Strike Force Charlie s-3

by Mack Maloney

  Once airborne, they raced down the length of the foggy lake using its cover for as long at they could. Then they rose and turned due south, going right over the heavily populated Litchfield area, no doubt attracting attention from below. The air traffic control people at Minneapolis Airport tried to raise them; they’d been picked up by the airport’s radar when they were forced to go up and over some particularly hilly neighborhoods. But there was nothing they could do about that now. They simply shut off the radio, dipped back down to 200 feet, and went full throttle toward the amusement park.

  Called the Great American Adventure Land, it was a huge complex with everything from modern roller-coaster type rides to old-fashioned Ferris wheels. There was also a large water park, a concert arena, and many food concessions. One mile out, Ryder and Gallant clicked on their FLIR device. It gave them a heat register of the area. The first thing that jumped out at them was the hundreds of people lined up at the park’s main gate, waiting for the waterslide attraction to open.

  “Damn,” Gallant cursed. “This isn’t going to be clean as we hoped.”

  “Let’s make it quick then,” Ryder replied.

  They did a scan of the interior of the park. It took a few moments, but then they found two heat signatures at the top of the tallest hill of the park’s roller-coaster-type attraction, something called Space Ride.

  “Could be maintenance men,” Gallant said, compressing the image on the screen. “They have to check those things every day before they let anyone on them.”

  “Could be our mooks, too,” Ryder replied. “It’s the highest point this side of the Rockies.”

  “Let’s buzz them,” Gallant suggested.

  And buzz them they did. Ryder put the copter into a quick, sharp bank, pulling a tight 180 degrees. This put their nose pointing directly at the top of the Space Ride’s highest hill. Then he pushed them to full throttle.

  They roared over the metallic peak a second later. What they saw was two men in soccer-style clothing, sitting very casually atop the roller-coaster hill. They watched the chopper as it went by, playing it cool, even waving in a bid to seem friendly.

  But then Gallant saw something else: On the ground, 200 feet below the structure, clear as day, were two bodies. They were wearing bright yellow and blue shirts and caps. The overall color scheme of the Space Ride and the park itself was the same shades of yellow and blue.

  The three men riding in the back saw the bodies, too.

  “Those are mooks up there!” Puglisi screamed up to the pilots. “They threw those two poor bastards right off the top!”

  “That seems to be the case …” Fox agreed.

  They turned sharply again and went back over the big hill. This time the two men weren’t waving at them. Everyone on the helicopter could see the telltale suitcase and tube assembly that was used to transport Stinger missiles. The two soccer players were sitting on it.

  Ryder looked over at Gallant. “That’s enough for me,” he said.

  Gallant just nodded. It was that time again.

  He pushed a series of keys on one of the connected laptops. Its screen burst to life with an icon representing the large .50-caliber machine gun mounted in the chopper’s nose. The word READY flashed on the screen. Gallant hit the enter key. The huge nose gun burst to life. Two seconds was all it took. The two terrorists, their launcher, and about fifteen feet of the top of the Space Ride’s hill exploded into a cloud of fire and metallic dust. No sooner had this happened than a Northwest 747 airliner passed over the amusement park no more than 2,000 feet high and still climbing.

  Ryder yanked back on the throttles as they passed over the remains of the big hill. There was no sign of the terrorists’ bodies. They’d been vaporized.

  “We won’t have to waste a couple pigs on them,” Gallant said drily.

  Ryder clicked the FLIR back on. The soccer cells always traveled together, four to a cell. This meant two more mooks were still down there somewhere. There was no way the team was going to let them go.

  “There!” Gallant called out. He was pointing at the expanded FLIR screen that showed two figures running through the park’s concert arena, heading toward the food court. “The other two — I knew I could smell them all the way up here ….”

  Fox was already disconnecting one of the side door fifties from its swivel mount. They would have to do an insertion to take care of this. Bates started gathering up ammunition. Puglisi was checking his knives. Ryder and Gallant just looked at each other. One of them would have to go, too.

