“This isn’t good, huh?” asked McGowan when he finally got close.

“There’s a mine right here,” said Danny, pointing. “And one about six inches behind your right foot.”

“Can I go right?”

“No.” Danny pulled out the MY-PID head unit and stared at the screen. “Your best bet is to move to your left slightly.”

“How slightly?”

“Hold on.”

The cloud cover was making it harder and harder for the system to see McGowan from the Owl. Danny, on the other hand, was tracked by the satellites using his biomarker. He nudged right toward McGowan.

The Voice objected that he was going off the established trail.

“Affirmative,” he told it. “Guide me toward McGowan.”

“Subject cannot be definitively located.”

“He hasn’t moved.”

“Data insufficient to confirm.”

“Warn me if I’m too close to a mine,” Danny told it. He
shifted right, crawled two feet to the right, then stopped at the Voice’s direction. He had to zig to the right then back before drawing parallel to his trooper.

“Get on my back,” Danny said.

“Huh?” said McGowan.

“The computer will tell me where to go. Rather than taking a risk and following me, I’ll just carry you out. It’ll be easier.”

“Hey, Colonel, I can do this.”

“Get on my back, soldier. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

W
HILE
D
ANNY WAS GUIDING HIS MEN THROUGH THE MINEFIELD
, Nuri and Boston were on the opposite side of the camp, preparing an assault. Or what would look like an assault to the men inside.

Nuri was on the north side of the road, Boston the south. They’d split the mercenaries between them. They didn’t have nearly enough men to take the camp, but they had more than enough to make it look as if they wanted to.

The rain continued to fall, blocking not only the Owl’s view, but making it hard to see with the night glasses as well. Nuri could barely tell where the machine-gun position was.

There were three minutes to go before the guards were due to change watch.

“Danny, you want us to delay the Catbirds?” Nuri asked. “You only have three minutes.”

“Stay on schedule. We want to hit while the guards are changing.”

“You sound like you’re straining.”

“I’ll explain later.”

H
ERA CLIPPED THROUGH THE LAST OF THE WIRE AND PUSHED
it back. Then she stepped through, holding it for Flash so he could get in.

“This way,” she said, pointing toward the prisoners’ pen.

Aside from some smaller lights on the buildings, the only illumination in the complex came from a pair of floodlights mounted on a telephone pole at almost the exact center of the camp. Their light formed an arc that took in about two-thirds of the prisoners’ area. The area between the two fences where Hera and Flash were was cast in a deep shadow.

Before the rain started, two guards had been watching the prisoners, walking back and forth in the area that was lit. The heavy rain had sent them into the trucks, though Hera and Flash couldn’t see them from where they were.

“What happened to the guards?” asked Flash.

“I’m looking,” said Hera.

“Maybe they’re up around on the other side.”

Hera saw the two trucks at the edge of the very small parade and assembly area off to her left.

“Maybe they’re in the trucks,” she suggested. “They can see the pen from there.”

“Could be.”

“You watch the truck,” she told Flash. “I’ll go cut the fence to the prisoners’ pen.”

“Go,” said Flash, trotting forward through the mud.

The rain kept coming harder. Flash felt it soaking into the pores of his skin, covering his whole body with a slimy film of water and sweat.

As annoying as it was, the rain was making their job considerably easier. Visibility was cut down for the defenders, and the foul weather lessened the chance of being spotted by a random patrol or a casual cigarette smoker.

Flash slipped a grenade round into his rifle’s attached launcher, ready to take out the truck quickly if necessary.

Danny had told him only to fire if the guards presented a clear danger—if they came to investigate or started shooting. This wasn’t only because he wanted to keep the casualties down. They were outnumbered, and the only way to even the odds was to use trickery. When Boston and Nuri attacked,
so the plan went, the defenders’ attention would be drawn toward the front of the camp. Escaping out the back with the prisoners would be easy.

While Flash was watching the truck and the rest of the compound, Hera had slipped around the corner of the prisoners’ area. The rain had encouraged the prisoners to clump together at the southeast side of the pen, seeking shelter under a small tarp augmented by a collection of small blankets and other rags. They were all soaked, the water leaking in a constant drip on the prisoners below.

Hera began cutting the fence. She knew Farsi, but Danny thought it might make Tarid more suspicious and told her not to use it. He wanted to make it appear that they had come to free all of the prisoners. So she used Arabic after she got into the pen and started waking the prisoners.

“Time to go,” she said, first in a whisper, then more loudly. “Be quiet. The way is this way.”

The first man was so battered by his wounds that he simply stared at her. The one next to him was dead.

“Come on,” said Hera, shaking the third. She raised her voice. “Let’s go.”

The man turned his head toward her.

“What sort of devil are you?”

“Mr. Kirk sent us. Go through the fence. Stay low to the ground so they don’t see you.
Go!
”

The man raised his head, barely able to make her out even though it was raining. As Hera grabbed him to pull him upward, the ground heaved with an explosion, the night turning white. Two of the Catbirds had just struck the minefield in front of the machine-gun posts.

D
ANNY AND
M
C
G
OWAN REACHED THE SAFE AREA BEHIND
the minefield just as the Catbirds exploded.

“Take out the minefield,” Danny told McGowan, pushing him off his back. “I’ll hold the prisoners back.”

McGowan pulled off his rucksack and pulled out what
looked like a misshapen football. He slid his thumb against a latch at the side, undoing the safety.

“Fire in the hole,” he yelled, rearing back and throwing the football toward the end of the minefield.

As it sailed through the air, the rear of the ball burst apart and a thin Teflon net expanded from the rear. The net was studded with microexplosives. These were more like powerful firecrackers than bombs, but had the same effect on the minefield, exploding in a coordinated pattern designed to create and accentuate a pulsing shock wave. The explosives set off six mines simultaneously, in turn igniting another two dozen nearby. Dirt, water, explosives, and metal roiled into the air. McGowan pushed his head down, protecting himself as the shrapnel settled.

An illumination flare shot up from the center of the compound. Its white phosphorus gave him a good view of the minefield. The explosion had cut only about a third of the way through. He took out a second football and tossed it closer. This time he was too close for comfort; pebbles pelted him as the mines finished exploding.

Inside the fence, Danny had grabbed the first escapee, corralling him while McGowan worked on the mines. He repeated the words for “stop” and “mines” in Arabic, but the man seemed simply bewildered, still half asleep and confused by the explosions. Danny pushed him down to the ground, then signaled to the man running behind him that he should hit the deck as well.

McGowan had one more football, and roughly half of the minefield to take out. The shower from the last blast convinced him that he had to throw it from shelter, so he ducked into the trench leading to the machine-gun post. This time more than a dozen mines ignited immediately, starting a chain reaction that zigged out through the rest of the remaining field.

He started to get up out of the trench to make sure the path was clear, and to mark it for the prisoners. But as McGowan
started to his feet, he heard a shout and turned to see a Sudanese soldier pointing his rifle at him.

McGowan raised his hands in surrender.

A
S SOON AS THE
C
ATBIRDS EXPLODED
, N
URI AND
B
OSTON’S
teams began firing at the machine-gun posts in front of them. The guards were taken completely by surprise. The man at the northeast post, in front of Nuri, began firing wildly into the minefield, his bullets setting off several mines. The other man fired a single burst before his gun jammed. Too shaken to clear it, he hunkered down behind the sandbags and waited for the gunfire to stop.