Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Sasha didn’t know what was happening…except in a strange way, she did. It was exactly what she’d been afraid of; they had changed the plan, and now chaos was descending.

They’re going to kill me next, she thought, and maybe that was okay. Everyone died, no matter how they fought against that inevitable outcome. Life, with all its endless unpredictable possibilities, always reduced to zero in the end, the final victory of order over chaos.

But the Delta team leader didn’t shoot her; he didn’t even point his gun at her.

“Sorry you had to see that,” he shouted. “But if you’ll just sit tight, everything will make sense in a little while.”

Sasha very much doubted that.





SEVEN


Sigler was the last to climb aboard the second Black Hawk. As he got in, he flashed a thumb’s up to the crew chief and shouted: “Last man!”

Then the crew chief did something unexpected. He held up his hand with forefinger and middle finger extended, just like the peace sign, or V for Victory…or, Sigler realized, the number two. The crew chief was telling him to switch to channel two on his radio, which was preset with the Night Stalkers’ frequency.

“This is Cipher One-Six,” Sigler said when the he’d made the switch. “Do you have traffic for me?”

“Cipher, this is Beehive Six-Four. I’ve lost contact with Beehive Six-Six, and they are presently heading away from our position on a bearing of three-three-zero. Do you know what’s up? Over.”

Beehive Six-Six was the Black Hawk with Rainer’s group, and the compass heading meant they were flying north-northwest. Ramadi lay to the south.

“Standby.” He switched to the Delta channel. “Cipher Six, this is Cipher One-Six. Come in, over.”

No answer. He tried two more times, unsuccessfully. He was about to switch back to update the pilot, when a voice sounded in his earpiece. “Cipher One-Six, this is Eagle-Eye Three. What the hell’s going on?”

Even without the callsign, Sigler recognized the voice of Lewis Aleman. The tall, athletic sniper shared Parker’s interest in science and technology, and the two men often hung out together, salivating over the Sharper Image catalog like it was the Sport Illustrated swimsuit issue.

“Wondering that myself, Eagle-Eye. Are you guys on the bird?” Sigler saw the crew chief motioning for his attention again, but waited for Aleman to answer in the affirmative. “Roger, Eagle-Eye. Standby.”

He switched to the Night Stalkers’ frequency. “Go for Cipher element.”

“Cipher, this is Beehive Six-Four. Beehive Six-Six is…they’re bugging out, and they ain’t taking our calls. This is your show, Cipher. What do I do?”

Sigler’s brow furrowed in disbelief; there was no protocol for a situation like this. He leaned over the crew chief’s shoulder and stared out the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the departing Black Hawk, as if visually confirming what he’d been told would give him some insight about what to do next.

He didn’t see the helicopter. Instead, he saw a flash on the ground, perhaps a mile to the west, then another.

Abruptly, the display in his night vision device flared bright white, like a high intensity spotlight beaming directly into his retina. He reflexively tore the monocular away, but the damage was done; a greenish blue spot filled his right eye.

His left eye however, fixed on the source of the light: two parachute flares, fired from mortar tubes, were blazing like tiny suns in the night sky.

“Shit! Get us out of here, Beehive!”

His warning was unnecessary; the pilots had seen the flares as well and were already taking evasive action.

Two deep booming sounds reverberated through the airframe, the reports of the mortar launch finally reaching them, and then Sigler’s good eye detected more flashes on the ground, and pinpoints of light streaking into the sky. Sigler recognized them instantly; RPGs…rocket propelled grenades.

The effective range of the RPG was only about a hundred meters. Beyond that, there was less than a fifty percent chance of hitting a stationary target. At a thousand meters, the grenade would self-destruct. Sigler’s helicopter was well outside that radius, but Beehive Six-Five was a lot closer to the source. The air around the helicopter carrying the snipers suddenly came alive with flashes, as the grenades began exploding. Sigler thought the helicopter had weathered the barrage, but a moment later he heard a voice over the radio: “Shit! We’re going in.”

Beehive Six-Five wobbled in the air and began corkscrewing downward.

There was a thunderous eruption right in front of Sigler; the crew chief had opened up with his M240. Red arcs—tracers—described the path of the 7.62 millimeter rounds as they lanced toward the source of the RPGs, but it was impossible to distinguish a target or judge the effectiveness of the fire.