The Red Horseman jg-5

by Stephen Coonts

  “Over a dozen men. Some armed,” Jake whispered.

  “The nukes?”

  “A lot of them.”

  “Whoo boy!”

  “There’s a door in the east side, by the aircraft door,” Jake said. “It’s open. I’m gonna step out and look around the corner. Open the door for me.” His heart was hammering, he was perspiring freely, and he was breathing hard, as if he had run ten miles, but when Toad opened the door he slipped back outside.

  The light over the doorway outside had to go. Jake reached up and broke it with the silencer on the end of the submachine gun. Then he inched his head around the corner of the hangar. Just bodies visible. He ran the length of the building as fast as his sore leg would allow and paused at the next corner by the sentry box, then cautiously inched his head out.

  There was a trailer or something, a dozen or so armed Iraqis, some of them looking this way. He jerked his head back.

  The fat was in the fire. They must have seen him. A grenade!

  He got one from his web belt, pulled the pin, then threw it as hard as he could around the corner. When it blew he leaned out a few inches and let go with the silenced weapon.

  Three men were down. The nearest man was picking himself up off the concrete, just twenty feet away. Jake’s slugs smacked him and he went over backward, his weapon flying. Jake sprayed another burst at the men by the trailer, then ducked back into shelter.

  Bullets splattered into the metal of the hangar just above his head as the ripping of a weapon echoed off the clustered buildings. Jake crouched, looking for the muzzle blasts. There! He squeezed off a burst as he scuttled sideways for the dubious safety of the sentry box.

  More bullets spanged in.

  Now he took his time, sighting carefully: this was what the Iraqi hadn’t done. He squeezed the trigger and held the muzzle down. And saw the Iraqi fall from behind a barrel where he had taken cover.

  Quickly he took the empty magazine from his weapon and inserted another. Now back to the corner. Another burst at figures now trying to get behind the trailer.

  There was a car there. A car? A limo, it looked like.

  Shots from inside the hangar. Toad must have gone in.

  Jake heaved another grenade.

  After it exploded, he looked again. The car was right beside the trailer, the passenger door open. Two men were hosing lead in this direction. The car was also facing this way.

  Jake got down on his belly and aimed his weapon at the front tires of the car. The two men who were upright now went down, dropping their weapons. Jake gave the tires a whole clip.

  New magazine inserted.

  Even though its front tires were flat, the limo started to move. Grafton pumped a burst into the engine compartment and watched as a cloud of steam came out. The limo stopped.

  The gunfire on the western side of the base was building into a sustained racket. Grafton looked around. A SEAL was running toward him, his weapon at the ready.

  The SEAL flopped down behind Jake. “Go into the hangar and help out,” Jake said. “One of our guys is in there. Be careful where you shoot.”

  Without a word the other man got up and went into the hangar.

  Jake lay where he was, watching the limo and the trailer by the hangar wall. No one moved.

  A helicopter swept over. Then another. Running without lights. Rockets rippled from a third machine and streaked away to the west. Now Jake heard the roar of a 30mm cannon. This machine was barely moving, pouring fire at several tanks just outside the perimeter fence. The wash from the rotors of this machine fanned Jake.

  Two figures rose from a low place out on the airfield and came slowly this way, bent at the waist. They stopped and crouched occasionally. They approached the car.

  “Don’t shoot him,” Jake shouted during a momentary lull in the gunship barrage going on just behind him. “Take him into the hangar.”

  With that he got up and opened the hangar door.

  Inside the foyer he wiped the perspiration from his eyes, got a good grip on the submachine gun, then jerked open the interior door and dived through.

  He slid right into the body of an Iraqi soldier. His throat had been cut. More bodies lay near the eastern door, the one that led to where the trailer was parked. Jake inched forward and looked carefully around. A group of Iraqis was standing near the west wall of the hangar with their hands up. Three missiles on trailers sat against the north wall, and here and there, several compact, cylindrical devices — warheads. Piles of wooden crates sat in one corner. A Scud on its launcher sat against the west wall.

