Wild Card (27 page)

“I’m in too?” David asked me.

I nodded. Julie, Pia and Victor’s guards should be enough for Jen. I’d need Alex as well, and I was hoping that meant Ricky too.

Bian ushered us into the corridor. “There’s an elevator at the end,” she said. “I’m looking forward to this. I get to see what your little accountant is made of.” She grabbed David’s butt.

“I’m actually not an accountant at all, I’m an actuary,” David said, unfazed. “Despite the fact I work in financials, there are fundamental differences between what I do and what an accountant does. It’s all to do with risks and uncertainties. It’s really fascinating. See…”

Bian gave me a beseeching glance over her shoulder.

I shrugged. “You made the bed, you lie in it,” I mouthed at her. Not that there was any real chance of that, given how smitten David was with Pia.

Chapter 28

My ear hissed with the noise of too many connections lashed together in a hurry.

The colonel’s mil-spec TacNet was like a huge spiderweb, stretched over the high plains, fastening to the Nagas’ comms system on one side and Victor’s on the other. It even seamlessly relayed cell calls, all slipping down the ether to me, kneeling motionless on a blacktop in the middle of nowhere.

It was dark in a way that cities don’t get: unrelieved blackness in every direction except for the diamond scatter of cold stars across the sky.

I was hot. That was good. It meant the blankets swathing me were keeping my heat signature locked in. Bian had checked on her infrared scope. Outside the duct-taped blankets, I was close to the temperature of the blacktop and invisible to infrared eyes.

I was looking east into the darkness where Colorado 52 ran, arrow-straight, and waiting for the call to slither its way through the static in my ear.

Alex’s voice startled me. “Contact! Fifteen. First mark in ten.” He was calling on his cell, fifteen miles east of me. Time to rock and roll.

“Affirm in ten.” That was the colonel.

It went quiet, then Alex came back. “Five, four, three, two, one. Mark.”

“Rolling. Five seconds to the blacktop.” I heard the colonel’s car engine racing. He’d be shooting out of the old barn, down the dirt track. He’d make the blacktop just around…

“Bravo, this is Eagle,” said a voice I now recognized as the helicopter pilot. “I have a contact westbound on Colorado 52. Twenty miles west of us.”

“Not one of ours, Eagle. Check it out.”
That
was a Naga, in their command center, somewhere out on the interstates.

“Right overhead!” That was Alex again. I heard a brief rumble like thunder, then he spoke again, his voice subdued. “Apache.”

Oh, joy
.

It had to be the frigging Apache, not the Chinese Z10.

Fifteen miles west of me. A little over five minutes. Five miles east of me, the colonel trailed his coat and the Apache came flying down the road to see who it was. They’d pass right over me.

“Eagle. Second vehicle joined westbound on 52, eight miles. Motorcycle. Designated Oscar 3.”

Bian. My pickup. Dismissed. Not their target.

But still logged in their fire control system.

It was an eerie, creepy feeling. They could probably read her license plate.

I had a moment to wonder about the wisdom of this. I was putting myself directly under the flight line of the most capable attack helicopter in the world. The beast thundering towards me had the weaponry to turn this road into a river of fire, to gouge out a grave the length of a freight train and leave nothing of me to fill it.

I had the equivalent of a strong flashlight.

Well, you always did like to see your ideas put into action.

Thanks, Tara. This was one I wanted to leave in the workshop.

“Passing overhead!” Bian’s voice.

Any second now.

I had one eye on the nightscope, the other wide open and searching for the first hint in the darkness of the onrushing helicopter. The split view made my eyes ache, but I wasn’t going to do what they were doing—rely on what one piece of tech was telling them.

“This is Eagle, Tango! Repeat Tango, westbound at twelve.” They’d identified the colonel’s car, and they were less than seven miles from me.

“All units respond, grid 5-18, Tango westbound on Colorado 52.”

I tuned it out as pursuit vehicles called out positions on the Nagas’ TacNet. As long as there was nothing in the immediate vicinity, we’d be fine; but we couldn’t be sure of that. I didn’t know how big they’d set their grid pattern, how much space there was in grid 5-18. Maybe the colonel would.

I could see Bian’s headlight in the distance.

