The Genesis Plague

53

Nestled behind a hill on the camp’s northern limit, the Blackhawk had yet to sustain bombardment. That indicated to Jason that the militants had concentrated on a purely southern incursion, with no artillery fire coming from the expansive western plain, or the mountains to the north and east. Most likely, the enemy scout Jason had spotted earlier had been spooked by the patrolling marines and realized that any attempt to surround the encampment would take too long and prove too risky.

Jason knew that once the hostile RPG gunners were in range, the Blackhawk would become their primary target.

‘Let’s go! Move it!’ Meat yelled towards the camp from the top of the hill. He waved impatiently for Camel and Jam to pick up their pace. Then he ran down the hill towards Jason.

‘You still know how to fly one of these things?’ Jason asked.

Meat gave the chopper a sideways glance. ‘No worries, bro,’ he said, patting Jason on the shoulder.

Meat hurried to the chopper, opened the cockpit door, and hopped in the pilot’s seat.

Camel and Jam crested the hill and scrambled down to Jason.

Seeing them alive gave Jason relief. At the onset of the attack, they’d all been safe inside the cave helping to clear debris.

‘It’s pandemonium back there!’ Jam said.

‘Where’s Hazo?’ Jason asked.

‘He’s fine,’ Camel said. ‘He said he’ll stay here and keep an eye on things.’

With Crawford unaccounted for, Jason wasn’t thrilled about the idea. But there was no time to deliberate. ‘Fine.’

The Blackhawk’s engines fired up. Seconds later, the turbine whined to life and the flopping rotors began turning, gathering momentum.

‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ Camel said, with frightened eyes on the cockpit window where Meat was putting on his flying helmet. ‘You’re letting him fly?’

‘We’ve got no choice,’ Jason said. ‘Meat said the pilots were inside the first Humvee that blew.’

‘Mother Mary,’ Jam said.

‘He figured out how to turn the thing on,’ Camel offered with a sigh. ‘It’s a start.’

Jason trotted to the chopper and slid open the fuselage door. He leaped inside, Camel and Jam coming in behind him.

While Jason settled in the copilot’s seat alongside Meat, Camel and Jam each claimed a jumpseat and began buckling their harnesses. Jason looked over to Meat. The guy’s eyes were nervously roving the controls, hands splayed flat on his thighs.

‘You sure you can do this?’ Jason asked him.

‘Just like riding a bike, right?’ Meat chuckled nervously.

Jason wasn’t so sure. It had been eight years since Meat’s brief stint with the Coast Guard. Shortly after 9/11, sea patrol and rescue missions had become increasingly dangerous as Islamic extremists used sea routes to circumvent US border patrols. Homeland Security responded by cross-training military personnel to accompany Coast Guard crews. Most of Meat’s training had been inside a simulator, and he had only logged a few flight hours inside a Sikorsky Jayhawk. The Blackhawk’s instrumentation and gadgetry, though, was more complicated and he could see that Meat was mentally running through the mechanical sequences, reacquainting himself with the gauges and controls. And unlike the Jayhawk, its bigger cousin was fully outfitted with armaments and countermeasures.

Suddenly, something flashed along the hill’s crest, burst bright orange and rang like a thunderclap. The chopper rocked sideways as blast debris clanged against the fuselage. Stones strafed Meat’s window and fractured the glass into a web of cracks.

‘Go!’ Jason yelled into the helmet microphone.

Meat excitedly pushed down too hard on the collective control stick, forcing the Blackhawk to jolt upward. As if he weredriving a car, his right foot instinctively stomped the anti-torque pedal so that the nose yawed perilously to the right, swinging the mountainside into full view.

Jason grabbed hold of the grip bars, bracing for collision.

Then Meat got the feel for the pedals and used his left foot to rotate the chopper and orient the nose back towards the plain.

Camel yelled through the intercom, ‘Grenade!’

Meat saw it streaming towards them. He pushed the cyclic control stick forward and left, to pitch the vector. The nose dipped and the chopper shot forward. The RPG mortar practically skimmed the Blackhawk’s belly before striking the cliff face, throwing off a concussion wave that whumped the chopper like an invisible fist.

Meat fought with the controls to keep the chopper straight.

‘Get us clear!’ Jason yelled, pointing out over the plain. ‘Then move into firing range!’

‘Roger,’ Meat said.

‘Firing range?’ Camel muttered over the intercom.

‘We can’t abandon the platoon,’ Jason said. ‘They won’t be able to hold off those gunners. We’ve got enough firepower to take them down.’

‘What about the truck? Al-Zahrani?’ Jam said.

‘We’ll catch up to them,’ Jason replied confidently. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘You’ll need to work the weapons console,’ Meat said, glancing over at Jason. He pointed to the copilot controls in front of him.

Staring down at the switches, gauges and computer interfaces, Jason felt instantly overwhelmed.

Meat flipped some switches on the cyclic’s grip which powered on the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles rack-mounted on the pylons. The targeting interface illuminated on the LCD in front of Jason — a camera tracing the terrain beneath the chopper with glowing night vision, overlaid with crosshairs.

‘Works like a videogame,’ Meat explained to Jason. ‘I’ll walk you through it as soon as we’re in range.’

‘Got it.’

Safely out over the plain, Meat banked the chopper along a wide arc and headed south to allow for the first glimpse of the enemy convoy.

‘Holy shit!’ Jam said. ‘Look at them all!’ He pointed out the fuselage window.

Jason saw what he meant. There looked to be almost a dozen trucks on the road south from the camp.

