Jones tensed, ready to make his move with his AK-47. “Who are you?” he asked to distract the stranger.
“Ben. Ben Raines. I’m sure I’m the one you’ve been sent here to kill.”
Jones closed his eyelids briefly. How the hell had Raines gotten behind him? “There must be some mistake. We came here to fight the Mexicans.”
“No mistake,” the voice said. “Unless you count letting me get behind you. That was a helluva mistake.”
“Would you shoot a man in the back?”
“I’d shoot a sorry son of a bitch like you in the balls if the light was better. I suppose I’ll have to take the only target you’ve given me. But just for the hell of it, I’m gonna give you a chance to turn around before I pull the trigger.”
Gerald felt he had no choice. Either he would be shot down from the rear, or he could take a chance at having better aim than Ben Raines.
He wheeled, sweeping his AK-47 barrel toward the trees as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Jones was lifted off his feet by a hail of lead tearing through his body. As he fell over on his back, just before he lost consciousness, he wondered what Ben Raines really looked like.
Ben walked rapidly away from the dead body that was cooling in the humid jungle air. He knew the flash of his Uzi would’ve been seen by Jones’s men, and he needed to get some distance between him and the site.
Within twenty minutes, the last shot was fired and the jungle was filled with silence.
Moments later, a warbling whistle trilled over the jungle night, and Harley Reno walked into a clearing, holding a flashlight aloft.
As Raines’s team gathered to the light, Harley said, “I got the last one a couple of minutes ago. We’re okay now.”
Ben stepped forward. “We won’t be okay until we get to the Mexican Army base at Durango. When they don’t hear back from the patrol they sent to kill us, they’ll probably send out choppers at first light. We need to be gone by then.”
He glanced at Anna. “You going to be able to make double time from now on?” he asked.
She nodded, though the swelling of her ankle could be seen even through Jersey’s tape.
“Yes, sir.”
Ben consulted his compass again, then glanced at the night sky, studying the star formations there. “Okay, we’ll head off in that general direction as fast as we can,” he said, pointing to the southwest. “At first light, we’ll slow down and make sure we stay under cover in case the choppers fly by.”
“I’ll take point,” Harley said, starting off with his SPAS shotgun cradled in his arms.
“I’ll bring up the rear,” Hammer said, taking the second most dangerous position in the column.
“Let’s go, people,” Ben said, glancing around at the bodies sprawled all around them. “We’ve wasted enough time here.”
THIRTY-FOUR
When Ben had heard from General Guerra that he needed the SUSA’s help at Durango and Tampico, Ben had instructed Striginov and McGowen to get their bats headed south as fast as they could.
Both men called upon HEMTTs (pronounced Hemits) to do the heavy work of transporting the heavy equipment the men would need. HEMTTs, or Heavy Equipment Mobility Tractor Trucks, were first used for cargo, recovery, and carrying tanks filled with water or fuel in the Desert Storm war in Kuwait in the ’90s. They were essentially large tractor-trailers, fitted with four huge wheels on each side that were necessary for traveling through desert and sandy areas.
The HEMTTs tooled through the desert as if they were on superhighways, accompanied by the heavy M-1 Abrams tanks, which could travel forty to fifty miles an hour and could laser-target six objectives at the same time; the smaller but no less effective Sheridan tanks, which were modified low-profile tanks fitted with the older optical sights; and the Bradley Attack Vehicles, or BAVs. All of these carried both 120mm cannons and fifty-caliber machine guns as their main armament. Also running alongside were the Vulcans, very small tanklike vehicles that carried a crew of two along with three-man scout teams they could transport quickly behind enemy lines, covering them with their own 120mm cannons.
The troop movements were led by the aircraft the bats used as air cover: Cobras, which had no night-fighting ability but were deadly hunters in good weather, and Apaches, the super-expensive, all-weather attack helicopters that were state of the art in killing efficiency. The venerable A-10 Warthogs, planes that had been known in combat to have a tail and half a wing shot away and still return home safely, were used both as troop transports and tank hunters. They flew vanguard, and swept the area ahead of the troops for any enemy soldiers that might hinder the movements of the thousands of men Ben was sending into Mexico to help General Guerra slow down the advance of Loco’s and Bottger’s armies.
