Biowar (27 page)

The handheld screen flickered, then came up with a red-tinted window of the guerrilla camp. He had to stop so he could fiddle with the magnification. Sourin came over to look.

“Our target,” Karr explained, holding the image up for him.

The Thai major had apparently never seen a handheld computer before and turned his head to look behind the device. Karr showed him how the screen image could be sized. By now the analysts back at the NSA had added information to the image; Karr toggled the overlay and showed Sourin that there were guards in both of the trenches they had spotted earlier. At least six men guarded the northeast line. The Desk Three people IDed two Russian DShKM heavy machine guns, commonly called Dushkas; the weapons were mounted near the center of the compound on a rise that gave them decent coverage to the south as well as the north. Though older than anyone on the assault team, the guns were serious weapons that fired 12.7mm rounds. Lighter machine guns, Russian-made RPDs, were mounted on tripods covering the Thai approach; there were two, along with a third, more curious weapon.

“Hey, uh, Sandy, my computer’s got a glitch. One of the machine guns is being called a Stoner.”

“That’s what it is. Stoner 63 LMG. I may have to hose down the weapons guy. He’s asking if you can take it home for him.”

“What am I going to get in return?”

The Stoner dated from the 1960s; an American weapon, it was a versatile lightweight gun that had been popular with some Special Forces troops in Vietnam but never really caught on in the military at large.

“He’s offering to trade a mint Winchester Model 1873, still chambered for .44-40.”

“That a good deal?”

“Claims it was used to shoot at Wyatt Earp.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Malachi Reese is your air support liaison. His time-to-target is two-five minutes; you’ll want to launch the Kite ten minutes before he’s there.”

“Sounds good,” he told her. He started to set the buzzer on his watch, then realized an audible alarm might not be a good idea.

48

“We have him! He’s in the subway—the metro. Heitzing—the stop is Heitzing,” said Rockman. “It’s right nearby. He’s coming out.”

“You don’t have to shout,” said Lia, turning to tell the pilot to fly there.

As Dean cleared the turnstile and went outside, he heard the pounding rotors of a nearby helicopter. He started to move along the sidewalk, disoriented by the rush of daylight and the press of the tourist crowd nearby.

People were pointing, saying something.

The helicopter was coming right over the buildings, literally close enough to knock them over.

Dean’s headache instantly returned, and he felt his stomach revolting again. A swatch of green appeared on his right, trees, a massive park.

The chopper was coming for
him.

Dean bolted across the street, running. People were staring, shouting.

There was a line of people, a fence, a gate.

Dean’s head swirled. Everyone was looking at the helicopter, which was landing in the park nearby.

“Charlie,” said the voice in his head. “Charlie, we can see you.”

“Rockman?”

“Go to the helicopter. Lia’s there.”

Dean started to run.

Lia opened the helicopter door and leaned out as it came down. She could see someone running on the street toward her.

Charlie?

She lost sight of him as the helicopter descended. She yelled, but of course he couldn’t hear—the engine was too loud and now they were yards and yards away, separated by a small run of trees as well as the metal fence.

She’d have to leave the chopper to get him.

“That van is coming back around,” warned Rockman.

That did it. Lia leaped out, tumbling on the ground as the helicopter roared away. She ran to the park perimeter.

Dean was there, just reaching the fence.

“Get in here! Get over the fence—come on. Come on!”

Dean swung his head around, then started toward her in slow motion. Two men—policemen—were running toward her. Lia pointed toward the street.

“The van!” she yelled in English. “The van!”

Dean grabbed at the fence.

Even if the policemen could have heard her over the roar of the nearby helicopter, there was no van on the street. One of them grabbed her arm and immediately regretted it—Lia flipped him over and spun him back into his companion, both men sprawling in a tumble. Dean climbed the fence, hauling himself up over the pointed bars at the top.

The van skidded to a stop in the street as Lia tossed one of the smoke grenades onto the sidewalk. People began to run—she readied her gun but didn’t fire.

Dean collapsed onto the ground. She ran to him, grabbed his shirt.

“What?” he said.

