Z: The Final Countdown Read online

  Z: The Final Countdown

  book VI of the Green Beret Series

  by

  Bob Mayer

  Author’s Note

  This series started with my very first book, Eyes of the Hammer. However, that wasn’t the first book I wrote. Dragon Sim-13 was. I originally set that story in Russia, but with the end of the Cold War, had to reconsider it. I moved it to China, and rewrote. I followed Dave Riley through the end of his military career into civilian life much as my own life transitioned.

  I based some of these characters on people I served with in the Special Forces. Also, some of the missions approximate missions that were actually conducted. While my heroes and heroines perhaps aren’t as bulletproof as those from other thriller writers, it’s because my military experience is that soldiers aren’t bulletproof. We’re human. We bleed, we hurt and we sometimes question our orders. But we accomplish our missions. I believe the Special Forces A-Team to be most elite and flexible fighting unit in the world.

  Chasing the Ghost introduced Horace Chase, one of my favorite characters, albeit with deep flaws. It occurred to me after that book was out that he ought to meet Dave Riley. The result was perhaps one of my best books, The Green Berets: Chasing The Lost. I love the group of characters I brought together in that book in the Low Country around Hilton Head Island and they will have many more adventures together.

  Nothing but good times ahead!

  Thanks for reading.

  Prologue

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  21 May

  Eight hundred feet underground, the monotony of watching computer screens was broken by one of the six men on duty calling out to the shift commander: “Sir, we’ve got a break in orbit on a known.”

  The Warning Center watch officer, Major Sinclair, looked up from his computer chess game. “Whose is it?”

  “Code is RG-fourteen,” the screen watcher replied.

  The code told Sinclair several things: The R meant it was Russian. The G represented the year the object went into space, and since it was the seventh letter in the alphabet that meant it had been launched this year. The 14 indicated it was the fourteenth object launched into space by the Russians since January 1. “That’s very current,” Sinclair commented. “What’s the break? New orbit?”

  “No, sir. It’s a decay. She’s coming down.”

  “Damn,” Sinclair muttered. “How long before she reenters?” he asked as he figured out who to call and how soon he would have to call. He hoped they would have a couple of days before reentry so he could just log it and let the center’s operations officer take care of the situation during normal duty hours.

  The screen watcher hit the keys on his computer, then whistled. “Twelve minutes.”

  Sinclair almost spilled his coffee. “What?”

  “Twelve minutes, give or take twenty percent. It’s decaying rapidly,” the man added in a bit of an understatement.

  “Put it on the big screen,” Sinclair ordered. The large screen in front of the room displayed a Mercator conformal map of the entire world’s surface. With a few commands, the data that was being downloaded from Defense Support Program (DSP) could be selectively displayed on the screen. A glowing dot appeared on the screen moving from left to right across the South Atlantic.

  The U.S. Space Command’s Missile Warning Center is located deep inside Cheyenne Mountain on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. The Space Command, part of the air force, is responsible for the DSP satellite system.

  DSP satellites blanket the entire surface of the earth from an altitude of over twenty thousand miles up in geosynchronous orbits. The system had originally been developed to detect ICBM launches during the Cold War. During the Gulf War, it had picked up every SCUD missile launch and proved so effective that the military had further streamlined the system to give real-time warnings to local commanders at the tactical level.

  Every three seconds the DSP system downloads an infrared map of the earth’s surface and surrounding airspace. Most of the data is stored on tape in the Warning Center, unless, of course, the computer detects a missile launch, or something different happens to one of the objects already in space that the Warning Center was tracking.

  The staff at Space Command delineates four categories of objects in space. The first is a known object in stable orbit, such as a satellite or some of the debris from previous space missions. Each of those has a special code assigned to it, and its data is stored in the computer at Cheyenne Mountain. There are presently over eight thousand five hundred catalogued items orbiting the planet.

  The second category is a known object whose orbit has changed, such as when a country or corporation decides to reposition one of its satellites. The third is a known object whose orbit is decaying. When that happens Space Command puts the tracking and impact prediction (TIP) team on the job to figure out where it will come down. TIP teams were instituted as a result of the publicity after Skylab came down years ago. The fourth category is an object that has just been launched and has yet to be assigned a code.

  The man who had first picked up the discrepancy explained the movement. “She’s running roughly east-west along about ten degrees south latitude.”

  “Do you have an impact point?”

  “Computer’s working on it, sir.”

  Hell, Sinclair thought, by the time the computer figured it out, the thing would be down. He got out of his chess game and entered the code for the object. The entry on his screen was very short.

  RG14: Proton final stage booster.

  Orbit: Free, plotted, and logged.

  Launch: 18 May 1997

  Launch Site: Kazakhstan

  Comments: Final stage booster for Proton launch of communications satellite contracted out to SINCOM, European

  Communications. Payload is listed as EG36.

