Raven Strike

“I wish I could do it that easy,” said Zen.

“Then you’d have to take the whole package. Headaches, not really knowing who you are. Not trusting your body.”

“I know a little bit about that.”

Stoner nodded.

“The doctor says some of what they did to me might help you,” said Stoner.

“Me?”

“Is that why you’re hanging around?”

“You mean my legs?”

“Exactly.”

The enthusiasm had been replaced by something else—anger.

“No,” said Zen. “I’ve been down that road. A lot. They’ve done a lot of things trying to help me to walk again. None of them worked, Mark. This is what I am. This where I am. It’s just the way it is.”

“That’s too bad,” said Stoner.

The silence was more awkward than even Stoner’s question.

“I come to see you because we’re friends,” said Zen, trying to fill it. “You saved Brea

“Yeah,” he said after a very long pause. Zen wondered if he really did.

“And we were friends before,” said Zen. “Remember that?”

“Vaguely,” said Stoner.

“And . . .” Zen hesitated. “I was . . . sorry I couldn’t protect you and the others in that helicopter. I always felt . . . as if I should have done something more. I should have gone against orders and figured something out. Whatever. Something . . .”

Stoner looked at him for what seemed an eternity. “It’s OK,” he said finally. “I understand.”

Then he went back to pumping more iron. Zen glanced at his watch. He had to leave.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

“I’ll be ready.”

He did remember. Everything.

Mark Stoner sat on the edge of the weight bench, thinking about dying, remembering how it had all happened.

It wasn’t Zen’s fault at all. Zen wasn’t anywhere near at the time. Even if he had been, there was no guarantee he could have done anything. None.

He himself had accepted the risks. That was the nature of the job.

Zen had risked his life to get him back here alive. They were more than even, the way those things worked.

It was good to have a friend.

He rose and took two more plates from the rack, slipping them on the bar one at a time.

It would be good to go to the game. Baseball was a good thing.

Even if the hot dogs gave him heartburn.

Chapter 4

Southeastern Sudan

The Brothers were called to prayer as the sun set, joining Muslims around the world in turning toward Mecca to fulfill the requirements of their faith.

Just as the prayer was ending, a trio of small rockets arced over the advanced lookout posts and struck the guard posts at the main entrance. A split second later a half-dozen more struck the gutted bus used as the gate, obliterating it.

The rockets looked like Russian-made Grads. Which they were. Mostly.

Ordinary Grads were extremely simple weapons, mass-produced and exported around the word, including to Hezbollah, which used them against Israel. As originally designed, they sat in a tube and were fired. In the original version, the tubes were massed together and mounted on the back of a truck.

These three rockets were fired from tubes on the ground. But their rear sections included stabilizers and steering gear that made them considerably more accurate than the originals. The mechanisms were interlaced with explosives, which meant they disintegrated when they landed.

The real alteration was in the nose, where the explosive used an aluminum alloy mixed with a more common plastic explosive base to produce an explosive power some eleven times more destructive than the original warheads.

A tenth missile—this one unguided—flew a few feet farther, landing harmlessly on the roadway behind the post. The charge in it was stock, or at least appeared so. It failed to ignite properly, fuming but not exploding. This in fact was its intent: evidence for anyone who had a chance to see it that the attack had been launched by a rival group.

A dozen men died instantly. The other fighters in the camp reacted with indignation, grabbing their rifles and rushing to defend the camp and avenge the insult to their beliefs. They were met with a hail of gunfire from the Marines, who had spent the past two hours creeping up the hills into position. At roughly the same moment, another dozen rockets were fired at two sniper posts and four gun positions overlooking the camp. The sniper positions were essentially depressions in the rocks, and firing so many missiles at them was arguably overkill; the resulting explosions caused small landslides, not only obliterating the men there but turning the positions into exposed ravines that could no longer be used for defense.

Even as the dust from the rocket strikes was settling, the first mortar shells began raining down on the positions. These were standard-issue, Marine Corps high explosive M720 rounds, armed with M734 Multioption fuses set for near surface burst—not fancy, especially compared to the weapons Whiplash was deploying, but extremely effective. Fired from a range of roughly 3,000 meters, the rounds exploded behind the first wave of enemy troops, then walked inward toward the defenses, in effect sweeping the enemy toward the front line.

Da

In contrast to the noisy action at the “front” of the camp, the Whiplash team’s descent was entirely silent and, in the dark, practically invisible.

“Target area,” Da

“ICS, target and eliminate enemy in designated box A3,” Da

The AB-2C was a specially modified version of the B-2A, prepared under Office of Special Technology supervision as part of the Air Force program to investigate replacements for the AC-130. The AB-2C was essentially just a test bed for the weapon system; it was very likely that the final design would be completely automated. But in the meantime, the two men and one woman aboard as crew relished the chance to show what they and their aircraft could do.

Unlike her conventional gunship forebears, the modified stealth bomber carried no howitzers or ca

The forward laser of the AB-2C burned holes in the skulls of the two mujahideen ma

Meanwhile, Da

“I’m in,” said Sugar, landing just to his left on the roof of the building in the center of the targeted compound.