EndWar

TWENTY-SIX

Still crouched beneath the cellar staircase and not moving a muscle, Major Stephanie Halverson listened to the commotion going on upstairs:

“Where is she?”

“Who?” asked the father.

“The Yankee pilot!”

“I don’t know!”

A gunshot boomed, causing the mother to cry out, and Halverson thought, This is it. It’s over.

They had killed the husband. They would come down and finish the job.

Suddenly, the mother bolted from her hiding place in the back and charged toward the stairs, where a Spetsnaz soldier was just coming down.

“Don’t shoot!” she screamed.

He did.

Put a bullet in her chest.

But a half second after he fired, so did Halverson, carefully aiming between the slots of the wooden stairs, her round coming up between his legs and into his torso.

He tumbled forward, his rifle dropping to the concrete. Before Halverson could come out and grab it, the boy was there, snatching up the rifle. He panted as he looked at his mother slumped across the floor—

Then a creak from the stairs seized his attention. He cut loose a dozen rounds.

Yet another troop slumped.

Halverson darted across the room, got up on a chair, broke out the window with the butt of her pistol, then hoisted herself up and squeezed through the hole. “Come on!” she cried, reaching out to the boy.

He raced over and took her hand, just as a metallic thump sounded, followed by a loud hissing: gas.

They’d killed two. Had the father shot one? Maybe. There’d only be three left, then, she thought.

Out in the snow, she and the boy ran straight for the barn, about a hundred yards away.

Gunfire boomed behind them.

She hazarded a look back. One troop, who had come out the back door, had just spotted them.

“Run!” she screamed.

Sergeant Raymond McAllen wasn’t shaking in fear but in frustration. His men had the fuel truck pulled up beside the Longranger III, the hose attached to the bird. However, filling the tanks took time. Too much damned time.

Come on, come on.

The Russian helos were twenty meters above the tarmac, ten, five…

He tightened up against the wall, his helmet and combat subsystems fully activated, his Heckler & Koch XM9 assault rifle at the ready.

Each operator on the team handpicked his own weapons, sometimes purchasing a few fancy toys themselves, and McAllen had recently been experimenting with the XM9, a weapon whose earlier version, the XM8, had been abandoned by the military.

Like the XM8, the 9 was a modular weapon with four variants: a baseline carbine, a compact carbine, a sharp-shooter, and a heavy-barreled automatic. McAllen carried the baseline carbine with attached XM322 grenade launcher.

McAllen glanced off to his left, where Palladino lay prone beneath a tree, eye pressed to the scope of his M82A1 sniper rifle with its bipod dug deep in the snow. He’d taken the big girl along for this ride, and her.50 caliber rounds would easily penetrate the fuselages of those helos, the booming alone enough to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy.

Gutierrez had positioned himself a couple meters farther south, near another tree, his SAW balanced on its bipod. Radio operator Friskis and assistant team leader Rule were closer to the chopper, each armed with an MR-C — Modular Rifle Caseless — which fired 6.8 mm caseless ammo at a rate of nine hundred rounds per minute. Both weapons were also equipped with rail-mounted 40 mm grenade launchers.

All of which was to say the boys from Force Recon were good to go and waiting for showtime.

But the order to fire would never come, McAllen realized. The Russians were jamming all communications. He would let the SF boys take the first shots, as they had indicated. His years of experience would tell him when to engage his men.

The first two helos touched down, the third and fourth only seconds behind.

From somewhere on the other side of the terminal came a boom and hiss, followed by a white streak that spanned the tarmac in the blink of an eye, reached the lead helo—

And detonated directly over the canopy.

After the initial explosion, two more quickly followed, knocking the chopper onto its side, rotors digging into the ice and asphalt, while another burst sent flames shooting from shattered windows.

Those Special Forces guys must’ve brought an AT4 from their cache back home. They had some very nice toys.

Jagged pieces of fuselage and engine components from the first chopper flew into the second, striking its rotors just as a side door popped open and the first infantryman tried to get out. Meanwhile, the third and fourth choppers began to lift off.

McAllen craned his head toward the forest. “Outlaw Team, fire!” Even as he issued the order, he burst from his position and launched a grenade at the open door of the second chopper.

