Shadow Command

by Dale Brown

  “Thanks.” She grimaced at the pain as she started to pull herself up, but the stuff McNulty gave her must’ve started working because the pain wasn’t debilitating this time. After McNulty departed, Charlie lowered her voice and spoke, “Odin, Stud Four.”

  “We read you loud and clear, Four,” Patrick McLanahan responded via the subcutaneous global transceiver system. Every member of the Air Battle Force had the communications and data transceiver system implanted into their bodies for the rest of their lives, ostensibly for situations like this but realistically to allow the government to monitor each member’s whereabouts for life. “Thank God you’re alive. We read Five is with you.”

  “Affirmative—he’s alive but still unconscious,” Charlie said. Wohl started to put his helmet on, preparing to move out. “I’m going to mount up and we’ll—”

  Suddenly McNulty ran back into the tent, completely out of breath. “Soldiers, just outside the camp,” he said frantically. “Hundreds of them.”

  “Odin, do we have a ride yet?” Charlie radioed.

  “Stud, this is Genesis,” Dave Luger cut in. “We have a CSAR team on the way from Herat, ETE ninety minutes. We’re launching cover aircraft from Batman Air Base in Turkey, but they’ll take about the same amount of time. What’s your situation?”

  “Getting tense,” Charlie said. “We’ll give you a call when we’re safe. Stud Four, out.” Charlie went over to the large box lying on the dirt floor. “Any backpacks or rifles, Five?”

  “Negative,” Wohl replied. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay—you had your hands full,” Charlie said. “Let’s get moving.”

  Miles motioned to the large box that Wohl had been carrying with him when he entered the camp. “Are those your weapons? Now would be a good time to get them out, lass.”

  “Not exactly,” Charlie said. “CID One, deploy.”

  As Miles watched in amazement, the box began to move, quickly shifting size and shape like a magician’s wand changing into a bouquet of flowers. In seconds, the large but ordinary-looking metal box had transformed into a ten-foot-tall robot, almost bursting out the top of the tent, with smooth black “skin,” a bullet-shaped head with no discernible eyes or ears, and large, fully articulating arms, legs, and fingers.

  “CID One, pilot up,” Charlie spoke. The robot assumed a leaning-forward stance as if on a sprinter’s starting block, but with one leg and both arms extended backward. Grimacing from the pain, Charlie stepped around the robot and climbed up the extended leg, using the arms as handrails. She entered a code into a tiny keypad somewhere behind the robot’s head, a hatch popped open on its back, and she slipped herself inside. The hatch closed…

  …and moments later, to the Irishman’s amazement, the robot came to life and stood, resembling a regular person in everything but its appearance—its movements were so smooth, fluid, and lifelike that Miles immediately found himself forgetting it was a machine!

  Charlie scooped up the still-unconscious Wayne Macomber. “Now is a very bad time to be out of it, Whack,” she said. She activated the Cybernetic Infantry Device’s millimeter-wave radar and scanned the area outside the tent. “Looks like they’re trying to surround us,” she said. “The south side looks like our best escape route—just one truck set up down that way.”

  “How about a little diversion to the north and west?” Wohl asked, studying the radar image data being transmitted to him from Charlie’s CID unit. “Looks like a machine-gun squad getting set up on the north side. I can use one of those.”

  “Sounds good.” She reached a fist out, and he punched it in return with his own. “As a hunky Australian actor said in a movie once: ‘Unleash hell.’”

  “On the way. Better give him some cover.” Wohl sprinted out the front of the tent. Charlie knocked Miles to the ground and covered him just as a hail of automatic gunfire shredded the tent apart.

  “Hop on, Miles,” Charlie’s electronically synthesized voice said. Still bent over, she shifted the inert form in her arms aside, far enough to form a space between her body and the Tin Man. He hesitated, still dumbfounded by what he had just seen. “You can’t stay here. The Revolutionary Guards Corps will think you’re one of us.”

  “Can ye carry us both?”

  “I can carry twenty of you, Miles. Let’s go.” He lay across her arms, and she rolled Macomber back on top of him and tightened her grip, sandwiching him in securely. “Hang on.”

