First Team [First Team 01] Read online

  “Understood,” said the lead pilot, Commander Daniel “Wolf” Clarke. Wolf and his wingman were coming toward the 747 at about thirty-eight thousand feet, at roughly a thirty-degree angle from its nose. The Sri Lankan pilot had not yet answered their hails.

  “Four MiGs from Malaysian Number 17 squadron preparing to take off,” relayed one of the controllers.

  “I don’t think the Navy needs their help,” said Major Gray.

  Corrine’s aircraft was several thousand miles away, helping coordinate the search over Iran for the supposedly downed jet, which more and more looked as if it hadn’t been downed at all. The interplay between the two Tomcat pilots made her feel as if they were just a few miles away—as if she might go to one of the windows at the front of the aircraft and spot them up ahead.

  “Slam Six, you getting a response?” Wolf asked his wingman.

  “Negative, Four. You sure these guys speak English?”

  “Yeah all right, I see him, correcting—stay with me six. Definitely a 747.”

  “SF Command Transport 3 copies,” said Gray. “You have a 747 in sight. Does it have markings?”

  “Negative. No markings. No markings at all,” said Wolf. “They’re holding course. We’re coming around.”

  The two F-14s banked, circling around so they could come at the 747 from the rear. Though as far as they knew it was incapable of offensive actions, they nonetheless approached it gingerly, their adrenaline level steadily climbing. The Sri Lankan plane still had not answered their calls on any frequency, nor had it acknowledged the order to land. The Tomcat crews were close enough to see in the cockpit, but the Sri Lankan pilots steadfastly refused to look in their direction. It was five minutes from landfall.

  “There’s no way they don’t they see them,” Gray told Corrine.

  “Get their attention,” Corrine told the Navy flight. “Make sure they know you’re there.”

  The Navy aviator hesitated for just a moment, then requested permission to fire a few rounds “across the bow.”

  “Yes,” said Corrine. “Do it.”

  The bursts lasted no longer than a second and a half. The big plane lurched off its flight path, seemingly in the direction of Slammer One-Four. Wolf tucked his wing and cleared away from the Boeing’s path. It took a few seconds for the two Tomcat pilots to sort out the situation and make sure they weren’t in each other’s way.

  The Boeing pilot, meanwhile, began accelerating, his nose pointing downward.

  “He’s descending,” Wolf radioed. “But he’s still not answering our hails.”

  “He’s not heading for the airfield,” said Gray. “He’s going south. He’s on a direct path for Singapore. He’ll make landfall in two minutes. We have to get him over the water. Now.”

  Singapore sat more than two hundred miles to the south of Kuala Lumpur, a fat and inviting target. And in fact while the cities and towns along the coastline were considerably smaller and much, much poorer, they were all potential targets, once the aircraft was over land.

  “Slammer One-Four, fire more warning shots,” said Corrine. “Advise him that we will shoot him down if he does not immediately respond to your commands.”

  “I’ve done that.”

  “Do it again,” said Corrine. She pushed her sweater away from her wrist, noting the exact time on her watch.

  ~ * ~

  S

  amman Bin Saqr felt something in the aircraft giving way or breaking behind him; there was noise deep in the cargo bay, something like a muffled explosion, though the engines themselves seemed in order.

  The explosives had been packed and arranged to prevent accidental ignition; his engineers bragged that neither lightning nor fifty rounds from an American 20 mm cannon would set them off until the proper moment. But there had definitely been a sharp crack in the back, a noise that to him sounded like an explosion.

  With no way to check the problem, he checked his position on the GPS device, making sure that it coincided with the internal navigation equipment. There was no deviance; the plane would fly itself perfectly to the target once he left.

  ~ * ~

  B

  asher One-Four to Command Transport Three. No response.”

  Corrine watched the seconds adding themselves one by one to the window on her watch. There was no question in her mind now that she was going to order the plane shot down; she wanted merely to wait until the last possible second—the lawyer in her forming the opening argument.

  The seconds clicked off until there were forty left.

  “Basher One-Four, has the aircraft responded?”

  “Negative,” said Wolf, surprised that she asked again.

  “Shoot it down. Now,” said Corrine. “Do not let that aircraft go over land.”

  “Basher One-Four, confirming order to shoot down Sri Lankan cargo aircraft registry 5SK.”

  “Confirmed. Shoot it down immediately,” said Corrine.

  The Navy pilots traded terse commands, then Wolf took the shot, opening up with his cannon from point-blank range from behind the airliner.

  “He’s going in,” said Basher One-Six.”

  “Watch yourself! Watch!”

  The two aircraft had to pull off as debris flew from the stricken 747. The terrorist plane turned into a fireball, spinning toward the ocean just short of the coastline.

