Corsair

The heat seeker sent minute corrections to the missile’s fins, aiming it straight for the still-hot barrels of the Hind’s Gatling gun. The pilot tried to pull up at the last second, so the Javelin missed the gun but impacted directly under the cockpit. The explosion tore the helicopter in half, its front section nearly disintegrating, while the hull and tail boom reared up from the force of the blast. Because the main rotor was still fully engaged, the chopper lost all stability and began to spin, smoke pouring from the blackened hole that had been the cockpit. When the chopper canted over almost ninety degrees, the blades lost lift, and the ten-ton Hind crashed to earth. Its aluminum rotors tore furrows into the ground until they blasted apart, sending shrapnel careening at near-supersonic speeds. So much grit was sucked into the Isotov turbines that they flared out and seized.

The chopper’s self-sealing fuel tanks had done their job. There were no secondary explosions, and the flames around the engines’ exhausts quickly starved for gas.

Mark blew out a long breath.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” Linc drawled. He then called back to Linda, “You okay back there?”

“I know what James Bond’s martini feels like.”

“Sorry about that.”

She poked her head back into the cabin. “You guys took down the Hind, so it was an observation, not a complaint. What is this place? Some sort of border station?”

“Probably,” Linc replied.

“Take us over to the Hind, will you?” Mark asked. He was studying the downed chopper through the FLIR.

“That isn’t such a good idea. We should clear out while the clearing’s good.”

“I don’t think this is a border station,” Murph said. “I need a closer look at the helo to be sure. Also, we have to do a sweep for any communications gear left intact. If there are survivors out here, the last thing we need is them calling in reinforcements.”

Linc dropped the transmission into gear and drove the quarter mile to the wreckage. The Pig wasn’t even stopped before Mark threw open his door. Like a primitive hunter approaching a dangerous prey that he wasn’t sure was dead, Mark crept closer to the downed Hind. Linda was back up in the hatch, watching the smoldering ruins of the camp over her machine gun’s iron sights.

“What are you looking for?” she asked without looking down from her perch.

“Not for,” Mark corrected. “At.”

“Okay, then, at.”

“The air intakes aren’t normal. They’re oversized. Also, the stubs of the rotor blades.”

“And?” Linc prompted from the Pig’s cab.

Mark turned to look at him. “This chopper’s modified for high-altitude operations. I bet if I checked the fuel lines for their turbines, they’ll be larger than normal, too. And this”—he slapped a hard-point mount under the gunship’s wing—“is the launch rail for an AA-7 Apex missile.”

“So?”

“The Apex isn’t part of the typical load-out for a Hind. These are ground-attack choppers. The Apex is designed for air-to-air combat, specifically for the MiG-23 Flogger.”

“How can you be so sure?” Linda asked.

“Weapons design is what I did before coming to the Corporation. I lived and breathed this stuff,” he replied. “You guys have put two and two together, right?”

“Air-to-air missile, high-altitude chopper”—Linc made a motion like he was balancing these two elements in his hands—“it isn’t exactly a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. They used this bird to shoot down the Secretary’s plane.”

Linda asked, “So is this place Libyan or some terrorist compound?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Mark replied, stepping back into the Pig. “Let’s check it out and see if we can come up with an answer.”

They drove into the confines of the desert base. The tents were little more than ash, and the fronds had burned off all the palm trees. Linc braked next to the body of one of the Hind’s mechanics, placing the Pig between the corpse and the open desert. Mark jumped down and turned the body over. In the wavering light of the nearby fires, he could see a chunk of metal, probably from the tank of the fuel truck, was embedded in the man’s chest. What Mark didn’t find were rank insignia on the uniform or any kind of identification in the man’s pockets, not even dog tags.

He checked several more corpses, never venturing far from the protection of the Pig. No one showed any rank or carried ID. He poked around the ruined tents, finding a satellite phone, which he pocketed, and a big radio transceiver, which had been destroyed by the blast, but nothing to indicate who these men were or whom they served.

“Well?” Linda asked when he clambered into the cab of the Pig and closed the door for the last time.

“This place is a complete cipher.” He raked his hand though his stringy hair in a gesture of frustration. “We know the how of the crash, but we still don’t know the who or the why.”

“I’m not worried,” Linc said as he started them away from the camp and toward the Tunisian border. “I bet the Chairman had those two questions pegged five minutes after landing in that other helo.”

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