Harley Reno stepped out of the jungle a hundred yards from the guard post of the Durango Army base and held up his hands.
The guard, who looked to be no more that sixteen years old, leveled an old M-16 and snapped off a couple of shots in his direction.
Harley dove to the ground and considered blowing the kid’s head off, then thought better of it. That wouldn’t be a diplomatic way to enter the post.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted.
“Who . . . who goes there?” the soldier asked in Spanish.
Harley answered the same way, explaining he was with General Raines from the SUSA and they were there to see General Guerra.
After some confusion, the boy shouted for them to come on in to the camp.
Ben stepped out of the jungle, smiling at Harley, who was still lying on the ground.
Harley glanced up and grinned. “I’m applying for hazardous-duty pay if we’re gonna be working with these dopes.”
Coop strolled by, smiling. “I guess you just look like the suspicious type, Harley, not a clean-faced, all-American type like me,” he said.
“I didn’t hear you volunteer to take point, Mr. All-American,” Harley growled, jumping to his feet.
“My momma didn’t raise no fools, Harley,” Coop replied.
“No, just assholes,” Jersey called from the back, but she smiled as she said it.
Coop gave her an injured look. “That hurts, Jersey, and after all we shared.”
“You can share my bugs anytime, Coop, especially the fatal ones,” she shot back as they neared the guard post.
The young soldier, after a fearful look at Harley, who towered over him by at least a foot, saluted Ben and said, “The general said for me to take you to him at once, sir.”
Harley gently pushed the barrel of the young boy’s M-16 up toward the ceiling. “We’ll follow you, soldier,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you behind me with that thing.”
General Guerra rushed from behind his desk to shake Ben’s hand, nodding his greeting to the other members of the team.
“General Raines, I am very happy to see you, sir.”
“Happy to be here, General. As it turns out, we have a common goal . . . to keep Loco and Bottger out of Durango and Tampico as long as we can.”
“That is my hope as well,” Guerra said. “Please, gentlemen and ladies, have a seat and I will have my aide bring you some refreshments.” He looked over the bedraggled group. “You look as if you could use them.”
“A couple of nights and a day in your jungles will do that to you, General,” Ben said.
“Please, call me Jose and I will call you Ben.”
Ben shrugged. “All right.”
After Guerra gave the orders for them to be brought food and wine, he sat behind his desk, ready to get down to business.
“What are your plans, Ben?” he asked.
“Of course, I’d like you to remain in command of all the Mexican troops, Jose, but I’ll have to insist on giving the orders concerning the disposition and conduct of my men.”
“Certainly, Ben, that is to be expected.”
“Good, I’m glad we agree,” Ben said. “Now, what is your latest intel on Loco’s and Bottger’s mo
vements?”
Guerra whirled his desk chair around and pulled a large-scale map of Mexico down from a roller on the wall. “Here we are at Durango, Ben,” he said, pointing to the map. “Bottger’s mercenaries have taken Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and are now attacking Valparaiso, about ninety miles to our south.”
“How about Loco?”
“They are massed at Ciudad de Valles twenty-five miles south of Tampico, and are now staging attacks against the Navy base there with helicopters and some older-model jet airplanes.”
“No foot soldiers?”
“Not as of yet. The terrain there is very . . . how you say, wild. My officers think it will take them another two days for the troops to get in position to attack them.”
“Why aren’t they just airlifting them in with Chinooks?” Harley asked.
Guerra smiled. “The base at Tampico is not without its own defenses. While our helicopters are of the older, Huey vintage, my pilots are fearless and have inflicted heavy damages to the more modern helicopters of Perro Loco’s army. I feel he is afraid the Hueys would shoot the slower Chinooks down, so he is waiting until most of the Hueys are neutralized, as they soon will be, by the vastly superior Kiowas.”
