I charged after him and promptly tripped over the bodies, landing full force onto the concrete. I felt Brit’s foot on my back as she charged over me. I rolled off to one side as Red came through, and I managed to take a snap shot from the ground that caught one of the mercs in the side of his head. I’d like to think it was skilled shooting, but it was actually pure luck; I had been aiming center mass. The man next to him was hit by a full burst that climbed across his torso as Brit fought to control that was heavier than she was used to. The Air Force Security Sergeant fired his M-4 once and I felt a white hot poker burn across my shoulder. I grunted and tried to shift my aim, but Ziv had buried his knife deep in the man’s throat, even as I saw Red shift aim away from the man to avoid hitting Ziv. The Serbian barely paused, but ran around the back ramp of the Stryker. A few seconds later his voice rang out with “CLEAR!” followed by shouts from Red and Brit, who had each peeled off around the corner of the building to check the sides. Both their voices rang out the same time with “CLEAR!” and then Brit was crouching next to me, frantically asking me where I was hit.
“I’m Ok, I think. Just scored my back. It looks worse than it feels.” Fuck that, it hurt like hell.
“Well, it’s about goddamned time YOU got shot instead of ME!” she said, but I could hear the concern in her voice. She started bandaging the wound, which was more like a cut than a puncture.
“Hey, I’ve been shot before! Once in the helmet, and once in the chest plate.”
“That’s not getting shot. Getting shot is, oh, getting wounded in the leg, and then getting shot in the STOMACH half an hour later by a cannibal, and oh yeah, getting part of your ear shot off.”
“Don’t forget the shrapnel in your arm from Seattle,” I said. She kissed me to shut me up.
“If you are done, now is time to get out of here,” said Ziv. Red came out with General Scarletti, and we piled into the back of the Stryker and raised the back deck. Red climbed into the driver’s seat, and Ziv took over the remotely operated .50 caliber. Brit continued to try to tend to my wound, but Scarletti immediately started messing with the radios.
“I doubt you have the same fill needed to talk to your guys,” I said, meaning the security codes for the radio. He growled in frustration, the burned half of his face holding still while his mouth grimaced in anger, and flipped a switch, broadcasting in the plain.
“Sheriff, this is Linebacker, over.”
The radio cackled into immediate life, even as a loud CRASH sounded from outside, and the .50 started hammering. We bumped over something and accelerated; there was a BANG and the back end hitched to one side.
“Linebacker, this is Sherriff, send your traffic, over.” In the background of his transmission I could hear the roar of C-130 engines, and I assumed Scarletti had a Rivet electronic warfare bird orbiting over Central New York.
“SALT, I say again, SALT, Linebacker out.” He hung up the handmike and yelled to Red. “Take us North on Route 11, parallel to 81, then head towards Oswego.”
“Not going to Drum?” I asked, the muscles on my back tensing up, starting to react to all the blunt force trauma.
“No, they would expect that. I have the 1st of the 5th Marines sitting on ship just off Oswego. Supposedly in clearing actions around Toronto, but they will be there waiting when we get there.”
“Good, then we can pack up and go home, right?”
“Oh no. I have a special job that only the scouts can do.” In the red lights, his burned face took on a demonic look as he half smiled. “I know how you hate flying, Colonel.”
“Bastard,” I said, meaning it.
“Oh yes,” he said, just as sincere.
Chapter 234
“No.” Brit stood there, arms across her chest, foot tapping on the concrete floor. “We’re not doing this.”
“Brit,” I said as I pushed rounds into a thirty round M-4 magazine. In the old ammunition bunker that served as the team room for IST – 1 whenever we prepped for a mission, other figures were pointedly ignoring us as we argued.
“Brit shit. WE. ARE. NOT. DOING. THIS.”
“Look, I don’t have a choice. Last I checked, Scarletti can and will have me shot if I disobey orders, and he damn well WILL if he thinks it will further his cause one inch.” I put the magazine down and picked up another one, then tore open a cardboard box of rounds. Click, Click, Click.
“I give a flying fuck what he wants. I let you go on your little scout two months ago, to get this out of your system, and you came back all beat to shit. What happens this time?”
