Hellfire- The Series, Volumes 1-3

by Leigh Barker

  “He’ll warn the guards, and they’ll be waiting for you. You know that?”

  “I do. No more than I’d expect.”

  “And when they catch you sneaking in under the wire, our whole credibility will be shot.”

  He smiled. “No,” he said. “Just me.”

  He left her with a worried look on her face and walked briskly after the colonel. “One other thing, Colonel.”

  Shapiro stopped and waited.

  “I’ll need a vehicle.”

  The colonel nodded. “No problem, Master Sergeant. Anything you want, you just take it.” He smiled. “I think a terrorist would.” He pointed down a corridor. “Stores are down there. I’ll see you later.” He smiled briefly. “In chains.”

  Ethan flashed a mock salute and headed down the corridor. He was surprised to find the military stores open and manned by a young airman. “Late night duty?” he asked as he scanned the racks for the gear he would need.

  “Only tonight… sir,” the airman said sulkily.

  “That’s handy, then.” Ethan reprised the insincere smile. “And don’t call me sir, I work for a living. Now let’s get some gear.”

  Ten minutes later he checked himself out in a full-length mirror. Desert combats, boots, baseball cap, backpack and an airforce issue Sig P229 in a holster strapped to his leg by two Velcro belts. He didn’t intend killing any airmen—unless it was absolutely necessary… The airman handed him the last of his requests, and he tested the night vision goggles down the dark corridor. Okay, he was ready.

  He walked towards the main entrance back the way he’d come. The airman hadn’t asked him to sign for any of the kit, which meant he’d forgotten, or had been told not to. That’ll be box number two. He guessed Shapiro didn’t want a paper trail. He stopped and looked back at the airman switching off the lights. Why wouldn’t the colonel want to log the gear out? There could be only one reason. Maybe something about the gear wasn’t kosher. Which would be a bit underhand, but a good gambit. What would the colonel have arranged?

  What about a tracker? He tutted. You think?

  He looked around for nothing in particular, and saw it. On a desk near a door marked Training was a set of speakers intended for use with an MP3 or iPod, or something like that. He crossed to the desk, switched on the speakers, and turned slowly in front of them. They screamed like a radio when a cell phone searches for a tower. He smiled and patted down the camouflage tunic. Nothing. But something was there; the scream told him it was on his right-hand side. He saw his reflection in the classroom door and smiled, unclipped the holster off his thigh and examined it carefully, but couldn’t see a bug. He ran it in front of the speakers, and they screamed at him. Sneaky. He was about to toss it, but changed his mind and shoved the holster into his tunic.

  Time to put his money where his mouth was. Maybe he should’ve kept it shut, but then the colonel would think his base was all safe and secure, when it was probably full of holes. At least he hoped it was full of holes, or he was going to get his ass kicked from here to Tuesday.

  He’d intended going to the motor pool to borrow a jeep, but as he stepped out of the building, he saw the perfect vehicle for the job. He smiled and glanced back at the closing doors. The airman was going to be pissed, but like the colonel said, a terrorist would take what he needed. So he wheeled the dirt bike away from the building and into the alley.

  It took him a minute to pry off the ignition cover and hotwire the bike; then he snapped his knife shut and put it away as he looked around. The camp was silent, and he swung his leg over the saddle, kicked off the stand, and rode the bike away as quietly as a dirt bike would go, which, let’s face it, isn’t quiet at all. But at least he didn’t stand it on its back wheel, so he’d clearly calmed down in his old age.

  With the bike’s lights off, he stayed between the admin buildings and hangars and headed north-east down 3rd Street, past the darkened runways, crossed where the perimeter fence would be built if his job went the way he planned, then out into the pitch-black desert.

  He was smiling. It shouldn’t be this easy. And that thought woke God up.

  Three and a half miles out into the scrub desert, he stopped the bike at the side of a dirt road. He looked at the rolled sand surface and sighed. That could have saved him a bone-jarring ride. He swung the bike around and down into a low gulley, killed the engine, and climbed up the gentle slope to where he could see the base lit up like a Christmas tree with floods and street lights. It was as though Shapiro was taunting him.

