“We’re dancing,” said Danny. He fed the analyzed picture to the rest of his team, briefly summarizing the situation. The Osprey was tasked with neutralizing any resistance from the two men on the northern side of the atoll.
“Everyone hold your fire unless we’re fired on,” he reminded them. “You know the drill. Two—if they move toward the boat, sink it.”
“Aw, Cap,” said Powder. “Can’t we take it out for a spin first?”
“Hawk Leader to Whiplash One. You need another run?”
“Negative, Hawk Leader. Hold your orbit as planned. We’re going in.”
“Godspeed.”
The Quick Bird pilot threw everything he had into the helo’s turbine engines, flooing the gates with the remains of a thousand long-gone dinosaurs. The tail whipped around and the helicopter tilted hard, pulling two or three Gs as it swooped into an arc. Once pointed at his target, the pilot began to back off the throttle, and somehow managed to come at the island like a ballerina sliding across the stage.
The effect on his passengers, however, was more like what might be felt in the cab of a locomotive throwing on the brakes and reversing steam at a hundred miles an hour. Danny felt his boron vest pushing hard against his collarbone as the restraints took hold.
If felt damn good.
“We’re hot!” said the pilots as something red erupted on the left side of the island.
“Missiles in the air!” said Danny. He could see small pops of red near the dock. “Guns—fuckers! Let ’em have it!”
The mini-gun at the side of the Quick Birds’s cabin spit bullets toward the cottage. A burst from the ground, and the helo pirouetted to the side, flares popping as it whipped into a quick series of zigs and zags to avoid a shoulder-launched SAM. The missile sniffed one of the flares and shot through it, igniting above and behind the helicopter. The small scout shot downward in a rush; Danny threw his arm out in front of him as they hurtled toward the cottage area. The pilot slid the aircraft twenty feet from the ground, hurtling almost sideways over the rooftops. As they passed the cottages, Bison, sitting behind Danny, pointed his MP-5 out the open doorway and burned a magazine at one of the men on the ground. Flames burst from the cottage. Danny caught a glimpse of the man dropping his rifle and falling backward as the chopper spun away.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” screamed Danny, undoing his restraint to go down the rope.
Stoner grabbed the rope after Sergeant Liu disappeared. Even though he wore thick gloves, the friction burned his hands. He had taken the team’s smart helmet and carbon-boron best, but because the Whiplash issue seemed a bit bulky, had opted to use his own gloves. Obviously, a mistake, but it was too late to bitch about it now. He felt the dock under his boots and let go, collapsing into a well-balanced crouch.
Ten times hotter than he imagined, everything was exploding. In the back of his mind, he heard his boss’s boss, the Director of Operations himself, bawling him out for going ahead with only six guys in broad daylight.
Yet the atoll’s defenders throwing up all this lead and blowing up so much equipment—for surely that was what they were doing—argued that hitting them as soon as they could had been the right thing to do.
Should have hit it last night then.
Liu was at the head of the dock, onshore already. The boat was on Stoner’s right. He pulled his knife and went to it, slashed the two lines, then kicked it away. Something pushed him down onto the bobbing boards—it was the helicopter rocking back after firing a salvo of rockets. Thick cordite and smoke, and something like diesel fuel, choked his nose. A fireball erupted; the water churned with a stream of steady explosions. Now all he smelled was burning metal.
These bastards had SAMs and all sorts of weapons.
“Hey, forward, damn it!” yelled someone.
It was Powder, waving through the smoke on the beach. Stoner pushed himself to his knees, stumbling toward the land.
By the time Danny made it to the ground, the gunfire had already stopped. The defenders’ stores of ammunition and weapons continued to explode, and the cottage burned bright orange, flames towering well overhead.
They’d rigged it. Bird One tried smothering the fire by flying over it, but this only made the flames shoot out the side and was dangerous as hell. Finally, Danny told them to back off. The inferno continued, doubling its height in triumph and sending a burst of flames exploding above.
“Team One, move back,” he told Bison and Pretty Boy. “Get back to that fence of vegetation. Powder, what’s your situation?”
“Two dead gomers. Can’t see what else is going on with all this smoke. We’re on the beach near the dock.”
“You got a way out of there?”
“Same way we came.”
“How’s Stoner?”
“Got a smile on his face,” said Powder. “I think we oughta draft him, Captain.”
Danny doubted the CIA officer was doing anything but frowning. The truth was, the operation was a fiasco. The only saving grace was that none of theirs were injured—a minor miracle, given all the lead and explosives in the air.
What listening post was worth this?
“We’ll wait for the fire to go down; then we’ll inspect the building,” Danny said. “Everybody just relax. Powder, those bodies near you got Ids?”
“Negative. Look Chinese, but no dog tags or anything. No names.
There was one more burst of fire from the walls of the hut, followed by an explosion that seemed to shake the island up and down an inch. Danny half-expected a volcano to open up in front of him.