being the futuristic Ospreys, and the Americans were the only ones who had such aircraft. It was not Zionists after all.
“Get up and shoot at them,” he yelled to his small group. “Kill the Americans. Fire at them, damn you. Shoot.” He swatted the nearest one on the head. “Get up and fight or I’ll kill you myself.” The man he slapped got to his feet with his weapon, but his eyes were wide in fright. Al-Masri moved to the next one, screaming over the sound of the aircraft.
A second Osprey had appeared and was gently lowering itself toward the flat surface of the bridge, and he momentarily wondered why the team that he had seen take position down there was not shooting at it. Instead, he watched the two figures emerge from among the heavy equipment and hurry toward the hovering aircraft.
“There they are!” Two of the Americans had somehow gotten into the western column but were finally out in the open. “Kill them now!”
His men were responding, although sluggishly, and a few were snapping off some shots. Al-Masri had a vision of actually destroying an Osprey and watching the Americans burn to death in the wreckage. He pulled his own pistol and ran forward, firing at the big plane. If they could get close enough, there might be a chance.
BETH STUMBLED TO THE rear of the Osprey through the hard wash of the propellers, hauling al-Attas along. The gunner behind the ramp-mounted .50 caliber machine gun jumped down to help her wrestle the prisoner inside. He was used to surprises on these special missions but had never before encountered an operator who was a beautiful, almost petite, woman with short blond hair, and especially one who tossed him the leash to a flex-tied captive whose blue jeans were falling down over his skinny legs.
Ledford gained her footing and ran through the fuselage as fast as she could, feeling the vibration as the Osprey’s rotors turned. Since the machine had never actually touched down, it was already flying, and Major Jameson was just waiting for confirmation from the gunner that the two passengers were safely aboard.
Beth Ledford plunged onto the flight deck and grabbed the pilot’s shoulder. “Don’t lift off yet,” she screamed.
“What?” he yelled back.
“Don’t lift off!”
“We have to. We’ve made our pickup, and now we are getting the hell out of here.”
“You hang right here. Bounty Hunger Actual is coming.”
“Sorry, but he’s on his own.”
“Like hell he is.” She jammed a pistol hard into the ribs of the pilot. “That was not a request. We wait.”
SWANSON BOLTED FROM THE tunnel in a full sprint. The attention of everyone was locked on the aircraft, allowing him to run up unseen behind them. Within ten meters, he was in the middle of the group before someone finally noticed him.
Ayman al-Masri saw movement at his side, thinking that it was one of his men, but when he looked, he was staring straight into a face he knew well from studying intelligence photographs: The strong jawline and cheekbones, the hard gray-green eyes, the light brown hair, and the lithe body matched the characteristics of the infamous American operator Kyle Swanson, who had been causing trouble for years. At that moment of recognition, Swanson punched him in the face with the butt of a rifle and sent the New Muslim Order security chief crumpling to the roadway.
Now he was in front of the crowd, and Kyle knew the rest of them would start shooting at him. He dodged into a zigzag to create a moving target and flung a green smoke grenade back over his shoulder. Not far away, the Osprey was still hanging there, waiting for him, against orders and operational practice.
He saw someone leap from the rear of the plane, go to a knee, bring up a rifle, and start firing. A man to his right keeled over into the spreading emerald smoke, his face a mask of blood, and then a second man rolled forward in a somersault, hands grabbing at the bullet wound in his stomach.
He had only thirty more yards to go when he recognized that it was Coastie covering his approach with methodical bursts, and he couldn’t think of anyone he would rather have doing the job. She fired, and another man fell, then he ran past her, patting her shoulder to signal that it was time to leave.
Swanson jumped into the Osprey and pulled Beth up right behind him. Both had big smiles on their dirty faces.
“Everybody’s aboard,” the gunner called to the pilot, who had been balancing the Osprey in a delicate position as he watched the show from the cockpit. The swirling cloud of yellow and green smoke had covered the enemy, but he had seen at least four of them fall, and the only person who had been shooting was the girl who had threatened him. They could talk about that later. He fed the Osprey power, and the machine lifted off in a typhoon of wind, climbed rapidly on the rotors, which were already moving back to airplane mode, and banked away from the bridge.
27
SWANSON AND LEDFORD DROPPED into canvas-strap seats, side by side, as the Osprey curved away from the bridge that could have been a death trap for both of them. They were filthy and stained, streaked with sweat, but their eyes still glowed with excitement from the action. Beth had a fresh purpling mouse beneath her left eye, and her lower lip was split, seeping blood. Kyle was bruised and scraped from being slammed about by explosions. They smiled, then broke into peals of laughter and slapped their palms together in a high five. They had made it.
“What’s with the kid?” Swanson asked, shedding the now useless combat gear and taking a long drink of water.
Across the aisle, Mohammad al-Attas had been lashed into a seat, his hair matted and tangled, his eyes rolling wide, and his head twisting all around. His nose was bloody, a big bruise colored his left forehead, and his pants were around his knees. Plastic flex-cuffs bound his wrists, and when he kicked at the gunner who fastened the seat harness around him, the gunner spun a few turns of duct tape around the ankles. The belt was still looped around his neck. He tried to bite the gunner and was put to sleep with a strong sedative injected with a syringe in the medical kit.
“He went weird about ten minutes after we left you. We were running along just fine, and the next thing I knew, he was snarling and snapping like a dog, punching and knocking me to the ground. It was like he was flying on some super coke high. I had to slap him about a little bit and hogtie him.”
“Shoulda just shot him.” Kyle shrugged.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “but you said bring him back alive, and his intel might be worth trying to save. Maybe the shrinks can straighten him out.”
“Whatever. Just glad you made it out with the extra luggage.”
Kyle waved to the gunner, who was seated near the engineer, facing them. “Hey, dude, thanks for waiting for me.”
The big man looked out beneath his olive drab helmet and pointed at Beth. “Didn’t have much of a choice,” he yelled over the noise of the churning propellers. “We were ready to haul ass until your friend pulled a gun on Major Jameson, the pilot. He ain’t none too happy about that, neither. You ought to have heard him cussin’.”
Beth leaned back and closed her eyes, lacing her hands behind her head. “Won’t leave my BFF behind.”
“What?”
“Girl talk. Best Friend Forever. I’m probably going to get court-martialed, huh?”
“Naw. They’ll make you stand at attention and gnaw on you for a while, but if you don’t laugh in their faces, you’ll walk away OK. General Middleton protects the Tridents, and you done good. We’re bringing back a hell of a lot of information. We tend to piss off some people, time to time.” Swanson looked at her face. Ten minutes after coming through a major action, she was damned near asleep.
“I’m not in Trident,” she said, somewhat wistfully, lifting her chin in defiance of the fates.
“I am, and I would have been in a world of hurt back there if this bird had left without me. Then you jump back out there and do your Little Sure Shot routine on the guys chasing me? Outstanding, Beth. What was that you