  But when she got up, there was obviously something wrong—Miles felt a high-frequency vibration within the machine, and Charlie’s gait was unsteady. “What’s wrong?” he shouted.

  “The CID unit is damaged,” Charlie said. “Must’ve been from the crash.”

  “I copy,” Wohl radioed. Charlie could see his position in her electronic data visor—he was moving rapidly through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ positions, stopping briefly at each concentration of troops. “Head out the best you can. I’ll be beside you in a moment.”

  The next few minutes were sheer torture. Wohl had drawn some of their fire away briefly, but it returned full force just moments after Charlie burst from the tent, seemingly all aimed at them. The sounds were deafening. They were consumed with clouds of smoke, occasional blasts of fire, and continuous gunfire. McNulty screamed when a round hit his left leg, and screamed again when a crushing explosion knocked Charlie to the ground. They were up again within moments, but now the smooth running rhythm was replaced by an awkward limping shuffle, like an automobile with a flat tire and bent rim.

  Wohl ran beside Charlie, a Chinese Type 67 machine gun in his right hand, a metal can of ammunition in his left. “Can you travel, Captain?”

  “Not for long.”

  “What the hell is going on?” they heard.

  “Whack!” Thankfully, Macomber was awake, although he sounded sluggish and doped-up. “Are you okay?”

  “My head feels like it’s been cracked open,” Macomber said thickly. Charlie suspected a concussion. “Am I alive?”

  “So far—hopefully it’ll stay that way,” Charlie said. “Can you walk?”

  “Do I still have legs? I can’t feel anything down there.”

  “Stay put and try not to move—you’ll squish the other passenger.”

  “Other passenger?”

  Charlie tried to run, but things were definitely getting worse. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded on her back, sending them flying again. “Power is down to forty percent already,” Charlie said as Wohl helped them up, “my primary hydraulic system is out, and I can’t move my right leg.”

  “Can you keep moving?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Charlie said. Using her right leg as a crutch, she limped along, with Wohl laying down suppression fire with his machine gun until he ran out of ammunition. He half supported, half carried Charlie, and they were able to move faster up a low ridgeline. They could easily see their pursuers below them, advancing slowly, with more and more units joining the pursuit.

  Charlie set Macomber and McNulty down, then dismounted from the CID unit. “It’s getting ready to shut down,” she said. “It’s done. There’s just enough power left to start erasing the firmware. Once we move away, it’ll automatically self-destruct.”

  “It looks like they’re not sure where we are,” Wohl said, scanning the desert below them with night-vision optics. He zoomed in on a few of the details. “Let’s see…infantry…infantry…ah, got one, another machine-gun squad. I’ll be right back.” He raced off into the darkness.

  Macomber struggled to his hands and knees. “Okay, I’m starting to tell up from down,” he said. “Who’s our guest?”

  “Miles McNulty, a UN relief worker,” Charlie replied, filling in the details.

  A few minutes later, Wohl ran back with an even larger weapon than the first, a Russian DshK heavy machine gun with a huge drum magazine on top, along with a wooden box of more magazines. “Looks like they brought some anti-aircraft weapons with them—they were obviously expecting c
ompany. How are you doing, Major?”

  “Peachy, Sergeant Major,” Macomber replied. He looked at McNulty. Charlie was busy tying a scrap of cloth torn from her uniform around his leg. “The passenger is hurt. Where’s the cavalry?”

  “At least sixty mike out.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “East toward the Afghanistan border,” Charlie said. “About thirty miles away. Hilly and pretty open. No towns or villages for fifty miles.”

  “How are you doing on power, Sergeant Major?” Macomber asked.

  “Down to thirty percent.”

  “Here—I can’t use it yet.” He unclipped one of his circular batteries from his belt and swapped it for one of Wohl’s more depleted ones. “Can we use the CID unit to charge our batteries?”

  “Not when it’s in shutdown mode, Whack,” Charlie said.

