The Scorching

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Not at all. I’m going with my Regulators.”

  “I thought so,” Sensor said. “Well, introduce me to your merry men.”

  Cantwell did, starting with Pete Kennedy, who seemed genuinely excited to be a part of the attack. The three Brits were old hands at this kind of operation, used to addressing senior officers, and they said all the right things. A piece of cake, sir. Eager to get to grips with the enemy, sir. We will do our duty, sir.

  And this pleased Jacob Sensor enormously, and he was grinning like a Cheshire cat as he led the others toward Captain Miller and the Chinooks. Sensor was still smarting at the President’s intention to take credit for Guts and Glory, if it was an unqualified success. But even at this late date, Sensor hoped he could deflect some of the glory onto himself. Maybe he’d lead a charge or something. No, not that. Leading charges was hardly his style. But a way might show itself during the battle. He could only hope and pray.

  Captain Buck Miller was in full combat gear, including a helmet with the new Operational Camouflage Pattern cover. He carried an M4 carbine and a SIG Sauer M18 pistol and he looked capable, able to handle anything thrown his way. He had blue, analytic eyes that could and did unsettle civilians and a clipped, direct way of talking.

  Used to women soldiers, Miller raised no objection to Sarah Milano’s presence.

  “You Regulators will ride in a Chinook and deploy with the infantry,” the officer said. He called out, “Sergeant Baker!” A tall, well-built black soldier stepped to Miller’s side and saluted. “This is Sergeant Cameron Baker,” Miller said. “When we land you will stay close to him at all times. Is that clear?”

  “Sergeant Baker is taking us under his wing,” Pete Kennedy said, smiling.

  “Yes, he is,” Miller said. “Sergeant Baker, you will take good care of them.”

  “I will, sir,” Baker said. “Any of you gentlemen been in combat before?”

  Kennedy and the former SAS men said they had.

  “Then you know the drill,” Baker said. “Stay close to me, do as I say, and we’ll all come out of this alive. We move out at 0930.”

  Jacob Sensor had listened to Sergeant Baker and when the soldier left, he said, “Attention everybody. A couple of reporters, war correspondents really, will be in the other Chinook, and I’ve decided to fly with them. If I don’t see you until this is all over, I wish you the best of luck.” His smile had all the warmth of a Florida alligator’s grin. “Don’t let the Regulators down, gentlemen and lady.”

  Cory Cantwell watched tough, highly trained, and fully equipped troops file into the Chinooks and told himself that six people armed with handguns were hardly going to get a chance to cover themselves in glory. Especially with the slightly intimidating Sergeant Baker acting as mother hen.

  But he said what Sensor wanted to hear. “We won’t let you down, sir.”

  “Good, good,” Sensor said. Then, slapping his hands together, “This is going to be a great day.”

  The wind blew his white hair over his forehead, and Sarah Milano thought he looked like Julius Caesar about to cross the Rubicon.

  CHAPTER 58

  The morning was warm, pleasant, no wind to speak of, clouds floating in the baby blue sky like lilies in a pond. The air smelled of pine and slightly of the dust kicked up by the wheels of Forest Service vehicles on the back roads. The silence was profound, almost sacred, birdsong from the trees the only incursion.

  Visitors were already flocking to the park, escaping the heat of nearby urban localities, and the Three Pools area was filling up fast with young families determined to enjoy a mix of sun and water the whole long day.

  West of the pools, eight young men stood at the edge of a mixed pine and fir forest. Behind them, honeysuckle, cranberry, and cat’s ear bloomed in a grassy meadow about a hundred acres in extent, crossed by a stream that meandered among rocks and gravel banks.

  It was after nine-thirty, and the young men were concerned. Where was Nasim Azar, their mentor and leader? The drip torches were ready and several cans of gasoline had been stashed in the trees. All was prepared for the great conflagration that would destroy the infidels fleeing the slaughter at the Three Pools.

  “Perhaps he will not come,” one of the young men said.

  “He may be ill,” said another.

  “He will come,” said a third. “He seeks a glorious martyrdom as fervently as we do.”

  The others nodded and said this indeed must be the case.

