Meltdown Read online

Mary had almost forgotten. “Oh, Olenka said she’d text me the instructions.” She produced her cell phone from the pocket on her dress and checked her messages. There was one SMS. “Driver Slev. Yellow van. 035861 plate. 6695-2896.”

  John was reading over her shoulder. “So we’re looking for some guy named Slev?”

  Mary snapped her phone shut. “Let me go freshen up first, then we’ll find our buddy.”

  When she emerged from the washroom she felt ten times better, despite the rumpled denim dress and the fact that she would have killed for a toothbrush. The men were standing by the exit doors.

  Sweeney jerked his head in that direction when she approached. “We may have found our guy.”

  As they walked out of the terminal, Mary saw what they were talking about. A potbellied unshaven man stood munching on some sort of pastry as he leaned against the grille of a rusty yellow Volkswagen van. No license plate was visible from where they stood.

  “Hang on, guys. Let’s see if he’s our man. Watch this.” Mary produced her phone and quickly dialed the number Olenka had sent in her text message. She put the phone to her ear, and then everyone turned to watch the driver.

  Sure enough, ten seconds later he started frantically patting his pockets for his phone. Satisfied, Mary ended the call and led the way across the cobblestone parking lot toward their man. He was still giving the phone a frustrated stare when they walked up on him. The man looked up, and Mary smiled, showing him her own phone. Recognition dawned on his face.

  “Hi,” Mary said.

  “Phoenix?” the man replied, jabbing a greasy finger at John.

  Mary just nodded. “Da.” It wasn’t worth trying to explain. She turned to the rest of the group. “Get in.”

  Fifteen minutes later, rain began to fall. They zipped through the outskirts of the city of Kovel in the rattletrap Volkswagen. The rundown old town gave way to rolling farmland abruptly as the jarring cobblestone streets changed to a long straight road heading northwest toward the Polish border. But even though the road ran in a near-perfect straight line, its surface was more potholes than pavement.

  Situated in the passenger seat, Mary gripped the dashboard as Slev barely slowed, even for the biggest fissures. He didn’t seem to be driving the decrepit vehicle so much as simply aiming it.

  Sweeney sat directly behind her, holding the GPS out the window. “This thing says we’re twenty-six kilometers from the border. You think this heap will hold together long enough to get us there?”

  “I don’t know,” Rip replied through clenched teeth. “But dang, I need some shock absorbers for my back, bro.”

  John reached up and handed Mary the satellite phone. “Why don’t you try raising Major Williams?”

  “Great idea.”

  She took the handset and extended the telescoping antenna, then rolled down her window and powered on the unit, looking for a signal. It took ten minutes before the set locked on to the satellite, then five frustrating tries to get a call through to the command center. Thankfully, someone picked up on the second ring, even though by Mary’s calculations it was just after three in the morning on the East Coast of the United States. Some clicks told her she was being transferred.

  A moment later Major Williams’s gruff voice came over the line, along with a lot of background noise. “Hey, kid, where are ya?”

  “Hi. Justa sec.” She covered the handset and yelled back at Sweeney. “How far?”

  “Maybe ten kilometers.”

  She spoke back into the phone. “Sweeney says ten klicks.”

  “You all better get a move on. The Poles have given us very tentative approval to put a plane on the ground at an airstrip twenty miles inside their border. We’ve got a helicopter headed your direction now, but he won’t be able to stick around long. If you don’t get through in time, things will get a lot more complicated.”

  She didn’t want to know what that meant. “How much time do we have?”

  “Hard to say. We weren’t able to run all this past Polish border security, and if they pick you up, people in the Polish security service are going to look bad for it. So the trick is going to be getting you guys off the ground as quick as possible once you cross the river. You got me?”

  This didn’t sound very well thought out. Mary wondered if missions like this ever were. “Okay, we’ll try you again when we get through.” She tried to sound confident but wasn’t sure she succeeded.

  “Don’t worry,” the major concluded. “I’m praying for you. Bye.”

  “Okay…thanks.” But the line was dead.

