Reflexive Fire - 01 (37 page)

Twenty Nine

   Burning bridges never felt so good.

   Deckard braced himself against the fuselage of the aircraft, gazing out the small portal as they flew high above the clouds.  It had taken a long time to get to this point, with everything riding on the line.  Good people had died.  His people.

   His only source of relief was in knowing that the best he could hope for was a pyrrhic victory.  If they failed, none of them would be around to experience the results.  Squinting, Deckard could barely make out masses of land somewhere below.  Swaths of earth, farmed by and lived on by human beings.  Slowly, he shook his head.

   Billions dead.

   He wouldn't let that happen.

   His fingers brushed against the grip of the Kimber 1911 automatic sitting snugly in his holster.  He had forgone Samruk's standard issue Glock 19 opting to carry his personal weapon.  The Glock was a fine gun, but tonight he wanted the extra knockdown power provided by the .45 caliber round.

   Shifting his gaze, Deckard saw Pat sitting on the grated floor of the Antonov, preparing his gear for what was waiting for them on the other side of an hour or so.  The pilots didn't know it yet, but Samruk International was on a collision course with the most powerful men in the world.

   They had as much money as printing presses could produce at their disposal, hundreds of private security contractors, and the most high tech weapons and equipment imaginable waiting for anyone who crossed them.

   Samruk's sole advantage lay in the fact that they were doing something that had never been done before.

   In hours they had stripped their headquarters, packing everything onto the half-dozen Antonov's that arrived back in Astana hours after they received the Operations Order.  All vehicles and weapons were strapped down; the contents of their offices were palletized and loaded to take with them for extended operations.

   Officially, Pat was still on convalescence leave from Delta Force after his ordeal in Colombia.  Frank had reached out to him for help.  All he had said was that it was something Deckard and the old crew were all on board with.

   The Master Sergeant didn't need any further explanation.  As the Russian cargo planes were warming their engines, preparing to lift off in Astana, Pat came running up to the ramp.  Red in the face and out of breath, he threw his gear bag onto the plane and was helped on board.

   Pat expertly reassembled his AK-103, making sure that key points of friction were lubricated, before obsessively examining his kit for a third time.  He was no stranger to the realities of combat and knew that survivability depended largely on setting the conditions for success before ever stepping onto the battlefield.  He continued his preparations, despite Deckard having told him that everything came down to a roll of the dice.

   Turning back to the window, Deckard's jaw tightened.

   They were now over the Pacific Ocean, the six huge aircraft transporting the entire battalion to Denver International Airport.

   It was time to roll the dice.

   “What does that thing do?”

   “Lower the landing gear,” the black operations pilot answered, more than a little annoyed by his backseat flyer.

   “What about that dial?” Chuck Rochenoire asked.

   “Fuel gauge.”

   “And what about that?”

   “Why don't you take a seat already,” the copilot said.  “We don't need any war tourists upfront.”

   “You got me all wrong,” Chuck said, smiling as he pressed his Glock 19 pistol into the nape of the pilot's neck.

   “Hey, what the hell!” the copilot screamed, before reaching for the .38 Special tucked under his jacket.

   “Halt,” Kurt Jager said, grabbing the man's wrist in an iron grip, his own pistol shoved under the copilot's nose.

   Sergeant Major Korgan tossed the curtain aside that served as a partition between the cockpit and the cargo area, immediately pointing his pistol at the navigator.

   “Now you reorient on new set of coordinates,” he said in heavily accented English.

   Unbeknownst to the flight crew, a similar scene was taking place on each of the transport aircraft at that moment.  Samruk mercenaries were raiding the cockpits, effectively staging multiple simultaneous hijackings.  They could already feel the shift under their feet as the massive airplane changed its heading, the pilots given little choice at gunpoint.

   Making wide lazy turns the aircraft shifted onto azimuth, heading to the Southern Pacific Ocean.

