infantryman aboard may be dead, but the vehicle can still fight if the driver or commander made it.”
“Roger that, Whack,” Martinez said. As soon as he stood up, he started taking fire, including automatic forty-millimeter grenade rounds. He dashed sideways for a hundred yards, searching for the origin of those rounds. He soon found it—not one, but two APCs.
“Angel, keep moving!” Charlie shouted. “Those two APCs have you lined up!”
“Not for long,” Martinez shouted back. He took aim and fired directly through the front of one APC. It immediately shuddered to a stop, and soon a fire broke out in the engine compartment. But Martinez couldn’t enjoy the view, because two more APCs had zeroed in on him. He immediately loaded their locations in his target computer’s memory, aimed, and fired. But they moved quickly, and he was only able to get one before having to run because he was being bombarded by the other. “Guys, I have a feeling they anticipated finding us out here,” he said. “I’m getting clobbered.”
“Target on the run and shoot at as many as you can when you stop,” Whack said. “Don’t target while you’re stopped.”
“It looks like they’re gunning for us for sure,” Charlie said. She fired four ballistic rockets from her backpack, which had infrared and millimeter-wave radars that guided them to a group of four Turkish armored personnel carriers that had appeared out of nowhere from the east. “At least it gives Jaffar’s troops a chance to—”
“
“Evasive moves, Angel!” Whack shouted. Now that the scout helicopter, a U.S.-licensed but Turkish-built Kiowa, had to keep its laser on Martinez, it was an easy target for Macomber’s rail gun, and he blew the sensor ball atop the helicopter’s rotor mast apart seconds later…but not before the Hellfire missile hit Martinez on the left part of his chest.
“Angel’s down! Angel’s down!” Whack shouted. He tried to run over to him, but sustained fire from the battalion in front of Jaffar’s security platoons kept him pinned down. “I can’t get to him,” he said as he fired at more oncoming APCs, then reloaded his rail gun. “I’m not sure how much longer we can hold these guys off. I’m down to fifty percent power and ammo.”
“The Wolverine will be overhead in one minute,” Patrick said. “More helicopters inbound!”
“I’m going to try to get to Martinez,” Whack said.
“The Turks are too close, Wayne,” Patrick said.
“We might have to retreat, but I’m not leaving without Martinez.” Whack fired several more times, waited for the return fire to subside, then said, “Here I—”
At that moment several dozen flashes of lights erupted from the west, and moments after that Turkish armored vehicles started exploding like firecrackers. “Sorry I am late once again, gentlemen,” Yusuf Jaffar radioed, “but I am still not accustomed to your speed. I think you may get your comrade, Macomber.”
“On the way!” Whack fired the thrusters on the boots of his Tin Man armor, and in three jumps he was with Martinez. At that moment the earth in front of him began to sizzle and pop like water sprayed on a hot pan as the Wolverine began sowing bomblets and antipersonnel mines on the Turkish troops. The air was getting thick with smoke and the screams of trapped Turks. “You okay in there, Angel?” Whack knew from his biometric datalink that Martinez was alive, but most of the left side of the robot was shattered, and he couldn’t move or communicate. Whack picked up the robot. “Hold on, Martinez. This might hurt a bit on the landing.”
Just as he hit his thrusters, a Hellfire missile fired from the Turkish Cobra gunship exploded at the spot he had just left, and Whack and Martinez were swatted out of the sky like clay pigeons hit by birdshot.
The BERP armor protected Whack from the blast, but after he landed he found all of his helmet systems dark and silent. He had no choice but to take his helmet off. Illuminated by the nearby fires of burning vehicles, he could see Martinez lying about fifty yards away, and sprinted over to him. But just as he got within twenty yards, the ground erupted with heavy-caliber shells peppering the area around the robot. The Cobra gunship had moved into cannon range and was spraying twenty millimeter shells on him. Whack knew he was next. Without power, his BERP armor wouldn’t protect him.
He looked around for someplace to hide. The nearest Iraqi machine-gun nest surrounding the XC-57 was about a hundred yards away. He hated to leave Martinez, but there was no way he could carry him, so he started running. Hell, he thought grimly, maybe running made it a
And then he heard a tremendous explosion, big enough and near enough to knock him off his feet. He turned and looked up just in time to see the Cobra gunship crash into the field just a couple dozen yards away. As the sound and feel of burning metal wafted over him, he got to his feet and ran. The heat and choking smoke made him crouch down as he ran, and he could hear and feel the missiles and ammo on the burning chopper cooking off behind him. Wouldn’t it be a bitch, he thought, to avoid getting turned into Swiss cheese by a Cobra gunship only to have the chopper’s unexpended ammo get him? Of course, that’s my luck, he thought, that’s the way I’m supposed to—
Suddenly it felt as if he had run headlong into a steel barricade. “Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Mr. Jackrabbit,” he heard the electronic voice of a CID unit say. It was Charlie, who had run over from her position to the east. “You’re clear. Take a minute. You lose your headgear?”
“I lost everything…the suit’s dead,” Whack said. “Go get Martinez.” Charlie waited a few moments, shielding Whack with her armor, until the explosions stopped on the downed Cobra, then ran off around the burning wreckage. She returned a few minutes later carrying the other CID unit. She then dragged Martinez with one hand and carried Macomber under her other arm back to the security post near the XC-57.
“Those other gunships are coming in,” Charlie said, picking up her rail gun and scanning the skies with the CID unit’s sensors. “Most are going after Jaffar’s brigade, but there’s a couple after us.” She paused for a moment, studying the electronic images of the battlefield. “I’ll draw them away,” she said, then bolted off to the east.
Whack peeked out over the sandbag bunker…and when he looked in the sky he saw the unmistakable flare of a missile motor igniting, and he jumped to his feet and ran away from the bunker as fast as he—
He was instantly thrown off his feet, blinded, deafened, half-broiled, and pelted with supersonic pieces of debris when the missile hit just a few yards behind him. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t knocked unconscious, so all he could do was lie on the ground in pain, with his entire head feeling like a charcoal briquette. But a few seconds later, he was scooped up off the ground. “Ch-Charlie…?”
“My rail gun’s DOA,” Charlie said as she ran. “I’m getting you out of—” She suddenly stopped, turned, and crouched down, shielding Whack from a thunderous burst of cannon fire from the Cobra. “I’m going to put you down and get that thing,” she said. “He doesn’t want you, he wants—” The Cobra pilot fired again. Whack could feel the heavy-caliber shells shoving him and Charlie as if they had their backs to a hurricane. “I…I’m losing power,” she said after the last fusillade ended. “That last blast got something…a battery, I think. I don’t think I can move.” The Cobra opened fire again…
At that moment they heard an explosion behind them, the cannon fire ceased, and they heard the sounds of another helicopter crash. Neither of them moved until they heard vehicles approaching. “Charlie?”
“I can move, but it’s real slow,” she said. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.” Whack painfully wriggled out from the CID unit’s mechanical arms and looked around for the Turks. “Stay put. We’ve got company.” The vehicles were almost on them. He had no weapons, nothing he could fight with. There was nothing he could—
“Raise your hands and don’t move,” he heard a voice say…an
“Macomber, and that’s Turlock,” Whack said. “I’ve got another guy back there.” The sergeant whistled and waved, and a few moments later an open-back Humvee came up. Whack helped load Charlie up on the Humvee. As she was taken back to Nahla, he got another Humvee, went back and found Martinez, had some soldiers load him up, and took him back to base as well.
Martinez was unconscious and had several broken bones and some internal bleeding and was taken to the
