catch them just as they stumbled out of their beds, when they were still caught in the no man’s land between sleep and alertness.
But you played the cards you were dealt, and Parto was not one to demand a recount.
Just as he was about to give the command over his whisper-mike, the technicians scrambled over the missile. They began raising the launch arms, putting it at the angle necessary to launch through a narrow hole in the canopy overhead.
As the launch arms rotated upward, the mounting platform under them complained. A good coat of grease would have prevented the metal-on-metal grinding, but Parto knew how hard it was to maintain equipment in the warm salty air. As the missile launch rails reached the angle of approximately twenty degrees above vertical, something snapped. The entire assembly jolted hard to the left.
“Not yet,” Parto whispered. He waited. There was a sharp crack, and then a seam near the tip of the missile opened. From it gouted a burst of white vapor, a fog that wafted in the gentle breeze toward the depths of the jungle.
The men around the truck panicked. Some grabbed gas masks, others fled wildly into the jungle. With cold dread in his stomach, Parto knew what the warhead was.
“Fall back,” he ordered, moving himself away from the site. “Get as far away from here as fast you can — it’s a chemical warhead, and it’s leaking. Head down slope, into the wind — we’ll form up at Charlie point.”
His men needed no urging. He heard them moving out, sacrificing stealth for speed. If they didn’t escape the deadly cloud heading for them, there would be no second chance of this mission.
Which nerve agent? It didn’t matter. Not if he didn’t get out of range fast enough. He had the standard antidotes in self-injecting vials in his pocket, atropine and a few others, but they weren’t effective against everything. Some nerve agents didn’t even need to be inhaled. The slightest touch of their vapor on skin would be immediately deadly.
Was he clear of it? Did he feel muscle tremors starting now? No — he was imagining things. It was the normal, comfortable feel of adrenaline pumping through his body as he put out maximum physical effort.
He was the second man to arrive at the muster point, but the others weren’t far behind him. There was something peculiarly terrifying about chemical and biological weapons. For all the SEALs’ strength, for all their physical prowess and weapons, they had no sure counter to this enemy. What they could not see, what they could not touch, they could not fight. And that was a very odd sensation for each one of them.
“What now?” one asked. Despite the hard run, Parto was breathing normally.
“The last thing I heard before all hell broke loose was a launch order. They’re planning on letting them rip sometime in the next hour. Every site still around is raising launchers, setting in coordinates, and preparing to fire. If we are going to stop them, we have to do it now.”
“Metal fatigue, probably,” one commented. “You don’t maintain something, you use it too hard, that’s what happens. They should have known that.”
“I wonder if all of them are in the same shape,” another said.
“Probably — or close to it. Makes our job easier, huh?”
“No. That was a one-in-a-thousand mishap,” Parto said firmly. “We’ve got an hour — if we move fast enough, we can take out two more.”
Not one of them would have expressed doubt openly, but he could see it in each face. Hell, he felt it himself, the gut feeling of revulsion and fear that made him want to beat feet as far and as fast as he could from this place.
But that’s what they were here for, wasn’t it? To take the risks that they didn’t want to subject their families and friends to back in the States? They were the hard spear tip of the American military, protecting the soft underbelly of the civilian population, and sometimes it came down to this — put up or shut up.
He didn’t have to tell any of them that. They would make the connection in their own way, come to the same conclusion. There was no help — they had to take out the ones that they could.
Suddenly, he heard a crashing in the bushes. Chief Petty Officer Jesus Lacar held up a hand, nodded, and silently slipped out of the group. He would find whoever was approaching and dispose of the problem.
The noise stopped. A few moments later, he reappeared. His face was pale and tight.
“Whatever it was, it got him,” he said, his voice steady, maybe too steady. “Definitely a nerve agent. He had blood coming out of his mouth and was in convulsions when I got there. Big red boils all over his skin, some of them breaking open. And his eyes…”—the man could not repress a shudder—“his eyes were solid bloodred. They must’ve been hurting bad because he was trying to claw them out.”
“Better here than at home,” Parto said finally. “Come on, let’s move out.”
The next crew they approached was much sloppier. The guard had his back to him as Parto approached, and he died quickly and quietly. They were in the clearing in a heartbeat, moving silently, but not as carefully as they had before. The clock was ticking.
On signal, six handguns rang out with a double tap, dropping six men, and then again until everyone was dead.
“One more,” Parto said, as they hastily regrouped. “We have twenty minutes — we’ll use them.”
Maskiro’s people disliked giving him bad news. Over the previous three days, he’d gone from an aggressive, canny tactician into an easily irritated manic. So, when the Russian air traffic controller saw the spate of aircraft symbols appear around the American aircraft carrier, he groaned.
Maskiro was behind him in an instant, stinking of sweat. “What is that?”
“It appears to be aircraft launching from the carrier, comrade,” the controller said, trying to keep his voice level.
“Impossible. They will not take the chance of incurring civilian casualties. I have that on the best authority and we are not.” Maskiro’s voice trailed off as he saw the aircraft symbols merge into a single mass, and then break apart into two separate flights. One group headed for the island. The second turned north, staying out of range of the antiair weapons, but clearly intending to intercept the reinforcement MiG squadron now approaching the island.
“Command, sector one commander. Comrade, three stations have failed to conduct their hourly status reports. I have been unable to raise them by radio. I think we must consider the possibility that American special forces are now on the island.” The sector commander had no hesitation in voicing his opinion, since he was out of Maskiro’s immediate reach. “I have ordered additional security measures, but I cannot guarantee our security here. Comrade, your orders?”
Maskiro howled in rage. He slammed the radio down on the desk and turned insane eyes around the room as though seeking someone to take the brunt of his anger. The radio blared again. “Comrade, your orders?”
Maskiro grabbed the radio. “Launch. I repeat, all land attack site launch! Now!” He then turned to the air controller. “Notify the inbound flight and Comrade Korsov that we are under attack.” Maskiro drew his personal side arm and chambered around. “And that we will fight here to the death.”
FIFTEEN
With a slider in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Tombstone was on the flight deck with Coyote’s
