Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (61 page)

"UP!" Konstantin ordered, pointing.

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S UP THERE," Lada shouted.

"TARGETS!" Konstantin shouted back.

Musin, again, led the way. At the first landing, he ran into two keffiyeh-clad men, carrying rifles. Literally, ran into them. It was too close even to use a submachine gun. Instead, Musin threw himself into a tearing Tatar frenzy, a furball of slapping steel, punches, kicks, and headbutts. It seemed a long time, though it was probably less than two seconds, before Konstantin put his muzzle to one head and pulled the trigger, followed by another trigger pull for the other.

The two Yemeni guards, however, had had time enough to call out a warning. Before they reached the top of the steps, the air above was filled with a lead blizzard, being poured in from outside.

"Shit," Konstantin muttered. Again switching radios he called, "Falcons, we need you fast."

"Five minutes, Major."

"In five minutes we might all be dead."

"I can't change the laws of physics, Comrade. Leave that to the communists and the current American administration."

"Fuck the Americans and fuck the comm-"

Litvinov interrupted. "Comrade Major, Galkin is not dead. I'm not saying he'll live long but he's not dead." The radio also transmitted the sounds of bullets striking all around the transmitter, as well as the cracks of further misses, and the still more distant sound of rifle discharges.

"How do you know?"

"He called for me . . . for help."

"Okay, that's pretty much the definition of not dead. Can you get to him?"

"No. Not while I'm under this much fire."

"Tell him to hang on another five minutes."

"I'll try, but he seems to be rolling in and out of consciousness."

"Best you can do," Konstantin finished.

"And now?" Lada asked.

"And now we wait for support," the major answered. And hope those fuckers don't have any grenades.

"About two minutes out, Major. SITREP?"

Konstantin might have cursed the chopper pilots except, What would be the point? Besides, it never pays to curse out people you desperately need.

"We're in three parties," the major said. "The largest of us, three of our men, one woman-don't ask-and one prisoner are trapped in a stairwell just below the roof. Two men, one of them wounded and not all that close to the other, are trapped and under fire on the eastern wall of the compound. One man is outside, to the east."

"I can't carry five of you on my own, Major. You've seen the passenger compartment. You just won't fit."

"The woman is tiny," Konstantin said. "As for the prisoner . . ."

So the old man wanted him for interrogation? So what? All he really needs is for the bastard to be dead. And I'm not leaving either one of my own, nor the woman, behind to satisfy an old man's desire for revenge. Let him be happy with the infliction of a shameful and painful death.

On a hunch, he asked, "Lada, what's on that laptop?"

"Everything, I think. Contacts, accounts, plans, assets. He never really lets it out of his sight."

Hmmm. Got the laptop, don't need the wog.

He took from a pouch a strand of piano wire, made to form a loop at one end. The loop he put around Yusuf's neck. The free end he tied off quickly on the stairs. Then he told Kravchenko, "Drop the fucker down to the next level."

With an indifferent shrug, Kravchenko walked down a couple of steps, then more or less tossed a screaming Yusuf through the opening. The screams cut off abruptly as the piano wire tightened. Yusuf swung violently and began to kick and dance, though the kicks grew weaker with each second his brain lacked fresh blood.

Tsk, thought the major. That must hurt. While Yusuf strangled, Konstantin took a pen and a notepad from one pocket and wrote on it, in Russian and English, "Pirate." He went down two steps and folded the note around the wire above the loop around Yusuf's neck. He couldn't tuck it between the wire and the neck because it had dug into the man's flesh at least half an inch. Just in case anyone doubts why the swine was hanged.

"Forget the prisoner," he told the senior pilot. "What I need is a rocket and gun attack on the roof to clear it off. The other bird needs to get a picture of what's pinning my two men on the wall and eliminate it."

"Wilco," the pilot answered simply.

"GRENADE," Konstantin shouted at Musin, once again, again signaling that he wanted it dropped. After it exploded below, he thought, Ought serve both to discourage pursuit and make absolutely sure the wog has enough time to finish strangling. Though that's probably overkill at this point.