  Well, okay then.

  He took the binoculars out of his pack and scanned the base, looking for a way in. He adjusted the focus. Now why would the drone hangars and workshops in the north-east quadrant be in darkness? He tutted. “Be a good grunt,” he said, “and put your head in here.”

  He panned left slowly until he found the control tower. He would ingress west of that, stroll down between the drone hangars, along 3rd Street, and put Shapiro’s model airplane back on his desk right under his nose. He lowered the binoculars. It was going to be a hard walk, a mile or more further than the nearest buildings, where his interception squad was probably waiting. Four or five miles should be nothing, but in the dark, over this terrain? That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the time. It was already four thirty, and sunup would be around six thirty at this latitude. So that gave him two hours, probably less if he wanted to get some dark-time when he arrived. Yes, time was the real problem.

  He turned and walked back down the slope to the bike. If he was going to get going, then he needed to get going now. Then he heard motors heading his way along the dirt road.

  That cheating shit Shapiro had sent a mobile unit to pick him up before he even started out. No way. Colonel Shapiro would be nervous in case this little caper proved his camp was wide open, but he was also an honorable man and wouldn’t cheat.

  Carefully, he climbed up the other side of the gulley and peeked over the sandy lip. He could hear the motors approaching, but there were no lights, which meant only one thing. Trouble. He took out the night vision goggles, squinted through them, and saw the trouble.

  A gas truck, military by the look of it, and a Humvee had turned off the road and were coming in across the desert, heading straight for the base. Even if he hadn’t been retired Special Forces, Ethan would still have been able to put it together. The Humvee was there to run interference, and the truck was the explosive payload.

  He checked the gas truck and quickly found what he expected. The fuel tank was criss-crossed with wired explosives, probably C4, but that wasn’t what was going to do the damage. The C4 was just to burst the tank and disperse the fuel high and wide. He knew the tanker wasn’t carrying gasoline. It would be propylene oxide, the fuel of choice for the most powerful non-nuclear explosive in the world. A fuel-air bomb. After the C4 detonated and the fuel cloud was big enough and had mixed with enough airborne oxygen, another explosive would ignite it.

  He lowered the goggles slowly. Maybe he was wrong, but of course, he wasn’t, and he knew it. He’d seen a fuel-air bomb at work, on a test range, thank God, but it was horrendous. First the prolonged shock wave took out all the buildings, but that wasn’t the real killer, that was the pressure wave travelling at more than two miles per second and the sudden vacuum it created. The blast and devastation he’d seen was almost as bad as an H-bomb. He shook his head slowly. Even those who survived the blast wave wouldn’t last long when the toxic fuel finished with them.

  Mahmoud Faraj. The name popped into his head in answer to a question he hadn’t asked. But could it be the terrorist? Hell, why not? Creech Air Force Base was wide open, so why not drive a truckload of explosives right down main street? But what for?

  His mind was racing as he slid back down the slope and pulled the dirt bike upright. Predators. Creech was the home of the Predators and their pilots, and it was one of those drones that had killed his family.

  Shit!

  He stamped on the kick-start and
fired up the bike. So okay, hotshot, what are you going to do, ram them? He leaned forward and twisted the throttle. If he had to, well, yeah.

  The bike left the ground as he breasted the top of the gulley, and he almost lost it as it bounced down onto the stony dust, and ended his madness right there. He dragged it back under control and took off after the truck and the Humvee, flat out with the bike screaming like a banshee. He hoped the truck would drown the noise, but gave it only a moment’s thought.

  He could see the vehicles silhouetted against the camp. They weren’t using headlights so must have done their recon during the day. He guessed hikers passed this way once in a blue moon, and that’s how he would have done it. Pity he hadn’t, because now he was racing blind across unknown terrain. He slowed down a little just as he was about to plough into the only kill-sized boulder around. His lucky day. Yeah, every day should be this lucky.

