Another five minutes and they reached the edge of the thicker undergrowth along the south bank. Turcotte wanted to get as close to the enemy line as they could prior to Harker initiating contact. He halted in an area of especially thick underbrush.292.Harker and DeCamp wee positioned slightly under six hundred meters away from the Chinese picket line. They were about a hundred meters higher than the men they would be shooting at. They crouched among jumbled rocks and stunted pines along the first crest of the ridge that marked the northern side of the draw they had been descending.

Harker looked through the thermal scope, which he now had mounted on the sniper rifle. The rifle and scope were rated effective out to twelve hundred meters, and Harker felt confident that he could hit the soldiers he could clearly see as glowing images. He also could see Turcotte's group, a small cl.u.s.ter of glowing dots, just south of the Chinese on the near bank.

Harker counted twenty Chinese soldiers in the immediate area of the team.

Harker zeroed in on one glowing figure nearest the team. There was no wind that he would have to correct for. The hundred-meter drop required some adjustment, but Harker had done enough long-range firing to be able to account for that.

Five meters to Harker's left DeCamp was hidden. He had his sniper rifle propped between two rocks. Harker glanced at his watch again. Another minute.

Behind the two Special Forces soldiers the ma.s.s of Qian-Ling loomed, waiting for the first rays of daylight to touch it from the east.

On the other side of the world glowing figures were also being watched, but these were small dots on a ma.s.sive screen in the front of a subter-293.

ranean room. At the s.p.a.ce Command's Warning Center, deep under Cheyenne Mountain, they had the two foo fighters on-screen. They were going west over the Pacific, directly above the equator.

Harker smoothly pulled back on the trigger and the bark of the rifle echoed across the draw. A Chinese soldier, thinking he was secure in the dark, was slammed back as the 7.62mm round tore a fatal path through the man's chest.

Without conscious thought Harker did as he'd been trained. He arced the muzzle of the weapon to his second target. The man had heard the first shot but didn't know what it meant. He never would, as Harker's round hit him in the center of the chest and he tumbled down in a heap.

Harker fired all ten rounds in the magazine. Nine hits for ten shots. He reloaded a fresh magazine and decided to wait a few minutes to allow the Chinese to react.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" Kelly Reynolds asked Major Quinn. A new message from the Airlia, broadcast openly to the entire world, not in binary, but in English, had just been picked up by receivers all over the globe.

PLEASE.

DO NOT INTERFERE.

WITH.

OUR PROBES.

THEY ARE GATHERING.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION.294.

FOR OUR ARRIVAL.

ASPASIA.Quinn pointed at the front screen in the Cube. "s.p.a.ce Command is tracking a pair of foo fighters."

"What does Aspasia mean by don't interfere!"

Quinn looked past her to make sure no one was close by, then leaned forward.

"The Navy just lost a sub over the site of the foo fighter base. The Pentagon's going nuts."

"Lost a sub?" Kelly repeated. "You make it sound like they misplaced it. What happened?"

"I don't exactly know. I'm picking up cla.s.sified reports going from CINCPAC to the Pentagon, and as near as I can tell, the foo fighters did something to the sub and it's down in deep water. No survivors."

"Jesus Christ." Kelly Reynolds shook her head in dismay. "What about China?"

Quinn bit his lip. "I'm not getting straight feedback, but I get the impression there's some trouble. I'm intercepting a lot of traffic between this Zandra person and STAAR in Antarctica."

"Are they going to get out?"

"The choppers going in to pick them up are on schedule."

Kelly Reynolds shook her head. "We're going to screw this up, aren't we? Our big chance and the human race is going to screw it up."

Turcotte could see and hear movement in the Chinese lines. There was the roar of tank and ar-295.

mored personnel carriers starting their engines. Orders were being yelled.

Even with the night-vision goggles it was unclear what was happening out there. For all Turcotte knew, the Chinese might be moving the whole picket line forward. He knew they had spotted Harker's position by the green tracers from the 12.7mm machine guns mounted on top of the tanks and APCs.

"When do we move?" Nabinger whispered.

"Any minute now."

