Skyfire (15 page)

"This was likely to happen sooner or later," one man said. "We couldn't expect them to continue to make landings without meeting some well-armed opposition eventually."

"True," another man said. "But this was not a regular military unit. We know they were not United American troops, but rather a local militia. It was the airplane that turned the tide."

"Airplane?" the woman asked harshly. "This is the first I've heard of an airplane being involved."

The six men eyed each other worriedly. No one wanted to speak. The woman was as well known for her violent temper.

"There was an airplane, my lady," one man finally murmured. "It was this airplane that saved the defending skraeling troops."

"And was it this airplane that also destroyed the troopship?" the woman demanded, pulling the dark hood she always wore closer to her face, giving her the appearance of a female Grim Reaper.

"Yes, my lady," several men answered at once.

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"Apparently the Krig Bat took a direct hit on its propellers before it could submerge," another explained.

A frightening silence descended upon the room.

"So not only did this attack fail," the woman said finally. "Now the enemy knows many of our secrets as well."

"Those men from the troopship met their deaths bravely, my lady," said one man boldly. "And they believed that if they die with honor, then they do not die for no reason."

"That's nonsense!" the woman said in a voice so chilling that all six men involuntarily flinched. "If you die without achieving your objective, then your death is meaningless."

"No . . ." another of the men half shouted. "It is the honor of death in battle that is important."

The woman raised her hand as indication that the men should be still.

"I will not argue philosophy with you now," she said, her voice becoming strangely calm. "What we must talk about is how this action will affect our plans."

"It shouldn't affect them at all, my lady," the boldest of the six men told her. "We'll make sure your orders are transmitted to the appropriate people and that the troops continue their actions just as you prescribed. The American skraelings will not be prepared for them every time they strike. In the meantime, we will pursue our own agenda."

"But now they know how we-and the troopships-all travel," the woman told him angrily.

"This is regrettably true, my lady," the man pressed on. "But tracking and finding us or the troopships will still be very difficult for them. Even before the Big War, submarines proved very elusive. The superpowers spent much time and money trying to discover better ways to track submerged warships, and-"

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"Do you pretend to lecture me on military history?" the woman interrupted.

"No ... not at all, my lady,'' the man quickly answered. "I was just reviewing the facts of the past . . ."

"Forget the past," she told him harshly. "We must plan for the future. We must keep our schedule or risk the consequences."

"We are dedicated to just that, my lady," one of the men concluded nervously.

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The small, German-built CH91 "Mini-Drone" RPV skimmed over the tops of the waves forty-four miles off the coast of Cape Cod, its remotely controlled flight systems performing flawlessly despite the turbulent air directly above the rough seas.

The RPV had been in the air almost three hours now and was quickly reaching the end of its fuel reserves. Sensing this, the drone's minicomputer flight control system began transmitting a series of short electromagnetic bursts.

Thirty seconds later, these homing signals acquired their mark. Instantly processing the return signal, the RPV deftly dropped its left wing and turned to a more northeasterly course. Within another minute, it had locked on to its

"home base."

Ten miles away, a seemingly innocuous fishing boat was undergoing a startling transformation. With speed and agility that comes only from many hours of practice, three members of its four-man crew hauled a section of fishing net up to a point twenty feet above the deck. Attaching one side to the fully extended deck crane and the other to a special set of clasps along the boat's main boom, the crew had, in effect, quickly constructed what was known in RPV

lingo as a "vertical retrieval barrier."

Overseeing the operation from the bridge was the boat's captain. Once the net was up and secured, he turned the seventy-five foot boat into the wind and then settled down in front of fourteen-inch CRT dis-133

play. After flipping three switches, he waited as the ghostly video image of his own vessel-shot by the camera mounted on the nose of the RPV now just six miles away-slowly appeared on the TV screen.

Now begins the hard part, he thought.

Jockeying a small lever that was linked to the RPV's guidance computer below decks, the captain gingerly lined up the outline of his boat with the middle of the TV screen. The video image flickered occasionally for the next minute as the captain steered the small airplane toward the fishing-net retrieval barrier erected by the crew.

So far, so good.

Another minute went by and then the RPV reached the crucial "five-mile away"

point. Instantly, the RPV's onboard flight system shut down the craft's engine, knocking its flight path slightly off kilter. More juggling of the joystick by the captain brought the RPV back to level.

All of the small aircraft's critically sensitive video systems "locked down"

at two miles out, the last step before the retrieval attempt. The TV image quickly faded from the captain's screen as the RPV's video camera clicked off, but by this time, he didn't need the electronic visual aid. Looking out the bridge window, he had no trouble picking up the shape of the green-and-brown RPV as it streaked right toward him.

Ten seconds later, the RPV flew right into the center of the raised net. With a whistle of relief, the captain yelled down to his crew to secure the aircraft and lower the net as quickly as possible.

Within forty-five seconds, they had done so. The whole operation had lasted less than 10 minutes.

*

A half hour later, the crew was gathered around the captain's monitor, sharing a pot of coffee.

The captain inserted the RPV's videotape cassette into his playback machine and pushed the appropriate buttons. A color bar appeared on the screen, and the officer quickly adjusted the videotape to the proper hue and tint. Then, after another few moments of knob twisting, he hit the machine's Play button.

The first few seconds of the videotape featured nothing more than footage of the ocean rushing beneath the RPV as it headed for the Cape Cod coastline.

Still, this sequence indicated that the RPV's cameras had clicked on at the proper time and that they had done so in sharp focus.

"Looks like it could be a good take," the captain said in a tone slightly more upbeat than his usual somber-ness. "Image is clear. The color's good. Zoom facility working OK."

"Here comes the coastline now," one of the crewmen said.

