Specter (36 page)

“Alexander, this is Night Rider. Do you copy? Over.”

“Night Rider, Alexander!” a voice called back. “Seems like you're always riding to our rescue! Over!”

“Shoot, is that Nomad?”

“Affirmative, Night Rider. Different call sign, same problem. We're inside the fort on the hill. We got some bad guy Injuns coming at us from the northwest. Think you can do something about that?”

Selby was studying the infrared sensor screens. The landscape below was ablaze with heat; the main gate of the castle was burning, the fireball lighting up the surrounding walls. A tracked AFV was burning just outside the wall, and he could see the engine heat from several more vehicles along the road leading to the castle.

The main road, however, was packed with military vehicles, trucks and jeeps mostly, loaded with troops, but there were some more tracked vehicles as well.

“Alexander, this is Night Rider. Confirm your ID with a flash, over.”

“Roger, Night Rider.”

An IR beacon strobed from the castle tower.

“Okay, Alexander, we have you. Confirm your position inside the castle walls.”

“Roger, Night Rider. That is affirmative.”

“Alexander, it looks like we have a number of vehicles on the main road by the lake, approximately regimental strength. You want ‘em boxed, or you want 'em on the run?”

There was a moment's delay. When Alexander came back on the air, it was a different voice. “Night Rider, this is Alexander, Charlie Oscar. The faster those people run, the better. Our real problem is going to be the head of the snake.”

“We copy that, Alexander. Stand by.”

Standard procedure for taking down a column confined to a road like the one below was to disable vehicles at both the front and the rear of the column, trapping those in between for a leisurely and thorough kill later. Alexander's CO—that's what the “Charlie Oscar” meant—was telling him to leave an escape route. Hit the head of the column hard enough, and maybe most of the hostiles would turn around and head back to Ohrid.

“Sergeant Zanowski, we'll be taking the targets from south to north. Not too close. We don't want to bounce any inside the compound.”

“Yes, sir.”

Selby reached for an intercom switch. “Colonel Carlotti,” he said. “We have Alexander on-line, positive identification.”

“Very well. Permission to fire.”

“Gunners, this is Selby. Stand by. We have firing command. Set, Sergeant?”

“Locked in, sir.” The sensor operator said, reaching for the armament safeties.

“Punch it!”

Night turned to day as fire rained from the sky, a lightning bolt, save that this bolt was ruler-drawn straight, and where it touched the earth beyond the castle walls, it erupted in blazing fire. Trees whipped back and forth beneath the touch of that hot breath, then cracked and fell, trunks splintered by lethal hail.

A meteor streaked down the shaft of fire. An explosion detonated down the hill among the trees. A second meteor followed, almost too quick to see ... and a third ... and a fourth.

A skilled Specter gun crew could work the aircraft's 105mm howitzer so quickly that they were firing the gun while one round was still in the air between the aircraft and the ground, and a third round was just slamming into the target. Murdock wasn't sure what they were hitting out there, but it was something big. The roar of rapid-fire explosions was deafening, drowning out the eerie, low-pitched, moaning shriek of incoming Gatling rounds. The northwest wall was backlit by fire.

Murdock peered down from the battlements of the castle keep, watching the incoming hellfire. Through his nightscope, he could see a line of Serb soldiers, dozens of them, running out of the trees beyond the ravine.

Then the pencil of fire drifted across them, caressing them, lifting them, tearing them apart as a sleet of lead slashed through them like a whirlwind, leaving bodies and body parts and a thin, bloody spray in its wake. The circle of destruction widened, as a two-and-a-half-ton truck exploded in flame, as a jeep overturned, shattered, as a BMP exploded violently in orange flame and hurtling bits of armor, as soldiers crumpled and twisted and died, and that moaning howl went on and on like the grating shriek of a banshee.

The flame moved on, reaching lower down the slope, but an explosion against the castle wall to the right of the gate tower grabbed Murdock's attention. He swung the nightscope onto this new threat, caught the spilling of rocks and broken mortar into the courtyard.

