Area 51: The Reply-2 (29 page)

On the other side of the world glowing figures were also being watched, but these were small dots on a massive screen in the front of a subter-

293

ranean room. At the Space Command's Warning Center, deep under Cheyenne Mountain, they had the two foo fighters on-screen. They were going west over the Pacific, directly above the equator.

Harker smoothly pulled back on the trigger and the bark of the rifle echoed across the draw. A Chinese soldier, thinking he was secure in the dark, was slammed back as the 7.62mm round tore a fatal path through the man's chest.

Without conscious thought Harker did as he'd been trained. He arced the muzzle of the weapon to his second target. The man had heard the first shot but didn't know what it meant. He never would, as Harker's round hit him in the center of the chest and he tumbled down in a heap.

Harker fired all ten rounds in the magazine. Nine hits for ten shots. He reloaded a fresh magazine and decided to wait a few minutes to allow the Chinese to react.

"What the hell is going on?" Kelly Reynolds asked Major Quinn. A new message from the Airlia, broadcast openly to the entire world, not in binary, but in English, had just been picked up by receivers all over the globe.

PLEASE

DO NOT INTERFERE

WITH

OUR PROBES

THEY ARE GATHERING

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

294

FOR OUR ARRIVAL

ASPASIA

Quinn pointed at the front screen in the Cube. "Space Command is tracking a pair of foo fighters."

"What does Aspasia mean by don't interfere!"

Quinn looked past her to make sure no one was close by, then leaned forward.

"The Navy just lost a sub over the site of the foo fighter base. The Pentagon's going nuts."

"Lost a sub?" Kelly repeated. "You make it sound like they misplaced it. What happened?"

"I don't exactly know. I'm picking up classified reports going from CINCPAC to the Pentagon, and as near as I can tell, the foo fighters did something to the sub and it's down in deep water. No survivors."

"Jesus Christ." Kelly Reynolds shook her head in dismay. "What about China?"

Quinn bit his lip. "I'm not getting straight feedback, but I get the impression there's some trouble. I'm intercepting a lot of traffic between this Zandra person and STAAR in Antarctica."

"Are they going to get out?"

"The choppers going in to pick them up are on schedule."

Kelly Reynolds shook her head. "We're going to screw this up, aren't we? Our big chance and the human race is going to screw it up."

Turcotte could see and hear movement in the Chinese lines. There was the roar of tank and ar-

295

mored personnel carriers starting their engines. Orders were being yelled.

Even with the night-vision goggles it was unclear what was happening out there. For all Turcotte knew, the Chinese might be moving the whole picket line forward. He knew they had spotted Harker's position by the green tracers from the 12.7mm machine guns mounted on top of the tanks and APCs.

"When do we move?" Nabinger whispered.

"Any minute now."

From the high ground Harker could pick out the beginnings of what appeared to be a line moving forward toward his position. Harker gave a brief whistle and DeCamp whistled in response. Harker placed his weapon down and stretched his shoulders and arms out. He took several deep breaths and leaned back against a rock. He had a few moments before he had to start killing again.

Turcotte pulled on Nabinger's arm, indicating they were going to move out.

Howes and Pressler rose up and followed. They slowly moved out of the bushes they had been hiding under.

Turcotte heard another brief burst of fire from Harker and DeCamp's position.

Turcotte was sweeping from left to right and back with the night-vision goggles.

He held the MP-5 at the ready. Off to his left he could barely discern a tank about seventy meters to north. Between the tank and the stream he could see nothing else.

Slowly they slid down into the streambed.

296

Turcotte felt his shoulders hunching, anticipating the bullet out of the darkness, but none came. He reached back and gave Nabinger a hand as they climbed up the far bank.

Turcotte checked his watch. Another twelve hundred meters and they should be at the pickup zone. Twenty minutes and the choppers should be there also.

The nearest troops were only five hundred meters away. It was time to be moving on, Harker thought. The Chinese were getting the range. Harker briefly considered not firing again. He decided they had to. He couldn't be sure that the others had made it through yet.

