The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  “The thought had crossed my mind, but you’ll have to reach him first.”

  Isaac winked. “I got my ways. It’s just like checkers and now it’s our move. The enemy might have more pieces, but we’re the ones doing the jumping. Have a nice flight.”

  “Shalom, you old devil.”

  The Sikorsky helicopters streaked through the night sky at a routine altitude, making no effort to disguise themselves from either radar or visual contact.

  “Two minutes to showtime, Indian,” McCracken said to Wareagle in the cockpit, the floodlit expanse of Masada growing as they drew closer. “Time to join the others in the back.”

  Wareagle took a deep breath and Blaine noted the slightest smile force its way onto his features. “The hellfire, Blainey. Once again we join it.”

  “You sound almost glad.”

  “No, nor am I sad. I have learned that all exists to provide scale. The hellfire lends definition to who we are and were. The spirits are closest in times like these. They rise into the chaos, but to feel them you too must enter it. Never are their words clearer. Never do I feel closer to my ancestors.”

  “Just so long as you don’t pick tonight to join them, Indian.”

  Major Ben Shamsi, commander in charge of the security force deployed around Masada, lifted the walkie-talkie to his ear.

  “I read you, Corporal.”

  “Sir, I have a pair of troop carriers approaching from the south.”

  Just then Shamsi’s ears picked up the familiar wop-wop-wop of two Sikorskys and he could see the flashing lights marking their path through the night.

  “Lieutenant,” he called to the man behind him, “are we expecting reinforcements?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, sir.”

  The troop carriers dipped out of sight from the officers’ viewing angle at the mountain base station on the eastern side of Masada.

  “Raise them on the radio,” Shamsi ordered. “Let’s find out what—”

  “Sir!” came the frantic voice of the corporal based on the southern edge. “One of the troop carriers has released objects over Masada!”

  “Objects?”

  “Bats, sir, they look like huge bats!”

  The guard Lace had posted on the southern wall of Masada had actually raised his hand to wave at the lead Sikorsky passing overhead when he saw the black figures plunge out and soar instantly over him. He ducked out of instinct the way one does from a swooping bird. The guard was still fumbling for his walkie-talkie when the first poof! sounded from the northern flank of Masada. When he turned back, the entire sky seemed filled with the black shapes spilling out from the guts of the Sikorskys.

  The motorized hang gliders had been the centerpiece of Wareagle’s plan from the beginning. They were the only vehicles both quick and maneuverable enough to permit approach to Masada from above. Hiroshi had happened upon this lot by intercepting a shipment originally bound for Delta Force at Fort Bragg. But since he steadfastly refused to deal with the only market for them—terrorists—they had remained in his warehouse until now.

  The gliders were truly a magnificent creation, far more technologically advanced than those used by Palestinian terrorists in raids over the Israeli border with Lebanon. Their black wingspan was barely six feet, and the weight of the small motor that propelled them was easily dispersed across the middle. Maneuverability was permitted in all directions, as well as rapid drops and climbs.

  In the last moments before the initial drop, McCracken considered the strategy they were employing and how it had been arrived at. He and Wareagle had assumed from the start that Rasin would have lookouts posted all over Masada, not just to the north where his forces were concentrated. This ruled out making their way over by glider from a nearby ridge and necessitated an air drop from the Sikorskys.

  “My greatest concern is the lights,” Hiroshi had warned from the outset. “The problem is double-edged. If we shoot them out, my warriors will have nothing to guide their landing. If we leave them as is, we’ll make inviting targets in the sky.”

  “What about dropping gas ahead of our approach?”

  “More problems.” Hiroshi shrugged. “First we must consider the possibility that Rasin’s troops will have gas masks, and even if they don’t, gas might work against us by supplying camouflage for our enemy and, again, obscuring our landing zones.”

  “The air holds our greatest strategic advantage and also our greatest vulnerability,” Wareagle added.

  “Grenades,” Blaine said suddenly.

  Wareagle grasped his intent immediately. “Two waves, Blainey?”

