by Ian Slater
“Hey!” Aussie was on the stairs up to the cockpit, but Sal, Choir, and Johnny Lee managed to save the pilot from Aussie snapping his neck.
“Fer cryin’ out loud, Aussie!” Salvini shouted above the deafening rotor slap and engines.
“He’s right, Aussie!” shouted Choir. “Calm down, boyo. Those Hueys can’t risk having any MANPADs fired at them or risk anything else those terrorist pricks have left. If the general and Thomas stay where they are, they’ve got a chance with a STAR.”
Aussie, cooler now, shook off Sal’s restraining arm. “Have you ever done it?”
“A STAR? No. But—” Sal tried a smile. “—it’s in the manual.” He then resorted to a favorite line of Freeman’s lighter moments, taken from one of his favorite movies, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.
“Ja,” repeated Sal, “it’s in zee manual. A German officer can do anything from zee manual.”
“Seriously, though, Aussie,” put in Choir. “They drop instructions with it?”
“I fuckin’ hope so! The marines only use volunteer crew.”
“You think he went back?” said Johnny Lee.
“Of course he went back, Johnny,” said Aussie. “Fucking det cord fucked up so the old man’s gone back down the hole. Alone. Stupid bastard.” It was a term of affection. “Think Thomas is helping him?”
“I dunno,” said Sal. “She could’ve collapsed under the belly of the Stallion. It was a hell of a rush before we left. Not even the Cobra would have seen her.”
Sal was only half right. Melissa Thomas hadn’t collapsed in the evac rush. And the Cobra hadn’t seen her, nor had Freeman. In the maelstrom of swirling reeds and muddy snow that was aerosoled by the downward blast of the Stallion’s rotors, the general, quickly pulling on his gas mask, had slipped back into the tall reeds to retrieve his pack. Melissa Thomas, seeing him, intuitively sensed he wasn’t going to evac, that he was going back down to rectify the broken det cord or remove whatever had either fallen on it or been put there by a terrorist in a last-ditch effort to stop the detonation of the C-4 laid by the team. She owed him her life. From the moment he had astonished his men, dragging her blindfolded onto the ant heap, the adrenaline rush triggered by her body’s reaction to the ant bites’ poison bringing her back to life, she had incurred a debt that any human being would understand. Was she overconfident, she wondered, putting a neophyte’s faith in the corps, in the article of faith that the marines, as always, would be back to get as many people out as possible? Or, given the naked fact that the deadline had now passed, would she merely be listed as MIA, the best she could hope for to be honored in absentia?
What Marine Thomas didn’t know was that what Freeman and his team member Sal had surmised might be a chute was indeed a parachute, Abramov landing sodden and bruised but otherwise unhurt in the reed-dense minefield. Abramov made no attempt to chase his chute or rein it in. Instead, he stood precisely where he had landed, knowing he was in the minefield, and, though his legs were trembling with the effort of sustaining the weight of the bundles of U.S. thousand-dollar bills beneath his tank commander’s uniform and the sheer weight of the twenty small gold bullion bars he wore in a belt, he remained on spot, making one call on his cell to his tank commander, Colonel Nureyev.
“Dancer. Release El-Hage and friend. And tell your men there’s bullion for Freeman’s head.”
“Done, General,” said Colonel Nureyev, who then called whatever ABC staff were still on duty. Most had fled, but a radio operator still on duty had apprised Nureyev of the intercepts that had been made of the American aircraft communication and that Abramov, Beria, and Cherkashin had left together in the transports, with Abramov, as overall commander, having taken the vital DARPA ALPHA computer disk with him. Having now spoken with Abramov, Nureyev concluded that, of the three, Abramov was the sole survivor of the Igla MANPAD attack. Nureyev then called his own private troop of four T-90s. “I know,” he told them, “that the Americans are pulling out, but this Freeman bastard is still around. American channels were randomly monitored by our scanners during their first wave evac. One intercept was specifically asking, ‘Where’s Freeman?’ So he’s still out there. Strictly speaking, we’re on a cease-fire order, some girlfriend deal between our two so-called presidents, following the deadline. But out here, we rule, and there’s bullion on his head. Who wants in?”
One of the four tank teams opted out — they’d seen enough destruction, five T-90s taken out by marine anti-tank missiles and Hummer-fired TOWs. But the three remaining tank crews opted for the chance of bullion.