  Nasim Azar will appear very soon, they said.

  But that would not be the case . . .

  Ten minutes passed and then came the slow realization. . . Nasim Azar was not coming. The traitor had chosen life over martyrdom. He’d disdained Paradise and embraced Jahannam . . . an eternity of fire in in the Seventh Level of Hell.

  The young men talked among themselves and made the decision to cleanse themselves of the betrayer’s demons. They would set the forest afire and perish in the flames as glorious martyrs.

  Using gasoline and drip torches, they set blazes along the tree line. Pines quickly became columns of fire, and plumes of black smoke rose skyward. The young men exalted to see the destruction they’d wrought. Surely Allah looked down on the flames and smiled.

  Then disaster. The devilish infidel hordes descended upon them.

  * * *

  The unmistakable rattling racket of helicopters drawing nearer sent the eight young men running from the trees into the meadow where they could get a better look at the sky. A Venom swooped in and turned broadside to give the man standing behind its machine gun a clear field of fire. The gun cut loose with a sound of a squealing hog in a slaughterhouse. A stream of 7.62 mm rounds tore into the men on the ground like a buzz saw and chopped five of them down in the first pass. The other three ran deeper into the meadow in headlong flight, away from the Venom and its terrifying gun. One of the terrorists stopped, pointed his pistol at the Venom, fired, and earned his martyrdom. The machine gunner was good, well-trained, his skill honed by five tours in Afghanistan, and as the other Venoms and the Chinooks flew over his helicopter, he dropped the shooter where he stood.

  The other two saw their brother fall and decided to stop running and make their fight as befitted Muslim warriors. Both drew their weapons and fired on the hovering chopper. Several .380 rounds ticked through the thin aluminum skin of the Venom, and one of their bullets nicked the pilot’s right arm, drawing blood. But then the machine gun shrieked again and cut down both terrorists in a hail of bullets.

  One of the young men, a twenty-two-year-old from an upscale Portland suburb, his body all but cut in half by a dozen bullets, lived long enough to realize that he and the others had been betrayed by Nasim Azar. That realization didn’t make his agonized dying any easier.

  * * *

  Ibrahim Rahman heard the approaching helicopters, but he didn’t realize he was under attack until a hailstorm of lead rattled through the tree canopy and hammered some of the young mujahideen into the ground where they lay. Others cried out in fright and ran around like terrified chickens fleeing a fox, trying to escape the lethal hail of bullets and the resulting carnage of blood and brains.

  Bullets kicking up dirt around him, showering him with twigs and pine needles, Rahman rose to his feet. He caught fleeting glances at the two Venom helicopters circling the stand of trees and yelled at the surviving Jacks to stand fast and fire at the helicopters.

  “Use your rifles. Kill the pilots,” he yelled.

  Rahman’s voice steadied the surviving mujahideen, and at least a dozen shouldered their AK-47s and returned the chopper’s fire. A man close to Rahman let out a terrible gurgling scream as he took a round to the face, smashing it to a red pulp like a strawberry pie dropped on a bakehouse floor.

  The young terrorist fell, and Rahman’s voice took on an edge as he yelled louder, “The pilots. Aim for the pilots.”

  The Venoms flitted above the tree canopy like giant dragonflies, their machine guns still shrieking death
. Then someone, probably Rahman, scored a hit.

  The cockpit of one of the helicopters rose and suddenly greasy black smoke belched from its engine compartment. The rotors still turned but with a rough, chattering sound as the Venom pulled away, out of the fight, a dead soldier slumped behind his machine gun.

  “Allahu Akbar!” Rahman screamed as the stricken chopper fluttered away like a bird with a broken wing.

  He looked around him, quickly counting heads. Eighteen men still standing. No, now just sixteen as two fell under the surviving Venom’s raking fire. He had to act fast while there were still enough of the faithful left to kill people at the Three Pools.

  Rahman held his rifle aloft and called out, “Brothers! Follow me!”

