the lakeshore through the forbidding woods. A hard, pushing slog suddenly became a run, and someone’s camelback was sloshing, for which, at the appropriate time, Freeman would ream out the offender in no uncertain terms. Running, it made no difference, but if and when they were forced to close on the enemy quickly, silently, even the greenest cadet knew that the smallest sound could give him away.
It wasn’t the fastest mile in history, but for men weighed down with arms, ammo, and essential war wares, it was exemplary. In another five minutes they saw the road and slowed, senses on high alert. They walked quickly, quietly now, until they could see that the road was clear, then split into two teams: the general, Johnny Lee, and Choir, with Prince leading, on the eastern side of the northbound road, Ruth, Eddie Mervyn, and Gomez on the opposite, western, side. They were running again, resolute in their intention to bypass the terrorist group that had been firing on them and to keep going until they found a cabin or one of the few small marinas scattered around the lake’s seventy-mile-long shoreline. With luck, they could get either a boat or a vehicle in which to hightail it to the northern end of the lake before the “disk” party disembarked into the woods and followed one of the creek beds on the twenty-to thirty-mile hike to the border and the equally wild country of the Canadian forests.
Prince, panting, growled at a rush of sound that suddenly burst from the bush, sending all six men to ground until they realized the noise was that of squirrels, not men. Prince stopped to look back at them with what seemed to Freeman an expression of mild contempt for their unwarranted belly flops.
They were running again, and from their GPSs they knew that soon they would be adjacent to the general area from which the rearguard terrorist squad had been firing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A world away, the White House was learning just how important, indeed critical, it was to recover the DARPA ALPHA disk. The prospect of any country, even the tried-and-true allies Great Britain and Australia, having possession of America’s revolutionary Flow-In-Flight technology was, as Eleanor Prenty told the president, sending shock waves through the Pentagon. She placed an 8?-by-11-inch scaled-down drawing of the “gas in nose cone” torpedo before him. “It’s downright traumatizing the chief of naval operations. It would mean a sub having the ability to fire at an enemy ship two hundred miles away. The DARPA ALPHA people say there would be no wake, no warning.”
“Wouldn’t the targeted ship hear it?” posed the president. “I mean, on its sonar?”
“At a mile a second, it would be like—” She consulted the notes she’d taken from the CNO. “DARPA ALPHA scientists tell us that—” She had to turn several pages, her hand trembling. After being on her feet this long, and stoked with coffee since the crisis broke, she was beyond exhaustion. “The scientists say that at ten miles, for example, the sonar noise from the super-cavitating torpedo would last no longer than a quick jab on a door buzzer. But if you think the CNO’s in near-coronary mode, you should read the stuff I’ve been getting from the Joint Chiefs. The army is piss — sorry, sir. I mean—”
“The army’s pissed that they hadn’t heard of DARPA ALPHA until today?”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Eleanor moved her laptop so he could see the map of Washington state’s Kitsap Peninsula. “The army knew about DARPA’s Division of Naval Surface Warfare up here at Bayview and about the Keyport testing lab and torpedo range on the Kitsap perimeter. But DARPA ALPHA was — is — completely different in intent and in staffing from the DARPA installation we knew back in 2006.”
The president shrugged. “Can’t blame them. These things have to be run on a strictly need-to-know basis. Black ops. We can’t all know what everybody else is doing.”
“Well, the army’s particular worry is that they see the super-cavitation technology in a smaller, bullet-sized projectile that could pierce the armor of the Abrams M1. More important, it could penetrate the armor of our new lighter, faster Stryker vehicles, which have gained so much favor in the Pentagon after the army brass realized just how—‘constipated’ is the word General Freeman once used — the big M-1 is when trying to travel on non-American roads. The tank weighs in at seventy tons, and on any other highway system than our own or on the German Autobahns, it becomes a dinosaur, no matter how well armored and upgunned it is. Which is why we need to get that disk back. And quickly.”
“How’s Freeman’s team doing?”
“FBI says that the sheriff at Sandpoint has told them that there’ve been reports of a helo going down in the area, possibly brought down by a MANPAD shoulder-fired missile, but—” She paused, exhausted, so much so she asked the president if she might sit for a moment.
“What — oh, of course.” But Eleanor had no sooner sat, her feet resting on the border of the plush round blue oval carpet that bore the Great Seal of the United States, than the president was asking, “Freeman’s team okay? Functional?”
“Yes, sir,” Eleanor replied, catching her breath. “The moment the Navy’s Hawkeye lost contact with the helo and tracked its down position, the local sheriffs and air rescue in Coeur d’Alene were alerted. Then Freeman’s team came through on their infantry radios. Freeman says it’s well in hand, and he doesn’t want more troops in there confusing the issue. Says it’s a case of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth.’ Says he’s closing in on the beeper via the radar contact the downed helo still has with the beeper that was planted in the disk.”
“Okay,” said the president. “I’d prefer to send in more men, but Freeman’s the man on the ground. If he feels he’s closing, there’s no point in us getting in his way.” The president turned to the large map of the Idaho panhandle that had been wheeled into his office. “I can see Freeman’s point. Must be some of the densest part of the country up there. Even so, I want the nearest army battalion on standby just in case he needs a last-minute assist.”
“That’s already been taken care of,” said Eleanor.
The president turned from the map to her. “Next thing, Eleanor, is for you to be driven home and not come back here for twelve hours. That’s an
“Yes, sir,” she said gratefully, but not without a feeling of guilt that she should stay.
“Go on now,” he ordered. “Scram.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Everyone on the team — Choir, Johnny Lee, and Freeman on the eastern side of the road, Tony Ruth, Gomez, and Murphy on the western side — saw Prince stop short, pine cones flying in front of his paws. The weight of his armored vest was starting to tell, his panting more rapid than it had been when they left the helo, but the rest of him was rigid. He was pointing. They froze. Freeman knelt on the soft earth and fallen leaves on the road’s shoulder, and Tony Ruth could see the general’s gloved right hand switch his AK-74 from the “off” position. Everybody else had done the same.
The disquieting noise of their controlled breathing could be heard above the stillness of the forest from which a white mist bled. Prince was pointing into the woods from the road at a barely discernible opening in the wall of trees and brush only a few yards from the road’s shoulder. Had the terrorists’ rear guard anticipated his move, wondered Freeman, and also raced through the woods from the lakeside to reach the road? Both sections of Freeman’s team had automatically adopted CAF, covering arcs of fire, so that they could engage the enemy and guard each other.
He saw the silhouette of an AK-47’s front sight above the trail and fired. Both of his sections opened up, using the falling corpse, a U.S. Army uniform, as their central aiming point. The air was ripped apart by the sudden fury of the firefight, but it was all one-way, the enfilade from Freemen’s men having the crucial advantage. Anyone behind the first man they’d killed would be unable to get past him easily on the narrow trail and forced to ground amid timber and brush that was now the recipient of concentrated fire, 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm rounds pouring into the woods in a narrow cone. If the screams and Arabic curses of the dying were anything to go by, all six of the terrorists were either down, dead, or badly wounded, Prince growling ferociously at the mere gall of the interlopers.