“Let’s hope, Captain,” Nureyev told his 2IC, “that El-Hage doesn’t get Freeman before we do.”
“Right,” said the captain. “Do we have a GPS on Freeman?”
“No, but the Iglas that brought down Abramov could have only come from the tunnels, and they haven’t been blown. I don’t think that American shithead has come all this way to kill us only to leave our factory intact. Those SpecOp teams carry around plastique like you and I carry keys. They always have it. I’ll bet ten to one, Captain, that the bastard is still sniffing around the tunnels with his boys.”
“Very well then,” said the captain. “I know where I’ll take my tank.”
“Meanwhile,” said Nureyev, “I’ll take my tanks out to the minefield road and run over some Bettys to get Abramov out. The sight of all that lovely currency going sky-high and getting burned up is enough to make you ill.”
“Yes, so be careful in that minefield,” said the captain.
“Ah,” said Nureyev dismissively, “I can run over those Betty anti-personnel jobs no problem. They won’t even rattle my beast’s treads.”
“Yes,” the Russian tank captain agreed, “but don’t get too close. You don’t want shrapnel from a bouncing Betty to burn those dollar bills.”
“You think I’m stupid?” countered Nureyev. “I’ll get just close enough to extend the main gun to him. He grabs it and I’ll swing the gun around behind us.”
“But—” began the captain, until he sensed the Dancer’s wide grin and understood: A tank with its gun pointing to the rear was giving the sign of surrender. “So you see,” said Nureyev, “any asshole American with an anti-tank weapon won’t fire at me.”
“Be careful the general doesn’t lose his grip on the gun’s barrel.”
“Would you, until you were out of the minefield?”
“No, Comrade,” replied the captain. “I’d hang on like grim death.”
“So would I,” agreed Nureyev with a smile, his mood clearly elevated by the promise of the largest bonus ever paid by ABC — now A.
“All right, let’s go,” ordered Nureyev. “You get to that exit and put a few rounds down that shaft.” The captain paused, and Nureyev could hear him pulling down his ribbed leather helmet. “One thing I don’t get, Comrade. I thought this Freeman and his team were supposed to attack the entrance, not the exit?”
“That’s what we thought, but from what the boys who are still in H-block tell me, Freeman sent a bogus message to an American colonel. Rumor is that there was a signal within the signal that deliberately misled Abramov — something about a baseball player in America who claimed he had never wagered and was thrown out when it was found he lied. So when this Freeman said he was going to attack the H-block and the tunnels’ joint entrance below, our decoders, or Abramov himself, didn’t recognize this thing about the baseball player. It was like a verbal wink, you see, like saying, ‘I’m saying this but I’m going to do the opposite.’”
“Cunning shit,” said the captain. “I’ll take great delight in personally running over him.”
“Watch him. He may still have an Igla.”
The captain buttoned up his tunic and tapped on his throat mike. “Ivan, let’s roll. We have Yankees to kill.” The captain wasn’t worried about Iglas. They would bring down aircraft, no problem, but he’d seen them fired against a T-90’s glacis plate and its top — where armor was thinnest — and th
e HE charge just hit the tank and made a hell of a bang but no penetration whatsoever. “Ivan?” he asked his driver. “You watch all that TV shit. What’s that English phrase those Yankee game show hosts use?”
Ivan was thinking. “‘Come on down.’”
“Nyet,” said that captain. “That’s not it. You know — the one Bush Junior used against his enemies in his election campaign.”
Ivan didn’t know.
“Ah, I have it,” the captain declared jubilantly. “Bring it on!”
“Don’t freak!” Melissa Thomas told herself. “Don’t freak out.” It was difficult not to when she saw the huge black blob moving through the high reeds, especially when she realized it was a Russian state-of-the-art, infrared-laser-targeting-equipped main battle tank and when she didn’t know whether General Freeman would emerge from the pitch-black square that had been the exit door which she had seen him enter shortly after the last evac chopper had left. Down there now the general would have only his infrared-keyed night vision goggles by which to see, all the lighting, from the snippets she’d heard as the team had come up from the tunnel, taken out in the firefight.