  The dot was simply the last stage of a Russian Proton booster rocket, which was some relief to Sinclair. At least it wasn’t a nuclear power source, of which he knew the Soviets had several in space giving juice to their space lab and some of their satellites. If one of those started coming down, there’d be hell to pay. The fact that a Russian rocket had put a European satellite into orbit was not strange at all. The Russians were so strapped for cash that they had begun putting their space program up for hire several years previously. The booster itself was garbage and of no concern, unless of course it landed on someone’s roof.

  “Why’s it deteriorating so fast?” Sinclair asked out loud.

  The man who had first spotted the decay was just as confused. “I don’t know, sir. It shouldn’t be deteriorating at all. Those Proton final stage boosters usually stay up there for quite a while before they go down the gravity well.”

  “Could the Russians be bringing it down?” Sinclair asked.

  “No, sir. According to our data on the Proton booster, it’s dead weight. No thrusters.”

  “Dead weight doesn’t decay its own orbit and defy the law of gravity,” Sinclair remarked. “Maybe they’re trying to recover it to use it again.”

  “They wouldn’t be bringing it down at that latitude,” the man said. “And they’ve never brought one down before.”

  They continued to watch as the small dot moved across the ocean.

  “She’s coming down somewhere in Africa,” the man said as his computer finally yielded its projection. “Maybe Zaire.”

  The dot touched the western shore of Africa. It started across Angola, then suddenly disappeared just short of the border between that state and its neighbor Zaire.

  “She’s down.”

  “Put a lock on the tape,” Sinclair ordered. The center recorded everything that the GPS satellites picked up. The lock would ensure that the tape w
ith this particular action would not be reused. Due to budget cuts, they were starting to reuse old tapes that had nothing of significance on them.

  “At least it didn’t strike a city,” the screen watcher joked. “Maybe some farmer just saw what he thinks is a meteorite.”

  “It probably just hit jungle,” Sinclair said, noting the location where the dot had disappeared: on the edge of the Congo basin. The heart of darkness in the title of Conrad’s novel. Better Africa than North America, Sinclair thought.

  As things settled back down, Sinclair stared at the screen at the front of the room and the traces of the political borders in Central Africa that were on it. Something wasn’t right about this. Like he had said, the booster should not have come down that fast, if at all. A normal gravitational decay usually occurred over the course of several weeks to months to years, depending on the height of the orbit and the object’s velocity, yet this thing had come down less than fifteen minutes from the first change in orbit being noticed. Maybe the booster had hit something, Sinclair reasoned. There certainly was enough debris floating around in orbit. But that didn’t sit right either.

  Sinclair shrugged and entered one line in his duty log concerning the event. He noted the date and time group for the computer tape of the incident. Then he turned his computer game back on.

  Chapter 1

  Angola, 9 June

  “What do you think?” the corporal driving the truck asked Sergeant Ku. The patrol was deep inside rebel territory and the men were very nervous. Ku knew Lieutenant Monoko, out front in the jeep, didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know how deep inside rebel territory they were.

  They’d traveled for six hours over unpaved roads and trails since leaving the paved main road between the border post at Luau and Luena, the next major town on the road. Sergeant Ku had watched the sun the entire time, troubled about the direction it told him they were traveling.

  “I think the lieutenant does not know where we are,” Ku said. He was in the cab of the half-ton diesel truck with the corporal driving. The rest of the patrol—twelve men—was in the back. Ku was an old veteran of the civil war in Angola, having fought the Portuguese at the start, then beside the Cubans many years back. The allies and enemies had changed over the years but never the fighting. Ku’s dark scalp was covered with gray hair and his slight frame was tense, ready for action.

  They could see Lieutenant Monoko ahead in the jeep, looking at his map and scratching his head. The fact that the lieutenant’s vehicle was out in front told the sergeant more than he wished to know about his new officer. Only a fool would want to be in the lead to trip whatever mines the UNITA rebels might have planted on the road. Of course, Ku’s sense of self-preservation made him very grateful that in this specific area the lieutenant was ignorant. If Monoko had done as he should have and made the truck lead, the sergeant would not be sitting in this cab—he’d be in the backseat of the jeep with the lieutenant.

  Ku climbed out of the truck and walked forward. This was their first chance in several hours to stop, and he indicated for the soldiers to take a break. Some were already urinating off the side of the truck. Ku snapped a salute, startling Monoko. “Sir, may I be of assistance?” The lieutenant was a very large and fat man, used to the easy life of the city. Ku wondered what circumstances had forced him into uniform and out to the bush.

  Ku watched with detached amusement at the emotions that played across the broad black plain of his officer’s face. Pride versus the reality of the situation. The amusement disappeared quickly, though, because the look on Monoko’s face also confirmed what Ku had been fearing. They were indeed lost.

  “I believe we are near Cangamba,” Monoko said, vaguely stabbing his finger at the map.

  Years of working with incompetence allowed Ku to keep his face expressionless. “Sir, we have been heading to the northwest all afternoon. We cannot be close to Cangamba.”

  “We have been traveling southwest,” Monoko disagreed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a compass, flipping open the plastic cover proudly.

