Echo Six: Black Ops 8 - ISIS Killing Fields (5 page)

“Ja, I have it. You want me to go after them?”

“Negative, you’re our artillery. Stay close to Drew. I doubt they’ll want to charge down a machine gun. He’ll give you cover, and as soon as you have a chance, nail their asses.”

“Copy that, Boss.”

He turned to look for Guy Welland, but his number two had disappeared. He found him a few moments later, already twenty meters away, picking his way across open ground toward the enemy. He bit off the order to call him back. The Special Air Service had a certain reputation. They prided themselves on being able to move like ghosts when the situation demanded. Right now, the situation demanded, and if Guy could get into position, he could rip into the enemy and disrupt the attacks.

He saw a head rise up above a rock fifty meters ahead, ten meters above. He flung up his rifle and triggered a long burst at the target. The first four bullets missed, the fifth chipped a sliver of rock that slashed into the man’s head. The remaining bullets would have missed, except the man moved to one side, into the path of his next burst of four. The lead ripped into him and tore his head apart.

“Nice shooting,” he heard Rovere say from behind him, “All we need to do now is kill the twenty-five or thirty hostiles still standing.”

Talley had come to the same conclusion about the numbers. “Right. They’re in a strong position, right above us. We’re going to need help.”

“You want me to call for air support?”

“Right. Grab the radio from my vehicle and get hold of Sykes. Tell them we need whatever assets they have in the air to re-route to this place. And Dom…”

“Yeah?”

“Make it clear if they’re not here real soon, they’d better bring in a body recovery team.”

“I’ll tell them.”

He rushed away, and Talley checked around his beleaguered force. Buchmann was with Jackson. He’d put down his launcher and was acting as loader for the Minimi, the NATO version of the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Roy Reynolds was on the opposite side of the riverbed, hosing down the ISIS positions. He wasn’t scoring too many hits, but it kept their heads down and minimized the incoming fire. Guy had disappeared.

He darted ahead to find cover behind a small pile of rocks and scouted for targets. An arm appeared, clutching an assault rifle, and then a shoulder. He took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. A fraction of a second before the fighter pulled back, he saw his bullets tear the man’s shoulder to bloody ruin, and a loud scream echoed down the narrow valley. He looked for more targets and saw movement. He took aim, took up the pressure on the trigger, and stopped as Welland’s bulky armored vest appeared in his sights. Guy’s right arm came up, holding a pistol, and he pumped several shots into an unseen target.

He was about ten meters above the ground, but in the next second, he vaulted down, landing like a cat on all fours. He still had his rifle in one hand and handgun in the other. A Heckler and Koch EX-23, fitted with a state of the art Knights Armament Company suppressor. Modified to 9mm caliber, it was the perfect close quarters pistol for Special Forces operators, although virtually useless at longer distances. Like now, when the pair of black-clad fighters appeared out of nowhere, fifteen meters above him and forty meters away.

He fired, and the EX-23 chipped stone from the boulder they were standing behind, but the shots failed to find a target. He swung up his assault rifle and fired, but the burst went high and chipped more stone from the boulder they’d used as cover. He had to dive away fast, as a shooter from his flank started opening fire and the bullets came too close. He swung around, returned fire, and took him down with a fast volley of shots, but the first two men saw their chance as he exposed himself and popped back up, fingers on triggers.

He snatched off two shots, but they went wide. The hostiles opened fire on his position, and several shots peppered the ground around him. He was in an exposed position, and he attempted to hunker down even lower, but they weren’t finished with him. Another head appeared above the boulder, and this time he clutched an RPG. All Talley could do was press his face into the dust as the two men deliberately aimed to pin him down. At the same time, the missile shooter swung the long, deadly shape of the tube toward him, and he was staring at the cone-shaped nose of the rocket.

Despite the bullets, he had two choices. Either he'd kill them, or he’d die in this dusty, squalid wasteland. He chose the former, climbed to one knee, and took aim. He squeezed off three rounds, but they returned fire and two 7.62 mm bullets slammed into his vest, knocking him backward. Lying on the ground, looking up, he saw the missile about to launch. The bearded man who held it even grinned as he prepared to destroy the infidel, together with any of Talley’s men who were inside the blast radius. In a last desperate act, he got to his feet and flung his rifle up to his shoulder. Even as he took aim, he knew he was too late, and then everything changed.

