Target Deck - 02 (61 page)

The quick reaction element that had been training at Area 17 several miles away was being called in but in the meantime he was to wake his MEK squad members and move directly to the command center to provide containment if it became needed.

The Arab indicated his understanding before hanging up the phone. Reaching for the AK-47 propped up next to his bed, he flung open the trailer door and began screaming for his men to grab their weapons and follow him.

Slipping on his boots, he rallied the death squad.

Someone had followed him back from Mexico.

He had a feeling he knew exactly who that someone was.

51

The explosive charge blasted a hole through the roof, the sheet metal tearing and peeling outwards with the blast giving the appearance of a giant bullet hole. Through the smoke that poured out from the gap in the building's roof, a heavily armed mercenary appeared. Climbing out of the hole, he turned to help his team mates up.

Deckard pushed Greg up where Kurt Jager firmly grabbed him by both shoulders and hauled him up before dropping him on his side at his feet. The G3 communications manager hit the roof with a thud, his body bouncing off the surface with a gasp of escaping air from his lungs. Deckard emerged from the column of black smoke, coughing and gagging.

“Shooter-One,” Pat said, taking charge while Deckard was trying to regain his voice. “What's going on?”

“We have lots of movement,” Nikita reported. “About a dozen men waking up and kitting up from their sleeping quarters. They are starting to move to your position.”

“Slow them down.”

Nikita had transitioned back to regular long range sniper rounds, ditching the sub-sonic ammo. Still, the hollow crack of the suppressed rifle could hardly be heard. Pat failed to identify a muzzle flash from the aircraft graveyard which spoke well for the sniper's hide site selection.

“I got two of them,” Nikita radioed in. “But then they realized the general direction I was shooting from and took another route, behind the hangars. They should be on top of you guys in seconds. I will do what I can when they get out in the open.”

“Okay,” Deckard said as he regained his voice. “Let's get off of this roof before it collapses, fall back to a defendable position, and-”

His words were cut short as a RPG rocket barreled into the communications tower on the roof and exploded into a ball of fire. Releasing a high pitched creak of metal on metal, the tower fell sideways across the roof. Deckard and Kurt dived out of the way as the twisted metal hulk slammed into the roof, the end of the tower snapping off as it hit the edge of the roof.

“Kurt, you're with me. The rest of you get out of here while we lay down suppressive fire.”

Deckard and the German mercenary ran to the contact side of the building and began returning fire at the ten Arab shooters who were trying to surround them. Both triggered rapid bursts of fire at the death squad that was attacking them. Deckard's AK ran out of rounds first.

“I'm black,” he shouted to Kurt who picked up his rate of fire to compensate.

Deckard ducked down behind the lip of the roof and reloaded. He moved laterally to change his position before popping back up and rejoining the fight. By now Kurt was empty and had to reload. Meanwhile, Pat and Aghassi threw their prisoner off the roof before jumping down beside him.

“Let's go, let's go,” Deckard said as he slapped Kurt on the shoulder and fell back, running across the roof. He stumbled as the roof gave way beneath him. Sliding backwards and down into the inferno that had opened up below, he reached for the wreckage of the communications tower to stop his descent. He was still slipping when Kurt circled around the opening and gave him a hand. Yanking him up, the two turned to the edge of the roof and dropped down.

“Get down!” Pat warned as he threw a frag grenade at the chain link fence. Hitting the deck the mercenaries braced themselves as the grenade exploded and tore a small hole in the barrier. One by one, they slipped through the ragged opening.

Out on the flight line, they saw a convoy of headlights heading towards them.

“Shooter-One?”

“I see them,” Nikita informed them. “I count eight vehicles.”

“That's funny,” Pat said dryly. “I count ten.”

In seconds the convoy would blast right down the runway, cutting between them and their sniper in the aircraft graveyard. They would then be trapped between the convoy and the death squad on their opposite flank. Deckard didn't think they had killed any of them as they had been behind a pile of gravel which meant his team was outnumbered two to one on one flank and maybe thirty to one on their other flank.

The only terrain feature that even offered the illusion of cover and concealment from which to fight from was the drainage ditch that Aghassi had made his photographs from earlier. Bounding forward, the mercenaries descended into the waist deep channel and got down in the prone. Pat and Aghassi sat Greg down and dumped their bags of intel taken from the safe down next to him.

If they had continued forward, even at a sprint, they would never make it to the far side of the airfield before they would be overtaken by the convoy and caught out in the open where they would be run down and shot to pieces.