  “My turn,” Ryder said. Gallant had done the Campo Raid and the Nebraska job.

  But Gallant just shook his head.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  * * *

  Ryder swung the Sky Horse down toward the center of the park. There was an open area to the left of the waterslide, hard by the food courts.

  Puglisi threw out the access ladder and started down almost immediately. Fox was close behind, holding the big fifty by its strap below him. Bates went next, his skinny post — hippie dude frame weighed down by two bandoliers of ammo. Gallant went down last, carrying Bates’s gun as well as his own. And like Puglisi, Gallant was carrying a hatchet.

  All four made it to the ground next to a huge attraction, a kind of high-tech fun house called the Angry Alien. Gallant gave Ryder the wave-off; Ryder immediately put some air under the chopper. He could see twice as many people pressed up against the park gate now. They were all looking in with great curiosity. Some were shouting; some were laughing. Some thinking it was perhaps a simulated battle being put on by the amusement park or maybe an antiterrorist security drill. Many were taking pictures and even videotaping the action. Ryder tried to keep his head together. It wouldn’t be the first time the team had performed before an audience. During the Hormuz adventure, they’d made headlines on CNN more than once.

  But that didn’t mean he liked it.

  * * *

  The two remaining terrorists were hiding close by the waterslide, as it turned out. They’d scrambled behind the sparse cover of an overturned picnic table. On their right was the food court. On their left, the entrance to the Angry Alien. To their rear was the huge wave tank, which was the size of a small ocean. In front of them, the four heavily armed, and armored, American soldiers were advancing on them.

  The Islamic gunmen hadn’t anticipated any of this. Why would they? They’d been led to believe that they would not have to worry about getting caught or aggressively tracked down, at least not at first. They had been told that it had all been fixed. That when each four-man team was dropped off at their firing location there would be little to worry about concerning law enforcement agencies, that they’d be able to operate freely. They all had safe houses in Canada where they were to go once their individual missions were completed. As they understood it, someone high up in the U.S. government had even arranged it so they wouldn’t have to stop for a search at the border.

  So who then were these strange soldiers in their very strange helicopter? So suddenly they had blown away their two colleagues at the top of the roller coaster’s big hill. This was not how the typical U.S. soldier acted. The terrorists knew this because each had fought Americans in either Afghanistan or Iraq. These days American soldiers did not shoot first and ask questions later but actually did the exact opposite. So sensitive were they to inflicting unwanted collateral damage, many gave up their own lives rather than harm an innocent civilian.

  But not these soldiers. They’d turned their two colleagues into windblown gristle and now were making their way toward them. And they were trapped. There was nowhere inside the park for them to hide. The main gate was filled with hundreds of people — innocents true — but the terrorists didn’t have any firepower to shoot their way through them. The rest of the park was surrounded by a security fence that was simply too high for them to even consider climbing over — it had been erected to discouraged troublemakers from sneaking in. Plus they were armed only with pistols
….

  But that wasn’t what drove all the fear into them. For now the soldiers were near enough for the terrorists to see them up close. The huge oversize helmets, the black combat suits, the gray body armor, the M16 lookalikes with trademark bayonets attached. But it was the patch the soldiers wore on their right shoulder that burned into their terrorists’ eyes. The Islamic gunmen knew it well. It showed a billowing American flag with the silhouette of the Twin Towers on it. The initials NYPD and FDNY floating above. And below, a motto: We Will Never Forget.

  Seeing the patch told them who these bloody Americans from the sky were. Who they had to be.

  They were the Crazy Americans.

  The scourge of their comrades back in Hormuz and at Singapore and almost in Manila. The men who’d killed their sheikh, Abdul Kazeel.

  Now they were here, in America, to get them.

