back, sending them flying again. “Power is down to forty percent already,” Charlie said as Wohl helped them up, “my primary hydraulic system is out, and I can’t move my right leg.”
“Can you keep moving?”
“Yes, I think so,” Charlie said. Using her right leg as a crutch, she limped along, with Wohl laying down suppression fire with his machine gun until he ran out of ammunition. He half supported, half carried Charlie, and they were able to move faster up a low ridgeline. They could easily see their pursuers below them, advancing slowly, with more and more units joining the pursuit.
Charlie set Macomber and McNulty down, then dismounted from the CID unit. “It’s getting ready to shut down,” she said. “It’s done. There’s just enough power left to start erasing the firmware. Once we move away, it’ll automatically self-destruct.”
“It looks like they’re not sure where we are,” Wohl said, scanning the desert below them with night-vision optics. He zoomed in on a few of the details. “Let’s see…infantry…infantry…ah, got one, another machine-gun squad. I’ll be right back.” He raced off into the darkness.
Macomber struggled to his hands and knees. “Okay, I’m starting to tell up from down,” he said. “Who’s our guest?”
“Miles McNulty, a UN relief worker,” Charlie replied, filling in the details.
A few minutes later, Wohl ran back with an even larger weapon than the first, a Russian DshK heavy machine gun with a huge drum magazine on top, along with a wooden box of more magazines. “Looks like they brought some anti-aircraft weapons with them — they were obviously expecting company. How are you doing, Major?”
“Peachy, Sergeant Major,” Macomber replied. He looked at McNulty. Charlie was busy tying a scrap of cloth torn from her uniform around his leg. “The passenger is hurt. Where’s the cavalry?”
“At least sixty mike out.”
“Where are we headed?”
“East toward the Afghanistan border,” Charlie said. “About thirty miles away. Hilly and pretty open. No towns or villages for fifty miles.”
“How are you doing on power, Sergeant Major?” Macomber asked.
“Down to thirty percent.”
“Here — I can’t use it yet.” He unclipped one of his circular batteries from his belt and swapped it for one of Wohl’s more depleted ones. “Can we use the CID unit to charge our batteries?”
“Not when it’s in shutdown mode, Whack,” Charlie said.
“Can’t we tap into a power or telephone pole?” Macomber asked. Charlie looked at him with astonishment. “Hey, I
“I hear helicopters,” Wohl said. He used his night-vision and enhanced hearing systems to sweep the skies, pinpointing the approaching aircraft’s position. “Two light scout helicopters, about three miles away,” he said, raising the DshK machine gun.
“Let’s spread out,” Macomber said. But he soon found out that was all but impossible: Charlie was still in pain from her injuries, and McNulty was hurt badly and going into shock, so he had to carry both of them even though he still wasn’t a hundred percent himself, so it was slow-going. Wohl moved about ten yards away from them, close enough to support them if they came under attack but not close enough that one explosive round fired from a helicopter could take them all out at once.
They had run up the ridge just a few hundred yards when Wohl shouted, “Take cover!” Macomber found the largest piece of rock nearby and threw his charges and then himself behind it, placing himself between the helicopters and the others to shield them the best he could with his armored body. The Tin Man armor system featured an electronically actuated material that stayed flexible but instantly hardened when struck into a protective shield a hundred times stronger than plate steel.
Macomber could hear the oncoming helicopters through his own enhanced hearing system, but his eyes couldn’t focus on his electronic displays. “I can’t see them, Wohl.”
“Stay down.” A moment later he opened fire with the DshK machine gun, the muzzle flash of the big 12.7- millimeter cannon illuminating a ten-yard-diameter area around him. They heard a loud metallic screech as several rounds pierced the first helicopter’s turbine engine and seized it solid, then an explosion as the engine blew itself apart. Seconds later they heard more explosions as the second scout helicopter opened fire on Wohl’s position. He managed to jump out of the way just in time to avoid the full force of the Iranian 40-millimeter rocket attack.
