“Navy Detachment One, I need speak to your operations officer. Code Cosmic One.”
There was a stunned silence from the other end; then a young female voice quickly recovered and said, “Code Cosmic One, aye. Wait. Out.”
Tombstone let his hand holding the microphone drop to his side. “Now we wait.”
“What was that all about?” Greenfield asked.
Tombstone gazed at him impassively. “An old friend.”
Jackson was sweating heavily, which alarmed Mertz. He’d never seen Jackson so much as break a sweat under any circumstances.
“Red Team One — execute!” his father’s voice snapped over the walkie-talkie.
Jackson took a deep breath. His voice trembled ever so slightly as he said, “Okay. This is it. I’ll open the doors.”
Commander Michael Fields had duty, and he was taking advantage of the otherwise wasted day and night to catch up on his desk work. He had just polished off four inches of paperwork when a young airman burst into his office and said, “Sir, I need you on the clear tactical circuit. Priority Cosmic One.”
“What the hell?” Fields shoved himself away from his desk and headed for the radio room at a trot. Just why would anyone be calling up at this sleepy backwater training station with that sort of priority? It didn’t make sense.
“Unknown caller, this is the operations officer,” Fields said into the mike. “Interrogative your authority?”
“Fields?” the voice said incredulously, and something in it sounded familiar to him. “Don’t use my name on this circuit, but I think you know who this is. In fact, I think I bailed your butt out of trouble a couple of times, young man.”
“Holy shit,” Fields breathed. Rekeying the mike, he said, “Yes, I think I do know who this is. What can I do for you?” He carefully avoided saying sir or admiral.
“I need two attack helicopters, maybe an S-3, and anything else you can get airborne with guns on it. And I need them now. How fast can you scramble them?”
“This isn’t exactly an attack base,” Fields said. “It’ll take me”—he glanced over at the airman, who was already juggling aircraft spots and crews—“about fifteen minutes if everything works right. We have a training mission just ready to launch, and I can chop them to your control.”
“What composition?”
“Two helicopters, but they’re guns-only capability. An S-3, too. How will that do?”
“The load-out on the S-3?”
Fields glanced at the airman. She pointed at an entry on the schedule and said, “Just guns, sir.”
Fields relayed the information, and was answered with, “That will do just fine.” The familiar voice reeled off a frequency, and said, “We’ll be operating in the clear. Unavoidable, but there’s no way around it.”
“Any chance you have some SINGAARS gear there?” Fields asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” the voice answered, sounding slightly surprised. “I’m not sure it’s configured correctly — give me a channel and a setting. We have the military code-of-the-day information.”
Fields turned to the airman. “Get the communications officer up here. I think we’re just about to jury-rig ourselves a secure circuit.”
TWENTY-ONE
Greenfield’s radio crackled to life. “Team Leader, Team One. The doors to the barn are open. I see one truck — looks like our target.”
Greenfield scowled. “They’re making a run for it.”
“Sounds like it,” Tombstone agreed. “Where is everybody?”
“We’ve got a couple of routes blocked, but not everybody is in position. At least it’s not dark yet.”
“It’s dark down there in the valleys,” Tombstone pointed out. “With the cloud cover, it’ll be a dark night, too.”
“Team Leader, Team One! They’re rolling, sir. A two-ton truck, headed out from the barn and southbound.”
“Move, people!” Tombstone snapped.
Greenfield changed channels on his radio, and was snapping out orders to the lookouts and strike elements positioned further out. All their careful planning, all their preparation — all gone to shit.
Just when he thought he could stand it no more, Abraham Carter felt a trickle of fresh air on his forehead. At first he thought he was imagining it. It seemed like they’d been in the tunnel for hours and hours, although it could not have been more than fifteen minutes.
There it was again, this time unmistakable. The blackness around him seemed to be softening slightly, and he thought he could see a faint glimmer of light ahead. Yes, it had to be — the end of the tunnel. Energy surged through him.
He picked up his pace, now frantic to be free. The steel toes of his boot bit deeper into the soft ground, his fingers scrabbling over dirt and an occasional stone. The tunnel itself was supported by cross-beams and timbers at intervals, but they had not completely prevented small slides of dirt from caving in from the sides.
The dead, underground silence was breaking up, too. He thought he could hear night sounds, the wind blowing across the entrance, branches creaking, and small animals moving through the brush. And another sound — what was it?
Trucks. Big ones. Jackson.
No. Surely not. They couldn’t be—
The rumbling grew louder, now clearly audible over every noise he thought he’d heard from the outside. It was Jackson and his men, taking advantage of the break in the action to flee.
“Hurry!” he shouted, the ground around him absorbing his words. A chunk of the wall ahead broke off, each particle distinct in the beam from his flashlight. “We have to get out of here.”
The rumbling grew louder. Now he could feel the vibrations through his fingertips and legs where they rested on the dirt. He moved even faster, in his haste kicking dirt into the faces of the men behind him, provoking a spate of curses. He ignored them, unable to concentrate on anything other than the awful possibility now forming in his mind.
The sound was even lower now. The men behind him recognized it and seemed to catch his fear. They crowded up behind him, stamping on his feet and Achilles tendons, trying to push past him in the passageway built for only one man. Panic set in, driving all rational thought from their minds. Trickles of debris came from every direction, and the air was thick with suspended particles. It was harder to breathe. But the light, ah, the light — there it was, clear evidence that safety was just fifteen feet ahead.
Abraham lashed out viciously with hit right foot, kicking the man behind him. He could barely hear the shout of pain over the all-consuming noise of the trucks overhead. It was getting harder to move now as the loose dirt accumulated along the bottom of the passageway, sucking at his legs and hands, trying to embrace him. Sheer terror overwhelmed him. It was like swimming now, and his progress slowed. The cries from the men behind him grew softer as he piled up dirt in his wake.
Suddenly, there was a huge jolt overhead. The dirt rained down, coming in larger chunks now, mixed with rocks, and it hurt when it struck him. He couldn’t breathe.
But he could go without air long enough to reach the entrance if only—
The passage in front of him collapsed, blocking off the traces of light that had been his only hope. He took a
