The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 9: Extraction

Jeremiah Slade put his final shot right through the terrorist’s right eye. The Barret “Light Fifty” sent its .50 caliber shell unerringly over the half mile through the now smashed windows, through the eyeball, into the brain and out the back, making a much larger hole on exit than on entry.

To his grim satisfaction the blood and brains of the terrorist sprayed the owner of the house.

“Nice shot!” Killer Kincaid chuckled, looking through his standard Delta Force issue binoculars. “I think you’re getting to like this way too much; you’re shooting for dramatic effect!”

The thought had already occurred to Slade. It was one thing to get the job done, even to the point of adding a bit of extra terror to the lives of the enemy. It was quite another to enjoy it. He’d enjoyed every minute of that shooting gallery; everything except letting Khallida and Nikahd walk out alive. The Company put a “no-kill” tag on them, but Slade didn’t have a need to know, so they didn’t explain why.

Killer, told his men, “Alpha team you are cleared in, Bravo, you have their back. We have high cover!”

While Alpha team infiltrated the building to retrieve the iPads and any other intelligence they could dig up in a hurry, the other team took up a flanking position to cover the house.

Killer cursed.

“Problem’s?” Slade asked, scanning the area through his powerful scope. “I don’t see squat!”

“That’s just it,” Killer replied. “As soon as these jack rabbits hear a rifle shot that’s not theirs the find the nearest burkha and hide underneath it! The bastards are brave enough when it comes to beheading a man with his hands tied behind his back!”

Slade grunted, and then asked, “I’m the one whose supposed to be keeping secrets — that’s the CIA’s job — so you going to let me in on why I didn’t get to pop the Colonel or Khallida? Damn it, we’ve been after that bastard since Nine-Eleven!”

“Damned if I know. Maybe we’ll get debriefed on it in Kuwait City.”

“Kuwait!” Slade growled. “That’s not my favorite place, or don’t you remember?”

“I’m sure they’ve forgotten it all by now Slade,” Killer laughed. “Besides, you were only scheduled to be beheaded. I got you out of there didn’t I?”

“Being led to execution square counts as being “scheduled?”” Slade retorted.

“Come on, show some backbone,” the Delta Force Captain laughed. “Look at the bright side. In Kuwait you can legally buy western slave girls for your harem!”

There was sporadic fire from down below. Slade saw movement off the corner of the building. He heard over the radio. “We’ve got runners heading west bound!”

Two men appeared, sprinting across the dirt street toward a house, firing blindly behind them. The door of the house opened for them.

Boom! Boom!

The men flung their AK-47’s in the air, falling like disjointed marionettes into the dust.

“Bravo team shows all Tangos down!”

“Alpha team reporting, sir, we’ve cleared out the guards but we’ve found a package in one of their trucks. The package speaks French sir!”

Killer chuckled, “Well I’ll be damned, just as Intel thought! The Al Qaeda people were bringing the ISIS folks a present!”

“Damn!” Slade cursed out of the blue.

“What is it?”

“Look at the Tangos I just took out,” he told Killer, who whipped up his binoculars. “They’re using like an eight year old kid to retrieve the AK’s and ammo from the dead Tangos.”

“Where’s Child Protective Services when you need them,” Killer growled. “Your call boss.”

Slade let the kid go, but not before splashing both of the terrorist’s heads like melons all over the child. “Hopefully that’ll teach him not to get killed!”

Killer’s voice tightened up, “We have company. A five man patrol coming south along the street on the left flank. Idiots, they’re walking right into the sun!”

“Alpha team be advised we have Tangos — about one hundred yards. Coming to you Bravo team! Alpha team bring that package as fast as you can!”

“Bravo team has the Tangos. You want us to take them out?”

“Hold on tight,” Killer ordered. He glanced through his binoculars, and said, “You want them Slade?”

“Got ‘em,” he whispered, already set in his breathing pattern.

Killer waited and waited until finally he asked, “You going to fire or what?”

Boom!

The five man patrol, advancing furtively, nervously toward the house froze as one of the men turned a sudden somersault in the air. It looked like a circus act but for the splash of vaporized blood as the fifty caliber shell tore through his upper chest.

The bullet wasn’t done though.

The piece of metal splashed out from the terrorist’s torso and hit the man next to him in the stomach. There was very little resistance to the bullet in the abdomen. The misshapen projectile tumbled through the guts, tearing the stomach, the intestines and the viscera of the second terrorist, sending him to the ground clutching his belly.

Still the bullet wasn’t done.

With the impetus of a handgun it burst through the kidney and burrowed into the third terrorist’s groin. That unlucky terrorist faced a long, ugly death as the bullet completely disintegrated in his bowels after blowing off his privates.

“They shouldn’t be walking so close together!” Slade chastised them. Boom! Boom! The other two terrorist’s fell before they could find cover. Slade said dryly, “No point in letting them teach their friends what they learned.”