  “Toad?” Jake made it loud, because the noise from outside was reverberating inside this large metal building.

  “Over here, CAG.”

  “Everything under control?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Are you behind something?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stay there. I’m gonna take a look out this east door.”

  Jake walked across the hangar warily. He didn’t take time to count the warheads, but there were a lot of them.

  Approaching the door he stepped to one side. The door was ajar. He eased it open and inched his head around the jamb for a look. This was, of course, an excellent way to get his brains blown out, but right now didn’t seem to be the time to play it safe.

  Three bodies were lying near the door. Four more were visible to the right, toward the south. And fifty feet away the limo still sat, the two SEALs kneeling behind it. Jake stepped out and walked toward them.

  “There were about a dozen men here when I first saw them. Did you guys see where the others went?”

  “They went hoofing it toward the north. There’s a network of trenches over there, I think. You’ll find their bodies about fifty yards up that way.”

  As helicopters crossed above and the whuff of Hellfire missiles and rockets being launched washed over them, one of the SEALs seized the front door of the car and jerked it open. The driver sat with his hands on the steering wheel, offering no resistance. “This guy’s been watching too many American cop movies. Okay, Ahmad, outta there.”

  The rear door on Jake’s side of the car opened. He stood ready, the submachine gun leveled, his finger on the trigger. First a leg came out, a leg clad in uniform trousers. Then an arm and head, then the man was standing there. He was bareheaded, wore a long-sleeved uniform shirt without a tie or jacket, and had a thin brush mustache on his upper lip.

  Jake gestured with his gun. “Raise ’em.”

  The man obeyed.

  “Okay, Saddam,” Jake said, stepping aside and jerking his left thumb at the door, “let’s join the others at the party.”

  * * *

  Jake stopped outside the door and got out his radio. He selected the proper channel and checked in. “The weapons are here. The dance is on.”

  He waited for an acknowledgment, then turned down the volume of the radio to save the battery. He kept it in his hand though.

  Right now the SEALs were establishing a perimeter around this building and locating the remainder of the Iraqi Republican Guard troops. The Apaches were working over the Republican Guard camp and the nearby barracks. Yet this was makeshift, a temporary expedient until the helicopters with the 101st Airborne Air Assault troops and their heavy weapons arrived. Outside the base fighter-bombers would attack the Republican Guard without mercy and hopefully prevent Iraqi troops from amassing sufficient combat power to retake the base or hinder the American buildup. As usual in modern war, timing, mobility, and firepower were the key.

  Commander Lester Slick came striding in. His radio was also squawking in his hand. “Admiral, we have four dead that I know of and about twenty men unaccounted for. One of them is the reporter.”

  Jake merely nodded.

  “We’ve scouted out most of the base and neutralized some of the opposition, but the bulk of my men are setting up lights for helo landing zones. The choppers should be here in about a minute, sir.”

  “Run
ways intact?”

  “Appear to be, sir.”

  “So how are we doing?”

  “We’re right on schedule. Less resistance than we anticipated from the Republican Guard, which is a blessing.”

  “Let’s stay on schedule. When you can, send me a couple more men to guard these prisoners. And if you come across the reporter, send him in here.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  * * *

  The buildings of the town ended abruptly. Beyond was a sandy area, then the fence that encircled the airfield. And the fence had a hole in it, a fairly big hole that was just visible in the muted light from the town. The edge of the wire was curled and one post was awry. Beyond the hole was nothing, just darkness.

  Jack Yocke lay against the side of a building facing the fence. From where he lay he could see the body of a man lying facedown, half-buried in the sand. Yocke could see the entire length of the body, which lay about twenty feet away. The U.S. style helmet was quite plain, the parachute pack on the back, the weapon, the desert camouflage trousers, the desert boots.