  He and the others ran from the forest that had become a charnel house of bloody bodies torn apart by machine-gun fire. Rahman’s grim face was splashed with other men’s blood. Now it was time to make the infidels pay. As fire engines wailed in the distance, he led the mujahideen toward the Three Pools. They would gun the unbelievers, men, women and children, down like sheep and the bright waters would soon turn red with infidel blood.

  But then Ibrahim Rahman’s heart sank. A line of soldiers blocked his path to the pools area, and they fired steadily as they advanced though the trees.

  As men dropped around him, Rahman got off a few shots with his AK-47 before it ran dry. He threw the rifle aside and pulled a Beretta from the holster at his waist and fired at a crusader he took to be an officer. The 9mm bullet hit the man in the chest, but the round was stopped by the ceramic plates of the bulletproof tactical vest, and the solder staggered a little but then kept on coming. It was that officer, a second lieutenant named Dave Monroe, who gunned Rahman. He hit him hard. Three bullets slammed into the terrorist’s body and dropped him to his knees. Blood salty in his mouth, Rahman looked around him and saw that all of his men were martyred, but for a few wounded crawling across the sun-dappled forest floor. But a few of the solders also lay on the ground, dead or wounded.

  “Allahu Akbar!” Rahman yelled.

  More American bullets smashed into him, and he fell dead, his face in the dirt.

  * * *

  The remaining Chinook disembarked its contingent of soldiers on open ground near the parking lot behind the Three Pools. It was here that the only civilian casualties occurred as dozens of panicked visitors fled the shooting in the forest and dashed for their vehicles. They ran headlong into the six terrorists who were there waiting for them.

  As the visitors appeared, the Jacks cut loose with their AK-47s and the ambushed civilians took heavy casualties. Terrified people sought refuge behind cars or fled back to the forest. A twenty-eight-year-old woman was killed as she tried to get into her car, and her six-year-old son was wounded in both legs. An elderly couple, confused about what was happening, stopped in the middle of the lot, looking around, unsure of what to do next. They both died in a hail of terrorist bullets, as did ten other people—three men, five women and two children.

  The timely arrival of soldiers from the 40th Infantry Division prevented any further civilian slaughter in the parking lot. The troops charged out of their Chinook and deployed quickly, advancing in line as they swept the lot with fire. Five of the six terrorists were hunted down like rats, rousted from their hiding places and shot down. Surrender was not an option, especially after a soldier was killed by a sniper. The last of them, a Syrian national allowed into Los Angeles as a refugee, chose a suicide attack and charged the troops, his AK-47 blasting lead. It was later determined that the man had a total of twenty-six bullets in his body when he fell. As one sergeant said, “In the space of about ten seconds we killed him twenty-six times.”

  CNN TV News later reported that Al-Qaeda and the Brothers of the Islamic Jihad took credit for the attack on the Willamette National Forest.

  * * *

  Cory Cantwell, Sarah Milano, and the others were aboard the Chinook that launched the infantry attack on Ibrahim Rahman’s men in the pine forest. But they took no part in the action. Obviously following orders, Sergeant Cameron Baker kept them in the helicopter until the firing stopped.

  “Sorry you couldn’t go in with the infantry, but you were deemed to be a liability,” Baker said. His smile was apologetic. “That was not my opinion, but the opinion of others.”

  Pete Kennedy looked a little put out, but the SAS took the news in stride. “Sergeant, don’t you worry about all that,” Frank West said. “If the attack had gone all to hell, we were prepared to go in and save the day.”

  “Truer words were never spoke,” Nigel Brown said.

  “Save the day SAS, that’s us,” Daniel Grant said.

  “I’m sure General Stuart will be relieved to hear that,” Sergeant Baker said.

  CHAPTER 59

  Cory Cantwell asked Sarah Milano if she felt up to looking for Nasim Azar among the bodies of eight dead pyroterrorists. “Of course,” she said. “It would be good to know that murderer is dead.”

  But Azar was not one of them. Nor did any of the other dead terrorists match the description Sarah gave of the man.

  “He chickened out on his own men,” Sarah said. “I guess he didn’t want to die a martyr for Islam after all.”

  “We’ll find him,” Cantwell said. “It may take time, but we’ll find him. We found Osama bin Laden, we’ll find Nasim Azar.” Then, “Look, here comes our boss looking down in the dumps.”

