Lisa walked over and closed the tent flap, cutting off some of the sunlight and noise from the helicopters coming and going.
“That’s those things’ turf down there, and now you’re volunteering to go into those holes? Has the major lost his fucking mind?”
Sarah turned and looked at her roommate while inserting a thirty-round magazine into her XM8 light assault rifle. “Why aren’t you that concerned about Carl or the commandos going down there? Why me?” she asked, looking her friend directly in her eyes.
Lisa didn’t back down. “Because, goddamn you, they’re macho schmucks with not one fucking ounce of brains, which I used to believe you had, but I guess not.”
“It’s my fucking job, Lisa,” Sarah said in a harsh whisper. “What do I say on my first mission, ‘Oh, can’t do it… a little too dangerous’?”
Lisa lowered her head and bit her lip, cutting off more of her argument because she knew her friend was right.
“I’ll be okay. If I have to, I’ll toss a few of those Delta Force guys in front of me and run like hell, alright?” Sarah looked over and smiled at the few of the elite troops who were still watching them. They nodded.
Lisa smiled for the first time since her friend’s arrival. “Just watch out for Carl, he thinks he’s the hero type.”
“I would, but he’s not on my team. But he’s with Jack, that spunky little navy guy, and Will Mendenhall, so he’ll come back, I promise,” Sarah said, taking her friend’s hand into her own. “I’ve got to go, Lisa. We have a briefing in five. Those things don’t know it yet, but it’s our turn to start hunting them.”
Chatos Crawl, Arizona
July 9,1420 Hours.
Julie slowly stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder, afraid the noise of her tennis shoe coming into contact with the broken floor would be enough to bring one of those things up through the broken tile and grab her away. But all was quiet in the kitchen. She saw a hole that had been made during the attack and stared into the dark and forbidding pit and shivered. Blood lined the mouth of the hole, and she silently prayed it hadn’t been Hal or Tony who had been pulled down to their death. As she moved forward, she heard the hiss and pop of the jukebox as the needle was stuck and kept hitting the stop and sliding back.
Overhead she heard the powerful turbines whining from the large helicopters settling just above the rooftops. Things in the kitchen began to rattle loudly as the down blast from the powerful five-bladed rotors hit the Broken Cactus. She jumped when one of the hanging frying pans fell from its hook over the stove and clanged to the floor. Then her heart fell to the floor as she was touched on the shoulder from behind. She gave out a yelp and quickly covered her mouth. Billy placed his small hand over his mother’s and held up a finger to his lips.
“Shhh,” he hissed. “Come on, Mom, what’re you doing?” he whispered, removing his hand.
“Goddammit, Billy, get your ass back up those stairs, now,” she half whispered, thanking God for the loudness of the turbine-driven engines of the Pave Lows.
“No way, not without you,” Billy said, looking around for any sign of the animals that had so ravaged everyone in the town. He had yet to see one of them and didn’t ever want to. He was putting up the best look of bravery and defiance he could muster; he just didn’t feel either of those at the moment.
Julie pursed her lips, trying hard to’ hold her temper. Then she consciously counted out loud to ten, angrily forcing out each number as she did. She calmed a little and opened her eyes.
“Alright, it doesn’t look like anyone’s here anyway, so let’s get back upstairs and the hell out of here.”
They were just starting to turn when, over the rumbling sound of the settling Pave Lows, they heard the sound of voices. They weren’t traveling down the stairwell from the rooftop, but were coming from the dining area just around the corner out of their vision. Julie raised an eyebrow.
“There must still be people in here,” she whispered a tad nervously, as she knew that everyone was supposed to be on the roof.
She took Billy’s right hand in her own and gently pulled him out of the kitchen and around the bar. They crept as quietly as they could, stepping lightly over fallen barstools and broken tables, and as they moved, the voices grew louder.
“Whoever they are, they don’t speak English. It sounds like French, I think,” Julie said in a whisper.
They finally reached the corner of the bar and looked around it. Julie quickly counted sixteen men. They all wore black suits like Ryan and the others who had come into the bar earlier, not the brown desert fatigues of the other soldiers of the 101st. These soldiers were different somehow from the black-clad men of Lieutenant Ryan’s outfit. Their uniforms were a different make, and some of these men had beards. They looked, in Julie’s unprofessional opinion, lethal.
As Julie started to pull Billy back, a hand fell on her shoulder. She couldn’t help it; she hated being this scared and tried not to, but she screamed anyway.
“Hey, can I pay you later for this?” Tony’s slurred voice asked loudly.
The men that had been sitting around loading weapons suddenly stood, and the ones who had already been standing brought their weapons up and ran to a better angle inside the dining area and aimed at the intruders. A dozen pinpoints of laser-red light hit the intruders’ chests and didn’t waver an inch. All Julie could do was raise her hands to show she wasn’t armed.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Tony, but you couldn’t have picked a worse time to wake up,” Julie whispered out of the corner of her mouth, taking a deep breath.
“Miss Dawes, what a surprise. I was sure you had vacated the premises with the others,” the blond-haired man from the Interior Department said, as he stepped away from his companions.
