“Nah. Wrong direction. We’re still way north. We’ve been heading west.” Gunny returned, hovering over Mack. “Damned if I know where the hell we’re going. Can you get up, Major?”
“Maybe,” he said. he let Melfi pull him up; he sat on the floor, waiting for the blood to stop rushing to his head.
“Did he die?” Mack asked.
“Did who die?” Gunny asked.
“The guy I hit.”
“Don’t know,” said the sergeant. “The raghead guy’s still alive, if that’s who you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t hit him,” said Mack. “I hit one of the guards. A Somalian.”
The door to the bus opened up front. Two Somalian soldiers came up the stairs, followed by an American in a flight suit – Captain Stephen Howland, one of the F-117 pilots. The Imam was behind him. The soldiers stepped aside and let the pilot pass. He walked toward them slowly, eyes fixed on the floor. He didn’t seem to be injured, beyond some bruises to his eyes.
“I see Major Smith has recovered,” said the Imam mildly. “There will be no more episodes, Major. They make our task that much more difficult. Our hosts get bothered.”
“You could just let us go,” said Gunny. “Then we’ll go easy on you.”
The Iranian had already started off the bus. The others followed, leaving them to the two Somalian guards and driver at the front.
“Libya?” asked Johnson.
“Yeah. The Iranians have declared a Muslim coalition against the West,” said Howland. “Libya, Sudan, Iran, now Somalia. Iraq is cheering them on.”
“The usual shitheads,” said Gunny. “They won’t get anywhere.”
“I don’t know,” said Howland. He sat in the seat opposite Johnson. “They’re gloating about Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They think they’re coming in with them. Something about air bases. Probably they didn’t give our planes permission to land.” The pilot shook his head. “There’s a whole lot of shit going down and we’re right in the middle of it.”
“Aw, come on,” said Gunny, trying to cheer him up. “If you’re standing in shit, at least it can’t rain on your head.”
“Unless you slip and fall in it,” said Howland.
“Jeez, Gunny, look at that.” Jackson pointed out the back window. A flatbed truck had pulled up behind them. A huge scrap of black metal was lashed to the rear; Somalians clustered all over the wreckage as well as the roof of the vehicle’s cab.
“My plane,” said Howland. He looked down at Mack. “They must have been waiting for me to open the bay and pickle. I got the warning and started doing evasive maneuvers, but like an idiot I flamed out.”
“You were just unlucky,” said Mack.
“What happened to you?”
“I fucked up,” said Knife.
“Ah, bullshit on that,” said Gunny, his voice almost vicious as he turned from the back window. “Fuckin’ major saved our asses is what he did. That wasn’t no fuckup. And it wasn’t bad luck.”
“Wasn’t good luck,” said Mack.
“No, sir. No fuckin’ sir,” said the sergeant as the bus lurched forward. “But it sure as shit wasn’t a fuck- up.”
Mack fought off the swelling pain in his head to acknowledge the thank-you with a nod.
Northern Ethiopia
23 October, 0300
Breanna pulled back on the control stick despite the warning from the computer that they hadn’t yet reached optimum takeoff speed. She pushed down on the throttle bar with her other hand, as if the extra force might somehow squeeze more oomph out of the four power plants, which were already at max.
She was also mumbling a Hail Mary. Couldn’t hurt.
Despite the computer’s disapproval, Fort Two caught a stiff wind in her chin and lifted off the mesh runway extension, clearing the trees at the far end of the runway with a good two inches to spare. Breanna gave herself a second to exhale, then began banking to swing onto the course north. They would fly at five hundred feet above ground level all the way to the border. At that point, she would take the plane even lower and goose the engines; they would be on their target in precisely five minutes. Chris would unleash the two cruise missiles on the known SAMs.
What happened next depended on the Somalians and the Iranians who were helping them. according to the satellite photos, a ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun sat at the northwestern corner of the complex. It would be nice to eliminate the gun before the MHV-22 Ospreys arrived with their assault teams. On the other hand, the Zeus had a limited line of sight toward that end of the base, so attacking it wasn’t a priority if other defenses had been installed along the southern edge of the old school grounds.
Unfortunately, there was only one sure way to discover if there were additional defenses there – the Megafortress would have to show itself and see if anyone took a potshot at it. It could use its JSOWs on them.
The EB-52’s ECMs would automatically ID all known Soviet-era detection and targeting radars, buzzing bands from Jaybird to Desilu, as Chris liked to joke. At the same time, it could automatically note the source of the radars, supplying the data and signal radios like Raven, for example, nor was it equipped to deal with the next-generation gear found in more sophisticated Western systems. They’d have to punt if they came up against any.