Thirty

   A low-pitched hum in the distance was the only warning before the dark shadows came into view.  They flew in low, landing gear skimming just feet above the choppy ocean waters.

   With Johnston Atoll almost entirely blacked out, the pilots flew under night vision goggles, relying on the few beacons that were lit.  The passengers of the first flight bounced off the cold metal floor as the wheels made contact with the runway, the pilots immediately throwing the levers to apply thrust reversers and speed brakes to slow them down before they ran off the other end of the runway. 

   On the ground, black-uniformed gunmen frowned and pointed at the unexpected arrivals as one plane landed after another.  Dozens of different aircraft had been flying in and out for days, all intended to be under the radar, but at least those had been announced to the ground crews so they could prepare for the arrival.

   Peeling off onto the parking apron, the massive Russian airplanes dropped ramp, tan colored assault trucks disgorged themselves and spilled out like locusts, accelerating across the covert airbase.  Splitting into platoon-sized elements, the Kazakh mercenaries rushed for their individual objectives.

   With defense systems finally being brought online by the control tower, a dozen Phalanx anti-aircraft cannons swung into position to confront the final Antonov on approach.  The last Samruk aircraft almost made it to the tarmac and out of the offensive radius of fire before the guns opened up with cannon fire shooting through the sky.

   The radar-guided Gatling guns locked onto target and immediately began pouring on long bursts of twenty millimeter tungsten steel armor-piercing rounds.  Multiple streams of fire chopped through the aircraft's wings and fuselage, sending it bursting into flames.  Tilting to one side, the aircraft dipped down sickeningly, then rotated into a vicious angle until its wings were nearly vertical, trailing flame behind them. 

   When the Antonov slammed into the concrete that made up the artificial island, the subsequent explosion briefly turned night into day.  Flaming wreckage rained down on the northern side of the atoll, the revolting smell of burning jet fuel invading the mercenaries' noses.

   Deckard noted the losses in as detached a manner as he could from the back of his assault vehicle.  Half of Charlie Company was gone.  Kazakh comrades and old friends, Piet and Gordan, were the first casualties.  Grimly, he acknowledged that this was just the opening salvo.

   Much worse was to come.

   Bravo Company trucks screamed down the tarmac, swerving to avoid large chunks of burning wreckage as they sped towards the hangers.

   Johnston Atoll sat in the Pacific Ocean, south of Hawaii and had been continuously expanded throughout the Cold War.  Stretching from atop its base on a coral reef, the military base sprawled out over fifty square miles.  Used for nuclear testing until the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was then maintained for the storage and decommission of the military's aging chemical weapons stockpile.  Finally in 2004 the atoll had been completely stripped of buildings and officially shut down.

   Unofficially, it had been reopened just days later under the auspices of several intelligence agencies and rebuilt into a covert staging ground.  A black site.

   The lead vehicle jerked, the passengers holding onto their seats and other handholds to avoid being thrown out, as enemy gunfire caught the driver by surprise.  Green tracers skipped across the concrete, searching for them.  Turning their turrets to face the enemy, the PKM gunners fired back in the direction of the enemy's muzzle flashes.

   Still speeding towards the hangers, individual Kazakhs seated in the back of the vehicles laid down a volley of fire with their Mk14 grenade launchers.  The result was a combination of machine gun fire and bursts of forty millimeter HE grenades.

   The mercenaries were closing the distance quickly while delivering at least semi-accurate suppressive fire.  It looked like they were going to make it, when a bright orange streak flashed through the air.  It skipped off the pavement and detonated somewhere behind them.  The next anti-tank missile came hurdling straight towards the center of the convoy as they drove in a wedge-shaped formation.

   One of the drivers saw it heading for him and yanked on the wheel just a moment before it exploded next to them.  The mercenaries were peppered with debris but otherwise left unharmed except for one Kazakh who was thrown off the back of the truck.

