by Ian Slater
Up on the surface, the moment the general, Aussie, Sal, Lee, and Choir saw the yellowish green smoke rising up from the out vents, Freeman and his team ran down the stairs of the long, narrow exit tunnel, then split up at the bottom, Freeman taking the first tunnel, Aussie and Sal the second, Johnny Lee and Choir the third, running along a grated metal floor. They could hear the nightmarish cries coming from the mob of trapped terrorists beyond, hammering and yelling hysterically for the entrance doors to be opened, no doubt terrified the tunnel complex was being attacked with chlorine gas or, as their great-great-grandfathers had called it, mustard gas, which the Americans, like the Russians, still had in ample supply. Further exciting the terrorists’ fear was their conviction, shared by the duty officer, who, sitting safely two floors up in one of the H-block’s administrative offices, had caught a glimpse of the intruders, that the tunnel complex would soon be swarming with Americans. And when the duty officer heard Abramov’s insistence that the RDX be blown, any hesitation that he might have had disappeared in the belief that he would be acting humanely, putting such tortured souls out of their misery. After all, as Abramov sharply instructed him, “You wouldn’t treat an animal like that.”
The duty officer pressed the button. The resulting subterranean roar reverberated through the tunnels, the concussion wave almost knocking Freeman’s team off their feet, and, in the middle tunnel, forcing Aussie and Sal to grab one of the MANPAD lathes to steady themselves.
* * *
It was testimony to Abramov’s expertise that he had calculated the amount of RDX so precisely that while the two halves of the massive door were bent and rendered useless by the blast, the door had not collapsed, acting, as Abramov had wanted it to, as a barrier between him and the enemy.
Safe above in the H-block, Abramov, Beria, and Cherkashin were cold as steel. They had no intention of waiting for what was being reported by the entrance guard detail as poison gas to leak up into the H-block. Thoroughly professional now, with no time to spare in a blame game — at least not yet — about the colossal error Abramov had made, enabling Dedushka—Grandpa — Freeman to heap humiliation upon them via the Pete Rose feint, Abramov declared, “Dead men can’t make sales,” adding, “Poison gas won’t hurt the production line. We can always get more men. I suggest, gentlemen, we take our bonuses and vacate.”
Without waiting for the other two’s acquiescence, Abramov quickly took his cell phone out of its holster and punched in three digits, briskly instructing his quartermaster, “Transport helo for three, plus luggage. Fully armed Sharks to escort us — and yourself — on the pad behind ABC. Fuel for Vladivostok. Now!”
“Yes, General. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Five!” Abramov shouted into the phone. “Five and you get double your bonus. In gold!”
“Yes, General.”
Beria and Cherkashin now moved quickly to the safe and withdrew their keys to their respective gold bullion boxes and attaché cases, as well as the access codes to their Swiss bank accounts.
“Got your keys?” Beria asked Abramov.
Abramov, checking the slide on his Makarov 9 mm pistol, retorted, “Are you serious? We’ll be back in production next week. C’mon, let’s get to the pad.” They could already hear the heavily armed Black Shark escort helos hovering overhead and the rotors of a big, bugeyed Hind transport chopper descending to the H-block’s emergency pad, located only yards from the edge of the enormous T-90 camouflage net.
Beyond the mass of red-hot twisted and steaming metal that had been the inner door between the entrance vestibule and the tunnels, there was a phalanx of upraised Russian hands dimly visible in the emergency lanterns’ light; were they surrendering? Many of the terrorists were crumpling to the floor in the eerie yellow-green fog, the choking impact of the tear gas in the confined space taking a rapid toll, Chester’s marines above keeping up a steady rain of tear gas canisters and smoke grenades. From inside their gas masks, Freeman, Aussie, Sal, Choir, and Johnny Lee found that despite the state-of-the-art charcoal-and chemical-pad filters, the air was becoming throat-raspingly hot and thin. None of Freeman’s team saw the flash but all heard the bursts of AK-47 fire. In the choking gas, the shooters’ aim was way off, but they could have hit any one of the team.
