“Here they come,” Tyvek shouted, and opened up on the men closest to the ditch. He couldn’t shoot them fast enough. Men dashed for the cover of the ditch as he and Ali and the other two poured fire into them and the SuperCobras lashed the area with ordnance.
Tyvek spoke into the voice-activated mike on his helmet-mounted radio. “We’re gonna need some help, Old Rover. Whenever you can get here.”
Something heavy fell across Tyvek’s legs. He spun and fired at the same time, but the man was already dead: Ali had shot him.
“They’re going into the barn!” Ali shouted. He fired a whole magazine at three men trying to get through the front door. One of the men disappeared inside.
Jamail Ali scrambled over the edge of the ditch and ran for the barn while Tyvek screamed at the SuperCobra gunners not to shoot him.
“Snake One Four, this is Orange One.” Richard Merriweather let go of the mike and waited for an answer from the SuperCobra inbound to silo six.
“Orange One, Snake One Four.”
“Man, we’re on the wrong side of this river or creek five or six clicks south of the LZ. How about seeing if you can find us.”
“Are you standing up?”
“In plain sight.”
Merriweather and his partner, Kirb Handy, stepped away from the trees. With their night-vision goggles, the SuperCobra crewmen should have no trouble seeing two men standing in an open field, and they didn’t.
Both the helicopters settled to earth and the marines on the ground ran to them.
The pilot of the lead chopper opened his canopy as Merriweather ran over. “Where are the other guys?”
“Haven’t seen them or talked to them. Don’t know.”
“Seen any bad guys?”
“Nope. How about a ride over toward the barn?”
“Sit on the skid and grab hold. We run into trouble, you gotta get off if we drop down low.”
Merriweather gave the pilot a thumbs-up and arranged himself on the skid. Handy was clinging to the skid on the other side.
The chopper came slowly into a hover, then dipped its nose and began moving forward. Merriweather held on for dear life as the rotor downwash and slipstream tore at his clothing, helmet, and gear, and threatened to rip the night vision goggles from his head.
What a stupid idea this was! How in hell had they ended up four miles south of the goddamned landing zone? If he ever again laid eyes on that son of a bitch who flew the Herc, he was going to stomp his ass.
Bryne and McCormick — those two were missing. If they were okay surely they would have checked in on the radio. Maybe their parachutes didn’t open. Maybe they fell into that river. Maybe the Cubans captured them as soon as they hit the ground. Maybe, maybe, maybe …
He could see the barn now. The chopper was just a few feet above the trees, making an approach to the area right in front of the damn thing. The other chopper was flying over the trees, three or four hundred yards away — close, but not too close.
Nobody in sight around the barn. Not a soul.
Merriweather jumped when the chopper was three feet off the ground, and fell on his face. He got up, staggered out from under the rotor blast.
Handy appeared at his elbow.
The glow of a cigarette tip showed in the door. Someone sitting there!
Merriweather froze, his M-16 at the ready.
A marine sat in the open door smoking a cigarette. His face and neck were coated with green and brown camo grease. His helmet and night-vision goggles lay in the dirt beside him.
Merriweather walked over to the man, who said, “No one around.”
“Where’s Bryne?”
McCormick nodded toward the east. “Over there about a hundred yards. Parachute streamed, backup didn’t open.”
“Your radio?”
“Broke. Bryne’s got smashed.” McCormick stood, took a last drag on the cigarette, and tossed it away. “Been sitting here waiting for you. The place is deserted, quiet as a graveyard.”
“Too bad about Bryne.”
“Left two little kids. Too fucking bad.”
The interior of the barn was large, empty, and dark. Merriweather used a flashlight, looked in every corner, inspected the ceiling, the floor, the nooks and crannys.
Then he spoke into his boom microphone. “Let’s get the Osprey into the LZ, set up a perimeter.”
Through her night-vision goggles, Rita Moravia could see the silo two landing zone and the hovering SuperCobras plain as day as she made her approach in the Osprey. She saw bodies lying everywhere, still-warm bodies radiating heat, and she saw living men. She transitioned to hovering flight and lowered the Osprey toward the ground between the choppers. A cloud of dirt and dust rose up, obscuring everything. She went on instruments.
On the intercom she told the lieutenant to get ready.
As soon as the wheels hit, the marines in back charged out the door of the Osprey and kept right on going for fifty yards, when they went down on their stomachs with their rifles at the ready.
Rita didn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. As soon as her crew chief said the last marine was out, she lifted the Osprey into the air, climbed straight up out of the dust cloud and only then began the transition to winged flight.
The lieutenant was named Charlie Herron, and he had his orders. His primary responsibility was to ensure that the missile in that silo never left the ground. As his feet hit the ground, he flopped on his belly and waited while the roaring Osprey climbed away. When the dust began to clear, he spotted the barn and went for it on a run.
Bodies and body parts lay scattered everywhere. The living men he passed sat in the dirt with empty hands reaching for the sky. Herron shouted over the radio, “Cease-fire, cease-fire. They are surrendering.”
Inside the barn he found Asel Tyvek standing over a dead Cuban.
“Over here, Lieutenant. I think this wooden thing is a door.”
Tyvek and Herron opened the wooden door, which revealed a steel door with built-in combination lock. “Think there’s anybody in there?” Herron asked. After all, Tyvek had been here longer than he had.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, we gotta get in there. Let’s blow the door.”
A charge of C-4 took less than a minute to rig. The two men took cover behind a wooden stall.
The explosion was sharp, a metallic wham that rang their ears.
The demolition charge cut the lock clean out of the door and warped it. The two men pried the door open. A stairway lit by naked light bulbs led away downward. Herron and Tyvek took off their night-vision goggles and let them dangle around their necks. With Herron in the lead with his pistol in his hand, the two of them descended the stairway.
Aboard United States Jake Grafton was getting the blow-by-blow update. Air Intelligence officers annotated the maps and briefers told him of every report from the silos.
“Heavy firefight around silos one and two.”
“No opposition at sites four, five and six.”
“Ospreys on the ground at sites two, three, and four.”
“SeaCobra hit and in trouble at site one.”
“Team leader into silo two.”
“Recon leader into silo six.”
Each report was entered on a checklist: there were eight of them, one for each silo and dairy site.
First Lieutenant Charlie Herron and Asel Tyvek found the control room of silo two empty. A series of stairs and more steel doors led downward to the bottom of the concrete structure. The doors weren’t locked. When he opened the last door, there was the missile towering upward. The shiny, painted fuselage reflected pinpoints of light from the naked bulbs arranged around the top and sides of the concrete silo.