Silent Enemy Read Online Free Page A

There’s a bomb threat against some of our aircraft, including yours.”
    What kind of nonsense is this? Parson wondered. We’re flying, aren’t we? Some Chicken Little in intel, probably. Typical Air Force. We make more problems for ourselves than the enemy does.
    “Where is this coming from?” he asked.
    “Jihadist websites are claiming that bombs have been planted on U.S. aircraft that departed Bagram today.”
    Well, Parson thought, you could scare yourself to death if you sat around reading those websites all the time. “They make all kinds of claims,” he said. “Why are we paying attention to this one?”
    “Because of its specificity. They say they had help on the base at Bagram.”
    “So why can’t I climb or descend?” he asked. Terrorists can say anything. Give me a break.
    “If there are any bombs, we don’t know the trigger. They could be on timers, or they could be barometric.”
    Or they could be in somebody’s imagination, Junior. And the timer, if there’s a bomb at all, could be set for any time. For now. Or in ten minutes. Or four hours. But if it was barometric, well, what then? Parson knew the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, might have had an aneroid barometer trigger. The 747 climbed through a set altitude and into eternity.
    But we’re already at flight level three-four-zero, he thought. We’re probably fine, and more than likely the whole thing’s bullshit.
    “Hilda,” Parson called. “We’ll conduct a search. Call you back.”
    “Roger that, Eight-Four. If you find something, don’t move it.”
    Don’t move it, my ass, thought Parson. If we find something, we’re going to chuck it out the damned door. But we’re not going to find anything because there’s nothing to find. No one has ever attempted to hijack a U.S. military plane, and planting a bomb on one would be just as hard.
    “Eight-Four, do you copy?”
    “Yeah, Eight-Four copies,” Parson said.
    “We’ll be here for you, Eight-Four. Army liaison’s working on getting some EOD expertise on the line. We’ll also get a tanker set up to buy you some time.”
    “Thanks, Hilda,” Parson said. “Air Evac Eight-Four out.”
    A tanker to buy us some time, Parson thought. Not a bad idea if they’re going to insist on making us bore holes in the sky until everybody calms down. Won’t be the first time we’ve burned a lot of fuel for nothing.
    “All right, crew, you heard it,” said Parson over interphone. All the aircrew members on headset could monitor the radios. “We’re going to search every millimeter of this aircraft. I want one loadmaster checking the troop compartment, two for cargo, and one for the aft flight deck.”
    Parson looked at Gold again. She had her head in her hands, elbows on the nav table. Too bad she had to hear this nonsense. Probably hard to keep it in perspective when your building’s just been blown up for real.
    “Sergeant Major,” he asked, “are you all right?”
    She looked up. “What can I do?” she said.
    “Tell the patients,” Parson said. “Then help us look around, I suppose.”
     
     
    GOLD WONDERED IF IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO TELL THEM, then decided not to argue. Parson had enough on his mind. And it wasn’t fair to keep the Afghans in the dark. Besides, one of them might have noticed something.
    She took off her headset and descended the steps to the cargo compartment. From above, on the ladder, the scene looked like an emergency room hastily set up in a metal warehouse. She found Mahsoud still asleep, a medic monitoring his vitals.
    “How’s he doing?” she asked.
    “Stable for now,” the medic said. “We’re keeping him on oxygen because he has smoke and heat damage to his lungs.” Gold looked at the plastic tubes leading to a cannula in Mahsoud’s nose.
    “Do you know what’s happening?” she asked the medic. He looked about twenty, with close-cropped black hair. His name tag bore his wings, and it read JUSTIN BAKER, AIC