D Day, Bandar Qassim Airport. Ophir
As with the other strike, the one on the truck convoy, this pilot led off with an illumination rocket. Having seen and heard what followed the previous such, the Ophiris dotted about the landscape of the ridge's northern slope-about half of them-dropped their crap and began to leg it for the north.
The rockets came fast after that: Flechette-which whined in with the drone of thousands of homicidal bees, high explosive, incendiary, high explosive, incendiary, flechette again, another flare, more flechette, and then three HE, interspersed with two incendiaries. They came in close enough together in time, if not in space, that the crest of the ridge lit up as if by strobe light.
Buckwheat doubted they hit much of anything-well, except maybe for the flechette-but that almost wasn't the point of an airstrike, which was usually much more about frightening and disorganizing people than about killing them.
'All right, Rattus, you maniac,' Buckwheat Fulton shouted, kicking the back of the medic's seat, 'fucking charrrge!'
The engine was already running. Hampson slammed on the gas, causing the Hummer to lurch forward, spitting rocks and gravel out the back. Fulton barely hung on to the rollbar and the bungeed machine gun. Off to the left, they heard Fletcher howling with pure delight.
The Hummer crested the ridge, launching itself into the air for a moment before slamming back down. Buckwheat waited for it to settle a bit from the pounding, then opened up with the machine gun, spraying ball and tracer pretty much at random to the front. Below him, Rattus drove with his left hand, firing a rifle out the right side. If either of them hit anything, moving and bouncing like that, it was a miracle.
Still, they didn't have to. After the strike on the truck convoy, the second strike on themselves, and the totally unexpected charge of the light vehicles, most of the Ophiris who had pursued the snipers up the slope broke and ran. Neither Rattus nor Buckwheat tried to kill them. Rather, they fired more to encourage them in their flight.
'Shit,' Fulton said. 'We might just get away with this.'
Sergeant Nurto Nuur, fiercely scar-faced, shook his head with disgust at the younger generation. So the bandits raiding them had called in a little air strike. So what? He'd faced worse, more than once, fighting Americans, Ethiopians, Malayans, Kenyans, his own former countrymen . . .
Bah. Fucking cowards.
Some of his own men had tried to run off, right after the light went off overhead. Nuur wasn't sure he could have restrained them except that the first real war rocket had killed the first man to get up and run, and done so faster and deader than a stomped mouse. That had made the rest listen to him, and crouch down behind his protecting rock.
Under the light of the overhead flare, Nuur counted six others, not all of them from his own squad. One of these had a machine gun, and had managed to retain his ammunition. That was to the good. Nuur gave the boy a terse commendation.
They almost bolted again, when the bandits' vehicles topped the crest and charged, spitting bullets. Then, Nuur had had to put his rifle on his own men to hold them in position.
'Stay put, unless you want to die,' he'd said, without reference to whether he meant die from the enemy's bullets, or from his own.
His judgment had been proved correct when the bullets that had been pinging off the great boulder to his front had stopped moments after they'd begun.
They can't control the machine gun from a moving vehicle, he thought. They're doing well to keep them going generally to the north.
'Give me your gun,' Nuur then demanded of the machine gunner, holding his hands out to receive it. The gunner passed his machine gun over without demur. Nuur took it, gave it the most cursory inspection under the waning light of the overhead flare, and told the others, 'Get behind me.'
Then he took a prone firing position and waited. He didn't have to wait long.
Rattus heard Buckwheat's shout, 'Shit, we might just get away with this,'and laughed.
'Of course we . . . '
Hampson stopped speaking as a long stream of bullets, one in five a green-flaring tracer, passed around and-based on sound and feel-through his Hummer. They came from behind him, to his right. His windshield cracked, physically and audibly. He couldn't return fire.
'Buckwheat!' Rattus called, 'get . . . '
He didn't bother continuing as Buckwheat had slumped forward onto his right shoulder. The medic's nose was assailed by the smell of blood and shit. Rattus aimed for the field and drove like a madman.
D-Day, Airfield, Five north-northeast of Nugaal, Ophir
Between Dayid's extended family, the liberated slaves, his own people, and the translator's body, Terry had eighty-nine people to shove, somehow, onto two helicopters.
He had one of his people, Graft, explaining through the remaining translator what they had to do. That wasn't a problem- 'No water, no food, no baggage, no arms, no . . . '-until he got to the real stickler- 'and get rid of any clothing that isn't absolutely essential to minimum modesty. That means shorts, ripped off skirts, and bras; no more.'
When the people, other than the troops and the liberated slaves, began to rise in protest, Terry said, 'Mr. Dayid, please go and explain to your relatives that they either do what they are told or they get left behind to the tender mercies of your clan chief while we do whatever it takes to extract the necessary information from you despite what will happen to them.'
'Yes, sir,' Dayid said, then hurried over to calm his people down. He must have been persuasive, because the men began removing trousers and robes as the women began to strip.
Venegas was on the radio to higher. Two of Terry's men had had to go and bring him in, but he could still run communications well enough.
'Two choppers inbound in five, Terry,' Venegas said, his voice a study in nausea-induced weakness.
'Start splitting them into two groups,' Welch ordered. 'By weight, best you can judge it.'
D-Day, Bandar Qassim Airport, Ophir
Hampson slammed on the brakes not far from where the medevac CH-801 had touched down. He didn't bother with lights; the entire field was still well lit by the hulks of burning aircraft.
As soon Hampson's feet were on the ground he was checking Fulton for vital signs. Weak, fast pulse . . . but at least he's still alive. A bullet cracked overhead, precluding any more careful diagnosis and all chance at treatment. He pulled the unconscious man out of the back, slung him over a shoulder, and began to race for the waiting plane.
Biggus Dickus met him halfway there. 'Where's your wounded Brit?' he asked.
'Back of the Hummer,' Rattus shouted, as the two passed by each other. As soon as Hampson was at the plane, he dropped the small ramp that made up the lower half of the tail and pulled out a low wheeled stretcher. He laid Buckwheat on it as carefully as possible, then pushed the stretcher in. He managed to lift the ramp and secure it by main force, then got into the plane himself and started digging frantically in its medical kit for an oxygen mask, a syringe, and drugs to keep blood pressure up. Bandages could come later.
Biggus came back and tossed Vic Babcock-Moore into the passenger seat next to the pilot. Vic groaned with the pain.
'Get the fuck out of here,' Thornton shouted at the pilot, who nodded and began letting go the brake.