In mere moments, so it seemed, after the grenade went off, the roof began to shed dust and plaster as one rocket after another slammed into it. There was a lull, quickly followed by another salvo of rockets and what sounded like a series of very close together grenade explosions.

"The roof should be clear now, Major. My wingman is still hunting for whoever has your men pinned.

They emerged onto the roof cautiously, maintaining that caution until they were pretty certain that the MI-28 had done its job and left nothing alive. Then the four of them, including Lada, raced for the eastern edge of the thing.

Konstantin looked down and could see both Litvinov and Galkin, separated by nearly a hundred meters. He could also see flashes of fire coming from two places at ground level. I can see why the helicopters are having trouble finding them.

Rather than shout, Konstantin used the short range radio. "Krav?"

"Comrade Major?"

"Can you get a grenade close enough to those groups to matter?"

Kravchenko, too, looked over. "Sure. Easy."

"Do it, then." To the helicopters he said, "Watch for the grenade flash." Going back to short range radio, he told Litvinov. "The helicopters probably won't be able to kill the people who have you pinned. They might be able to drive them back for a while. Your choice if you want to try to retrieve Galkin."

Litvinov snorted. "Like that's a choice, Comrade Major. He may be a queer but he's still our queer."

"Good man," Konstantin said. "Exactly so."

Litvinov saw the grenades go off, then watched as the MI-28 rose above the wall and began to dance, its tail doing the My girl's name is Señora thing, its chin gun pelting first one section, then another, then back to the first. It expended all rounds quickly, then veered off to the east.

Gathering his courage, Litvinov got to his hands and feet and did a sort of sprinting crawl down to where Galkin's body lay. He was breathing, Litvinov saw, but also bleeding from more places than he cared to count. Picking the man up, under his arms, Litvinov slung him over the parapet and then lowered him as far as he could down the wall. Then he let go. Galkin fell a few feet, than crumpled bonelessly to the ground.

Litvinov moved down a few feet from where he'd dropped Galkin. With an unvocalized prayer, he hopped his belly up to the crenellated wall, and swung his feet over. A couple of rounds struck the stuccoed mud brick below, where he'd been standing a moment before.

Slithering backwards, he lowered himself as far as he could, then also let go. When his feet hit the ground he did the very same parachute landing fall he'd learned many years ago at the airborne school at Ryazan. As he had there, more than once, he hit his head on something, hard.

Even as he cursed, he was moving to Galkin. Still cursing, he bent, got the other into a fireman's carry, and stood up. Then, as fast he as could, given the load, he began to sprint for Baluyev. It was an easy direction to hold because the praporschik was already firing at someone or something atop the wall, even as the other helicopter settled to the sand not far behind him.

The major watched Litvinov go. He also watched some of the guard force race to the wall once the helicopter had moved off. He and Kravchenko leaned over the side and pelted those guards with unexpected fire. They got some, But not enough.

"COME ON, KRAV," the major shouted, pushing the other in the direction of the helicopter, which had now landed on the roof. When they got to the door, they found Musin already buckled in, with Lada sitting more or less comfortably on his lap. Tim was trying very hard and somewhat unsuccessfully to hide a smile.

Ignoring the smile, Konstantin pushed Kravchenko in, then followed, putting on the flight helmet even before seeing to his own buckling in.

"Get us the fuck out of here!"

The MI-28 lifted suddenly with the whine of rotors and jets, before nosing down and skimming out over the palace walls.

With the sun rising up out over the Indian Ocean, the pilot buzzed Konstantin. "Major," he said, "bad news. I'm sorry, but your man in the other helicopter died. There was nothing his mates could do."

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Take pity of your town, and of your people,

Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;

Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace

O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds

Of deadly murder, spoil, and villainy.

-Shakespeare, "Henry V"

D-Day, Rako, Ophir

The sun was a bare hint, not yet crept over the horizon but reflected still from scattered clouds. The reflection shone down on a column that appeared mostly made of dust, but was, in fact, four tanks, six gunned Elands, three Ferrets, and rather more than a dozen Elands without turrets-headquarters, infantry carriers of which there was now one fewer than there'd been, mortar and ammunition carriers, and an ambulance.