She had a point. We were going to jump into a hornet’s nest, and had no idea what we would find. President Epson was being held somewhere on Hancock airfield, and there seemed to be at least a brigade of mercenaries and rebel Air Force personnel in and around the airfield. Fortunately, few if any of the regular military had responded to their call to join them. Unfortunately, they had fighter cover and two batteries of Patriot missiles, and, well the President as hostage. The Vice President had immediately been named acting President, but Scarletti wanted Epson back. The country was still fragile, and no one wanted a situation like we had faced last year, with loyalties divided up between two Presidents. I opened up the browser on my phone and re-read the email Scarletti had sent me. It had been two weeks since the coup attempt, and Scarletti had been directing our forces in an encirclement.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
RE: Status of Rebel Forces
“They tried to break out of the encirclement last night; I guess the rats are leaving the sinking ship. Apparently the guy who we killed at the Albany Airport, Brigadier General Ayres, was one of the main driving forces behind this whole thing, and with him gone, it’s a bunch of Colonels and Majors trying to run the show. They counted on getting Epson to change his mind, and he’s not. So the Army, Navy and Marines are in, and the Air Force is being gutted. I’ve had thirteen Flag or Field grade officers shot.”
A half dozen Rangers from the Regimental Reconnaissance Company, plus me and Ziv, were going to HAHO into the airfield. Once in, we were to scout the airfield to locate where the President was being held, then call a Delta Force squadron to assault whatever building her was in. Red wanted to go, but he had his foot shattered by a grenade a few years back, and couldn’t handle a PLF. Brit refused to go with me, since that would put both of our kids’ parents at risk, but I desperately wanted her there to watch my back.
I sighed and said “I don’t know. I can’t know. I’m going, and there’s nothing you can do about it; I just wish you were going with me. These guys are good, but you’re the only one I can trust.”
“Ugh, I just want to choke the shit out of you sometimes.” She came over and sat down next to me, grabbed a magazine, and started furiously shoving rounds in. She punctuated each one as it clicked in by saying “Such. A. Dumb. Ass. You. And. Your. Stupid. Fucking. Flag.”
“I love you too, honey.”
We finished loading mags in silence. One thing about her, she didn’t hold onto anger long. When she was mad, watch out. When she got over it, we moved on. I stuffed my magazines into my chest rig, then remembered that my chute harness would be in the way. I shrugged out of it, and stuffed everything into a bag to be strapped onto my body.
“Listen up!” called a grizzled Air Force NCO. Most of the Air Force enlisted had stood solidly with the government, crippling the rebels. “Going over the plan one more time.” Everyone stopped their preparations and turned their attention to him as he stood on an ammo crate by the door.
“I am Chief Master Sergeant Berezuk, and I’ll be your Jump Master for this little trip. I’ll review flight operations, and then Colonel Agostine will review the Ranger Recon portion. After that, Captain Horton will handle the Delta part of the op.”
“Once we reach cruising altitude of twenty seven thousand feet, our aircraft, BRONCO 23, will act as a routine flight between Seneca and Fort D
rum. Be warned, we have been painted by radar four times this week by the Patriot Battery at Hancock. They have not fired at us, but two days ago they shot down an A-10 that was on the same transit flight, and two F-15 Eagles are on Combat Air Patrol at all times.”
I felt an icy knot in my stomach. I fucking hated flying, and throwing in SAM’s and fighters? Uh, no.
“Once we are about halfway through the flight, approximately thirty minutes, you will all begin breathing pure oxygen to prevent nitrogen bubbles from forming in your blood.” Everyone here, including Brit, had been on HAHO, or High Altitude / High Opening jumps before, but it didn’t hurt to reiterate safety concerns.
“At go minus thirty seconds, the back ramp will drop. We have to make it quick, because we don’t want the change in our radar profile to be caught. At zero, you will all exit the ramp. Freefall will last exactly twelve seconds, allowing you to clear the aircraft, whereupon you will pull your chute. Thereafter, you will steer your chute to a course of one hundred seventy degrees magnetic. On stack, the bottom man will chart the course. You won’t see the lights of the airfield until you break cloud cover at approximately one thousand feet, but it’s going to be limited visibility all the way down. Follow your GPS in.” He stepped down and I stood up on the ammo box myself.
