Oath of Honor

by Matthew Betley

  Brrp-brrp-brrp!

  The muzzle flashes danced across the inside of the windshield, mixing with the soft lights of the suspension bridge to create an odd, lonely luminescence. Combined with the deafening fire in the confined space and the ejection of shell casings, which flickered inside the SUV like miniature fireworks, John felt like he was in some hellish version of a rave.

  Amira’s bullets bombarded the left-rear two wheels of the speeding truck, striking rubber and metal and sending a shower of sparks across the pavement below. The driver glanced out the window and sharply turned the truck to the left, trying to force the Mercedes into the short median wall.

  John pulled back as Amira emptied the thirty-round magazine, ejected it, and loaded another. The truck was now directly in front of them, and Amira opened fire again, this time aiming for the right rear tires.

  Brrp-brrp-brrp!

  Bullets once again hammered the truck in a well-aimed fusillade, striking the tires and the rear axle. The machine pistol went quiet, empty once again.

  For a moment, John thought their efforts had been futile, and he wondered what plan B would be. They were now a little less than halfway across the bridge and running out of ground.

  Thump! Thump!

  Suddenly, the truck’s right-rear tires exploded, disintegrating completely as the truck tried to maintain its speed. Pieces of rubber unraveled, discarding themselves along the pavement like dead skin. The truck careened from side to side in large, slow movements, a lumbering beast injured and unsure.

  With nothing but the rims remaining, the right rear corner of the truck dropped several inches. Sparks exploded from underneath the truck, the metal rims gouging the surface of the bridge.

  “Uh-oh,” John said.

  “Yeah,” Amira said in fascination as she watched the slow-motion destruction unfold.

  The driver tried to maintain control, but it was too late. The truck turned lazily to the right and lurched toward the railing of the bridge in a wide arc. The flat front cab of the Chinese truck smashed through the bridge’s railing, slowing the vehicle’s momentum.

  Fortunately for the driver, the engineers had constructed two sets of railings, one for the road itself, and one for the outer walkways on both sides of the bridge.

  Twisted chunks of metal punctured the underside of the truck and severed the front axle. The front of the truck’s cab smashed down onto the pavement, grinding purposefully toward the second set of railings.

  A lone man walking across the bridge had stopped to watch the mayhem, realizing just in time that he was about to become part of the action. As the truck broke through the second set of barriers, he ran for his life, sprinting up the walkway and escaping with mere inches to spare.

  The truck ground forward, its cab extending out over the open air eighty feet above the Nile, as it was finally, permanently, crippled.

  Parts of the second railing broke away and plummeted into the dark waters below.

  “That was close,” John said, turning to Amira as he stopped the SUV behind the wreckage of the truck.

  “You spoke too soon,” Amira said with awe in her voice.

  “What?” he asked, and then turned back to the truck.

  The wrenching sound of metal being torn and twisted reverberated across the bridge as the death throes of the mechanical monster slowly lifted the rear of the ruined vehicle into the air. The truck, a giant, broken teeter-totter balanced precariously on the edge of the bridge, inched forward, yearning for the watery grave below.

  CHAPTER 40

  By the time Logan and the SEAL team reached the tunnel, the other half of the assault force was already inside. They’d breached the door and found the keys to both the jeep and the cargo truck hanging on a wooden peg hammered into the wall next to the vehicles.

  A SEAL slightly younger than Logan approached him, extended his hand, and said, “Lieutenant Reed, Mr. West. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard plenty about you, both officially and unofficially.”

  Before Logan could respond, Chief Sorenson said, “Sir, you’ll have something to add to that laundry list of stories when you hear about what he and Mr. Matthews did inside.”

  “Is that so?” Lieutenant Reed asked, genuinely interested.

  “We just took care of some problems. Nothing more,” Logan said.

  “If that’s what you call it,” Chief Sorenson said drily.

  “Tell me about it later because we need to get the hell out of here. The guards are either dead or scared, and I don’t want to linger long enough to allow anyone to get any bright ideas. Let’s load up and go,” Lieutenant Reed said.

  “Sounds like a plan, Lieutenant,” Cole said.

  “Chief, I’ll take the jeep and three men. You take the rest of the team in the truck. Once we’re at least ten miles out at a secure location, I’ll call in the extract. Sound good?”

  “Roger, sir,” Chief Sorenson said, and turned to Logan and Cole. “You want to drive, Mr. West?”

  “No thanks, Chief. The last time I drove a seven-ton, I drove it off the top of a dam in Iraq. Didn’t go so well.”

  “I was kidding. No offense, but I’m driving,” Chief Sorenson replied.

  “I know, but I wasn’t,” Logan said, a slight grin breaking across his face.

  “Why am I not surprised? Are you sure you weren’t one of us in a former life?” Chief Sorenson asked as he jogged around the front of the truck and hopped in the driver’s seat.