  ~ * ~

  18

  OVER THE PACIFIC

  Ferguson squeezed off another shot. He’d cleared right through the pipe, but as far as he could tell, nothing had changed. He put the gun next to the edge and fired again. This time his weight wasn’t quite balanced, and he slid; unable to catch himself, he tumbled down to the deck.

  “Ferg. Ferg!” yelled Conners.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. I shot clean through the motherfucker.”

  “Maybe they have a backup. Or maybe that’s not the control cable.”

  Ferguson climbed back up, taking the knife. He felt thin wires in the hole, and described them to Conners.

  “If we weren’t in an airplane, I’d say they were for detonators,” said Conners when he finished. “Or something thin.”

  “Lights maybe?”

  “I guess.”

  “I think it’s a backup explosive system,” said Ferguson. “Maybe we can find the bombs and blow up the plane.”

  Conners didn’t say anything. He sat back against the side, pulling up his shattered leg. It wouldn’t bend. The blood and vomit had dried, but his head still pounded. “How fucked are we, Ferg, with this radiation?” he asked.

  It was about the last question Ferguson was expecting, and he started to laugh. “Oh, pretty fucked,” he said.

  “How much? We going to get cancer?”

  “You think we’re going to get out of this without getting blown up?” Ferguson asked.

  “Shit, yeah.”

  “Well, on that scale, cancer’s not that bad.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah.” Conners needed some sort of reassurance, and Ferg decided to try and offer it. Even so, he had a hard time; it was one thing to make fun or be sarcastic, and another to sugarcoat reality. There was no way they were walking away from this.

  But if they did walk away, he thought, what would it be like?

  “Remember those slides we saw that Corrigan made? Worst effect is the alpha stuff, but that has to be ingested, which probably won’t happen here until the particles are blown up, right? Because they didn’t spread uranium dust in the plane—they probably have it in those containment wafers scattered in these boxes here. As long as we don’t breathe it, we’re cool.”

  Ferguson paused. His stomach was feeling queasy, but that might just be because he was hungry and tired. It somehow felt reassuring to talk about the effects of the radiation as if he were writing a science report; it had been that way with his cancer, too, explaining it to his sister.

  “What we’re getting mostly is gamma, and some of that it probably shielded, too,” continued Ferg. “
I mean, we’re sick dogs, Dad, don’t get me wrong—even if we get out of here pretty soon, a lot of interesting medical stuff in our future.”

  “Leukemia?”

  “Oh, sure. Think of it this way—smoking cigarettes probably isn’t going to make things any worse.”

  “What’s cancer like, Ferg?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You got it, right?”

  Ferguson felt something prick at him, as if the question were a physical thing. No one in Joint Demands, not even Van or Slott, knew.

  “That’s compartmented need-to-know, Dad,” he said, pushing past the surprise by turning it into a joke.

  “We heard rumors, but no proof. Now I can tell.”

  “It sucks, Dad. But at the moment, it beats the alternative. Come on, let’s get to work.”

  “I’m sorry you got it.”

  “Me too. Come on, let me see what happens if I strip those wires down and cross them.”

  “I got a better idea, Ferg. Since we’re going to kill ourselves anyway.”

  “Fire away, Dad.”

  “We got two grenades. Throw ‘em up near that door, see if they blow through the panel.”

  “They’re only flash-bangs, Dad,” said Ferg. “They’re just going to make very loud booms.”

  The aircraft seemed to tremble, then Ferguson and Conners felt it tilting forward and starting to descend.

  “Let’s go for it,” said Ferguson. “Let’s do it.”

  “Yeah,” said Conners. He handed over the grenades, then slid down to the floor. Ferguson reached down for him, but got the shirt he’d discarded earlier instead. It had something in the pocket.

  “What about the Russian grenade Ruby gave me?” Ferguson asked. “The VOG thing. Any way to set it off?”

  “We don’t have a launcher. It works like one of our 40 mm grenades in a 203. The pins inside hold the trigger off until there’s centrifugal force. It has to spin fast.”

  “Can we take it apart?”

  Conners tried to focus. The grenades came in two basic models, one with an impact fuse in the nose, the other—this one—slightly different, designed more specifically as an antipersonnel shrapnel weapon, throwing metal over a wide area. It hopped up when it landed, then exploded.

  If they could set off the cap at the back, the propellant might explode.

  Or not.

  Hit the charge in the front. Something would go off.

  “Spit it out, Dad,” said Conners.

  “There’s a fuse in the nose, an explosive charge—if you hit it point-blank, I think it would explode. It might be enough to set off the propellant then.”

  “You think I could throw hard enough to set it off?”

  “Not even you could do that, Ferg,” said Conners.

  “So if I shoot it, what happens?” said Ferg.