Harker fired five rounds in under three seconds, shifting rapidly from target to target even as the Chinese soldiers dived for cover. DeCamp fired just as quickly. The two pulled their weapons in and slid down the loose rock, putting the outcropping between them and the enemy. Just in time, as the return fire was extremely accurate and incoming rounds cracked by overhead.

"Let's go." Harker led the way as they scrambled to the north, keeping the outcropping between them and the Chinese for as long as they could. There was only one direction for them to run: toward the top of Qian-Ling.

The PZ was a dry rice paddy surrounded by tall trees on every side. They had run into no one on the rapid kilometer-and-a-half walk to it.

Turcotte checked his watch. Ten minutes. They

297

were clustered on the edge of the pickup zone. Everyone's ears were straining.

Listening for the sound of rotor blades.

At eight minutes to time on target they heard blades off to the south. Too soon, thought Turcotte. But maybe they're ahead of schedule.

The blades were getting closer. Still off to the south. Then Turcotte realized what it probably was. More Chinese choppers to reinforce the first.

Turcotte leaned close to Nabinger. "You get on the first chopper that lands.

I'll get on the second. There's a thing I learned in Ranger School that we have to do now. It's called disseminating the information. That way if only one chopper makes it out, the word gets out. And there's some other things I need to know, but first tell me how we can stop Aspasia."

Nabinger nodded and began speaking.

298

The bulk of the tomb appeared right on schedule. O'Callaghan slid the Black Hawk on a course that would take them north of the man-made mountain. Five minutes out. The kilometers flashed by beneath. Four minutes. O'Callaghan could see tracers firing to the southwest.

Two minutes. The mountain was now to the south. O'Callaghan slowed down and started scanning to the right as Spence scanned to the left, looking for the IR

chem lights and strobe the team should be lighting right now.

Turcotte stood at the center of the small clearing and turned his IR strobe on. He could hear more helicopters coming from the east. His mind was buzzing with what Nabinger had told him and even more with speculation: what else might Nabinger have learned from the guardian computer that he had not had time to relate?

299

O'Callaghan could see the strobe. Perfect. Nine hundred and fifty kilometers from the O'Bannion and a perfect linkup. He slid over the pickup zone to let Putnam land first.

Putnam flared his Black Hawk and started to descend. O'Callaghan could see the figure with the strobe extinguish it. Putnam brought the bird to a halt on the ground. Two men ran out and got on board.

The first Black Hawk started to lift.

Turcotte watched the first helicopter with Nabinger and Pressler, the medic, on board, go up into the sky. He ran forward as the second bird landed, followed by Howes.

Turcotte leapt on board.

O'Callaghan did a quick scan of the area as he lifted and turned east.

"We got company," he said, seeing the navigational lights of an MI-4

helicopter, four kilometers away near the mountain.

O'Callaghan knew the Chinese helicopter couldn't see him yet, as the Black Hawk was blacked out and the Chinese pilot didn't have goggles. He wasn't about to give it a chance to find him.

O'Callaghan opened the throttle up and pushed the cyclic forward. The Black Hawk shot forward past Putnam, who immediately followed.

300

Harker took a quick glance over his shoulder as he climbed and saw the bright searchlights of two helicopters probing the darkness near the site he and DeCamp had occupied only minutes ago. On the ground Harker could also see the headlights of numerous trucks that were bringing more troops into the area.

Their only chance was to get over the top of Qian-Ling and then—that train of thought was broken off in Harker's mind as he watched two Chinese helicopters fly to the top of the mountain tomb and settle down. They landed about a hundred meters apart and then took off, heading back down toward the coast.

Harker turned to DeCamp. "They're putting troops in ahead of us."

DeCamp wearily rested the butt of his weapon on the ground. "What now?"

Harker weighed their options. "We keep going up the mountain. Those choppers can only carry ten troops on board. The odds are better."

Turcotte grabbed a headset off the roof of the cargo bay and put it on. They were going over the trees and the chopper was moving fast, but in the wrong direction. Turcotte keyed the intercom. "We've got to go back. We've got two more men on the mountain!"

"Jesus!" O'Callaghan exclaimed. He could see helicopters moving up there and tracers cutting through the air.

O'Callaghan pressed the button that transmit-

301

ted to the other chopper. "Putnam, run for the coast. I've got more passengers to pick up."