  Five minutes later, Slev shouted, looking in the rearview mirror.

  Mary whirled around to see what was the matter. In the distance, she spotted two cars traveling the same direction they were, only faster. Her heart nearly seized when she spied the flashing red lights on top.

  Suddenly everyone wanted to go faster, despite the potholes. Rip gripped the edges of both front seats and shouted at Slev as if volume alone would surmount the language barrier. “Go, man! It’s the cops!”

  Sweeney’s eyes were glued to the GPS. “Two klicks out.”

  Mary kept her mouth shut and held on tight. If this was God’s way of answering the major’s prayers, He had a sick sense of humor. She silently willed the aged van to go faster, even when they hit a pothole so deep she hit her head on the ceiling.

  “One klick. Almost there,” Sweeney said. “The road turns left soon.”

  Mary saw it coming and braced. The van almost lost traction on the wet pavement as they rounded the bend. Without warning Slev slammed on the brakes, fishtailing to a stop. Startled cries erupted from the rest of the team, but Mary was almost strangled as her body was thrown against the seat belt harness.

  “Get out!” Slev shouted in Russian.

  Mary looked at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Out! Hurry!” Slev reached across and opened her door, gesturing for them to get out.

  Mary’s eyes went wide. “You can’t just kick us out in the rain!”

  “Go! Go!” John shouted. “We’ll go on foot from here.”

  Sweeney practically ripped the side door of the van from its track, and everyone vacated the Volkswagen like it was on fire. No sooner had John cleared the door than Slev ground the gears and the van tore off in a spray of mud.

  The rain poured down in sheets as Sweeney consulted the GPS. “The river should be that way!” He pointed with a knifed hand.

  Nobody had to tell Mary twice. She gathered up her long dress and ran for it as the wail of sirens reached her ears. Sweeney, John, and Rip were right beside her.

  Crossing the freshly plowed field that separated them from the border was like running through ten inches of molasses. Wearing fifteen pounds of sodden cotton didn’t help. Clumps of mud stuck to her boots, and several times she fell down between the rows. By the time they reached the tree line at the far side of the field, the two black police cars had reached the bend in the road and skidded to a halt.

  Covered in mud, Mary clawed her way out of the field onto solid ground, feeling like her lungs had burst and she would cough them up any second. Rip knelt near her, puffing hard and looking like he’d gone swimming in milk chocolate. Dropping to her hands and knees, Mary looked back, heaving, as Sweeney and John came panting up behind her. A bullhorn sounded in the distance. Through the deluge she could vaguely see uniformed officers exiting both vehicles.

  John stumbled up the bank, gasping for breath. “Holy cow.” He bent over double, gulping mouthfuls of air.

  Sweeney arrived, practically blue in the face. “Mud…evil…”

  Mary could only nod in agreement.

  Rip held out a trembling hand, pointing past them toward the border. “How…how’re we going to cross that, man?”

  Mary turned to see what he was pointing at, and her feet suddenly felt like cast iron. Which was bad, because the brown river they were looking at was at least a hundred yards wide.

  “Aw,” John panted.
“We can swim that, no problem.”

  “Us, maybe,” Sweeney grunted. “But try swimming in one of these.” He picked up the hem of Mary’s soaked peasant dress. “She won’t make it ten feet.”

  Something snapped inside her. “Aww…crud. I’ve already been naked once this trip. One more time won’t hurt.”

  The guys all stared wide eyed at one another. “Don’t look at me!” Sweeney protested. Rip gave her a smile and a wink but said nothing.

  Mary was just glad she’d gotten her sports bra and boy shorts back from the soldiers in Chernobyl. She stole another glance across the muddy field and wondered why the policemen weren’t already halfway across.

  Then she heard the shots and knew why. A bullet clipped a branch directly overhead, sending it down on top of them.

  “Go! Go!” Sweeney pushed all of them over the bank as pine branches started exploding all around.

  Mary pulled the wet dress over her head and threw it on the bank. She kept her boots on.

  What was it her dad used to say? “If you’re going to play with the big boys, you can’t expect them to change the rules of the game just because you’re a girl.”

