McAllen tensed. So the Russians had beaten them to the site, but they hadn’t reached the jet itself yet. He got on the radio: “Outlaw Team, this is One. I want Outlaws Three and Six up here on the ridge. I want sniper and SAW fire on that tree line. The rest of you come with me!”
Gutierrez hustled forward with his big machine gun, setting up a few meters away from Palladino, who dropped to lie prone with his M40A3 sniper rifle balanced on its bipod.
McAllen led Jonesy, Szymanski, and Friskis along the ridge, weaving through the palms and other trees until they reached the aforementioned hill east of their position. It, too, was particularly steep but draped in enough dense foliage to conceal their advance — and the possibility of a tumble down the hillside.
“Outlaw One, this is Outlaw Six,” called Gutierrez. “They’re breaking from the tree line, over.”
“Let Outlaw Three take the first shot, and that’s your signal to open up, over.”
“Roger that.”
McAllen imagined Palladino up there on the hill, staring through his scope, making hasty calculations—
When suddenly his rifle resounded, a great thunder-clap echoing off the mountains.
A gasp later, Gutierrez began delivering his lecture, the Professor of Doom bathing himself in brass casings, the SAW rat-tat-tating loud and clear.
McAllen’s group had a handful of seconds to make their break from the slope and weave a serpentine path toward the downed plane.
He ordered Szymanski and Friskis out first and they charged away, vanishing off into the trees, while he and Jonesy took a more westerly path, closer to the Russians in the tree line. McAllen figured that even if the enemy got closer, at least two of his men would make it to the plane, while he and Jonesy could intercept.
Up on the hill, Gutierrez and Palladino continued laying down fire, the Russians only answering with sporadic shots.
McAllen and Jonesy reached the Learjet, two seconds behind the other guys. “Stay out here,” McAllen ordered Szymanski. “Mask up. Pop smoke. Friskis, stay with him. Call the PL, tell him we’ve reached the site.”
“You got it, Sergeant.”
McAllen and Jonesy slipped on their masks and McAllen followed Jonesy into the hazy confines of the jet, his rifle at the ready.
The cabin walls and ceiling were heavily scorched. He glanced right.
And wished he hadn’t.
At least ten people were strewn about, their blackened limbs twisted at improbable angles. A few of them were dressed in the burned remains of civilian clothes while the others wore military uniforms, Navy mostly.
“Check the cockpit,” he told Jonesy, then rushed forward to the nearest body, whose government ID had melted into his chest. There wasn’t much left of his face, either, but it was clear he wasn’t their Russian colonel. He was a black man, about middle age.
McAllen was about to move on to the next guy—
When the man’s eyes snapped open, shocking the hell out of him. “Jesus!”
The survivor’s voice came thin and cracked. “Help me.”
McAllen leaned over the man. “Whoa, God, buddy, yeah, yeah, I will. And you help me. We’re looking for a guy, a Russian colonel.”
“Sergeant!” hollered Friskis from the doorway. “I think we got another squad. They’re moving up!”
“Okay, get ready to fall back. We have a survivor here. Jonesy, check the others!”
McAllen’s assistant emerged from the cockpit. “Roger that. Pilots are dead,” he reported, his voice muffled by his mask.
The black man grabbed McAllen’s arm. “Please, my daughters need me.”
“Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get you out of here. What’s your name?”
“Charles Shakura.”
“All right, Mr. Shakura, stay calm.” McAllen carefully unfastened the man’s seat belt. “But listen to me, man. The colonel. We need to know about that Russian colonel. He’s supposed to be onboard.”
Shakura grimaced.
Abruptly, gunfire began drumming on the outside of the fuselage—
And Jonesy came rushing forward from the back of the jet. “Looks like some civilians and officers, but no one’s cuffed, Sergeant.”
“Charlie, where’s the Russian?”
Shakura swallowed.
McAllen seized him by the collar. “Where is he?”
Shakura slowly blinked. “He got here by sub. We’re just the… just the decoy. He was never on this flight.”
McAllen’s shoulders slumped. He released Shakura and glanced over his shoulder at Jonesy.
“Well, I thought I was a Marine, not an actor,” snapped Jonesy. “And I just love being expendable.”
McAllen took a deep breath, composed himself. “All right. Doesn’t matter what’s going on here. Decoy, no decoy. We got a survivor. Help him out, get him strapped into a litter.”
Jonesy sighed in disgust. “You got it.”
Drawing in another deep breath, McAllen shifted outside, where Friskis and Szymanski had taken up firing position on their bellies alongside the fuselage, whose port side faced the tree line, now obscured in thick walls of gray smoke.
McAllen got on the radio with his platoon leader, shared the grim news that they were just part of a decoy mission but that they did have one survivor to rescue. The PL promised close air support within five minutes.
A pair of grenades exploded somewhere behind them. That would be the Russians trying to take out Gutierrez and his big gun. “Outlaw Six, this is One. Take Three and rally east to our second hill, over. We’re bringing up a survivor.”
“Roger that, One. On my way, out.”
McAllen and Jonesy moved Shakura out of the Learjet. As Jonesy unfurled the portable litter he had removed from his pack, Friskis and Szymanski kept the Russians busy, triplets of fire drumming repeatedly.
Somewhere in the distance, the whomping of helicopters began to grow louder.
Once Shakura was strapped in, McAllen called back the scout and radio operator from their firing positions and gave them the unenviable task of hauling the injured man back up the hillside. He and Jonesy would remain behind to cover.
“Go now!” he cried, and while the two men took off with their survivor, he and Jonesy set up on either side of the fuselage.
Not three seconds later, something remarkable and utterly breath-robbing occurred:
The damned Russians decided to storm the jet!
A wave of six troopers in masks appeared in the smoke not twenty meters away, running directly at McAllen, their rifles blazing, rounds punching into and ricocheting off the plane, popping in the mud, whizzing overhead.
Out of the corner of his eye, McAllen spotted at least as many troopers charging toward Jonesy.
“Oh my God, Ray! Here they come!” cried his assistant.
A terrible ache woke deep in McAllen’s gut as he realized he couldn’t get them all. Damn, there was too much life left in him. He hadn’t even found the right woman…
And he’d worked so damned hard to get where he was, a Force Recon warrior — swift, silent, and deadly — the eyes and ears of his commander.
How many training missions? How many real operations, including that big one in the mountains of Bulgaria, fighting those terrorist bastards, the Green Brigade?
And now the big war had just started, maybe the war to end all wars, and he’d barely had a chance to make his contribution to the fight.
His life wasn’t flashing before his eyes. That was a myth. But that ache, that solid, thick ache whispered like the Reaper in his ear, This is it. Time’s up. The bill’s come due.
He figured the best he could do was lay down some fire across their unarmored legs, try to drop all six of them as quickly as he could, and as they fell, he might be able to pan again with another salvo.