I pressed the ‘charge’ button. I imagined I could hear the whine of capacitors as the satellite comms system juiced up alongside my head. Then it was blotted out by the distant thudding of the Apache.

A low star above Colorado 52 blinked, reappeared. Another.

Half seen, half imagined, the sinister shape started to emerge, the infrared making it look like the air was boiling around it, and it was suddenly hurtling towards me at forty feet and over a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

It was terrifying.

Don’t see me! Don’t see me!

The grotesque growths on the front of the Apache took shape in my scope-enhanced eye. Front and center, the topmost cluster was the PNVS, the Lockheed Martin Pilot’s Night Vision System. Left and below, the gunner’s IR cluster. Right of that, the range finder and low light cluster.

Two shots, maybe. The chance for three would be like winning the lottery.

Half a mile.

All the breath went out of me. My eyes stopped fighting each other and a ghostly composite image formed of the menacing insect-headed aircraft. The blades were invisible. It was slightly nose down, as if it was looking directly at me. My mouth was dry.

Now.

I thumbed the nightscope’s laser pointer. I had half a second before their countermeasures suite lit up with a threat warning. Time seemed to stretch. I leaned on the rig, pivoted it on the photographer’s tripod.

Hurry, hurry.

Gently stroked the pointer onto the PNVS cluster, looking right into its malevolent, mechanical eye. Squeezed Matt’s lashed-up trigger.

Silence. No bangs, no flashes.

Had it even—

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Vision system failure!” screamed the TacNet. Score one for me. Pilot
completely
freaked.

The Apache leaped upward as the pilot became almost completely blind and instantaneously allergic to flying close to the ground.

I followed it up. Gunner’s cluster, dead center.

Slowly. Slowly. Last chance.

Squeezed the trigger again.

“NVS down! IR gone. What the fuck?” Gunner freaked too. Ha!

“Bravo, this is Eagle. Systems down! Complete IR system malfunction.”

Dammit! Two bulls eyes! Third shot…and then it passed overhead, an angry roaring beast, visible only in that it blocked out the stars as it clawed itself up into the night sky with its head swinging and dipping, searching for the enemies that had blinded it. My wolfy eyes could see the heat coming off it like smoke in the cold air.

I threw the blanket aside and hefted the laser comms system. Maybe if they turned this way...

Bian’s motorbike came racing out of the night. The tires shrieked protest as she skidded to a stop beside me.

I jumped on behind her, slotted the laser into the saddlebags and grabbed hold. “Go, go, go.”

Bian redlined the big Kawasaki. We roared off along the midnight road, footless gray ghosts fleeing the anger of the blind eagle.

“And…mark,” the colonel said in my ear. “Going dark.”

About eight miles ahead of us, the colonel had turned off his lights and swung right onto a dirt track. His speed would drop to about thirty and he’d start counting and hope the coyotes weren’t out on the road. As long as he kept the car straight there wasn’t much else to hit. In five minutes he’d stop and wait for…

“Inbound, ETA ten.” Victor’s gravelly voice, with the thudding of Jen’s helicopter as background.

Victor had a nightscope as well. The colonel would pop the hood on his car and he should light up like a burning oil rig on the IR scope.

Time for the second pinch point. The Apache had a radar system. In standard battlefield mode they kept it shut down to stop missiles from locking on to it. If the pilot got over his unexpected IR system problems and decided to fly on radar, he’d see Jen’s Bell 407 helicopter, the colonel’s car and our motorbike. And one flicked switch later his weapons system would acquire targets. I had hopes that a $60,000 Hellfire missile wouldn’t regard the ass end of a motorbike as a suitable target, but I didn’t want to find out and that wasn’t going to help the colonel and Victor anyway.

So he could find targets. And then what would he do?

He wasn’t a Naga. He hadn’t signed on to blow away cars and civilian helicopters in the cold, high plains of Colorado.

I hope.

“Colonel’s here at the meet point.” David’s voice on the comm. “I can see your headlight, but there’s no sign of pursuit from south.”

“Also clear to the north,” Tom’s voice followed.

“Going dark,” Bian said.