The company had begun the march west with six tanks. Two of those had fallen by the wayside-victims of poor maintenance or victims of drivers who, with the exception of swollen- and bent-nosed Lana, hadn't more than a clue what they were about. None of the newly captured tanks, given that their crews were nothing but a driver and a black or black-faced soldier standing in the turret to look intimidating, were truly combat capable.

But, Reilly thought, when we show up at a town with better than two dozen combat vehicles I don't think we'll actually have to fight.

Hope not, anyway. It would not only be bad for the town, we'd certainly end up killing a number of the people we intend to capture.

Reilly checked his map against his GPS. Then he glanced half to the right and said over the radio, "Scouts and antitank: That's the tank lager over there to your right. Go shoot it up . . . and have fun storming the castle, boys."

D-Day, East of Buro, Ophir

It had been said that a stern chase was a long chase. This chase must have seemed very long indeed to the pirates pursuing Eeyore and Morales.

Not long enough, though, thought Antoniewicz. Not nearly long enough.

Antoniewicz was crouched down almost under the ship's wheel. This didn't give a lot of cover, though it gave some. He steered by feel, mostly, supplemented with occasional risky glimpses forward.

Morales was crouched as well, though he was in the stern, holding one of the team's utterly inadequate underwater assault rifles. He was bleeding, the result of a side hit, not terribly serious in itself, from one of the bullets the pirates had been throwing their way infrequently and at random. The hit hurt, but, thought Morales, probably not as much as a full day at BUDS.

The pirates surprised the team, at first, by not firing continuously until the boat was a sinking colander. It took a while for Eeyore to guess the reason. Fuckers don't want to damage the boat too badly. They're probably only shooting at all to try to entice us to surrender-like that's gonna happen-followed by a few deft throat slices and then over the side with our corpses. I'll turn and ram the bastards first. Try to, anyway. I'll be damned if . . .

Eeyore's thought was cut off by a . . . well . . . if not an "Earth-shattering kaboom," at least a sea-shaking one.

"What the fuck?" he asked, risking a look up and a glance backwards.

What he saw when he looked to the stern was the boat that had been pursuing, on its side, taking in water, while pieces of the hull-crew, too, most likely-sailed up and up.

Morales started to laugh, the laughter bordering on hysteria. Eventually, he managed to get out, "I guess we mined that one, too, Eeyore."

Antoniewicz scratched his head, then rocked it side to side for a moment. "Five second fuses always last three," he said. "Maybe, on the other hand, twelve mile limpets always last for seventy-five. Or maybe it was a Friday afternoon limpet. Or-"

"Should we pick 'em up?" Morales interrupted.

Now it was Eeyore's turn to laugh. "Those bastards? Fuck 'em. The sharks can have 'em."

D-Day, Bandar Qassim, Ophir

Biggus had made sure Wahab and Fletcher boarded the other armed CH-801, before he got on the last one. By the time that was done, and everyone was airborne and approximately safe, the long night was pretty much over and Rosy-fingered Dawn, the child of Morning, was doing her thing.

She was doing it pretty well, in fact. The harbor was lit up brightly and was amazingly-

"Empty," Biggus announced. "The bitch is practically empty. They sortied every small and medium boat they had."

He used the radio to inform the Merciful just how much trouble he thought it, and everyone, was in.

"What have you got left?" asked the disembodied voice he thought he recognized as belonging to Waggoner.

"Just the machine guns," Thornton answered.

"Mmmm . . . that's not a lot," Waggoner observed. "And if they shipped shoulder-fired SAMs aboard any of the boats, they'll outrange you."

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Biggus answered.

"No," Waggoner said, "you tell me something I don't know, like what's your fuel status?"

The pilot answered that one. "We've got enough to get back. If you haven't moved too far south."

"Roger . . . hold a sec."

Biggus was pretty sure Waggoner was bent over a map, protractor in hand, trying to figure out a way and a place to get all four armed birds onto the so-far-unseen pirate flotilla. Or extract everyone and head south before that flotilla showed up on the Merciful's doorstep. Biggus was pretty sure that with two companies still on the ground, and probably two special operations teams, including the Russkis, none of that fancy shit was likely to work out.