Читать книгу: «End Game», страница 2
Las Vegas University of Medicine, Las Vegas, Nevada 5 January 1998 0825
‘You’re early!’
Zen shrugged as he wheeled his way across the thick rug of Dr Michael Vasin’s office. ‘Yeah, figured I’d get it over with.’
‘Tea?’
‘Coffee if you have it, sure.’
Vasin picked up the phone on his desk and asked his assistant to bring them some. Then he got up and walked to the nearby couch, shifting around as Zen maneuvered his wheelchair catty-corner to him. Indian by birth, the doctor spoke with a pronounced accent, even though he had been in America since college.
‘And everything square with work?’
‘Squared away,’ Zen told him. The doctor did not know the specifics of what Zen did, officially anyway. But he was friends with one of Dreamland’s most important scientific researchers, Dr Martha Geraldo, who had referred Zen to him for the experimental program. So he probably knew a little, though neither man tested the specifics of that knowledge.
Vasin’s assistant came in with a tray of herbal tea, coffee, and two small cups. She was a petite, older woman, efficient at handling minutiae and thoughtful enough to ask after Zen’s wife, whom she had never met. When she left, Zen found Vasin staring out the large windows behind his desk. The Vegas Strip lay in the distance.
‘The desert is not a good place for gamblers,’ said the doctor absently.
Unsure how to respond, Zen said nothing.
‘Jeff, I want you to understand, there are no guarantees with this. It may have absolutely no effect on you. Absolutely no effect. Even if regenerating nerve cells in the spine is possible, it might not work in your case for a million different reasons.’
‘I understand.’
Vasin had already told him this many times.
‘And, as we’ve discussed, there is always the possibility there will be side effects that we don’t know about,’ continued the doctor.
‘I read everything you gave me.’
‘I’m repeating myself.’ Vasin turned around, smiling self-deprecatingly. ‘I want you to understand it emotionally. There’s always a possibility – unforeseen – that things could be worse.’
Zen had already sat through two long lectures from Vasin and another by one of the researchers on his team outlining the potential pitfalls and dangers of the technique. He had also signed a stack of release forms.
‘I’m about as aware of the dangers as I can be.’
‘Yes.’ Vasin rose. ‘Ready to get the ball rolling?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Air Force High Technology Advanced Weapons Center (Dreamland) 1100
Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh ‘Dog’ Bastian checked his altitude and location, then radioed to the event controller, who was sitting inside a highly modified Boeing RC-135, circling above at forty thousand feet.
‘Dreamland Raptor to Event Command – Jerry, are we firing this missile today?’
‘Event Command to Dreamland Raptor, we’re still hanging on Dreamland Levitow,’ answered the controller, referring to the EB-52 that was to fire the target missile. ‘Colonel, you sound like you’re anxious to get back to your paperwork.’
Not at all, thought Dog, who greatly preferred his present office – the cockpit of Dreamland’s experimental long-range attack version of the F-22 Raptor – to the one with his cherrywood desk twenty thousand feet below. Flying cutting-edge aircraft was undoubtedly the best part of Dreamland.
The F-22 bore only a passing resemblance to the ‘stock’ model. Its wings had been made into long deltas; in the place of a tailfin it had a faceted quadrangle of triangles over the elongated tailpipe. The plane was twenty feet longer than the original, allowing it to accommodate an internal bomb bay that could be filled with a variety of weapons, including the one Dog was waiting to launch. The length also allowed the plane to carry considerably more fuel than a regular F-22.
‘All right, Dreamland Raptor, we’re proceeding,’ said the event controller. ‘Dreamland Levitow is on course. They are firing test missile one.… Test missile has been launched. We are proceeding with our event.’
Test missile one was an AGM-86C whose explosive warhead had been replaced with a set of instruments and a broadcasting device. Also known as an Air Launched Cruise Missile, or ALCM, the AGM-86C was the conventional version of the frontline nuclear-tipped cruise missile developed during the 1980s and placed into storage with the reorganization of the nuclear force in the early 1990s. In this case, the missile was playing the role of a nuclear weapon.