  From the angle of the head against the shoulders, it was obvious that the man’s neck was broken. And probably half the other bones in his body.

  Yocke shifted his gaze. He watched the muzzle blasts of the helicopters making runs on the Iraqi troops outside the base and the streaks the Hellfire missiles made.

  To the east pulsing fingers of antiaircraft fire were rising into the night sky. The strings of tracers seemed to be probing randomly, without purpose. Even as he watched he saw the flashes of bombs exploding on the horizon, where the guns must be. The guns fell silent.

  He picked up a handful of sand and idly let it run through his fingers. Then he studied the hole in the fence some more.

  Well, there it was — a way into the air base. All he had to do was run for it.

  It was too good to be true, really. And that was why he was lying here looking.

  He concentrated on the problem, tried to think objectively about the hole in the fence. Why was it there? Perhaps the Iraqis were just sloppy. Well, that made sense. The streets and buildings he had come through were certainly Third World ratty.

  He looked left. No one in sight.

  Right. The same.

  But…it didn’t feel right. Something was wrong.

  His contemplation of the problem was interrupted by a chopper that came from over the city behind him and swept across the fence, merely a black, fast-moving shape, then laid into a right turn. He was watching as the streak came in from the right and intersected the chopper. Then it exploded. A white flash registered on his brain, then a red-yellow fireball, then the wreckage was angling downward. It hit the ground and fire splashed forward in the direction the machine had been traveling.

  Even from this distance, Yocke could faintly feel the heat against his cheeks.

  The fire burned fiercely for several minutes, then subsided. Finally it winked out, leaving the darkness beyond the fence even blacker than before.

  Yocke looked right and left again, then began to crawl. Across the street onto the sand, toward the dead American sailor. Murphy. That was the name on his clothes.

  After one more look around, Yocke got to his feet. Hunched over to present the smallest silhouette possible, he made for the fence.

  He was twenty feet from the hole in the wire when he saw the helmet. He took two more steps before he saw that the helmet still had a head in it. And there on the wire, a piece of cloth. No, an arm, with a hand attached.

  Jack Yocke froze.

  Now he saw the hole in the ground under the tear in the fence.

  Mines!

  He was standing in a minefield.

  He looked wildly around, trying to see the triggers. All he could make out in the gloom was sand and trash.

  Off to the right — there, something moving. Only Yocke’s eyes moved. A soldier, coming this way. An Iraqi!

  In front of him was the hole that led into the beckoning darkness. More pieces of the American sailor who must have tripped the mine. Fifteen feet. No more. Tracks.

  Tracks! He could see where the doomed man had stepped.

  Yocke moved. One step. Two. Three.

  A bullet sang over his head. And another.

  He ran. Straight through the hole in the wire and on for fifty or sixty feet as bullets cut the air near him and one tugged at the equipment on his back.

  Finally he threw himself down and spun around facing back the way he had come. The land was so flat that through the fence he could still see the Iraqi who had been shooting at him. The helmeted man was bent over, working with the action of his rifle. A bolt action rifle!

  Jack Yocke’s weapon was in his hands. He sighted it carefully, as carefully as he could as he struggled to control his breathing. Now he pulled the trigger. He held the trigger down as the weapon vibrated in his hands.

  The last shell flew out and he wrestled the empty magazine out of the gun and slammed in a new one.

  Now he saw that the Iraqi was down. Lying on the sidewalk, barely visible in the half-light.

  Yocke sighted carefully at the prone figure. Again he pulled the trigger and held it down. He fired the whole magazine, then lay still in the darkness listening to his heart thudding. Only then did it come to him that the man he had just killed had probably been even more scared than he was. A bolt-action rifle — missing bang, bang, bang…at that range! Probably a recent draftee, maybe militia. Yocke began sobbing again.

  25

  Rita was wearing the headset and listening to the radio traffic and conversation between the two pilots as they approached the Samarra air base through the southern corridor. Two sanitary corridors had been hacked through the Iraqi defenses by the allied jets and attack helicopters, which had pulverized every antiaircraft weapon and fire-control radar that they could locate.