  He pulled out the holster from inside his tunic and wedged it under his thigh, snapped open the flap to ready the Sig, and felt better for being armed. A 9 mm Sig against a truck and a Humvee. He didn’t go there, because there was only doubt and indecision, and he didn’t do doubt and indecision.

  He angled the bike to intercept the truck, now less than a hundred yards off to his right. Maybe he’d get lucky and kill the driver. Only in the movies, son. The terrain had sorted itself out and was mostly flat, scrubby desert, just what the bike was made for. He twisted the throttle full open and pulled out the Sig with his left hand. He was right-handed, but the throttle was using that one, so it would have to be a left-handed shot. Not perfect, but he’d spent many years teaching his left hand to shoot almost as good as his right, and it had saved his hide a few times. He prayed quietly to a god he didn’t believe in that it would save it again.

  He was less than twenty feet from the Humvee and passing it like it was stationary when the occupants spotted him. If they’d been quick enough or trained enough, they’d have had him cold, but they weren’t, and he was alongside before they could react. He slowed the bike as he came level with the truck and put two rounds through the driver’s side window. The driver’s head gave that familiar kick as one of the shots blew the top of it off.

  Ethan opened the throttle again, not wanting to be caught congratulating himself when the Humvee rolled up.

  Fifty feet ahead of the truck, he pulled the bike round in a tight turn and stopped, expecting to have a ringside seat for the crash and explosion. Instead of obliging, the truck changed direction a little and came straight for him. He opened the throttle and covered about a yard before the engine spluttered and died. He looked down at it for an instant, as if pleading with it would touch its soul and get it moving again, but without fuel, it was going nowhere.

  He stepped off the bike and let it fall, knelt, raised the Sig, and sighted the truck as it bounced towards him. He was going to get one shot, and then only if he was lucky. And the bummer was, he wouldn’t be alive long enough to know how he scored.

  He waited patiently for it to cover the distance and squish him like a windshield bug, and started to squeeze the trigger. Then stopped. The truck was going to miss him. Okay, by inches, but who’s counting? No way it should have missed, but it was as dark as hell and he was kneeling down. So, yeah, he’ll take that bit of god’s intervention.

  In a moment of inspiration, he jumped to his feet and ran forward, and as the truck bounced past, he tossed the holster into the space between the unit and the trailer. In that brief instant, he saw the piles of C4 that were going to ignite the fuel. So his guess had been correct.

  The truck was a fuel-air bo—the Humvee! Shit!

  He dived to his right and felt the Humvee brush him as it went past.

  You’re seriously getting old, man. He climbed to his feet and brushed himself off. So that was it, then. The whole thing now rested on Shapiro’s boys tracking the bug and intercepting the truck. And it might just work. But he doubted it.

  The Humvee slewed round and headed back for him. Now that was nuts. He frowned. They didn’t need to kill him; he was miles out into the desert. He smiled. He’d pissed them off, which was a habit he had.

  Dust blew up from the Humvee’s wheels as the driver gunned the engine in his hurry to run him down. Except Ethan had been run down before and didn’t think much of it, so sidestepped to his left as the monster truck crashed through the space he’d been occupying. He let his momentum turn him and put three rounds through the side window.

  The Humvee did an impossible left turn and slid sideways to a halt, its engine roaring at full throttle. He ran forward, wrenched open the driver’s door, and fired three more rounds into the cab. The passenger died as he tried to work out what to do first, shoot or run. Decision made.

  And now he had a chance to stop the thermobaric bomb before it annihilated everyone in the base. He reached up and dumped the driver into the sand, climbed in, stood on the gas, and pulled the wheel round hard. The Humvee took off faster than a truck of that size should be able to. He knocked on the headlamps and spots and flooded the desert with harsh light. Maybe the terrorists would see him coming and get spooked enough to do something stupid. Though he doubted it.

  They were almost a mile ahead, with a couple of miles to go, and he could see that the truck had accelerated, at least as much as it could with its volatile load and without lights over desert terrain. He put his foot hard on the gas as a fist closed over his heart. He wasn’t going to make it.