The missile in Dog’s bomb bay was designed to render such weapons obsolete. The EEMWB – the letters stood for Enhanced ElectroMagnetic Warfare Bomb, but were generally pronounced together as ‘em-web’ – created an electronic pulse that disrupted electric devices within a wide radius. Unlike the devices that had been used against power grids in Iraq during the 1992 Gulf War, the EEMWB used terahertz radiation – known as T-Rays or T Waves – to do its damage. Conventional electronic shielding did not protect against them, since until now there had been no need to. Occupying the bandwidth between infrared and microwave radiation, T-Rays were potentially devastating, yet extremely difficult to control and direct. While their potential had long been recognized, their use remained only the wishful daydream of weapons scientists and armchair generals.
Until now. The Dreamland weapons people had found a way to use carefully fabricated metal shards as antennas as the pulse was generated. Computer simulations showed they could design weapons that would fry circuitry at five hundred miles.
There were two likely applications. One was as a weapon to paralyze an enemy’s electronics, a kind of super E bomb that would affect everything from power grids to wristwatches. The other was a defense against nuclear weapons such as the one the AGM-86C simulated. The EEMWB’s pulse went through the shielding in conventional nuclear weapons that protected them from ‘conventional’ electromagnetic shocks. By wiping out the nanoswitches and all other control gear in the weapons, the EEMWB prevented the weapon from going off.
It was possible to shield devices against the T-Rays – both Dreamland Raptor and Dreamland Levitow were proof. But the process was painstaking, especially for anything in the air.
Dog’s EEMWB had a fifty-mile radius. If successful, tests would begin in the South Pacific two weeks from now on the larger, five-hundred-mile-radius designs.
‘Dreamland Raptor, prepare to fire EEMWB,’ said the event controller.
‘Dreamland Raptor acknowledges.’ The EEMWB’s propulsion and guidance units came from AGM-86Cs, and it was fired more like a bomb than an antiair weapon, with the extra step of designating an altitude for an explosion.
‘Launch at will,’ said the event coordinator.
‘Launching.’
Jan Stewart glanced at the screen at the left side of the control panel on her EB-52, checking the sitrep screen for her position and the location of the Dreamland landing area, now about fifteen miles away and due south. If the shielding failed when the EEMWB exploded, she would have to fly Dreamland Levitow back to base by dead reckoning on manual control – not a prospect she relished.
Actually, Captain Stewart didn’t relish flying the Levitow, or any Megafortress, much at all. She’d been a B-1 jock and had come to Dreamland to work in a project designed to test the B-1 for conversion similar to the EB-52 Megafortress. A week after she arrived, the project’s funding was cut and she was pressed into the Megafortress program as a copilot. She outranked a lot of the other copilots and even pilots in the program, but because she was a low-timer in the aircraft, she’d been relegated to second seat by the program’s temporary head, Captain Breanna Stockard. Worse, Breanna had made Stewart her copilot.
Bad enough to fly what was still essentially a B-52 after the hotter-than-fire B-1B. Worse – much, much worse – to be second officer after running the show.
Today, though, Stewart was boss. Her nemesis had been scrubbed at the last minute due to a snowstorm in Chicago.
‘EEMWB detonation in twenty seconds,’ said Lieutenant Sergio ‘Jazz’ Jackson, who was serving as her copilot.
‘Yup.’
A tone sounded in her headphones, indicating that the weapon had detonated. Stewart hot-keyed her communications unit to tell the event commander, but got no response.
She pulled back on the stick slightly, but the airplane failed to move.
Had the shielding failed?
Only partially – her configurable control panel was still lit.
She’d go to manual control right away.
Interphone working?
‘Prepare for manual control,’ she said.
‘Manual?’ said Jazz.
Immediately, Stewart realized what had happened – she’d turned the aircraft over to the flight control computer for the missile launch as part of the test protocol, and neglected to take it back.
It was a boneheaded mistake that would cost her at least two rounds of beers. Thank God the Iron Bitch hadn’t been here to see it.
‘I mean, taking over control from the computer,’ Stewart told Jazz lamely.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said the copilot.
‘Dreamland Levitow,’ said the event controller. ‘Please repeat your transmission. I’m sorry – we were caught up in something here.’
I’ll bet, thought Stewart, not entirely convinced that Breanna hadn’t somehow conspired with them to make her look bad.
