“Here come his friends,” Stonewall warned Arielle as they both ran into the warehouse seeking shelter amongst the pallets of weapons and ammunition.
“On the way,” Falcon replied. “You’ve got five more guards headed your way — Arielle, two of them are almost on top of you.”
“I got ‘em,” Arielle replied, as she stepped out from shelving stacks of weapons crates, hitting both guards with a long burst from her HK submachine gun. Almost immediately, Falcon and his men opened up on the remaining three guards, cutting them down from the rear in a classic ambush. Within fifteen seconds of entering the warehouse, Doctor Mohammed Kayani was the only one left alive in the warehouse.
“Who… who are you?” Kayani stammered.
“Does it matter? What happened to the other eight bombs?” Arielle asked.
“We took them up to Batman. They’ve been retrofitted and the raid has already taken off. I’m afraid you’re too late,” Kayani replied rather smugly.
“And, what’s the target?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Well, I’m afraid you won’t be around to see your handiwork,” Arielle replied as she put two rounds into his chest.
“Okay, let’s get all of these things loaded up. We’ve got a plane to catch,” Stonewall ordered. Falcon already had his men in the trucks with one of them already backed up to the loading dock, as Arielle took a quick look around to check on the status of all of the nukes.
“Mahdi flight, execute.” And with that forty-two aircraft, late of the Turkish air force, took a new heading, bearing one-seven-four. Desert Hawk Two-Six picked up the transmission but the flight was now more than 300 miles away.
XXXVIII
“Chaos, Nightwatch. Odin-One and Odin-Two are on final approach. They’ll be on the ground in a minute or two, coming in from the northeast. The rest of them are stacked up about forty-five seconds apart.”
“Roger that, Nightwatch. We’ve already secured the nukes. Be advised we have a C-130 over here that is on the flight line warming up.”
“Understood, will advise Odin-Two. Since you’re practically done, think you could lend a hand to those of us who actually have some work to do?”
“Kind of figured we’d need to do that. You know, once you get a SEAL out of the water, they don’t really amount to much, do they?” Jackson replied.
“I’ll pass on your compliments, Chaos,” Nightwatch replied, trying not to laugh over the radio.
“Okay, here comes Odin-Two, and there’s Odin-Four right behind it. Gotta get to work, Nightwatch.”
“Roger that, I’ve got Odin-One here now. Odin-Three’s stacked up right behind it, with five and six on the way. Any word from Cougar?”
“Negative, though the CAS has really amped up. Let me know how things are going.”
“Roger that,” Nightwatch replied.
“Falcon, our bird’s on final approach. We need to get these things over there right away,” Jackson hollered to his friend.
“Chaos, we should be done here in a few minutes with the first truck loads. We’ve only got three trucks and we can only get six bombs in each truck so we’ll have to make a second trip with a couple of the trucks.”
“Understand, let me know when the first truck is ready to go. Arielle and I will take that one. We still need to figure out what’s going on with that C-130 that’s warming up over there. If they’re planning on moving some of these, they might be expecting us.”
“Odin-One, Nightwatch, you’ll see some grain silos up ahead of you. There’s a very wide roundabout just before them. We’ll bring all four of you up to that roundabout. You can unload from there, turnaround, and then reload once the mission’s completed. Amazingly, it’s a perfect setup for us.”
“Roger that, Nightwatch, I see them now. Be there in a few.”
“Gotcha, Odin-One, welcome to Raqqa.”
“You’re heading towards their plane?” Arielle asked Stonewall.
“Yeah, from the looks of it, they were planning on moving some of them out, so, as long as they were going to fly them out, we might as well use their plane. Plus, this’ll give us a chance to get both of the LAVs out of here instead of leaving them behind — it was a fair trade, I know — two LAVs for the nukes — but if we can get everything out of here, we might as well try.”
“Makes sense to me,” Arielle replied.
“Well, looky here. That looks a lot like General Van to me there on the ramp,” Stonewall said as they approached the loading dock. “How many troops do you see?”
“Looks like we’ve got the load master, Van, and five more. And… Odin-Two just touched down. We need to hurry before they start to wonder why another Hercules just landed.”
“No doubt. We should be able to get this wrapped up by time Odin-Four lands. Okay, you take the two on the right and I’ll take the three on the left. The load master doesn’t look armed… ready?” Jackson asked as he pulled up behind the ramp where they could unload the truck.
“Let’s do this,” Arielle replied as they both exited the truck and charged their targets. The five guards, caught totally unaware, didn’t stand a chance. Within ten seconds all five of the guards lay dead. General Van had taken a round to the lower abdomen and another to the shoulder with blood flowing profusely from his shoulder wound.
“General Van, it looks as though the tables have been turned this time,” Stonewall commented as Van clearly lay bleeding out.
“You’ll never get out of here, Colonel,” Van struggled to say.
“Yeah, well, I’ve heard that before, but we’ll see. I take it as a personal challenge when someone tells me I can’t do something — and I love a challenge. You wouldn’t know where the first batch of the bombs went, would you?”
“You’ll never catch them,” Van struggled to get out, clearly weakening by the second. “They’ve… already….” was all he could say.
“You’re the load master?” Arielle asked the lone survivor of their attack. “We need to get these loaded right away! We’ve got several more trucks on the way.”
“Odin-Two, Odin-Four, Chaos here. Taxi all the way to end of the strip here. There’s plenty of room for both of you to turn around and unload.”
“Roger, that,” came the reply from Odin-Four.
“We’re also going to need to borrow a pilot for an extra C-130 I’m now designating as Odin-Seven. It seems that General Van was planning on moving another batch of the nukes. The plane’s already warmed up and we’re in the process of loading it right now.”
“Chaos, Odin-Two. I’d suggest that we fully crew Odin-Seven since it’ll have the nukes. We can then split the other two planes with a reduced crew. I did something like this in Afghanistan a few years back and everything worked out fine. We’ve got two good co-pilots and the C-130s a remarkable plane.”
“Roger that, Odin-Two. Let’s get’er done,” Chaos replied. “We’re about halfway through the loading process now. I’ll alert Archangel to the change in plans.”
“Archangel, Chaos. We’ve been able to commandeer the same C-130 that ISIS stole from us at Incirlik when they took the nukes. We’ve secured the weapons and have about half of them already loaded. I’m designating this new aircraft as Odin-Seven and am splitting up the crews of Odin-Two and Odin-Four. Odin-Seven should be airborne in ten minutes.”
“Roger that, Chaos. Any word on the hostages?” Archangel replied.
“Nothing as yet. We had a little fire fight with General Van. Before he died, I asked him about the eight missing nukes. He simply said that ‘We’d never catch them.’ Not sure if that means anything to you or not.”