“Leg’s busted,” said Nurse. “Compound fracture.” He checked for a concussion by looking for pupil reaction, then listened to make sure the pilot’s lungs were clear.
“Cut by something, but if it was a bullet, it just grazed him. Looks like that’s the worst of it. Not too much blood lost. Cold, maybe hypothermia. He’ll make it.”
Powder jumped up and trotted a few feet away, scooping something up from the rocks. “Pencil flares. Musta meant to shoot ’em, then the bad guys came.”
“Grab the radio and let’s get,” Danny told him.
Nurse secured the pilot with a series of balloon restraints, as much for cushioning as a precaution against back and spinal injuries. Danny took the back end of the stretcher and together they began making their way to the Osprey.
The Marine sergeant met them about halfway.
“Let’s go, ladies!” he shouted. “Uh, you too, Captain.
RAZOR’S EDGE
211
Something big’s kicking up some dirt up the road. Your pilot’s starting to get some twists in his underwear.”
Aboard Quicksilver , over Iraq 1655
ZEN PITCHED THE FLIGHTHAWK BACK SOUTH WHEN HE NOticed the three vehicles leaving the village on the dirt road. He was moving too fast to target them.
“Vehicles on the highway, coming out of the village,”
Zen told Breanna. “Alert the Osprey. I’m rolling on them.”
“You sure they’re not civilians?” asked Breanna.
“What do you want me to do, ask for license and registration?”
“I don’t want you to splash civilians,” said Breanna.
“Hawk leader,” he said.
Zen didn’t want to kill civilians either, but he wasn’t about to take any chances with his people on the ground.
The rules of engagement allowed him to attack anything that appeared to be a threat. He tucked Hawk One into a shallow dive, angling toward the lead truck. When it came up fat in the crosshairs, he fired.
One of the most difficult things to get used to about flying the robot plane in combat was the fact that the cannon provided no feedback, no shake, no sound. The pipper changed color to indicate the target was centered, and blackened into a small star when the gun was fired—that was it. He couldn’t feel the momentum-stealing vibration or the quick shudder as the gun’s barrels spun out their lead. But at least he could see the results of his handiwork: the lead vehicle, a four-door pickup truck with three or four men in the back, imploded as the bullets split it neatly in two. He nudged his nose upward and found the second truck, this one a more traditional mili-
212
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
tary troop carrier; a long burst caught the back end but failed to stop it. Zen broke right, regrouping; as he circled west he saw the Osprey on the ground two or three miles away.
It had been hit. Black smoke curled from one of the engines. Zen tore his eyes away, looked for a target.
The third vehicle, another pickup, left the roadway, spitting along the riverbank. Zen swooped in on it from behind, lighting his cannon as the letters on the rear gate of the pickup came into focus. His first shell got the circle on the second O in Toyota; his next two nailed something in the rear bed. After that he couldn’t tell what he hit—the truck disappeared into a steaming cloud of black, red, and white. Zen flew through the smoke—he was now down to fifty feet—and had to shove himself hard left to avoid running into the Osprey, which despite the damage was lifting off, albeit slowly. As he came back toward the road, he realized the second truck he’d hit had stopped to let out its passengers. They were spreading out in the sand, taking up firing positions. He double-clutched, then put his nose on the clump closest to the MV-22 and pulled the trigger. His bullets exploded in a thick line across the dirt; he let off the last of his flares as he came over them, hoping to deke any shoulder-launched SAMs.
“Osprey is away,” Breanna was saying. “Osprey is away.”
“Hawk leader acknowledges. Osprey is away. They okay?”
“Pressman says he lost an engine but he’ll get back before Boston wins the Series.”
“Yeah, well, that could be a century from now at least.”
Zen continued to climb, flying east of the mountains, well out of range of anything on the ground, before easing back on the throttle and looking for Quicksilver.
“Fuel on ten minute reserve,” warned the computer.
RAZOR’S EDGE
213
“Hawk leader to Quicksilver,” said Zen. “Bree, I need to tank.”
WHILE ZEN BROUGHT THE FLIGHTHAWK UP TO TWENTY
thousand feet for refueling, Breanna polled her crew, making sure they were prepared to resume the search for the SA-2 radar. O’Brien and Habib seemed to be champing at the bit, riding the high from having located the pilot and helping rescue him. Chris Ferris was his usual cautious self, advising her on fuel reserves and shortened flight times, but nonetheless insisting they should carry on with the mission.
Zen was all for continuing. He’d fly the Flighthawks down closer to the ground, using the video input to check on any radio sources, and look for buildings big enough to house a laser. Jennifer Gleason, working on her sensor coding in between monitoring the Flighthawk equipment, as usual was almost oblivious to what was going on, agreeing to keep at it with a distracted, “Shit, yeah.”
The normal procedure for the Flighthawk refuel called for the Megafortress to be turned over to the computer, which would fly it in an utterly predictable fashion for the U/MF. Six months ago the refuel had been considered next to impossible; now it was so routine that Breanna took the opportunity to stretch her legs, leaving Chris at the helm. She curled her body sideways, stepping out gingerly from behind the controls, stretching her stiff ligaments as she slipped back toward the hatchway. A small refrigerator unit sat beneath the station for the observer jumpseat at the rear of the EB-52’s flight deck; Breanna knelt down and opened it. She took the tall, narrow plastic cup filled with mint ice tea from the door and took a steady pull. Refreshed, she turned back toward the front of the plane and watched over Chris’s shoulder as he monitored the refuel.
214
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
Zen had blown off her question about the trucks, but it was a real one. They were here to kill soldiers, not civilians.
True, you couldn’t ask for IDs in the middle of a fight.
And their rules of engagement allowed them to target anyone or anything that seemed to be a threat. But if they didn’t draw a distinction, they were no better than Saddam, or terrorists.
Was that a distinction God drew? Did it matter to Him that only soldiers were in the crosshairs?
Did it matter to the dead?
“Refuel complete,” said Chris as she slipped back into her seat. “Computer has course to search grids. I’ve downloaded the course to Zen. He wants to launch the second Flighthawk about five minutes from the grid.”
“Thanks.”
Breanna flicked her talk button. “How are you doing down there, Zen?”
“Fine. Yourself?”
“I wasn’t trying to be testy about the civilian trucks.”
“I know that. They were army or militia or whatever.”
“The Kurds use a lot of pickups.”
“Yup.”
“You okay, Jeff? Do we have a problem?”
Breanna realized her heart had jumped into overdrive, pounding much faster than it had during the action. She was worried about their relationship, not their job. A deadly distraction. She couldn’t work with him again, not in combat.
“Major Stockard?”
“Not a problem on my end, Captain,” answered her husband.
“Thank you much. Computer says we’re on course and ten minutes from your drop zone,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light.