happened — he saw the bluish yellow streak of vapor hit the helicopter, but it kept on barreling toward him. Hal leveled the gun again and prepared to fire another round.
But he realized moments later that the big helicopter was no longer flying toward him but
“Got the bastard, sir,” Hal radioed, before realizing that Griffin’s equipment was destroyed and he couldn’t hear. He activated his sensors to locate Griffin.
And realized with horror that the second Russian gunship had zeroed in on Trevor Griffin and was about to attack! He raised his rail gun just as the gunner started walking thirty-millimeter rounds onto Griffin’s hiding spot.
But at that very moment, two missiles streaked out of the night sky and rammed into the Hind’s engine exhausts. The gunship immediately exploded, and the flaming fireball buried itself in the desert a few hundred yards away from the Air Force colonel.
Just as he was wondering who’d shot those missiles, Hal heard, “Sorry we’re so late, Tin Man.” It was Kelvin Carter. “Got here as quick as I could.” Soon the unmistakable roar of their QB-52 Megafortress could be heard, less than five hundred feet overhead.
“You were right on time,” Hal said. “Three more seconds and the colonel would’ve been turned into Swiss cheese.”
“Roger that,” Carter said. “Glad we could help. We’re going to pay a visit on a couple other Russki aircraft heading your way. The closest ground troops are about eight miles southwest. We don’t have any air-to-ground weapons on board the Megafortress, but we can create some confusion for you. Watch the skies.”
“Thanks, Bobcat.” Briggs jet-jumped over to Griffin. “You okay, sir?”
“I’m here to tell you, Hal,” Griffin said weakly, “that it
“You saved our bacon, Colonel,” Hal said, helping Griffin strip off the useless battle armor. “You’ve earned the right to join our exclusive club if you so choose.”
“I’ve got a desk back in San Antonio waiting for me, along with a wife and kids — I think that’s where I’ll stay for a while,” Griffin responded honestly. “That is, if we can get out of here without Condor.”
At that moment Hal turned. He’d received another warning tone in his helmet. “A vehicle heading toward us — I thought Carter said it was clear?” Hal raised his rail gun, preparing to engage.
Then he saw Jalaluddin Turabi frantically waving from his perch atop the Russian armored personnel carrier. He and Dendara had returned to the place where they’d been captured and absconded with the APC and weapons.
“It’s a piece of crap! Don’t these Russians believe in cleaning their vehicles?” Turabi asked. “But it should get us to Repetek, where my men will be waiting. Shall we go?”
Confirmed, sir,” the unit intelligence officer said, handing his commanding officer a report. “The damned Air Force again.”
“I thought so,” the commander said angrily. He read the report, shaking his head, then crumpled up the paper and banged a fist on his desk. “A commando operation
“Charjew, then by air to the USS
“I know, damn it, I know. A year of work down the tubes — not just in Turkmenistan but all the way to Iran and all over Central Asia. The Air Force really screwed us last night.”
The commander looked up from his desk at the hanger where his office was located. He had a U.S. Air Force MH-53M Pave Low IV special-ops helicopter and crew standing by ready to go, along with its crew of six and a team of twelve commandos — and there was no doubt that he could get volunteers to fill up the chopper if he asked. He had a large contingent of operatives and valuable informants on the streets of Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, and also down inside Iran, throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as far away as Krasnovodsk, the big Russian port on the Caspian Sea — all turning up information on enemy activity in Central Asia. He had guys deep inside Al Qaeda, the Russian military, Afghani drug cartels, and terrorist groups for thousands of miles around.
All compromised because of some half-assed Air Force operation near Mary.
It was too risky to stay in Uzbekistan now. The Russians were going to be like a large hive of angry bees — stirred up, swarming, and mad as hell, ready to lash out at anything that wasn’t 100 percent verified Russian. The whole Central Asia operation was in danger. A lot of Russians had been killed by the Americans as they fought their way out of Turkmenistan — no doubt the Russians wanted payback.
“We got no choice,” he said finally. “Send messages via secure microburst transmissions and radio interference, telling our guys to hightail it out into the back country and start monitoring the pickup points.” The CIA operatives used their own secret microburst transceivers — coded messages sent and received by devices that compressed messages into microsecond-long bursts, thereby reducing the chances of their being detected or used to backtrace their location. The CIA headquarters also sent messages by broadcasting interference signals overlaid on regular radio and TV broadcasts — sometimes as simple as bursts of static, other times images that could be seen only with special lenses or by slowing down videotapes of certain shows — to relay messages to their informants or agents in deep cover.
Over time all the field operatives and informants who wished to leave would get the message, and they would execute their escape plan. The actual procedure differed widely for individual agents, but the objective was for each agent to report to one of several exfiltration points near where he or she lived or worked and wait for a sign or message that the agent was going to get picked up. It could take days, sometimes weeks — patience and trust were the key words here. Sometimes agents would be on the run, hiding out in the wilderness. If they were lucky, they could maintain their covers while checking the spots daily for a sign that their rescuers were nearby.
“Roger that,” the intel officer said. “Everyone’s been in fairly close contact. We should have no trouble rounding them all up.”
“That’s because the Air Force stirred up the Russians
The unit commander was nearly knocked off his chair by the first massive explosion, but by the time he leaped to his feet and began running for the exit, the second bomb crashed through the ceiling of the hangar and exploded. He never heard or felt anything after that….
The CIA air base in Uzbekistan was certainly no secret to anyone — especially not the Russians. Since Russia was a full partner in the defense of Uzbekistan, and Russia was mostly responsible for Uzbekistan’s border security and defense, the Russians had plenty of information on anyone moving across the frontier — including the CIA agents and their most trusted informants.
But instead of simply raiding the CIA field headquarters, Russia had other plans for them.
A lone Tupolev-22M Backfire bomber swept in over the desert plains of eastern Uzbekistan. It had been cleared into Kazakhstan by Russian air-traffic controllers based at Alma-Ata and monitored by other Russian air- traffic controllers in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, who watched the speedy bomber as it descended rapidly
