As soon as they stopped, Hal unstrapped and opened the hatch. “Establish security, now,” he ordered, and he jumped out, followed closely by Brakeman. Hal handed Brakeman his electromagnetic rail gun, then began unpacking the rest of their gear from the back of the Condor.
Just then Brakeman heard on his battle armor’s satellite transceiver: “Condor, Condor, vehicle heading your way, north side of the field!”
Brakeman immediately plugged the rail gun into the Tin Man armor power supply, activated it, and immediately used the battle armor’s on-board radar and infrared sensors to sweep the area for threats. He saw the second Condor already rolling out from its landing…
…and at mid-field, still on the shoulder of the runway but just now coming onto the pavement, was a Russian-made ZSU-23/4 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun! “Contact!” he radioed. “Zeus-23-four!” He immediately leveled his rail gun, locked on, and fired, just as the quad 23-millimeter machine guns on the Iranian anti-aircraft vehicle opened fire on the second Condor. The gunfire stopped after less than a second, but Brakeman could hear crashing noises as the second Condor veered off the right side of the runway. Seconds later the ZSU-23/4 exploded in a massive ball of fire, with thousands of rounds of ammunition cooking off inside adding to the devastation.
Brakeman ran over to the second Condor and found Turlock and Ricardo climbing out. Hal Briggs joined them moments later. “You guys okay?” he asked.
“We’re okay, but the cabin filled with smoke,” Turlock said. “I pulled the fire handles, but the smoke is still coming out. Help us get our stuff out before this thing blows up.” In seconds all four of them had emptied the second Condor and retreated back to the first aircraft.
“We’re going to have company soon, so let’s move out as quickly as possible,” Hal said. “We’ll forget about securing the Condors — this place will be crawling with security, and one man won’t be able to hold them off. All four of us will go hunt down the Shahabs.” He turned to the large boxy object from his aircraft. “CID Two, deploy.” Immediately the device began to unfold itself…until it had grown into a nine-foot-tall robot, with armored skin surrounding hydraulic “muscles. CID Two, pilot up,” Hal spoke, and the robot assumed a leaning-forward stance, its arms straight back, its right leg extended backward forming a walkway. A small hatch had opened on the robot’s back. Hal climbed up the leg and slid himself into the tight metallic-like fabric inside, slid his arms into the robot’s “sleeves,” and secured his head inside the visor and sealed breathing mask assembly.
“CID Two, activate,” he spoke into the dark, suffocating mask. Seconds later he felt as if he was standing in his BDUs at the end of the runway. He looked at his hands and feet and saw the robot’s mechanical fingers and feet moving, but it was his fingers and feet! “Man oh man, I love this thing!” he said.
Charlie Turlock had already boarded and activated her Cybernetic Infantry Device, and now she carried one of the weapons backpacks over to Hal and attached it onto his back. Hal didn’t feel the weight one bit, but his electronic display showed him his weapon status: twenty-five rounds each of forty-millimeter armor-piercing and high-explosive grenades.
In the meantime, Brakeman had donned his battle armor’s powered exoskeleton, which was a latticework of armored microhydraulic actuators that attached to his battle armor and gave him added strength, mobility, and speed. He looped two spare battery belts over Hal’s shoulders, strapped ammo bags and spare battery packs to his back, and checked his electromagnetic rail gun. Hal picked up two more weapon backpacks — again, he didn’t feel as if he was carrying a thing. “Ready to move out?”
“Ready,” Charlie said. She too was carrying two weapons backpacks in her hands and spare battery packs on her shoulders. Ricardo had already donned her exoskeleton, loaded herself up with spare battery packs and ammo, and her rail gun was at the ready.
“Good luck, guys,” Hal said. He extended an armored fist, and the others touched their fists to his. “I’ll see you all at rally point Bravo.” He gave an eye-point command. The barrel of his grenade launcher extended and leveled to firing position, and he chambered a high-explosive round. “Let’s go kick some Iranian ass and get the hell out of here.”
Their attack plan was simple: each commando had a circuit of about twenty to twenty-five miles in which to search for and attack targets. The last known location of Shahab transporter-erector-launchers was on their electronic charts, and the team followed the land navigation prompts in their visors to each launcher. Only about half of the estimated fifty to sixty missile launchers were displayed — they hoped they would come across the rest of them as they proceeded. Since one Tin Man commando didn’t have a pre-planned circuit, Ricardo and Brakeman traveled together.
Using millimeter-wave radar images, visual enhancement, and datalinked images downloaded via satellite and transmitted between the other commandos, each unit was able to “see” all of the targets around them well before they approached them, and as soon as they detected new threats the rest of the team — as well as the men and women aboard Armstrong Space Station, the Megafortresses orbiting nearby, their headquarters back at Battle Mountain, and the persons watching the mission in the White House Situation Room — knew about them too. The commandos ignored dismounted security patrols and most light patrol vehicles because their weapons couldn’t pentrate their armor — they just simply ran past them directly at the Shahab launchers.
Maria Ricardo found the first targets, a group of four Shahab-2 launchers arrayed about two hundred yards apart in a small gully, with their missiles already raised into launch position. “Jackpot,” she crowed. “Four Shahabs ready to fire.” She knew that about a dozen soldiers and at least one light vehicle was chasing her, but she didn’t care. Ricardo simply lowered her electromagnetic rail gun to her hip, locked the millimeter-wave aiming emitter in with her helmet’s aiming cue, and fired one round at each TEL. She didn’t wait to see if her shots had any effect because she knew there were a lot to attack in a short space of time, but she didn’t need to wait — shortly after leaping off, she heard four satisfyingly loud explosions behind her as each TEL detonated, ripped apart by the two-pound hypervelocity tungsten slugs she pumped into them.
“Got some too,” Charlie reported. “Two Shahab-3 TELs. Look like they’re fueled but not yet elevated.” She fired one armor-piercing grenade at each launcher, then a high-explosive round at the maintenance and fueling vehicles still nearby. She could feel machine-gun bullets pinging off the CID’s armored shell, but she ignored them. “Moving on. One, how’s it going?”
“I feel like some fucking mythical avenging angel, that’s how it’s going, Three,” Hal Briggs responded. He had come across another group of three Shahab-2s, also in firing position. He fired armor-piercing grenades at two of the launchers, causing their missiles to topple over and explode on the ground. “I’ll show ’em how it’s done now!” he cried out through the flaming wreckage around him. Hal ran over to the third TEL, put his spare backpacks down beside them, then stooped down, grasped the TEL, and lifted. The entire launcher and missile flopped over on its side, crumpled as if it was made out of cardboard, ruptured, and caught on fire. Hal picked up his spare backpacks and ran off before they exploded. “Come and get me, you bastards!” he shouted over the radio. He stopped, turned toward the Iranian Revolutionary Guards soldiers pursuing him, and raised the backpacks triumphantly. “Come and get me, assholes, because I’m coming to get you!”