  Foolishly, in sheer terror, the terrorists began shooting at the Americans with their popguns. The badly aimed fire only served to pinpoint their position. Bates and Gallant opened up with their M15s immediately. The mooks were firing at them from behind nothing more than a wooden bench. Puglisi added fire, and the three streams of bullets pounded into the table, shredding it. One terrorist was blown away in the fusillade. The other scrambled away, fleeing into the entrance to the Angry Alien.

  Ryder was watching all this from above, at least as best he could from a stationary hover. But then he was distracted from the one-sided gunfight by a flash of light off to his left. He looked out past the crowd at the main gate, out into the parking lot. That’s when he saw the one thing he didn’t want to see.

  A police car ….

  Lights flashing, siren wailing, it was screaming right through the middle of the huge empty parking lot, heading for the main admission gate.

  “Son of a bitch …” Ryder breathed. “This ain’t good ….”

  The ghost team didn’t mind people seeing what they were doing — or at least having no misconceptions as to what they were up to. But they didn’t want to get caught in the act. Not by the police, not by anyone. That would put an end to this flying circus way too soon.

  So, Ryder knew he had to do something — but what?

  * * *

  He raised the copter up and over the water park, over the remains of the smoldering roller-coaster hill, and headed toward the parking lot.

  The police car had a lot of ground to cover — the parking lot was almost a quarter-mile long. Ryder brought the copter down to just 20 feet off the asphalt, perpendicular to the police car. He booted throttle and went rocketing over the top of the unsuspecting patrol car, carrying a storm of dust and noise along with him. The massive downdraft hit the vehicle full force, nearly tipping it over. There was a mighty screech of brakes; the two cops hadn’t seen him until the very last moment. The concussion was so severe, it caused both airbags to burst open.

  Ryder turned the copter over and was soon pointing back at the police car again. No doubt, the cops inside were stunned — and baffled as well. He could see them wrestling with the airbags, trying to look out their front window at the same time. They’d been called here for a report of shots fired. Why would a Coast Guard helicopter begin buzzing them?

  Ryder turned up and over again. The police car, its occupants recovered, started creeping forward once more. Lower and faster, Ryder came at them head-on. The downwash slammed into the roof of the car, forcing it almost down to its axles. It screeched to a halt again. Ryder turned, hoping he’d popped at least a couple of its tires.

  No such luck, though. In fact, the cruiser started rolling forward yet again. Ryder could see one cop on the radio. The other was unhitching a shotgun from his dashboard.

  Not good ….

  He went around again, lost as to what to do next. Ryder could still see the cruiser’s driver, steering the car with one hand while on the radio with the other. The second cop was pumping his shotgun and getting ready to aim it out the window. Ryder’s mind was racing, weighing the circumstances. Then, reluctantly, he armed the copter’s forward gun.

  He booted throttles and came at the police car head-on again. Making sure he was well out in front, he let loose a barrage from the big fifty. As always, it was blinding, noisy, and violent. The stream of tracer shells smashed into the parking lot 500 feet in front of the police cruiser, tearing up a huge portion of asphalt. Still the police car kept coming.

  Ryder came back around yet again and repeated the maneuver, this time laying down a barrage just 250 feet away from the patrol car. The police car kept on coming.

  Ryder swore again, whipping the copter around tail first. These cops were fearless. Plus they were now halfway across the huge parking lot and getting near a cluster of parked cars. He bore down on them, not 20 feet off the ground, and put a surgically placed, noisy barrage right over the top of their roof. The concussion of the fussilade alone took out the flashing-light assembly on top of the cruiser, exploding it in hundreds of multicolored pieces.

  That was all it took. The cops finally slammed on their brakes, put their car in reverse, and retreated.

  Ryder breathed a sigh of relief. His hands were shaking.

  “That was too fucking close,” he whispered.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, back in the park, Gallant was looking everywhere for the Sky Horse.

  “Where the hell did he go?” he yelled to Puglisi.

  The Delta soldier just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he yelled back to Gallant. “I just hope he doesn’t forget us down here.”