  “Separated by twenty seconds, at most. Say six in the first wave. It’ll be their job to scatter Rasin’s troops and take out the guards at the highest positions. Picture it. By the time they’re finished, Rasin’s men will be running every which way, easy pickings for the larger second wave. Once they’re sufficiently scattered, we land here and here,” McCracken explained, pointing to the storehouses on the eastern fringe and the open expanse in the plateau’s center.

  Wareagle was nodding. “The first wave can drop smoke when they pass the exposed center.”

  “I like it, Indian. Create a wall of smoke the second wave appears out of. It’s perfect.”

  “Not perfect, Blainey, but as close as we can come.”

  Hiroshi and his five warriors most skilled with the motorized gliders would make up the first wave. Twenty seconds later McCracken and Wareagle would lead the twelve samurai in their trailing helicopter down in the second. The remaining seven from Hiroshi’s Sikorsky would spill out to form the rear of McCracken’s attack phalanx on the northern front of Masada where Rasin’s forces were concentrated.

  “After you, Indian,” he said to Wareagle as the southern edge of Masada appeared below and a wall of thick gray rose across the center of the fortress.

  And together they plunged into the cool air, with another of Hiroshi’s lead team’s grenade blasts reaching them as hard rumbles in the night.

  The first explosion brought Yosef Rasin from the hot room of Masada’s bathhouse, where he had been making the final preparations to launch his vaccine into the air. His plan was to fire the cannisters by specially constructed mortar from the bathhouse roof, and he was going through the arduous task of removing them from their heavily sealed packing when the initial grenade blasts stung him. He emerged into the open to be blinded and deafened at the same time by a grenade that was all light and sound. A pair of soldiers crumpled to the ground and Rasin staggered back against the ancient ruins, holding his ears.

  Lace leaped down to his side as rubble from more grenade blasts showered down upon them.

  “It’s McCracken!” she screamed above the chaos.

  Rasin was in no position to argue, eyes clearing in time to see the huge black shapes swooping down from the sky and dropping grenades to scatter his troops.

  He grabbed hold of Lace’s steellike arm. “You’ve got to hold them off! You’ve got to buy me time! The shells! I’ve got to fire the shells!”

  “Not from here!” she screamed, pulling him away from the next blast. And then she seemed to realize something, easing back into the dust-smoked fray. “The lights! I’ve got to get to the lights!” She swung back to Rasin. “Get back into the hot room. Wait there.”

  “Wait for wh—”

  “You’ll see. You’ll know. Just do it!”

  And Rasin obeyed as a fleet of the black-winged monstrosities crashed through the wall of gray smoke deployed a hundred yards away in the center of the mountaintop.

  Chapter 27

  “SAY AGAIN, PLEASE!” the voice instructed from Jerusalem.

  “I said,” Major Shamsi repeated from the base of Masada, “that Rasin’s forces are coming under attack on the mountain!”

  “Did you say ‘attack’?”

  “Yes! For the third time, yes!”

  There was a brief pause. “Major, be advised that a detachment is en route. You are not to engage. Is that clear?
”

  “Mister, I couldn’t get up that rock if I wanted to.”

  “You fool!” Isser raged, storming into the operations center. “You crazy fool!”

  Isaac was standing by the window smoking a cigar, his withered frame lost in the confines of his baggy overcoat. A pair of soldiers looked on with rifles at the ready. Isaac had located Isser at a Mossad command post in the guise of a luxurious house in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem within sight of the Knesset building.

  “Temper, temper,” he said to the Mossad chief, waving a chastising finger. “To think that friends should speak to each other in such a tone… .”

  “You could have walked away. I set it up so you could. But now you leave me no choice. You force the issue.”

  “That’s the idea, old friend.”

  “What are you saying? Did McCracken put you up to this? Where is he?”

  “As of this moment, starting to clean up the mess you have made of our world.”

  “Make sense!”

  Isaac puffed away on his cigar. “I am. You’re just not listening. But now you’re going to. You joined forces with Rasin, and now it’s time you learned just what you’ve become a party to.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this!”

