Echo Six: Black Ops 5 - Strikeforce Syria (19 page)

If I don’t sort this out now, a war will erupt inside this bus in the next few minutes.

“I’ll give you two reasons why; first, because you’re wrong and she’s right. If there were any subhuman scum, they were the Nazis, not the Jews. And second, you’re undermining this mission. If I have to, I’ll shoot you myself, right here and now.”

There was a long silence. He looked up at Talley, and what he saw was enough to convince him.

“I apologize.”

She gave a sharp nod. “Very well, but you ought to know we’ve come to a dead end.”

Buchmann swore, and the brakes squealed as he brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt. A blank wall confronted them, with just a pipe that fed into the storm drain.

“We’re there,” Mahmoud announced. “The facility is one hundred meters further.”

Talley looked around. They were trapped inside the vehicle, the concrete walls pressed in on both sides. Buchmann climbed out of the driver’s seat and smashed his heavy boot through the windshield.

“It’s the emergency exit,” he smiled, pulling shards of glass from the frame and climbing through the empty front window. They scrambled after him, and from there it was an easy climb up onto the top of the bus. The roof was only a meter below the parapet of the storm drain, and they quickly shinned up. In front of them they saw an open space, strewn with the detritus of industrial boom and bust. The skeleton of an abandoned delivery truck, rusting pieces of machinery, and everywhere empty steel drums, left to corrode under the ravages of the Middle Eastern climate.

Over the other side of the garbage tip they could see a solid, high security fence, a concrete barrier topped with rolls of barbed wire. Inside was the unmistakable shape of the CX9 facility; huge storage tanks for the raw materials, with big-bore pipes that ran into the building itself. Ventilators set in the roof poured waste gases out to pollute the atmosphere; the smoke tinged a dark, dirty green. The stench hanging over the complex was foul, leaving a rank, oily taste in their mouths, the polluted mixture of corruption and decay.

Rebecca and Rovere came alongside him. The Italian couldn’t resist yet another quotation from his beloved Shakespeare. “The fire-eyed maid of smoky war, all hot and bleeding will we offer them.”

The Israeli girl looked at him suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

He smiled. “It means we’ll kick the shit out of them. That plant is about to shut down.”

Talley smiled. He and Rebecca climbed back down to the bus, leaving Rovere on sentry. The men were waiting.

“We’re next to the target. We couldn’t have come any closer. This time, we finish the job we came here to do. Our primary task is to locate the CX9 and destroy it…”

“Are we certain they have it?” Reynolds interrupted. “I mean…”

“There’s no question,” Brooks answered. “Apparently, the formula is easy to manufacture. Once they had Rothstein, it was like falling off a log.”

“Got it.”

Talley continued. “If they haven’t killed him yet, Benjamin Rothstein will be inside and may be able to help us out. Remember, we have to take care of him. The Israelis want him back in one piece.” He glanced at Rebecca, and she nodded. “Guy and Jesse didn’t make it back to Salmeh before we left, so it’s a certainty the Syrians got them.”

 
Guy, the indestructible SAS trooper, killed by these psycho ragheads! Unbelievable. I don’t want his stepbrother killed as well. We’ll look out for Rothstein. Let one of his family survive.

“What are we up against?” Vince asked. “Last time we were here, they nearly finished us with the flak gun. If we run into something like that, we may not be so lucky next time.”

“The flak gun was destroyed by the FSA,” Talley reminded them. “So the worst we’re likely to face is automatic weapons. I didn’t see any armor before.”

“They could have brought in reinforcements,” Reynolds pointed out. “An armored car, even a tank.”

“We’ll find out. Mahmoud, can you get the Albatross in the air?”

“Now?”

“Right now. Let’s see what we’re up against.”

The Syrian climbed out of the shattered windshield to the bus roof, and Talley followed with Brooks. The men below passed up the case with the tiny recon aircraft, and Mahmoud began unpacking its contents. A few moments later, he switched on the iPad, powered up the tiny motors, and the craft lifted off. While they waited, DiMosta and Buchmann climbed over the parapet to join Rovere. Their task was to find positions to monitor a wider area and take out any hostiles who came too close. He waited until they were in position and clicked on his mic.

“This is Echo One. Anything?”

“Echo Three, nothing,” Vince replied.

“Echo Five, we’re clear,” Buchmann’s guttural grunt came over.

“Copy that. We’re waiting for the feed from the recon craft. Then we’ll join you up there.”

“Roger that.”

He looked down at the screen. A minute later, the pictures began to beam back from the Albatross. They showed the huge expanse of the semi-abandoned industrial estate. The area where they waited came into focus, the rusty orange of the bus roof stark against the moonlit concrete surroundings. Squads of soldiers patrolled the streets, guarding the approaches. More men were stationed inside the yard of the plant, pacing around, checking for signs of the enemy.

“It’s as if they know we’re coming,” Mahmoud commented.

“They do know we’re coming,” Talley reminded him. “They fought off our previous attack, and they’ve every reason to expect we’ll try again, so it’s no surprise they’re prepared. But there’s no sign of armor. Do another circuit of the site. Look for heavy weapons, machine guns, an APC maybe. The Syrian Army is equipped with BTRs, the eight-wheeled amphib armed with a heavy machine gun. Take another look.”

