despite the setbacks. The untrained rabble at his disposal was clearly outmatched by the professionals of the Zionist raiding party, but the trail of bodies on the lower levels and the battle noise in the east tunnel indicated the raiders were still headed topside. If they expected a ride out of here, at some point their rescue helicopter had to arrive, and the enemy would have to emerge from the tunnel to board it.
In the distance, he had watched a blue golf cart carrying one of his teams emerge from the east tunnel and zip across to where heavy earthmoving equipment was parked. Good men. Finally, some of these cowards were showing the aggressiveness needed to overcome the flaws in the general attack. They had taken a good defensive position behind the big machines without being told, and that action gave him an idea for a final strategy.
Instead of wasting his fighters belowground, al-Masri decided to reorganize into a pair of strong defensive positions around both main entrances, and simply wait for the targets to present themselves. When they did, he would finish them off.
“Leave the guard and those other two down at the west tunnel mouth, but gather the rest here,” he told his bodyguard, who radioed the instructions to the other teams. “I will instill the fear of Allah in them, and they will fight!”
About thirty men had gone into the tunnels, but fewer than ten came out and drifted over to him. Twenty dead? Al-Masri snorted; some of the foreign contract workers were hiding down there to save their skins. He would deal with them later. There was still some shooting below, so others were still engaged and unable to break contact.
“Now listen carefully, you worthless dogs,” he shouted and took a deep breath to begin explaining his trap. He never finished, because he heard the pounding thrum of approaching aircraft.
IT IS HARD TO kill someone behind a wall, and Kyle Swanson huddled down tight in a small alcove on the first basement level while a tight curtain of bullets whizzed by him. Finally, he had run into someone who knew how to fight.
Swanson was bottled up in the wide tunnel that sloped up to the main entrance, and he had about a minute and a half left, with the seconds falling rapidly away. Soon, the bird would touch down for a moment and then be gone.
If he missed the extract, he planned to haul ass back downstairs as fast as possible and crawl out of a firing slit in one of the gun pits. Once in the valley, he could evade, find a new hide, and arrange another pickup.
He would stick here for a few more seconds and raise some hell to divide the attention of any topside fighters and help the Ospreys come in safely. He could only hope that Coastie and the engineer were ready, although he had not heard from them for several minutes.
Another fusillade of bullets buzzed his way, sliding and bouncing along the wall, gnawing at his hiding place, and he stuck the CAR-15 out and returned a burst. The other guy was shielded at a corner and was cold locked in on Kyle. There was too much open space to rush the gunman, and if reinforcements came in to help, Swanson would have a real problem. The one thing he could not afford to do was nothing.
THE BRIGHT GLARE OF the sun had made Beth Ledford shade her eyes with her palm when her cart swept out of the tunnel and onto the bridge. Free of the tight confines of the subterranean levels, she found herself in the open, driving across a wide roadway that had broad aprons spread on each side, with high guardrails along the edges. To her left were the cloth cubicles of the bazaar, although the hawkers had abandoned the area when the shooting started. Far to the right at the other end of the bridge, she saw a group of men gathered in a circle.
She swerved to the apron and parked between heavy excavation equipment, then shoved the engineer out, grabbed his leash, and hauled him down beside a huge bulldozer. As she checked her weapons, she heard the planes and pressed her radio earpiece hard, calling for help, praying for a response.
“Limo Three-Two. Limo Three-Two. This is Bounty Hunter Bravo.”
During years of controversial development, the Osprey had gained such a bad reputation that Marines assigned to fly on them grimly called themselves death crews. As the bugs were finally worked out, the twin tilt- rotor aircraft became a gem of the fleet and far surpassed the capabilities of the old medium-lift CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters. A pair of them were a minute out from the bridge.
Major Sam Jameson, at the controls of the lead bird, was just popping up over the final crest of hills when he heard the message. He responded immediately. “Bounty Hunter Bravo, this is Limo Three-One. What’s your traffic?”
“Roger, Limo Three-One,” Beth confirmed, trying to control her voice to filter out the excitement and relief that flooded through her. “We’re at the LZ. What is your timeline?”
The Ospreys clawed for a bit more altitude as the high ground unrolled beneath them, then dropped away into a valley, where a huge man-made structure dominated the far end. “We’re one mike out, and I see the LZ.” The friendly Kentucky twang of the Marine aviator made Beth feel more comfortable.
Ledford, kneeling behind a Komatsu lowboy flatbed trailer, smiled when she was finally able to see the pair of planes. “Limo Three-One. Bounty Hunter Bravo. I see you now. Popping yellow smoke.” She threw the grenade as hard as she could. It hit the roadway, bounced and rolled, and belched a spreading cloud of bright color.
“Roger, I see yellow,” confirmed Jameson. “Where are you?”
“Bounty Hunter Bravo and one pax are behind the earthmovers at the west end, next to a blue golf cart.”
Major Jameson altered the angle of approach and set the computers to perform the almost magical transition from airplane to helicopter. The speed fell away from cruising at 277 miles per hour as the nacelles on each wingtip elevated in slow motion up to a sixty-degree elevation, cut to about sixty miles per hour. Then the props were pointing straight up at ninety degrees, and the plane was at a complete hover, hanging in the sky, balanced by multiple computers of the fly-by-wire systems. Jameson nudged the stick to make minor adjustments.
The second Osprey remained in airplane mode to fly cover. Captain Les Richter banked slightly as the bridge came up fast. “Bounty Hunter Bravo, this is Limo Three-Two. Any friendlies down there?” Richter was not worried about small-arms ground fire, which was almost inconsequential to an Osprey, but if he had to make a gun run, he did not want innocent people caught in the .50 caliber shit storm. There was a village several klicks beyond the east end of the bridge, and that was far out of the danger zone.
Beth paused before answering. Better to be honest. “I have no contact with Bounty Hunter Actual,” she said. “I don’t see him topside. Everyone I see on the bridge has a weapon.”
“Good enough,” said Richter, whirling his big plane in closer. “Limo Three-Two will make one recon pass, then cover your extract. If you need help, we’ll hose the place down.”
Kyle heard the transmission. If he could get the Osprey to sweep the bridge, he still might get out of this mess. “Break! Break! This is Bounty Hunter Actual. Consider the entire bridge a free-fire zone!” He was still too far underground for his little radio to transmit properly, and no one heard him. Then another blast of gunfire erupted from down the hall, and he pressed his back into the alcove.
First things first. He had put up with about as much of this being pinned down crap as he cared to endure and was flat out of time. Swanson grabbed his last round M-67 hand grenade, holding it in close to his belly, simultaneously securing the safety lever with his right hand while picking out the pin with his left. He heard the covering Osprey roar by just as he released the safety spoon to activate the four-second fuse.
Instead of stepping out into the line of fire to throw the grenade, Kyle underhanded it across the corridor, where it clipped the opposite wall at a forty-five-degree angle and banked back toward the corner where the gunman was shielded. The metal baseball skittered across the stone and exploded at the man’s feet, blowing him backward, lacerated with metal shards.
Kyle had turned from the blast, but as soon as the concussion passed, he was out of his hideaway, charging for daylight.
AL-MASRI WAS MOMENTARILY FROZEN. At the west terminus of the bridge, a blossom of yellow smoke had flashed on the road and was expanding into a thick cloud that hung like a curtain. Then a plane with propellers like giant windmills dashed overhead, and its prop wash kicked up such a storm of dirt and debris that everyone around him hit the ground, and he turned away, covering his face. Americans! Ayman al-Masri recognized the aircraft as
