“What?” asked Turnbull.
No one answered.
Langer peered around the corner and then waved them forward. The team moved swiftly between the buildings, trying to stay out of sight from the guards on the control tower.
They made it to the final shed. Beyond it was the flight line and living area for the aviation unit.
Gunfire and a stream of tracers erupted from the tower, but not directed at them. The second group was drawing fire somewhere to the north.
“Shit,” hissed Turnbull. “Larry, the truck. The truck!”
Langer nodded and tore off.
“Follow me!” Turnbull said to the team, rushing around the corner.
The tower was right ahead of them, and the M240 machine gunner was spraying down a target on the other side of the complex. He was certainly not looking at the dozen guerrillas approaching from his flank.
Turnbull switched the M4 to AUTO and aimed as he ran. His weapon erupted in a long burst that sent sparks off the tower walls, but missed the gunner.
That was okay – the intent was to suppress him and get him to let up on his own fire. It worked.
The rest of the teams fired too as they ran. Sparks were ricocheting off the tower and the catwalk. There were at least three shapes up there now. One got off a burst from his rifle before someone’s bullet hit him and he went down. The other two soldiers were taking cover.
As the team charged, Turnbull waved three of them off toward the foot of the tower and the stairwell. The rest followed Turnbull’s lead. There was more shooting now. Apparently the other team had come out of cover and started suppressing the control tower. But that meant they were not going to be able to do their other mission.
Turnbull darted past the tower and headed toward the trailers and admin buildings at a full run.
Langer flung open the door of a big, green Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, or HEMTT, as the troops called them. The cab of the low-slung, vaguely insect-like truck was empty. The steering wheel was chained to a ring welded into the floor – a not-unreasonable precaution since the vehicle had no keys. Langer leaned his AK against the wheel and unlimbered the bolt cutters, set them on a link and squeezed. It snapped through. He cut the other side of the link, pulled the chain remnant out of the steering wheel, and climbed up to the metal landing outside the cab.
“Hey!” Someone was behind him.
Langer swung around. It was a guard with a M4 aimed at him. There was a burst of fire from the tower and the man’s eyes flicked to the light of the tracers for just a second as Langer drew the .357 from his belt.
The man’s eyes returned to Langer in time to see the barrel of the silver pistol, and they both fired at the same time. The .357 round caught the soldier in the face and he spun backwards and fell in a heap.
Larry pulled himself painfully into the cab and sat. Exhaling, he turned the power switches and hit the button to start the engine. It turned over. With it grumbling roughly, he only then reached down to check the hole in his gut just below his rib cage.
“Damn,” he said and looked around. There was a rag on the passenger seat, not exactly clean, but the best he could do on short notice. He took it and jammed it into the wound. That still left the hole out his back, which he could feel leaking. He pushed back in his seat to put pressure on it. It could wait.
He had work to do.
Turnbull led the remainder of his team at a run toward the two large OD green trailers parked next to the tarmac. Wires and cables ran from them and their roofs had dishes and antennae. Turnbull was almost to the foot of the closest one when the door at the top of the metal stairs opened. It was a hatless sergeant in a People’s Air Force uniform standing there with a Beretta.
Turnbull put a burst into him.
With the other team rushing the second trailer, Turnbull pumped up the stairs and opened the door. There were two more Air Force techs, standing in front of a bank of TV monitors showing Predator footage.
Turnbull emptied his mag then jumped back down to the ground. There was more firing in the trailer next door.
“Crash the drone and then burn the trailer,” he said to one of his troops. The guerrilla pulled a pair of two-liter bottles filled with gasoline from his pack and went up.
Turnbull slammed a fresh magazine home.
“Let’s go,” he said, charging toward the housing units.
The HEMMT picked up speed as it rolled toward the flight line. Various soldiers were running around, most without weapons, confused and disorganized. Most of them dodged the speeding truck, but not all. The heavy truck did not even notice them.
The crew of the fuel truck saw it coming and sprinted away. Langer laughed behind the wheel, slamming the rear end of the fueler with the side of the HEMMT, tearing off a swath of steel. Raw JP-8 fuel poured onto the tarmac.
Langer groaned – the jolt hurt like hell. But then he smiled.
Up ahead was the row of Blackhawks.
Behind him on the tower, the team Turnbull sent up was shooting it out at close quarters with the surviving guards. The second team was now moving to its two targets, the Predator drone hangers and the maintenance crew housing unit.
Turnbull headed to where the pilots slept, firing a burst through the door as he ran. When he got to it, he kicked it open.
No pilots.
The back door was open and he ran across the sleeping quarters to it. Out the door, in the moonlight, he could see shapes sprinting across the field, many shapes – it looked like the maintenance crews had cleared out too. Some of the guerrillas were shooting at them from the other building. Several fell.
Turnbull didn’t bother.
The HEMMT smashed through the tail section of the first Blackhawk, spinning it around so it slammed into the side of the speeding truck as it passed. Glass and steel fragments flew and the truck shook, sending jolts of agony through his gut.
But Langer didn’t care.
He smashed through the second, and the third, and then the fourth. The Blackhawks behind him lay as twisted ruins, but ahead lay four Apaches.
Langer smiled even wider, and hit the gas.
The fueler at the far end of the field was on fire. Turnbull watched as the HEMMT slammed through four Blackhawks and then four Apaches in succession. The Apaches crumpled, one after another, like tinfoil, when the armored truck slammed into them, flying off at wild angles, their tails cracking and their rotors snapping. In the end, eight fearsome aircraft were replaced by eight piles of bent, broken sheet metal.
Turnbull grinned. That was a couple hundred million old US dollars down the commode.
He looked at his watch. Time to load up the spoils and go. He trotted back toward the complex where the others were hard at work.
There was one Predator in the hanger, and it too was a smoldering ruin. Someone had liberated one of the hummers with a .50 caliber machine gun turret and brought it over, then riddled the drone with rounds. The big guns on the HUMVEEs would come in handy; they were coming with them back home. Other guerrillas were gathering the ordnance and ammo that they would be liberating.
“Get those 5-ton trucks over here and load this up,” Turnbull ordered. With no air threat to worry about, he could safely drive back in the enemy’s vehicles. But one that would not be joining them was Langer’s HEMMT. It looked like hell as it wheezed and groaned on its way over to join him.
“Nice job, Larry,” Turnbull said, smiling, when the door opened.
“Yeah, I clipped their wings,” Langer said, rising up and then spilling out of the cab. Turnbull caught him before he hit the pavement. His hand was soaked in something warm that Turnbull knew all too well.