guard posts, boundaries of minefields, fence positions, even locations of doghouses and latrines were pointed out. He was kneeling just to the north of the minefield, scanning the compound, when suddenly he heard a ripple of explosions. 'Nike, looks like our little buddies are on the job,' Hal radioed on the secure command satellite network. He heard several secondary explosions as a Wolverine cluster bomb attack destroyed a pair of SA-10 antiaircraft missiles, sending a balloon of fire into the night sky. The Libyans began firing antiaircraft artillery into the sky, tracers arcing everywhere, but judging by the wild, random sweep of the tracers across the sky, it didn't appear as if they were locked onto any of the Wolverines yet. 'What's it look like to you?'
'Why do you ask me these things, sir? You can see everything I see.' Chris Wohl was stationed on the south side of the military compound, keeping watch on the main access road between the military base area and the Jaghbub compound.
'Relax, Sarge. It looks quiet out here.'
'That's because you've got five hundred mines between you and the bad guys,' Wohl said. 'I've got two T-55 tanks less than a hundred meters away from me. This looks pretty damned suspicious to me, sir-the Libyans look like they're on full alert.'
'I don't blame them-we're only fifteen miles from the Egyptian border.' Just then they heard three beeps come over their communications network. 'Here we go, guys.'
Briggs raised and adjusted a device that looked like a small, fat mortar launcher. He double-checked the settings on the mount, armed it, and then used his boot thrusters to jet-jump away from the area. Thirty seconds later, the launcher activated, shooting a projectile with a onethousand-foot-long piece of half-inch-thick rope behind it. As the rope reached its full length, the projectile detached itself, and the rope sailed through the sky, eventually fluttering gently to the sand in a wavy snakelike pattern. Ten seconds later, the rope-which was actually a detonatorlike cord-automatically exploded.
The shock of the explosion caused every mine within a hundred feet either side of the detonator rope to explode, creating an incredible light show across the desert as an entire three hundred thousand cubic feet of sand simultaneously blew into the sky. The vibrations and shock waves rushing across the desert set off even more mines in a spectacular ripple pattern, like waves from a rock thrown into a still lake.
'Yeah, baby, yeah' Briggs exclaimed as the rolling ex-
plosions washed over him like a brief but violent minihurricane. 'Talk to me, honey!'
'Don't get yourself shot while you're patting yourself on the ass, sir,' Wohl said.
'Hey, you got the job I wanted-just make sure you don't miss.'
'I've got this job for one reason, sir-I never miss,' Wohl said. At that, he hefted a huge rifle that looked like a cross between a big Barrett.50-caliber BMG sniper rifle and something out of a science-fiction movie. The weapon was plugged into his belt with a short fiber-optic data cable, and with a simple voice command it was activated and Wohl started searching for targets.
It did not take long. Vehicles started rolling out of a security building inside the tall fence less than a minute after the explosions in the minefield. The first out was an armored car with only two men in it, probably officers; Wohl let it pass. His intended targets: The two ex-Soviet T-55 tanks sitting near the entrance, both small, fast, and still powerful despite their age, following closely behind the armored car.
Wohl didn't want to wait until the first one cleared the gate, so he had it in the electronic sights of the big gun as soon as he saw it move out. About ten meters before it reached the gate, Wohl pressed the trigger. Silently, with the recoil electromagnetically dampened out, a sausage-sized depicted-uranium projectile weighing about three pounds shot out from the muzzle of the electromagnetic rail gun at over twenty thousand feet per second. There were no explosives in the projectile-its effectiveness was in mass times velocity, pure momentum. In about a second, the sabot round hit the tank in the right side just below upper track level. It pierced the thick outer hull and passed completely through the tank's diesel engine and transmission and out the other side without losing more than twenty percent of its velocity. The projectile didn't even begin a ballistic flight path for another two miles, and it finally buried itself thirty feet diagonally in the sand after flying more than five miles.
