Men were still coming off the Osprey, easy targets.
“Get the machine guns up!” yelled Danny. “Get the bastards on the cliff down! Go!”
More pirates came up the cliff and began to fire, bullets blazing everywhere. Something exploded behind him; as he turned to look, he saw the right wing of the Osprey break apart, struck by a mortar shell that had the incredibly bad luck to land on the engine housing and detonate. The aircraft veered sideways, spun forward, then sailed toward the water.
“Son of a bitch!” yelled Boston into his open mike.
Danny threw one of his grenades toward the cliff where he’d 322
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seen the muzzle flashes. Someone else had the same idea, and their grenade exploded first, followed quickly by Danny’s.
Jumping to his feet, Danny ran forward, emptying the MP5 before diving flat on the ground, next to a Marine. He slapped a new magazine into his weapon and fired a few rounds. There was no return fire, but just to be sure, he threw another grenade.
“Come on, Marine, come on!” he yelled, jumping to his feet after it exploded. As Danny took a step, a fresh burst of automatic rifle fire stoked up from the right and he threw himself back down. He didn’t fire back; he had people in that direction and in the scramble now couldn’t be positive who was where. He tried crawling forward but the ground began percolating with gunfire.
“Let’s get that machine gun over here!” Danny yelled at the Marine he’d just left. The man lay a few feet behind him, still hugging the ground. “Yo, Marine, come on,” said Danny pushing back toward him. He grabbed for the man’s shoulder; it came without resistance. It was only then that he realized the man had been killed.
Aboard the Wisconsin
2350
ZEN STARED AT THE OSPREY AS IT FLEW OVER THE CLIFF, UNsure exactly what was going on for a moment. Then he realized that the wing and engine had broken off and the aircraft was going down. The left rotor tried valiantly to hold the doomed MV-22 upright, but within a second or so the fuselage sagged to the right. The Osprey veered backward and then into a wide arc, slinging down toward the water. A fire-ball erupted from the aircraft, spitting in the direction of the terrorist village, as if the Osprey had spit at its enemy, a final insult before diving into the grave.
The screen flared as the rest of the MV-22 caught fire. It hit the water a moment later, debris, fire, and steam erupting as if from a volcano. Zen had already started to bring Hawk SATAN’S TAIL
323
Two over the area; he pressed the throttle against its stop, trying to accelerate.
“We have a downed aircraft,” he said. “Osprey. Bad. No chance of survivors.”
“Acknowledged,” said Dog.
“I’m bringing Hawk Two overhead and then will provide fire support for the landing team,” said Zen. “Where the hell are those Werewolves?”
“Werewolves are still three minutes out,” said Dog.
“They’re doing their best, Zen.”
“They’re going to have to do better.”
Aboard the Abner Read
2351
STORM STOOD OVER THE NEWLY INSTALLED WEREWOLF CONsole in the Tactical Warfare Center. “Let’s move it, let’s move it,” he told Ensign Young.
“I’m doing the best I can, sir.”
Best wasn’t good enough, Storm realized.
“Dreamland,” he said, turning to Jennifer Gleason. “Can you do anything with this or not?”
“Damn straight, if you let me,” she told him.
“Well do it. Go. Go, do it.”
She moved toward the console. The ensign hesitated, glancing back at Storm, then quickly jumped up.
“WEREWOLF CONTROL COMPUTER, OVERRIDE ESTABLISHED
programming, authorization JenJen4356,” said Jennifer, pulling on the headset.
She got a tone and instructions on the main screen: OVERRIDE.
DESIGNATE NEW ORDERS.
W1 & W2 WILL CONTINUE ON PRESENT COURSE UNTIL NEW ORDERS ENTERED.
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“Auto designate mode, full pilot command, disregard safety protocols, authorization JenJen4356. Disregard tactical encyclopedia, authorization JenJen4356.”
As soon as the computer acknowledged, Jennifer punched the function key to designate targets. The computer didn’t beep for some reason, failing to accept the command.
“Free-form mode,” she told the computer. “Sitrep on main screen,” she added, asking for a bird’s-eye view of the aircraft and the battlefield.
The sitrep failed to come up.
All right, she told herself, you’re not thinking clearly because your adrenaline is blasting. Take a deep breath and go back to the beginning.
She took two breaths, neither as deep and slow as she wanted, then called for the sitrep again. Again the image failed to come up. She was sure she’d done it right; there must be a glitch in the connection with the Dreamland circuit.
There wasn’t any time to figure out where the problem was; the Werewolves were almost at their target and would begin firing on their own as soon as they arrived.
“Manual Command,” she said. “Complete override. Authorization JenJen4356.”
MANUAL COMMAND.
“Trial mode. W1 is lead.”
TRIAL MODE. W1 IS LEAD.
“Good computer,” she said.
UNKNOWN COMMAND.
Jennifer reached to the pad of function keys on the left-hand side of the console, hitting key 3 for a video image. It was dark and the image was blurry, but she could see enough to make out the approaching cliffside.
“Werewolf to Whiplash commander, what’s the important target?” Jennifer asked.
“The buildings,” said Storm.
“I’m not asking you, I want Danny … Danny—Whiplash commander, where do you want the Werewolves?”
The reply came back garbled.
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325
“Jen, they’re pinned down on the ridge by mortar fire from below,” said Dog over the Dreamland circuit. “Zen is en route.”
“I’m there—give me the location. There’s a glitch in the system and I can’t get the data through you directly. I don’t have time to figure it out, but I can gun it manually.”
“McNamara will guide you in. I’m not even going to ask what’s going on over there,” added Dog.
“Talk to you later,” she said. “Kevin?”
“This is McNamara,” said Dog’s copilot. “Jen?”
“I have the Werewolves. Give me a rough idea where that mortar is so I can erase it.”
“Stand by.”
Northern Somalia,
on the ground
2355
DANNY TOOK THE MARINE’S MACHINE GUN. THE PLASTIC BOX
that contained the belt of 5.56mm slugs remained full; the Marine had two more boxes at his belt. A mortar round landed nearby; Danny grabbed the boxes and dragged the gun with him as he looked for better cover.
“Captain Freah, this is Werewolf.”
“Jennifer?”
“I’m going to take out the mortars. They’re firing from down near the beach.”
“Go for it,” said Danny, skidding into a shallow gully. He could just barely hear the roar of the Werewolves somewhere below, launching their rockets at the pirates on the beach.
He flipped the smart helmet’s screen into a sitrep mode, which should have shown him the location of his men. But the screen was blank; either something aboard the Wisconsin or in his unit had gone offline.
“Yo, Boston, where are you?” Danny asked over the short-range team radio channel.
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“We’re about twenty meters from the lip of the canyon,”
said the sergeant. “There’s a set of spider holes or maybe tunnels behind some of the rocks to the left. That’s where the ragheads are coming from. We’ve been trying to get some grenades down it but we haven’t made it. And they have a pretty good line of fire.”
“Do you have a good location?”