Mike Maden - Blue Warrior

There was one more mission objective to be achieved. There were several options to achieve it. With Zhao’s permission, he’d initiate the most necessary one.

Judy surveyed the wreckage in her windscreen. She was still five hundred feet off the deck. Three smoldering DPVs were to her right, and the smashed Hummingbird airframe blocked the end of the runway. Judy would have to get up a good head of steam if she hoped to clear that wreck on takeoff. The Aviocar needed four hundred meters of runway to get airborne. That would be cutting it darn close, but that was the least of her worries at the moment.

“There he is,” Myers said, pointing to the east. Pearce was up ahead, a hundred yards from the tarmac, galloping toward the hangar, his head still wrapped in the indigo tagelmust . Myers called in her headset. “We see you, Troy.”

His voice crackled back. “Last one to the hangar buys the beer.”

“He looks friggin’ cool. I want one of those,” Kavanagh said.

“The camel or the turban, Colonel?” Myers asked.

“Both.”

Judy set the Aviocar down smooth as silk on the cracked runway but couldn’t avoid the debris scattered on the tarmac from the smashed Hummingbird. The Aviocar’s heavy rubber wheels threw chunks of metal against the fuselage. She prayed the wheels hadn’t been punctured or the airframe damaged. She’d have to check before they tried to take off again.

“Nice landing,” Kavanagh said into the headphone mic, grinning behind his aviators. “Your dad would be proud.”

“If our luck doesn’t hold, you might be meeting him sooner than you think.”

She taxied past the burning wreckage of the two DPVs taken out by Ian’s Reaper. Judy ordered Kavanagh to feather down the engines while she braked the plane, parking in front of the hangar, leaving the two motors running at low RPMs.

Judy waved at Mann crouching in the shade of the hangar. He smiled and waved back, his other arm draped protectively over the Italian woman Pearce had described earlier as his wife. She looked like she’d been through hell and back after six days of desert travel and the nightmare that had just transpired here, but she still looked gorgeous. It wasn’t fair, Judy thought.

The Red One team sensor operator called in. “Colonel, you’ve got company heading your way.” He was patched into everyone’s headset. Kavanagh had ordered the second Reaper at Karem AFB into the air and both teams on duty. If he was going to go out in a blaze of glory, he wanted all hands on deck to witness the folly.

“What is it?”

“Three bogies coming in hot and low on the deck—about ten meters.”

“Fighters?”

“Cruise missiles.”

“ETA?”

“Three minutes, tops.”

“You heard it, people,” Kavanagh said. “Let’s get this train loaded and rolling.”

“Troy? Did you catch that?” Myers asked.

“Yeah.” He was breathless in the headphones.

Wolfit pushed the cargo door open and jumped out, M4 at the ready, just as Pearce’s camel thundered past the plane’s rudder.

Myers, Kavanagh, and Judy scrambled out after Wolfit. Everybody ran for the hangar except Judy, who ducked beneath the plane to check for damage.

Pearce halted the camel at the hangar entrance and slipped off before the camel had a chance to kneel. He slapped its flank and it bellowed in protest, then trotted into the hangar where the two remaining camels knelt.

Cella ran up and threw her arms around Pearce’s neck. Myers ran up, too, with Wolfit and Kavanagh at her side.

“Troy, we’ve got to go,” Myers said.

“Mossa?” Cella asked. “The others?”

Pearce shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Cella swore bitterly.

“You’re coming with us,” Pearce ordered.

Cella glared at him, then softened, nodding yes.

“Good.” He turned to Myers. “Take her, please.”

“What about you?”

“Not without Mikey.”

“Where is he?” Myers asked.

Pearce ran as fast as his limp allowed back toward the tower, Mann beside him.

“There’s no time,” Myers said.

“You two get back to the plane. We’ll hustle him back, I promise.”

Kavanagh nodded at Wolfit, and the two of them chased after Pearce and Mann while Myers and Cella dashed for the plane.

Judy was still underneath the Aviocar. She didn’t find any damage in the fuselage, but the starboard wheel was leaking air fast. “C’mon, you guys!” she barked in her headset.

Pearce was the last one up the tower thanks to his limp. The colonel knelt by Early’s corpse and was covering his bloody neck stump with his own civilian shirt. The staircase was narrow. Wolfit handed Pearce his weapon and took Early’s feet, Kavanagh the shoulders. Pearce noticed the colonel’s knees were soaked in blood. Everybody’s boots were slick with it, too. Mann led the way down, and Pearce followed the rest.

They cleared the stairs and dashed for the plane.

“ETA one minute, Colonel,” Red One reported. “Advise you leave now.”

“Working on it, son. Thanks for the tip.”

Judy had already strapped back into her seat and revved the engines, keeping her feet pressed hard against the brakes. The plane shuddered in protest.

Mann ran and leaped into the cargo area as Wolfit approached. Wolfit stepped up into the bay effortlessly and swung around, the two of them pulling Early’s heavy corpse in behind them, deep into the cargo area. Kavanagh walked Early’s broad shoulders in, then jumped in behind him.

Pearce limped as fast as he could. Myers shouted at him. “Looks like you’re buying the beer!”

The air cracked.

Pearce spun like a top, then dropped to the tarmac, blood spraying from his head.

Aéropostale Station 11

Tamanghasset, Southern Algeria

15 May

As soon as he saw Pearce drop, Guo called the DPV for a pickup. He had to evacuate quickly—no time to savor the killing of the two Americans today. The cruise missiles would be arriving within moments to sterilize the battlefield. He was under strict orders to leave no evidence of Chinese presence behind, and with five smashed vehicles and ten dead operators in the field, there was only one way to burn away the evidence. The mobile missile launch platform in Mali had already fired on his command. He designated the COMPASS locators in three of the DPVs as the targets.

The surviving DPV slowed just enough for Guo to leap into the passenger seat. He shouted, “GO!” but it was hardly necessary. The driver smashed the gas pedal to the floor. The rail threw big sand and fishtailed as the Chinese raced due north, away from the coming holocaust.

Three ground-hugging Chinese cruise missiles streaked across the Algerian desert, flying just meters off the deck to avoided radar detection and air defense systems. Onboard TERCOM and COMPASS navigation systems maneuvered autonomously around obstacles while keeping the missiles zeroed in on their targets. They had been launched just minutes before from a single portable launcher now deployed in Mali by Dr. Weng and Zhao, with more missiles for reloads stored in a Chinese-secured Bamako warehouse.

The CJ-10 “Long Sword” cruise missile had been largely designed from reverse-engineered American Tomahawk cruise missiles salvaged by the Pakistanis from failed cruise missile strikes against the Taliban in the late 1990s. Like the Tomahawk, these weapons were designed for surgical strikes. Tomahawks were the weapons of choice for many American presidents before the advent of drone technologies like the Predator, and sometimes after. President Obama launched over two hundred Tomahawks against Gaddafi’s military in 2011, helping to topple his murderous regime. In fact, the Americans had launched two thousand Tomahawk strikes against other nations without declaration of war since 1983—ample precedent for today’s action, as far as the Chinese were concerned.