Dale Brown - Act of War

“Want us to follow you out to the range?” Ari asked. “We can fire up the radar, maybe test out the datalinks?”

“Maybe later,” Jason said. “I just want to run around a bit, pop off a few grenades, clear my head.”

“Nerd,” Ari said to the man in the fearsome-looking robot before her. The robot pointed to its crotch area, then turned and ran off.

The main part of Cannon Air Force Base was typical of most American air bases, about four thousand acres in size, but Cannon was fortunate in that it had a large tract of vacant land to the west called Pecos East, or R-5104 on aviation charts, about eighty-five thousand acres total, in which Task Force TALON was located. The airspace above Pecos East was restricted from the surface to eighteen thousand feet above ground level. The Air Force performed a wide variety of training exercises on these ranges, including bombing, aerial gunnery, close-air support training, ground-based air defense deployment simulations, and joint forces operations. A number of targets had been set up throughout the range by the Air Force. Some were nothing more than large bull’s-eyes painted on canvas and supported by poles, but others were very realistic models of buildings, armored vehicles, mobile missile launchers, cave entrances, and even oil refineries.

It took about ten minutes for Jason to run the eight kilometers out to the range controller’s station for R-5104 Charlie, which was nothing more than a large concrete parking area, large enough to park two helicopters plus a number of trucks, painted Day-Glo orange and with a large black “X” on it so fighter jocks wouldn’t mistake it for a target. After checking in with Moore and getting thirty minutes’ time in the range, Jason started exploring the range area by jogging around—except in his case, he was casually “jogging” at almost forty kilometers per hour.

Okay: DeLaine was cute, for an FBI agent, he thought as he sped around the range, jumping over targets and the occasional coyote. And maybe he and Kelsey were more alike than he cared to admit. But the problem with old, established, bureaucratic institutions like the U.S. Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was they were slow to adopt new ideas and concepts. The “graybeards,” as Jason called them, liked everything neat, tidy, and under control.

How was he going to get any information on the terrorists if DeLaine was going to dig in her heels like this?

He had been jogging around the range, “attacking” targets he found with his smoke grenades and testing his jumping and vertical leaping abilities, for almost twenty minutes when he heard, “Jefferson to Richter,” on CID’s secure communications system.

“Go ahead, Sergeant Major.”

“Say location.”

He quickly checked his satellite navigation system, then responded: “Charlie Range, four hundred and seventy-five meters southeast of the range controller’s pad.”

“Roger that. Hold your position.”

He landed from his last jump and froze. “Okay. What’s going on?”

“Just hold position, sir.”

A few minutes later, Jason noticed a small helicopter appearing on the horizon to the east. He switched to a higher magnification and saw that it was a sand-colored Marines Corps AH-1W Cobra gunship helicopter. “Is that you in the Cobra, Sergeant Major?” Jason asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Shall I meet you at the range controller’s pad?”

“Negative. Hold your position.”

“Roger.” Okay, Jefferson, what are you up to? he thought.

“Okay, Major, let’s see what you can do,” Jefferson radioed a few moments later.

“Okay, Sergeant Major,” Jason responded. “What am I supposed to…?” But he was interrupted…because seconds later a “LASER” warning came over CID’s threat warning system, telling him that he was being illuminated by a targeting laser. Then, moments later, just as Jason was about to ask Jefferson if he had hit him with the laser, the Cobra gunship opened fire from about two kilometers away. Jason saw the puffs of smoke coming from the nose Gatling gun and felt the pounding of shells on the hard earth beneath his feet milliseconds later, and he leaped away just as the shells walked their way to the exact spot in which he had been standing just a fraction of a second earlier.

“Good move, Major,” Jefferson radioed. “Our ammunition is just plastic frangible shells and shouldn’t hurt you, but let’s pretend they’re armor-piercing shells—three hits and you’re out. There are three large ‘enemy vehicles’ marked with green Xs in Charlie Range. Find them and destroy them without getting hit by more than three shells. Let’s go.”

This is fun, Jason exclaimed to himself. He started running in the same direction as the Cobra helicopter and behind it. The desert floor was hard-baked with a lot of mesquite, snakeweed, and mesa dropweed, and he had no trouble racing through, around, or over it. As the Cobra gunship turned, he turned with it, keeping easily on its tail and away from its guns. Once the Cobra tried a steep sliding turn to reverse course, but Jason simply ran underneath it at speeds exceeding thirty miles an hour.

When the Cobra tried a hard turn to quickly spin around to bring its guns down on Jason, he fired two of the smoke grenades at the chopper. “Hey, what the hell was that?” Jefferson shouted as the rounds whistled uncomfortably close.

“You didn’t say anything about me not firing back, Sergeant Major.”

“You wanna play rough, Major? I’m your Ranger,” Jefferson said. He stood on the gunship’s antitorque pedals and accomplished a simultaneous spinning-twisting-diving turn and raked the ground with machine gun fire at where he anticipated Jason would be, and very nearly got him. But as skillfully as Jefferson made the Cobra dance, Jason made the CID robot move faster. At one point, Jason found the second “enemy” vehicle, an old World War Two–vintage American M61 tank. He fired a smoke grenade to mark its location, jumped on top of it, and leaped into the air—very narrowly missing punching the Cobra helicopter at his apogee.

The demonstration was over in less than ten minutes. He had found all three vehicles with no problem whatsoever, and the Cobra gunship’s bullets only came close. A few minutes later, Jefferson landed the gunship on the range controller’s pad. Jason dismounted from CID and was introduced to the commanding general of Cannon Air Force Base, who had been seated in the gunner’s seat. Jason fielded a few questions from the general, and then Jefferson excused himself so he could talk with Jason privately.

“Very impressive, Major,” Jefferson said after the Air Force general was back over by the chopper. “I think perhaps Special Agent DeLaine might be a little premature in her opinion of CID.”

“I agree, Sergeant Major,” Jason responded enthusiastically. “Why don’t you go back to base and tell that to DeLaine and Bolton so they’ll get off my case?”

Jefferson’s eyes turned from light blue to thundercloud dark blue in an instant, and he stepped closer to Richter so he was almost nose-to-nose with him. “I was ordered to get this task force ready for battle,” he growled, impaling Jason with an angry stare, “and if you think I’m going to let anything or anyone interfere with that, you are sadly mistaken. The safety and security of the United States is in peril, and I will not let some childish spat between two wet-behind-the-ears jerk-offs threaten my country or my government. I will crush you under my boots first before I turn you over to a court-martial.” He fell silent, scanning Jason’s eyes carefully for several long moments; then: “I think you’ve spent too much time in the lab, Major. You think you’re in control because in your little world of computer programs, simulations, and mathematical equations, you might be. Out here, you’re being nothing but an irritant.” Richter said nothing in response.