That first infantryman was already cut down by Gutierrez’s machine gun — and as he slumped, McAllen’s grenade flew into the helo’s crew compartment.

What a shot!

With a slightly dampened boom, the grenade exploded, shredding the men inside and blanketing the chopper in thick, gray smoke.

The thumping of more helos from behind sent McAllen’s gaze skyward. For a moment, his heart sank as he assumed more enemy troops were inbound.

But no. He had to blink to be sure he was seeing them: a pair of civilian choppers with riflemen strapped in and leaning out their open bay doors, already opening fire on the two Russian helos below.

McAllen had to hand it to the SF guys, who’d managed to recruit those pilots and get some shooters up there. Sure, it was amateur close air support, but he’d take it.

Palladino let his first round fly, the rifle emitting a crack of thunder that rattled the buildings. He was targeting the crew members of the third helo. His round punched a gaping hole in the canopy and blew the pilot to pieces.

That bird wasn’t going anywhere now. It dropped back toward the tarmac, hit hard, then began to bank erratically over the grass, as Gutierrez raked it with more fire.

The bay door popped, and a few Spetsnaz infantry leapt out, hit the ground, and came up firing—

But they were quickly cut down by the riflemen in the air, helos sweeping over them, rounds sparking as they ricocheted off the street.

McAllen was ready to call it day. Khaki was giving him the high sign: the tank’s full, let’s boogie.

“All right, Outlaw Team,” McAllen began.

The sudden hissing and sparking of new fire on the wall behind him, on the ground, the snow, and over his head sent him diving onto his gut.

And just beyond the chopper, in the forest, came at least a dozen Spetsnaz infantry, probably two full squads, with one guy dropping to his knees, balancing a tubelike weapon on his shoulder.

McAllen’s mouth fell open. He recognized an RPO-A Shmel, or “Bumblebee,” when he saw one. The weapon fired a thermobaric projectile utilizing advanced fuel-air explosive techniques. Some described the weapon as a flamethrower, but it was more like a rocket with a flamethrower’s aftereffects, burning for a very long time.

The guy aimed at the fully fueled Longranger.

“Get out of there!” McAllen hollered to Khaki, Rule, and Friskis. “Get out!” At the same time, he cut loose with his XM9, directing all of his fire on the guy with the Bumblebee.

Squinting against the smoke from his barrel wafting into his eyes, McAllen watched the guy fall forward and drop the rocket, just as Khaki, Rule, and Friskis came racing toward him, gunfire raking their paths.

Gutierrez swung his rifle around and began to suppress the oncoming troops, but McAllen already saw they couldn’t hold them back for long.

And yet another Spetsnaz troop picked up the Bumblebee and was leveling it on his shoulder.

McAllen fired at that guy, dropped him, then another salvo sent him rolling to the left, out of the bead. He felt a dull pressure on his shoulders as a few rounds struck his Crye integrated body armor, but he was okay.

“God damn, Jonesy, you would’ve loved this,” he grunted, wishing his old assistant were here in the fray. Then he cried, “Outlaws, fall back to the front of the terminal. NOW!”

As his men continued, still returning fire, McAllen got to his feet and did likewise. He chanced a look back, saw yet another guy shouldering the Bumblebee.

There was no one to stop him now.

McAllen sprinted forward, reached the corner, and ducked around to his left, just as a massive explosion struck like thunder from a hundred rain clouds.

A gasp later, the concussion wave struck, lifting him a meter into the air, then knocking him flat onto his belly.

With the whoosh and roar of flames still resounding, accompanied by an unbearable gasoline stench that seemed to clog the hot air, McAllen felt a hand latch onto his wrist and pull him to his feet.

“They blew up my goddamned chopper!” shouted Khaki, releasing him. “They blew it up!”

Just then the two civilian birds swooped down, riflemen ready to strafe the oncoming infantry behind them.

“Forget the bird. I’ll buy you another one!” cried McAllen. “Let’s get some cover!”

Ahead lay a garage, home of the airport’s fire crew. They swept along the main terminal, headed for that—

One of the terminal doors opened, and Black Bear appeared. “Marines, get in here now!”

“Do what he says,” hollered McAllen.

They filed into the terminal, stealing a moment to catch their breaths.

Black Bear smiled, removed his cigar. “Guess you boys will be staying awhile.”