Ben nodded. “That gives Ike McGowen a couple of days to get some reinforcements to your base. If you will get me a radio, I’ll get on the horn and tell him to put it in high gear. We’ve got some helicopters with the 502 that will make the Kiowas look like kids’ toys.”
“Oh?” Guerra asked.
“Yeah,” Harley said, grinning. “The Apaches will eat the Kiowas for lunch, if they’ve got the cojones to face ’em.”
Guerra grinned “I’ve heard of the Apache helicopter, but I admit, I’ve never seen one.”
“The Apache is the most sophisticated and most expensive attack helicopter ever built,” Ben said. “It’s equipped with night vision and target acquisition and designation systems to enable it to fly and fight in all weathers, day or night. It’s armed with Hellfire missiles that can lock onto and destroy any known tank, and for softer targets it’s also equipped with 2.75-inch rockets and an extremely accurate thirty-millimeter Chain Gun.”
Harley grinned. “And it flies at one hundred fifty-five knots and has a range of three hundred miles. It kicked butt in the Gulf War and in Africa against Bottger a few years ago.”
“Ike’s also got a couple of Aardvarks,” Ben said, “and their range is over nine hundred miles. Maybe he could send a couple of them to keep Loco’s troops busy until he gets in range for the Apaches.”
“That is excellent news, Ben,” Guerra said. “Perhaps Tampico can be saved after all.”
Lieutenant Tommy Bartholomew took off in his Aardvark from an improvised airstrip that’d been bulldozed in the desert by the big Catapillar Cat-9’s the night before. He’d barely had time after his night landing to get six hours’ sleep and eat a quick breakfast before Ike McGowen had told him of Ben’s request for a little harassment of Loco’s troops at Ciudad de Valles.
The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark was the first supersonic fighter-bomber with the ability to make low-level precision bombing attacks by day or night, in any kind of weather. Known as the Aardvark because of its droop-nose silhouette, the swept-wing F-111 entered service over Vietnam in 1968. In 1986, F-111’s based in England struck at Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya, and in 1991 the F-111 was one of the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition’s most important aircraft. Now, almost fifty years since its first combat flight, the F-111 was still a mighty killing machine, and Bartholomew loved it as most men loved their wives.
Carrying almost eleven tons of bombs, it took almost three thousand feet to get airborne, but once in the air, the fighter flew at almost eight hundred knots southward toward Loco’s troop concentrations in the City of the Valleys.
Assured by McGowen that there were few if any civilians in the occupied city, Tommy dove out of the sun at just under the speed of sound, his electronic sights picking out targets of tanks, ammo dumps, fuel storage tanks, and troop bivouac areas.
On his first sweep, catching Loco’s men completely unaware, he dropped his bombs so low that he flew through the dark red mushroom clouds of debris and flames that rose upon exploding. Sweeping up in a wide turn, he glanced over his shoulder and saw several helicopters and two smaller jet fighters angling on the runway south of the city to get in position to take off.
Banking so steeply his cheeks bulged and flattened against the G-forces, he whipped around and made another run, this time the craters of his bombs marching inexorably toward the hapless planes still warming up for takeoff. Two of the helicopters managed to get off the ground before Tommy’s bombs totally destroyed the runway, three hangars, and most of the control tower of the airport.
His left wing shuddered under the impact of the Kiowa’s 20mm Minigun as he swept past the first helicopter. Ignoring the damage and the red warning lights that lit up his instrument panel like a Christmas tree, Tommy keyed the second Kiowa into his fire-control computer and pressed the button on his wing guns.
Every fifth bullet was a tracer, and the red dots of death screamed toward the helicopter, finally mating with it in a fiery explosion that rocked the F-111 as it flew by. Tommy watched the wreckage land in a field of scattering troops, incinerating at least a couple of dozen screaming men.
The control stick shook and shuddered in his hands, and he could see pieces of his left wing peeling off where the 20mm shells had stitched a pattern across.
He made one more pass at high altitude to stay out of range of the remaining Kiowa, and dumped the rest of his bombs indiscriminately over the city, watching most of them disappear under clouds of smoke and dust and flames.
