The outbuildings were undoubtedly filled with troops, and all previously existing guard stations appeared to be fully manned. Tamare had created some new ones as well, utilizing a couple of bulldozers, to block off the road approaching the facility from any traffic. These also bristled with defenders. Two parked Humvees gleamed in the light from a few electric lamps outside the portal.
In the dark and cold of early morning, the sentries were concentrating on staying warm. Carson smelled wood smoke and had already seen a few small fires lit to heat water for coffee. Armed soldiers moved back and forth, trying to keep warm.
Few people had working wristwatches anymore, so Mason had simply designated the start of the attack as the first shot fired and given strict orders for everyone to avoid being the first to shoot unless there was an immediate threat. It was risky, since an unlucky encounter or accident too early would set the whole thing off before everyone was in place, but there was no other way to communicate a concerted attack at a set time. And as the helicopter approached, they all knew the defenders would hear it and activity would increase around the gates, even if they didn’t immediately suspect an attack. If anyone opened fire, that would be the signal to get it on. If no one shot at them until Khalil himself deployed the chopper’s weapons, then that would be the opening gambit.
Carson found himself wondering how warriors throughout the ages had coordinated timed assaults. He’d read that some of the Native American fighters could mimic bird calls and communicated with animal sounds, but he didn’t know any. Without radios and wristwatches, everything was more primitive. It felt somehow more exciting this way, but also more terrifying and harder to predict.
The wind was cold, and it was pitch dark in the foothills. Generators running on some of Tamare’s precious fuel fouled the clean mountain air with diesel fumes, but kept the approach flooded with light. It was a long sprint to the gate, painfully illuminated. Carson began to have a sick feeling in his stomach. If they didn’t overwhelm the defenses quickly, it would turn into blind firefight, everyone shooting indiscriminately in the darkness at everything that moved, and anyone trying to get to the gate would be blown away, possibly from behind by their own men. They didn’t know if Tamare’s soldiers had night vision with working batteries, but Mason’s people only had two pair, and those had been given to the sniper teams so that their spotters could see infiltrators coming. The snipers were key to the whole operation, and merited such protection. But that meant most of the approach to the gate would be stumbling through the dark, until they reached illuminated concrete.
Carson shivered and patted Dana on the shoulder. Where was Khalil? What if the chopper had broken down? If that happened, would they have to scrub the mission?
Then, faint above the sound of the wind in the firs, came the whup-whup-whup of rotor blades. Carson’s hand tightened on his weapon, and he bounced on his legs to loosen up his calves for a sprint. This was it.
The sound came closer. Now Carson could see the soldiers in the parking lot looking up, listening. Some seemed confused, others unconcerned. Carson kept his eyes on a lieutenant standing inside a guard shack; if the officer starting freaking out, then he would start moving.
The helicopter appeared over the wind-tossed trees, rotor wash adding to the swirl of air currents. Its running lights were winking. Carson’s throat was dry. He could sense the tension in the people around him. Dana started to creep forward through the bushes, but he held out a hand to slow her down. “Stay close,” he whispered.
He was staring hard at the miniguns in the chopper’s door, and the rocket pods mounted on the stub wings to either side.
The helicopter’s lights suddenly went dark, and it swooped forward through the night air. Then with twin hisses, it fired a pair of Hydra rockets straight at the largest outbuilding past the parking lot. They hit hard, and the whole structure billowed outward in a sea of fire. The night became day and the fireball continued expanding in a rising cloud, sending chunks of material scything through the night.
Carson lined the lieutenant up in his sights and fired a three-round burst through the guard shack window. The officer slammed into the wall and sank out of sight. Carson fired another two quick bursts through the shack walls, hoping to hit anyone else in there, and then began looking for targets of opportunity. There were many to choose from, and the next few seconds was one long chattering roar as every gun on every shoulder began to unload.