  Still, there was no way that the gunships could kill every Iraqi with a rifle, so Rita and the people in the chopper with her were wearing flak vests and sitting on extra ones. They were also trying to make themselves very small.

  You hunch up, move self-consciously into the fetal position, and you wait. You wait for that random bullet to find your flesh.

  Those bullets were out there zinging through the darkness. Occasionally one struck the helicopter. Several times Rita thought she could feel the delicate thump and once the pilot commented. Fortunately the helicopter was flying perfectly with all its equipment functioning as it should.

  Still you draw your legs up and tuck your hands under the flak vest and wait for random death. The seconds tick by. You become aware of the beating of your heart. Stimulated by adrenaline, your mind wanders uncontrollably.

  Violent death happens to other people — it won’t happen to me. No bullet will rip my flesh or open arteries or smash bone or tear through that delicate mass of neurons and brain cells that makes me me. No.

  She was focused inward, waiting, when she heard the pilot gag and felt the chopper pitch abruptly sideways. The copilot cursed.

  “Let go of the stick, Bill! Goddamn, let go of the fucking stick!”

  Standing in the door, Rita reached over the pilot slumped in the right seat. He had a death grip on the stick. The bucking chopper threw her off balance.

  “Unstrap him,” the copilot urged Rita over the ICS. “Get him out of the seat. Bill, leggo the fucking stick!”

  She released the shoulder Koch fittings of the pilot’s harness and leaned forward for the lap fittings. The cyclic stick and his hand were right there. The copilot was wrestling the cyclic with both hands. The chopper was bucking. Rita grabbed.

  “Get him outta the seat,” the copilot demanded.

  She released one lap fitting and fumbled for the other. The dying man was jerking the cyclic stick and the machine was obeying. Rita lost her footing. She regained it and hung herself over the back of the seat.

  There. He was no longer attached to the seat.

  “Get him out!”

  Rita grabbe
d his shoulders and pulled. Oh God, he was heavy.

  She braced herself and gave a mighty heave.

  The pilot came half out of the seat but he still kept his death grip on the cyclic stick.

  His helmet, with the wires. She tore it off his head.

  She grabbed him again, two handfuls of harness, braced her right leg against the back of the seat and pulled with all her strength.

  He came out of the seat and Rita kept pulling and the two of them tumbled backward into the passenger compartment, the wounded pilot on top.

  She fumbled for her flashlight. The beam showed blood. He was shot in the face. His eyes were unfocused, blood flowing.

  “He took a bullet in the face,” she told the copilot.

  “Five minutes. We’ll be on the ground in five minutes. Keep him alive.”

  How do you keep a man alive who has been shot an inch under the right eye?

  Then she realized that the convulsions had stopped. He was limp. Rita Moravia found a wrist and felt for his pulse. Still a flicker.

  Since there was nothing else to do, she cradled him in her arms and hugged him.

  * * *

  How long Jack Yocke lay in the sandy dirt he didn’t know. The noise of the helicopters and the explosions and concussions that reached him through the earth finally subsided, so he levered himself from the ground and began walking. He walked until the exhaustion hit him, then he sat down in the sand beside a runway. He was sitting there unable to summon the energy to move when he heard the crunch of a boot in the sand.

  Yocke grabbed his weapon and ran his fingers over the action, trying to brush off the sand.

  “Hey, shipmate! What’re you doing out here?”

  “Uh…” Relief flooded Yocke and he tried to collect his thoughts. He gestured toward the fence, back there somewhere behind him. “His chute didn’t open. Murphy. His name was Murphy.”

  The man came over for a look.

  “You’re one of the SEALs, right?”

  “No, but I jumped with them.”

  “Better get over to the hangar. We’re setting up a perimeter along the fence.”

  “There’s mines on the other side.”