  There was no amusement left at all in Ku. “Sir, we never stopped to take compass bearings. How do—”

  “I was checking all along,” Monoko interrupted. “I can read a compass on the move. I do not need to stop.”

  Ku held out his hand. Monoko paused, then gave him the compass. “Sir, if you note, the compass now says north is that way”—he pointed to the right side of the road. Ku turned and walked several paces from the jeep. Monoko reluctantly got out of the jeep and followed. “If you would please note, sir, the compass now says north is that way.” Ku pointed to the left.

  Monoko blinked. “But how can that be? It is not supposed to do that!”

  Ku bit the inside of his mouth to restrain himself. “Sir, the metal of the jeep affects the magnet in the needle. That is why we must stop to get compass readings away from the jeep or navigate off the direction the sun speaks.” Ku pointed up.

  Ku felt sick with himself for having allowed the officer to proceed in ignorance for so long. But it was Monoko’s fault also, Ku reminded himself. Not only did the lieutenant not know how to use a compass properly, he had never told Ku what their orders were or where they were headed. Ku had assumed that they were going in the right direction, even if it was in the direction of the enemy. After all, they occasionally did have to go out and fight. Who knew what the idiots in charge in Luanda had thought up? Ku had been hearing rumors for weeks now that something big was getting ready to happen, and he had assumed this strange direction was tied to those rumors.

  Monoko looked about at the undulating grasslands that surrounded them. He turned back to his platoon sergeant. “What do we do?”

  “Let me see your map, sir.” Ku took the sheet and stared at it. He found the last point where he had positively known where they were, then estimated. They’d been traveling for over five hours since then, mostly north and west. He placed an aged finger on the paper and traced a forty-kilometer circle just south of a town named Saurimo. “We are somewhere here. We must head due west as quickly as possible to get out of rebel territory before nightfall. I know for certain that there are many rebels in Saurimo.”

  The last thing Ku wanted was to spend the night in this province with a green officer and a platoon full of new recruits. They were on the edge of Lunda Sul, a diamond-rich area that made up northeast Angola and was completely in rebel hands. There was a government garrison at Cacolo, about one hundred kilometers away. With a little luck and good roads, they might make it before dark.

  Monoko pulled himself together. “Yes. We must head west. Tell the men we must be moving.”

  Ku yelled out the appropriate orders, then made a difficult personal decision. “Sir, might I join you in your vehicle?”

  A half hour later, they turned a corner in the road and the driver hit the brakes. Ku reacted instinctively to the tangle of fallen trees that blocked the road ahead. He rolled out of the backseat and took cover behind the jeep, pointing his weapon ahead, searching for the ambush he expected to explode out of the foliage all around as he screamed for the men in the truck to deploy.

  The men reacted slowly, but eventually all were on the ground in the semblance of a perimeter and Lieutenant Monoko was at his side, peering ahead. “What do you think?” the officer whispered.

  If there were any rebels about, there was no doubt in Ku’s mind that the patrol’s presence had been detected and whispering was not needed, but he played along. “I do not know, sir.” He peered at the trees. They’d been hacked down and pulled across the road. Beyond he could see some smoke, maybe from cooking fires. There was a small patch of thatched roof visible above the fallen trees. “There is a village there.” It was a logical location for a village: they were in low terrain and a river ran to their left.

  “A rebel village?” Lieutenant Monoko asked.

  This was rebel territory, but most of the villages Ku had encountered over the years were on neither side in this
bloody civil war. The inhabitants probably wanted to just be left alone. But Ku needed to get through the village to continue on to the west. There was most likely a crossing site for the river on the far side of the village. “I will look, sir.”

  He stood and signaled for a couple of men to accompany him. He walked up to the roadblock and checked it for booby traps. Nothing. He went around the tangled limbs and looked. A small village of about ten or twelve huts was in a clearing on the gentle bank that led down to the river. There was no one moving about. A pile of smoldering logs on the right side of the village was the source of the smoke. There were also the remains of several huts that had been burned to the ground.

  Ku frowned. The road was blocked on the far side also, and beyond it he could see a ford across the small river. What had the villagers wanted to stop? And where were they? Who had destroyed the huts?

  He ordered his men to stay put and went forward. Then he caught a scent in the air and stopped in midstep. He recognized the horrible smell from past battles: burning flesh. Ku turned and looked more closely at the pile of logs and now saw that they weren’t wood. They were bodies, tightly wrapped in soiled sheets, piled four deep.

  “Remove the roadblocks!” he yelled at his men. “Quickly!”

  Ku went to the first hut and used the muzzle of his AK-47 to push aside the cloth that hung in the doorway. The stench that greeted his nostrils was even worse than the burning flesh. The walls were spattered with blood. There was something that might have once been human lying on the floor, but the body had been destroyed by some terrible force.

  Ku had seen many bodies in his service, but this one did not look like it had been killed by an explosion. However, that was the only thing he could think of that would cause the mangled flesh and the amount of blood splattered all around the interior.

  Ku moved to the next hut, but paused as he heard Lieutenant Monoko’s voice. “What is going on, Sergeant?”