Up in the air, Khalil was crowing as he hovered and swayed back and forth in front of the gate. “Yes! Yes, baby, yes! Let them have it all, guys. We are omnipotent! We are invulnerable. This is perfect: no SAM’s, no jammers, no enemy air. We are a fire-breathing dragon!”
His crewmen grinned, hosing down the parking lot and gate area below with fire from the dual miniguns, and launching one more rocket for good measure. It sent two soldiers flying and tumbling across the ground, clothes aflame.
Mason had managed to get his hands on a couple of Javelin shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles from a destroyed armory in Boulder. Now, in the seconds just after Khalil’s opening salvo, while the fireball was still rippling skyward, these were also deployed. Their targets were the two Hummers in the parking lot, each with a swivel-mounted .50 cal machine gun in back. Both carefully prepared shots flew true, and as the fireball from the building died down, the darkness again flared into white light as the two muscular vehicles lifted off the ground and erupted in flames. Everything around them was flattened, and the only reason more enemy weren’t killed in their blast was because so many were already on the ground from the first, far larger explosion. Soon Carson had difficulty finding another target, and knew that it would shortly be time to go in. Hope surged in his breast with the adrenaline. It looked like there opening salvo was successful in every way.
Khalil wasn’t waiting in place to admire the results of his fire. Even as the building exploded, he was juking right, then forward again. Just ahead was the entrance to Cheyenne Mountain. Above it, receding backwards into darkness, lay the rest of the mountain, and the mountain rose on both sides in steep slopes. It was a perfect kill box. Khalil was vulnerable with so little room to move, but there was nowhere his targets could run, either. The whole area was lit by the generator-powered lights, and the soldiers guarding the gate itself could either duck back inside or die. One thing they were having a very hard time doing was zeroing in on the hulking, dark shape in the black sky and hitting it with anything that would threaten it. The asphalt erupted in a billion little storms of grit and rock dust as the helicopter guns continued their sustained belch. Where those guns touched flesh, the flesh evaporated in a red haze. It was slaughter, and Khalil’s crew were merciless; they knew their own chances of survival lay in massacring everything that moved.
Carson heard Dana and Scala firing at his side. Brunson waited, his shotgun useless at this range, waiting in silence for any soldiers who sought the cover of the trees or staged a pitiful counterassault against the dark hillside. Carson could hear continued but more sporadic gunfire all around, and knew that so far the ambush was working.
Tamare’s soldiers fought well. They were not wholly unprepared, and despite being successfully caught unaware they adapted quickly. But the momentum had been taken from them so quickly, and the first seconds of firing had been so effective, that there was little they could do. Just as the counter-ambush had saved Carson’s group at Longmont, they were hitting Tamare’s troops with sudden and overwhelming violence of action. It was the way Mason liked to fight, and it was effective.
Most of the soldiers desperately sought cover, firing at the muzzle flashes in the trees from behind concrete barriers or pieces of wreckage, but the blazing debris around the Hummers and outbuildings made the shadows sway and flicker, hampering good shooting. Here and there it illuminated an ambusher, and several were pinned in the light and gunned down by the soldiers as they tried to advance. But there was less cover to be had near the gate than in the trees, and Mason had his
people firing at a downward angle into the fire-lit bowl of the kill zone. No one fired a flare, but even if they had, the ambushers were dug in behind cover and camouflaged.
Bodies littered the asphalt within the first minute, and the soldiers never regained the advantage. As Mason had predicted, Tamare’s arrogance in his own perceived impunity had spelled doom for his people left outside to guard the portals. They simply hadn’t expected that an attack of this size and precision was feasible.
Khalil’s rocket pod roared again. He was using the limited ordnance with care, treating each irreplaceable rocket as if it were gold-plated. But he also knew that now was the time for them, and he wasn’t going to be shy about deploying them when a target presented itself. He had spotted a group of five soldiers sprinting from the tunnel’s mouth to get to the inner doors. He gave a victory cry as the space inside the arch-shaped tunnel mouth became an incandescent cloud of superheated gas and burning rubble.
