John Ringo: Ghost

Follow, recon, lead in support. If he could call 911 direct, he would. But as it was, there just wasn’t time for anything but… stupid heroics.

He’d gotten to the fence and cut the lower section with his knife, then wriggled under, pulling his jump bag and the MP-5 behind him. He was in a dark portion of the field; it was dark most of the way to the plane. Slow or fast? There didn’t look to be many more coffins to load and the pilots might turn up, and look out or turn on their landing lights, at any time. Fast.

He sprinted across the open area, staying low, willing no one to see him, until he reached the nose-wheel. No shouts of alarm, no change in the regular action of loading. The plane was a 727 and he’d briefly studied it, and other, aircraft with a view to taking them back from hijackers. Again, not a primary mission but one that they trained on occasionally. If he recalled correctly, there was a hatch behind the nose-wheel assembly that led to the cargo compartment. From the cargo compartment, the plane could be accessed through a small tunnel, and another hatch. If the compartment was pressurized. They’d have to pressurize it to ensure the girls lived; the coffins had not been pressure sealed nor did they have air. Okay, get into the cargo compartment and he’d be golden.

He lifted himself up into the nose-wheel assembly and found a ledge to stand on. As he did he heard the engines start to whine.

“No pressure, we’re good,” Mike muttered. There was the hatch, appropriately marked. There was just one problem. There should have been an operating lever, actually a sort of horseshoe thingy, on the outside. But this hatch was smooth. Either he’d messed up on his recollection or this one was a different design.

“Motherfucker,” he muttered. “What now?”

He heard an engine approaching and ducked up into the darkness, looking around wildly. When the nose-gear raised, he was going to be squashed like a bug. Even if he avoided that, the way that planes like this climbed, he’d not only be in an anoxic condition, without enough oxygen to stay conscious, possibly so little that he’d take brain damage, but it was likely he’d get the bends. Sudden reduction in pressure is sudden reduction in pressure and just as a SCUBA diver can’t come up quickly after a certain amount of time because of nitrogen saturated in his tissues, being exposed in a plane in a fast climb can cause the bends. In a HALO jump, the cabin was slowly depressurized. This bird wasn’t going to ascend slowly.

There was a ledge that had half of it marked in yellow with the words “Stay Clear” and the rest was just plain metal. With any luck, at all, the plain metal part wouldn’t be filled with nose-gear. The truck sound had been a follow-me that hooked up to the nose assembly and turned the plane around.

He lay down on the metal and pulled out his thermal blanket, wrapping it around himself. Then he hooked the MP-5 to the jump bag and put the latter under his head.

“This is a truly bad idea,” he muttered as the plane started to taxi. He thought about what he could have done. Instead of going into the airport, go to a convenience store and call 911 from a payphone. That might have worked, if they’d reacted quick enough. Too late now. Try the sat phone? They’d just shoot down the plane. Lots of dead girls. He didn’t want that on his conscience or the conscience of the pilot that had to take the shot.

He pulled the jump bag around and fumbled out an aspirin tablet and his water. He took the tablet and washed it down and then put everything away as the plane moved into takeoff position. Sometimes aspirin helped reduce the bends. Anything would help. Oh, his poor abused joint; they were not going to like this.

“God…” he muttered as the engines revved and the plane started to move. “No, St. Michael. St. Michael, patron saint of all warriors of the air and of the sea, we’ve got a really screwed up situation here. These girls don’t deserve what they’re in, no matter how bad they’ve been. And, well, I could use a little help here. I know I’m not the greatest example of your name, but I’m on a pretty good mission and I think that should count for something. St. Michael, patron of paratroopers, protect us all. And please don’t let me get so bent I can’t do my job at the other end!”

The last was shouted over the blast of wind coming through the open nose assembly and Mike really hoped that he wasn’t going to simply be picked up and washed out by it. There wasn’t anywhere to hold on, just smooth metal. Suddenly, the nose came up and they were in the air. Then there was a sound of hydraulics and he could see the assembly coming up.

“And please don’t let me get squashed like a bug!”

“Holy shit.”

Special Agent in Charge Barry Conway had seen his share of murder scenes. The FBI didn’t have murder as one of its jurisdictions, but they got called in on special cases. And this case had “special” written all over it.

“What do we have so far?” he asked the detective from Athens PD.

“We’ve got two witnesses,” Detective Sergeant Jason Nix replied with a shrug. “The female victim, Ashley Winters, is being remarkably uncooperative. Her description of the perp keeps shifting around and she’s not sure she really saw him shoot anyone, including the torture victim.”

“That’s because she’s protecting him,” Conway replied. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I’m not particularly happy with the unknown perpetrator,” Nix admitted. “I’ve got ten dead bodies on my hands, one torture victim and two females who had been kidnapped, one of them drugged, the other one beaten and molested. I want to know what his connection is to all of this.”

“His connection appears to be that he killed most of the terrorists that were involved.” Conway sighed. He liked bank jobs. Tracking down a bank robber was straightforward FBI work. Domestic terrorism, that was okay. You got somebody on the inside, got your intel and rolled them up. Foreign terrorism ops got really complicated really quick. The Patriot Act had helped, at least he wouldn’t have to jump through hoops figuring out which particular action was simply illegal, kidnapping for example, and which was terrorism… kidnapping for example. The way things used to be structured, it was like he had to have two separate brains that were not permitted to link the national security information with the criminal information. If for no other reason, he was a big fan of the Patriot Act. It also meant he could say…

“We’ve got jurisdiction over the case from here. We’ve got terrorism and kidnapping with transit, possibly across state lines.”

“The girl said the perp said that they were going to Atlanta airport,” the detective replied. “It’s the one thing she’s clear about.”

“And did you put out that alert?” Conway said, quietly.

“Not yet,” the detective said. “We’re waiting for some corroboration.”

“Do it,” the FBI SAIC said, bluntly. “Do it now. Before the damned plane gets in the air.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Nix said with a shrug. “But, again, I want to know how this guy knew. I think he was working with them and they had a falling out. That fits the situation better than an unknown superhero rescuing the damsel. That shit doesn’t happen.”

“There you have a point,” Conway admitted.

“This looks more like… well,” Nix stopped and shrugged. “This looks like a really violent bad drug deal to me. I think he was getting shafted by them, maybe he was their lookout or something, and he decided that he could get away by offing all the witnesses.”

“Why keep the torture victim alive?” Conway asked.

“Maybe he didn’t know enough to bother?” Nix said, shrugging. “I’m going to go call in the all points on a cargo container heading for the Atlanta Airport, possibly carrying hostages. You know how many cargo containers move through Atlanta?”