“Gentlemen, you’ve all done this before. If I remember right, you guys are the same crew that jumped into Panama last year to secure the canal, right?” Several “hooahs” and grunts of affirmation. “Good job, I’m happy to be working with professionals. Just keep your damn grubby paws off the beautiful redhead back there, or you might come back missing some fingers.” They laughed, appreciating the joke to relieve the tension.
“OK, our LZ is going to be behind here,” and I pointed to a building on a photo of the base that I held up “on the east side of the base. Most of the activity from Satellite Recon has been centered in the base operations center and Syracuse Airport, proper. Hopefully we can get down without being seen; for once the crappy central New York weather is going to be a help.” I paused to take drink of water, then continued.
“We THINK the President is being held here, at the base operations center. Once we ascertain that, a Delta Squadron that has been holding on station due south in helos will assault directly onto the building, after the Marines and Army launch a demonstration attack on Syracuse Airport. Staff Sergeant Millburn?”
The Ranger team leader had raised his hand, and asked “What about the Patriot Battery? Won’t the helo’s catch it in the ass on the way in? Will the Air Force take it out with a HARM?”
“Good question. A HARM (High Speed Anti Radiation Missile) may cause secondary explosions that could injure or kill the President. Or us, which honestly, is more important to me.” After they stopped laughing, I continued. “That’s our secondary. We have to take out the radar. Quietly, hopefully, but loudly, if we need to. Any other questions? Nothing you guys haven’t done a hundred times before.” I ignored the sarcastic ‘yeah fucking right’ that someone muttered. Always someone pissing in the cheerios.
Captain Horton replaced me on the ammo crate, and he was brief. “Once you all pin point the building, and take out the radar, get the fuck out of our way. My boys are going to come in hell bent for leather, and we’re not going to take time to ID anyone between us and the President. Pick yourselves a point that you want our helos to come in on, we have three already laid out, and get on board once we exit. The helos will take you back out. We don’t need anyone getting in our way, especially civilians. Any questions?”
Brit spoke up from the back of the room, and I grimaced. “I have a question. That stick, the one that’s shoved up your ass, do you want me to break it off? So you know, when you are hell bent for leather, you can move more freely?”
I groaned, and Ziv laughed. The Captain looked pissed. “No offense, Miss, but this is what we train for, day in and day out. You would just get in our way.”
“Brit” I said, exasperated. “We have our job to do, they have theirs. He’s right; despite all our experience, we WOULD get in their way.”
She looked mollified, but I knew she would take another shot at him if we kept going. I tuned to the Delta commando and said “Don’t worry, Captain, we want to get out of there just as badly as you want us out of your way. I’ll be the first one on the chopper, trust me.”
Chapter 235
We flew steadily through the clouds, eight of us in two rows of four on either side of the aircraft. We all had full helmets on, oxygen going, and were less than one minute out from go. My heart was pounding in my chest; thankfully the flight so far had been smooth. The main parachute, a smaller reserve, in addition to my heavy thermal over wear, and weapons bag weighed close to a hundred pounds, and when the Jump Master told us to stand up, I had to grunt with effort. I turned and gave Brit a hand up. The back ramp came down, letting in a roaring dragon of thin, bitter cold air.
Shuffling over towards the ramp, we formed in two lines, holding onto the side of the aircraft. MSG Berezuk held up two fingers. Twenty seconds. Then he dropped one. Ten seconds. I started an ungainly shuffle up to the spot where the ramp met the fuselage. Even as I did, hellishly bright light flared out beneath the aircraft and an ugly, wailing siren sound could be heard in the cabin. A split second flash, like a shutter bulb going off, accompanied by a loud BANG and the C-130 tilted crazily, spilling us all onto the floor. Berezuk fell off the ramp, dangling out in the air by his safety strap. I grabbed Brit and we all tumbled towards the edge of the ramp, clawing desperately for the open night sky. The plane shifted again with a howling roar from the remaining engines, and we were thrown out into the brightly lit clouds.
