Prime (7 page)

SIX

Sasha Therion stumbled along behind Klein, trying to make sense of what
was happening…trying and failing.

She’d come here to learn about the Voynich
manuscript. It wasn’t just a book of herbal remedies. It contained something so
much more fantastic than that… It had to. That was why its author had gone to
such extraordinary lengths to encipher the text. The insurgents knew it, too.
They had cracked its code, or were close to doing so, and planned to use its
centuries’ old secret to make a weapon that could destroy life.

So why were the soldiers leaving?

Sasha didn’t like it when people changed the
plan at the last minute. Plans were good; they were the only way to ensure
orderliness. Changing plans meant introducing uncertainty into the equation,
and uncertainty was a sure path to chaos. And chaos was relentless…insidious.

If
they would just let me do what I came here for
…

The helicopter swooped down, beating the
earth all around her with its rotor wash. She felt Klein’s hand on her
shoulder, urging her to duck low. She didn’t like it when people touched her,
but she complied. A few seconds later, she was bundled inside and guided onto
one of the bench seats. Klein sank down next to her, and a moment later, the
Black Hawk climbed back into the sky.

She peered through the eyepiece of the night
vision monocular the Delta operators had supplied her with, looking first at
the Agency man and then at Rainer. She had to explain it to them, make them
understand how important it was that they accomplish their goal.

One of the helicopter’s crew leaned back and
craned his head toward Rainer. He was shouting, but his voice was barely audible
over the strident whine of the turbine engines. “What happened?”

“A complication,” Rainer answered. “The plan
is the same.”

Sasha didn’t understand. How could the plan
be the same if they were leaving?

The crewman just nodded.

“Do it!” Rainer shouted.

Sasha was still trying to make sense of this
when the Delta team leader brought his carbine up and fired two shots.

Klein jerked in the seat beside her. Sasha
flinched, as a hot blast of sulfurous exhaust sprayed her face. Then she felt
something else, something warm and wet on her shoulder. Klein had slumped
against her with blood trickling from a pair of tiny holes in his forehead, and
gushing from the enormous opening in the back of his skull.

The crewman Rainer had spoken with stretched
out his arm, pointing across the cabin in the direction of his counterpart on
the opposite side. As the other crewman started to turn, a tongue of flame
leapt from the pistol in the first man’s hand. The second man slumped forward
over his machine gun. At almost the same instant, there was another report from
the cockpit.

“What the—” the man Sasha knew as Pettit
stiffened on his seat, trying to get his own weapon up, but Rainer was already
swinging his gun around. Two more shots erupted from Rainer’s carbine and
punched into Pettit’s face.

Sasha didn’t know what was happening…except
in a strange way, she did. It was exactly what she’d been afraid of; they had
changed the plan, and now chaos was descending.

They’re
going to kill me next
, she
thought, and maybe that was okay. Everyone died, no matter how they fought
against that inevitable outcome. Life, with all its endless unpredictable
possibilities, always reduced to zero in the end, the final victory of order
over chaos.

But the Delta team leader didn’t shoot her;
he didn’t even point his gun at her.

“Sorry you had to see that,” he shouted. “But
if you’ll just sit tight, everything will make sense in a little while.”

Sasha very much doubted that.

SEVEN

Sigler was the last to climb aboard the second Black Hawk. As he got
in, he flashed a thumb’s up to the crew chief and shouted: “Last man!”

Then the crew chief did something unexpected.
He held up his hand with forefinger and middle finger extended, just like the
peace sign, or V for Victory…or, Sigler realized, the number two. The crew
chief was telling him to switch to channel two on his radio, which was preset
with the Night Stalkers’ frequency.

“This is Cipher One-Six,” Sigler said when
the he’d made the switch. “Do you have traffic for me?”

“Cipher, this is Beehive Six-Four. I’ve lost
contact with Beehive Six-Six, and they are presently heading away from our
position on a bearing of three-three-zero. Do you know what’s up?
Over.”

Beehive Six-Six was the Black Hawk with
Rainer’s group, and the compass heading meant they were flying north-northwest.
Ramadi lay to the south.

“Standby.”
He switched to the Delta channel. “Cipher
Six
, this is Cipher One-Six. Come in, over.”

No answer. He tried two more times,
unsuccessfully. He was about to switch back to update the pilot, when a voice
sounded in his earpiece. “Cipher One-Six, this is Eagle-Eye Three. What the
hell’s going on?”

Even without the callsign, Sigler recognized
the voice of Lewis Aleman. The tall, athletic sniper shared Parker’s interest
in science and technology, and the two men often hung out together, salivating
over the Sharper Image catalog like it was the Sport Illustrated swimsuit
issue.

“Wondering that myself, Eagle-Eye. Are you
guys on the bird?” Sigler saw the crew chief motioning for his attention again,
but waited for Aleman to answer in the affirmative. “Roger, Eagle-Eye.
Standby.”

He switched to the Night Stalkers’ frequency.
“Go for Cipher element.”