   Seconds later, Bravo Company overtook the remaining guards and encircled the hanger complex.  Dead security contractors littered the ground, some crying out in agony.  The mercenaries were under orders to take as many alive for questioning as possible.  No executions would take place, not yet.

   Alpha Company kept a large degree of standoff, hanging back to avoid close combat.  The three brick and stucco buildings that served as barracks were in the process of getting hammered by both direct and indirect fire.

   The barracks housed the support personnel that maintained the facilities on the clandestine base as well as the private security contractors, the hired goons standing by for whatever dirty work needed to be done.  On seeing the size and scope of the facilities, Frank knew that he was seeing a mirror image of Samruk International.  A parallel group who would serve similar purposes after the plague was released on the world. 

   From a defensive position behind a concrete bunker, Mendez's mortar section was dropping round after round down their tubes.  The 82mm mortars crashed through the roofs, blowing out windows, and devastating the enemy as they crawled out of their beds and shrugged into their clothes.  Samruk never gave them a chance to resist.

   With the upper floors quickly consumed in flames, the atoll personnel were left with little option but to attempt to escape out of doors and windows alike.  They chose to die by automatic gunfire from the Samruk mercenaries, rather than perish by fire. 

   None of the participants gave much thought to which fate was worse, only which was faster.

   Sergeant Major Korgan cursed through his teeth.

   Somewhere behind him a ten thousand gallon JP-8 fuel blivet exploded into a miniature mushroom cloud, fire rising along a massive pillar into the night sky, casting long shadows across the airfield.

   Deckard was diverting resources from Bravo Company to their position to help, but it wasn't coming fast enough.  With half of Charlie Company incinerated during infiltration, their task was made twice as difficult.

   Gunfire from the enemy's M4 rifles pinged off the belly of the capsized Serbian armored personnel carrier they were taking cover behind.  Inside the tin can they could hear the occupants screaming and thrashing around, trying to figure out what was going on outside.

   Richie was cooking up an explosive, an incredibly destructive method to crack open the APC.  Thankfully, a low ranking Kazakh acted faster, producing a gas can from one of the assault trucks and pouring the flammable liquid into the crack where the hatch met the chassis on the armored vehicle.  Most of the mercenaries smoked so one of them quickly flicked a lighter and set the gasoline ablaze. 

   The occupants threw open the hatch in short order, smoke-producing fire invading the confines of their vehicle.  Surrounded, the contractors were pummeled by the Kazakhs and stripped of their weapons and equipment while the firefight sputtered out and restarted all over again.

   Korgan recognized their language and features.  He had seen them before.  They sounded like the late Executive Officer Djokovic.  Serbs.  Shoulder insignia on their uniforms identified them as working for a company called Special Security Solutions.

   A large caliber shot cracked above the noise of the battlefield.  

   One of Samruk's snipers was engaging the airfield's control tower from an assault truck parked a few hundred meters away.  The .300 Winchester Magnum rounds thudded into the tower's Plexiglass windows.  The shots penetrated, spider webbing the rest of the glass although it stubbornly refused to cave in.

   Meanwhile, five more assault trucks rushed up to the side of the tower and came to a screeching halt.  Any guards that remained standing were quickly cut down by the assault force as they moved towards the entrance to the airport's electronic nerve center.

   One of the mercenaries ran for the door and slapped a charge on it.  Seconds later, the explosives tore the door off its hinges, the assault team gaining entry.

   The firefight was sputtering and winding down when the hanger doors began rolling open.

   It had taken a few minutes for someone to figure out how to get them open, but not much was really locked or otherwise secured with everything on the island heavily guarded until now.

   Adam crossed the threshold with the huge doors still rolling open.  His eyes scanned across dozens of different aircraft illuminated by powerful overhead lights.  Most of them were military models.  Cargo aircraft and fighter jets, including the new model of the F-22 Raptor.  Hard cases filled with the tools and diagnostic equipment needed for long term maintenance were left alongside the walls, someone clearly thinking ahead for the long haul.