Even as this final fireball died down, Carson was up and running. He was vaguely aware of Scala just behind him, Dana to his right, and Brunson on his left. They scrambled down the slope, cursing and grunting as they tried to scan for enemies while avoiding fallen logs, brush, and other obstacles. When his boots finally hit asphalt, Carson threw his AR-15 to his shoulder and moved forward. Ahead, a stocky corporal crouched behind a cement barricade collapsed from a head shot delivered by Scala.
That seemed to leave the way ahead clear, for now. Carson moved as fast as he could while still keeping his weapon up. He half expected to feel a slug rip into him at every step. Most of the enemy were down, but gunfire still crackled around the tunnel mouth. It was all on the sniper team now, especially Bosin, to play god and keep the way ahead open.
A hurried run across an open patch, a pause behind cover, and then another sprint, and they were near the entrance. The roadway entering the tunnel mouth looked dark and eerily silent compared to the chaos outside. The lights were all out now, courtesy of Khalil, and that would give them some concealment but also made it harder to see enemies inside. Bits of flame from the explosions flared up occasionally to illuminate the path, but it was dark enough that Carson briefly wished for NVG’s.
The firefight still chattered and roared behind them; ahead, the only sound was harsh breathing, boots on asphalt, and the rustle and rasp of clothing and equipment. Carson was drenched in sweat already and his legs felt rubbery, even though the distance covered was small.
He saw a flicker of movement ahead, just inside the tunnel entrance. Carson opened his mouth to yell an order to hit the deck, but the night cracked with a high-powered rifle round, beating him to it. There was a grunt, then the clatter of a weapon falling, and Carson saw a shadow stagger forward and collapse just outside the gate.
Thank you, Bosin.
Chapter 13: Into the Breach
They rushed forward and gained the tunnel. Mason would be sending back-up assault teams behind them shortly, but for the next few seconds they were isolated in an unfamiliar area, with an enemy that knew they were coming. They had all been issued small but powerful flashlights, with working batteries from the militia’s precious supply, and Carson and Dana both had lights attached to their weapons. Brunson had duct-taped his to a scavenged helmet, as a makeshift headlamp. Scala held hers in her left hand, her right clutching her deadly Beretta.
But here, beyond the point where Khalil’s last missile had torn up the pavement, the tunnel was dimly lit, and so the flashlights were not needed. It was tall and wide enough to allow two vehicles to drive side by side, with room on the edges for parking.
They raced, all of them, as fast as they could possibly make their legs respond, down the long tunnel. At the far end there were more lights, which Carson assumed were marking the blast doors. The breath rasped in his lungs. They were at 7100 feet here, and he was getting winded faster than he’d anticipated. Dana lagged further behind, and Carson and Brunson were neck to neck, but Scala ran like a storm wind. Carson had never seen anyone sprint so fast. She outdistanced him quickly, slender figure whipping forward with a manic intensity. Carson pushed himself harder, willing the muscles in his legs to blast forward, but Scala was easily outdistancing him. He considered ordering her back, but didn’t have the breath.
Ahead, the tunnel widened into a larger, cave-like area, well-lit by lights set into the rock and cement walls. Carson realized that the enemy had abandoned trying to shut the outer blast door and were focusing on getting the inner and final gate shut instead, as it was the farthest away from the inserting team. Already he heard panicked shouts ahead.
Scala bolted through the first two doors, skidded to a stop, and somehow, with almost superhuman control that Carson knew he couldn’t match despite his years in the Marines and his time at the range, controlled her racing pulse and heaving lungs long enough to squeeze off five rapid shots. Carson arrived just in time to see two soldiers in fatigues drop to the polished cement floor, blood splattered across their chests. They had been manually pushing the third and final blast door closed, and they had gotten very close. Scala had arrived with mere seconds to spare, killing the men just before they completed their desperate task.