“Cipher, this is Beehive Six-Four. Beehive
Six-Six is…they’re bugging out, and they ain’t taking our calls. This is your
show, Cipher. What do I do?”

Sigler’s brow furrowed in disbelief; there
was no protocol for a situation like this. He leaned over the crew chief’s
shoulder and stared out the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the departing
Black Hawk, as if visually confirming what he’d been told would give him some
insight about what to do next.

He didn’t see the helicopter. Instead, he saw
a flash on the ground, perhaps a mile to the west, then another.

Abruptly, the display in his night vision
device flared bright white, like a high intensity spotlight beaming directly
into his retina. He reflexively tore the monocular away, but the damage was
done; a greenish blue spot filled his right eye.

His left eye however, fixed on the source of
the light: two parachute flares, fired from mortar tubes, were blazing like
tiny suns in the night sky.

“Shit! Get us out of here, Beehive!”

His warning was unnecessary; the pilots had
seen the flares as well and were already taking evasive action.

Two deep booming sounds reverberated through
the airframe, the reports of the mortar launch finally reaching them, and then
Sigler’s good eye detected more flashes on the ground, and pinpoints of light
streaking into the sky. Sigler recognized them instantly; RPGs…rocket propelled
grenades.

The effective range of the RPG was only about
a hundred meters. Beyond that, there was less than a fifty percent chance of
hitting a stationary target. At a thousand meters, the grenade would
self-destruct. Sigler’s helicopter was well outside that radius, but Beehive
Six-Five was a lot closer to the source. The air around the helicopter carrying
the snipers suddenly came alive with flashes, as the grenades began exploding.
Sigler thought the helicopter had weathered the barrage, but a moment later he
heard a voice over the radio: “Shit! We’re going in.”

Beehive Six-Five wobbled in the air and began
corkscrewing downward.

There was a thunderous eruption right in
front of Sigler; the crew chief had opened up with his M240. Red
arcs—tracers—described the path of the 7.62 millimeter rounds as they lanced
toward the source of the RPGs, but it was impossible to distinguish a target or
judge the effectiveness of the fire.

A puff of dust below marked the spot where
Beehive Six-Five finished its fateful plunge. Sigler knew exactly what he had
to do next. “Six-
Four,
get us as close as you can.
We’ll do the rest.”

“Roger, Cipher.” The pilot’s voice was steady
and professional, without a trace of hesitation. “I’ll try to make it a short
walk.”

Sigler switched channels. “Eagle-Eye, do you
copy?”

There was an interminably long silence, but
then someone broke squelch. Sigler heard several seconds of gunfire, then a
cough.
“Cipher.
Could use a little
help here.”

It was Aleman.

“On our way, Eagle-Eye.
What’s the count?”

“Two and two.”
Two dead, two injured badly enough to be out
of the fight. After a beat, Aleman amended: “I think. Having trouble telling
which way is up right now.”

“Sit tight, Eagle-Eye. Help is on the way.”

The Black Hawk set down about fifty yards
east of the crash site, well out of RPG range, but in between bursts from the
M240,
Sigler could hear the distinctive crack of bullets
ricocheting off the armored exterior of the helicopter. As soon as the crew
chief threw open the door on the sheltered side, Sigler’s team poured out onto
the desert floor.

When the last man was out, Beehive Six-Four
rose again into the sky, and the door gunner continued to hurl bullets in the
direction of the muzzle flashes. Sigler’s men broke into pairs and began moving
toward the crash using the tried and true individual movement techniques taught
to every soldier: three to five second rushes, measured out to the rhythm of
the mantra
I’m up, he sees me, I’m down
…
Then drop to the prone, roll left or right, it didn’t matter which as long as
you didn’t get into a pattern, and give your buddy some cover fire so that he
could make his move.

There was another pair of booms and two more
flares appeared in the sky overhead. The enemy probably thought that lighting
up the sky would level the playing field, removing the technological advantage
of the Delta team’s night vision. And maybe it would do that, but stealth and
darkness weren’t the only tools in the Delta toolbox. One Delta operator was
easily worth ten…twenty…or even fifty insurgents.

Sigler tried to do the math as he dropped to
the prone once more, rolled left, and then squeezed a pair of shots in the
direction of a distant muzzle flash. His eyesight was almost back to normal,
and he could easily distinguish at least twenty separate jets of flame. Maybe
fifty to one was pushing it a bit. He didn’t know how many hostiles they were
facing, but it was evident that someone had put a lot of thought into this
trap, which meant these weren’t run of the mill durka-durkas sprayin’ and
prayin’.

Inside job
.

He bounded up and made another rush. He was
close enough to the crash site to see men huddled behind the wreck, popping up
every few seconds to provide covering fire. Two more rushes would get him
there, maybe one if he didn’t stop…he was close enough now that the wreck would
cover his approach.

Someone in Beehive Six-Six was working with
the enemy. Klein. It had to be Klein. The Company man had sold them out,
sacrificed them…but why?

