“And soon. There are no survivors today, but perhaps one of their officers was able to get off an emergency message during the attack, quick as it was.”
“Even if they didn’t get off a message, the fact that none of them will be calling in a report will alert their command. Are there other army units in the area?”
“None more than a day’s journey away.”
“Then you’re right. We need to get rolling.”
“Any word from your pilot?”
“Not yet.” Pearce checked his watch. “She won’t be landing for another twenty minutes. I told her to maintain radio silence for security.”
“That is wise. Please be sure to inform me when you have news of my granddaughter.”
“Of course. But don’t worry, Judy is a great pilot.”
Pearce smiled to comfort the old man. He was telling the truth. Judy was a great pilot, but he was still worried. Murphy’s Law FUBAR’d more ops than he cared to remember. He wouldn’t relax until Judy and the girl were safe on the ground.
Judy was still five minutes from the Niger border when the alarm blared. An air-to-air missile had locked onto the Aviocar. Her scope indicated the attack plane was some thirty miles behind her and closing fast. A military aircraft, no doubt.
She had no information at all about the Mali air force, but Ian had mentioned something about the Soviets earlier so she hoped that the jet behind her was just as antiquated, even if it was lethal. But even old, the jet behind her was still a heck of a lot faster than her two turboprops. She wondered how much time she’d have before it would launch its missiles. She guessed the military pilot probably required a visual confirmation. In her mind, that gave her thirty seconds, max.
Judy glanced over at the girl in the copilot seat. She was still out cold, which was good. Judy didn’t want the child awake, especially if things went sideways.
Judy stomped on the right rudder control and slammed the yoke into the firewall, banking the plane hard into a steep turning dive, hoping beyond hope that she could shake the radar lock. The negative g’s tingled in her gut and her rear end lifted out of the chair, pressing her small torso against the seat harness. Three seconds later, she reversed, stomping on the left rudder control and yanking the yoke as hard as she could toward her chest, lifting the plane in a steep left climb, pressing her hard against the chair at the same time her body rolled against the belts. She was riding the roller coaster from hell. Judy glanced over at the sleeping girl, her head pressed against the bulkhead. The alarm kept blaring. Not good. Maybe she deserved it, but the girl didn’t.
One last shot.
The Aviocar was a flying truck, nothing more. No weapons, and slow as molasses. Electronic countermeasures and chaff would be a waste. Any jet jock worth his salt would get a look at the old girl, flip on his gun switch, and have some target practice. A flying fish in a barrel. But Ian had devised a trick. He removed the active homing radar unit from a decommissioned AIM-54 Phoenix antiaircraft missile and installed it in the Aviocar. Maybe the old transport plane couldn’t carry a long-range antiaircraft missile like the Phoenix, but it had the wherewithal to carry a small, secondary radar, didn’t it?
And that’s just what he did. The radar blip on Judy’s scope angled hard off her tail and reversed course, dropping altitude and picking up speed, racing away like a scalded cat, silencing the shrieking missile alarm in her cockpit ten seconds later.
Thanks, Ian, I owe you one, she thought. It had been a long time since she’d last seen him. Time to fix that. Maybe she’d even buy him a beer.
Pearce, Early, Mossa, and his fighters gathered up several cans of ammo and five machine guns from the dead Malian troops and loaded them into the Toyotas. But there were too many AK-47s to haul, so they spiked the barrels by bending them into right angles. Any pistols they didn’t take they disassembled, ruining the firing springs and tossing the rest of the gun parts in all directions. Anything else lethal or of use to the Mali army was loaded into the trucks and the trucks set on fire. The BTR was left intact, but Moctar rigged a booby-trap grenade beneath the driver’s seat. The first man who sat in it would trigger the spring-loaded mechanism.