Gone were his casual clothes, and in their place was this military, black jumpsuit. He had a large pistol strapped to his side and the most lethal-looking knife Julie had ever seen on the black belt across his chest.
“Mr…. uh…?” Julie stuttered.
The man just smiled and stepped up to the three intruders. He placed his hand on Billy’s head and rubbed his hair. The smile, all three noticed, didn’t touch his now cold eyes.
“We’ll leave my name out of it for now, Miss Dawes. And this must be the man of the house. I’m glad you located him. Today isn’t one to be roaming around outside.”
“My son, Billy,” Julie said, looking worried.
“As I said, Miss Dawes, you really should have left on the evacuation helicopters with the others. But as it stands, I’m afraid you’ll be accompanying us. I am sorry.”
“Okay, okay, what’d I miss?” Tony said, taking the cap off the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
The four F-15 Strike Eagles out of Nellis streaked through the blue sky at twelve hundred feet off the desert floor. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Jessup led the flight of air force jets, who were on temporary duty from Japan, here to take part in Red Flag, a rigorous course to train pilots to fight foreign aircraft and their tactics. And now they had been summoned on the most unusual CAP mission he had ever been in command of. He scanned the ground, watching for any kind of activity out of the norm. He was trying to figure out just what the norm should be when his wingman, Major Terry Miller, called over the radio:
“Drover lead, this is Drover Two, they said unusual activity, correct?”
Jessup thumbed the transmit button on his joystick. “That’s what they said. What have you got, Drover Two?”
“Look to your nine o’clock and tell me what you see.”
Colonel Jessup looked to his left and down, but his weapons officer in the backseat saw it first.
“What in the hell is that, Colonel?” he asked.
Jessup stared in wonder as the ground below rippled as if a small speedboat were traveling across the sand. Just behind the advancing wave, the ground was caving in as if whatever was causing the wake was traveling close to the surface, weakening the tunnel it was making and causing the ground to fa
ll in just as it passed.
“All right, Drover flight, we have a target of opportunity as per orders. Our ROE are still the same.” Jessup didn’t have to remind his flight that the rules of engagement were simple: sight the enemy and attack. “Drover Three and Four, sight on target and attack” was Jessup’s brief command. “Drover lead will ride high cover.”
“Drover Three and Four, sighted and locked.”
In all three locations, ears listened anxiously to the radio conversation between the air force pilots as they rolled in and dived on what must be the leading element of the animals as they were exploring the valley. The president’s attention went from the live feed in the desert valley to the monitor hooked into the Event Center for a reaction from Niles Compton. But Niles was busy listening to the radio transmission and watching the live feed himself. Then the president looked at the Joint Chiefs in the room, then to another monitor showing the crash site, where the largest audience by far, made up of Event Group technicians, were gathering to hear the exchange between the attacking fighter bombers.
The F-15E Strike Eagle is an amazing aircraft, capable of dogfighting with the best fighters in world, belying that it also has a bomb load capacity almost equal to that of the venerable old B-17 bomber from World War II. The bombs on this flight had been researched and specially chosen. If the animals were traveling close to the surface, the pilots were to use the general-munitions cluster bombs. They didn’t have the shaped charge or the weight of the Bunker Busters that the F-16 Fighting Falcons were carrying above the larger fighters at ten thousand feet, but they were accurate, and they exploded with a large bang and killed well for their size. Before the human element went below to fight the creatures, the air force had been given the green light. Now they would see what air power could do to help right the situation in the valley.
The two fighter-bombers streaked in low, maintaining their height at three hundred feet, a dangerous altitude for the large fighter, even in the relatively flat terrain of the desert. Then, at three miles out, the fighter-bombers nosed up and climbed, water vapor pouring off their wingtips as the Eagles fought for altitude. At a thousand feet they leveled off, and Colonel Jessup watched as both Drover Three and Four dropped their munitions wing abreast. This tactic would expand the area of impact and make their killing zone wider, rather than longer, for the best chance of taking out the lead elements of the animals. The colonel watched as four small wing-brakes popped out from the back of the eight six-foot-long bombs, retarding their speed and rate of drop to give the fighters time to get out of Dodge before they impacted. At 175 feet of altitude, a pressure-sensing device activated and blew the outer casing off the eight bombs, loosing two hundred softball-sized bomblets. They struck the ground just two feet in front of the wave of dirt and sand that was caused by at least two of the moving animals, causing what looked like a fireworks display gone awry and exploding on the ground. To the men and women at the crash site it was if someone had set off two hundred grenades at once.
“Direct hit,” Jessup said in a businesslike manner into his oxygen mask.
As Drover Three and Four banked hard to come around for an assessment pass, they didn’t see another two waves approaching the first set until they were almost on top of the strike zone. Jessup saw the twin waves breaking fast from above his pilots, who were too busy to notice the approach. In horror, he watched an animal they thought had been stopped in the cluster munitions strike rise from the dirt and sand and shake itself.
“Drover Three and Four, pull up, abort pass! Bandits are approaching the strike area, and the active target is now aboveground!”
