Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (38 page)

 
          
The
small helos struggled to stay connected to the drogues fluttering behind the
Osprey. The gyrating wash of the massive propellers tossed the small bodies up,
down, and sideways. The pilots compared the energy needed just to work the
stick to a ten-mile kayak race; their arms were burning even before the fuel
started to flow. Watching the sweat pour off his pilot, Danny wondered what
he’d do if the man collapsed in midair. When the Quick Bird was finally topped
off, it lurched so violently to the right, Danny thought they’d been clipped by
something.

 
          
“We’re
five minutes out,” said the pilot, no sign of stress in his voice.

 
          
“All
right, listen up,” Danny said over the Dreamland frequency. “Flighthawks give
us real time ninety seconds ahead of the assault, so we see what’s there when
we go in. Boom-boom-boom, just like we drew it up.”

 
          
He’d
drawn it up simple: one helicopter from the south, one from the east. The one
from the south overflew the small dock and landed on the beach area. The other
went directly to the building seventy yards from the water. The helos would
suppress and defenses—the Flighthawk snaps Zen had taken showed there were no gun
emplacements or heavy weapons, so resistance should amount to no more than
hand-carried light machine guns. With the defenses neutralized, the two teams
would rapid-rappel to the ground.

 
          
Stoner
had concluded there should be no more than six people on the islands, given the
small size of the building and the lack of cover elsewhere. Danny concurred.
The takedown should go quickly.

 
          
In
case it didn’t, the Osprey would circle in from the north, prepared to use the
chain-gun in its chin if things got tough. Fentress and the Flighthawk, with
their 20mm weapons loaded for bear, would be available for fire support as
well.

 
          
The
island was shaped like an upside-down L, with the observation post near the tip
of the leg. The head of the letter had a rocky beach that could serve as a
set-down point for the helos and Osprey once the atoll was secure.

 
          
“Hawk
Leader to Whiplash One,” said Fentress over the common frequency. “Captain
Freah, I’m ready when you are.”

 
          
“Roger
that,” said Danny. He glanced at his watch, then back at the sitrep map in his
smart helmet, which showed they were about twelve miles from the atoll.
Fentress would start his pass when they hit five miles. “We’re just over three
minutes from Alpha. We’ll keep you posted.”

 
          
“Hawk
Leader.”

 
          
Fentress
wasn’t Jeff Stockard and would never be, but he was definitely capable; Danny
had no doubt he’d do this job well.

 
          
So
if Danny left, would somebody else walk right in and pick up the slack?

 
          
Yeah.

 
          
“Team
Two checking in,” said Powder, in charge of the second squad. “Hey, Cap, can we
go for a swim when this is over?”

 
          
“Only
if there’s a school of sharks nearby,” said Liu.

 
          
“That’s
what I’m
talkin
’ ’bout,” said Powder.

 
          
“Hey,
Cap, you ever have grilled shark?” asked Bison. “Serious food. You get a little
lemon, maybe some herbs. Very nice.”

 
          
“I
thought you only ate burgers and pizza,” said Danny.

 
          
“Burgers,
pizza, and shark.”

 
          
They
were eight miles from the atoll.

 
          
“All
right. Sixty seconds, Hawk Leader,” said Danny.

 
          
“Copy
that.”

 
          
Danny
turned to look at his pilot, an Army officer who’d come over to Dreamland
specifically for the Quick Bird program. Before that he’d flown with the
special operations aviation group that worked with Special Forces, 160th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). The captains gave each other a
thumbs-up; Danny sat back, clicked his viewer into the Flighthawk feed, and
curled his thumbs around his restraints.

 
          
“Alpha,”
he told Fentress.

 
          
“Alpha
acknowledged,” said Flighthawk pilot. And the show began. “Welcome, my friends,
to the show that never ends… .”

 
          
All
Danny saw at first was a blur of blue and white whipping across the screen. The
blur settled into a hatched pattern of waves as the Flighthawk leveled off,
then slowed. A brown bar appeared in the distance, growing into a cat stretched
across a purple rug, morphing into the side of a mountain at the top of a
black-blue desert. Light glinted like crystal arrows from the blue background.
Then, the image seemed to snap, and now everything was in perfect focus. A
small dock sat before him, a rubber speedboat tethered to one end; above it sat
a green-yellow cottage, a shack really, made of palms—no panels designed to
look like palms in the distance. Fishing poles, oddly oversized, sat in the
water near the dock. There was a rock at the water’s edge.

 
          
No,
not a rock. A housing for a radar.

 
          
“Infrared
feed,” Danny told Fentress. The pilot must have anticipated him, for as the
words left his mouth, the image flashed into a gray greenness, murky monotone
as if the robot aircraft feeding if had dipped into the bottom of an
algae-choked pond. It took nearly three seconds for the computer to
artificially adjust its sensitivity, forming the blurs into an image. If froze
frame, backed out twice—all obviously at
Fentress’s
command—then
analyzed the picture, supplying white triangles that showed a total of five
people on the islands: two near the docks, one in the hut, and two about twenty
yards further north, possibly observing the water.

