They ran for what felt like hours. It was the same routine the whole way—darting from cover to cover, watching for Russian patrols and sentries. They were able to avoid everyone else that they came across. Security seemed to be getting looser, not tighter, as they got deeper into enemy territory and closer to the airfield. There were more houses, which made running and hiding easier, and the airport was on the north end of town; they didn’t have to go through the city center, or even go past many buildings to get there.
But for all the ease they were having, and the jokes they were telling, Jack was growing more and more uneasy. The airport was going to be hard to access. And the lambda was going to be guarded.
They ran past a group of three ponds to a large house.
“Okay,” Josi said. “It’s right over there.” She pointed to a street, and to the field beyond it.
“It’s dark,” Rich said. “Is the power out again?”
Aubrey shook her head and pointed at a house to the south that still had a porch light on. “It’s probably—”
Jack held up his hand for her to be quiet. He was listening. The airfield lit up as two dozen rockets shot into the air, just in time to meet four very low-flying American planes.
The whole house seemed to shake as the planes flew over. Two of the planes—they were Super Hornets—were hit by the rockets and burst into flame. But all four of them managed to drop their bombs, which hit the airfield like an earthquake.
The house they were huddled beside shuddered violently, its windows warping and shattering.
“I am getting so sick of glass,” Rich started to say, but another wave of American planes came right over them louder than a freight train, louder than anything Jack could compare it to. A second set of explosions rocked the airfield and Jack was knocked to the ground by the force of the blast. He watched the sleek black jets—F-35 Lightnings—veer up in a sudden climb.
Instead of climbing and disappearing, they slowed, stopped, and then began to fall.
Jack glanced back at the porch light, but Rich was ahead of him.
“Power’s out.”
All four of the aircraft tumbled helplessly back to Earth, exploding in the fields beyond the airstrip.
“Jack,” Aubrey said. “Find me the glider.”
So much of the airport was burning that it was easy to see across it.
“There are two runways,” Josi said. “And they only hit one of them.”
“Where’s the glider?”
“I’m looking,” Jack said. “It might be burning rubble. I can see the remains of six Russian jets.”
“The airport is laid out in a triangle,” Josi said. “Two runways, and then a road connecting them. There’s a row of hangars and buildings on the south side—I think that’s what just got bombed.”
Aubrey was on her feet. “We need the glider. Where the glider is, the lambda will be.”
“There it is,” Jack said, and pointed. “Over by the far buildings—the ones that didn’t get smashed.”
“Let’s get closer,” Aubrey said. “Quick.”
Jack stood up, hating to move when there was so much light, and ran through the yard of the house and past two more. He stopped at a row of trees. They were at one point of the triangle, where the two runways came together. A tank was sitting quietly at the point, its crew watching the fires off to the west.
“Damn it,” Jack said, and pointed. “The glider is being hooked up to a towplane.”
“Then the lambda’s going to be on it. What guards are there?”
Jack pointed. “There’s that tank. And we can probably bet there are enough soldiers to fire all of those surface-to-air missiles we saw.”
“Those weren’t coming from a vehicle?” Rich asked.
Josi answered. “They were coming from all over. I’d guess Grinches or Gimlets.”
Jack looked at her. “What kind of names are those?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aubrey said urgently. “Is the lambda in the glider?”
Jack closed his eyes and tried to focus in on it. “It’s too close to the fires,” he said. “I can’t make out something like breathing.”
“Where will it take off?”
“Straight ahead,” Josi said. “Past the tank. The other runway is too bombed out.”
“Rich,” Aubrey said. “You’re good with that rifle?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re our sniper. Josi, you stay with him and keep him safe.”
“What am I supposed to shoot at?” he asked.
“Don’t let that glider get off the ground,” she said. “Take out the towplane or the glider once they get over to the runway. They’ll be driving down the runway coming toward you here. Shoot the pilot or the tires or something. But not until they’re on the runway. We have to make sure the lambda is inside.”
“Should I stay here?”
“Wherever you have a clean shot.”
Jack looked at Aubrey. “What about me?”
“You come with me. We’re going to find that lambda, and kill him.”
FIFTY-ONE
THE AIRPORT WAS ONCE SURROUNDED by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, but the bombs had blown it to steel ribbons. Aubrey and Jack could have easily run onto the small airfield; there wasn’t much to it—just two landing strips and a handful of buildings. But if they did, they would be bathed in firelight and clearly visible. Russian soldiers were trying to extinguish the flames and soon they’d patch the runway. Aubrey could see a bulldozer standing by.
“They’re going to have to turn the power back on,” Aubrey said to Jack. “To get that towplane up in the air, and get the bulldozer working.”
“Can we use that to our advantage?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
She ran, her Beretta out and in a two-hand grip, to a cluster of trees—the last trees before the open airport road.
“Tell me what you see,” she said, breathing heavily. They’d spent the night jogging and hiding, and she was already feeling tired. She couldn’t do this whole operation invisible.
