"Shit. One casualty here, too."
"Who?"
"Who the fuck do you think, Zack? You sent me in alone, remember?"
"I know that, dickhead. I didn't know if you were talking about Oryx."
"Oryx is fine."
"You get a boo-boo?"
"Something like that."
"Where are you hit?"
"Upper back, with an arrow."
"Uhhh, repeat last?"
"I got shot with a damn arrow. Haven't taken it out yet. I'm working up to it."
"So there's an arrow sticking out of your back? For real?"
"Affirm."
"What the hell? Ain't nobody shooting arrows around here."
"Well, I didn't fucking back into it, Zack! I never saw the shooter. Beats taking a 7.62 from one of those PKMs the army's blasting back there."
"An arrow. I'll be damned."
"Look, Zack. I can get to you guys. I'm pulling into my hide right now. I can zip-tie Oryx to a support beam and haul ass back to you. I've got my Glock and a mag left, maybe I can-"
"Negative. You stay put and protect the package for now. I don't need you charging in like Custer and losing the president in the process. We'll keep trying to wiggle out of this shit on our own."
"Understood."
"How you gonna get that arrow out?"
"I'm going to ask the president to help me."
Zack whistled. "He may be disinclined to cooperate."
"Yeah. I'll have to persuade him."
"Well, good luck with that. But while you're over there playing cowboys and Indians, the grown-ups are shooting real guns in my neck of the woods. So get your principal secure and your shit straightened out and check back with me."
"Roger that."
Zack disconnected the call. Just as he looked back up, gunfire from a heavy machine gun hit the north side of the building, scattering plaster and concrete through the dusty air of the room like thick smoke. All three men dropped to their chests and returned fire into the wall. Zack shouted into his mike, "Come on, Dan! Clear my fuckin' sky already!" But his words were drowned out by the incredible noise.
THIRTY-EIGHT
By eight a.m., Whiskey Sierra was completely pinned down from the west and from above. Spencer had scooted back into the room with the other men. He'd taken a three-round burst from an AK-47 into his big chest plate and was bleeding from several shrapnel injuries to his neck and face.
Dan was still up on the roof. He'd found some concealment from the chopper and was trying to get an opportunity to bring it down, but he would need to expose himself to do so, and the Hip was circling too damn close to try it. The other four team members were flat on the ground of the first floor. The machine gun on the back of the jeep Brad had almost rear-ended earlier had found a crew, and it had been pulverizing the portion of the mall where Whiskey Sierra was hiding. Zack and his team could not even get their heads up to return fire, so withering was the enemy's attack.
"Dan, can you make it to the side of the roof to get a shot on this machine gun?"
"No fucking way, boss. The Hip is hovering right in front of my position. I stick my head out, and I'm going to lose it. I can't even engage it till it moves away." The noise of the helicopter came through the headsets with Sierra Three's transmission.
"Roger that."
Brad shouted over the noise from the incoming fire, "They are going to flank us here in a second!"
"Yeah," agreed Zack. It was his job, as the team leader, to think of a way out of this seemingly impossible predicament.
He looked at the hallway. Other than the windows and front door, it was the only exit to the room. "Spence, think the GOS has taken that next room yet?"
"I wouldn't doubt it. Lots of access from the street."
Hightower nodded. "Okay. All elements, here's what we're going to do, break. This ain't pretty, but it's all I got. Brad, on my command, you are going to throw all your smoke as far as you can out the window towards the west, try to get it on the road between us and the machine gun. Dan, stay down, but throw your smoke from the roof in the same direction, as far as you fucking can."
"Roger, boss."
"Spencer, throw your smoke out the window to the east, into the market between the malls. How copy?"
"Good copy."
"I'll pop smoke along with Spence. Then, on my command, Spencer goes out the window to the east, fires at the Hip, and hauls ass. You're going to try to get the chopper to go after you. As soon as he does-"
Dan finished the transmission. "I'll dump eighty rounds from the HK up its ass."
"Good man. Then Spencer continues on to Mall Bravo. Tries to make the GOS think we've relocated over there, while the rest of us keep heading south in this complex via the second floor."
"Roger that," said Spencer. Going out into the open like that was all but a death sentence, but the man did not show a moment's hesitation or an ounce of fear.
"We'll link up as soon as possible," said Zack.
"Sounds good," Sierra Five said. Still no indication that he knew he was likely about to die.
"Brad, Milo is your responsibility."
"I got him, but we're going to have to shit-can his gear so he can keep moving."
"Do it." A pause for Brad to get the assault vest and backpack and utility belt off his injured patient. And then, "All right, guys, let's make this happen. Go!"
Smoke grenades arced out of the windows and off the roof. Men under direct fire scrambled to their knees. Milo, though injured and weak, rolled to his knees and fired his borrowed weapon, threw a fragmentation grenade to the west.
"Frag out!"
Within seconds opaque red and white smoke had spurted from canisters in the streets on two sides of the building.
Spencer had unhooked much of the gear from his back and hips, and with only his UZI, a pistol, and a few magazines, he leapt out of the window of the shop, began sprinting across forty meters of market stalls and open ground to try and make it to the other strip mall. He was somewhat obscured by thick white and red smoke, but above and behind him the Hip turned on its axis and plunged through the air after him.
The big black operator slowed and turned to fire at it, raised his impotent weapon for a long burst, but the Hip fired first. The chain guns ripped up the wooden stalls to the left and right of him, and Spencer turned and began running again.
The Hip moved closer, creating distance between itself and the roof of the building behind it. Dan, Sierra Three, stepped out of his low concealment and brought the machine gun to his shoulder.
He lined the big rifle's red dot sight on the tail rotor assembly at the back of the big bird. He opened fire with quick controlled bursts to combat the recoil, and he did not stop, firing eighty rounds and turning the barrel white-hot.
A small puff of black smoke appeared in seconds. The aircraft shuddered and angled to the right, breaking off his chase of the man in the market. He banked harder and harder. Dan thought he was trying to fly back around and engage him, but an explosion at the rotor assembly, much larger than the original puff of smoke, sent the Mi-17 spinning on the vertical midline of its main rotor.
It was eighty feet in the air, completely out of control, and Dan ducked back into the stairwell with a warning to Sierra Five, "Spence! He's goin' down hard! Get clear of the market!"
The tail of the Mi-17 slammed into the second story of the mall Zack and the majority of Sierra Five occupied. It dipped forward and hit the ground nose first. It was only a drop of thirty feet or so, but the big machine was moving at speed, and the resulting explosion and fireball ensured there would be no survivors.
Hightower knew exactly what happened to the Hip, though he had not seen it take the hits from Dan's rifle nor had he watched it auger into the dirt between the two shopping centers. But he heard all the noises and the transmissions from his man on the roof, and when the chopper burst into flames, he and the two men with him were just coming out of the second-floor stairwell and passing a window, and the light and heat off his left shoulder left no doubt as to the fate of the Mi-17 and those aboard.