Читать книгу Citadel Of Fear - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

The War Room

Aaron Kurtzman observed as T. J. Hawkins operated on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle thousands of miles away in Scandinavia. Kurtzman would have preferred to have done the surgery himself, but security protocols dictated the little UAV helicopter traveled no farther until they could make sure they weren’t bringing a Trojan horse into the Farm’s precincts.

Kurtzman secretly wished Hermann “Gadgets” Swartz was in the operating theater, but Hawkins wasn’t bad. The UAV was a standard quad-motor helicopter with four equidistant rotors on stalks sticking out of the main body. This one had a very powerful and sophisticated camera that was night-vision capable. Hawkins had separated the motors and the camera; they were amazing pieces of technology.

“Here we go…”

Gummer leaned in carefully. He was the team’s explosives expert and this was the point where everyone wondered if the UAV would blow sky-high. Hawkins carefully separated the two halves of the fuselage as if it were the shell of a crab.

Kurtzman leaned forward in his wheelchair and peered at the feed from Sweden on his screen.

The guts of the UAV were extremely interesting.

Much like a crab shell, nothing was attached to the top. All the good stuff was attached to the bottom half.

Hawkins looked into the camera. “Bear, I don’t know what half this stuff is.”

Gary Manning sat back, nodding to himself. “I don’t see a booby trap. If there are any explosives in there, they are tiny and made to wipe the equipment instead of kill anyone who might be tampering.”

“Wait a minute, before you two touch anything else.” Kurtzman took control of the camera on his end and began panning and scanning the UAV’s internal organs.

The power supply system was easy to spot and very impressive. It was a flat stack and Kurtzman suspected this UAV would have double the range and endurance of a standard commercial model of comparable size. He had to admit he had never seen a CPU like the one he beheld mounted in a UAV like this. Most similar models were equipped with a simple GPS that allowed them to return to their launch point if they lost contact with their human operator. The sophistication of this drone’s CPU implied to the Stony Man cybernetics whiz that the drone was capable of making a number of decisions autonomously and could operate in independent search, patrol or mapping functions.

Kurtzman was also willing to bet that this machine was capable of being operated by, or cooperating with, other autonomous drones operating as autonomous units. In effect, this baby was capable of engaging in independent small- and large-unit actions without the benefit of a human operator in control.

It was an incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery.

Kurtzman leaned back in his chair. It was a very strange thing to be shot down out of the sky during an engagement with Russian mafiya thugs. Of course the mafiya thugs had showed up with antiaircraft artillery. It all led to the inescapable conclusion that there was a much larger game afoot.

Hawkins pointed his screwdriver at a small, yellow, rectangular casing that almost seemed off in a corner by itself. It didn’t appear to be connected to the UAV’s power supply, CPU, engine or guidance units. “What do you figure the little yellow box is?”

“I figure that little yellow box is the little black box.”

“A flight recorder?” Manning offered. “On a little rig like this?”

“You’re right,” Kurtzman agreed. “You don’t usually see that on a UAV this size. But it’s not attached to anything and it hasn’t blown up. A drone is the same as any other vehicle. You don’t want the flight recorder attached to anything else in the system. You want it to independently record what happens in case the vehicle gets lost, shot down, captured or, most important, hacked and hijacked.”

“So it’s on right now?” Hawkins asked.

“I suspect its transponder is pinging away.”

As a demolitions man, Manning knew something about electronics. He eyed the little yellow box. “So the bad guys know where we are? Even here?”

“Depends on the range. That is a pretty small unit and you have flown it across the Baltic. It’s not like you left it where it fell in Gdansk. Then again? Just about everything inside that rig appears to be about ten times more powerful than any standard, comparable commercial model UAV. Heck, a lot of its electronics are more sophisticated than similar-size stuff the United States military issues to our troops, including Special Forces. This fellow is not standard issue anywhere. It’s made to look like a commercial rig, but it was made custom from top to bottom, to customer specifications, and that customer had money to burn.”

“So the bad guys know where we are?” Hawkins asked again.

Kurtzman made a judgment call. “Normally, I would say no, unless of course the bad guys have their own satellite talking to it.”

McCarter leaned in to the conversation. “You think these guys have their own satellite?”

“I would bet they have one. Or, given the level of sophistication, they can access someone else’s satellite and the owners don’t know about it.”

Hawkins tried one more time. “So the bad guys know where we are?”

“Oh, I’d bank on it,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Speaking of which, did you get the guns?”