Dr Ray Rubeo, Dreamland’s head scientist, was waiting for Colonel Bastian as he unfolded himself from the Raptor’s cockpit.
‘So how’d we do, Doc?’ Dog asked, coming down the ladder. Techies were already swarming over the Raptor, preparing it for a complete overhaul. Besides thoroughly analyzing the shielding and systems for signs of damage from the T-Rays, the engineering team was planning a number of improvements to the plane, including a new wing structure that would lower its unfueled weight by five percent.
‘It’s premature to speculate,’ said Rubeo.
‘Do it anyway.’
Rubeo frowned. ‘I’m sure that when the results are analyzed, the models predicting the impact of the weapon will be shown to be quite correct. All of the test instruments reported full hits. And,’ he paused dramatically, ‘one of the ground technicians forgot to remove his watch, and now finds that it no longer functions.’
Dog laughed. The scientist touched his earring – a habit, the colonel knew, that meant he was planning to say something he considered unpleasant. Dog decided to head him off at the pass.
‘Ray, if the full-sized weapons won’t be ready for testing –’
‘Bah. They’re sitting in the bunker, all eight of them. Though the tests are unnecessary.’
Then obviously I’m about to get harangued for more money, thought Dog, starting toward the Jimmy SUV waiting to take him over to the hangar area where he could change. Sure enough, Rubeo fell in alongside him and made the pitch.
‘If you are going to proceed with the project, Colonel, I need several more technicians to assist while the team is away.’
‘Can’t do it, Ray. You’ve seen the budget.’
‘Colonel, we are past squeezing water from a stone. We need more people.’
Dog stopped to watch Dreamland Levitow practicing touch and goes on the nearby runway. As part of a new policy at Dreamland, the EB-52 Megafortress had been named for Sergeant John L. Levitow, an Air Force Medal of Honor winner. A crewman in an AC-47 gunship during the Vietnam War, Sergeant Levitow had thrown himself on a live flare inside the hold of his damaged aircraft following a mortar hit. Despite numerous wounds, he managed to toss the flare outside of the aircraft before it ignited, saving the entire plane.
Rubeo renewed his pitch as the plane passed overhead. ‘Colonel – we need more people.’
‘If the EEMWB project gets funding, we’ll have more slots.’
‘Only if it’s approved as part of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Program, which it shouldn’t be.’
Rubeo had made this point before: The EEMWB was not a good ABM weapon, since the lead in technology would last, by his estimate, no longer than five years. And it was not selective – everything in the area was disabled, not just the target. Dog didn’t disagree, but he didn’t see that as an argument against proceeding with the weapon, which would provide a decent solution until other technologies matured. And he especially thought this was a good idea since it would help him get the people Rubeo needed.
‘We have to be practical,’ said Dog.
‘Colonel, I’m the most practical scientist I know.’
‘That isn’t saying much, Ray,’ Dog told him, climbing into the truck.
Near Port Somalia 5 January 1998 2304
Captain Sattari felt the slight burn at the top of his shoulders as he paddled in unison with the others, propelling the small boat toward their target. The wind came at them from the west, trying to push them off course. They compensated for it as they stroked, but the boat still drew a jagged line forward.
Sattari allowed himself a glance to the other three craft, gauging his performance; it seemed to him that their boat was doing better than two of the others, and not much worse than Sergeant Ibn’s, which was in the lead.
The raft lurched with a sudden swell. Sattari gripped his oar firmly and dug at the water, stroking hard and smooth. His instructor had claimed propelling a boat was a matter of finesse, not strength, but the man had rowed every day of his life for years, and surely took strength for granted. Sattari’s chest rose and fell with the roll of his shoulders, as if he were part of a large machine. He heard the hard, short breaths of the men around him, and tried to match them.
A light blinked ahead. Ibn’s boat had stopped a few meters away. They changed their paddling and surged next to the other raft with a well-practiced flare. First test passed, thought Sattari. He reached for his night glasses and scanned around them as the other boats drew up.
Sergeant Ibn moved in the other raft until he was alongside his commander.
‘No sign of the Indian warship,’ said Ibn.
‘No. Nor the helicopter.’