Wohl opened fire on the second helicopter, but the fire soon cut off. “Jammed…shit, a round stuck in the chamber…won’t clear.” He was surprised the gun had fired as many rounds as it did — it looked as if it was fifty years old and hadn’t been cleaned in half that number of years. He discarded the weapon and scanned the area for more nearby Pasdaran units so he could grab another machine gun, but the three remaining units were hanging back, blindly peppering the ridgeline with occasional rifle and mortar fire and content to let the scout helicopter do some fighting for them.
“The infantry units are hanging back, and there’s still one helicopter overhead,” Wohl reported. “I’m down to throwing rocks.” He wasn’t kidding — the microhydraulically actuated exoskeleton on the Tin Man combat system gave him enough power to hurl a five-pound rock almost two hundred yards with enough force to do some damage, which could put him within range of that scout helicopter if he could dash toward it, jump, and throw with perfect timing. He found a softball-sized rock and prepared to do just that…
…but then his sensors picked up another helicopter, and this time it wasn’t a little scout. He’d recognize that silhouette anywhere: “We’ve got more trouble, ma’am,” Wohl said. “Looks like a Mi-24 Hind inbound.” The Russian-built Mi-24, NATO code name “Hind,” was a large attack helicopter which could also carry up to eight fully outfitted soldiers inside. It carried a formidable array of weapons…
…the first of which opened fire seconds later, from over three miles away. Wohl immediately dashed away from the rest of his team, then stopped to make sure the anti-tank guided missile was still tracking him. It was, and he realized that the helicopter itself was following him too, which meant that the helicopter crew had to keep him in sight to keep the missile on him. Good. It had to be an older guided missile, probably an AT-6 line-of-sight radio- controlled missile.
Wohl waited another heartbeat, then dashed toward the nearest group of Pasdaran ground pursuers at top speed. He could no longer see the missile, but he remembered that an AT-6’s flight time was somewhere around ten seconds when fired from maximum range. That meant he had just seconds to make it. This Pasdaran unit was an armored vehicle with a heavy machine gun on top, which opened fire as he closed in. A few shells hit, but not enough to slow him down. Now he was between the armored vehicle and the helicopter — certainly, Wohl thought, the Hind’s gunner had to turn the missile away. His mental stopwatch ran to zero…
…just as the AT-6 Spiral anti-tank missile slammed into the Pasdaran armored vehicle, setting it afire in a spectacular fireball. Wohl was thrown skyward by the concussion. The damned Pasdaran gunner got so target- fixated that he lined up and hit his own guys!
Wohl rolled unsteadily to his feet, alive and mostly unhurt except his eyes and throat were clogged with oily smoke. The entire left side of his helmet, along with most of his sensors and communications, had been damaged in the blast. He had no choice but to take the helmet off. The blast had also ruined his hearing, and the acrid smoke burned his eyes and throat. He was a sitting duck. His first order of business was to get away from the burning vehicles behind him, which could be highlighting him…
…but before he could move, a line of automatic gunfire stitched the ground in front of him, and the big Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter zoomed before him and stopped, the chin-mounted 30-millimeter cannon trained directly on him. His armor would protect his body, but that would be of no use to him without a head. Wohl had no idea if they would accept a surrender, but if they were distracted long enough it might provide the others a chance to escape, so he raised his hands. The Mi-24 started its descent to touchdown, and he could see the clamshell crew doors open on either side, with soldiers ready to dismount as soon as the big chopper set…
…and at that instant there was a flash of fire on the right side of the attack chopper, followed by a large plume of smoke, more fire, an explosion, and a scream of metal, and then the big chopper spun to the left and hit the ground. Wohl dashed away just as the helicopter began to disintegrate in several more tremendous explosions. He was about to head back toward the others when he saw several vehicles, including an armored personnel carrier, approach. The lead vehicle, a pickup truck with a machine gunner in back, was flying a flag, but he couldn’t