“What yourself. Come on,” she said, pulling. One of the policemen started to rise but stopped as he caught sight of her Mac 11. Tourists threw themselves down or ran in the opposite direction as Lia and Dean began heading deeper into the grounds. They ran across the paths, cutting momentarily through some of the trees and then to Lia’s left, skirting the large zoo.

“I can’t keep going,” said Dean. “I can’t.”

Lia turned. Dean had stopped running and was walking almost in a daze. His face had flushed red.

“Charlie?”

“I’m okay,” he mumbled.

“You’re burning up,” she said, feeling his face.

“Yeah,” he said.

They walked at a slower pace, making their way toward the Gloriette Monument and then down the large lawn toward the formal gardens at the very bottom. Lia folded the stock on the Mac 11 and held it tight to her body so that it looked almost—almost—like a purse. She could hear police sirens in the distance.

“What’s going on, Rockman?” she asked the runner.

“Just your typical city riot.”

“You getting us out of here or what?”

“Oh,
now
you want my help. Move on down the hill to the Fasangarten,” said Rockman. “That would be the place with the flowers.”

“You going to give me the history of the place next?”

“I may.”

Dean continued beside her, walking slower and slower but still moving at least.

“What’d they do to you, Charlie?” she asked.

“Nothin’,” he said. “We stopped in some sort of tunnel. They had somebody waiting to grab the car. Hercules is dead.”

“They didn’t drug you or anything?”

“No. I feel like death, though. All that food I ate yesterday.”

“Then how come I’m not sick?”

“You eat like a bird.”

Lia curled her arm tighter around his. They crossed a roadway to the back border of the garden, walking down a tree-lined path. She flinched as something ran out at them from the right.

Two brothers, maybe seven and eight, chasing each other in a game of spy versus spy.

“Rockman,” she hissed.

“Listen for it.”

All she could hear was police sirens.

“Have you told the Austrians we’re on their side?”

“We’re in the process of doing that. Listen for it.”

The air had started to vibrate with the loud rap of rotors. Six Blackhawk helicopters circled out of the northeast. The choppers were dark green American birds.

“Finally,” said Lia when she spotted them.

“I told you we had it under control,” said Rockman. “You have to learn to trust us.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me these guys have been here all along.”

“They’ve been nearby,” said the runner.

“I’ll bet.” Lia stopped at the edge of one of the large garden squares, which was laid out with colored flowers to form a pattern. “We’re almost home, Charlie,” she said.

“Yeah, roger that,” he said, sitting down.

Lia expected the helicopters to land on the grass beyond the tree line they’d come through. But as she took a few steps in that direction, she realized that the two lead Blackhawks were coming toward the gardens. They had their wheels down, ready to land.

“Tell them they’re going to ruin the flowers,” said Lia as grit began to whip around.

“Just stay where you are,” said Rockman.

Dean and Lia turned their backs and huddled together as the sandstorm increased. Finally Lia turned back toward the helicopter to look for her rescuers.

There were a dozen SF troopers, guns ready, fanning out around them. A few were carrying shotguns; the rest had M4s.

But that wasn’t the weird thing.

All of the men had full hazard suits on—they looked like spacemen, bundled up against any contingency.

“What is going on?” asked Lia.

“Put down your weapons and come with us,” said a voice from the helicopter over a loudspeaker.

“Rockman, what’s going on?”

“Do what they say, Lia. It’s for your own good.”

“No way.”

“We will use our weapons if necessary.”

“What the hell?” said Dean.

Before Lia could react, a slug of nonlethal but very painful ammo from one of the troopers with the shotgun took her down at the knees. It was followed by a rain of small plastic pellets and, for good measure, a dose of tear gas.

49

Malachi Reese steadied the Puff/1 as it came over the ridge, fighting a wave of turbulence. After steering satellite-launched “vessel” space planes and Mach 2-capable robot fighters, flying the prop-driven robot was like stepping into a Model T. The two-engined unmanned aerial vehicle looked like a three-quarter-sized OV-10 Bronco, with a fattened central fuselage. In place of a crew cabin, the body contained two GAU-12/U Equalizers, 25mm Gatling guns mounted in turrets that could swing approximately thirty degrees in any direction. Adapted from their original incarnation as podded weapons in AV-8B Harrier II jump-jet attack planes, the cannons could put a hundred or so armor-piercing rounds through the skin of a medium tank or armored personnel carrier in a little over ten seconds. Sitting between them was a double-bank of nineteen-inch rockets, unguided missiles that had high-explosive warheads.