Hawkins had taken the elite trajectory from United States Army to United States Army Ranger to Delta Force before he had taken a meeting with Mack Bolan and company. All of his life, guns were artillery pieces. Firearms were weapons. He had given up trying to explain this to Kurtzman. Hawkins often had to remind himself that despite the man’s utter brilliance, Kurtzman was, and always would be, a civilian. “The guns arrived, Bear. Swedish steel is good steel.” Hawkins made a face. “Too bad they’re fifty years old…”

“Short notice?” Kurtzman vaguely milled his hands. “Sweden?”

“They’re charmingly retro,” quipped Calvin James from where he sat in an armchair assiduously cleaning and oiling his weapon. “I’ve met some old-timers at the SEAL meets who’ve told stories about being issued Swedish Ks.” He made a face that matched Hawkins’s. “In Nam—”

“Retro is right,” Hawkins grunted.

The Swedish K submachine guns had no optics, laser designators, suppressors or tactical lights. They looked as though they belonged in a Bond film; nothing later than early Roger Moore, and Sir Roger probably would have scowled at them. They only operated on rock and roll and didn’t even have a safety. Though that part Hawkins perversely kind of liked. He also kind of liked the fact that the models the CIA had procured were so old they had the original adapter for Finnish 50-round magazines. Hawkins got back to the matter at hand. He turned to McCarter. “So, boss. Do I do anything about the black box or not?”

McCarter leaned over the table and peered at the little yellow question of the day. “Bear, what do you think?”

“My guess is they have been able to track you, and they had all day to cross the Baltic or organize something in your neighborhood. If you want to move, they’ll be able to track you. Maybe you want to do that and set a trap? Or you could remove it, put it on a train to nowhere and send the bad guys on a wild-goose chase, then maybe we can take a stab at tracking them.”

It wasn’t a bad plan and McCarter had considered it. However, in his opinion, Phoenix Force had already frittered away a day crossing the Baltic and hanging out in Sweden. He had to admit the food and rest had been welcome and that as an asset Nikita Propenko got more interesting by the minute. “Or I could destroy the black box right now, let our opponents know we found it and force the bloody sons of bitches to act before they lose us.”

“There is that,” Kurtzman conceded.

McCarter decided. “Hawk, gut it.”

Hawkins unbolted the little yellow box from the UAV fuselage. He held it up and almost dropped it as it made a single, plaintive, electronic peep. “Bear?”

Kurtzman sighed. The cat was out of the bag. “If I had to guess, someone, somewhere, is now aware that the flight recorder has been removed from the UAV body.”

“Then the jig is up and an attack is imminent.” McCarter took the flight recorder and slid it across the table to Propenko. “Here, this is your first job. Take this and—”

The bottom of Propenko’s scarred fist slammed down on the flight recorder like a hammer. Bits of thick, weather-sealed plastic armor flew in all directions.

McCarter nodded. “And do something like that.”

Propenko scooped up the little black box’s innards and made a fist around them. Little bits of technology cracked and popped. The Russian rose, went to the sink, turned on the tap and flicked on the garbage disposal. Propenko dropped the shattered remnants down the drain and the flight recorder of Drone 1 met its final mastication. McCarter noted that not only had the Russian’s English gotten better but his leg seemed to be bothering him a lot less.

Everyone froze as the lights suddenly went out and the garbage disposal spun to a grinding, snapping halt. For a moment the only sound was the tap water trickling. The lights of the neighbors on the surrounding hillsides and the lights of Kalmar below didn’t flicker a single watt. Someone had cut the safe house’s power. Propenko turned the tap off.

“Gear up,” McCarter ordered. “We’re about to get hit.”

Phoenix Force’s armament might have been archaic but they still had their mission night-vision gear, armor and com equipment.

Jack Grimaldi’s voice shouted across the link. “Two choppers just flew by! Low and fast and inbound on your position. They have door gunners and they are not Swedish Coastal Patrol!”

Encizo spoke from his lookout point in the loft. “I see them. Coming in hot.”

McCarter spoke into the com. “Jack, get airborne.”

Grimaldi was on the beach. He had flown Phoenix

Force in illegally below Swedish air control radar and was three klicks south. He was about to rise and announce himself to Swedish airspace. “ETA five!”

McCarter nodded to himself. Phoenix Force was going to have to take the shot. He highly suspected the enemy ground teams were already on top of them. “Well, lads, they didn’t sick the local bobbies on us, so it looks like they’re spoiling for a fight. Let’s knock one down! Backyard! Everyone except you, Fish. I think they’ll sweep the main level.”