‘All right,’ Meat said, flipping down the helmet’s night-vision lenses. He paused to study the enemy formation. ‘They’re bunched up pretty nicely along the road. I’ll take us two klicks out so we can line up for a nice shot. I’ll need to focus on keeping this thing steady. So I’ll need you to send some rockets at ‘em,’ he told Jason. ‘Use the toggle button on top of the grip to move the crosshairs over the target. Then squeeze the trigger to get a laser on it … you’ll see it come up on the screen. Just be sure to keep the laser dot on the target until the rocket hits. Use the red button to fire the missile. Fire and forget. Think you can do it?’

‘Roger that,’ Jason said, focused on the targeting screen and getting a feel for the control grip. He used his thumb to move the crosshairs side to side. As he tested the forward and backward functions, the camera zoomed in and out.

‘They see us coming,’ Jam said, scanning the militants through his night-vision goggles. The Arabs were scrambling to target the incoming Blackhawk.

‘Doesn’t matter. Their RPGs are only good up to a thousand metres. And their guns can only shoot half that distance. They won’t know what hit ‘em,’ Meat said.

Climbing higher, Meat smoothly circled along a northerly course. ‘Get ready,’ he said to Jason.

He swung the chopper around, gained more altitude, and let the digital stabilization system assist in hovering the chopper. Luckily, there was minimal drag from the light winds moving over the plain. ‘Go for it, Jay. Give ‘em hell.’

The roadway cut horizontally along the targeting display, sandwiched by the foothills on the back side, a deep ravine and dense wheat field in the front. The convoy lined up onscreen like a shooting gallery. Jason immediately knew that the Arabs’ hasty attack was about to backfire horribly on them. He decided to use the same tactic that roadside bombers had so frequently employed when assaulting US convoys — strike the lead vehicle first, then the rearmost vehicle next to immobilize everything in between.

Jason felt his stomach go into a knot as he zoomed in and panned the crosshairs over one of the trucks fanned out in the front of the convoy.

‘Remember to keep the laser on the target until the missile hits,’ Meat said.

‘Got it,’ Jason said. He squeezed the trigger control and a flashing red dot appeared on the display. He adjusted the aim, held the dot steady, and the crosshairs flashed from red to green. He slid his thumb over the red firing button and pressed down on it.

The first missile hissed out from its pod, shot out in front of the chopper along a high arc, then bobbed and weaved as its onboard guidance system synchronized with the laser’s coordinates. Jason kept his eyes nailed to the crosshairs, made slight adjustments for the side-to-side rocking caused by Meat’s less than graceful attempt to hover the Blackhawk. Onscreen the missile struck with a brilliant flash.

‘Nice!’ Meat said.

‘Now let’s hit them in the rear.’ Intensely focused, Jason panned the crosshairs to the convoy’s rear, picked his target and squeezed a laser mark. Keeping the laser dot steady over a pickup truck mounted with a crude machine gun turret, he hit the fire button. The second missile hissed out from the weapons pylon, spooled and angled sharply towards the target. Within seconds, it hit — decimating the target with flawless execution.

Jam and Camel hooted and high-fived one another.

‘Now pop ‘em in the middle,’ Meat said.

‘Roger that,’ Jason said. He targeted the remaining vehicles and fired a third missile.

Another explosion rocked the convoy’s centre in a maelstrom of fire, hurling bodies and metal in every direction.

Meat pulled the cyclic to the left and the chopper banked. He spotted the Arabs charging north along the open roadway. ‘They’re on the run, heading north to the camp. Camel, you’re up. I’ll sweep in and you hit anything that moves with the mini gun.’

‘Roger,’ Camel said. He assumed a crouch position behind the six-barrel M134 Gatling gun pedestal-mounted outside the fuselage doorframe. He opened the ammunition container cover to check the supply. It was filled with 7.62 mm shells. He flipped on the mini gun’s master arm switch, then adjusted the gun scope’s night-vision display. Gripping the fire control handles, he tested the swivel mount’s action.

‘You ready, Camel?’ Meat called over the intercom.

‘Ready,’ he replied, steadying his thumbs over the trigger buttons.

Meat manoeuvred the Blackhawk on a sharp trajectory, gliding low on approach, and hooking sharply along the road.

Camel lined the runners in the scope’s crosshairs — all scrambling for cover. He opened fire at 3,000 rounds per minute, effortlessly cutting down the combatants and sending bodies tumbling off into the ravine. He even managed to strafe a trio attempting to climb over the foothill. In one sweep, he guessed that half of the fifteen surviving Arabs had been taken out.

Meat pulled up and banked out over the plain again.

‘One more pass … then the marines are on their own,’ Jason said.

The Blackhawk’s final sweep eliminated all but three Arabs, whose focus had turned from attack to retreat.

‘Shit, Camel,’ Meat said, impressed. ‘That was some nice shooting.’

‘He’s the goddamn Terminator!’ Jam said.

As the chopper pulled away, Jason was fixated on the roadway, which in less than five minutes had been transformed into a living nightmare of carnage and fire. His nerves were buzzing with adrenaline, fingers trembling. Though he feared the emotional swirl of satisfaction, euphoria and indifference that this perfect devastation evoked, he allowed himself to embrace the primal urge awakened deep in his core — the lust for vengeance; the driving force that pushed otherwise rational men to commit unspeakable acts to exact justice. That’s for Matthew. Burn in Hell … all of you.

But the vendetta was far from complete.

‘Now let’s get Al-Zahrani back,’ Jason said.