Something hit the man with the missile and punched him back behind the boulder, out of sight. Talley looked around and saw Vince diMosta holding his long sniper rifle, the Accuracy International. Firing the .338 Lapua Magnum 250 grain round, the gun was incredibly accurate. Deadly to the target at the wrong end of the barrel, at ranges considered impossible by the average shooter. Two more shots cracked, and the two men still trying to kill Talley both joined the missile shooter in Paradise.

He waved a hand in thanks and looked around for Guy. To his relief, he was alive and easing back toward him.

Alive, until ISIS comes at us in
strength. They’re sure to have at least two Shaheeds in their midst. Suicide bombers, teenagers they use to spearhead an attack, and die when their explosive vests rip them to bloody scraps of flesh.

Even as he had that thought, he heard a chorus of screams, and four men appeared like magic from where they’d been hiding in fissures in the rocks. It was obvious what they intended. Unlike the Shaheeds who carried out the attacks in urban areas, covering their suicide vests with loose, bulky coats and jackets, these young men had no need to hide anything. They relied on the speed of youth, and the terror of imminent death to propel them toward their target fast enough to strike before the Special Forces operators realized the danger.

He opened fire and saw Guy and two of his other men start shooting at the same time. The Islamists wore no armored vests. They had no need of such earthly protection. They were doing the work of Allah. Bullets smacked into their flesh, but in their maddened fury, they kept coming. All they would feel was a numbing shock, and by the time the pain hit them, they'd have detonated their charges. One man went down, as someone’s bullet hit him in the center of the face. Another looked down in horror as a pair of bullets smacked into his chest. One tore apart the electronics that would detonate the explosives, the other found a narrow gap to penetrate his lethal charges, and the bullet lodged in his heart. He fell as if poleaxed, but the other two were still coming. It didn’t need two. If one of them got close, it would all be over.

His gun clicked on empty, and there was no time to slam in a fresh magazine. He snatched out his handgun, a 9mm Sig Sauer, and blasted several shots at the two fanatics who were almost on them. Above the stutter of the machine guns, and the sharp cracks as men fired their rifles, he heard Heinrich Buchmann shout. It was more than a shout, more of a mighty roar as if the Gods had spoken from the heavens.

Heinrich Buchmann was a throwback. His ancestors were German, like his name. Ruthless and cold storm troopers who’d smashed their way across Europe during Adolf Hitler’s futile attempt to conquer the Soviet Union. Buchmann himself was built like a Tiger tank, huge and hard as Krupp steel. He was also fearless, in many ways the perfect warrior. This time, he’d seized the initiative and snatched up the grenade launcher. The weapon was a FN-SCAR assault rifle, fitted with the Enhanced Grenade Launching Module, EGLM. The weapon loaded and fired single 40mm grenades. With a fast-loading side entry breech, in the right hands, it could be fired and reloaded almost as fast as a modern multiple grenade launcher; Buchmann’s hands were the right hands.

The first grenade sailed over their heads and detonated a few meters from the two surviving Shaheeds. They checked as the small, dark shape hit the ground. One man, quicker to react, began to swerve aside. At some stage during his training, Suicide Bomber 101, they'd failed to inform the gomer of the impossibility of outrunning a grenade. The explosion ripped fragments of hot metal that tore into the two men. It also detonated their bomb vests, blowing up so much sand, dust, and small chunks of rock, the ground looked as if a thick mist swirled overhead. When it started to clear, the bloody dead lay strewn over the ground. The Shaheeds were shattered, dismembered heaps of blood and bone after the force of the exploding vests.

The enemy was no longer firing, stunned by the massive response to their trump card, but Talley knew it wouldn’t last long before they recovered. He also knew what would come next. RPGs. He and Guy began edging back to find some cover. There was nothing, save the fragile shelter of the Land Rovers, and they crouched behind a rear wheel. At that moment, Rovere raced out from behind the second Rover, clutching the radio.