A stray round? He thought so at first but quickly changed his mind. The AC-130 was having to be conservative for fear of striking inside Gorazamak's walls; ricochets bounding around inside the walls could be deadly, and there was a hell of a lot of gasoline—and maybe ammo as well—inside the vehicles parked by the stables. Probably the Specter was restricting its fire to the far side of the ravine ... but something was on this side of the ravine and it was coming in through the wall.

The second BMP was coming through the breach in the wall now, its coaxial gun chattering as it blindly swept the courtyard. No one was left in the bailey, though. All the SEALs had pulled back to the keep and were either up here on the roof, in the back of the tower with the hostages, or on the lower floor, bracing for the assault. Murdock had ordered the male hostages moved from their room near the front of the tower to the room where the women had been held. The problem was deciding where, inside the keep, was the safest place.

Probably there was no such thing as a safest place, not if the Serbs started shelling the keep. He was counting now on air support to stop the enemy assault.

But leakers were coming through, despite the deadly, controlled lightning from above. The BMP ground over the spill of stone and rubble. Its main gun fired, and the castle keep shuddered as the round exploded at the front door.

“Damned pesky salesman,” Papagos said.

“Maybe we can discourage him,” Murdock said. Rising, he shouldered the RPG again, aimed, squeezed on the trigger....

The round arrowed down from the tower top, striking the BMP squarely on its glacis. The explosion was shattering, halting the vehicle's advance ... but as the smoke cleared it was obvious that the high-explosive round hadn't pierced the armor. Its main gun fired again, and Murdock felt the tower shudder.

This close, the BMP probably couldn't elevate its main gun high enough to reach the SEALs on the tower roof. On the other hand, all it had to do was keep slamming rounds in through the front door. Sooner or later, this old tower was going to come down, taking a lot of people with it.

The fire from the sky had ceased.

“Prof! Lemme have the horn.”

“Here you go, L-T.”

“Night Rider, Night Rider,” Murdock called. “Alexander. Do you copy? Over.”

“Alexander, Night Rider copies.”

“That was right on the money. Can you hit a bit closer? We're all inside the big tower. You can come right down inside the compound if you can.”

“Ah, that's a negative, Alexander. We're moving into the north leg of our orbit. The mountain's in our way.”

Specter gunships, with all of their armament on the port side, had to engage the enemy in a constant left-hand bank. The Specter had been circling counterclockwise in from the lake, passing south of the castle while continuing to smash at targets to the north. Now, however, it was passing to the east, and the mountains and the trees were blocking its view not only of the road, but of the castle itself.

“Copy that, Rider. See you on the other side.”
I hope.

“Watch it!” Mac shouted. “Here comes the grunts!”

Soldiers were following the BMP through on foot, and more were piling out of the AFV's rear, scattering across the courtyard. Murdock thought they must be charging at least in part because moving forward against a fortified position was preferable to staying on that road long enough for the Specter to get another crack at them.

Mac's M-60 opened up, a sustained, crashing volley that cut down running men one after another. Holt, sent up to the rooftop with his M-60, opened up as well, and was quickly joined by Papagos with his H&K, and by Magic Brown, who was calmly and steadily dropping enemy soldiers one at a time with his Remington.

Murdock raised himself above the parapet, his last RPG round loaded and ready to fire. “Watch my back-blast!” he yelled, and he sent the last HE round streaking toward the BMP.

The charge struck the turret with a crash; the Sagger exploded an instant later, adding to the destruction. The turret, its gun barrel twisted, hung over the side of the AFV, as smoke boiled from the interior.

But the eight troops inside were already out and clear, sheltering behind the dead BMP and the vehicles by the motor pool. Gunfire barked and crackled from the courtyard below. Sooner or later, they would try a rush. Kos and four SEALs were on the ground floor waiting for them, but if they went in using a lot of grenades, the way the SEALs had done on their entry, the affair could have only one ending.

