looking for a target. But the gunfire had come from the front of the building, one of the guards there firing in panic.
As Dean got up, the ground shook again. There were shouts from inside the house. Dean saw the Brit kneeling a few yards away; he whistled to him and then started running toward the building.
“Where is she?” he asked Rockman.
“She’s inside the bunker beneath the house. Go to your right. You’ll see a large garden. Down the steps, keep moving to your right. Around to the pool house. She left the door open for you.”
“She left the door open for me?”
“She’s a lot more sentimental than she seems.”
84
Malachi Reese leaned back from the console, waiting as the commander of the mission cleared his F-47C bird from the engagement area. Malachi had the second plane in the formation; the unmanned fighter had a pair of 2,000-pound selectable GPS/laser-guided missiles under its wing, ready to fire.
But no target.
“Hang tight, Mal,” said Train — also known as Major Pierce Duff, the mission commander. “Orion has some good snaps for us — no more resistance there.”
“Yup on that,” said Malachi.
“Get into position for the bunker shot,” said Train.
“On it.”
A targeting reticle had opened in the middle of Malachi’s main screen. It boxed the back portion of the Syrian intelligence agent’s house with a yellow square. At this point, Malachi could launch his two air-to-ground missiles with 98.9 percent confidence that their GPS systems would take them within eighteen inches of the center of the square, striking within.4 second of each other.
“Hold off,” said the commander. “We have people in the bunker. Our people.”
Malachi held his stick lightly, staying on course. While in theory he could launch from anywhere within a twenty-four-mile oval fire zone, his best aiming area was somewhat more limited; he’d run out of it in about ninety seconds and have to slide back in the formation. Truck had already taken direct control on the backup plane and would have the next shot.
“We’re just going to hold here,” said the commander. “We may not have to be firing at all. Mal, you copy that?”
“Roger that. I got it. All dressed up and nothing to blow.”
“Don’t sweat it,” said Whacker, who handled the weapons systems for the four-man team that flew the birds. If the GPS failed for some reason, he could use a laser system to put the bomb on target. He could also launch the weapons himself, if authorized by the pilot or commander. “You’ll get some action.”
“Still got plenty of time here,” said Riddler. He worked the electronic countermeasures, or ECMs. The remote-controlled attack aircraft were flown from a bunker at Crypto City by four-man teams, who together handled anywhere from four to eight planes with the help of computers. The computer system and crew arrangements were necessary partly because of the slight but significant lag time involved in communicating commands over the network. The automated flight control systems actually did much of the “real” flying and fighting. Typically, two men served as pilots, with another taking offensive weapons — usually air-to-ground bombs, though they could fly interceptor missions as well — and another handling the defensive gear. All four men were actually cross-trained and could handle any of the others’ tasks.
“Israeli fighters now zero-five off,” said Riddler, adding their approach and speed. The Israelis had not been informed of the Birds’ mission; the four planes were too stealthy to be picked up by Israeli radar at present. “Going to have to decide what we’re doing here, chief. They’re coming hot and look like the ‘shoot first, say prayers later’ types.”
“All right, let me talk to Telach and see whether we want to give these guys a heads-up or just blow out of here,” said Train.
85
Lia pushed against the wall as she heard someone at the far end shout in Arabic. Two men ran from the front room into the hallway and then into the access chamber and outside.
The bunker looked more like the basement of a well-appointed middle-class home than a bomb shelter or backup military headquarters. A beige Berber carpet covered the floor; the walls were covered with plasterboard painted a muted damask.
The computers she had to tap were about midway down the hall. As Lia moved up the hallway she heard someone talking. Not sure exactly what was happening, she ducked into a nearby room, which turned out to be an oversize linen closet. Towels, sheets, and pillows filled the walls on the left. The rest of the room was empty.
Lia pulled a pile of the towels out, carrying them in front of her as if she were a housemaid. She took a breath, then went back into the hallway.
“Lia?” asked Rockman.
“Got it covered,” she said.
The door to the computer room was open. Lia swung inside, back to them, as a towel dropped to the floor. One of the two men inside got up, starting to question who she was. As she turned toward him the wall flashed and exploded — the result of a lipstick-sized mini-flash-bang grenade Lia had slipped into the towel.
Stunned, the man closest to her went down with a quick chop to the side of the head. Lia jump-kicked the second man as he rose, or tried to, from one of the desk chairs near the computer. A second kick rendered him unconscious. Lia went back to the first man, just rising from the carpet. Two sharp kicks from her heel ended the effort. Neither man had been armed, unfortunately, and there was no door to the room.
The computers were late-nineties PCs. One had just connected via modem to some other database; a prompt flashed on the screen requesting a password. Lia connected the dongles via the serial port, using a second adapter.
“Go,” said Rockman. “Get the hell out of there!”
But it was too late. As she hopped over the bodies and ran for the door, two of the Syrian bodyguards and the woman who had brought her here came down the hallway.
Dean and Pendleton were nearly to the pool when the ground in front of them began percolating with small- arms fire. They threw themselves down onto the patio, rolling behind a low wall that provided scant cover.
Chips of concrete flew around Dean as he hunted for a target. He pushed to his right, saw something move, and fired. The sky vibrated fiercely — Dean threw himself into the vibration, running to the pool building as he emptied the AK-47 into three figures in green running toward him. He dived behind the building, rolling on the ground and then scrambling back, swimming through the rumbling air that had enveloped the world. From the edge of the building he saw two of the guards advancing, their rifles flaring. He popped in a new magazine and took them with two presses of the trigger. But the magazine had been nearly empty and the gun ran dry after a pair of bursts.
“Cover me!” he yelled to Pendleton, launching himself back up across the patio toward the two guards. Just as he reached the closest one, another Syrian came out from the back of the house; Dean tried scooping up the AK-47 but dropped it, then threw himself down as well. By the time he got the gun in his hands and rose to his feet, Pendleton had burned though his own magazine. The Syrian lay on the ground, blood burbling from his neck.
“We have to get into the bunker there,” Dean told Pendleton. The SAS sergeant bent and grabbed two mags from the dead man, tossing them to him.
“More men, coming around the north side of the house,” warned Rockman.
