Danny touched down a few seconds later. He quick-released his chute gear and sprinted toward the rooftop defense position. Sugar had already secured it, ramming what looked like a small stopper in the mouth of the machine gun in place there.
“Fire in the hole!” she yelled, somewhat dramatically.
Danny turned away as the charge in the stopper ignited. The blast ripped back the barrel of the gun, rendering it impotent. The sound was lost in the crescendo of the attack near the front gate.
“Let’s go inside,” said Danny as the other two members of his fire team reached the roof.
Melissa was thrown against her restraints as the Osprey pitched hard to get on a new course, avoiding the MC-17 swooping in low over the compound. As the black cargo aircraft came in, two large containers trundled down the interior rail system to the rear bay doors. The large rectangular boxes looked like smaller versions of the shipping containers that carried so much freight around the world. Long droguelike parachutes deployed as the boxes left the aircraft, slowing their descent just enough to allow the cushioned bottoms to properly absorb the blow from the fall.
The flat screen at the forward station in the Osprey’s hold received input from the MC-17’s target-drop system; it declared the boxes had hit exactly 13 and 27 centimeters from their “optimum” positions.
“Good enough for government work,” joked the crew chief, watching over Melissa’s shoulder.
As they hit the ground near the larger citadel, the sides of the large crates unfolded, revealing a quartet of TinkerToy-like objects on a platform. These odd contraptions, known to the Whiplash team simply as Bots, could be configured for a variety of tasks. The eight that had just landed were all equipped with M-134 Gatling guns, essentially the same weapons fired by a door gunner in a helicopter or a crewman on a riverine boat. Moving on tanklike treads, the bots fanned out around the larger of the two central compounds, taking up predesignated positions.
As the last bot reached its destination, all eight began to fire, peppering the exterior of the half-dozen buildings with a barrage of gunfire for exactly twenty-two seconds. As the last bullet hit, a dozen small munitions, launched from the “arms” of the Osprey Melissa was riding in, struck their targets, removing the roofs from the buildings.
Melissa jerked up as the crew chief tapped her on the shoulder.
“Be ready to land in zero-five,” said the chief.
She gave him a thumbs-up, then keyed the screen to show the area Danny was attacking to the northwest.
Danny came in through the door as the flash-bang grenades exploded, his visor automatically adjusting for the burst of light. Something moved on his left; he turned and tapped his trigger, killing a Brother gunman instantly. This was a “full prejudice” mission — no holds barred. The rules of engagement allowed anyone inside to be shot. Everyone in the compound had already declared themselves a member of the Sudan Brotherhood, and the unit’s alignment with al Qaeda made them a legitimate enemy of the United States.
The team moved through the room quickly, reaching the exterior hallway. The next two rooms were unoccupied — the walls were so thin they could see the heat signatures on their helmet screens — and they reached the hallway in seconds.
“Fire in the hole!” yelled Nolan.
Standing at the head of the stairs, the trooper dropped a frag grenade down. As soon as it exploded, the team descended to the first floor of the two-story building. Nolan stayed on the steps while the rest raced to check the rooms.
The walls were either thicker or insulated, and they could no longer count on their infrared images or MY- PID’s interpretation. They swept each room methodically, hitting them with grenades and then coming in. Each room looked like a classroom, with a small desk and a number of chairs — a finishing school for terror.
When the last room had been cleared without finding anyone, Danny checked in with the team that had landed on the building at the diagonal corner from them.
“Flash, what’s your situation?”
“Building cleared. Twelve enemies encountered, twelve down.”
“Move on.”
“Moving.”
“Got all the action over there,” quipped Nolan. “I picked the wrong team.”
Floor cleared, Danny was about to move on to the next building when he heard a shout from Sugar in the back room. He ran over in time to see her pulling a desk away from the side. She kicked the corner of the carpet behind it, revealing a metal trapdoor on the floor.
“Used a string to close it,” she told him. “Squeezed past the desk.”
Danny covered her while she opened it, revealing an unlit staircase.
“Drop a grenade,” he told her.
She did.
“Goes down pretty far,” she told him after it exploded. “Then in that direction, to the north.”
“We’ll have to come back and check it,” he told her. “Help me with the desk.”
They turned the desk on its side and slid it over the hole. Then Danny posted a pair of small video cams, one on the desk and the other at the side of the room, and had MY-PID monitor them for any movement. He also added a pair of charges near the hole so they could blow up anyone trying to escape by remote control.
MY-PID had apparently not discerned the tunnel because of the building structure and angle, which either by design or accident obscured the image on standard radar techniques. The computer calculated — with a 43.5 percent certainty, an admission that it was just guessing — that the tunnel was connected to a mine shaft some two hundred yards away, which had been seen by the radar.
“Target the mine shaft opening,” Danny told the Ospreys. “See if you can bomb it closed.”
In the meantime, the rest of Danny’s team cleared the second building, a one-story structure where three fighters attempted to hold out. Armed with AK-47s, all three were quickly overcome.
“Running out of buildings,” said Flash, reporting that his team had cleared its next objective.
“Keep moving,” barked Danny.
Nuri ducked as a sudden burst of gunfire bounced through the rocks just to his right. The bullets themselves were well off the mark, but they shattered the nearby rock outcropping, sending a fusillade of chips showering in every direction. Several hit his helmet so hard that he fell down. He had an instant headache — but it was far better than what might have occurred had he not given in to Pierce’s “extremelystrongpersonalrecommendation, sir!” that he don a Marine helmet to go with his Whiplash-issued armored vest.
Shaking the blow off, Nuri rose in time to see the Marines he’d been with pump several grenades into the position behind the flattened bus. One of the grenades hit a small store of ammo. This resulted in a cascade of shrapnel even larger than the one that had engulfed him, but it didn’t stop the Brothers who were several yards behind the position from firing.
The Marines countered with a heavy dose of lead from their M-16A4s. Nuri added some rounds from his own SCAR, then saw two of the enemy soldiers running down the hillside on his left. As he swung around to fire, one of the men dropped straight back, taken down by a Marine sniper.
The other tossed a grenade, big and fat, directly at him.
As the rest of his team headed to take down their third and final building, Danny diverted to check on the “spikes” that had been launched and planted just after the start of the mission.
The “spikes”—they had no official name beyond a series of letters and numbers — were a quartet of long metal tubes that were literally rocketed into the ground after being launched from the MC-17. After insertion, a network of small wires shot from the bodies of the spikes, creating a field of electric current — a virtual electric fence, or for the more sci-fi oriented, a force field. Anyone attempting to run through the area protected by the spikes would receive a massive jolt of electricity, roughly the equivalent of three hits from a commercial grade Taser.
The system wasn’t foolproof. A very determined enemy willing to sacrifice a few men could conceivably force