Part of the trouble was that SEALs, probably the best-trained fighters in the world, were at their best with offensive combat, not with holding a fixed position.

The gunfire from the tower sputtered out. With the JNA under cover, they were no targets ... and ammo for the M-60s was running low now ... about two hundred rounds left apiece.

“Alex Two, this is One! Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear, Skipper,” Kosciuszko replied.

“You guys hanging on down there?”

“So far.”

“The bump's dead, but we've got bad guys getting ready for a rush, looks like. We'll hold them from up here as long as we can, but they're probably working up close to the walls by now, down where we can't see 'em. Watch out for grenades.”

“We're ready. L-T. Rattler and Jaybird moved some of these counters around to make a barricade, and we're up on the balcony now with a good field of fire.”

“Okay. Just hang on. When Night Rider makes another pass, I'm going to have him dump a load inside the perimeter.”

There was a long pause. “Copy that.”

It was a desperate measure, but Murdock had just run out of options. The helos wouldn't be here for another fifteen minutes or a bit more. He could try to take the hostages out the tower back door and into the woods, but those woods were probably crawling with JNA troops by now. Besides, getting untrained civilians to rappel down a wall at night would be inviting disaster.

Fifteen more minutes!

“Here they come!”

Gunfire volleyed from the courtyard, shrieking off the ramparts at the top of the tower. A fresh wave of JNA soldiers were coming through the breach in the wall, firing wildly. Murdock dropped the RPG and unslung his H&K. Leaning over the parapet, he took aim. . . .

“What the
fuck?”
Holt said.

The Serb soldiers charging through the gap in the wall were being hit, and hit hard. No one in the tower had started firing yet, but the enemy troops were going down in twos and threes and fours, and the rest were scattering. Mac's 60-gun began hammering away in short, sharp bursts, but the enemy's charge had already broken.

A lone figure was crouched in the breach in the wall, firing into the JNA troops from behind, his weapon scything down men with a deadly
thud-thud-thud
of full-auto shotgun fire.

“Doc!” Roselli's voice yelled over the tactical channel. “Jesus Christ, hold your fire upstairs, it's Doc!”

The Yugoslav soldiers still on their feet in the courtyard were surrendering now, throwing down their AK-copies and raising their hands. Doc's shotgun fell silent.

“Kos!” Murdock snapped. “Doc's at the wall, the bad guys are surrendering. Get your people out there and round'em up!”

“Already on it, L-T.” SEALs were spilling out into the courtyard, rounding up soldiers who'd suddenly been transformed from desperate, charging fanaticism to a kind of dazed and accepting docility.

Thunder pealed across the sky. Murdock looked up, half expecting to see Night Rider on his way in for another pass ... but what he saw instead was the glow of afterburners, the too-quick-to-follow shadows of low-flying jets.

“Skipper!” Higgins called. “Night Rider's on the line. He says the Javelins are here.”

“Javelin?” The code names were running together. He didn't remember that one. Was his mind starting to play tricks on him? God, he was tired. . . .

“That's VFA-161, L-T. A Hornet squadron off the
Jefferson
.”

Hornets! That's why he hadn't remembered the code name; “Javelins” was the unit name for a squadron of F/A-18s, deadly, carrier-borne aircraft with dual roles, both air-to-air and air-to-ground. The U.S. Marines swore by them for close ground support. Two of the aircraft were streaking in low above the lake, moving south to north. By the firelight, Murdock thought he could see the elongated shapes of bombs tumbling off the aircraft's wing racks, and a moment later, he heard the popcorn stuttering of cluster-bomb bomblets detonating along the main highway. With a roar of exploding gasoline, fresh fires lit the night beyond the trees to the northwest.

“Skipper?” Higgins called. “I've got Chariot on the horn. Chariot and Achilles are inbound, ETA eight minutes.”

Explosions roared from the direction of the road. More Hornets circled out of the night, their thunder pealing across the lake and echoing off the mountainside.

“I think,” Murdock said slowly, “that we can hold out that long. No problem.”