appreciated.
The airstrip was nearly clear, and as best he could see the engineers clearing the mines were finished. He throttled up and headed toward a pile of cement-filled fifty-five-gallon drums. The stench of diesel fumes filled the air and mixed with the odors of sweat, fear, blood, and explosive fumes that now pervaded the battlefield.
Someone ran toward him and shouted. They were pointing toward the oil drums. The noise of the bulldozer drowned the shouter's voice, but it was clear he was indicating the obstructions still to be cleared.
The padre waved an acknowledgment and trundled on.
'MINES!' screamed the engineer behind him. 'MINES! WE HAVEN'T CLEARED THERE YET! STOP, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!'
The padre sped across the airstrip and then slowed down as he approached the drums. He lowered the blade and began moving forward. Suddenly he was struck violently on his right side and propelled off the bulldozer onto the runway. He hit the ground hard and painfully, and as he shook himself he became aware that there was a heavy weight on his back.
He began to struggle, and the weight on his back moved. Seconds later, the weight was gone altogether and he rolled over. In front of him, a paratrooper was getting to his feet. It might have been a normal parachute landing fall recovery, except that this paratrooper had his arms through his straps as if he had jumped without putting on the ‘chute properly. He seemed to have descended just holding on to the thing.
The trooper, Colonel Dave Palmer, put out his hand. 'Sorry about that, Padre. Left in a hurry.'
'Judas Priest, Dave!' said the padre. 'You're supposed to wear that bloody thing.' He struggled to his feet.
Driverless, the bulldozer was still trundling along with the pile of concrete-filled oil drums rolling in front of it.
'My bulldozer!' cried the padre.
There was a vivid flash as the antitank mine blew and the entire bulldozer seemed to rise in the air and fly for several yards before exploding. A further mine was set off, and then one explosion followed another.
The blast threw the remaining obstacles clear of the paved strip.
'Interesting way to clear a runway, Padre,' said Palmer.
'The Lord helped,' said the padre hoarsely.
Carranza's tank force hit the perimeter of Second Brigade's firing line and veered away to the right as a barrage of TOWs, Hellfire missiles, AT4s and Sheridan tank fire plowed into it.
The volume of fire was bad enough. The accuracy was horrifying. All around him tanks were blowing up, men were on fire, and his command was dying.
Within twenty-three seconds, Carranza had lost two-thirds of his force and was driving desperately away from the wall of death that faced him. He tried to grapple with what he was up against. Paratroopers were lightly armed troops. This was firepower of a different magnitude.
A further six tanks exploded behind him. He caught a quick glimpse of a Sheridan tank in the distance. The American tank was aluminum and virtually obsolete, he had been told. He had not taken in that it was fast, light, carried the biggest gun of any tank in general use, and had been upgraded with long-range optics and night-vision equipment.
His one thought now was to get away. He did not care where he was going or what he would do when he got there. He just wanted to flee.
Shells burst around his tank and one wall glowed red when a fragment hit.
Carranza was bruised and bleeding from being bounced around the metal box.
Beside him his gunner had abandoned any attempt to load and fire the main gun. His face was gray with desperation and the foreknowledge of certain death. The driver slewed the tank from side to side in the hope that the jinking would cause the incoming fire to miss. It was making Carranza sick.
The tank drove right through the perimeter defenses and into the minefield beyond.
The mines were laid according to Soviet doctrine, in a massive belt three hundred meters deep. The first two mines had been carelessly laid and did not explode. Carranza's tank hit the third mine after thirty-two meters. The force of the mine was so great, it blew the entire tank into the air.
The tank was still in the air when it was his nearly simultaneously by a Hellfire missile and the 152mm shell from a Sheridan. The combined blast blew all the mines in a two-hundred-meter radius and could be seen with clarity from the command-and-control aircraft 20,000 feet up.
Carranza and his entire crew were vaporized.
Fitzduane fired two rounds from his M16 into the torso of a terrorist in the weapons pit and rammed the barrel into the face of the second man. The terrorist went down and Fitzduane thrust his fighting knife into his throat and wiped it on the dead man's fatigues.
He reloaded and checked his pouches. Ammunition was getting low.
Getting through the hangar had been easy. In contrast, the cavernous bunker below seemed to be defended by some kind of palace guard. They had blown the Sheridans as they came down the ramp, and since then it had been basic infantry slogging as the Scouts and Delta cleaned out a series of interlocking defensive positions.
'Why the fuck didn't I bring a Barrett?' asked Lonsdale.
The heavy rifle fire would have punched through the armor plate of the weapons pits.
The M60 rounds made shallow dents. The M16 rounds just bounced off. They were out of 40mm grenades. They had fired the last of the AT4s. They were nearly out of everything.
'Why the fuck didn't I stay in Washington?' said Cochrane.
'We'd have missed you,' said Lonsdale caustically.
'Even if they don't hit us,' said Cochrane, 'they're going to pollute us to death. The air quality in this place sucks.'
'It could get a shitload worse,' said Lonsdale.
Fitzduane was silent. If Rheiman's hand-drawn map was to be trusted, beyond that metal door was a hatchway that lead down two flights of metal stairs to the command bunker. Straight ahead was a nerve-agent store. Behind them, at the other end of the cavern, was the second nerve-gas store. If nothing had been moved, the unit had already secured the Xyclax Gamma 18. One component alone was useless.
Of course, Oshima did not have to have moved all the components together. She could have had just one cylinder transported. According to what he had been told, one matched pair of Xyclax Gamma 18 cylinders properly distributed would be enough to take out the entire airfield, let alone the cavern.
'Brock,' he called.
'Yo!' said Brock.
'We need a couple of grenades up here,' said Fitzduane. 'Get someone to check the lockers in the Sheridan that didn't blow.'
'Hot damn!' said Brock. 'Neat thinking. Those guys are squirrels.'
Two minutes later, the weighted end of a parachute cord fell beside Fitzduane. Brock was across to the left and behind a support pillar. He couldn’t get any closer and keep breathing.
The terrorist machine gun and three AK-47s spat flame as the saw the cord and tried to cut it with fire. Ricochets zinged along the cavern. The concrete floor of the cavern spewed fragments as rounds bit into it around the line of the cord.
Fitzduane saw the edge of the cord fray. If he pulled too fast it could break. If he pulled too slowly the contents of the pouch at the end could go up.
Thinking of what was inside, it was an easy decision.
He pulled hard. The cord broke, but enough momentum had already been transferred to the pouch. It slid into home base.
Fitzduane opened the pouch and looked at Brock. There were three grenades inside. 'What the fuck!' he