  Jacob Sensor walked past the Chinook parked in the middle of the meadow, its helmeted aircrew standing around talking, waiting for orders now that the action was over and the gunsmoke had cleared.

  He spoke to Cantwell. “Glad to see you are all alive and well.”

  Cantwell smiled. “We never left the helicopter.”

  “Nor did I,” Sensor said. “Me and the two reporters were kept inside until the shooting stopped.” He moodily kicked at a wildflower bloom with the polished toe of his Berluti oxford and said, “Well, at least we got Sarah back in one piece. That’s always something, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Cantwell said. “That’s always something.”

  “Sixty pyroterrorists dead, three killed and five wounded on our side and a few civilians, and only twenty acres of forest burned, and I imagine the President is already taking the credit,” Sensor shook his head. “There’s no justice, is there?”

  Cantwell made no answer, and Sensor said, “Well, the Regulators were here.”

  “The army classified us as a liability,” Cantwell said.

  “I don’t care what the army classifies. We were here. Today. That’s what matters,” Sensor said.

  “Here today, gone tomorrow,” Cantwell said.

  “No, Superintendent Cantwell, the Regulators are here to stay,” Sensor said. “This action today is not the end of the war on pyroterrorism, it’s only the beginning. The opening salvo in what’s destined to be a long battle.” He read the hesitation in Cantwell’s face and said, “I still want you to be a part of it.”

  Police and emergency vehicles wailed in the distance, come to preside over the hurting dead, and the morning slowly began to mature into a warm, golden day.

  “Where do we go from here?” Cantwell said.

  “You and Miss Milano will stay here in Portland and recruit your Regulators from here,” Sensor said. “After today’s success, I can get the President to release the funds to build an office block with living quarters and a helipad and firing range attached. It’s time to get very serious about this Regulator thing. I want a hundred trained people within the next twelve months. Can you do it, Superintendent Cantwell?”

  “You mean can Sarah and I do it?” Cantwell said.

  “Yes, you are a team,” Sensor said.

  “And we intend to stay that way,” Sarah said. “We won’t be apart again.”

  Sensor smiled. “Do I sense love in the air?”

  “Yes, you do,” Sarah said. “It came as a big surprise to both of us.”

  “Damn right it did,” Cantwel
l said. “And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Good. I’m very happy for you both. You’re wonderful young people. Now, can you give me my hundred Regulators?”

  “Yes, we can,” Sarah said.

  “Mr. Cantwell?” Sensor said.

  “Yes, we can do it,” Cantwell said. “There’s something I’ve come to believe in very strongly, and it was Sarah’s kidnapping that drove the lesson home. Evil exists in this world, and evil people can’t be reasoned with. They can only be destroyed. I feel no sympathy for terrorists. We have to rid the world of them, and the Regulators can do their part and end the real threat of attacks on our nation’s forests. And now I’m all though speechifying.”

  “Bravo!” Sensor said. “Well said. I have the feeling that the safety of forests like the Willamette will be in good hands. How is the shoulder, Superintendent?”

  “It’s all right,” Cantwell said. “I think the bullet cured my arthritis.”

  “Glad to hear you’re recovering,” Sensor said. “Ah, there is General Stuart. I must congratulate him.” He smiled. “Well, so long for a while, you two lovebirds. I’ll stay in touch.”

  Pete Kennedy and the three Brits waited until Sensor left before they approached Sarah and Cantwell. In the distance voices were raised as the dead were carried out from among the trees and taken to ambulances. The Three Pools area was almost deserted, most people deciding that they’d had enough excitement for one day.

  “Jacob Sensor talked to us,” Pete Kennedy said. “He says he’ll talk to the British authorities about having our three SAS men on permanent loan.”

  “Suits us,” Frank West said. “We like it here.” He was chewing on a stem of grass. “Of course, the United States immigration people might have something to say about that.”

  “I hope we can clear it with them,” Cantwell said. “I really need you three hoodlums.”

  “We haven’t done much,” Dan Grant said.

  “Except sit around and drink your booze,” Nigel Brown said.