“General,” she said on open channel, “a T-90’s coming out of the minefield.” If he heard her, maybe that would bring him up. “I say again, a T-90 is coming out of the minefield, heading our way.”
Freeman froze in shock. By now he’d descended the ninety-foot-long stairway into the bowels of the tunnel complex. Melissa — where the hell was she? And more to the point, why hadn’t she evaced? He didn’t dare answer immediately. Someone near or amongst the dead bodies of the terrorists must have somehow severed the det cord and might hear him reply. His right hand grasping his 9 mm H K handgun, he was on his knees, using his left hand to feel along the cord of the middle tunnel for a break.
“General! Are you reading me?”
Again he said nothing, and squelched the volume button. Ahead of him, through the infrared lenses, he was concentrating on the long assembly line of the middle tunnel. But it was slow, meticulous work, for no matter that Freeman had his night vision goggles functioning, the line of bodies he saw ahead was still a threat. During the firefight, a terrorist could have faked it, hiding in some nook or antechamber in one of the three tunnels which the team felt confident had been swept clean of the violently coughing terrorists who were trying to flee what they had thought was poison gas. No one else had come out of the exit since the team had gone in to “take out the garbage,” as Aussie had put it. And the explosion-buckled entrance doors at the far end of the tunnel were impassable.
Maybe, Freeman told himself, no one had severed the det cord. Perhaps it could have been cut by something heavy, such as a box of MANPADs falling from one of the stacks along the tunnel walls.
In the dank darkness all about him, fetid with the stench of human waste, he could hear a faint dripping. Then he saw darts of white light crossing his NVGs’ field of vision. Rats. Intuitively he wanted to hurry up, go topside, and try to position himself well enough so that he could trigger his identification friend or foe beacon, realizing there might still be a risk of rogue terrorist elements still prowling around after the marines’ first evac wave. And the general prayed that Melissa Thomas would be all right until the second evac wave. Freeman had been touched that she’d stayed behind, offering him backup. But on an op like this, searching for just one det cord break, one soldier was enough. Besides, though she’d come out of her semicomatose state, she had the awful pain of a broken rib, and he was unsure how steady she was on her feet. The tunnels weren’t the place to find out.
Silently he asked God to protect the young woman who had stayed behind. He had prayed a lot over the past twenty-four hours — never more for absolution as they’d gunned down the terrorists after only one, at the most, three, had fired at the team — and wildly at that.
Suddenly a body moved, then another. Freeman swung his sidearm in their direction and stayed his trigger finger. It had been rigor mortis setting in, an arm jerk of one of the dead terrorists enough to produce movement but no threat. Lord, he was tired. Now he could hear moaning, but was sure, from his long experience of combat, that it was no more than the sounds of bowel, stomach, and throats changing volume after death, bad air expelled. Get a grip on yourself, he silently ordered himself. General Freeman! You’re tired. Keep alert but don’t overreact.
He moved forward again slowly, his left hand cautiously sliding along the det cord.
When Melissa Thomas saw the T-90 slowing about five hundred yards beyond the perimeter of the minefield, she had hoped it would stop coming eastward, and turn about westward, and go away. The rain was still heavy and she knew that, despite her thermal clothing, she’d soon be in the early stages of hypothermia unless she started to move. Her body, despite one morphine jab, was throbbing with the sharp, needle-stabbing pain of hundreds of ant bites and her broken rib. She saw the tank’s cupola open, sighting it through her M40A1’s scope, resting the rifle on the gnarled tree branch at the edge of a clump of reed grass just beyond the wood. She could see a man’s head or, more accurately, a man’s bearded face, enclosed in the peculiarly antiquated thick, ribbed-leather helmet favored by both modern Russian and old Soviet bloc tank commanders and crews. The bearded face looked about quickly then disappeared. Now Marine Thomas was cursing herself in terms that would have shocked a longshoreman. Why hadn’t she got away a quick “slap” shot? Because, she told herself, truthfully, you weren’t ready, you silly bitch. You were so full of “poor me” and your ant-bitten, cold ass that you weren’t on the ball. But at least the tank was now moving southward, reminding her, in the neurotic manner of its sudden and abrupt change of course, of some mad bird dog, fast right, then left, fast right again, as it passed through the shoulder-high reeds, at times only its turret visible.
