Several seconds later, Patrick saw another explosion, this time farther north. "Hot damn, that works good!" Briggs crowed. "I'm liking this!"
Patrick started running for the perimeter fence, then hit his boots'jump-jets. A shot of compressed air propelled him twenty feet into the sky and almost a hundred feet forward. When he landed, he jogged forward while scanning the area with his helmet-mounted sensors. Libyan soldiers were pointing in his direction. He had to run several yards until the accumulators built up enough pressure, then propelled himself with ease over the perimeter fence. His sensors and self-protection weapons worked automatically-any soldiers within thirty feet were knocked unconscious by a bolt of energy strong enough to start a jet aircraft.
Two more jumps and six blocks later, Patrick was at the southernmost garbage pit. It was exactly as Chris Wohl described it: a strong net, steel or even Kevlar, with enough real trash piled atop it to hide a huge wide truck carrying a large rocket. One step inside the pit revealed a second transporter about fifty yards away. He immediately found the fuel filler port and set the first SS-12 afire just as Wohl and Briggs did, and the TEL's right rear wheels blew apart, sending the SS-12 rocket rolling right off its launch rail. In-t few seconds it was going to be covered in burning diesel fuel — he hoped the nuclear warhead would just melt away and not cook off. He had no idea how sophisticated the Russians' nuclear warhead safety mechanisms were, or how well the Libyans had maintained them, so he had to assume that the explosive material surrounding the nuclear core would explode and scatter radioactive debris everywhere. He wanted to be off the base before any of them did just that.
Patrick quickly attacked the other two SS-12 launcher vehicles. Now there were explosions everywhere, mostly in the north where Hal Briggs was creating havoc. He turned just as his battle armor's defensive weapon downed another Libyan soldier that had run out from an underground shelter, an AK-47 raised and ready to fire. "Base, status of the FlightHawk?"
"Inbound sixty seconds, coming in hot," Wendy McLanahan responded. "FlightHawk One has good imagery of all three garbage pits and good downlink to FlightHawk Two. You guys can bug out anytime. I took the liberty of calling for the Hammer too." The "Hammer" was the CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor aircraft. Accompanied by another tilt-rotor aircraft acting as an aerial refueling tanker, the Pave Hammer had flown them in across Egypt from the S.S. Catherine the Great in the Mediterranean Sea and had been waiting for them about a hundred miles to the south in the Sahara Desert.
"Good thinking, Base. Stalkers, rendezvous at Sierra One." The team had buried caches of battery packs, spare parts, water, and medical supplies in various places in the desert for their withdrawal; if they were not used within three days, explosive charges would destroy the evidence.
"Taurus copies."
"Nike copies."
"Pollux copies." Patrick had just turned to start jumping out of the base when he heard Paul cut in, "Wait, Stalkers. I found something."
"What do you got, Pollux?"
Paul McLanahan was too stunned to take cover-he was standing out in the open in front of three shabby-looking tin service buildings. Just before he was going to jet away, the big overhead doors to each building opened-and two MAZ-543 transporter-erector-launchers carrying an SS-12 Scaleboard nuclear rocket started to roll out. "Stalkers, I'm staring at six huge rockets coming out of those service buildings. I think they're the same SS-12s you guys have been setting on fire. Should I-?
And then he stopped-because all six of the huge vehicles stopped, and the SS-12 missiles started to rise up off the truck bed, and large steel legs began to extend to the ground to steady the vehicle. Warning lights began to blink, and soldiers and ground crew members that had been running around before now started to take cover.
"Hey, guys, I think the Libyans are going to launch these puppies," Paul said.
"Oh, crap," Patrick murmured. "Base, ETA on the FlightHawks?"
"Less than ninety seconds, Castor."
Patrick had no idea how long it took to launch an SS-12, but he assumed that once it was elevated into launch position, it would take just a few moments. "Stalkers, converge on Pollux. Let's take those SS-12s out before they can launch!"
"I can take them!" Paul shouted. "You can't make it here in time! Continue the evacuation!"
"Stalkers, converge on Pollux now!" Patrick repeated. At the same time, he jet-jumped to the east in Paul's direction. "Base, have the Hammer meet us at Tango Ten exfil point."
"Roger," Wendy replied. "FlightHawks are sixty seconds out. Hammer's ETA to Tango Ten is two-zero minutes."
Paul's electrical defensive weapon went off as several Libyan soldiers approached. He felt heavy-caliber bullets pounding into him from many directions, all on full automatic and some with very heavy rates of fire-a Minigun or antiaircraft gun aimed at him. Seconds later, he got a lowpower warning. The Tin Man battle armor was not designed to sustain a heavy attack, and heavy-caliber aulpmatic-weapons fire drained power quickly. Paul had only seconds to get away.
A loud siren sounded. Paul turned toward the SS-12 rocket just to the right of him just as restraining clamps that held the rocket to the launch rail released and the rocket started to eject some gases from its nozzles. It looked like it was going to launch at any moment.
Instead of jet-jumping away, Paul commanded a fullthrust jet-right into the rocket, just a few feet below the warhead section. Unrestrained by its road-march holddown bar, the rocket easily toppled off the launch rail. Just as it hit the ground, the single-stage liquid rocket propellant ignited. The rocket streaked across the ground, slammed into the SS-12 unit beside it, and exploded. In rapid-fire succession, all six SS-12 Scaleboard rockets exploded in a wall of flame several hundred feet high and nearly a half-mile long. Every building within a mile was torn apart in the concussion.
Patrick did not just see and feel the six nearly simultaneous explosions-he was knocked off his feet from the concussion and earthquake-like tremors, even though he was more than a mile away. The eastern sky lit up like a millennium fireworks display. He didn't bother getting up from the ground, but low-crawled behind a doorway that led to yet another passageway underground. "Stalkers, status check," he ordered. He knew where the big explosion was, knew who had been assigned to attack that area, and he dreaded what he was going to learn…. "Castor is secure."
"Nike secure."
"Taurus secure. I got my bell rung, but I'm secure."
"Pollux?" No reply. "Pollux? Paul?" Patrick checked his electronic display for any sign of Paul's transponder. Nothing. "Castor is en route to Pollux's last location," he said. He hit his jump-jets and quickly propelled himself toward the massive explosions to the east. Patrick didn't have to check his heads-up display to know that Briggs and Wohl were on their way to join him.
But there was no way to reach Paul's last location. An area the size of at least four square city blocks was totally engulfed in flames-the very streets seemed to be rivers of fire, and the sky was thick with roiling waves of heat and smoke. Patrick was able to move forward another halfblock with great difficulty before system failure warnings and low-power warnings started to ring. There were several Libyan soldiers in the area, but they seemed stunned both by the devastation and by the strangely armored figure before them.
"Patrick." It was Hal Briggs, suddenly appearing beside him as if from nowhere.
"I'm going in."
"You can't. No one can survive that, not even in a BERP suit."
"I'm not leaving my brother behind," Patrick said. "I left David Luger behind in Siberia, and he survived only to be tortured for five years by the KGB. I won't let that happen to my own brother."