“Fire!” yelled Freeman, and the team opened up, taking what shelter they could behind the assembly line machinery nearest them. In addition to firing their weapons, Freeman’s team tossed twelve HE and eight flash-bang grenades, the wild terrorist AK-47 fire, presumably coming from the guard detail, absorbed by the boxes of guidance vanes for Igla and Vanguard MANPADs that lined the walls of the tunnels, the flash-bangs taking out most of the remaining emergency lanterns, what little light remained casting huge, macabre shadows on the tunnel walls. Amid the acrid-smelling smoke and tear gas, some of the terrorists managed to stand, screaming for mercy. Freeman’s stentorian nasal voice boomed through his mask: “The Cole, the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, Flight 93!” his AK-74 chopping them down, the barrel of his Kalashnikov so hot he wondered whether it would tolerate another mag just yet. Giving it time to cool, he whipped out his H K sidearm and, with Aussie, Sal, Lee, and Choir doing likewise, continued putting the wounded out of their misery.
Aussie, his hand wet with flesh and bone, continued his gruesome, but as he saw it, necessary task if America and her allies were to be safer from these heartless murderers who sold their wares to the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. He could make out a clutch of swarthy Middle Eastern faces screaming at him, not begging for mercy but hurling their hatred at him, the Arab face nearest him so contorted for a moment he looked as frightening as Aussie must in his gas mask, Aussie yelling at him, “You look like one of those bastards in Bali!” as the next burst punched the Arab back, his body crumpling beneath the waning light, Aussie seeing the name “RAMON” stenciled on the man’s blood-soaked battle tunic. Immediately Aussie remembered the attack on DARPA ALPHA, one of the victims having written “RAM” and “SCARUND” on a piece of paper before he died. Now, looking down at the dead terrorist, he saw the raised, angry red scar under the man’s chin.
“All right,” Freeman yelled out, his voice muffled by the gas mask’s filters but sounding just as resolute as it had at the beginning of the subterranean raid. “Hurry up with the C-4, guys, and let’s get back topside!”
The five men, the general in the first tunnel, Aussie and Sal in the second, and Johnny and Choir in the third quickly placed the fist-sized lumps of C-4, connecting them with det cord, at strategic points along the production line of each tunnel. The det cords from the three tunnels were wrapped into one, then run topside by the team and connected to the remote initiator that, once the team was safe topside, would be activated, beginning the firing sequence that would move through the det cord to the globs of C-4, the cord’s explosive detonation wave traveling at more than seven thousand yards a second, thus in effect exploding all the globs of C-4 simultaneously.
Freeman told each of the other four men to take a MANPAD and portable power pack with him from the assembly line. There was a chance, he knew, that if the weather cleared, the Russians might just risk some of their hitherto revetment-hidden attack helos to harass the marines’ evacuation, if for no other reason than sheer spite. Against this, however, there was the equally good chance that without “product” to sell after the tunnels blew up, what pilot would bother to risk his life for revenge sans bonus?
“Son of a bitch!” said young Kegg, as Freeman and the other four gas-masked MANPAD-carrying warriors emerged from the exit. “What the fuck went on down there? Sounded like a — a war!”
“It was,” said Aussie. “For the fucking terrorists.” He whipped off his gas mask with his left hand and took in a deep draft of cold, rainy air. “Those pricks won’t be making any more of these.” He raised the Igla with his right hand. “These five are the only ones left.”
“You know how to fire one, Aussie?” joshed Kegg.
“Surely
you jest, boy.” Aussie lifted the forty-pound missile in its launcher-sheath to his right shoulder, the rocket’s aerodynamic spike in front of the heat-seeking infrared and its flare decoy analyzer piercing the air. Aussie looked about. “Where’d the opposition go?”
“The navy infantry,” replied a sodden but smiling Lieutenant Chester. “Soon as the word got out that the tunnels were under attack, that Freeman suckered Abramov, I guess they thought, ‘What’s the point?’ Anyway, they’ve pulled back for now.”
“You ready with that remote, Choir?” called out Freeman.
“Ready, sir.”