It took a couple of minutes for a second sweep of the facility, and they found the machine gun emplacements, two of them. They were carefully hidden to provide a deadly crossfire that would destroy any enemy foolish enough to attack directly through the front gates, except they weren’t coming that way. Even so, machine guns could be resited in a hurry.

“No flak gun, just the machine guns. If they manage to deploy them, they’ll tear us to pieces.”

Talley considered. His squad was so tiny, he could ill-afford to spare the men, but they had to take out the guns, two to each gun, four men in total, and almost half his force. He stopped on seeing movement in the facility. A heavy steel door swung open, revealing the top of a flight of steps. Three men emerged, two in the white coats of scientists, and the other wearing Syrian Army uniform, a major.

“It’s underground,” Brooks breathed.

The men lit cigarettes and stood quietly smoking and chatting. After a few minutes, they tossed away the cigarettes and went back inside, down the staircase. The heavy door began to close.

“You want to bet it’s the only way in,” Rovere murmured.

It made sense, one way in and one way out; easy to defend and hard to attack. Besides, when you were playing with nerve gas, who would want too many exits?

“There’s no way for us to break through that door,” Mahmoud observed. “You’ll have to use the UCAV, the Harop. We could guide it in from here, and when it hits, the door will disintegrate. It could severely damage the underground facility, too. Even so…”

“Negative,” Brooks stopped him. The Harop is our one ace in the hole. We don’t use it until it’s the only card we have left to play. Besides, we have to get in there first and locate Rothstein. A UCAV missile could kill him if he’s in the wrong place, yet it could fail to destroy the nerve gas. We have to get inside and eyeball the place. There’s no other way.”

“We have grenades,” Buchmann growled. “They might do it.”

“I doubt it,” Brooks responded. “It’d need a much more powerful explosion to make a breach.”

More powerful? Why not?

“Admiral, we have Galils, and they can launch the SIMONs, the breaching charges. If four of us hit that door at the same moment, it should be enough.”

“Should be?” Brooks looked skeptical.

“It’s all we have, so what choice do we have? The big problem is once they detonate, the Syrians will come a running. They’ll get those heavy machine guns firing and cause us a world of pain.”

“It’s a tough call,” Brooks sighed, “I dunno…”
 

“I will deal with the machine guns.”

Rebecca looked tiny, dwarfed by her Kevlar helmet, ballistic vest, and Israeli weaponry. Her face was smeared with streaks of grime where she’d camouflaged her white skin with grease. Laden with the Galil SAR and her Mini Uzi, and spare magazines and a combat knife strapped to her webbing, she looked like a tiny Amazon, a miniature Angel of Death.

“Give me ten minutes to get in position.”

After a short hesitation, he nodded. He was pretty certain there was no stopping the beautiful, alluring Israeli killer. “You got it. Commo check? You’re designated Echo Six.”

She keyed her mic. “Echo Six, for Echo One.”

“This is Echo One.”

They both nodded. As she disappeared into the darkness, he keyed his mic.

“Call us if you hit trouble.”

They all heard the two clicks. Now the machine guns nests were up to the pint-sized Israeli assassin. Moving silently to take out four tough Syrian regulars, and deny the enemy the use of their heavy machine guns, and all they could do was wait.
 

They prepared to head for the steel door, himself, Buchmann, Jackson and Reynolds. Ready to hit it with the four SIMONs and create a breach. Brooks and Mahmoud monitored the tactical pads. The Harop was beaming down signals from its video camera, and the targeting system was online and ready to aim and fire, as soon as he fed in the data and hit the button. The Syrian monitored his Albatross low-level drone, searching for anything the camera in the high level Harop missed. The rest of his people were watching the surrounding area, Vince DiMosta, Julio Garcia, and Rovere, the backup unit.

I wish Guy were here. He’s the best fighting man I’ve ever known. No matter how much the odds are stacked against us, Guy Welland always comes out on top, except now. I need them both, and yet they’re gone
.

He heard a click in his earpiece, a voice, whispering.

“This is Six. I’m in position, but two more soldiers just joined the machine gun crew. I can’t take them until they leave.”

“Is your position secure?”

A pause. “No. To get close, I had to move into the open yard. If a vehicle comes through the main gates with its headlights on, they’ll see me. I’ll move as soon as those two men have gone. I should be okay. Give me a few minutes.”

“Copy that.”

Two clicks and she was gone. He watched the screens carefully. The area was alive with soldiers, but so far nothing had alerted them to their presence. When the shooting started, the chances were they’d react first by running for cover. There was no sign of any armor hidden in the darkness between the derelict buildings, waiting in ambush. No indication of a vehicle approaching the plant with blazing headlights, about to illuminate Rebecca Dayan for the machine guns to wipe out.

If she takes them out, and the SIMONs breach the door, we can do this. In and out before they recover from the initial shock. A quick sweep through the nerve gas plant, locate Rothstein, get out fast, and use the UCAV to destroy the place. Come on, Rebecca. Waste those fuckers. We can’t move until it's done.

He watched the screen. Nothing moved in the yard they had to cross. Just the shadowy shapes of the machine gun nests showed as amorphous mounds lit by the waning moon.