It was good to have a friend.
He rose and took two more plates from the rack, slipping them on the bar one at a time.
It would be good to go to the game. Baseball was a good thing.
Even if the hot dogs gave him heartburn.
Chapter 4
The Brothers were called to prayer as the sun set, joining Muslims around the world in turning toward Mecca to fulfill the requirements of their faith.
Just as the prayer was ending, a trio of small rockets arced over the advanced lookout posts and struck the guard posts at the main entrance. A split second later a half-dozen more struck the gutted bus used as the gate, obliterating it.
The rockets looked like Russian-made Grads. Which they were. Mostly.
Ordinary Grads were extremely simple weapons, mass-produced and exported around the word, including to Hezbollah, which used them against Israel. As originally designed, they sat in a tube and were fired. In the original version, the tubes were massed together and mounted on the back of a truck.
These three rockets were fired from tubes on the ground. But their rear sections included stabilizers and steering gear that made them considerably more accurate than the originals. The mechanisms were interlaced with explosives, which meant they disintegrated when they landed.
The real alteration was in the nose, where the explosive used an aluminum alloy mixed with a more common plastic explosive base to produce an explosive power some eleven times more destructive than the original warheads.
A tenth missile — this one unguided — flew a few feet farther, landing harmlessly on the roadway behind the post. The charge in it was stock, or at least appeared so. It failed to ignite properly, fuming but not exploding. This in fact was its intent: evidence for anyone who had a chance to see it that the attack had been launched by a rival group.
A dozen men died instantly. The other fighters in the camp reacted with indignation, grabbing their rifles and rushing to defend the camp and avenge the insult to their beliefs. They were met with a hail of gunfire from the Marines, who had spent the past two hours creeping up the hills into position. At roughly the same moment, another dozen rockets were fired at two sniper posts and four gun positions overlooking the camp. The sniper positions were essentially depressions in the rocks, and firing so many missiles at them was arguably overkill; the resulting explosions caused small landslides, not only obliterating the men there but turning the positions into exposed ravines that could no longer be used for defense.
Even as the dust from the rocket strikes was settling, the first mortar shells began raining down on the positions. These were standard-issue, Marine Corps high explosive M720 rounds, armed with M734 Multioption fuses set for near surface burst — not fancy, especially compared to the weapons Whiplash was deploying, but extremely effective. Fired from a range of roughly 3,000 meters, the rounds exploded behind the first wave of enemy troops, then walked inward toward the defenses, in effect sweeping the enemy toward the front line.
Danny had a bird’s-eye view of the explosions as they rocked the southern side of the camp. He and the rest of the Whiplash team had jumped from the back of an Osprey moments before the first rockets were launched. All were wearing glide suits, which allowed them to guide their free fall into precise routes specified by the GPS module in their smart helmets.
In contrast to the noisy action at the “front” of the camp, the Whiplash team’s descent was entirely silent and, in the dark, practically invisible.
“Target area,” Danny told the helmet. The view changed to a square roughly fifty by twenty meters at the eastern end of the cluster he was assaulting. A red box appeared around two shadows at the left side of the box — armed men who might present trouble. They had just manned a bunkered security post.
“ICS, target and eliminate enemy in designated box A3,” Danny said, this time talking through MY-PID to the integrated combat system aboard the AB-2C that had joined Whiplash for the operation.
The AB-2C was a specially modified version of the B-2A, prepared under Office of Special Technology supervision as part of the Air Force program to investigate replacements for the AC-130. The AB-2C was essentially just a test bed for the weapon system; it was very likely that the final design would be completely automated. But in the meantime, the two men and one woman aboard as crew relished the chance to show what they and their aircraft could do.
Unlike her conventional gunship forebears, the modified stealth bomber carried no howitzers or cannons. Instead, there were two laser weapons in what had been the Spirit’s bomb bay. Descendants of the Firestrike weapon first developed by Northrop Grumman, the lasers were capable of sending a directed beam of just over 100 kW into a target.
The forward laser of the AB-2C burned holes in the skulls of the two mujahideen manning the post in a matter of milliseconds. The crew then sought other targets, concentrating first on the prepositioned machine guns, cooking off their ammunition so they couldn’t be used against the Marines.
Meanwhile, Danny did one last check of the target area and the descending squad before manually deploying his parachute. Though not absolutely necessary, the chute allowed for a softer, surer landing — and not coincidentally, was a hell of a lot easier on his knees.
“I’m in,” said Sugar, landing just to his left on the roof of the building in the center of the targeted compound.
Danny touched down a few seconds later. He quick-released his chute gear and sprinted toward the rooftop defense position. Sugar had already secured it, ramming what looked like a small stopper in the mouth of the machine gun in place there.
“Fire in the hole!” she yelled, somewhat dramatically.
Danny turned away as the charge in the stopper ignited. The blast ripped back the barrel of the gun, rendering it impotent. The sound was lost in the crescendo of the attack near the front gate.
“Let’s go inside,” said Danny as the other two members of his fire team reached the roof.
Melissa was thrown against her restraints as the Osprey pitched hard to get on a new course, avoiding the MC-17 swooping in low over the compound. As the black cargo aircraft came in, two large containers trundled down the interior rail system to the rear bay doors. The large rectangular boxes looked like smaller versions of the shipping containers that carried so much freight around the world. Long droguelike parachutes deployed as the boxes left the aircraft, slowing their descent just enough to allow the cushioned bottoms to properly absorb the blow from the fall.
The flat screen at the forward station in the Osprey’s hold received input from the MC-17’s target-drop system; it declared the boxes had hit exactly 13 and 27 centimeters from their “optimum” positions.
“Good enough for government work,” joked the crew chief, watching over Melissa’s shoulder.
As they hit the ground near the larger citadel, the sides of the large crates unfolded, revealing a quartet of TinkerToy-like objects on a platform. These odd contraptions, known to the Whiplash team simply as Bots, could be configured for a variety of tasks. The eight that had just landed were all equipped with M-134 Gatling guns, essentially the same weapons fired by a door gunner in a helicopter or a crewman on a riverine boat. Moving on tanklike treads, the bots fanned out around the larger of the two central compounds, taking up predesignated positions.
As the last bot reached its destination, all eight began to fire, peppering the exterior of the half-dozen buildings with a barrage of gunfire for exactly twenty-two seconds. As the last bullet hit, a dozen small munitions, launched from the “arms” of the Osprey Melissa was riding in, struck their targets, removing the roofs from the buildings.