Reluctantly, he pointed the nose of his beloved F-111 north toward Tampico and keyed the mike on his radio.
“Mayday, Mayday,” he said calmly, dialing in the frequency of the Navy base at Tampico that he’d been given in his pre-flight briefing that morning.
“This is Big Bird One-One-One to base at Tampico. I have a Mayday.”
“Come in, Big Bird, this is Tampico Navy base,” a Spanish-accented voice said in fairly good English.
“I’ve taken a hit on my left wing and the stabilizer is out. I need clearance for a straight-in approach on Runway B-12,” Tommy said, glancing at the map strapped to his right thigh.
“Come ahead, Big Bird. We’ll have fire trucks and foaming equipment standing by for your landing.”
“Roger, Tampico. Get the beer ready. I’ve got a mouthful of dust to cut.”
“Roger that, Big Bird. Good luck, amigo,” the voice said, signing off.
Minutes later, his wings wiggling and shaking more than Elvis’s hips ever had, Tommy lowered the nose of the F-111 toward the base at Tampico and lowered his flaps, hoping they would help calm the jittering of his wings on final approach.
His speed slowed, making control of the aircraft more difficult, and sweat began to pour from his forehead and face as he gripped the control stick with both hands, using his feet on the pedals to try to keep the plane in the air for another quarter mile.
“It’s gonna be close, old girl. Hang in there for me another couple’a seconds,” he whispered through a dry mouth to his plane.
The F-111 hit the ground, bounced once, skidded slightly to the right, then began to slow to manageable speed in the center of the runway.
Tommy leaned his head back, breathed a quick prayer of thanks, and let the air he’d been holding out of his lungs.
THIRTY-FIVE
Lieutenant Commander Johnny Held and Lieutenant Josh Fuentes were in the lead Apache flying out of Georgi Striginov’s 505 Bat, while Lieutenant Commander Jerry Stringer and Lieutenant Wally Fuller were flying backup in the second Apache.
Their orders were simple: Find the mercenaries operating under the command of Field Marshal Bruno Bottger and destroy as many men and as much equipment as they could. If they managed to down a few helicopters, all the better.
Their la
st intel was that the mercs were attacking the village of Valapraiso ninety miles to the south of Durango, where General Ben Raines and his team were meeting with the head of the Mexican Armed Forces, General Jose Guerra.
As they flew along the tributaries of the Grande de Santiago, the large river on the West Coast that sent its smaller branches up near Valapraiso, they could see smoke and flashes of light as the mercs systematically destroyed the meager defenses of the small town.
“Whirlybird One to Whirlybird Two,” Held said to Stringer over the ship-to-ship radio. “Looks like the bad guys are having some fun down there, pickin’ on the smaller boys.”
“Yeah,” Stringer answered. “Let’s go kick some sand in their faces and teach them some manners, American style.”
“Roger that,” Held said. “Drop your socks and grab your cocks, boys, we’re goin’ downtown!”
The two Apaches separated slightly, put their noses down for increased speed, and rushed toward the conflagration below. Held could see a couple of small black dots flitting around the outskirts of the town, and knew them to be either Kiowas or Defenders. It was too far to tell which they might be, but it really didn’t matter too much, for the Apache outclassed both of them in combat by a large margin.
Deciding to save his 2.75-inch rockets for the big boys, the Chinooks he knew must be in the area, Held fingered the trigger on his 30mm Chain Gun. The Chain Gun was a hellish instrument that could fire 30mm slugs so fast it sounded like a steady whine instead of the usual chatter of a machine-gun.
One of the enemy helicopters, a Kiowa, must have seen them coming, for it turned its back and headed off in full retreat.
“Smart boy,” Held said to his copilot, Josh Fuentes, who was busy checking the area for other targets or risks.
The second helicopter, a McDonnell Douglas OH-6 Defender, made the mistake of turning to face the Apache and letting go with a stream of 20mm shells from its Minigun while the Apache was still far out of range.
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