For a few seconds, it appeared as if Wohl had missed-
there was nothing at all to indicate that the tank had been hit except it had stopped suddenly and one track drive sprocket and drive shaft was sliced into pieces. But inside, the tank's engine was disintegrating with incredible speed and destructive force. It was as if a hundred parts inside the engine, instantly dislodged from their bearings and mounts, simply decided to fly apart at the same instant. The big diesel engine simply split apart and became a deadly cloud of shrapnel, killing the four crewmen inside instantly. The T-55's gun turret popped off the top of the tank like a champagne cork, spinning twenty feet in the air before landing against the fence. Smoke and flames spewed out the opening like an upside-down rocket engine.
Wohl immediately targeted the second T-55, and seconds later it too was a burning mass of metal, blocking the base entrance. Wohl jet-jumped twenty yards east, retreating to a spot where he could fire inside the base. He sent one projectile into the security building through the front door, hoping to take out some communications equipment. But he was only waiting for his real target.
It came less than five minutes later: an Italian-made Agusta A109 VIP transport helicopter, escorted by a Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter. Their intelligence information was right on: The Agusta was Libyan president Zuwayy's personal helicopter, and the Mi-8 carried his security staff, twelve heavily armed Republican Guard troopers. Wohl didn't have to lead either helicopter with the rail gun at such short range: one shot each, and both helicopters came down hard.
But by now security forces and infantrymen had started streaming out of the base, and they were even starting to walk automatic weapons fire in his direction-time to leave. 'Nike is evacuating,' he radioed.
'Taurus is on the move too,' Hal Briggs reported. 'Let's get the hell out of Dodge.'
Wohl turned to leave-but before he could use his thrusters to jump away, suddenly the sand around him disappeared in a blinding cloud of fire. Out of nowhere, a third T-55 tank had raced around the two stricken tanks, lo-
cated Wohl's hiding place, and had opened fire with a 101millimeter round that exploded just a few feet away-if he had been hit by the round, at this range, it might have killed him. Wohl was blasted off his feet and thrown twenty feet in the air.
'Taurus… Taurus…' The blast had stunned Wohlhe could make his arms and legs move, but he couldn't get his legs under him well enough to run or jump away. He could hear the T-55 moving closer, and he desperately tried to crawl behind a sand dune or into a ditch-anything to avoid a direct hit by a tank shell. Alarms were ringing in his suit-most of the energy in his suit was already gone.
No answer. Briggs was already gone. Even if he heard him, he couldn't get back in time.
Wohl could now feel the T-55's treads moving closer. He picked up the electromagnetic rail gun, hoping to get one last shot off-but it was already a tangle of broken parts in his hands. The hypervelocity rail gun rounds were nonexplosive-he couldn't even fashion a grenade or smoke screen out of the now-useless rounds. His electronic stunbolts were useless against a tank, and even if he was confronted by infantrymen, he might have one or two bolts left before his power drained out completely.
Crap. In his entire military career, he hadn't gotten more than a scratch or a few minor cuts and bruises in combatunless he was dealing with the Tin Man battle armor. Every time he had anything to do with it, the damned suit had managed to bite him in the ass. This time, he had relied on it too long. The one weakness in the suit is that you started to believe you were invulnerable, and that's when you got into trouble, getting too cocky and getting into worse and worse scrapes.
The Libyan tank sounded as if it was right beside him. Wohl pulled himself up with his arms, but he still couldn't get his legs to work. He commanded his jump-jets to firehopefully they would blast him away from the area, giving him a precious few moments to hide or get to his feet, but the thrusters weren't responding-all he got was' power level warning message. He frantically tried to issue override commands, to use the last bit of 'housekeeping' power in the suit to fire the thrusters, but the computer ignored his commands. Damn machine…
A big white searchlight on the tank blinded him. Wohl could now see the muzzle of the T-55's big main gun trained on him, less than thirty yards away. Would they actually use the main gun on him? Wouldn't they realize it would blow him into tiny pieces, like a double-barreled shotgun blast a few inches away from a little bird sitting on a fence? They probably weren't looking for prisoners at this point….
Wohl saw the bright flash of light from the tank. 'Hal…,' he muttered weakly, for the last time. 'Hal, help