  She tossed the soggy mess in a heap before plunging into the surging brown river. The cold water gave her an instant energy boost, and without the weight of the dress, she was soon powering across the current with long powerful strokes.

  This time, she beat everyone across, though by the time she crawled onto the opposite bank, she had been swept several hundred meters downstream. She scampered up out of the water and sat down, once again trying to catch her breath.

  The rain had lightened considerably, but as she waited for the men to reach the bank, her heart rate slowed and she became thoroughly chilled. She could no longer see any of their pursuers from where she sat, and she wondered if they’d given up the chase.

  Sweeney was the first to heave himself out of the water. He stumbled up the bank past her, and she heard him retching behind a bush.

  “Welcome to Poland,” she said.

  Sweeney approached, wiping his mouth. “Thanks. Here, take this.” He unbuttoned his shirt and draped the wet blue cotton over her shoulders. “Better than nothing.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you, Bobby. Mrs. Sweeney really did raise a gentleman.” She pushed her arms into the wet sleeves and hurriedly buttoned it up.

  John arrived next, towing Rip.

  Despite being winded, Rip found enough energy to complain. “Man! I hate water. Nobody said anything about crossing no river.”

  “Hey, we made it!” John puffed. “Come on. Let’s go find that chopper.”

  Mary suddenly felt as if she’d beenTasered. “Oh no! I left the sat-phone in the van!” She pounded her fists into the ground.

  That’s when she heard the helicopter.

  Everyone jumped up at once and scrambled up the bank toward the sound.

  At the crest of the hill, they found a road that ran almost due north, but they still could not see any aircraft, though it sounded close.

  Sweeney stepped onto the roadway and squinted south down the road, then grimaced. “Wonderful. More company.”

  Mary had seen it too. Far off, a green military-looking jeep racing in their direction. She estimated it would reach their position in two minutes. “Polish border police?”

  “Don’t suppose it’s our ride,” John said.

  Sweeney shook his head, causing droplets of water to cascade from his short blond hair onto his shoulders. “It looks like it’s gonna be our ride one way or another. What do you want to do, boss? Keep running?” Mary realized he was looking at her, not John.

  Just then the trees on the far side of the clearing began to quiver and sway, and a sleek blue French-made helicopter appeared above them.

  Task Force Valor ran for the bird, yelling and waving their arms. The pilot saw them and flared hard. He snapped into a low hover two feet above the clearing. The side door slid open as the team stumbled through the rotor wash toward the chopper.

  When Mary reached the door, she looked up into the smiling face of none other than Frank Baldwin, the team’s tech sergeant.

  “Frank!”

  “Why, hello, ma’am. Where are your clothes?”

  “Shut up and let me in.”

  Frank’s grin was a mile wide as he extended his wrist to hers. “Yes ma’am. All aboard!”

  The pilot fought to control the Dauphin helicopter as it dove through the wind-whipped rain for landing. Sweeney felt his stomach drop as the aviator felt for the ground through the maelstrom of spray thrown up by the craft, and was relieved when he felt the wheels thump down onto soggy earth next to the thin airstrip that had been barely visible as they made their final approach.

  Once the engines powered down, Sweeney could just make out a white Learjet thirty yards outside the starboard window, waiting on the tarmac with engines running.

  “There’s our ride,” Frank said, slapping Sweeney’s bare shoulder.

  “Ow, watch it!” Sweeney grumbled, massaging the spot. “I think I caught some shrapnel back in the dead zone.”

  Was that only yesterday morning?

  “Sorry about that,” Frank said with a grimace. “Don’t worry, though. We’ll take care of you. We’ll have new clothes for you guys waiting in Frankfurt, so you won’t have to ride all the way home looking like, er…that.” Frank nodded at Mary, who was huddled across from them in Sweeney’s tattered shirt, shivering. “Doc’s there too. So he’ll give you all a once-over.”

  John and Rip weren’t much better off. Their ill-fitting and mud-stained costumes made them look like they’d been mining sludge for a week.