The call came three seconds too late. As the colonel watched in horror, two of the animals approaching the first exploded out of the sand and dirt of the desert. Bunching up their muscled legs and using their powerful tails as a natural catapult, they sprang into the air at incredible speed. The first one caught Drover Three in the left air intake, smashing into the fuselage and being sucked in, exploding through the Pratt & Whitney engine, causing a catastrophic failure and explosions that ripped through the cockpit and fuselage of the heavy fighter, tearing it apart. The second animal ricocheted harmlessly off the remains of the disintegrating jet, falling onto the desert floor, along with the mile-long stretch of settling wreckage of Drover Three. To the amazement of all watching, the animal rose and stumbled, fell to the ground, then rose again. This time it shook its massive bulk, jumped into the air, and dove into the desert soil. Drover Four banked hard and climbed, pushing the big fighter to afterburner in its attempted escape, taxing the huge jet’s air-frame as it did so. The first beast was on the surface of the desert floor below and was watching the F-15 Eagle trying to make her escape. The beast timed its jump perfectly and leaped just as Drover Four went to afterburner and started climbing. But before the full effect of the powerful twin engines could provide enough thrust to propel the heavy fighter forward and up, the animal struck hard. It hit the Strike Eagle’s left wing and punctured straight through it, tearing out control surfaces and bending and weakening the struts until the wing creased and folded inward toward the cockpit with a pop that sounded as if a bomb had exploded. The wing then slammed hard into the glass-enclosed canopy, crushing the life from the two men inside instantaneously, seconds before the aircraft slammed into the desert floor and disappeared in an expanding fireball. The Talkhan that had embedded itself in the fighter’s wing rolled free of the wreckage. It was burning as it gained its feet, stumbled three steps, then collapsed dead to the sand.
“Jesus Christ!” Jessup yelled into his mask. “Drover Three and Four are down. Repeat, Drover Three and Four are down, no chutes. Drover lead is on the attack.”
Jessup banked hard to the left, bringing the fighter to a nose-down attitude. His wingman mimicked the move as he followed. The colonel brought his cannon to bear on the still form of the animal that had downed Drover Four. The cannon embedded in the left side of the aircraft just aft of the radar dome in the nose erupted with all six barrels with a short bruuuuuup. Rounds from the powerful minigun struck the remains of the invader, tossing pieces in all directions and further disintegrating the wreckage of the downed Drover Four, pushing the carcass hard across the desert floor.
Jessup applied power and pulled back on his stick, bringing his fighter back up to a safer level, then he called, “Drover flight, climb to five thousand feet and hold for targets.”
Lieutenant Colonel Jessup removed his oxygen mask as he made the fast climb to altitude and rubbed a gloved hand across his sweating mouth. In all the missions he had flown in deserts just like the one below him, in all the time he had spent in, over, and around the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, he had never lost anyone, not even an aircraft, with all his aircrews coming home safely. Now four men lay crumpled and dead in their aircraft on American soil. Dead because someone on the ground had underestimated the ability of the enemy they were facing. Jessup had become like most commanders in the opening phases of war. He took it for granted that he had superior firepower and numbers, the same mistakes that had been made by men of his nation since the times of Washington, Lincoln, Custer, and Westmoreland.
Once he made it to a safe altitude, he thumbed his transmit switch and raised his mask to his face. “Drover base, Drover base, this is Drover lead. Inform National Command Authority, the enemy is a viable air threat.”
Superstition Mountains, Arizona
July 9, 1425 Hours
Billowing clouds of black smoke that marked the remains of the two downed air force fighters and crews could still be seen from their high vantage point above the mountain valley. They had all listened and watched in horror as the aircraft and four brave men were lost, and that made for the grim determination they felt as they gathered in the large command tent.
Collins watched Specialist Sarah McIntire as she spoke with a member of Delta, obviously a part of her tunnel team. He waited until she looked up and made eye contact with him. He had been tempted
to place her on his team, which had been assigned one of the town holes, but they needed one of the tunnel experts to go in after the mother, and Sarah was it. Since she was the most experienced in tunnels, she would be making a few points about the geology of the valley during the briefing.
“Alright people, let’s settle in and get started, we’re damn near out of time,” Colonel Fielding said, standing at the head of the one hundred men and women of the tunnel assault teams.
Behind Fielding was a three-dimensional computer blowup of the surrounding mountain and desert floor. Marks in a dozen places indicated the routes the squad-sized tunnel teams would take. Larger dots indicated a parental hole and the smaller ones the offspring.
“Before we start out, we wanted you to hear what we’re up against here. It’s nothing you have trained for, but your units have been chosen for your ability to adapt to a fluid situation. And make no mistake, people, your enemy is ruthless and cunning, as we just witnessed in the valley.”
The absolute quiet of the gathered soldiers told the colonel they understood.
“Very well.” He turned and looked at Collins. “Major Collins, if you would, please.”
Collins stood and stepped forward. “Here’s what we know. They are diggers, as you’ve heard. Our soil is absolutely nothing to them because their body is so much denser than our own. They can be killed, even though they’re heavily armored. Hit it where it is weakest, where the armor plates meet, but even then it will take a pounding before it dies. As search teams, your job is simply to search and destroy and count. I can’t stress this point enough, count.
Event: A Novel Page 36