  From her vantage point high up in the darkened control tower, Kelsey saw the Humvee’s lights in the desert and focused her borrowed binoculars, but all she could see were the twin headlights and the spotlight beams bouncing as the vehicle lurched across the broken ground. She shifted her attention along the line it was taking. And saw the gas truck. For a moment she thought she was going nuts. A gas truck driving off-road? It made no… but Christ, it did!

  “Sound the alarm!” she shouted at the three airmen in the tower. “Sound the alarm!” As if repeating it louder was going to move them to action.

  The men looked at her for several seconds before the sergeant smiled. “Right, I get it.” He pointed at the darkness. “We all run around making lots of noise looking for bogeymen while your marine buddy slips into the camp and makes us all look like morons.”

  Her mouth was open, she could feel it. She forced herself to remain calm. “There’s a fuel truck heading for the base.” She pointed at the desert.

  They didn’t even pretend to look. Just smiled.

  She glared at the sergeant for a moment, then grabbed for the phone, but he placed his hand on it and shook his head.

  “Are you out of your mind?” She was screaming at him. “There’s a fuckin’ fuel tanker heading straight for… you!”

  “Of course there is,” said the sergeant. “Why don’t you get down there and say hi to them for us.” He looked back at his monitor. “Now stop jerking us around,” he added quietly.

  She tore open the door and half ran and half fell down the stairs, pulling her gun as she went. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked at the Glock in her hand, and put it back in its holster. Not even with a following wind was it going to hit a truck a mile away.

  Halfway down the path leading to the open area beyond the hangars and the approaching fuel tanker, she stopped, did a fast 360 and headed for the admin building. She half-pushed, half-shouldered the doors open and burst into the brightly lit corridor. The place had come alive since she’d left to watch Ethan do his thing, and airmen and women stopped and watched the madwoman with various degrees of alarm. She tried to smile a nice reassuring smile, but the thought of the imminent arrival of a truck loaded with fuel wiped it before it could form.

  Shapiro looked up sharply as she burst into his office. “What the hell?” He started to rise.

  “You need to sound the alarm and get something big enough to stop a truck over to the runway perimeter,” Kelsey gasped.

  Shapiro sat down slowly and shook his head
. “Yes, Sergeant Hooper told me you were trying that one.” He smiled.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” she said slowly, placing her hands on his desk and leaning forward. “There is a fuel truck coming in across the sand towards your perimeter. And it’ll be here in five minutes. Unless you do something.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “And while we’re doing something, over there.” He pointed west. “Your man will stroll in from over there.” He pointed east. “I don’t think so.”

  She took a breath and forced herself not to bang his head on the desk. “Colonel,” she said quietly, “when Ethan is ready to get into this base, there will be nothing on God’s green earth that you will be able to do to stop him.” She let it sink in. “He doesn’t need me to make up some crazy story to help him. Trust me.”

  Shapiro watched her for a moment and then shook his head slowly. “Miss Lyle—”

  “Special Agent Lyle,” Kelsey corrected with an edge to her voice that showed she knew what was coming.

  “Special Agent Lyle,” said Shapiro, raising his eyebrows, “you clearly think me a fool.” He raised his hands to stop the answer he thought she would give. “And you’d be right. If I was dumb enough to fall for this thin trick and call out the guard so your friend can make me look like an ass.”

  “You don’t need Ethan to do that.”

  He clamped his jaw and veins stood out on his forehead. With a little luck, he’d have a heart attack and his replacement might have more sense.

  “Now, Special Agent Lyle, if you’ll excuse me.” He picked up his pen and pulled a stack of reports across his desk. “I have real work to do.”

  She walked slowly to the door and stopped. “You’ll have plenty of real work in about five minutes.” She opened the door. “And it will be the last work you do as a colonel in this man’s airforce. Jackass.”

  He glared at the closing door, but then turned slowly and looked out of the window. What he saw were headlights in the desert, approaching the perimeter and coming in fast.