The headlight died, and we had a minute slowing down along the blacktop as Bian’s Athanate vision adjusted, then we turned and chased after the colonel’s car along the dirt track. I could taste the dust in the air, thickening quickly as we overhauled him. Bian’s eyesight allowed us to travel much faster than the colonel.

The TacNet had cleared from the confusion of pursuit cars calling out their positions.

It was down to the Apache. Bravo wasn’t talking at the moment—the Naga was probably reporting up the chain of command.

“Eagle on the ground. Checking systems. Back to you in fifteen.” The Apache had landed.

Silence on the TacNet. The Apache crew would be running their onboard diagnostics. I wasn’t an expert, but I was betting it would take them a while to figure out I’d burned out their IR sensors with a laser.

“I see the colonel’s car. ETA five.” Victor.

He was coming in to land. We’d be loaded and gone before the Apache got off the ground, but how far?

“ETA two,” Bian confirmed our position.

I pictured the immense country around us. Miles of flat fields and darkness crossed by scores of roads running at right angles to each other. For all the noise on the comms, they couldn’t have more than a dozen cars patrolling this area. We were like a needle in a haystack while that Apache was down.

Bian slowed and we coasted alongside the colonel’s car. I swung off as soon as Bian stopped, and slung the saddlebags with AdAstra Communications’ expensive satellite comms system over my shoulder.

“I have headlights north of us.” Tom’s voice was calm, but it still shattered my premature wind-down. “I’m holding position.”

At this time of night, it was vanishingly unlikely that was a farmer heading home. Of all the miserable luck, one of the Nagas had decided to take this dirt road to get down to 52. Tom could see a long way and we had a little time yet.

It depended on how fast the Naga was going.

“Shit.” Bian fired up the Kawasaki again and had its tail snaking in the dirt as she took off toward Tom.

I caught a glimpse of the headlights Tom had reported just as Victor brought the Bell in to land, flying without lights and relying on his helmet IR system. Dust billowed and whipped around us as he drifted closer. I guessed Victor had to be flying blind now, feeling for the ground through the cloud he was kicking up.

“Bravo, Pursuit 6,” said the comms system. “We just crossed with Pursuit 9 on 52. He must have turned off.”

Crap, they had been too close. And now they knew we were on a side road. The next call would pinpoint us.

“Your flight is boarding now, people,” Victor growled, as the Bell settled. “Watch your heads.”

“Bravo, Pursuit 7 on uh…County 13. I have visual with some disturbance. Lights and dust. Just checking…oh, shit. I can hear a helicopter.”

The colonel scurried forward, his arm around Vera and their heads bent low.

“He’s shooting, people. Hurry it up,” Tom called from outside the dust cloud.

The guy had to be shooting blind. He couldn’t see anything, but luck wasn’t running our way tonight. One bullet in the wrong place…

Then Tom’s voice again. “Bian’s on it.”

“Tom, Bian,” I called. “Leave it. Come in now. Time to go.”

Vera stumbled on the uneven ground and fell. Immediately, David was there. He and the colonel lifted her into the Bell.

They climbed in quickly. David took the bulky laser from me and strapped it down. I stood in the door. Victor had the blades spun up to takeoff speed again. I could feel the Bell straining to lift.

“Done.” Tom spoke from somewhere in the night.

“Forget them. Come on, come on,” I called again.

The Kawasaki seemed to leap out of the night suddenly, screaming like an enraged puma. Bian slammed the back brakes and it slewed around, throwing up even more dirt into the cauldron of dust around us. She and Tom jumped off and let the bike slide away.

“Go, go, go,” I yelled, shoving them inside.

I followed them through, falling into the cramped compartment as the Bell immediately snatched up its tail and swiveled to face east.

And in the confused, jumbled darkness, I could smell blood.

I twisted to my right. I was shoved up against Bian’s back, the hard casing of her katana’s sheath pressing against my shoulder. There was some blood there. Not Bian’s or Tom’s. That was fine. If there were a couple of headless Nagas back there, so much the better.

I twisted the other way.

Vera had fallen from the seat where David had lifted her. The colonel was on the other side of her. His face was blank with shock and he was cradling her in his arms, his hands touching her, searching blindly.

I tore the comms set off and knelt over her. I could see what he couldn’t.

“I’m so sorry,” she said hoarsely. “I seem to have got myself hit.”