"Nomad, this is Night Rider. I see seven lights on the beach or in the water. Confirm your ID with a flash, over."
"Roger, Night Rider."
The IR lights flicked off one by one, then flicked on again.
"Okay, Nomad, we confirm your position. Everybody else is a bad guy. Heads down! Here come the goodies!"
"Roger that, Night Rider."
Selby reached for an intercom switch. "Colonel Carlotti," he said. "We have Nomad on the screen and we have positive identification."
"Very well, Major. You have my permission to fire."
"Gunners, this is Major Selby. Hang onto your jockstraps, boys. We've got firing command! Sergeant Zanowski?"
"Locked in, sir. The computer has it." The sensor operator grinned as he flicked off a row of switches, releasing the last of the armament safeties. "Firing phasers."
The actual firing was done by the aircraft's computer.
"Blue Squad!" Murdock yelled. "Hit the deck and stay down! We've got incoming!"
"Yeah, big time!" Roselli added, and then the night lit up with fire.
At 3,600 rounds per minute, the high-velocity shells were shrieking out of the sky at a rate of sixty per second, each 25mm projectile traveling practically nose-to-tail with its neighbors in a solid stream of lead and high explosives. Fired at night, the rotary Gatling cannon seemed to be loosing a bolt of white-hot lightning… or the phaser beam of a popular TV and movie science-fiction series.
The beam slashed in from over the sea, illuminating the clouds as it burned through them, then passed above the heads of the SEALs with a shrill, air-shaking howl that was palpable. The AC-130's war-load for this pass was HEI — high explosive incendiary — and where those rounds hit there was destruction, instant, accurate, and devastatingly total. Poplar trees shuddered, cracked, and exploded left and right; part of the seawall dissolved in hurtling chunks of broken concrete; portions of the highway buckled and vanished in a searing cascade of explosions that swept across dirt and wall and pavement in a deadly, sparkling dance. The Mi-8 helicopter, its rotors still slowly turning as it rested on the highway, seemed to crumple like a deflating toy, sagging to the side before on-board fuel reserves were touched off and the aircraft fireballed. Thunderous explosions lit up the night as brightly as that shaft of glowing fire raining down from the sky. The Hip's five-bladed rotor lifted up off the helicopter's rotor shaft and cart-wheeled through the air; an instant later, the sky-fire brushed across the military truck parked nearby, and that vehicle added its touch of flame to the firestorm raging over the Hip's spectacularly dissolving framework.
And men died. They died as the stream from the sky touched them and shredded their bodies in whirling fragments; died as their uniforms burst into flames; died as bits and pieces of metal or chunks of stone or shards stripped from ricocheting bullets scythed through them like volleys of machine-gun fire. The noise was deafening, overwhelming, a thunderous cacophony piled atop the buzzsaw shriek of incandescent shells.
Murdock lay facedown on the beach, covering Garcia's body with his own as Roselli lay nearby, refusing to look up into that hellfire from the sky. With the Specter gunship's fire computer-directed, it was accurate to within five feet of the chosen target across a range of almost one mile. With an eerie and terrible mathematical precision, the Specter drew a curtain of flame and death between the SEALs and their foes.
When the fire ceased, scant seconds after it had begun, the silence was more unnerving in a way than the noise and flame had been. The beach was brilliantly lit now by the Hip's funeral pyre, but all gunfire had ceased.
"C'mon, Razor," Murdock said. "Help me get Boomer to the water."
"What about his weapon?"
"Forget it. Give me a hand!"
"Right, L-T."
Together, they half carried, half dragged Garcia toward the water's edge. They were met there by Doc and Magic, who'd swum back ashore when they realized that Murdock and the others were under fire. "I got him, L-T," Doc said. As Murdock, Roselli, and Magic formed a half perimeter at the surf's edge, Doc broke out his medical kit and began working on Garcia's wounds. A terrible sound could be heard now wavering above the crackle of flames, a low, monotonous moaning sound, a chorus of many voices from many terribly wounded men. Murdock could see several Serb soldiers moving against the firelight near the seawall, but he held his fire. If the Yugoslavs could see the SEALs where they were gathered at the edge of the water, they were ignoring them. More likely, the fire had so ruined their night vision that they couldn't see a thing right now beyond the immediate circle illuminated by the fire. Besides, they must have all they could handle right now, tending to their wounded.
"That's all I can do for him now," Doc said moments later. "We gotta get a medevac for him, stat."
"Well, we can't medevac him from here," Murdock replied. "Let's get him off the beach and into the water."
They discarded NVDs and boots, automatic weapons and ammo, Kevlar jackets and most of their assault vest loadouts as soon as they were past the wave line and well into deep water, keeping only their knives, radios, and survival gear. They took turns, one man pulling Garcia along with one arm thrown across his shoulder and chest, while another swam alongside to make sure the unconscious man's head stayed above water. Where the air had felt chilly, the sea seemed almost warm, though Murdock knew that was an illusion. They struck out from the shore, angling slightly south to counter the south-to-north offshore current. A twelve-mile swim with a badly wounded man. They'd never make it, unless…
Roselli grabbed Murdock's arm and pointed. "Hey! L-T! Look! It's Gold Squad!"
Murdock was almost too tired to look, so drained was he by the brutal intensity of that short firefight on the beach. He let Roselli turn him in the water, however, until he could just make out the indistinct forms of more night-cloaked SEALs riding low in a pair of CRRCs.
"Lieutenant Murdock!" Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, Third Platoon's XO and the leader of Gold Squad, called. "Here!"
Hands grabbed at Murdock's arms. "No," he said. "Get Boomer on board."
"We got him, L-T. Come on."
"Christ, Two-Eyes!" Murdock said as he was rolled out of the water and onto the raft. DeWitt's team nickname was drawn from his position as platoon "2IC," the second-in-command. "I don't think those people like us."
"From out here it sounded like you boys got quite a reception."
"That's nothing to the reception we're gonna get at the debrief," Murdock said. "You pick up Mac?"
"He's in the other raft, L-T. With the package. A chopper's on the way from Nassau. God, it's good to see you guys. You had me worried!"
"That," Murdock said with feeling, "makes two of us."
Narednik Jankovic was the first one to find the blood, a coagulated patch on the beach close to the high-tide line. Most of it had already been absorbed by the sand, but there was no mistaking the slick, dark stain that remained as he turned his flashlight on it. Footprints were visible as well, along with a submachine gun dropped by one of the invaders.
He studied that weapon carefully. Heckler and Koch… though the fact that it was a German gun meant nothing. HK made some of the finest firearms in the world, and plenty of people, from the British SAS to a dozen European and Mideast terrorist groups, used them. The SD3 model, with integral sound suppressor too. The very best. He had the feeling that if he were to disassemble the weapon, he would find that every serial number on every part had been removed or was otherwise untraceable.
He turned his flash back on the blood and the ragged, double line of footprints moving down the shelf of the beach toward the water's edge. Those footprints closely flanked twin furrows that were most likely where a dead or wounded man's toes had plowed through the wet sand as he was dragged along. There was some more blood further along… and there… and there. There was something oddly comforting about that stain on the beach and the furrows in the sand, evidence that these commandos were human. They could be fought, could be shot and killed.