Crocker extended his forearms and eased himself down. Based on the sloppy military tactics of the jihadists, he had to believe they were losing and would soon be retreating. When that happened, Assad’s forces would return.
He pushed the button that lit up the dial of his Suunto watch. Already 0243. Things were proceeding too slowly for comfort. If they wanted to get back to the border before sunup, they had to pick up the pace.
“Manny, Deadwood here. What’s happening?”
“The StunRays are in place.” The StunRays were special handheld hardware Mancini had brought along.
“Good.”
“Rojas?” Crocker asked into his head mic.
“I need two more minutes.”
“Time’s fucking precious.”
“I know, boss,” Suarez whispered from two hundred feet inside the hangar, where he had found a pile of propane tanks near some parked vehicles. He was trying to orchestrate the biggest possible diversion.
“Breaker, can you hear me?” Crocker asked.
“Breaker? Report.”
“We’re…” His voice broke up.
“Breaker. Breaker?”
Davis’s voice came through. “I read you.”
“What’s your status?”
“We’re in, boss.”
“The tunnel?”
“Roger.”
“Excellent. Romeo with you?”
“He’s bitching like usual. Scratched his pinky.”
“The canisters there?”
“We count six of ’em.”
“Only six?”
“How many did you expect?”
“Wait. Here comes Rojas. Hold on.”
He saw Suarez hugging the opposite wall, moving as fast as possible while trying not to be seen. Through his NVGs, Crocker eyeballed the clearance in all directions, rose into a crouch, and signaled Suarez to join him on the south side of the bunker.
When Suarez arrived, his chest heaving, he readied the radio-controlled detonator in his hand.
“C4’s set. Time to blow?”
“Hold on. Let’s move alongside the bunker first. Maintain a safe distance.”
They proceeded another hundred feet and stopped. All the action behind them seemed to have shifted farther north and west, which was ideal for their escape.
Crocker, into the head mic: “Manny, report. Ready with the truck?”
“Near the gate, Deadwood. Ready. Over.”
“Breaker and Romeo?”
“In the tunnel. Ready.”
“All right. Signal to launch!”
Suarez lowered the black button and a split second later, the bunker emitted a tremendous roar that shook the ground and sent a huge column of light, flames, and debris shooting out the back. Crocker and Suarez didn’t stick around to watch. They ran the rest of the two hundred yards in a crouch toward the opposite end-the front entrance to B3-hoping to meet Mancini soon after he entered the gate.
Mancini, meanwhile, drove the Ford pickup up to the gate and came out of the cab shouting gibberish at the two guards, who started running toward him. They readied their AK-47s and ordered him to the ground. He stepped behind the cab and pushed a button that activated the six XL-2000 StunRays he had bolted to the forward stabilizer bar of the truck.
To say the light they emitted was intense was a huge understatement. An aircraft landing light put out about one-tenth the light of only one of these little devices. The collimated beams of incoherent optical radiation temporarily blinded both Syrian guards. In fact, the light was so bright they became completely disoriented. One soldier covered his face with his arm and stumbled backward.
Mancini put them both down with suppressed blasts from his M7A1. Then he got back into the Ford, rammed through the fence, swung it around, backed in, and lowered the gate. It was like picking up furniture at Walmart.
“Vehicle in position,” he barked into his head mic. “Let’s do this! Over.”
Cradling the M7A1, he knelt beside the back gate of the truck and got ready to start loading. A Syrian guard to his left opened fire, and he responded.
“Clear?” Davis shouted from the steps to the entrance to the tunnel where he waited with Akil. Both men were drenched with sweat.
“Clear!” Mancini shouted back, now that the guard had run away. “What did you guys find?”
“We’ve got six of these babies.”
“Hand ’em over.”
Mancini set down the M7A1 and took two of the forty-pound canisters at a time, one under each arm, and started to load them into the back of the pickup. Each canister was wrapped in black plastic.
“Where’s Crocker?” Akil asked when Mancini came back for the second round of canisters.
“Dragging ass, per usual.”
Akil smiled.
They worked fast as military sirens sounded in the distance. By the time Crocker and Suarez arrived, everything was loaded.
“That it?” Crocker asked.
“Done. Where the fuck were you?” Akil responded.
Mancini pointed to a Russian S-125 Pechora missile system on a truck parked at the entrance to B3. “Looks like two more there!” he exclaimed.
“Two more what?”
“Warheads. They contain sarin.”
Crocker saw that they matched the size and shape of the canisters in the truck bed.
“I can dislodge them,” Mancini said. “Spare some civilian lives.”
“How long?”
“Give me five to seven.”
Crocker glanced at his watch and nodded. “Five. Davis, you help him.”
The rest of them guarded the pickup as the fierce battle raging in the distance moved north. As Mancini handed down the first warhead, an armored vehicle appeared from the other side of B3, speeding toward them.
“Incoming!” exclaimed Akil. “Three o’clock!”
“Keep your heads down and cover my ass!” Crocker shouted.
The.30 cal on the armored truck opened up, bullets tearing into the concrete around the pickup and ricocheting. Crocker knelt and fired one of the PG-7VR rounds from the RPG-7 he’d been carrying.
Whoosh!
The PG-7VR maintained a straight line four feet off the ground. The first 64mm round detonated against the vehicle’s reactive armor block, and the second 105mm warhead penetrated the gap created to take out the vehicle itself-just as it was designed to do.
Within seconds the truck was a ball of flaming white-hot metal.
“Bingo.”
“What next?”
“How about we get the hell out of here?”
Seven minutes after the “launch” order had been given, they loaded the last sarin warhead into the pickup and packed into the cab, shouting, “Go, professor! Take us back to Turkey!”
Mancini gunned the Ford F-250 through the gate and cut the lights. “Turkey, here we come,” he muttered.
“Piece of cake.”
They rendezvoused with the Mercedes Sprinter hidden in the concrete culvert where Hassan was waiting nervously, distributed the canisters between the two vehicles, and headed back toward the highway. Almost immediately they ran into problems. The combat between the Assad forces and the jihadists had resulted in impassable roads, which they bypassed by going off-road and driving across the flat plain-more difficult for the Sprinter than for the F-250.
Crocker told Akil, now at the wheel of the Ford, to slow down and maintain a speed of thirty-five.
Assad’s guys were pissed off, so they’d shot up some flares, which took away the SEALs’ cover. Now, to make things worse, attack helicopters were up in the air patrolling-at least one SA 342 Gazelle and a couple of Russian-manufactured Mil Mi-24s.
“So much for what Katie said about there being no helicopters at the air base,” Crocker commented.
“Who’s Katie?” Akil asked.
“Katie, the analyst at Ankara Station. The Asian chick.”
“She cute?”
“Just keep your eyes on where you’re going.”
One of the 24s bore down on them. Before its.50 cal guns opened up, Akil hung a sharp right on a little dirt path with homes strung along it. In the process he nearly flipped the truck.