  “Yes, you do. It’s for your own good, you see,” Isaac told him, and opened his overcoat to reveal a dozen sticks of dynamite taped to his chest. Before the soldiers could respond, his cigar was a touch away from the instantaneous fusing. “Now why don’t you have a seat, Mr. head of Mossad? I’ve got a story to tell you… .”

  McCracken and Wareagle passed through the gray cloud side-by-side in the air, amazed at how easily the motorized gliders handled. The ten-horsepower motor hung directly over their heads, attached to a shaft extending the glider’s length. At the shaft’s end a propellor spun soundlessly. Speed was controlled by manipulation of a single handgrip, much like that of a motorcycle, on the right side of the frame the fliers were attached to by a harness.

  Below the chaos wrought by Hiroshi’s initial six-man attack wave was already obvious to them. Rasin’s troops were scattering for cover, positions of stronghold abandoned, all semblance of organization gone. The airborne samurai coming in now knew exactly what their role was from this point on.

  Suddenly Wareagle swooped down, firing his M-16 on full automatic. In the narrow area lit by one of the floodlights, Blaine could see a gunman struggling to regain position on the blasted-out top of the guard tower that looked over the entire northern quadrant of Masada. The Indian’s fire blasted the rocks briefly before locking onto the enemy. Blaine dipped his wings to drop next to Wareagle.

  “That’s clearing the way, Indian.”

  “The hellfire beckons, Blainey.”

  Around them the remaining eighteen samurai had broken into a wide spread. Twelve were already firing toward positions where Rasin’s soldiers were deployed. The key was to keep the enemy splintered, keep him on the run. That way the vastly superior numbers came to no advantage at all. Meanwhile, at the first available opportunity, the remaining six samurai, armed with swords as well as rifles, would land and start the process of securing ground control from the south northward. At the same time Hiroshi’s team of six would close from the upper terrace of Herod’s palace across to the south. The dozen gun-wielding warriors under Blaine and Johnny’s lead would join the rest on the ground as soon as they had done as much damage as possible from above.

  Blaine nodded at Johnny and the two of them darted through the air at divergent angles. McCracken had used conventional hang gliders on numerous occasions, but the feeling of this was totally different. He supposed it was as close as a man could ever come to flying, so effortless were the controls required to swerve and swirl through the air.

  Down below in a high-walled section of the vast storehouses nearest the eastern wall, he caught sight of a small cluster of Rasin’s men struggling to get an M-60 properly mounted. Blaine kicked his legs up to dip into a dive and roared down at a forty-five degree angle with machine gun blasting, curling into a rise just as he passed over the neutralized target area. Manipulations with his legs controlled the maneuvers effortlessly.

  In the sky around him, the rest of the flying complement swirled and crisscrossed through the air. Sometimes the extended glider wings of one nearly grazed another, but the samurai flew with an instinctive sense of distance acquired by men who had trained often and long together. For them the sense of battle was no different; only the locale and rules had changed. Blaine watched Johnny Wareagle actually twirl himself upside down to quicken his escape after diving into a strafing run with his M-16. McCracken kicked his knees up to drop fast and provide the Indian cover, then eased himself parallel to the ruins with machine gun aimed straight down. He fired in short, controlled bursts at areas of motion, and saw Johnny flash him the okay sign as he soared back upward already snapping a fresh double clip home.

  A stray bullet pierced Blaine’s wing and he drove his glider into a rise to regroup. From that position farther over Masada the picture was akin to an ant farm constructed under glass. Rasin’s men were responding with true professionalism by ducking for cover into any of the labyrinth of ruins. They concentrated mostly in the area of the vast storehouse remains of the northeastern flank where they could form a new stronghold. A number of enemy combatants toted heavy machine guns and RPGs with them, just the kind of firepower Blaine had been most frightened they would encounter. The samurai continued to soar over the ruins, but the angle was no longer to their advantage and Rasin’s forces had regrouped sufficiently to fire up at them when they passed.