Greg was trembling uncontrollably.

The four combat veterans had seen more than their share of firefights. They had all had their nose bloodied a few times in the past. They knew what was coming. It would be the fight of their lives. It wasn't that they were not afraid as much as their calmness was really a resignation that fear would be not a productive emotion at this point. Their training took over. The terrain and the enemy had made the decision for them and now they had to ride it out, hoping that their asses came along for the ride.

Each man made sure they had a full magazine loaded and a round in the chamber. Several laid an extra magazine or hand grenade next to them for easy access. Pat had the LAW rocker launcher that he had liberated from the weapons shipment that they had intercepted. He pulled the retaining pins out and extended the tube. The former Delta operator readied the LAW, aiming down its sights.

Fingers tightened around triggers.

Behind them, the ruins of a conspiracy burned.

The Arab held his hand out, halting his men.

An injured animal would go to ground and wait in ambush. This what the mercenaries had done. They would not walk into their kill zone. He would wait for the quick reaction team to arrive. The mercenaries would be cut down or forced to retreat, right into his death squad. Then, they would feast on the American's bones. The Iraqis would act as a stopper force and block off their escape.

The convoy was rapidly approaching. Their role as a quick reaction security force was only while in garrison at their training areas in Nevada. They were actually a strike force made up of several platoons of MEK gunmen. While The Arab and his men specialized in sabotage, assassinations, and black propaganda, the strike force's role was one of direct combat.

They were being trained to go into Iran with CIA para-military forces ahead of the planned invasion where they would soften up Iranian military and even civilian targets before coalition forces pushed across the border. Heavily armed, they would make quick work of the feeble mercenary force. They were fools to even attempt to infiltrate Area 14 with such small numbers.

Going from position to position, The Arab set his men down on their bellies in the dirt at even intervals where they would be able to cut off any avenue of escape that the mercenaries might attempt. Finally, he got down on the desert floor himself and shouldered his AK-47 just as the MEK strike force screamed down the runway.

Pat pulled out the safety, aimed, and fired the LAW rocket launcher. The warhead shot down the runway and scored a direct hit on the lead vehicle. Both front doors on the HMMWV blasted open as smoke and fire billowed out. The turret gunner did a Peter Pan impersonation as he launched out into the night. Discarding the empty rocket tube, Pat scooped up his AK and joined his comrades as they fired bursts into each vehicle they could draw a bead on.

On the other side of the airfield, Nikita thinned out their ranks, transitioning from target to target as fast as he could. Hitting moving targets in low light conditions was no easy task, even with night vision but he managed to take out four of the turret gunners before they could even open fire.

One HMMWV driver panicked and drove straight toward their position, not knowing where the gunfire was coming from. Aghassi came up to one knee and fired on fully automatic, walking his gunfire through the windshield. He rolled out of the way a nano-second before the military vehicle crashed into the ditch, bottomed out, and then lost control as it climbed the opposite side and rolled over in a cloud of dirt.

Another HMMWV stopped short, identifying several muzzle flashes. The turret gunner swung his M2HB .50 caliber machine gun on the mercenaries and opened up with a heavy staccato burst that chewed up the ground less than a foot away from Kurt Jager. The machine gunner suddenly pitched forward, a sniper's bullet slapping him in the back of the skull.

The vehicle's doors were flung open as more MEK gunmen spilled out onto the runway. At less than forty feet away, Deckard threw a hand grenade that bounced off the tarmac and rolled right into the middle of their ranks before exploding.

Kurt fired into the next nearest HMMWV. Killing the driver, the truck crashed into the first HMMWV that was now disabled, jolting its passengers.

The firefight was lightning fast and frantic as the enemy had no idea how close they were to the intruders. The Iraqis had been taken by surprise and now they were trying to draw down on their targets but found that each of them already seemed to have giant bulls-eyes painted on their heads.

The Samruk International team had gotten their licks in, but the writing was on the wall. It was a matter of tactical calculus. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Looking over his shoulder, Deckard saw that Greg had already gotten zapped. He lay in a puddle of his own blood, staring up at the purple, black, and blue early morning sky.

“Fuck it,” Deckard said. “I'm dead already.”

Sprinting out from behind cover, he ran straight for the crashed HMMWV. The passengers who had been rattled by the crash were now emerging from the vehicle. Deckard fired on the run, blasting ragged holes into all three of them with stunted bursts of fire that blasted through the unarmored doors.