A helicopter had nearly run into one of the airplanes roughly seventy miles from shore. Captain Sattari was not sure where it had come from. It seemed too far from Port Somalia to belong to the small Indian force there, nor had the spies reported one. The Somalian air force had no aircraft this far north, and it seemed unlikely that it had come from Yemen.
‘The helicopter most likely belonged to a smuggler,’ said Ibn.
‘Perhaps,’ said Captain Sattari. ‘In any event, let us proceed.’
‘God is great.’
Sattari put his glasses back in their pouch and began helping the four men on his boat who would descend to the pipes below them to plant their explosive charges. The charges they carried were slightly bigger than a large suitcase, and each team had to place two on the thick pipes below.
Sattari positioned his knee against the side of the raft, but cautioned himself against hoping it would brace him; he’d already seen in their drills that the raft would easily capsize. The trick was to use only one hand to help the others balance their loads; this was a heavy strain, but the team he was assisting managed to slip into the water without a splash or upsetting the raft.
The men on the raft on the other side of him did not. The little boat capsized.
Sattari picked up his paddle, as did the other man on his raft. They turned forty-five degrees, positioning themselves to help if necessary. But the two men on the other boat recovered quickly; within seconds they had their vessel righted and were back aboard.
‘Good work,’ Sattari told them.
He turned back toward Ibn’s raft. The sergeant had gone below with the others, but one of the two men still aboard had a radio scanner, which he was using to monitor local broadcasts. As Sattari picked up his oar to get closer, the coxswain did the same. They pushed over silently.
‘Anything, Corporal?’ Sattari asked the radioman.
‘All quiet, Captain.’
‘There was nothing from the Indian warship?’
‘No, sir. Not a peep.’
Sattari scanned the artificial island, roughly two miles away. Aside from a few dim warning lights on the seaward side, it was completely in shadow. It slumbered, unsuspecting.
‘We will proceed,’ Sattari said. ‘God is great.’
Aboard the Abner Read, off the coast of Somalia 2340
Storm took Admiral Johnson’s communication in his cabin. The admiral’s blotchy face was rendered even redder by the LCD screen. Johnson was aboard his flagship, the Nimitz, sailing in the waters north of Taiwan.
‘What’s going on out there, Storm?’
‘Good evening, Admiral. I’m about to send a boarding party over to a boat I suspect is a smuggler.’
‘That’s what you called me about?’
‘No,’ said Storm. ‘About an hour ago we spotted four aircraft flying very low and fast toward northeastern Somalia. We were not able to identify the aircraft. Given the size of the force, they may have been terrorists going ashore to a camp we don’t know about. Since they were flying in the direction of Port Somalia, I tried to contact the Indian force there, but could not. I wanted to send –’
‘Port Somalia? The Indian tanker station? What is your exact location?’
‘We’re about eighty nautical miles –’
‘Exact location.’
Storm looked over to the small computer screen near the video display, then read off the GPS coordinates.
‘What are you doing so close to that end of the gulf?’ said Johnson. ‘You’re supposed to be chasing pirates.’
‘With all due respect, Admiral, that’s what I’m doing. I have a smuggler in sight, and we’re preparing to board her. I called to alert you to these aircraft, so a message could be sent through the normal channels. I don’t know whether their radio –’
‘You know as well as I do that you’re a good deal east of the area we discussed two days ago. A good deal east.’
‘I’m within the parameters of my patrol area. I’m not in coastal waters.’
When Johnson was displeased – as he was just about every time Storm talked to him – his cheeks puffed slightly and his eyes narrowed at the corners, so that he looked like the mask of an Asian sea devil. When he became really angry – which happened often – his forehead grew red and he had difficulty speaking. Storm saw the space above his eyebrows tint, and decided it was time to return the conversation to its point.
‘Should I attempt to contact the Pentagon to alert the Indians at Port Somalia?’ he asked.
‘No, you should not.’ Johnson scowled. ‘We’ll handle that here.’
The screen blanked before Storm could respond.
Off the coast of Somalia 2345
Captain Sattari felt his gloved hand slipping from the rope. Swinging his left arm forward, he managed to grab hold of the cross-hatched metal fencing at the side of the support pillar. For a moment he hung in midair five meters over the water and rocks, his fate suspended.