He pointed west, close to the building with the glider. “There’s a sniper on top of that water tower, or grain silo. I’m not sure what it is. I can see five or six Russian fighters still intact after the bombing. Pilots are getting in them.”
“What about ground troops?”
“There’re about thirty around the fires. None of them are paying attention to anything else. The glider is hooked up to the towplane now, and there are pilots inside both.”
“I’ve got to get over there,” Aubrey said, and watched the sniper. “How close do you think he is?”
“Not close enough,” Jack said. “He’ll see you even if you’re invisible.”
“Can you hit him from here?”
“You’re a better shot than me.”
“When my eyes are good,” she said, adjusting her glasses and trying to get a clear look at the man. “And I don’t have a rifle, and yours doesn’t have a scope.”
Jack paused before he answered. “I think I can hit him. But if I don’t, we’re going to have hell rain down on us.”
“How far away is he?”
“I’d say two hundred yards.”
“So I’ve just got to get sixty yards before he can’t see me.” She thought of how fast she could run, about their timed trials in basic training, when she was carrying all her gear. Right now her armor felt like she had rocks piled over each shoulder.
“He’s pointed this way,” Jack said.
“Then you’ll have to take the shot,” Aubrey said.
“We should get Rich. He’s way better than me.”
Aubrey shook her head, glancing at the men putting out the fires. They were spraying foam from a fire truck. It looked like it had been trying to drive close to the burning airplanes when the power went out.
“The noise of those fire hoses will cover your shot,” she said. “You’ve got to do it now.”
“But—??
?
“Just do it,” she said, “and I’ll use it as covering fire, and I’ll run. So even if you miss, I’ll get close to him.” She was trembling as she said it, but she tried not to let him see. Hopefully he wasn’t listening to her racing heartbeat.
Jack was quiet as he knelt beside a tree and aimed his M16. “Aubrey.”
“What?”
“This is the real deal.”
“I know,” she said, trying to calm herself with long, slow breaths.
“I want you to know—”
She cut him off. “Stop. Just stop. I know where you’re going, and we can’t do this right now.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I love you.”
Aubrey felt a tear in her eye, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. “Just take the shot.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, too.”
All was silent, except for the pop and crackle of the fires off to their right.
The lights came back on.
“Damn it,” Jack said. “Okay. On the count of three.”
Aubrey watched the tower, not sure she could even see the sniper up there. Her heart seemed to beat a hundred times in the three seconds Jack counted down.
He fired, a sharp crack splitting the air.
Aubrey jumped from the trees, sprinting toward the tower. As she ran she disappeared, knowing she had to get sixty yards before the sniper—who might have been alive or dead—fired back.
There was another gunshot, and then another. They weren’t sniper shots. They were coming from Jack. He must have missed, and was now just trying to keep the sniper’s head down. She heard one ping off the giant steel tower.
And then she was close enough to him, out of the sniper’s vision, invisible. She kept running, slowing only slightly as she approached the base of the tower. She nearly collided with a fence that she hadn’t seen. It was surrounding the tower on three sides.
She breathed a sigh of relief, though she heard the sniper returning fire on Jack.
She stumbled around the edge of the fence, ready to climb the ladder and take out the sniper with her Beretta, but the power was on and that meant the glider could be moving.
A blaring, metallic voice burst above all the noise.
“Amerikanskiye voiska priyehali. Amerikanskiye voiska priyehali.”
She searched the darkness for the glider. She saw dozens of troops scrambling around the broken fence, apparently not sure whether they should be putting out the fires or defending against an unseen enemy.
The glider was beyond them, its black body lit orange by the gleam of the flames. It was attached to a small single-propeller plane, like a large Cessna, and it was parked in front of the largest of the buildings at the airport.
No one was shooting anymore. Not Jack or the sniper. Aubrey didn’t know what that meant, and she had to force herself not to think about it.
He’s okay, she told herself as she started to run toward the glider. He’s okay.
The men in front of her were abandoning the fire, forming a loose battle line where the airfield’s fence used to be. Two men were shouting at them to get them organized. Aubrey thought about how easy it would be to shoot one of those officers, but she didn’t need to. She could slip through the ranks easily enough.
Then Aubrey fell to the ground, landing on her butt and sprawling onto her back. She heard the report of the rifle a moment later, but she was too dazed to realize what it meant.
FIFTY-TWO
JACK SAW AUBREY FALL, AND he rose to his feet. No.
There had to be a second sniper somewhere. Jack had finally hit the one on the tower after six shots, but there had to be another one. And that second sniper had shot Aubrey. And she’d fallen. And she wasn’t getting up.
There was nowhere for Jack to run. If he moved from the trees, the string of soldiers—a full platoon—would open fire on him.
She has to be alive, he told himself.
Jack took aim at one of the officers, let out a slow breath, and squeezed the trigger.
The man dropped like a bag of wet sand.
No, she really had to be alive. If she were dead, she’d reappear, and she was only twenty feet in front of the line of soldiers. She was alive.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt. She still wasn’t moving.