At that point, the men put down their coffee cups and drew their chairs up closer to the TV. Two of them began to take notes, while a third operated a stopwatch.

The tape showed the RPV streaking over the coastline at precisely noon, exactly the time dictated by its preprogrammed flight sequence. As soon as it reached the beach, it climbed slightly to clear a long cliff that ran parallel to the shoreline, a place the captain knew was called Nauset Heights. Reaching its prescribed height, the RPV then flew over an abandoned farmhouse and several recently cut hayfields before turning north, toward the small seaport of Nauset itself.

Any doubt that the destruction of the village had been anything but complete was dispelled by the videotape. Few houses in the small town were left intact, and

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many continued to smolder, now more than two days after the attack. The men watching the TV had seen the pattern before.

"They did their jobs well this time, the bastards," the captain said, his voice thick with contempt.

The RPV went into a wide circle over the village at this point, providing various angles to the ruins of the small Cape Cod seaport.

"Looks like they used mostly rockets and automatic weapons," the captain said, studying the tape with a well-trained eye. "Not so much evidence of napalm or even flamethrowers this time."

"Time at one minute and thirty right now," the man working the stopwatch said.

"The wide-angle sweep should commence at any moment."

A few seconds later, the image on the screen flickered slightly, indicating that the RPV's onboard computer had ordered it to break from its circling pattern over the village and climb for a wider view.

Now, as the angle widened, the crewmen were able to see that two paths of destruction led out from the outskirts of the village, one to the north and one to the south.

"No doubt they landed two roaming parties," the captain commented. "Thirty to forty men each, burning and killing as they went. You can see where one unit swept north and the other tried to go south."

"Coming up on the impact site in five seconds, sir," the stopwatch operator said.

Now the captain leaned forward with the rest of the men. The next sequence would be the most important part of the tape.

The image flickered again as the RPV went into a preprogrammed descent and turned slightly northwest of the village.

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"There it is, sir!" one of the crewman said excitedly. "God, it looks like a direct hit. . ."

The captain put his hand to his chin and watched the next ten seconds of the poststrike reconnaissance videotape very closely. The blackened, smoking trail of destruction caused by the raiding party heading south came to an abrupt halt at the edge of an enormous crater. Where once a high sand dune stood, now there was nothing but a monstrous chasm. The massive hole-it was more than one hundred yards across and at least fifty feet deep-was still smoking, too, the sand at its bottom and along its rim black and scorched. There was also evidence of many seared bones and skulls.

"It was a direct hit . . ." the captain said with a tone of satisfaction. "And it appears to have wiped out that entire raiding party."

He quickly hit the freeze-frame button on the playback machine and then slowly advanced the tape in order to get a better look at the crater.

"Twenty-four miles away and we can still hit them that hard," he whispered, almost to himself.

They watched the replay of the crater sequence several more times before the captain finally relaxed. Leaning back in his chair, the captain's face creased in the new lines of an unlikely smile.

"Yes, my friends," he said in a reverent, hushed tone, 'They are finally beginning to feel our sting."

A short time later, the fishing boat was underway again.

Steering their vessel due east, out into the open Atlantic, they sailed for four hours through increasingly rough seas and in and out of several squalls.

By dusk, they were within ten miles of their destination, and with the coming of night, the sea had settled down to an eerie calm. The captain reduced his speed

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to one half and allowed the comforting dusk to engulf the fishing boat.

Their home was coming into view now, but in the fading light, the crewmen could just barely see the outline of the warship's massive guns.

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Yaz woke up to the sounds of a raven crying.

His entire body ached so much, even opening his eyelids was a major discomfort. Then, after he was finally able to blink a few times, he found his vision to be blurry. More blinking cleared it up to the point that he could see his surroundings. But this turned out to be the most painful part of all.

He was inside a tiny room-though "glorified closet" would be a better description. The place was so small, his rusting, squeaky bunkbed just barely fit. All four walls plus the ceiling and the floor were painted in sickly dull gray, the only deviation being the red-paint drawing of a bird just above the room's only door.

A half-filled glass of water was on the floor next to the bunk, as was a piece of crusty bread. Yaz's clothes-the army fatigues he was wearing the night he was captured-were rolled in a ball and wedged between his bunk and the wall.

What he was wearing at the moment was a cross between a hospital gown and a very cheesy bathrobe.

His stomach ached worst of all-he was sure he hadn't eaten in at least three days, maybe more. Yet, the piece of stale bread looked anything but inviting.

He was sick to his stomach not so much from hunger but from the stench of the cabin itself. It smelled like the dirtiest locker room in the world.

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Despite being unconscious for most of the past forty-eight hours, it wasn't hard for Yaz to recall just how he had gotten into this predicament. The raiders invaded Nauset Heights less than an hour after Hunter had left to investigate the explosions down in the village. The invaders had come so quickly and in such large numbers-more than forty strong-that Yaz never had a chance to fend them off.

As it was, he considered himself lucky to be alive.

The raiders looked as if they had just walked Dungeons & Dragons horror movie-grizzled, heavily scarred faces, many of them carrying battleaxes that were smeared with dried blood. They had surrounded the farmhouse before he even knew it, and by a series of crude hand gestures, had communicated to him that they would burn down the house if he and Dominique didn't surrender.

At the time, Yaz still wanted to fight, thinking he could hold them off with his M-16 on the chance that Hunter would return just in time to save the day.

But Dominique told him no. If they were going to die, she said, she could not bear to see the farmhouse go up at the same time.

So they gave up.

Their captors were immediately struck by Dominique's beauty and this, Yaz told himself over and over, was the real reason he was still alive. From the looks of the men in the raiding party, killing and raping went with the job.