While the weaponry was relatively low-tech, the aircraft itself was not. Its wings and surface area were covered with LED panels that could project real-time background images across the aircraft, so that in the middle of the day it might look like a collection of clouds passing overhead. The engines were powered by fuel cell technology; they were about 15 percent as loud as normal turboprops. The power plants could drive the aircraft 1,200 miles and back without stopping for a refuel.

But Malachi couldn’t get used to the slow speed. He had Feckboy jammin’ on the Mp3 player, but 300 knots was still 300 knots. The big screen in front of him plotted his position on a detailed topographical map; he could see the squad members who were carrying radios as well as Tommy Karr, the Desk Three op on the scene. A timer drained off in the right corner, showing how long it would be before Malachi was within weapons range. His console displays toggled between four video feeds; two were infrared capable.

“Stand by for site feed,” said Telach, over in the Art Room.

Malachi punched the function key and brought up the video, which was being supplied from a man-portable unmanned aerial vehicle known as a Kite. The small UAV was three miles from the guerrilla camp; the camp was a blurry gray-red image, jittering at top of the screen. The battle-analysis computer looked at the image and interpreted it, IDING the guard units.

“Hey, Malachi, what are we listening to today?” asked Karr over the sat com system.

“Feckboy,” he told the op.

“That thrash rock or metal rap?”

“In that direction.”

“You seein’ what I’m seeing?”

“Two guards on that perimeter,” said Malachi. “I’m on target in zero-five.”

“I have only one request: Don’t hit us.”

Malachi snorted. He nudged his joystick controller left slightly, positioning Puff for a swing that would take it to the northwest of the site. Firing from that direction would have the advantage of confusing the guerrillas about where the ground attack would come from. It also put a little more distance between Puff and the ground forces.

Malachi began his prebattle checklist: instruments in the green, fuel steady, guns armed and ready, Mp3 cranked at 8, two full bottles of Nestle’s strawberry drink on standby, straws inserted and ready to go.

“Ready when you are,” said Karr.

Malachi glanced up at the large screen, looking to see where everyone was. The NSA op had moved to within five yards of the sentry line; he was planning on running right past the position as soon as Puff took it out.

“Sixty seconds,” Malachi told him. “Careful where you’re going.”

Karr heard the light hum of the robot gunship about two seconds before it started to fire. The weapons didn’t carry tracer rounds—the sighting was all done with radar data—and so the rattle seemed to come from the earth itself. Dirt flew upward; Karr hunched down behind the tree a few yards from the guard post, confident that Malachi would hit exactly what he was aiming at and nothing else.

The GAU-12 spat about a hundred rounds through the heavy-gun position, then moved on; Karr got up and started running through the guerrilla camp’s perimeter, making a beeline for the pair of huts a hundred yards away. Puff/1, meanwhile, blasted away at the heavier emplacements on the northwest.

The guerrillas began returning fire, their green tracer rounds streaking haphazardly upward. Sourin and two of his men were now a few yards behind the NSA op.

Something moved on Karr’s left. He threw himself on the ground; an automatic rifle popped behind him, taking down the guerrilla.

By the time the big American had hauled himself back to his feet, the Thai Army squad had already breached the defenses and was just about at the buildings. They were firing at them, though it wasn’t clear whether they had targets or not.

“Whoa, guys, whoa!” shouted Karr. “Major Sourin—Major. Hold on. We want the people inside there alive, remember?”

Sourin shouted something back at him but was drowned out by a fresh splatter of cannon from Puff. Karr jumped into a shallow revetment behind the two buildings; Sourin was a few feet away, emptying his rifle at the building.

“Damn it, we want the people in the buildings alive if we can do it,” said Karr, clamping his hand on the officer’s shoulder.