Kincaid chuckled in a gallows humor manner, and said, “You were waiting for them to line up; a triple! Uncle Sam’s going to be very happy you’re saving the taxpayer money!”

“Alpha has the groceries and the package; we’re bugging out!”

Slade and Kincaid covered the egress of the Delta Force squads. When they were all gathered they hot footed it from the ridge where Slade set up his sniper station and headed southeast.

“You set up the booby traps?” Kincaid asked the Alpha team.

“Couldn’t,” he said. “There were kids in the house; we could hear them.”

“Damned terrorists hiding behind civilians!”

They jogged out of the engagement area. The French hostage wasn’t in the same kind of shape as the Deltas so they purloined a bicycle and stuck him on top, trotting on either side of him. It was ninety minutes before they reached the little road. A hundred yards further on was the abandoned village.

“Boss, there’s a dust cloud coming from the direction of the target village,” one of the men warned.

Slade scrambled up the shoulder of the ridge and turned his scope north. “Killer we’ve got company!” Slade announced. “Four vehicles heading our way; they are a two thousand yards and closing. It looks like we’re compromised!”

“Bravo plant me some Claymores along the road! Slade, give me the Light Fifty!”

Slade unslung the Barret and handed it to Killer.

“Get the bird warmed up. We’ll be hot on your heels!” Kincaid said, taking the sniper rifle and steadying it atop a boulder. “Alpha, escort the package. Bravo you’re with me!”

Killer and his two man team set up shop at the edge of the ridge where the road turned to the right. As they hunkered down behind the available cover the convoy of trucks appeared at the far point of a shallow valley five hundred yards away. They gunned their motors in a cloud of dust.

As the men set up a few rows of Claymores to cover their egress Killer began sending fifty caliber rounds at the drivers. Finished with their mine-laying, the other Deltas joined their commander and let loose with their SCARS, sending a hail of 7.62 mm rounds at the enemy.

Killer hit one driver in the throat. He took his hands off the wheel and flung them instinctively over his wound. The shell nearly decapitated the terrorist; his head lolled grotesquely to the side as he slumped over the wheel. The terrorist next to him tried to grab the steering wheel, but the dead driver’s arm caught in the spokes as he slumped over. The truck turned hard left, spilling the dozens of terrorists crowded in the back onto the desert road. Many of those were run over by the following trucks, who avoided hitting the tumbling truck but not the men scattered across the road.

“Grenades!” Killer shouted.

Two volleys of three grenades flew through the air. The remaining trucks made it through the hail of bullets only to endure the explosions of the grenades and claymores. One truck veered off in flames. Terrorists leapt from the back, some were on fire. Two trucks made it through.

A growing roar behind them caught Killer’s attention. “Time to go boys, bug out!”

Slade sprinted around the corner and headed toward the parked aircraft. Between the buildings underneath a camouflage net sat the OV-10 Bronco. He didn’t need to tell the Deltas what to do. As he clambered into the forward cockpit they cut loose the netting so that it wouldn’t foul the props. Then they loaded up the hostage and took their places in the rear, weapons pointed out the open back of the aircraft.

He primed the engines and hit the cartridges; the motors coughed to life amidst two black clouds of gritty, acrid smoke.

Checking to either side, Slade cleared his path, making sure he wasn’t going to chop up a friendly Delta; seeing nothing he pushed the throttles up. He didn’t worry about checking with the Deltas in the back; those guys could take care of themselves.

The Bronco started forward at a brisk pace, heading out of the narrow opening between the two dilapidated buildings and out into the street. He stopped, keying the mike and transmitting, “Killer are you ready to mount up?”

“Coming up behind you!” replied the testy voice of Killer. “They’re hot on our tail!”

Looking in his rear view mirror, Slade saw Killer hustle his men to the Bronco. As they closed Slade shoved the throttles up, moving the twin turboprop ahead at a brisk walk. Dust spiraled out from behind the OV-10, providing effective cover, but the first tracers were coming out of the growing cloud.

The Deltas piled in. As their fields of fire cleared the Deltas already on board began pouring fire behind them. They couldn’t see their targets, but unlike the terrorists they weren’t firing blind. The tracers gave them a good idea where the firing was coming from. The bark of the SCARS and the ripping fire of the light machine gun made the Bronco shudder.

“All right go, go, go!” Killer yelled through his mike.

For Slade that meant everyone was secure, and he jammed the throttles up to the firewall. The Bronco leapt forward, spitting dust and gravel behind it. The aircraft bucked like its namesake. Slade kept the stick forward, keeping the pressure on the nosegear to give him better steering over the rough terrain.