 
          
“We’re
dancing,” said Danny. He fed the analyzed picture to the rest of his team,
briefly summarizing the situation. The Osprey was tasked with neutralizing any
resistance from the two men on the northern side of the atoll.

 
          
“Everyone
hold your fire unless we’re fired on,” he reminded them. “You know the drill.
Two—if they move toward the boat, sink it.”

 
          
“Aw,
Cap,” said Powder. “Can’t we take it out for a spin first?”

 
          
“Hawk
Leader to Whiplash One. You need another run?”

 
          
“Negative,
Hawk Leader. Hold your orbit as planned. We’re going in.”

 
          
“Godspeed.”

 
          
The
Quick Bird pilot threw everything he had into the
helo’s
turbine engines,
flooing
the gates with the remains
of a thousand long-gone dinosaurs. The tail whipped around and the helicopter
tilted hard, pulling two or three Gs as it swooped into an arc. Once pointed at
his target, the pilot began to back off the throttle, and somehow managed to
come at the island like a ballerina sliding across the stage.

 
          
The
effect on his passengers, however, was more like what might be felt in the cab
of a locomotive throwing on the brakes and reversing steam at a hundred miles
an hour. Danny felt his boron vest pushing hard against his collarbone as the
restraints took hold.

 
          
If
felt damn good.

 
          
“We’re
hot!” said the pilots as something red erupted on the left side of the island.

 
          
“Missiles
in the air!” said Danny. He could see small pops of red near the dock.
“Guns—fuckers! Let ’
em
have it!”

 
          
The
mini-gun at the side of the Quick
Birds’s
cabin spit
bullets toward the cottage. A burst from the ground, and the
helo
pirouetted to the side, flares popping as it whipped
into a quick series of
zigs
and
zags
to avoid a shoulder-launched SAM. The missile sniffed one of the flares and
shot through it, igniting above and behind the helicopter. The small scout shot
downward in a rush; Danny threw his arm out in front of him as they hurtled
toward the cottage area. The pilot slid the aircraft twenty feet from the
ground, hurtling almost sideways over the rooftops. As they passed the
cottages, Bison, sitting behind Danny, pointed his MP-5 out the open doorway
and burned a magazine at one of the men on the ground. Flames burst from the
cottage. Danny caught a glimpse of the man dropping his rifle and falling
backward as the chopper spun away.

 
          
“Let’s
go, let’s go,” screamed Danny, undoing his restraint to go down the rope.

 
          
Stoner
grabbed the rope after Sergeant Liu disappeared. Even though he wore thick
gloves, the friction burned his hands. He had taken the team’s smart helmet and
carbon-boron best, but because the Whiplash issue seemed a bit bulky, had opted
to use his own gloves. Obviously, a mistake, but it was too late to bitch about
it now. He felt the dock under his boots and let go, collapsing into a
well-balanced crouch.

 
          
Ten
times hotter than he imagined, everything was exploding. In the back of his
mind, he heard his boss’s boss, the Director of Operations himself, bawling him
out for going ahead with only six guys in broad daylight.

 
          
Yet
the atoll’s defenders throwing up all this lead and blowing up so much
equipment—for surely that was what they were doing—argued that hitting them as
soon as they could had been the right thing to do.

 
          
Should
have hit it last night then.

 
          
Liu
was at the head of the dock, onshore already. The boat was on Stoner’s right.
He pulled his knife and went to it, slashed the two lines, then kicked it away.
Something pushed him down onto the bobbing boards—it was the helicopter rocking
back after firing a salvo of rockets. Thick cordite and smoke, and something
like diesel fuel, choked his nose. A fireball erupted; the water churned with a
stream of steady explosions. Now all he smelled was burning metal.

 
          
These
bastards had SAMs and all sorts of weapons.

 
          
“Hey,
forward, damn it!” yelled someone.

 
          
It
was Powder, waving through the smoke on the beach. Stoner pushed himself to his
knees, stumbling toward the land.

 
          
By
the time Danny made it to the ground, the gunfire had already stopped. The
defenders’ stores of ammunition and weapons continued to explode, and the
cottage burned bright orange, flames towering well overhead.

 
          
They’d
rigged it. Bird One tried smothering the fire by flying over it, but this only
made the flames shoot out the side and was dangerous as hell. Finally, Danny
told them to back off. The inferno continued, doubling its height in triumph
and sending a burst of flames exploding above.

 
          
“Team
One, move back,” he told Bison and Pretty Boy. “Get back to that fence of
vegetation. Powder, what’s your situation?”

 
          
“Two
dead
gomers
. Can’t see what else is going on with all
this smoke. We’re on the beach near the dock.”

 
          
“You
got a way out of there?”

 
          
“Same
way we came.”

 
          
“How’s
Stoner?”

 
          
“Got
a smile on his face,” said Powder. “I think we
oughta
draft him, Captain.”

 
          
Danny
doubted the CIA officer was doing anything but frowning. The truth was, the
operation was a fiasco. The only saving grace was that none of theirs were
injured—a minor miracle, given all the lead and explosives in the air.