One by one, the men filed outside, squinting in the darkness as they walked toward the hangar past a rattling sound in the brush nearby.
“What’s that noise?” Leo asked.
John poked Lev in the side and grinned. “Rattlesnakes.”
“What?”
“Snakes, Cardinal. They’re all over the place out here.”
Leo stopped in his tracks as he looked down at the ground around his feet. “Great … serpents.”
Leo heard snickering in the darkness as they all stepped up their pace toward the hangar. Rounding the corner, the men stopped dead in their tracks. All of the American choppers were still in place, and Ed Wilson was walking straight toward them.
“There you all are,” Wilson said. “I was just coming to talk to you boys.”
Lev placed his hands on his hips as he puffed on his cigar and eyed the tall pilot. “I thought you were pulling out, Colonel.”
“We are.” Wilson winked. “They told me I had to pull out, but they didn’t say when I was supposed to do it. Maybe we can all pull out together.”
The men stared at Wilson with the unspoken respect shared between warriors, and then, as if someone had given a command, the sound of motors roaring to life began drifting across the field.
Wilson jerked his head toward the distant hangars. “What’s going on over there?”
“Drones,” Alon said. “Jack just told us they can fly on autopilot. Sounds like they’re warming the little buggers up.”
With a huge grin spreading across his face, Colonel Wilson tossed his hat in the air and let out a loud whoop. “Well alright. Let’s get this show on the road, boys!”
Over the course of the next thirty minutes, the darkened airfield began to sound like a giant bee hive. One by one, the drones were taking off. They would climb and circle the field at stacked altitudes until they were all in the air, then begin streaking toward their predetermined target in mass.
Around the hangar, activity swelled to a frantic pace. Under the glare of the overhead lights, American and Israeli soldiers could be seen running back and forth, hauling their battlefield gear out to the waiting choppers before climbing onboard and strapping themselves in.
The scheduled launch time for the attack against Acerbi’s compound had been set for one o’clock in the morning. At exactly five minutes to one, the intense, bee-like sound of the drones overhead began to fade away as they were electronically released to fly in a wedge-shaped formation toward their target in the Mexican desert.
As soon as the drones were on their way, twenty Blackhawks and three MH-47 Chinook helicopters full of Special Forces soldiers lifted off. After waiting on the ground another thirty minutes until the slower moving aircraft were almost to the target, five Israeli F-15 fighter planes streaked down the runway and hugged the desert floor as they passed over the border. The mission to obliterate Rene Acerbi and his compound was under way.
CHAPTER 59
In the predawn darkness, a Mexican sentry lit a cigarette and settled back against the concrete wall that surrounded the missile he was guarding. He exhaled and watched the smoke drift upward in a long, curling arc through the camouflage netting above his head, all the while wishing he were home in bed with his wife. His eyelids were growing heavy, and all he could think of at the moment was sleep. But sleeping here came with a price, and if he ever hoped to see his family again, he would have to fight the urge to close his eyes, even for a moment.
El Jefe … that’s what the men called him. The boss. Acerbi’s reputation for calculated brutality was so frightening that even the most ruthless of killers avoided his gaze. His stare was almost otherworldly, and if one of his men ever disobeyed him or even balked at an order, they would soon find out what it was like to be in that other world, one far removed from the world of the living.
It was then, just as his eyes began to droop, that the sentry heard the sound. He listened. What was that? It sounded like bees … thousands of bees. Jumping to his feet, the sentry rushed up the steel ladder and out into the desert night. By now, the ground was shaking with a resonant hum, and as he looked overhead, he could see an endless line of dark shapes parting the air as they covered the sky a few hundred feet above his head.
A sudden alarm made the sentry jump. He threw down his cigarette and began pulling the camouflage netting away from the missile as he had been taught. Soon, other men were rushing to help him, all pointing upward at the endless formation of flying machines passing overhead … and then they heard a new sound. It was the sound of approaching helicopters-lots of helicopters.
Inside the lead chopper piloted by Ed Wilson, Lev and Alon looked down from the open side door at the moonlit desert rushing by below. Highlighted by the red lighting inside the chopper flying next to them, they could plainly see Leo and John sitting behind the door gunner. In total, there were twenty-four helicopters flying so close to the ground that Lev was actually worried about colliding with one of the tall cactus plants he saw whizzing by below.
Through the cockpit window, Wilson saw the first surface-to-air missile streak skyward before hitting one of the drones in a fiery explosion that lit up the desert and sent jackrabbits scurrying for their holes. Seconds later, a dozen more missiles shot into the sky, knocking out an equal number of the single-minded drones flying en masse over the ranch.
Then, inexplicably, the sky turned quiet as the remaining drones flew on without triggering a single missile.
Lev moved up between the two pilots in the cockpit of the Blackhawk and tapped Wilson on the shoulder. “What’s happening, Colonel?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Professor. Either a lot of missiles failed to fire for some reason, or they discovered that they were shooting million-dollar rockets at drones and adjusted their fire-control computers.”
Just then, an F-15 thundered over their heads and released a laser-guided smart bomb from under its right wing. Seconds later, Acerbi’s hangar evaporated in a shattering explosion that left nothing but scattered debris extending outward from a blackened, star-like pattern on the ground.
A second fighter spotted a large passenger jet that had just taken off from the runway behind Acerbi’s house and followed it up through the clouds. They had been told in their briefing to prepare for this-that Acerbi might be onboard any aircraft that took off during an attack, but whether or not he was onboard didn’t matter. For all practical purposes, this ranch was considered enemy territory, and any aircraft associated with it was considered a righteous target.
After locking onto the jet with his combat targeting computer, the pilot was just preparing to fire a Phoenix missile when he saw dozens of faces inside the lighted cabin, staring out into the darkness through the windows. Flying closer, he could see that several of the passengers were women, and two faces looked much smaller than the others. Were those children? Damn! What if this was a decoy full of innocent people, including women and children? Such was the fog of battle. The pilot knew he had to make a decision, and make it quickly. For one full agonizing minute, he ran through all his options, but in the end, he knew that he would never be able to justify taking down a plane that could be full of innocent people, even if it meant letting Acerbi escape. Cursing the lack of intelligence coming from the ground, he turned off his targeting computer and dove back down through the clouds to take out his primary target-the hacienda.
Descending at the speed of sound, the Israeli pilot let loose with one of his smart bombs, and as he watched it home in on the hacienda, he saw the flash from the launch of a surface-to-air missile as it blasted from its camouflaged hiding place and headed straight for his descending fighter plane. From that point on, it was a race between rocket power and afterburner as the F-15’s pilot turned and pointed the nose of his plane straight up in an attempt to outrun the deadly arrow now chasing him. Seconds later, a flash in the heavens signaled that the missile had either hit the fighter or exploded before it reached its target.