Putnam didn't need to be told twice. "Roger that." The other Black Hawk raced off to the east as O'Callaghan brought his chopper around on a tight turn to the west.

DeCamp discerned the enemy soldiers first. He gripped Harker on the arm and pointed. Harker stopped and squinted into the darkness. There were ten of them.

Two hundred meters away and heading downslope. The Chinese were spread out, weapons at the ready, with twenty meters between each man. Harker looked around quickly. In the ground between the two parties there was a small knoll of boulders rising slightly above the rest of the ground. It was about a twenty meters ahead of where he and DeCamp now stood. He pointed it out to DeCamp.

"We'll make our stand there."

"We've got company," O'Callaghan yelled through the intercom as he accelerated the helicopter and jerked it hard to the left. Those in the back were tumbled on top of each other. Turcotte got on one knee and looked out as two Chinese helicopters roared by out of the southwest and started to circle east.

"The next one will be a gun run," O'Callaghan said. "They're circling to come back."

The AWACS's control room continued to track the action. They had the one Black Hawk escap-

302

ing to the east, the other inexplicably turning back to the west, flying near two blips indicating Chinese helicopters.

Things got worse in a heartbeat as one of Colonel Zycki's operators called out. "We've got four fast movers lifting off out of the airbase outside Xi'an, sir."

Zycki swore. "Jesus. This thing's getting out of control. The Chinese must have picked up the Black Hawks on local radar. How long till the jets are in the area near the Black Hawk?"

The analyst next to the radar operator quickly calculated. "Twelve minutes, sir."

"How far out are the F-117's?"

"They can make intercept, sir, but we need authorization for them to go hot."

"Goddamn. Get me this Zandra person on the line."

Harker and DeCamp settled in among the boulders on the crest of the small knoll and watched the Chinese squad approach in the moonlight. They were only a hundred meters away now and moving slowly toward them. Harker whispered to DeCamp, "Another fifty meters and we start firing."

DeCamp checked his submachine gun and insured he had a round in the chamber and the magazine was seated properly. Harker laid out two more magazines for quicker reloading.

303

"This is Zandra. Go ahead." She was ignoring the glare of Lisa Duncan standing next to her, listening to the report from the AWACS.

"Yes, ma'am. Things are getting hairy over there. We've got one Black Hawk heading for the coast, but it's got a hell of a long way to go. The other's turned west for some reason. They've obviously been picked up on local radar as we've got two Chinese helicopters vectoring in on it. They're about a minute out from intercept. We've also got four fast movers scrambled out of Xi'an. They're nine minutes out. Our F-117's will be in range to intercept, but we need authorization for them to fire."

"I understand," Zandra said.

Zycki's voice came out of the box. "Ma'am, neither of those helicopters is going to make it out without help. Those Chinese helicopters vectoring in are probably armed."

"All right, order the flight leader of the F-117's to escort out the one Black Hawk that's heading for the coast. It must have what we want on board."

"That's abandoning the other chopper to certain death," Zycki argued.

"I don't have time to—" Zandra began, but the mike was ripped out of her hand by Lisa Duncan.

"This is Lisa Duncan. I'm the President's science adviser to UNAOC. You will order two F-117's to escort the Black Hawk heading for the coast," Duncan said,

"and the other two go help the second chopper. Is that clear, Colonel?"

"Quite clear."

Zandra had made no attempt to regain the mike.

304

Harker took a deep breath. He let it out. "Are you ready?"

"Roger that."

Harker took a deep breath and held it. He pulled back on the trigger and the submachine gun spoke. He hit his first two targets before the rest had gotten under cover. The return fire was intense, green tracers racing by in all directions.

O'Callaghan had the Black Hawk down very low, cut short in his attempt to go straight to the mountain by the interception of the Chinese helicopters.

O'Callaghan was skimming along just above the surface of the streambed Turcotte had crossed not too long before. While he was down lower than the enemy could go, he was forced to go much slower than the Chinese helicopters at a higher altitude. As he took a left-hand bend in the river he glanced back. He could see the running lights of the lead enemy helicopter only eight hundred meters back.