  “Yeah,” said Conners, as if Ferguson had given the answer rather than the question.

  “I don’t know if the shrapnel will go through all the shit they have inside the plane,” said Ferguson. “But it will go through us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right,” said Ferg. He took the grenade and his gun. “I’ll do it near the cockpit. Take those bastards with us maybe.”

  “Go for it.”

  Neither man moved. Both were willing to die—both realized they were going to die—but neither wanted to cause the other’s death.

  Then Conners had another idea. “The flash-bang might set it off, if you wedged them together right. It’s not much of a killing force, but it could set off the percussion cap at the back, or maybe the fuse in the front, because it has to be pretty loose to begin with.”

  “Which one?”

  Conners thought. “The back. It’s like a bullet being fired.”

  “I could shoot the back point-blank, like a striker.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell,” said Ferguson. He grabbed hold of Connors and dragged him toward the front of the plane.

  “What are you doing, Ferg?”

  “We’ll use the grenade to blow open the door. We’ll huddle under the ledge, the explosion misses us, we go get the bastards. The flash-bang will be the striker. It’ll work.”

  Conners said nothing as Ferguson dragged him forward, convinced belief was better than despair. Finnegan’s saga floated into his brain. Oh, for a good slug of whiskey right now, he thought to himself.

  “Shoot me before we crash,” said Conners, as Ferguson let go of him.

  It was dark, so Conners couldn’t see Ferguson wince. The CIA officer patted the SF soldier on the arm, then started to climb up toward the door he’d found earlier.

  “I’m going to stick the grenades in the door and jump,” Ferguson told him. “If it works, it’ll either blow a hole in the fuselage, or the door to the cockpit, or ignite the whole plane.”

  “Or it won’t work,” muttered Conners.

  “Always a possibility,” said Ferg.

  Conners curled himself against the metal, hunkering his head down. The pain of his wounds hadn’t disappeared, but his mind seemed to have pushed itself away from it. He felt as if he could think at least; he was conscious, awake, and knew he’d be awake when he died. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  It took Ferguson two tries to get back on the ledge near the door. The small metal bar that had acted as a handle for the door was about a half inch too tight to hold them together; Ferguson squeezed it back but still didn’t have enough room. He fit the Russian grenade in place and forced the stun grenade down, wedging it with his knife between the two devices. He tried to position the tip of the blade at the center of the Russian grenade, like a striker against a detonating cap, but he couldn’t really see what he was doing. The flash-bang squeezed only about a third of the way down.

  It wasn’t going to work, Ferguson thought as he gripped the top of the M84 grenade.

  Better to do something, Ferg’s father always said, even if it’s futile. You’re going to pee your pants one way or another.

  Maybe the sound of the damn flash-bang going off would scare the piss out of the terrorists, and they’d lose control of the airplane. Or maybe it would ignite the Russian grenade, shoot it through the cockpit, and put a hole in the back of the pilot.

  And maybe they’d all just go boom. There certainly were enough explosives packed into the 747.

  “So this is the way I go out, Dad,” he said. He was speaking to his own father, not Conners, though maybe in a way he’d always been talking to his dad when he talked to the older SF man.

  “See ya in heaven, boys,” said Ferguson. He pulled the pin on the grenade, heard—or thought he heard—a click, then jumped off the ledge.

  ~ * ~

  19

  OVER THE PHILIPPINES

  Rankin leaned out of the helicopter as it whipped over the compound. There was a docking area with a pair of small boats, but no helo in the flat helipad area at the side.

  “Can we get down for a look?” he asked his pilot, pointing.

  “Not a problem,” replied the pilot, who like most Filipinos had spoken English all his life. The four choppers tucked downward, buzzing the shoreline and small building in formation. They turned back to land, slowing to a hover over a dirt road at the back of the facility. Rankin covered his face as he jumped off the skids, ducking and coughing as he ran toward the buildings. Six Filipino soldiers came off the helicopters behind him, and by the time Rankin rapped on the door to the small shack they were lined up at the corner of the building, ready for a takedown. Guns and Massette had their MP-5s out directly behind Rankin.

  The soldier knocked several times, Uzi ready. He eyed the door and lock; it was flimsy, easy to kick down, but he was wary of booby traps.

  “I’m going in,” he told the others. He blew off the lock, tensing, expecting a booby trap. Nothing happened. He kicked in the door, hesitating as it flew against its hinges. But there were no explosives, no trip wires; it looked like the sleepy office of the s
leepy, one- or two-man operation Corrigan said it claimed to be.

  They went inside. There was a desk with two computers, some folders and old newspapers. Nautical memorabilia—a miniature ship’s wheel, a decorative clock— were scattered around the room gathering dust.