“Good.” The general told Kegg and the marine’s two fire team buddies to go back with Melissa Thomas. “These vents are going to start really smoking in the blink of an eye. C’mon, people, move!”
They moved, and waited for Choir to activate the inititiator. The det cord — in effect a long, explosive-filled flexi-tube from a spool — had a burn rate so fast that once the initiator kicked off the firing sequence, the major explosions of the C-4 would occur in a fraction of a second.
But they didn’t.
“Aw—” came Aussie’s bitter disappointment. “Fuck a duck!”
It seemed interminable. Then they heard, saw, high up through the rain, five helos — a big transporter and four Black Shark gunships rising and turning above the minefield.
“Take those bastards out!” yelled Freeman. “I’ll take the big guy in the middle. Let’s see how they like their own medicine.” Freeman hadn’t even had time to take his gas mask off. The Igla on his shoulder, he placed his left foot forward, the ground power supply kit giving full surge power to the missile in four seconds. Gripping the launcher by its flanged neck, he gained visual contact, squeezed the trigger, and heard the gentle whirring of the missile’s automatic target lock and launch circuits, the primary booster igniting the missile, passing through the tube, disabling the first safety twenty feet from the general, the sustainer motor firing, blowing hot air and reed debris into his gas mask, the missile now streaking at over a thousand miles per hour in the two seconds since leaving the tube. Second safety was now gone and, unless the missile’s twenty-five-pound blast and fragmentation warhead hit something within fifteen seconds, it would self-destruct.
The subsequent “whooshing” sounds were the other four fire-and-forget Iglas taking off from the shoulder launchers on Aussie, Sal, Choir, and Johnny Lee. Johnny slipped on a patch of mud as he fired, the Igla going near vertical.
No one said anything, watching the five missiles, fierce orange streaks with the bluish sulfur exhausts visible.
“Terrorists are popping flares!” called Sal.
“Look at ’em panic!” said Aussie, watching the helos jinking hard left, right, right — trying to outmaneuver the closing Iglas, flares popping everywhere like hundreds of little meteorites burning up in the gray, rainy sky, but the Igla-E2, devoid of a friend-or-foe tone because terrorists didn’t need any such discriminating equipment, proved a formidable weapon. With infrared decoy override, the E2 ignored the tortuous, frantic maneuvers of the helos two miles up. There were one, two, three, then a fourth explosion as the “traveling fuel tanks,” as Aussie called the Russian choppers, blew up, sending down heavy golden showers of burning debris that, upon impact, detonated dozens of small anti-personnel and big anti-tank mines, cratering the snow-and rain-covered ground.
A lone Shark helo, the only survivor of the four attack choppers, obviously deciding not to risk any more MANPAD attacks, turned west, climbed higher and fled into the mountain fastness of China across the border. Freeman and Salvini thought they saw a chute blossom, but in the rain it was difficult to be sure whether it was that or a piece of fabric from the transporter caught in the air currents as the fuselage plunged earthward.
There was something wrong, however, as Freeman, taking off his gas mask, realized that there should have been explosions not above him but ninety feet below in the tunnels.
“Did you press that remote?” the general asked Choir.
“Yes, sir. I’ve checked the box and it’s middle tunnel’s det cord that’s screwing things up. There must be a break. Nothing’s wrong up at this end. Something must have fallen on it.”
“Or cut through it!” said Aussie. “One of those bastards—” His voice was suddenly drowned out by the combined roar of a Super Stallion and a Cobra gunship riding shotgun, both helos dropping decoy flares. Despite the noise, the booming voice of the Stallion’s crew chief managed to cut through it and the fury of the rotor wash. “Evac immediately. Mission is over.”
Every one of Freeman’s team and the marines around him wanted to leave, but no one thought that they should. They’d cleaned out the rats in the nest below, but not the nest, as Freeman told the Stallion’s crew chief through cupped hands that reeked of cordite and tear gas from the tunnels.
“Doesn’t matter,” the crew chief hollered back. “We got orders from Yorktown. C’mon, General, I haven’t got all fucking day.” The Cobra gunship was rising and falling in the side draft of the Stallion’s enormous rotors. “C’mon, mission’s over. That’s an order from Colonel Tibbet. You’ve run out of time.”