From the high ground Harker could pick out the beginnings of what appeared to be a line moving forward toward his position. Harker gave a brief whistle and DeCamp whistled in response. Harker placed his weapon down and stretched his shoulders and arms out. He took several deep breaths and leaned back against a rock. He had a few moments before he had to start killing again.

Turcotte pulled on Nabinger's arm, indicating they were going to move out.

Howes and Pressler rose up and followed. They slowly moved out of the bushes they had been hiding under.

Turcotte heard another brief burst of fire from Harker and DeCamp's position.

Turcotte was sweeping from left to right and back with the night-vision goggles.

He held the MP-5 at the ready. Off to his left he could barely discern a tank about seventy meters to north. Between the tank and the stream he could see nothing else.

Slowly they slid down into the streambed.296.

Turcotte felt his shoulders hunching, antic.i.p.ating the bullet out of the darkness, but none came. He reached back and gave Nabinger a hand as they climbed up the far bank.

Turcotte checked his watch. Another twelve hundred meters and they should be at the pickup zone. Twenty minutes and the choppers should be there also.

The nearest troops were only five hundred meters away. It was time to be moving on, Harker thought. The Chinese were getting the range. Harker briefly considered not firing again. He decided they had to. He couldn't be sure that the others had made it through yet.

Harker fired five rounds in under three seconds, shifting rapidly from target to target even as the Chinese soldiers dived for cover. DeCamp fired just as quickly. The two pulled their weapons in and slid down the loose rock, putting the outcropping between them and the enemy. Just in time, as the return fire was extremely accurate and incoming rounds cracked by overhead.

"Let's go." Harker led the way as they scrambled to the north, keeping the outcropping between them and the Chinese for as long as they could. There was only one direction for them to run: toward the top of Qian-Ling.

The PZ was a dry rice paddy surrounded by tall trees on every side. They had run into no one on the rapid kilometer-and-a-half walk to it.

Turcotte checked his watch. Ten minutes. They297.

were cl.u.s.tered on the edge of the pickup zone. Everyone's ears were straining.

Listening for the sound of rotor blades.

At eight minutes to time on target they heard blades off to the south. Too soon, thought Turcotte. But maybe they're ahead of schedule.

The blades were getting closer. Still off to the south. Then Turcotte realized what it probably was. More Chinese choppers to reinforce the first.

Turcotte leaned close to Nabinger. "You get on the first chopper that lands.

I'll get on the second. There's a thing I learned in Ranger School that we have to do now. It's called disseminating the information. That way if only one chopper makes it out, the word gets out. And there's some other things I need to know, but first tell me how we can stop Aspasia."

Nabinger nodded and began speaking.298.

Chapter 31.

The bulk of the tomb appeared right on schedule. O'Callaghan slid the Black Hawk on a course that would take them north of the man-made mountain. Five minutes out. The kilometers flashed by beneath. Four minutes. O'Callaghan could see tracers firing to the southwest.

Two minutes. The mountain was now to the south. O'Callaghan slowed down and started scanning to the right as Spence scanned to the left, looking for the IR chem lights and strobe the team should be lighting right now.

Turcotte stood at the center of the small clearing and turned his IR strobe on. He could hear more helicopters coming from the east. His mind was buzzing with what Nabinger had told him and even more with speculation: what else might Nabinger have learned from the guardian computer that he had not had time to relate?299.

O'Callaghan could see the strobe. Perfect. Nine hundred and fifty kilometers from the O'Bannion and a perfect linkup. He slid over the pickup zone to let Putnam land first. Putnam flared his Black Hawk and started to descend. O'Callaghan could see the figure with the strobe extinguish it. Putnam brought the bird to a halt on the ground. Two men ran out and got on board.

The first Black Hawk started to lift.

Turcotte watched the first helicopter with Nabinger and Pressler, the medic, on board, go up into the sky. He ran forward as the second bird landed, followed by Howes.

Turcotte leapt on board.

O'Callaghan did a quick scan of the area as he lifted and turned east.

"We got company," he said, seeing the navigational lights of an MI-4 helicopter, four kilometers away near the mountain.

O'Callaghan knew the Chinese helicopter couldn't see him yet, as the Black Hawk was blacked out and the Chinese pilot didn't have goggles. He wasn't about to give it a chance to find him.