“What if they sweep the loft?”

“Then you’re screwed, mate!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

“All right. Backyard! Behind the chimney! Brick and mortar are our best friends! Watch your leads. They’ll be flying over the house and nap of the earth up the mountainside. We might get a good shot. Go for the second bird!”

Phoenix flowed out the back door. The safe house’s backyard was little more than a carved-out flat space with a brick barbecue attached to the chimney and a hot tub and a sauna. Beyond that the mountain ran almost straight up. The sound of rotors beat against the hillside. Multiple machine guns ripped into life and echoed over Kalmar. Bullets tore through the little mountain house, shattering glass and ripping wood. McCarter smiled as the rotors beat overhead. The enemy wasn’t hovering and firing. Someone had told them what had happened in Gdansk. They were making fast gun runs.

The two choppers swung up the mountainside in echelon bare meters above the treetops of the near-vertical forest.

Grimaldi’s voice came over the link. “These boys aren’t bad.”

“Screw ’em,” Hawkins snapped.

“Rear target!” McCarter bellowed over the overwhelming rotor noise overhead. “Fire!”

Six stone-cold soldiers opened up. The two choppers were little more than thundering shadows save that they were commercial copters and their running lights flying straight up the mountain and barely overhead made for perfect target frames.

The chopper flying wing position took three hundred and fifty 9 mm rounds up his ass in the space of three seconds. The helicopter slewed and made a stuttering whirp-whirp-whirp noise as broken engine parts and severed hydraulic lines failed. The lead chopper summitted and disappeared into Sweden.

“Up yours, dude,” Hawkins swore. He and the rest of the team slammed in fresh 50-round magazines.

The stricken copter nosed up to apex in the starlight. It suddenly auto-rotated and nosed downward. Sparks and smoke belched out of it and the helicopter began wildly swinging down the mountainside, still barely above the tree line and suicidally straight at the safe house.

Hawkins reassessed. “Aw, damn…”

Behind them Phoenix Force heard glass and wood breaking as the enemy team hit the house.

Fire exploded out of the kamikaze helicopter as it came on like doomsday.

McCarter roared. “Forward! Forward! Forward! Hug trees!”

Phoenix Force ran forward. Olympic synchronized swimmers would have admired how they vaulted the hot tub and the tiny, motorized-current lap pool. As a unit they each found a beautiful pine tree, ran just past it and then fell against it.

The burning helicopter plowed into the back of the safe house. Rotors snapped, fuel tanks ruptured, the house’s natural gas tank detonated and the world went orange. McCarter had ordered his teammates to hug trees. They were mostly cringing as heat washed up the mountainside and black smoke followed in billowing waves. James had taken cover behind the sauna but the sauna was now on fire. Encizo burst from the house and was vaguely smoking as he ran out and hurled himself into the stationary lap pool.

McCarter watched the tail rotor of the enemy chopper slowly turn as heat rose through it. The chopper’s blackened tail boom tilted through the roof of the burning house where the chimney used to be. The house was burning out of control. McCarter spoke into his link. “Jack, do we have movement?”

“You have ashes settling,” Grimaldi returned. “Flawless victory.”

“Phoenix, sound off!”

Everyone complied from behind their smoldering tree. Encizo rose from the lap pool and shot a thumbs-up.

McCarter surveyed his team. “Where’s Nick?”

James and Manning snapped up their K guns to watch their flanks.

Propenko limped out of the burning safe house, the enemy UAV’s fuselage halves clamped beneath his arm trailing scorched wires and guts. “I am figuring you are still wanting this.”

“You bet, bubba!” Hawkins said.

McCarter was duly impressed but stayed on mission. “Jack?”

“Lead chopper is gone. I wanted a piece of him but he has headed straight north into the Swedish hinterland. You want me to pursue or do you want extraction?”

There was very little way Phoenix Force could wander down the mountain after a gunfight, ghost helicopter crash and a flaming cabin. McCarter could already hear police and emergency vehicle sirens down in Kalmar proper.

“Jack? We need extraction now.”

“Where to? Swedish police channels are blowing up, much less Swedish air traffic control. My range is severely limited. Norway? Denmark? Pick a Baltic republic. They are all about incursions!”

“Poland,” McCarter decided.

Grimaldi was unusually flabbergasted. “You want me to fly you back across the Baltic into Poland?”

“Right back to Gdansk,” McCarter affirmed, and he felt good about it. “It’s the last thing any idiot we are dealing with will ever expect.”