“Base, this is Cerberus Leader,” a voice called over the walkietalkie headset Remington wore. The field command post’s communications still worked up to three klicks away with only slight static.
Five klicks back from the front line, at a time when all the intelligence networks were on the blink, Cerberus was the perimeter security team charged with defending the command post. During the SCUD attack, a few of the missiles had landed nearby, but the cinderblock building had remained standing if somewhat battered.
Until the moment the people went missing from the unit, Remington had felt they were divinely protected, and that was a stretch for him. He believed in God, but he’d never once thought God had any interest in him or knew he’d been born.
“Go, Cerberus,” Remington replied.
“You can add three more to that list of MIAs,” Lieutenant Don Carmichael told him. “We found the uniforms and gear of one of the outer perimeter guard posts.”
“Affirmative, Cerberus Leader,” Remington replied. The information continued the trend of confirmed disappearances that had started only minutes ago. Everyone within the three-klick radius who hadn’t responded had been verified missing. Remington had ordered the others into search-and-rescue teams to sweep the area and systematically check on units that had gone missing in action. “Secure whatever gear you can salvage and continue your search. Supplies are going to be hard to come by for a time.”
“Understood, Base.”
The walkie-talkie connection hissed sparks in Remington’s ear. He strode again, seeking to neutralize some of the nervous tension that filled him. More than anything, he wanted to hear from Goose. The first sergeant was more than just a friend; Goose was Remington’s third hand, the man who could see that things Remington wanted done got done, and that they got done Remington’s way.
Remington stepped in behind Private First Class Foster. The private had been on the second team, a step down from the individuals the captain had worked with in the past, but Foster was good with the computer.
“Let’s see the archived footage of the helos again,” Remington said. “A few seconds before the impact.” We’ve missed something. We had to.
“One monitor or both?” Foster asked.
“Both,” Remington replied. “Post four quadrants on the screens. All in one-third speed slo-mo.”
“Yes, sir.” Foster tapped the keyboard. Both monitors ceased struggling with the grainy digital video they were puking over at the moment. The images became crystal clear again, going back to the kind of performance Remington desired and was accustomed to.
The captain stood behind the computer operator and opened his vision. Remington had always been good at tracking more than one thing at a time. That was one of the abilities that had helped him get into OCS and had later helped him make the jump to captain.
The images scrolled again and again, changing by flickers. Besides the ground cams that had been assigned to the Rangers, the U.N. peacekeeping teams, and the Turkish army, several of the arriving helicopters and gunships had been equipped with cams as well. The satellites governed by NORAD’s command center had pumped the video and audio transmissions to Wasp and to Remington’s intelligence teams.
The offered views included ground viewpoint shots as well as shots from inside the helo cockpits.
Remington eyed the screens, blurring his attention and his peripheral vision, not looking at the individual action, but looking through the surface motions for the incongruent actions that didn’t fit. Something had gone wrong as the helos had swooped into the LZ, and he was going to see it this time.
The exterior views of the Sea Knight contingent showed the helos descending toward the LZ in perfect formation. The crimson haze from the smoke grenades Goose had used to establish quick visual sighting blossomed against the tops of the smoke clouds from the explosions like blood surfacing from the ocean during a shark attack. In the next instant, some of the helicopters suddenly veered into others.
Two Sea Knights in the lead collided and set off a chain of violence that whipped through the formation. Other helos slammed together in a string of aerial wrecks. Often, the blows were only glancing, or a brief meeting of rotor blades that shattered against each other, not full-blown collisions. Shards of carbonized steel ripped through the helos like fragmentation grenades, slashing through the metal sides and Plexiglas windows like tissue paper. Men died in that moment, and others died immediately afterward as the helicopters broke and went to pieces against the hard earth. Black, oily smoke mixed with flames and obscured the views of most of the few ship-carried cameras that had survived the impacts.
In a brief, frozen split second, the image of Goose on his knees beside a man who had been impaled by a long shard filled one of the helo cams as the Sea Knight heeled over out of control. The image was so stark, so unforgiving, that for a moment Remington was afraid Goose had been killed. He forced himself to remember that he had talked with the first sergeant just after that. When the helicopter made contact with the ground, the camera screen went black.
But Remington had seen something else. The image played at the back of his mind, gnawing like a terrier. He leaned forward. “Stop.”
Foster hit the keyboard. All the cycling images left onscreen halted, becoming silent, frozen images of destruction or impending destruction.
“This one.” Remington pointed to the lower left quadrant of the left monitor. “Can you identify this helicopter?”
Foster tapped keys and floated a legend into view on the screen. “Yes, sir. That was Lieutenant Briggs’s aircraft.”
“Can you isolate Lieutenant Briggs’s aircraft in that formation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then show me footage of the approach toward the LZ again and let’s see what that helo did.”
After a brief intermission for serious keyboarding, Foster put the results up on the right monitor. The helicopters froze onscreen. “This is fifteen seconds before the first crash,” Foster said. “And this
