No wonder Patrick found little to smile about these days.
"Don't give me that 'Nike out' crap," McLanahan radioed back. "This is supposed to be a soft probe, not a search-and-destroy-that's why we have the FlightHawks overhead. I want you out now."
"Then I guess I'll just ignore this SS-12 battery I just found."
"What?"
"Pretty damned clever, hiding it in a garbage dump," Wohl said. He moved closer to the area. There was a short ramp on the west end of the pit, ostensibly to make it easier for the dump truck drivers to enter the pit. But on closer inspection, he saw that the garbage was piled not on the ground inside the pit but atop a retractable net. "Normal overhead imagery shows a garbage dump. It's unguarded like a garbage dump-and the organic waste gives off enough heat to block infrared and radar imagery." Wohl examined underneath the net with his infrared sensory "And there it is, boys-the aft end of a MAZ-543 transporter-
erector-launcher and an SS-12 Scaleboard rocket, still in its marching sheath. I'll bet there are at least three more TELs in this pit, and if I check the other garbage pits, I'll find more. Not to mention the TELs hidden in some of the service buildings."
"The damned Libyans have SS-12s," Briggs breathed. "Holy shit." The SS-12 tactical ballistic missile, NATO code name "Scaleboard," was the upgraded version of the ubiquitous mobile "Scud" surface-to-surface missile, in service with almost a dozen nations around the world. The SS-12 was larger, had three times the range of a Scud, was more accurate-and it carried a one-point-three-megaton nuclear warhead. As far as anyone knew, this was the first known instance of an SS-12 missile based outside of Russia. "Can you see the warhead, Nike? Is it a nuke?" "Stand by, Taurus. I'll check."
"Nike, clear out of there," McLanahan repeated. "We'll have the FlightHawks take them out." The first FlightHawk UCAV carried only the laser radar array, but the second FlightHawk was armed with four antitank BLU-108 SFW sensor-fuzed weapon bomblets and four antipersonnel Gator cluster bomb munitions. They were devastating weapons: A single SFW could destroy as many as three dozen main battle tanks, and a single Gator could kill, injure, or deny enemy access across an area twice the size of a football field. "Base, you copy? Stand by to arm up the 'Hawks."
"We have a good location on Nike," Wendy McLanahan radioed from the Catherine out in the Med. The Tin Man battle armor contained a transponder to allow Wendy on board the command ship to track and monitor all the commandos. "Ready to come in hot."
"Negative, Base, negative," Wohl interjected. "The junk they got these things buried under will keep the SFW from detecting them, or they might lock onto some other hot object; and the junk might block the bomblets' blast effects. We're going to have to expose them enough so the SFWs and Gators can do their job, or destroy them one by one by hand. I'm moving in."
No use in trying to hold him back, Patrick thought, he's on the warpath. It's not every day that you're sent in just to take a few pictures and end up coming across a bunch of nuclear-tipped missiles. Wohl must be salivating in his battle armor. "Roger, Nike. Stalkers, let's move in together. One coordinated attack. Stand by."
But Chris Wohl wasn't going to "stand by"-he was already on the move.
He hurriedly checked for a sentry. There were sentry shacks on all four sides of the garbage pit, but through his infrared sensors he could see that all were deserted. He descended down the incline toward the rear of the rocket…
… and the second he reached the floor of the pit and touched the net covering the rocket, four huge ballpark lights illuminated the entire garbage pit, and a siren sounded. There were no sentries because the entire garbage pit was alarmed. Time had run out.
From his observation point, Patrick saw the lights come on. "Oh, shit," Patrick murmured. "Taurus, move in, check the garbage pit at Alpha Two," he radioed. "I'll check Golf Six. Pollux, create a diversion around Tango Five. Base, order the FlightHawks in to attack."
"Roger that, Castor," Patrick's younger brother, Paul, responded. One of the original members of the Night Stalkers and the acknowledged expert in the use of the Tin Man battle armor, he was the fourth man on this spy team, taking the east side of the Libyan base.
"Copy, Castor," Wendy replied. "They're coming in hot, two minutes out, SFWs and Gators. Light up the targets as much as you can."
Meanwhile, Wohl dashed to the body of the SS-12 rocket, grabbed a cable running down the side, and pulled. The SS-12 missile was encased in a plastic transport sheath that protected it during transit but popped off easily during launch; it was simple to peel it off now. It was a real SS-12 rocket-no decoys here. He dashed forward, unzipping the sheath as he ran, then climbed up onto the cab until he reached the warhead. It looked real enough too, although he had never seen a live nuclear warhead before. "Castor, I just cracked open the warhead. Take a look and tell me what it is."
Patrick commanded his electronic helmet visor to lock in on Chris Wohl's visor image, transmitted from his suit's electronics suite via satellite. He recognized it instantly: "It's the real thing, folks-a Russian NMT-17 Mod One warhead, one-megaton-plus yield."
Wohl turned at a sudden sound behind him and saw soldiers rushing to the edge of the garbage pit, gesturing inside. The best proof he had a live warhead here wasn't McLanahan's assessment-it was the fact that none of the Libyans surrounding him dared raise a rifle muzzle in his direction or even come any closer to him. They were afraid of creating a nuclear yield if they hit the missile with a bullet. Wohl knew it took a lot more than one bullet to set one of these things off-but then again, maybe they knew something he didn't. "How do I disable it, Castor?"
"You can't, unless you brought a whole truckload of Snap-On Tools," Patrick replied. "Your best option is to create a heat source and let the FlightHawks finish the job."
"I can do that," Wohl said. He jumped down from the front of the TEL and searched until he found the diesel fuel refilling port, between the third and fourth set of wheels on the right side. The fuel tank itself was underneath the chassis and protected very well by slabs of steel, but he didn't need it. He opened the filler port, stepped back a few paces, and activated his self-protection weapon, sending a bolt of electrical energy from electrodes on his shoulders directly into the fuel port. A few moments later, Patrick saw a flash, and a second later heard an explosion, then another just a few moments later. So much for their little sneak-and-peek operation.
"All right, Nike, you dropped your drawers-we might as well have some fun too," Hal Briggs chimed in. "I'm in."
"Go for the fuel filler port on the right side between the rear wheels," Wohl said as he moved to the third SS-12. "The TELs aren't grounded, and there aren't any flame suppressors in the filler tube."
"Hey, Castor," Briggs asked, "what's the chance of one of those babies popping off with a yield in a fire?"
"Very slim," Patrick replied. "If they have no safeties in them or if the ones the Russians installed haven't been maintained by the Libyans, the worst that will happen is that the high-explosive jacket surrounding the core will cook off and scatter radioactive debris around."
"What if the trigger gets activated by a concussion or even by our shock beams?"
"I don't know," Patrick said. "Try not to hit the warhead with your beams. But there would have to be no pressure or acceleration safeties and pretty unstable triggers that then happen to work perfectly to produce a yield. Don't worry about it. Expose your missiles with a heat source as best you can so the FlightHawk can drop on them, and let's get out of here."