Jack took aim at the second man, who’d been herding the men into line—the man who had to be their commander. Jack squeezed the trigger and watched that man fall, clutching his hip.
Jack’s rifle must be like a beacon in the darkness—a bright muzzle flash in a dark cluster of trees in a dark night. A moment later, bullets began to whiz past his head. Jack dropped prone and started returning fire.
Talk to me, Aubrey.
He could hear the breathing of dozens of people, but he couldn’t pick out hers. Worse, he had no idea where the sniper was who had hit her. He had no way to help other than to engage an entire platoon.
An entire platoon that was advancing.
Crap.
FIFTY-THREE
AUBREY LAY STUNNED IN THE dirt, pain digging into her shoulder like a dozen daggers.
She was having trouble getting enough air—she wasn’t sure if she was getting any at all.
She tested her right hand. It seemed like it was working, though as she tried to curl her bicep bolts of electricity shot all the way from her elbow to her neck. She felt for the wound with her left hand, and found a bloody spot torn into her shoulder. She didn’t prod—it hurt far too much for that—but she guessed that the bullet had gone through her collarbone.
Above her, the row of soldiers was moving and firing, which meant they’d seen a target. Jack was under fire.
She had to be bleeding badly, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to do for a shoulder wound. She couldn’t put a tourniquet on it. And there wasn’t time.
That glider was still out there. And so was a sniper.
She didn’t dare lift her head. If the sniper had shot when she was standing, but hadn’t shot her while she was moving her arms just now, then he couldn’t see her on the ground. She assumed that meant he was standing—maybe somewhere in the center of the airfield?—and wasn’t perched on the roof of a building. Someone on a roof would see she was still moving.
“Jack,” she said, with a wheeze. “I’m okay, I guess. If you could find that sniper for me, I’d kiss you senseless.”
With a grunt, Aubrey rolled onto her stomach, and began to pull herself forward through the dirt with her left arm—her hand that held the Beretta. Her right felt absolutely useless. She wondered how she’d be able to aim her gun if she ever got close enough to that lambda.
“And you’ve got super senses, Jack,” she wheezed as she moved, “so kissing you senseless would be some serious kissing.”
There wasn’t any nearby cover—ahead of her were the burning remains of several planes, and to the west were the six Russian fighters, just starting to taxi away from the fires. Much farther to her west was the large building where the glider sat. Since there was nowhere else to go, she began to scramble over there.
It was slow going—slow and horribly painful. But she forced herself to go on. She held her right arm to her side, trying not to bump it while she dragged herself with her good arm. The glider still hadn’t moved. Maybe it was waiting for the tarmac to clear of the fighter jets, or maybe it was waiting for the lambda to be somehow prepared.
She had one smoke grenade. She could throw it and use it to obscure herself from the sniper, but she didn’t know where he was. She might as well be throwing it blind.
Still, it might slow the fighters, which might slow the glider.
Or it might make them go faster, if they knew they were under close attack.
She heard a pair of loud bangs behind her, much louder than the chatter of automatic weapons, and for a moment, all the shooting stopped.
She didn’t wait to find out what it was. She kept crawling toward the building.
; FIFTY-FOUR
JACK WAS UP AND RUNNING as soon as the flashbang grenades exploded. He crashed through the trees and bushes, forcing his way out of the cluster of greenery that the platoon of soldiers had been swarming around. Jack threw a fragmentation grenade as he ran, then a smoke one for good measure, and then he was sprinting west toward Aubrey and the sniper’s tower.
He wished he could turn invisible, and wished it even more as soon as the bullets started to fly around him. A few were coming from the platoon—the platoon that had lost at least eight men in their advance toward him, and surely men from the frag grenade. Pops of new shots were coming from a different angle—from the center of the airfield.
He could see Aubrey as he ran, saw her holding one arm tight to her chest as she dragged herself with the other.
It was only now that he realized he had no idea where he was going. He’d had to get away from the advancing platoon, and it only made sense that he run after Aubrey, but he was in the open, completely visible to everyone, and only armed with his rifle.
If he could just sit down somewhere, he probably would be able to see the sniper in the dark. But the sniper was already taking shots at him. As soon as Jack stopped running he’d be dead.
He turned slightly, darting around the fence and stopping behind the tower.
He was backed into a corner. There was nowhere else to run. Even as he began to climb the ladder to the top of the three-story tower, he knew it was a dead end. He couldn’t shoot everyone from there—not an entire Russian platoon. And while he could hide up there for a little while, eventually someone would get a shot at him—maybe from the roof of another building, or maybe with a rocket-propelled grenade.
This wasn’t a hiding spot—it was a suicide mission.
But he’d get that sniper. He’d clear the way for Aubrey.
He reached the top of the tower a moment later, bullets pinging off the steel around him, and he found the Russian sniper—the one he had killed.
Jack lay flat, a bullet winging past his head, and searched the airfield. There. The other sniper was on his stomach in the grass in the center of the large triangle-shaped airfield.