“They’re on the way. I got through to Sykes. They called an AWACS Sentry on patrol about twenty klicks to the southwest. He’s shepherding a pair of gunships, Apache Guardians. They’re running interference on any ISIS bands that fancy their chances trying to cross the border. When I told them they had some custom right here, they told me they’d be more than happy to oblige. Their ETA is about five minutes, and I told them we’d stay within three meters of the Land Rovers. Anything outside that radius is toast.”

Talley felt a sense of relief, but his first task was to secure his unit.

“All men, this is Echo One. We have friendlies incoming. They’re due in a few minutes. Form a tight group around our vehicles. The gunships will give them a wide berth. Move it now!”

Several double clicks confirmed they’d heard his order. One voice disagreed.

“That’s a negative, Echo One,” Buchmann’s grating tones came into his earpiece, “The enemy is regrouping out there, and I need to stay eyes on. They could be all over us before the air cover gets here.”

He cursed. The German would be dead meat if the gunships caught him outside the declared radius. “Echo Eight, get your big Kraut ass down here pronto. There’s no time to screw around. They’ll be on us any moment, and those chain guns will hose you down and make fucking sausages out of you.”

A pause. “I’ll stay put. Echo Eight, out.”

He tried to reason with him, but the stubborn German had switched off his headset. He was about to race over to drag him back, but Guy grabbed his arm.

“Too late, Boss. They’re coming.”

At the same instant, a furious storm of gunfire slashed at them, punching more holes in the aluminum of the Rover bodywork and clanging against the heavy steel of the engine block and axles. The bullets flew thick and fast, like a rainstorm of hot lead, and they had no choice but to hunker down and wait. Three things happened in a very short space of time. First, Buchmann began launching grenades, and they sailed overhead almost in a continuous barrage. For their next move, the Islamist fighters came at them in a tight group. They were using a simple tactic, to overwhelm them while they were still sheltering from the heavy gunfire. As the first of the grenades exploded in their midst, the gunships arrived.

The first indication was a distant thunder of the massive General Electric turboshaft engines. The hostiles began to recover from the grenade attack, and the blood curdling shouts echoed around the enclosed riverbed. More gunfire slashed at them, but Talley took a chance and peered around the side of the Rover to monitor their attack. There were at least twenty men still on their feet, still shooting. About fifty meters behind them, a missile shooter was looking out from behind a rock that gave him partial cover, searching for a target in case the attack failed. Then the leading Apache Guardian opened fire.

The Hughes M230 Chain Gun was a 30mm, single-barrel automatic cannon. An electrically operated chain gun, or Gatling gun. Firing the heavy .30 caliber slugs at a rate in excess of 800 rounds a minute, the awe-inspiring power of the first long burst seemed to shake the earth like a roll of thunder. The gunner was no rookie. He walked the stream of gunfire into the mass of screaming Islamists. It was like watching a magic show. One moment they were there, a savage horde intent on causing death and mayhem. The next, they were a mass of bodies piled on the ground, their flesh torn apart and shattered by the burst.

It was all over for them, although not for the shooter with the missile. If he’d possessed half a brain, he would have run. Someone should have told him of the folly of tangling with modern gunships in the air, as well as the NATFOR troopers now outnumbering him by a factor of twelve to one. Either no one had told him, or he didn’t possess half a brain. In an act of suicidal folly, he was standing in the open to acquire his target. The launcher pointed directly at Talley’s men still crouched behind the Land Rovers. Afterward, it was almost impossible to separate the mass of ordnance that ripped into him.

A cheery voice came into his headset, “Echo One, this is Straightshooter in the lead Apache. We don’t see any more targets, except their vehicles parked a few hundred meters away. Toyota trucks. You want us to blast ‘em?”

He glanced up to the gunship hovering a few hundred meters above them. He was about to give the go ahead when he paused. If they were anything like the truck they’d tried to follow, they’d be modern Japanese built SUVs. They may not make it back with the Iraqi Army Land Rover rejects. Modern Toyotas would be something different.