Code of Honor полностью

A branch snapped in the foliage to Adara’s left, and Chavez caught a glimpse of brown movement. One of Habib’s men had flanked them. Chavez swung his pistol, but Konner lunged into the brush, leaving his shotgun behind. The brush thrashed for a moment, and then the lanky Papuan crept back to the group in a half-crouch, his grandfather’s bloody thighbone dagger clutched in his fist.

“Thanks,” Chavez whispered, scanning for others.

“You give me medicines,” Konner said. “We be even Steven.”

“Okay,” Adara said into the sat phone. She was talking to the air boss on the ship now, and the pilot who was remotely operating the Fire Scout from the USS Fort Worth. She held out her hand to Chavez, who knew exactly what she wanted. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and cued up the compass, aiming it at the UAV to give her an azimuth. “We’re lined up,” she said. “The Fire Scout is directly over the tree with the first group of bad guys. They are armed and hostile. We’re seventy-five meters due north if you line us up. Second set of bad guys another fifty meters to our north, spread out.”

Adara listened and then said, “Roger that. We don’t have a choice.”

She turned to Chavez and Konner. “Hug the ground, boys,” she said.

The Hydra 70 laser-guided rocket fired by the MQ-8 had a blast radius of ten meters and a lethal fragmentation radius of fifty meters. Delivering a ten-pound warhead, the slender rocket traveled at speeds approaching Mach 3. At this range, it didn’t have time to reach full speed, but the explosion was nearly instantaneous from the time of firing. Bits of dirt and foliage and probably drug smugglers rained down on Chavez and the others. He felt the blast as much as he heard it, and still wondered how long it was going to be before he’d need hearing aids.

Incredibly, stupidly, the men uphill began to fire at the helicopter.

“They’re too close for a missile,” Chavez said.

Adara simply smiled, pointing seaward again as the MH-60 Romeo Seahawk from the Fort Worth hove into view above the smoldering hibiscus tree.

The big sister of the little Fire Scout flew directly overhead, with Adara guiding her in. A half-second later, the remotely piloted helicopter’s GAU-17 “Vulcan” electric Gatling gun began to burp lead into the trees at six thousand rounds per minute.

The MH-60 pilot made two passes to surveil the hillside and then overflew the twisted remains of the hibiscus tree one more time. Satisfied the threat was neutralized, he gave the all-clear for Chavez and the others to come to the beach for pickup. The little Fire Scout remained aloft, providing overwatch.

The MH-60 pilots weren’t keen about spending any more time than necessary in Indonesian airspace, but since the orders to pick up this package had come directly from the secretary of defense, they did as Adara requested and flew seven miles down the beach, where they dropped off Konner Toba a mile past his house so he couldn’t be identified by any neighbors getting off the helicopter.

The Papuan shook Chavez’s hand and then cried when Adara gave him her entire med kit. “You good folk,” he shouted, as the helicopter prepared to lift off from the beach. “Me say prayer for you.”

Chavez collapsed into his seat, wounded, exhausted, and wondering to whom Konner Toba planned on directing his prayer.

President Gumelar used the telephone aboard Marine One during the forty-minute flight to Nusa Kambangan Island. He made a quick call to his military adviser first, clearing the way for Marine One and the accompanying aircraft to overfly the country unmolested. Not surprisingly, he called his press secretary next, speaking in rapid-fire Bahasa Indonesian. Ryan couldn’t understand the conversation but got the gist of it when Gumelar used the words hashtag and China in the same contemptuous-sounding phrase. Like everywhere else in the world with access to the Internet, Indonesians were sensitive to public sentiment. Astroturfing what looked like a grassroots campaign to question the validity of Chinese influence in Indonesia would take some political pressure off the president. Such a life ring might come at the expense of Chinese Indonesians — but Gumelar had always struck Ryan as the sort of man who would climb on top of his own mother in order to save himself from drowning.

Only after he’d created a backstop for himself did he call his commanding general of the Indonesian National Police. Marine One was fifteen minutes out when he was finally assured that everything would be in order when they arrived on the prison island. Gumelar passed the phone to his security man, who spoke to the Marine One crew chief with instructions on where to fly. Sergeant Scott in turn relayed the instructions to the pilots, who passed the word to the other aircraft in the presidential lift.