by Dale Brown
“Listen up, Angel,” Charlie radioed. “The armor and the rail gun are great, but your main weapons aboard a CID are speed, mobility, and situational awareness. Your main weaknesses are massed platoon-or company-level weapons because they can drain your power quickly. You have to move to avoid heavy weapons being able to concentrate fire on you. Shoot, move, scan, move, shoot, move.”
“Charlie, you drilled me on that mantra so much I say it in my sleep,” Martinez said. He was racing ahead of Jaffar’s battalion with breathtaking speed, well over fifty miles an hour across the open field. “Target’s in sight.”
“The Turks are concentrating on the platoons ahead of them,” Whack said, “but the minute you open fire they’ll—”
“Projectile away,” Martinez said. He dove to the ground in a prone position, selected a Turkish armored personnel carrier in his sights, and fired. The APC didn’t explode or even stop when the tungsten-steel alloy projectile hit, because the sausage-size slug passed right through it as if it never existed—but every man inside the vehicle was shredded to bits by shards of the APC’s thin steel fuselage flying uncontrollably inside the vehicle. “Damn, I must’ve missed,” Martinez said.
“No, but you gotta remember to go for the engine compartment, transmission, magazine, or the tracks, not just the crew compartment,” Whack said. “The projectiles will pass through the thin steel or aluminum easily. Every 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—”
“Helicopters inbound, bearing northwest, five miles!” Patrick shouted. “They look like gunships accompanied by a scout! Too low to spot them farther out!” Before Martinez could search for the newcomers, the Turkish Cobra gunship launched a Hellfire laser-guided missile.
“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 little harder for the Cobra pilot to kill him. He heard a machine gun open fire, and he tried doing a little dodging and weaving like he’d done as a football player at the Air Force Academy. Who knows how good those Turkish gunners are, he thought as he waited for the shells to rip into him. Maybe—
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 t
he 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 American voice. Whack did as he was told. He saw the vehicle was an Avenger mobile air defense unit. An Army sergeant came up to him, wearing night-vision goggles, which he raised. “You gotta be a couple of the Scion guys, because I ain’t seen nothin’ like you two before.”
“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 infirmary for emergency surgery; Charlie and Whack were checked out and were fine, with Whack suffering a number of cuts, burns, and bruises. She and Whack were taken to a guard post near the departure end of the runway, where two Humvees, a Stryker wheeled armored command post vehicle, and an Avenger unit were partially hidden by runway end light structures and the Instrument Landing System transmitter building. Standing outside the Stryker watching the battle through image-intensified binoculars were Patrick McLanahan, Hunter Noble, Jon Masters, Captain Kelvin Cotter, the air traffic management officer, and Vice President Kenneth Phoenix with his Secret Service detail.
“Glad you guys are all right,” Patrick said. He handed out water and energy bars. “That was close.”
“Why are you guys out here?” Macomber asked.
“The jamming has knocked out all our radars and most of our communications,” Cotter said. “The Triple-C is pretty much dark. I can get line-of-sight laser comms out here.”
“What’s the word, General?” Wayne asked. “How bad did we get hit?”
“The word is, it’s just about over,” Patrick said. Wayne lowered his head dejectedly…until Patrick added, “It’s almost over, and it looks like we won it.”
“No shit?”
“Between the CIDs, you, and the Wolverines, we pretty much stopped the Turks completely,” Patrick said. “The Turks weren’t expecting the Iraqis to fight so hard, and Jaffar’s guys went berserker on them. Then, when Wilhelm joined it, the Turks turned and headed north.”
“I had a feeling Wilhelm wasn’t going to just sit around while Jaffar went out there,” Whack said.
“It was four brigades against two, plus you guys and the cruise missiles, but that was enough for the Turks,” Vice President Phoenix said. “I have a feeling their hearts really weren’t in it. They came to Iraq to hunt down PKK, not fight Iraqis and Americans. Then they started fighting robots and armored soldiers firing Buzz Lightyear rail guns, and they split.”
“I hope so, sir,” Patrick said. “But I don’t trust Hirsiz one bit. He’s already been pushed over the brink by the PKK, and now we handed him a defeat. He’s likely to lash out. I don’t think it’s likely he’ll stop at bombing some suspected PKK-friendly businesses in Irbil.”
“Looks like Jaffar will be reinforcing his forward battalions and start taking his casualties back to base,” Cotter said, stepping out of the Stryker and scanning the area to the north of their position with binoculars. “Colonel Wilhelm and Major Weatherly will keep their battalions on the line in case…yaaah!” Cotter screamed as an impossibly bright flash of white light pierced the night sky, exactly where he was looking.