He reached the downed helicopter and went
immediately to the nearest man. It was Lewis Aleman. The Delta sniper had his
H&K PSG 1 sniper rifle beside him, but his left hand was clutching a
Beretta M-9 handgun. It took Sigler only a moment to realize why Aleman had
opted to use the pistol; his right hand, cradled protectively against his
abdomen, looked like a mass of raw meat.

Sigler took a mental step back and assessed
the situation. The Black Hawk sat upright on the desert floor, but the crash
had crumpled its frame like a beer can. The doors had sprung open, leaving an
open space through the middle, and two men—one wore an olive drab flight suit,
marking him as a surviving crewmember, and the other was a Delta sniper—
were
working the fixed machine gun on the far side. Sigler
also saw a body inside, a crewman impaled on a piece of metal.

There were two other motionless forms on the
ground outside the Black Hawk. Both wore desert camouflage, torn and dark with
spilled blood. Sigler couldn’t tell if they were alive or not. He turned back
to Aleman. “Sit rep?”

The sniper grimaced. “Pilot’s alive…at least
he was…trapped in the cockpit. Co-pilot has a broken leg…maybe some ribs.”

“Our guys?”

Aleman motioned to the still forms on the
ground. “Bell’s hurt bad. Broken back, I think. Martinez is done.”

“Did you get a look at the other side?”

“Yeah.
There’s a whole fucking lot of them.”

The rest of Sigler’s team reached the wreck
and fanned out to join the Black Hawk’s defenders. Sigler took charge. “Danno,
Jess…get that second 240 back in action. Jon, I need an LZ. Casey, Mike, get
the wounded ready for transport.”

As the men quickly went to their assigned
tasks, Sigler called up to the remaining Black Hawk, which continued to circle
high above them. “Beehive Six-Four, this is Cipher. We’re establishing a
casualty collection point fifty meters from my location.
Will
pop white smoke when ready for pick-up.
How copy?”

“Good copy, Cipher. Stay on this channel.
Have requested CAS, but no word on ETA.”

CAS—close air support—was exactly what they
needed right now, but Sigler wasn’t going to hold his breath and hope for
someone to come pull their asses out of the fire. He turned back to the wreck,
where Parker and Strickland had succeeded in liberating the M240H from its
pintle mount. Strickland cradled the machine gun in both arms, while Parker
gathered up full cans of ammunition—two in each hand. Sigler gestured for them
to set it up at the nose end of the helicopter, and then he moved forward to
the cockpit door.

The pilot sat unmoving in his chair, the
control panel closed over his legs like the jaws of a devouring monster. His
head lolled to the side and blood dripped from the bottom edge of his helmet.
Sigler turned away.

He joined Parker and Strickland just as the
latter opened up with the M240. Parker was right next to his teammate, ready to
slap in a fresh belt of ammo as soon as it was needed. Sigler dropped down next
to him.

“How many?”

Parker craned his head to answer. “I make out
three different groups…at our ten, twelve and two.”

The mortars boomed again, throwing another
pair of flares into the sky, and this time Sigler was able to mark their
location, positioned behind the line of riflemen.

“I don’t like this, Danno. Pretty soon,
they’re gonna figure out they can do more with those cannons than just pop
flares.”

“So we can’t stay here. What’s the play?”

Sigler did a rough head count. There had been
ten men aboard the Black Hawk. Even if they left the dead behind, a thought that
galled him, he didn’t think the remaining bird could get them all out. “We evac
the casualties, then fall back to the original objective. Buy some time until
another bird gets here.”

Parker nodded, but before he could say
anything, the ground in front of them erupted in a spray of dust. Sigler
instinctively dropped, but just as quickly, he rolled into a prone shooting
position and triggered a few shots of suppressive fire. He expected to hear
Strickland jump in with the 240, and when that didn’t happen, he called out:
“Danno, Jess, still with me?”

“Jack,” Parker called. “Jess is hit.”

Sigler muttered a curse and spider-crawled
back to the impromptu machine-gun emplacement where he found Parker with both
hands pressed to the Strickland’s neck in what seemed like a futile effort to
stanch the rhythmic spurts of blood.

“Keep pressure on the wound,” Sigler
instructed. “I’ll pull him behind cover.”

At a nod from Parker, he grabbed the stricken
soldier’s legs and began hauling him back behind the shadow of the helicopter.
Parker kept one hand on the wound and dug a field dressing from his tactical
vest with the other. It was probably a wasted effort, but Sigler didn’t tell
Parker that; Delta operators never gave up, especially when it came to saving
one of their teammates. Braving the kill zone once more, Sigler crawled out to
retrieve the 240.

“Jon! Where’s my LZ?”

From about fifty meters away, Jon Foley on
one end of a litter carrying an immobilized Delta sniper, shouted: “Open for
business!”

Sigler helped Parker carry Strickland to the
casualty collection point, and then he keyed his mic. “Beehive, this is Cipher.
Watch for smoke.”