Tom Clancy: Locked On

Ryan said, “There must be a dozen guys in those cars, plus Rehan and his crew makes sixteen.”

The major nodded. “And these new men do not look like ISI or PDF. They are LeT, I would swear it.”

Ryan said, “Mohammed, if we have to go up against sixteen bad guys, I could use a little more firepower.”

“I’ll arrange for that, do not worry.” And with that the major grabbed his mobile phone.

Clark and Chavez stood outside a Russian Air Force Antonov An-72 transport airplane parked on the tarmac at Krayniy airport near the town of Baikonur, twenty-five miles south of the Dnepr facility at the Cosmodrome and forty miles south of Yubileinaya Airport. The Antonov’s engines roared, even at idle.

Also parked there on the tarmac were four Mi-17 helicopters, a smaller Mi-8 helicopter, and a gargantuan Mi-26 helicopter. A flurry of men and women moved around the machines, fueling them and loading them under the artificial lights of auxiliary power units and portable spotlights.

A light blowing snow whipped around the only two Americans on the airfield.

“Has Nabiyev arrived yet?” Ding asked John.

“Yep, he’s up at Yubileinaya. He’ll be ferried over at 22:30.”

“Good.” Chavez was head to toe in black Nomex. He wore a helmet on his head, and an oxygen mask dangled from it. On his chest an HK UMP submachine gun, 40 caliber, hung over a chest rig full of magazines. Even with the silencer on the SMG’s barrel it was barely wider than Ding’s shoulders with the shoulder stock folded closed.

Domingo Chavez was kitted up just like he had been for many years back in Rainbow, although he did not use his old call sign. The man leading his former team was here and active on this mission, so his Rainbow Two call sign was not available. Instead he was handed the moniker Romeo Two by the Rainbow comms men. Someone joked that the R designation was due to the fact that Domingo was retired, but it didn’t matter to him. The men of the Rainbow teams could call him Domingo Chavez, for all he cared. He had so much else to worry about.

“You need help getting into your chute?” Clark asked.

Ding said, “Not from you, lefty.” Both men smiled dryly. The attempt at gallows humor fell short. Chavez said, “The loadmaster on board will get me set up.” He hesitated a moment and then said, “You’ve done damn fine work on this op, John. But still… we’re going to lose a lot of guys.”

Clark nodded, looked off at the choppers full of Rainbow men loading up. “I’m afraid you’re right. It’s all down to speed, surprise, and violence of action.”

“And any luck we can make along the way.”

John nodded again, then reached out to shake his son-in-law’s hand. He stopped midway, recognizing that the bandages were going to make a normal handshake impossible, so then he switched to his left.

Ding asked, “How bad are you hurting?”

Clark shrugged. “Broken ribs mask the broken hand. Broken hand masks the broken ribs.”

“So you’re golden, then?”

“Never better.”

The two men embraced warmly.

“See you when it’s over, Domingo.”

“You bet, John.”

A minute later, Chavez was on the An-72, and five minutes later Clark was on board one of the Mi-17s.

Al Darkur, Ryan, and Caruso followed Rehan and his entourage of ISI men and LeT operatives to the Lahore main railway station. The city was on a state of alert, which should have meant organized checkpoints and enforced curfews and the like, but Lahore was a city of ten million, and virtually all of them were certain tonight would be the beginning of a shooting war in their city, so there was much more chaos than order on the streets.

Ryan and Dominic rode in the back of the Volvo van with the major. Al Darkur had passed out police body armor and big G3 rifles to everyone in the truck, and he donned the same gear.

Fires burned in the city from the earlier artillery barrage, but no more shelling had occurred. The panicked citizenry would cause more casualties, Jack was certain, as he had seen dozens of car wrecks and fistfights and pushing and shoving at the rail station.

Rehan and his four-vehicle convoy pulled into the streets inside the station property, but then the rear car stopped suddenly, blocking the path of traffic. The other cars raced forward, the heavy crowds in the street scrambled out of the way.

“Shit!” said Ryan. He worried they would lose their man. They were a half-dozen vehicles behind the parked car, and they could just make out the top of the convoy vehicles as they turned east, remaining inside the grounds of the train station.

Al Darkur said, “We are dressed as police. We will dismount, but remember to act as police.”

And with that, Mohammed al Darkur and his two men climbed out of the Volvo, and the Americans followed. They left the car there in the road, a cacophony of horns honked in anger behind it.

They ran on between the cars, pushed their way onto the sidewalk, and sprinted after the convoy that was, again, bogged down in the thick pedestrian traffic around the train station.

Rehan and his men got through the scrum in the street, and then they turned and headed up a railway access road that crossed the fifteen tracks of the station as it headed to a large cluster of metal-roofed warehouses on the northern side. This was a quarter-mile away from the station and all of the passenger traffic.

With al Darkur and his two men in the lead and the two Americans behind, the five men on foot sprinted onto a public railway-crossing path above the employee road. Below them, the four vehicles pulled between several links of rusted rail cars sitting alone on the far side of the yard. The cars had no engines, they were just positioned there in front of a storage building alongside the tracks.

The five men on the crossing path stopped and watched the sixteen men get out of the vehicles and walk into the warehouse.

The sounds of another artillery barrage on the city came from far to the south.

Ryan was panting from the run, but he said, “We need to get out of the open and get a better vantage point to watch that building.”

Al Darkur led them the rest of the way across the path, where they took over the second floor of a small boardinghouse.

While al Darkur assigned his two officers to guard the stairs, Caruso, Ryan, and the major entered the large dorm room that faced the train station. Ryan pulled his infrared binoculars from his backpack and scanned the area. Ghostly shapes moved between the parked rail cars, walking or running to and from the roads, climbing fences to get nearer to the active tracks.

These were civilians, people desperate to get out of the city.

He looked at the warehouse through his optics and he saw the glow of a man in an upstairs window. The man just stood there, looking out. To Ryan, the form looked like that of a sentry.

Another white glow appeared on the opposite corner window of the building a minute later.

He passed the binoculars to his cousin.

Al Darkur borrowed a scoped rifle and checked himself. He also looked over the space between his position and Rehan’s new location. “What’s that? One hundred fifty yards away?”

“Closer to two,” said Dominic.

“I’d like to get closer,” Ryan said, “but we’d have to cross a lot of open ground, go over about five sets of tracks, and then climb that cyclone fence on the other side.”

Al Darkur replied, “I can try and get more men here, but it won’t be anytime soon.”

Dom said, “What I’d give to know that fucker’s plan.”

Chavez jumped alone from the rear ramp of the Antonov An-72 at twenty-four thousand feet. He pulled his ripcord within seconds of exiting the aircraft, and within a minute of leaving the plane he was checking the GPS and altimeter on his wrist.