The first flash was followed by hundreds more, each one brighter than the last, and then the thunder of massive explosions and the roar of superheated air reached them. Clouds of fire rose hundreds of feet into the sky, and soon they could feel the heat wash over them like ocean waves rolling onto the beach.
“What in hell was that?” Phoenix cried. He and Jon Masters helped Cotter, who was flash-blinded, to the ground and poured water on his face.
“Smells like napalm, or thermobaric bombs,” Macomber said. He took Cotter’s binoculars, reset the optronic circuits so any more flashes wouldn’t blind him, too, and scanned the area. “Je…sus…”
“Who got hit, Wayne?” Patrick asked.
“Looks like Jaffar’s two forward battalions,” Whack said in a quiet voice. “God, that must be what hell looks like down there.” He scanned the area around the blast zone. “I don’t see our guys. I’ll try to get in contact with Wilhelm and—”
Just then there were two huge bright flashes, followed moments later by two massive explosions…this time, behind them, inside the base. The chest-crushing concussions threw everyone to the ground, and they crawled for any bit of safety they could find. Two massive fiery mushroom clouds rose into the sky. “Get under cover!” Patrick screamed over the hurricane-like chaos as clouds of smoke rolled over them. “Get under the Stryker!” The Secret Service agents pulled Phoenix into his Humvee, and everyone else crawled under the Stryker just as they were pelted by massive chunks of falling debris.
It took a long time for the deadly debris to stop falling, longer before anyone could breathe well enough through the choking clouds of dust and smoke, and longer still before anyone found the courage to get up and survey the area. There was a massive fire somewhere in the center of the base.
“That’s twice I’ve been too close to a bomb attack!” Jon Masters shouted. “Don’t tell me—Turkish bombers again, right?”
“That would be my guess,” Patrick said. “What got hit over there?”
One of the Stryker crewmembers got out of his vehicle, and when everyone else saw his eyes widen and his jaw drop, a chill of dread ran up their spines. “Holy shit,” he breathed, “I think they just nailed the Triple-C.”
THE PINK PALACE, ÇANCAYA, ANKARA, REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
A SHORT TIME LATER
“What do you mean, they retreated?” President Kurzat Hirsiz asked. “Why did they retreat? They outnumbered the Iraqis five to one!”
“I know that, Mr. President, I know,” Minister of Defense Hasan Cizek said. “But they weren’t just fighting Iraqis. The American army helped them.”
“God…so we were fighting Americans, too,” Hirsiz said. He shook his head. “It was bad enough we decided to draw the Iraqis into a fight; I never expected the Americans to respond, too.”
“As well as two of those American robots and one of
those armored commandos…the Tin Man soldiers,” Cizek added. “They also had two cruise missiles that attacked with bomblets and antipersonnel mines.”
“What?” Hirsiz exploded. “How badly did we get hit?”
“Very badly, sir,” Cizek said. “Possibly twenty percent or more.”
“Twenty percent…in one battle?” a voice shouted. It was Prime Minister Ays¸e Akas. She had not been seen in public since the declaration of a state of emergency and the disbanding of the National Assembly, but had been meeting with lawmakers most of the time. “Mr. President, what do you think you’re doing?”
“I did not summon you here, Prime Minister,” Hirsiz said. “Besides, we did much worse to the Iraqis. What do you want? To turn in your resignation, I hope.”
“Kurzat, please, stop this insanity now before this turns into full-scale war with Iraq and the United States,” Akas pleaded. “End it. Declare victory and bring the troops home.”
“Not before the PKK is wiped out, Ays¸e,” Hirsiz said.
“Then what are you doing attacking Tall Kayf?” Akas asked. “There are few PKK in that area.”
“There is a situation at that air base that needed to be resolved,” Hirsiz said.
“I know about the American spy plane—you still allow me to watch television, although you’ve taken away my telephone and passport and keep me under twenty-four/seven guard,” Akas said. “But why would you waste Turkish lives for a hunk of burned metal?” She looked at Cizek. “Or are the generals in charge now?”
“I am still in charge here, Prime Minister, you can be assured of this,” Hirsiz said.
“So you gave the order to bomb Irbil?”
“What is it you want, Prime Minister?” Hirsiz asked irritably, finding a cigarette.
“I think you should allow me to meet with Vice President Phoenix, in Irbil or Baghdad.”
“I told you, no,” Hirsiz said. “In a state of emergency the president must decide all actions, and I don’t have time to meet with Phoenix or anyone else until the crisis is resolved. Besides, Phoenix is still at Nahla, and it’s far too dangerous for him to travel.”