O'Callaghan opened the throttle up and pushed the cyclic forward. The Black Hawk shot forward past Putnam, who immediately followed.

300.

Harker took a quick glance over his shoulder as he climbed and saw the bright searchlights of two helicopters probing the darkness near the site he and DeCamp had occupied only minutes ago. On the ground Harker could also see the headlights of numerous trucks that were bringing more troops into the area.

Their only chance was to get over the top of Qian-Ling and then-that train of thought was broken off in Harker's mind as he watched two Chinese helicopters fly to the top of the mountain tomb and settle down. They landed about a hundred meters apart and then took off, heading back down toward the coast.

Harker turned to DeCamp. "They're putting troops in ahead of us."

DeCamp wearily rested the b.u.t.t of his weapon on the ground. "What now?"

Harker weighed their options. "We keep going up the mountain. Those choppers can only carry ten troops on board. The odds are better."

Turcotte grabbed a headset off the roof of the cargo bay and put it on. They were going over the trees and the chopper was moving fast, but in the wrong direction. Turcotte keyed the intercom. "We've got to go back. We've got two more men on the mountain!"

"Jesus!" O'Callaghan exclaimed. He could see helicopters moving up there and tracers cutting through the air.

O'Callaghan pressed the b.u.t.ton that transmit-301.

ted to the other chopper. "Putnam, run for the coast. I've got more pa.s.sengers to pick up."

Putnam didn't need to be told twice. "Roger that." The other Black Hawk raced off to the east as O'Callaghan brought his chopper around on a tight turn to the west.

DeCamp discerned the enemy soldiers first. He gripped Harker on the arm and pointed. Harker stopped and squinted into the darkness. There were ten of them.

Two hundred meters away and heading downslope. The Chinese were spread out, weapons at the ready, with twenty meters between each man. Harker looked around quickly. In the ground between the two parties there was a small knoll of boulders rising slightly above the rest of the ground. It was about a twenty meters ahead of where he and DeCamp now stood. He pointed it out to DeCamp.

"We'll make our stand there." "We've got company," O'Callaghan yelled through the intercom as he accelerated the helicopter and jerked it hard to the left. Those in the back were tumbled on top of each other. Turcotte got on one knee and looked out as two Chinese helicopters roared by out of the southwest and started to circle east.

"The next one will be a gun run," O'Callaghan said. "They're circling to come back."

The AWACS's control room continued to track the action. They had the one Black Hawk escap-302.

ing to the east, the other inexplicably turning back to the west, flying near two blips indicating Chinese helicopters.

Things got worse in a heartbeat as one of Colonel Zycki's operators called out. "We've got four fast movers lifting off out of the airbase outside Xi'an, sir."

Zycki swore. "Jesus. This thing's getting out of control. The Chinese must have picked up the Black Hawks on local radar. How long till the jets are in the area near the Black Hawk?"

The a.n.a.lyst next to the radar operator quickly calculated. "Twelve minutes, sir."

"How far out are the F-117's?"

"They can make intercept, sir, but we need authorization for them to go hot."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n. Get me this Zandra person on the line."

Harker and DeCamp settled in among the boulders on the crest of the small knoll and watched the Chinese squad approach in the moonlight. They were only a hundred meters away now and moving slowly toward them. Harker whispered to DeCamp, "Another fifty meters and we start firing."

DeCamp checked his submachine gun and insured he had a round in the chamber and the magazine was seated properly. Harker laid out two more magazines for quicker reloading.303.

"This is Zandra. Go ahead." She was ignoring the glare of Lisa Duncan standing next to her, listening to the report from the AWACS.

"Yes, ma'am. Things are getting hairy over there. We've got one Black Hawk heading for the coast, but it's got a h.e.l.l of a long way to go. The other's turned west for some reason. They've obviously been picked up on local radar as we've got two Chinese helicopters vectoring in on it. They're about a minute out from intercept. We've also got four fast movers scrambled out of Xi'an. They're nine minutes out. Our F-117's will be in range to intercept, but we need authorization for them to fire."

"I understand," Zandra said.

Zycki's voice came out of the box. "Ma'am, neither of those helicopters is going to make it out without help. Those Chinese helicopters vectoring in are probably armed."