In the central tunnel, still moving slowly, one of a soldier’s most difficult disciplines, feeling his way along the det cord to find the break, the general’s breathing echoed inside his gas mask, and he could detect faint whiffs of tear gas. Probably the filter needed to be changed or, more likely, his head strap had slipped, his neck aching from the unusual strain of having to simultaneously stay alert for danger in the tunnel and outside. If the fingers of his hand missed even one millimeter-wide break he would have to repeat the whole process. Unable to contain the itch in his throat from the whiff of tear gas, he coughed.
“You okay, General?”
Melissa’s voice so startled him he lost his place on the det cord, quickly raising his handgun for a double-handed shot before he realized it was Thomas’s voice in his earpiece.
“Yes,” he said. “Having a great time!” It was the most sarcastic voice she’d heard since her DI’s, immediately followed by a more compassionate question from him, “How you doing?”
“I’m holding,” she said. “Tank’s sniffing around. Think it’s looking for us.”
By “us,” she meant not only her and the general but those other marines still dug in throughout the area of reeds and swamp-bordered woods, but “us” gave Freeman the impression that the tank was specifically looking for him and Thomas. A main battle tank with a 125 mm main gun and machine guns tended to make things very personal.
Freeman’s left hand resumed its feel of the detonation cord. Suddenly his NVG’s view was of a white jumble of bodies that looked like a long pile of clothes waiting to be ironed, the heat given off by the bodies sufficiently warm to register as “thermals” on his NVGs.
General Abramov reached up like a man doing his morning calisthenics and took a firm hold, wrapping both arms around the muzzle of Nureyev’s T-90’s main gun. Once before, Abramov had told Nureyev, this shit Freeman had caused trouble as leader of the U.S.-led “peace intervention” in Sirbir. Well, now he was going to pay for it. All legends die, whether those who embrace the legend wish to concede the point or not. After having carefully followed the GPS route and running over five anti-personnel mines so they could get safely to him,
the tank now backed out of the minefield, Nureyev having reversed the gun.
When Marine Thomas saw this second tank, with Abramov hanging from its main gun, moving slowly away east of the mad bird dog tank that was busily sniffing in the reeds beyond the minefield, she estimated the distance between it and her to be about a mile, though in the downpour that obscured lenses and made a constant hiss in the reeds it was difficult to gauge, even using the scope’s range finder. But she knew she had to move, the cold in her bones now making her feel, she imagined, like her great-grandfather who suffered 24/7 from the curse of fibromyalgia, from the despair of which nothing short of narcotic painkillers and the Good Book could help him. Every bone in her body was heavy with the ague, every muscle taut with strain, only one more disposable “jab” of morphine left. She forced herself to think of the second evac wave, which would surely be back within the hour. Please, God.
As dusk settled on this strangely beautiful but, for Melissa, godforsaken, reed-world west of the huge lake, she remembered the SpecWar guy Aussie Lewis telling her it was nearly four times bigger than Oahu, and she remembered stepping off the plane there and how warm it was, before the marines began their long haul to Japan. She was starting to drift; for a blessed moment her pain-racked brain was able to conjure up the fragrant kiss of the trade winds, the sound of crashing, lacy surf, and the sun of those blessed, healing isles.
Her brief reverie was broken by the bass bellow of the first T-90 bursting out of the reeds no less than a quarter of a mile away, heading straight for her or, she guessed, the tunnel exit, and now she understood why the mad bird dog tank wasn’t so mad and indecisive as it had seemed. While the other T-90 Melissa had seen had stopped in the minefield, only its cupola visible, its more agile comrade had no doubt been sent to scour east and west of the minefield exit to make sure there were no more tank-destroying Predator, Javelin, or TOW units whose marines might be tempted to fire, and to hell with the presidents’ timeline for evac that had passed already. No doubt about it now. This mad bird dog tank was racing, doing at least forty miles per hour, running parallel to the minefield, charging through the reeds like a bull elephant in a surge of uncontrollable sexual “must,” leaving a thick shower of tangled vegetation, reeds, birds’ nests, dead birds, Euriale leaves, and splintered ice in its wake, simultaneously firing its coaxial and 7.62 mm machine guns like some thundering giant savagely obliterating any impediments before it, its exhaust pipes all the while vomiting filthy brown clouds over the hitherto pristine, clean greens of reeds and lotus.