  “Can’t we tap into a power or telephone pole?” Macomber asked. Charlie looked at him with astonishment. “Hey, I have been studying these things—I may not like them, but I do read the manuals. We’re not going to follow the highway, but if we spot a breaker box or control junction, I think I can rig up a jumper. Let’s get—”

  “I hear helicopters,” Wohl said. He used his night-vision and enhanced hearing systems to sweep the skies, pinpointing the approaching aircraft’s position. “Two light scout helicopters, about three miles away,” he said, raising the DshK machine gun.

  “Let’s spread out,” Macomber said. But he soon found out that was all but impossible: Charlie was still in pain from her injuries, and McNulty was hurt badly and going into shock, so he had to carry both of them even though he still wasn’t a hundred percent himself, so it was slow-going. Wohl moved about ten yards away from them, close enough to support them if they came under attack but not close enough that one explosive round fired from a helicopter could take them all out at once.

  They had run up the ridge just a few hundred yards when Wohl shouted, “Take cover!” Macomber found the largest piece of rock nearby and threw his charges and then himself behind it, placing himself between the helicopters and the others to shield them the best he could with his armored body. The Tin Man armor system featured an electronically actuated material that stayed flexible but instantly hardened when struck into a protective shield a hundred times stronger than plate steel.

  Macomber could hear the oncoming helicopters through his own enhanced hearing system, but his eyes couldn’t focus on his electronic displays. “I can’t see them, Wohl.”

  “Stay down.” A moment later he opened fire with the DshK machine gun, the muzzle flash of the big 12.7-millimeter cannon illuminating a ten-yard-diameter area around him. They heard a loud metallic screech as several rounds pierced the first helicopter’s turbine engine and seized it solid, then an explosion as the engine blew itself apart. Seconds later they heard more explosions as the second scout helicopter opened fire on Wohl’s position. He managed to jump out of the way just in time to avoid the full force of the Iranian 40-millimeter rocket attack.

  Wohl opened fire on the second helicopter, but the fire soon cut off. “Jammed…shit, a round stuck in the chamber…won’t clear.” He was surprised the gun had fired as many rounds as it did—it looked as if it was fifty years old and hadn’t been cleaned in half that number of years. He discarded the weapon and scanned the area for more nearby Pasdaran units so he could grab another machine gun, but the three remaining units were hanging back, blindly peppering the ridgeline with occasional rifle and mortar fire and content to let the scout helicopter do some fighting for them.

  “The infantry units are hanging back, and there’s still one helicopter overhead,” Wohl reported. “I’m down to throwing rocks.” He wasn’t kidding—the microhydraulically actuated exoskeleton on the Tin Man combat system gave him enough power to hurl a five-pound rock almost two hundred yards with enough force to do some damage, which could put him within range of that scout helicopter if he could dash toward it, jump, and throw with perfect timing. He found a softball-sized rock and prepared to do just that…

  …but then his sensors picked up another helicopter, and this time it wasn’t a little scout. He’d recognize that silhouette anywhere: “We’ve got more trouble, ma’am,” Wohl said. “Looks like a Mi-24 Hind inbound.” The Russian-built Mi-24, NATO code name “Hind,” was a large attack helicopter which could also carry up to eight fully outfitted soldiers inside. It carried a formidable array of weapons…

  …the first of which opened fire seconds later, from over three miles away. Wohl immediately dashed away from the rest of his team, then stopped to make sure the anti-tank guided missile was still tracking him. It was, and he realized that the helicopter itself was following him too, which meant that the helicopter crew had to keep him in sight to keep the missile on him. Good. It had to be an older guided missile, probably an AT-6 line-of-sight radio-controlled missile.

  Wohl waited another heartbeat, then dashed toward the nearest group of Pasdaran ground pursuers at top speed. He could no longer see the missile, but he remembered that an AT-6’s flight time was somewhere around ten seconds when fired from maximum range. That meant he had just seconds to make it. This Pasdaran unit was an armored vehicle with a heavy machine gun on top, which opened fire as he closed in. A few shells hit, but not enough to slow him down. Now he was between the armored vehicle and the helicopter—certainly, Wohl thought, the Hind’s gunner had to turn the missile away. His mental stopwatch ran to zero…

  …just as the AT-6 Spiral anti-tank missile slammed into the Pasdaran armored vehicle, setting it afire in a spectacular fireball. Wohl was thrown skyward by the concussion. The damned Pasdaran gunner got so target-fixated that he lined up and hit his own guys!