  They both turned their attention back to the matter at hand. They had the last terrorist cornered in the Angry Alien fun house. But how could they get him out? They could hear the siren in the distance and maybe the clatter of gunfire — and maybe that’s where Ryder was. They could also hear the crowd at the main gate, yelling, shouting, screaming. It all added up to a shortage of time.

  Puglisi and Gallant ran forward now, taking up positions near the ride’s entryway. It was a large building, not one of the newest attractions at the theme park but elaborate nevertheless. Bates had scrambled around to the back and confirmed there were no rear exits that he could see. So the last mook was indeed trapped. Trouble was, the ghosts didn’t have time to go in and flush him out.

  Gallant and Puglisi just looked back at Fox, who had set up the big fifty near an ice-cream stand. All three just shrugged. Then Fox yelled, “Get Brainiac back out here!”

  Gallant yelled for Bates; he soon came running back to the main midway, knowing what would happen next. Joining Gallant and Puglisi, they all retreated to Fox’s position. Bates immediately fed a belt of ammunition into the .50-caliber. Fox cocked the gun and then let loose a fierce barrage at the front of the fun house. He never let off the trigger. The stream of tracer bullets was frightening as the huge rounds perforated the saucer-shaped building. Pieces of wood and metal went flying, some sparkling with sudden heat. Fox just kept spraying back and forth, taking the building apart seemingly one board, one piece, at a time.

  It took almost a half-minute, so long the barrel of the huge gun was nearly red-hot. But the building finally collapsed on itself; then it caught on fire.

  “Who the fuck is going to pay for that!” Gallant yelled wildly.

  The terrorist staggered out, burned and bloody. Puglisi ran forward, hatchet in hand. Bates had a small video camera he’d found in his care package. He recorded the mayhem that followed. The screams were horrible. Gallant and Fox had to look away. When it was over, though, they saw Puglisi stuffing hot dogs into the dead terrorist’s mouth.

  “God damn,” Gallant said. “That’s freaking nasty.”

  At that moment, they heard a great roar above them.

  The Sky Horse had returned.

  * * *

  Ryder had picked up the action on the ground.

  He saw the fifty take apart the fun house. He saw Puglisi first riddle the terrorist with bullets, then chop off his hands. And Puglisi was now stuffing frankfurter
s into the man’s mouth.

  Are hot dogs made out of pork? Ryder found himself thinking.

  Then he snapped back to reality. They were through here. It was time to go.

  “Jesus, c’mon!” Ryder was yelling at his comrades on the ground now. Fox was already on the still-dangling ladder. Gallant was holding the bottom for Puglisi to start climbing. But where was Bates?

  Ryder was straining his neck looking for the wayward computer whiz, this as he was doing his best to keep the old chopper steady as the others tried to ascend.

  Fox reached the cargo bay and scrambled aboard.

  “Where’s the Brain?” he yelled back to the DSA officer.

  “Jesuzz, he was right behind me!” came the reply.

  Now Puglisi fell into the cargo bay. He was carrying the dead terrorists’ weapons plus their cell phones. He didn’t know where Bates was, either. Ryder could just about see through a hole in the roller coaster, out through the main gate. He saw a small army of police cars now approaching the park.

  “Damn!” he cried again.

  He looked below and saw Gallant, still holding the bottom of the ladder, looking up at him and pointing to a spot deeper into the food court. Ryder turned to where Gallant was pointing, and that’s when he saw Bates. He was kicking the crap out of one of the concession vending machines and picking up its contents from the ground.

  “Is he insane?” Fox roared. “We gotta get out of here!”

  But then Ryder turned the chopper slightly, and this gave him a better view of Bates.

  And he saw Bates wasn’t busting up a candy vendor or a Coke dispenser. He was robbing a cigarette machine.

  Ryder let out a whoop.

  “Atta boy!” he yelled. “Now you’re using your head!”