Carson and Brunson, wheezing and rasping, threw themselves against the massive thing, heaving with all their might back in the opposite direction. Slowly the twenty-five ton monster pivoted on silent greased hinges, and the way was open.
The tunnel behind them had been a mixture of the natural and the man-made, with pure rock here and cement there. Frequently there were massive steel bolts driven into the stone, an additional structural measure to withstand a nuclear hit.
But past the third blast door, the facility proper began, and it was a maze. White-painted walls, cement floors, exposed pipes. None of them knew where to begin, or what to expect. It was the worst possible situation: advancing into an unknown area against enemies who knew the area and knew they were coming. And they were in too much of a hurry to take it slow and careful, or to wait for backup. Carson cursed himself for letting Dana come along. He suddenly realized that however successfully the initial assault outside, their chances of surviving the next several minutes were slimmer than ever. There were only the four of them, and they couldn’t wait for backup or they risked allowing Tamare and his cronies to destroy the command center, make off with the keys and equipment they needed. Where were Mason’s men?
Scala was studying the way ahead while the others caught their breath. After a moment, she started to edge forward. “We can’t wait. They could be doing anything back in there, setting up defenses, locking doors. Two-man teams. Let’s go!”
Brunson stepped forward, Mossberg ready. “Lead the way. Find me some targets.” The pair slipped down a hallway on the right and disappeared.
Carson glanced at Dana. “Wait here fifteen seconds,” he murmured. “Then come in very slow, very careful behind me. I won’t have you be the first to take a bullet.”
He ignored her protest and darted forward, taking a left-hand turn. Now it was a game of reflexes, of instinct, of rapid-fire reactions. Carson kept the AR-15 up, clearing each room as he came to it, acutely aware of his vulnerability. They had no idea how many troops Tamare kept in the mountain. If it was any more than fifteen or twenty, his little crew was already dead. Even ten would be a stretch. He hoped that Dana would survive.
The oppressive silence was suddenly broken by the roar of Brunson’s shotgun, interspersed with the lighter report of Scala’s Beretta, and then drowned out by the frenzied chatter of assault rifles. Carson couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from in the maze of hallways, and he decided to continue without letting it distract him. Scala and Brunson would have to take care of themselves.
That decision saved his life. He turned a corner and confronted three soldiers. They were in the act of listening intently to the distant firefight, and because of this their reactions were off by a second. Carson beat them to the trigger by a mere shade, and opened fire. His hail of 5.56 rounds r
ipped and tore into his opponents, puncturing them, driving them back and down. He let them have the whole magazine, dropped it, and slapped in a fresh. He stepped over the twisted bodies, boots slippery in the lake of blood, and turned another corner.
Two more soldiers, ready this time. Carson staggered backwards, boots smearing great crimson tracks on the pale floor, barely escaping a barrage that chewed into an office door next to him, turning it into wooden shards. Then he heard the ping of a grenade’s safety lever snapping outwards from the grenade body, and hurried backward some more. “Grenade!” he called out, hoping Dana would hear and stay well back.
Seconds later, an M67 frag grenade bounced down the hallway, caroming off the wall and then rolling towards him. Carson dove for an office, making it just in time. Frag out inside the facility? Are they crazy? he thought as he waited for the explosion. They must be really desperate. Not sure if that’s good or bad.
The detonation was deafening. Glass from interior office windows and light fixtures shattered, showering Carson with crystal shards, and metal pipes sheared and split. Ears ringing, he rolled onto his back. He felt sick and dizzy, pulling himself together only with great effort. He couldn’t hear anything, but knew the two would be coming after him soon. He slithered out the office door and back the way he’d come, feeling more than hearing the vibrations of booted feet tromping towards his position.
Carson slipped around another corner and stopped, rising to his feet. He waited. The two soldiers would be approaching the other corner now, weapons out, to see the results of their grenade. When they didn’t see him lying there, they would then unload into the office he’d taken refuge in as the natural place of cover.
Assault on Cheyenne Mountain (Denver Burning Book 4) Page 10