I spread my arms to stabilize my fall, taking a second to roll on my back, then facedown again. In that quick roll, I saw the plane plunging to the cloud deck, flames blazing out of the stump of a wing, still dispensing flares to ward off missiles. Berezuk hung out in the air from his tether, scrabbling to get back in, even as another missile detonated directly outside the fuselage. The entire plane detonated with a horrendous BOOM and wash of heat, scattering flaming pieces that disappeared into the clouds.
When I reached twelve, I pulled my ripcord, and tightened myself up against the shock I knew was coming. I looked up to see the dark grey shape of my main chute against the sky, checking for twisted risers and uninflated panels. Good to go. Then I looked around, to see who was with me, watching chutes on either side, I counted five, six, including me. I steered to fall in behind the lowest chute, who had become our de-facto leader, and we formed a column, drifting more forward than down in the bitter cold air.
The next thirty minutes passed like eternity as I wondered whether Brit was riding one of the chutes, or was dead on the ground. I couldn’t make out individual figures in the darkness, just the tiny blinking red strobe on the man in the bottom of our column. He would set the rate of decent and make course corrections, based on his GPS. After a while, the sweat that I had broken out in when the plane was hit started to grow chill, and my hands, encased in heavy gloves, started to freeze and cramp. I was grateful when, drifting lower and lower, the air started to warm up, and at ten thousand feet, I took off my helmet, breathing deeply. Another ten minutes, and the glow of city lights started to filter up through the clouds. We slipped left and right, aiming for our LZ, and the clouds grew wispier. Suddenly, the building roof that was our LZ loomed out of the darkness, and I was startled into full alertness.
The man in front of me hit the edge of the roof and immediately rolled, spilling the air from his chute. I hit the graveled roof with a hard THUMP, barely missing an air conditioning unit that we hadn’t seen on the satellite photos. The next man down kicked me in the head as he almost landed on top of me, and then the rest followed. I heard a muttered “SHIT” from the last parachutist, as he missed the far edge of the roof and went over the side.
The first person down had actually been Brit, owing to her lighter weight getting her thrown off the ramp first.
The one who had gone over the edge of the building hung there silently, and we rushed to pull him back up. The soldier, an NCO named Gualaine, was dead, his head lolling back and forth on a broken neck. His teammates wrapped his body in his chute as we all shed our heavy thermal protection and donned Night Vision Goggles.
“Who are you missing?” I asked Millburn when he had done a head count. Just as I asked, one more chute came in out of the darkness and made a perfect landing in the center of the roof. Ziv struggled with the harness for a second, and then walked over to us. So that made us six, with one dead and one missing.
“Corporal O’Brien. Our SAW gunner.”
“Can’t be helped. Hopefully he’ll be waiting for you at the team room, pissed off he missed the fun. Let’s move out.”
We had picked this building because it was unlit, and probably unoccupied. The nearest rebel position was more than five hundred meters away, and our target building was a thousand meters past that. Beneath our coveralls, we all wore Air Force uniforms, except for Ziv, who had kept his motley mercenary camouflage. The plan was that once the diversionary attacks started, we could just walk up to the target building and confirm that the President was staying there.
Two of the Rangers set up a spotting scope and a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, and started checking out targets between us and the objective, taking notes on a pad of the range to different landmarks and dialing the scope in based on the humidity and wind direction. The rest of us clambered down a rope ladder to the ground, but I took a second to give Brit a quick kiss. “Glad you came, beautiful.”
She kissed me back, whispered “That’s what she said!” and disappeared down the ladder. I followed her, and the four of us, myself, Brit, Ziv and Staff Sergeant Millburn, attempted to walk as nonchalantly as we could towards the target building. Even as we started, alarms sounded and a low rumble of gunfire echoed from the north and east. Like everyone else on the base, we broke into a run.
Zombie Killers (Book 6): AMBUSH (Irregular Scout Team One) Page 9