  The female copilot stepped out of the helicopter and came around to pull open the side door. Sweeney wondered if the crew knew anything about the team’s mission or if they’d been contracted to do the job. Not that it mattered. They were out of Ukraine alive, though in his case he couldn’t even claim to have made it with the shirt on his back.

  He unbuckled his seat belt and waited for John, Rip, and Mary to exit the bird, before stepping out into the frigid rain himself. He looked back in time to see Frank toss an easy salute at the pilots as he climbed out, then Sweeney turned and ran for the waiting Learjet, ignoring the cold raindrops that stung his neck and raised goose flesh on his arms.

  The door of the plane dropped open as they approached, and a familiar figure stuck his head out the door, dressed in an olive-drab flight suit with a green aviator headset.

  “Major Williams!”

  The Task Force Valor commander waved for them to hurry and shouted over the roar of the engines. “Let’s go, boys! The weather isn’t getting any better!”

  As soon as the team made it up the stairs and ducked inside the jet, Major Williams went around and embraced each one in turn, heedless of their soaked and soiled attire. “Thank God you made it! The chopper pilot kept trying to abort because of the weather. I had to practically threaten him with bodily harm to get him to stick around.”

  The Learjet’s pilot, a squat black man wearing a U.S. Air Force uniform, stepped out of the cockpit and cast a wary eye at his passengers, then yanked the doorway up into place and slammed it shut with a thud.

  After the noise and chaos of the last hour, the muted interior of the plane sounded like a mausoleum. Sweeney flopped into a plush leather chair near the back of the plane and let out a groan of relief—his actions mimicked by Rip, John, and Mary. Frank sat up front across from the major.

  Williams raised an eyebrow at the haggard crew. “You folks look like you’ve been through the wringer. Buckle up and we’ll have you in Frankfurt in less than an hour. There’s drinks up here, but no peanuts.” He tossed bottles of water to each team member.

  “How about a cover-up for Phoenix back there?” Frank suggested, reaching into an overhead compartment and pulling down a stack of blue fleece blankets.

  Major Williams took in Mary’s half-dressed condition. “How in the world did
you lose your clothes?”

  “It’s hard to swim in a full-length dress,” she answered, blushing.

  The plane’s engines wound up and began pushing it down the runway.

  Frank turned to inspect his exhausted teammates, who were half sitting, half lying in their seats, still recovering from the ordeal of the last hour. He burst out laughing.

  Rip lolled his head around to look at the dark-haired tech sergeant. “You think this is funny, bro?”

  Frank shook his head, still laughing. “I was just thinking you all make it look like this plane already crashed.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Mary spat. “I won’t be able to relax until we’re back at Bragg.”

  “That could be awhile,” Major Williams said, his tone sober. “We’ve got another tentative mission as soon as we can get out of Europe. Doc is waiting for us in Frankfurt with a C-141 standing by. We’re headed there now. In the meantime I’ll give you an update on what’s been happening.”

  John looked as shocked as Sweeney felt. “You’re kidding,” John said. “Can’t we at least take a shower and a nap?”

  “We’ve got new uniforms and kit for you in Frankfurt. Maybe we can hose you off before you get on the plane.” The major grinned. “Sleep won’t be a problem. The flight from Frankfurt is at least ten hours.”

  “What’s the status stateside?” Rip asked.

  The major shook his head. “Not good. ITEB has been blowing up all over the place. The most recent is a bridge on the beltway around Washington DC and a casino in Las Vegas. There are shortages of fuel, natural gas, power outages—you name it. The whole country is going nuts, and the politicians are screaming bloody murder for us to find who is responsible.”

  “What about posse comitatus?” John said. “As U.S. soldiers, we can’t operate inside U.S. borders, right?”

  “You can’t be deployed against U.S. citizens, that’s correct,” the major said. “But that won’t be an issue here.”

  “Because the bombers are foreigners?” Rip asked.

  Major Williams shook his head. “No, because we’re not headed back to the continental U.S.”

  “We’re not headed back to Bragg?” Mary blurted.