The general was cupping his right ear. “Can’t hear you.”
“General!” the crew chief bellowed again. “We have to get you guys out of here now. Colonel Tibbet’s order!”
“I outrank him,” said Freeman, “but, dammit, all right,” he continued, and ordered everyone aboard. “Go! Go!”
No matter what their personal feelings, they were professional soldiers, Freeman’s team and the marines, and knew orders were orders.
As the crew chief helped lift Gomez to put him in a litter, the others scrambled aboard the overcrowded helo through a jumble of other bodies and weapons. The Stallion’s anxious copilot glanced back, saw no one on the ground, but spotted an armored vehicle spitting fire and bristling with MANPADs racing toward them from about a mile away on the edge of the frozen marshland that ran back to the lake. Because he too was looking in the distance at the armored vehicle even as he kept hauling the others into the helo, the crew chief noticed something in the rain-washed landscape previously hidden by the snow: a vast carpet of dead birds — thousands of them.
It wasn’t until six minutes after they’d scrambled aboard the already dangerously overloaded helo, which, like all the other Stallions, was trying to get as many of their fellow Americans out before the twenty-four-hour deadline, that someone noticed that neither Freeman nor the marine, Melissa Thomas, was aboard the Stallion. But the pilot and the copilot had their orders. On the other hand, marines didn’t leave their dead, wounded, or living behind.
“Those cocksuckers!” Kegg shouted. “Get a load of this shit!” He was watching the crew chief’s TV feed on the twelve-inch bulkhead inset screen. CNN was running an Al Jazeera tape, which the Arab station said had just been taken in overflight by a lone Shark helo and which showed patches of yellowish smoke rising in Lake Khanka near Siberia. Al Jazeera claimed the smoke was poison gas used by Americans against a defenseless refugee camp. Then there was a CNN clip, Marte Price thrusting her mike into the face of a nearly hysterical coed. “I–I—never thought I’d live to see the day my country would use such a — such a horrible, awful thing. It’s, like, you know, totally irresponsible.”
“Oh,” mimicked a marine who was also watching the feed. “Like you’re totally insane, you silly bitch. We colored the friggin’ tear gas with a yellow smoke grenade, you stupid whore. That’s all we did.”
“Yeah,” put in Kegg. “But it sure frightened the shit out of ’em.” His laugh was contagious, the marines’ pent-up emotions suddenly finding a release. But Aussie, Choir, Sal, and Johnny Lee weren’t laughing. They were petitioning the pilot to go back and pick up Melissa Thomas and Freeman.
“Can’t do it,” said the pilot, quite properly. To go back with a MANPAD vehicle on the loose and risk losing every man he’d picked up would have been the height of irresponsibi
lity.
“Where the fuck did he go?” Aussie asked Sal angrily.
“And the woman,” said Choir. “It was so disorderly. We should’ve—”
“Never mind what we should have done,” cut in Aussie. What are we gonna do now?”
“Tell Yorktown,” put in the crew chief, “to get a STAR bird over here fast.”
“It’d be their only chance,” agreed Choir. “By the time they drop them a kit we can have a Herk on its way out of Japan and here in—” Choir did the math in his head. “—four hundred and fifty miles — two hours, tops.”
“Two hours,” said Aussie.
“I know,” said Choir, “but it’s a STAR or nothing. We can say the Herk’s coming in to pick up our wounded. Tibbet’s boys say we’re missing a few.”
“We’ll go plain language, if you like,” said the pilot. “Tell everyone to head for the lake.”
“Bit bloody vague,” snorted Aussie. “Lake’s four thousand square miles. Bigger ’n Rhode Island.”
“We’ve got a couple of dusters, Hueys,” the pilot told him. “They’re packed under nets near the ice as backup evac for any lost marines.”
“Then shit,” said Aussie, “send one of the Hueys in to pick up the general and Thomas.”
“Negative,” said the pilot. “A lot of guys have been given the location of those two Hueys, but those birds come out exposing themselves looking for our general and his girlfriend—”
