As the Blackhawk thumped overhead and swept behind them, the Howler pitched forward, coming to bear on one of the trucks. White-hot flashes came from its rocket pods.
Before Brent could open his mouth in an order to fall back, the first truck lifted off the ground and burst into a dome of fire whose heat and blast wave sent Brent sliding backward.
Smoke swirled in the rotor wash and dropped on them like a woolen blanket as the din of gunfire rose.
Brent coughed. His eyes burned. He could barely see the images piped in from the Cross-Com. And then the smoke thinned.
The second gunner kept firing on the chopper, a fountain of brass casings rising at his side. Brent screamed for the guy to get out of there, but he doubted the man had heard him. The Brit seemed unfazed by the helicopter coming around to finish him off.
Brent hollered again as the rocket pods flashed like cameras and twin smoke trails slashed the air between the chopper and the truck.
But that gunner never released his weapon and fired until the explosion swallowed him.
FOURTEEN
Knowing that Dennison was observing everything on the battlefield, Brent did not report the loss of the fifty- caliber guns or that the Russians were about to finish his team.
Those facts were obvious.
As was the fact that he needed immediate air support. He and his Ghosts were firing slingshots at an armored Goliath, and a break back for the woods would leave them vulnerable.
Only a few seconds after he’d called for help — his senses overloaded by the fires, the secondary explosions, the deafening din of rotors and rotor wash — did a new window open in his HUD to reveal a praying mantis or rather a fighter pilot wearing an alien-like helmet with attached oxygen line. A complex grid of flashing data displays was reflected brilliantly across the pilot’s tinted faceplate.
“Ghost Lead, this is Siren, Joint Strike Fighter Support, over.”
“Siren, this is Ghost Lead, our target is—”
“Relax, Captain. I have your target. Tell your people to take cover, over.”
“Roger that!” Somewhere amid all the racket came the faint hiss of a jet.
Brent hollered for incoming, and they all dug deeper into the mound. Brent craned his neck up, studied the sky, and waited.
Finally, the whoosh of the F-35’s Pratt & Whitney engine boomed louder than the chopper’s.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was a Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) aircraft that had often provided Close Air Support to Brent’s operations in Afghanistan. Pilots could keep their jets hidden in the mountains and launch vertically on a moment’s notice. Some of his operators referred to the fighters as helicopters on steroids, and Brent was well accustomed to working with their highly capable if sometimes immodest pilots. Small world, too, because he knew this particular fighter jockey, and she was one of the best.
Major Stephanie Halverson had fought bravely enough during the Russian invasion of Canada to earn the attention of the president of the United States, along with the admiration of everyone in the JSF. She’d been shot down, nearly captured behind enemy lines, and rescued by a stalwart Force Recon Marine unit, who’d plucked her from the waters of a frozen lake whose ice had given way.
Word was in Afghanistan that if you had Siren on your back, the enemy didn’t stand a chance — and you stood a greater chance of coming home alive.
All of Brent’s people had been trained as air force combat controllers, though Lakota was the most accomplished among them. At the moment, though, Siren didn’t need any help. Brent watched from her point of view as she targeted the Howler and unleashed the dogs: a pair of wingtip-mounted AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles.
That the missiles used a passive IR target-acquisition system to home in on the Howler’s infrared emissions was a trivial detail.
That they would utterly destroy the enemy aircraft was all you needed to know.
And now it was time to stop, hold your breath, and look up at the fireworks show.
And that’s exactly what Brent did.
The twin flashes came, burning magnesium bright, and from the jet’s wings came fate in all its destructive glory.
The Howler tore apart not a second after the Side-winders struck their one-two punch. Flaming debris formed the petals of a brilliant flower before all of it came crashing down just thirty meters away, the entire field trembling, secondary explosions resounding, debris pinwheeling in all directions like razor-sharp throwing stars tossed by ninja warriors.
Brent waved his people away, lest they be sliced apart or caught in the flames. His Ghosts needed no more coaxing and sprinted for the trees.
“Ghost Lead, this is Siren, is there anything else I can do for you today, over?”
“Yeah, you can finally surrender your phone number.”
Although Halverson’s face was hidden by her faceplate, Brent guessed that she smiled. “Always a pleasure, Ghost Lead. Siren out.”
The team, along with the surviving Brits, rallied back to the edge of the field where they’d entered as the Blackhawk settled down into a landing.
“You can ride with us if you want,” Brent told the driver.
“My people are on the way. Thanks for that,” the guy said, glancing at the burning Howler.
Brent gestured toward one of the shattered trucks. “I’m sorry about your gunner.”
The driver made a face. “Me, too. Glad you got us a little help, otherwise we would’ve joined him.”
Brent nodded.
“All right, everyone, let’s load,” shouted Lakota.
Brent shook hands with the driver, a sobering moment to be sure, and then he and the others climbed aboard the Blackhawk. He was the last inside and searched the bay area for any surprising faces. Just the pilot, co-pilot, and two door gunners, about as nondescript a bunch as you could get.
He wanted to express his puzzlement to Lakota, but the bay was much too loud to do any talking. They lifted off and forged onward, toward the coast.
No precious cargo? No VIPs? Why hadn’t the Russians fired at the Blackhawk?
The answer came within seconds. Dennison appeared in his HUD. “Ghost Lead, we’ve intercepted communication from Haussler and his team. They had direct contact with that Howler. They’re trying to track us again, but we cut the line.”
“I thought maybe we were carrying VIPs,” Brent said, lifting his voice above the helicopter’s engines.
“Negative. Well, actually, from Haussler’s standpoint,
“Roger that.”
“But take a look at this,” said Dennison, her image switching to a streaming satellite video of a hovercraft racing across the channel. A text box indicated that the craft was bound for Folkestone Harbor, with an ETA of just six minutes. The image then zoomed in to show three people on bicycles heading down the narrow, shop-lined Old High Street, en route to the linkup with that hovercraft.
“We have her now,” Brent said, trying to control his pulse. “If she gets on that ship, that’s it. Done deal. Much easier to isolate and control.”
“I agree. I’m instructing your pilot to hold off. We want her to board, get out into the channel, and then I’m calling in a laser strike on the hovercraft’s engines. Once she’s dead in the water, you move in.”
