Turcotte fired at the lights, shattering them and throwing the room into darkness.
A small object came flying over the top of the bar. Grenade, Turcotte thought, and reacted just as quickly, rolling away. The man was right behind the object, vaulting the desktop — which didn’t make any sense if it was a grenade. Turcotte knew he’d made a mistake as he fired offhand with the MP-5, still rolling.
The other man was also firing in midair, his bullets trailing Turcotte’s rolls by a few inches, Turcotte’s winging by him.
Turcotte slammed into the wall just as the bolt in his MP-5 clicked home on an empty chamber. He dropped the submachine gun and drew his pistol, firing as he brought it to bear. In the darkness it was his night-vision goggles that gave him the advantage over the other man, and his rounds hit the other man in the chest, knocking him down.
Turcotte stood, listening to the radio, hearing the SAS clearing the building from top floor down. There was no sign of any Airlia artifacts yet. He called in his own location and that the room was secure as he moved to the door, and carefully opened it.
At the end of the hallway a searchlight came in the window from an AH-6 helicopter hovering just outside. Turcotte could see SAS sharpshooters hanging out the doors and the small laser dots creeping around the hall, searching for targets. He flipped a switch on the side of his night-vision goggles and they emitted an infrared beam, identifying him as friendly.
From five thousand feet Colonel Spearson was orchestrating the assault over five different radio nets. The airborne force was in the main building. The Little Birds were flitting about the compound, searching for targets. He turned to Duncan.
“All or nothing, now, miss,” he said.
“Let’s go in,” Duncan said.
Spearson gave the orders for the main assault force to land.
Turcotte kicked open the door at the juncture of the hallway, his reloaded MP-5 in his left hand. He spotted two men in khaki with their backs to him, firing around the corner. Turcotte killed them with one burst.
“Who dares, wins!” he called out the SAS motto, moving down the hall. Turning the corner he met four SAS gathered by the stairwell, one of them holding his muzzle inside the door, firing an occasional shot to keep more security men from coming up.
Ridley came around the corner with more men. Turcotte stepped back and let the professionals do their job as they began to clear down the building.
The Little Birds were also going down the building one floor ahead of the SAS inside. The two armed with 7.62 miniguns were firing through windows. The snipers hit anything they saw moving. Windows shattered out and tracers crisscrossed the floor. The men inside lay low, hiding from the carnage as best they could.
The two Little Birds with rockets were firing up the barracks buildings nearby as security personnel poured out of them. As the first armored vehicles began appearing, they switched to those.
The four Apaches arrived just in time and fired a salvo of eight Hellfire missiles at the armor. Each one was a kill, ending that threat.
A pair of SAM-7’s — shoulder-fired heat-seeker missiles and thus not affected by the Weasel attack — streaked up at one of the Apaches. It exploded in a ball of flame.
“Bloody hell,” Colonel Spearson muttered as he saw the signal for the Apache disappear and heard the pilot screaming before the radio went dead. He ordered in the F-14’s, directing the Apaches to laser-designate targets for the smart bombs the fast-moving jets carried.
Lisa Duncan watched the chopper go down, knowing that meant two men dead. “Let’s land,” she told Spearson, who looked like he was going to argue with her, then changed his mind.
The SAS soldiers were quickly overcoming their opposition in the building. Surprise, superior firepower, and superb training were winning the day. Turcotte followed them down, floor by floor, until the entire building was clear except for whatever was hidden behind a set of steel doors on the ground level.
One of the Little Birds was hit by ground fire and autorotated down. Once it was on the ground, the four men got off and immediately became embroiled in a gun battle with ground forces.
The Apache pilots were also firing now, trying to suppress any SAM fire from shoulder-fired missiles. They would be out of ammunition in another minute at their current rate of expenditure. The F-14’s came in, their bombs riding the laser beams down with pinpoint accuracy. The effect was devastating.
“One minute!” the pilot said.
Colonel Spearson keyed his mike. “Put us in with the first wave!” he ordered. The pilot glanced over his shoulder at Duncan and she nodded. The Black Hawk swooped down, heading toward the secondary explosions in the compound on the valley floor.
The Black Hawk touched down and Duncan jumped off, following Colonel Spearson. The chopper was back up and gone just as quickly.
“How are the men inside?” she asked.
Spearson had the handset for the radio his batman was carrying pressed to his ear. “They’re in the basement. Took some losses, but they’ve cleared the building.”
Turcotte watched as Ridley examined the steel doors. “Okay, men, let’s get through this thing.”
A demolitions expert took a heavy backpack off and pulled out a three-foot-long cone-shaped black object. He placed the shape charge up against the doors and ran out the firing wire.
“Fire in the hole!” he yelled, causing everyone to scatter and take cover.
On the surface the battle was about over, disheartened mercenaries surrendering now that they saw that there was only one possible ending to this conflict. Spearson’s men rounded them up, while they searched for the scientists who had been working at the site.
Spearson had been listening to the force inside the building, and he knew that they were getting ready to blow the doors. “They must be underground,” he told Duncan when she asked where the scientists were.
“Let’s get inside,” she told him.
“Oh, yeah,” Spearson added as they headed for the main doors to the building. “Your buddy is okay.”
The only acknowledgment Duncan made was to slow her walk slightly.
Turcotte’s head rang from the explosion, and swirling dust choked his lungs.
SAS men with gas masks on ran through the hole in the twisted metal.
Turcotte forced himself to wait. He turned as Lisa Duncan and Colonel Spearson came down the hallway and joined him.
“This has got to be it,” he said.
“We wait on my people to clear,” Spearson said.
“Fine,” Duncan acknowledged. She turned to Turcotte. “You all right?” “I’m getting too old for this,” he said, earning a laugh from Spearson.
The minutes stretched out. Finally, after almost a half hour of waiting, a dust-covered Major Ridley crawled back out of the hole. He pulled his gas mask off and wiped his eyes. “Did you find any of the scientists?” Duncan asked.
Ridley looked slightly disoriented. “Scientists? They’re all dead in there. All dead.”
“How?” Colonel Spearson demanded.
Ridley shrugged, his thoughts elsewhere. “Gas, most likely. Must have been set off by the guards when we attacked. It’s clear in there now. The merks were just delaying us until the gas worked. The scientists were trapped in there like rats. Looks like they hadn’t been allowed out in a long time. Probably lived down there for years. There’s plenty of tunnels full of supplies. Living quarters. Mess hall. All that.”