  Wohl rolled unsteadily to his feet, alive and mostly unhurt except his eyes and throat were clogged with oily smoke. The entire left side of his helmet, along with most of his sensors and communications, had been damaged in the blast. He had no choice but to take the helmet off. The blast had also ruined his hearing, and the acrid smoke burned his eyes and throat. He was a sitting duck. His first order of business was to get away from the burning vehicles behind him, which could be highlighting him…

  …but before he could move, a line of automatic gunfire stitched the ground in front of him, and the big Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter zoomed before him and stopped, the chin-mounted 30-millimeter cannon trained directly on him. His armor would protect his body, but that would be of no use to him without a head. Wohl had no idea if they would accept a surrender, but if they were distracted long enough it might provide the others a chance to escape, so he raised his hands. The Mi-24 started its descent to touchdown, and he could see the clamshell crew doors open on either side, with soldiers ready to dismount as soon as the big chopper set…

  …and at that instant there was a flash of fire on the right side of the attack chopper, followed by a large plume of smoke, more fire, an explosion, and a scream of metal, and then the big chopper spun to the left and hit the ground. Wohl dashed away just as the helicopter began to disintegrate in several more tremendous explosions. He was about to head back toward the others when he saw several vehicles, including an armored personnel carrier, approach. The lead vehicle, a pickup truck with a machine gunner in back, was flying a flag, but he couldn’t make it out yet. He thought about running away from where he last left Turlock, Macomber, and the Irishman…until he saw the vehicles veer left away from him and toward the hiding place.

  Wohl took off at top speed toward the vehicle at the tail end of the six-vehicle convoy, which had a machine gunner covering the rear of the formation. The other vehicles wouldn’t fire toward their own vehicles, and hopefully he could reach the machine gunner, disable him, and take the gun before he could get a shot off. Just a hundred yards to go…

  …and then he saw Turlock coming out of her hiding place, with her arms up. Was she surrendering? It might be good timing after all—if they were concentrating on them he had a better chance of reaching
the last pickup truck and…

  …but then as he got closer Wohl realized that Turlock wasn’t raising her hands in surrender, but waving to him, motioning him back! Why was she doing this? Now she was pointing at the lead vehicle, the one with the flag…

  …and Wohl finally realized what she was trying to tell him. The flag the vehicle was carrying had the green, white, and red stripes of the Islamic Republic of Iran on it, but the center symbol wasn’t the “red tulip” stylized word “Allah,” but the profile of a lion carrying a sword with the rising sun behind it—the flag representing the pre-revolutionary era and the opposition to the Islamists.

  Chris trotted over to Turlock and Macomber, carefully watching to be sure none of the gunners pointed their weapons at him. “Not answering your phone, Sergeant Major?” Turlock asked, pointing to her ear, indicating his subcutaneous transceiver system.

  “Got my bell rung back there,” Wohl said. He nodded toward the newcomers. “Who are these guys?”

  “These are Buzhazi’s men,” Charlie said. “General McLanahan actually called Buzhazi and asked for help.”

  “They came right on time. Good thing they brought Stinger missiles with them.”

  “They didn’t shoot down the Hind, Sergeant Major.” Charlie pointed to the sky, and they saw the contrails of a very large aircraft high overhead. “Compliments of the general. They’ll be on station for another two hours.”

  “Outstanding. That should get us enough time to get across the border.”

  “The general suggests we head back toward Tehran with these guys,” Charlie said. “They’re bringing in a helicopter to pick us up, and the Vampires will cover for us.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a hot idea, ma’am.”

  “I’ll explain.” She did…and Wohl couldn’t believe what he had just heard.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  You don’t hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.