The Hammer of God

vehicle went underground or found cover, which was doubtful in this terrain, the Forward-Looking Infrared Radar and computer would keep track of it and warn him if it closed to within 500 meters, the effective range of any shoulder-fired missile at the low altitude they were flying.

In the Datsun, Ross grabbed the laser and pulled himself halfway outside the passenger window. Using it like a pen, he laser-lit the roof of the Datsun drawing a rough triangle symbol. It only took 30 seconds for the armaments officer to register the symbol as the friendly sign used by his squad members.

“Captain, I’ve got Ross and Bridgestone. Traveling towards target one in a vehicle two-and-a-half miles out.”

“Good. We’ll extract them with us.”

At 1000 meters out Foxtrot Bravo launched a drone that was mounted on hard points between the struts. It glided down 100 feet from the copter; its silent drive engine then kicked in and it sped ahead of the copter. On board the copter, Specialist First Class Neumann flew the drone from a joystick and monitor display. When he got to within 200 yards of the refinery, he engaged the EMP switch. Immediately, all radio, cellular, and any other electromagnetic radiation was blocked from an area about the size of a 300-yard umbrella directly below the silently hovering drone. It was the same kind of electro-magnetic pulse type jamming device that was used when senators or VIPs visited war zones where improvised explosive devices could be remotely detonated by cellular or radio control. The Presidential detail also carried this type of device to stop would be assassins from getting real-time telemetry or data on the President’s exact whereabouts. Now the group holding the ambassador in the refinery was blind and their forward scouts were unable to signal them.

The Apache Longbows went down to the deck and switched on NOE. Utilizing the Nap of the Earth, terrain- hugging software, the pilots became passengers as the computer-guided copter cruised over sand dunes and gullies at 90 knots at 25 feet. Using infrared, the co-pilot turned on his “see and shoot” helmet array. A M23 °Chain Gunon a gimbaled mount under the nose of the helicopter now copied every move of his head. The heads-up display on his visor was in infrared mode. He just lined up his reticule by moving his head and trained the gun in on whatever he had in his sights. A red button to the right of the center of his collective control was the trigger. If he held the button down, he could fire 300 rounds per minute. Tapping the button released a 50-round fusillade of flesh/metal tearing 30 mm slugs, which he now did five times as he walked the fire in on the four life forms revealed on his ever-changing horizon. All of the bullets en route created a temporary curtain of white hot lines trailing towards the target.

To the doomed lookouts at the forward post, there was only the sudden percussion of 250 heavy white-hot bullets slamming into and shredding them and everything around them. They never heard or saw the black copters approach.

On the co-pilots HUD, all he now saw were cooling pieces of bodies and glowing hot holes where the bullets either lay embedded cooling in the night air or starting small fires where they met something material. What a few seconds earlier were four distinct heat signatures, was now a mess of green dots and clumps.

“Target neutralized,” crackling over the pilots headset, was the only epitaph the dead men, who they were now zooming over, would ever get. Foxtrot Alpha flared up at 100-feet and held off at 50 -yards, its co-pilot picking off random targets in the compound, while Foxtrot Bravo went in for a strut jump. Hovering four feet from the ground as the men piled out 50 yards from the main building 20 seconds later, Foxtrot Bravo was 12 feet off the roof as five repel lines sprang out from each side. A door gunner training his counterbalanced 7.62 mm mini-gun down onto the roof to clip anybody trying to stop the deployment.

“Eight kills, 35 seconds into breach, and no sign of counterattack,” the Captain manning the console reported to the room in the Pentagon. He was watching an array of monitors that showed him every feed of video and GPS data. He had seen the action of the gunners much the same as they had through their HUDs.

“Good, then the bastards don’t even know they are under attack. This might just work,” Pickering said.

?§?

As if that comment was heard a third of the way around the world, an explosion rocked the building and blinded most of the heat-sensitive night scopes.

“What the hell was that?” the squad commander yelled into his helmet-mounted tactical radio mike.

“Jonesy tripped a booby trap wire, but he felt it. There was a delay and he was able to get to cover. No one hurt.”

“All units, go, go, go!”

Their presence no longer a secret, the men were turned loose to enter, interdict, and neutralize the enemy with all due haste. They moved with lightning speed. Three-shot bursts from their MP-5s crumpled startled terrorists who didn’t have the benefit of night vision goggles. Each trooper had memorized the face of the two high value targets believed to be in this complex — the ambassador and Jamal. One they wanted to save, the other they wanted to boil in oil, but were under orders to retrieve for his intelligence value.

The great unknown here was the number of bad guys in the center of the building. The metal roof and pipes made it impossible for the infrared to get an accurate reading. They could be facing one hundred armed men or two night janitors wielding mops. The fighting became intense as they neared the center of the complex. It turned out that some of the terrorists were in fact equipped with night vision goggles. Two squad members were being pinned down in a hallway from a night-vision-capable gun at the far end of the hall. One motioned to the other and, on the count of three, they flipped up their night vision sets and threw a flare into the hall. As soon as it lit off, they were up and firing, guided by the same intense light that was blinding the goggled terrorists. It only gave them a one- second advantage, but when you are the best of the best of the United States military and qualified to brag about it every month, one second can be the enemy’s life expectancy — which it proved to be.

Two operators were equipped with infrared scopes/vision assist. That meant they could literally see through walls. They saw the outlines of two armed men lying in wait behind an overturned desk. Seeing no one else, like a hostage, they simply chucked a grenade into the room. The blast flattened the desk against the wall along with the two men. Overall, the resistance was sporadic with no real counteroffensive. By neutralizing their lookouts, the captors weren’t expecting a raid and they certainly weren’t alerted before the choppers hit.

A flash-bang grenade went off down the hall and three troops ran to it. They were into the room before the sound stopped echoing off the walls. Tied to a chair, his ears bleeding and rolling his head side to side to ward off the pain, was the ambassador. Jamal and two others were writhing on the floor in the immediate aftershock of the blast. Two troops put themselves in front of the ambassador, shielding him with their bodies, their guns trained outward. Another operator put a round each into the heads of the other two men in the room. Jamal was wire-tied and brought to his feet.

The troopers started to assemble in the room. Fifteen of them surrounded the ambassador and Jamal and started leading them out of the building. Two operators were down. Luckily, Kevlar vests protected their vitals, but both suffered leg wounds.

Not taking chances, the 15 stopped at an obvious ambush point before the exit of the building, lobbing five grenades into the area as they all took cover. Grunts and moans accompanied the explosions. Two scouts went ahead to clear the way. A few shots rang out, all U.S. weapons, as the scouts made sure no one was playing possum.

Foxtrot Alpha circled and secured the area as half the team boarded Foxtrot Bravo. Then Alpha landed as Bravo kept guard. That’s when the Datsun approached the LZ. Instinctively, the men boarding the copter trained their guns on the vehicle.

“They’re friendlies!” the squad commander shouted. “Hold your fire!”

Everybody laughed when Ross and Bridgestone came out of the car.

“Shit, Ross, we almost blew your fucking heads off!” an operator yelled.

“Bullshit. You couldn’t hit the broad side of a bull stopped to fuck a cow.”

“What’s that?” the squad commander asked as Bridgestone and Ross carried the wrapped body from the back seat towards the copter.

“Salinda. I didn’t want to dispatch her in case we still needed info.”

“What are we supposed to do with her now?”