Twenty-five, thirty, forty knots; the airspeed climbed quickly. All he needed was another forty knots and they’d be able to get airborne. Tracers flashed around the aircraft but Slade hadn’t felt any impacts. A blur of movement on his left caught his peripheral vision. One of the trucks was careening over the field, closing in on him and trying to cut him off. They were only forty yards to his left and the truck had a head of steam. The back of the truck carried about a dozen rag tag terrorists, swathed in loose fitting clothing and black schmaugs. One even carried a black flag with “spaghetti noodles” in dirty white.

The terrorists on the truck were firing, or rather they were trying to fire at Slade. In his determination to cut Slade off, the driver floored the gas pedal without regard to the terrain or his cargo. Every furrow, every hole, every hillock caused the truck to bounce and rock wildly.

The terrorists in the back should have been able to draw a bead on the Bronco as it accelerated, but the truck’s passage threw them around so violently they fired everywhere but at the aircraft.

One terrorist tried to steady himself with one hand on the plank rail of the bed and fire his AK-47 with the other. He almost had the automatic rifle steadied on the cockpit — Slade prepared to swerve — but the truck’s front right tire disappeared halfway down a hollow and then popped back up again, driving the front right quarter of the truck airborne. It came down with a crash, bottoming out the tire and digging the fender into the sandy soil.

All the while the terrorist squeezed the trigger of the AK on full auto. He sprayed his entire clip into the sky and even behind his shoulder as the truck bottomed out. He caught the flag bearer, shooting off the terrorist’s right arm at the middle of the forearm. The flag tumbled from the truck and into the dirt with the hand still attached to it.

The impact bounced two terrorists right out of the truck — it would have bounced a third — but he was manning the fifty caliber machine gun mounted on the bed of the truck. He held onto the gun for dear life, flying like a pennant in a violent wind. When the truck bottomed out he hit the deck hard. The force ripped his hands from the gun and he inadvertently fired off another burst straight up into the sky.

“What I wouldn’t give for a couple of JATOs right now!” Slade swore, meaning the old, old school way of getting an aircraft off the ground through disposable rocket assist engines.

“What?” shouted Killer, who was climbing into the back seat and was now on interphone.

It didn’t matter. The terrorist driver’s heavy handed tactics slowed the big truck down enough for Slade to pull the surging Bronco ahead of him. He watched the terrorist yank the wheel to the right, driving the truck through a line of shrubs and a shallow ditch next to the road.

“A present coming your way gentlemen,” Slade barked.

The driver of the truck apparently accepted that he wasn’t going to catch up to the Bronco over the fields; cutting the Americans off wasn’t going to work. So he opted to get back on the road and chase the aircraft from behind. It was a good plan. Even if the truck couldn’t catch the Bronco the road would give the terrorists a much more stable platform to shoot the Americans down.

Unfortunately, the terrorists hadn’t counted on the Bronco’s rear door still being open, giving the Deltas a perfect field of fire. The truck bounced onto the roadway but before the terrorists could get off a single shot they took the combined firepower of a very angry Delta Force right in the chops.

Slade heard the Deltas let go en masse. That was followed shortly thereafter by a large explosion. As he pulled back on the stick and labored into the air, Slade glanced back to see the ugly smear of black smoke amidst the bright flashes of flame.

“Now that’s a beautiful sight!” Killer laughed.

Pulling away from the killing fields and heading south toward friendly territory, the Delta added, “Okay boys, buckle up! I hope you enjoyed our free tour of the cultural hot spots of today’s new Caliphate. Feel free to enjoy our complimentary pork rinds and bacon bit chips!”

Slade shook his head and flew the airplane, ignoring the banter of the younger men. Their job was over. He still had to get everyone home safe and sound; he took that seriously and it showed.

Three hours later they landed in Kuwait City. Slade took the headset off his Aussie slouch hat and opened the canopy. The extreme heat of the cockpit gave way to the extreme heat of Kuwait. Soaking with sweat, he unstrapped, now feeling every hour of the mission. Exhausted, Slade started to lift himself out of the steel seat, Killer stopped him.

“Hold on Slade, we’re going to get a picture,” he said. Kincaid waved his troops to the side of the aircraft, calling down to one man. “Tommy! Tommy hand the Light Fifty up to Slade will you?”

Tommy, whose last name Slade didn’t know, smiled and lifted the heavy Barret up to him. “Nice shooting sir, but I bet you miss your flintlock!”

Another chimed in, “He’s gone from horses to airplanes. Just think of the changes you’ve seen since the Civil War!”

“No it was the Revolutionary War wasn’t it Slade?”

“He fought with the legions under Caesar, Shakespeare said so!”

Thus it went. Slade took it in stride. For the Deltas to joke with you was their way of accepting you. If they didn’t Slade couldn’t have gotten a colder shoulder from an iceberg. As it was, Slade was part of the photo; he was part of the team.

Slade took part in the debrief and the traditional after mission drink, but as the young guns recounted the adventure, all he could think about was how tired he was and how good it would be to be home for a while.