If I slip, he thought, the man behind me will fall as well. He will be killed, and even if I survive, I will never be able to draw a breath as a man again.
He’d practiced this climb for months. He could do it. He had to do it.
With a ferocious heave, Sattari pulled himself to the pillar. Hanging by three fingers, he hunted for a better handhold. His left arm seemed to pull out of its socket before his right hand found a grip.
Up, he told himself, forcing open the fingers on his left hand. Sattari jerked his arm upward, throwing it against the fencing. His right arm had always been stronger than his left; he found a good hold and rested for a moment, then attacked the fence again, trying but failing to get a toehold so he could climb rather than pull. Again and again he forced his fingers to unclench; again and again he felt his shoulders wrenching. Even his right began to give way before he reached the top.
The first man up stood by the rail, waiting. Sattari took the rope he had carried up, tied it to the rail, then tossed it down. The captain helped the man who had started up behind over the rail, then went ahead.
Their target was a pipe assembly and tank housing fuel for the boats that docked here. Besides the large tanks containing ship fuel, there were two tanks that held the lighter – and more flammable – marine fuel used by small vessels. The tanks and some of the associated machinery sat behind a Cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. The point man began cutting a hole through the fence with a set of large wire cutters; Sattari went around the decking to the corner to act as a lookout while the others prepared to set explosives on the tanks.
A pair of metal staircases led down to the lower docking area just beyond the turn where he took his position. A small boat was tied to the fiberglass planks, and he could hear it slapping against the side with the current.
Sattari could also hear his heart, pounding in his chest. Never had he been this nervous, not even on his first solo flight.
The Indians had roughly two dozen men permanently on the island; another three or four dozen workers came out during the day when ships were docked or to finish up the many small items that still had to be perfected before the official opening in a few weeks. At night, a force of no more than eight men were on duty, manning lookouts on the northern and eastern sides of the large complex.
A local spy had reported that the watchmen varied their patrols admirably, making it impossible to time their rounds. However, this area was consistently neglected; like many security forces, the guards concentrated their efforts on what they thought the biggest prize was.
Sattari heard a noise behind him. He turned; the man who had cut the hole in the fence raised his hand in the air. The charges had been set.
They retreated to the ropes. Remembering the trouble he’d had climbing with the gloves, Sattari pulled them off. Better to burn his hands, he thought, than to lose his grip. He slung his gun over his shoulder and took hold of the rope, waiting for the point man before starting.
Sattari was about a third of the way down when his companion said something. The words were garbled in the wind; as Sattari glanced toward him to ask what he’d said, a gun barked from above.
Without consciously thinking about what he was doing, Sattari hooked his foot taut against the rope and swung up his gun. A muzzle flashed above him; he pushed the AK-47 toward the burst of light and fired. His bullets rattled sharply against the steel superstructure. Thrown off-kilter by the kick of the gun, the captain swung to his right and bounced against the fence. Before he could grab on and stabilize himself, he saw two shadows moving above and fired again. This time one went down, though whether because he was ducking or had been hit was impossible to say. The other shadow returned fire. Sattari squeezed the trigger of the AK-47 once, twice, several times, until its magazine was empty.
He let the rifle drop against its strap and skidded down the rope. The captain hit the water and bounced backward, rolling against a rock, half in, half out of the sea. Pushing forward, he willed himself in the direction of a boat floating nearby. Gunfire erupted from above. As he was about to dive into the water, he saw a shadow behind him on the rocks; it had to be one of his men. He twisted back, half hopping, half crawling, aiming to grab the man and drag him into the sea and safety. Bullets danced around him, but Sattari focused only on the black shadow that lay in front of him. He grabbed the man and pulled, growling as he did, a threatened bear cornered in an ambush. Pulling the soldier over his shoulder, he went back to the water, growling the whole time.
The steamy hiss of a rocket-launched grenade creased the air; a long, deep rattle followed. The water surged around him, pushing him down, but Sattari kept moving until hands reached out and grabbed him. The commando was lifted from his back, and Sattari was pulled into the raft. He pushed himself upright, looking around. They were the last boat to get away.
‘Detonate the charges,’ he told the coxswain when he saw his face.
‘Now, Captain?’
‘Now.’