  “Hiroshi, can you read me?” McCracken said into his wireless communicator.

  “Loud and clear, Fudo-san.”

  “We’ve got them pinned in the storehouses for the most part. I’m going down to look for Rasin. I’ll land between the inner wall and synagogue off from the northern palace lookout.”

  “My men and I are already down. Be careful. Something bothers me about their number. I counted only forty in our initial passes.”

  McCracken felt the familiar twinge of uneasiness creep through him, called up by the fact that Isaac’s intelligence indicated upward of sixty troops had accompanied Rasin to Masada. “You hear that, Indian?” he asked, soaring low to drop into his landing.

  “Troublesome, Blainey. We’d be best to stay alert.”

  Blaine hit the ground running, still in motion when he pulled himself from the harness and tore the glider off his back. In the process he was careful not to disturb the small earpiece and microphone rising from the rolled collar of his black turtleneck. He crouched low and charged into the remains of the synogogue overlooking the ramp path that had ultimately allowed the Romans to breech the fortress. The sound of rocks crunching beneath his boots seemed as loud as screams in the night to him, helpless as he was to silence his heavy footsteps. Pinning himself against one of the inside walls, he set about readying his weapons.

  Above him, a complement of Hiroshi’s samurai under Wareagle’s leadership continued to wage the battle from the sky. They focused on the storehouse area where most of Rasin’s troops were concentrated, swooping in any direction additional fire came from. In a sense the strategy the motorized gliders allowed was a microcosm of war itself: they provided air superiority to better allow ground based troops to surround the enemy and attack from a position of strength. The clincher, of course, was that a primary weapon of attack here would be the sword in addition to the gun. In such narrow, serpentine confines, with much of the battle certain to be waged in exceptionally close quarters, it was a more practical and versatile weapon when wielded by experts. The six men in Blaine’s attack group were already closing from the south, Hiroshi’s party from the north.

  Machine gun fire continued to split the night, the blend of ancient and modern weapons bizarre enough to be almost ludicrous. But the plan all along had been to reduce this to a hand-to-hand battle where Hiroshi’s samurai would have the und
oubted advantage even against Rasin’s superior number of commandos. Blaine concentrated on the task of finding Rasin. As he eased back out through the synagogue entrance, though, the lights all over Masada died and the mountaintop was plunged into total darkness.

  “Come in, Hiroshi!”

  “I read you, Fudo-san.”

  “There’s someone up here who’s good, sensei. They chose the same response I would have. And we must expect whoever it is to do more.”

  “We must get the lights back on!”

  “I’m going to call the Sikorskys down. Have them turn on their floods.”

  “They’ll be sitting ducks!”

  “Not if they stay on the move. Besides, what choice do we have? We’ll have to rely on your people to keep them from solidifying positions to fire their RPGs from. Where are you?”

  “Outer wall of the bathhouse. My men are all within sight. Were,” Hiroshi corrected.

  “Give me thirty seconds to turn the lights back on. Then we’ll finish the bastards once and for all. You get that too, Indian? Johnny?”

  McCracken waited, his only sight that of the khaki-colored rock wall an arm’s distance away.

  There was no reply from Wareagle.

  “Come on!” Lace ordered, almost dragging Rasin as they rushed along beside a courtyard wall. They came to an open stretch by the building that had been the officers’ family quarters two thousand years before. The area was full of gray smoke the invaders had left in their wake.

  “Where are we—”

  Rasin stopped his question when Lace released her grip on him and drew a heavy scimitar from her belt. To use a gun now would be to risk exposure. If it came to battle, it would be with the sword. In her free arm she toted the heavy mortar Rasin needed to fire his containers of vaccine, held presently in a bag over his shoulder. But where could they fire from? Where was Lace taking him?

  “You’ll see,” she whispered, responding to his unfinished question of seconds before.

  They could hear the whirl of the motorized gliders soaring above them and then, louder, the wop-wop-wop of the Sikorskys that were speeding back onto the scene.