Then he turns to the captured Bandit.
“You smelling of fear,” he says without exaggerating. A dark stain on the prisoner’s groin tells that he has wetted himself. “You speak English?”
“I do, sir! Please don’t hurt me!”
“What’s your name?”
“Bruiser, sir!”
A few fighters grin. In his present state nothing justifies the Bandit’s pretentious nickname.
“Calling me ’sir’ won’t help you, Bruiser,” Collins says, he too smiling under the shemagh. “If you want us to be friends, you have to be cooperative. If you want us to be enemies—”
“No, no!”
“Attaboy. First question: is this your only base?”
“That’s correct.”
“Do you expect more Bandits to arrive, and if yes, when and how many?”
“Today. About three hundred.”
Collins frowns. “What? Three hundred?”
“Yes. With two Antonovs… see, I’m cooperative! Please don’t hurt me!”
“When exactly?”
“In about two hours.”
“Call signs, passwords, landing protocols?”
“Hitman One and Two. They will make contact before landing. I will tell them if everything is clear on the ground. Hitman One will land first with enough men to secure the area, then the rest will disembark.”
Collins turns to his two team leaders and Ahuizotl who has just arrived. “Let’s get outside for a minute.”
Away from the Bandit’s ears, the Lieutenant gives the three men a concerned look and recaps the situation for the sniper.
“Three hundred hostiles expected in two airplanes, due in two hours. How do we deal with this?”
“What kind of airplane?” the sniper asks.
“He said Antonovs. Probably Cubs, since nothing bigger can land here.”
“You mean the An-12.”
“Yup.”
Ahuizotl reflects over their options and shakes his head. “I can take down a chopper by hitting the pilots. An Antonov — no way. Not from this angle.”
“We could just scare them away if we send enough bullets in their direction,” team leader Walker suggests.
“Risky,” Ahuizotl says. “They might have tail gun turrets and blast us from above.”
“Besides, we need to annihilate them and not just scare away,” Collins observes. “The whole thing wouldn’t make much sense if they come back later. Three hundred of these sons of bitches, Jesus! We need more firepower than we have.”
“It’s a small airstrip,” Harper says. “They can land one airplane at a time. Means we’ll have to face only a hundred and fifty, I guess. If we have good cover, and use the SAW and blooper wisely… it could work.”
“Those Antonovs have rear ramps, right?” Collins asks.
Getting the Lieutenant’s idea, the sniper points to the airstrip. “They will probably land from the north. The fighter is right—if we have the machine gun positioned at the right angle, we can hit the tail gun to neutralize it and then the ramp as soon as it goes open.”
“Gonna be like bloody Omaha,” Walker remarks.
“I don’t like the idea,” Collins says after a moment of thinking. ”If I were aboard and see this happening, I’d raise the ramp immediately, turn the aircraft around and take off. One SAW won’t be able to stop a big airplane.”
“Then what do you suggest, sir?”
“We’ll have to wait until they begin disembarking. The airplane will be a sitting duck while the men and cargo inside are being unloaded. First, you’ll take out their command element with the long rifle. Then we strike from behind the ruins.”
“What about the second airplane?”
“We’ll have to deal with that another day.”
“How will the sniper identify the Charlie Echo?” Walker asks. “These Bandits or whatever look all the same to me.”
“Bandits are like Neanderthals,” Ahuizotl says with a smile. “Look for the biggest, meanest son of bitch and you’ll find the boss. I’m sure he will make for a nice big target.”
Collins nods. “Then we mow down the rest. Go back to your position on the hilltop and send the girl down. I need her to listen to what that bastard says in Russian when the airplanes report in.”
“Will do,” Ahuizotl replies and hastily makes his way back to the hill.
74
The Antonov An-12, Russia’s reply to the C130 Hercules and bearing the NATO call sign Cub, has a cruising speed of 415 miles per hour. With a normal payload of 44,000 pounds, it would take about five and a half hours to cover the distance between Minsk and the New Zone. However, each of the two Antonovs arranged by Sultan have about a hundred and fifty men cramped inside, much more than the ninety passengers the aircrafts would normally carry. The conveyor belt with crates holding ammunition, weapons and other supplies make the cargo bay even more congested. To make fuel consumption cope with the heavy load, the airplanes fly below cruising speed; this adds two more, painfully long hours to the haul.
Cramped in the cargo bay without any comfort, the Bandits who were in such high spirits when leaving the Zone soon started to grumble. After a while, the first fights broke out over places that appeared just a little more comfortable than the cargo bay’s bare metal floor. A veteran Bandit knocked a former Stalker out when the latter retched next to him, prompting other Loners to take his side. The ensuing brawl resulted in a few bruised noses and blue eyes on either side, making Tarasov wonder if these self-proclaimed conquerors of the New Zone would begin killing each other as soon as they reached it.
The boring and uncomfortable flight took a heavy toll on Nooria. She became sick twice, using the empty wrappers of the last US-made rations they had as a vomit bag. A Stalker who was about to scold her quickly changed his mind upon seeing the scorn in Tarasov’s eyes.
At least they had their own corner close to the cockpit, separated from the Bandits by Ferret, Buryat and the few Stalkers on their side. As time passed, Nooria and Hartman looked out of the bullseye window more and more often, hoping to at last see the ochre, undulating terrain of the New Zone’s northern reaches appear.
Together with the airplane’s sudden descent, Tarasov’s watch tells him that they must be really close when the head of the Belarusian radio operator appears in the hatch leading to the cockpit.
“Hey, you guys from the New Zone! You better come and see this!”
Thinking that the crew member only wants to show them the New Zone, Tarasov and the Top follow him indifferently.
“Termez,” the navigator says, pointing forward in the glass cupola on the airplane’s nose.
What they see causes the two men look at each other with deep concern. The town appears to have been swept over by a tsunami of destruction; giant waves of sand have buried a long stretch of the Amu-Darya river and the refugee camps next to the town. Smoke rises from the airfield where the runways appear broken, as if torn to pieces by a massive tremor. A long column of vehicles is blocking the road to the north, probably cars trying to escape the disaster-stricken town. Mi-24 gunships are circling above. They appear to fire at targets on the ground.
“Holy mother of Jesus Christ,” the Top murmurs.
“What the hell happened here?” the Belarusian pilot asks in English. His accent is so heavy though that Tarasov seriously doubts if any ground control could understand him. Judging by his white hair and equally white moustache, he is not a regular aviator anymore but rather someone hired by Sultan’s cronies; probably eking out his meager pension by flying dangerous and usually illegal missions.
“That was a dust storm,” Hartman tells him. “My guess is those Hinds were shooting at mutants who crossed the river in the storm’s wake.”