  Cole stepped up and slid into the middle of the seat, holding his AK-47 between his legs, the muzzle pointed forward. Logan followed, rolling his window down to allow the barrel of an AK-47 to stick out. He’d picked it up after the giant had destroyed the first one.

  Three loud thumps on the back of the cab informed them that the rest of the team was secured and ready to go.

  “Here goes nothing,” Chief Sorenson said, and turned the key.

  The Mercedes-Benz engine turned over immediately, spitting exhaust from its vertical pipe.

  “You gotta love German engineering,” Chief Sorenson said. “Take away the whole Third Reich–Aryan supremacist–Holocaust thing, and they’re not so bad,” he added sarcastically.

  Chief Sorenson honked the horn once, and the jeep in front of them pulled away. The truck followed, driving through the tunnel entrance and out the front gate without so much as a single shot fired.

  “No fanfare? I’m a little surprised,” Logan said, thinking of the Chinese man he’d met earlier in the day. He found it hard to believe that he’d let them slip away without a fight. He hadn’t seen him during their escape. Bastard was probably hiding. Maybe he’s dead. If so, good. “Be alert. One of the shot callers in the prison didn’t seem like the type to let us go so easily.”

  “Logan, we’re always alert,” Chief Sorenson replied seriously. “You know that.”

  “Good point,” Logan said, and then added, “I meant to ask, how did you guys insert and get to the guard towers?”

  “We HALO’d in five clicks away and then humped in. Since this place is so remote, it was a fairly easy movement. Once we were in position with a four-man team at each corner, we took out all the guards in each tower, cut through the fence—it wasn’t electrified—and scaled the towers. The plan was to gain access to the inside since satellite imagery showed an access panel in each tower and work our way through the prison until we found you. But you literally shot our plan full of holes when you got into a gun battle in the control room.”

  “It was rather unexpected,” Logan said, watching the side-view mirror as the prison disappeared into the night. Good riddance, he thought, and shifted his focus to the single-lane dirt road that meandered its way along the Nile River flowing less than thirty meters to the left.

  “Two of our teams on the east wall had a better view of it than we did,” the chief continued as he navigated the winding road behind the jeep. “The lieutenant thought you could use the cover of darkness. So we took the lights out for you, and wh
en our guys saw you two jump out the window, the lieutenant ordered us to rappel into the courtyard to get you. After that, well, you know the rest.”

  “I just want to say thank you, Chief,” Cole said. “I appreciate the effort. I know it’s what you guys do for a living—hell, it’s what you live for—but it makes a difference to me.”

  “Ditto, Chief. That was an excellent piece of work,” Logan said sincerely. “Hopefully, we can get back to the US Embassy without further incident.”

  “It’s a little more than eighty miles away, which is why we have a Marine Corps CH-53E staged twenty miles from here. It’ll pick us up and take us back to sovereign soil,” Chief Sorenson said.

  “The embassy had a CH-53 in country?” Logan asked incredulously.

  “Negative,” Chief Sorenson said. “You don’t miss a thing, do you? We got lucky on that count. There are actually two here, supporting a USAID mission. The crews are Marines, but they fly in civvies to keep things friendly with the locals. I think they even grew beards and let their hair get out of regs,” he said dramatically. It was common knowledge Marines were more stringent about grooming standards than any other branch of the service. “The birds have no weapons on them as part of the agreement between us and the Sudanese government,” he finished.

  “I had no idea,” Logan said.

  “We were just as shocked, but we figured we may as well take advantage of it. And the Marines were happy to help, even if they can’t talk about it back home after this is all over,” the chief added.

  “I’m sure they are,” Logan said, staring out into the pitch-black night. “How much farther before we’re in the clear?”

  “Ten minutes or so,” Chief Sorenson said, and then spoke into a microphone he wore around his neck. “How’s it looking up there, sir?” he asked his commanding officer in the jeep in front of them.

  The truck hit a shallow pothole and bounced, the Mercedes’s shocks efficiently dispersing the energy from the jolt.

  A deep, low rumbling grew in the distance, entering the noisy cab in waves through the open window.

  A chill ran across Logan’s neck. Oh no, he thought. It can’t be.

  “Chief,” Logan said, hiding his sudden concern under his ever-present calm facade. “Please tell me your lieutenant already called the helo, and it’s on its way.”

  “Wait one,” Chief Sorenson said, and then asked Lieutenant Reed over the radio. “That’s a negative. Why?”

  “Because we’ve got an inbound bird. I can hear it in the distance. It’s getting closer.”

  “Great,” Cole said. “Just what we need.”

  “Chief, let your lieutenant and our guys in the back know. Tell him to kill his lights on the jeep. You too. Any of you packing an M79, by chance?” Logan asked, referring to the 40mm grenade launcher that dated back to Vietnam but was still a preferred weapon of the SEALs.

  “As a matter of fact, we are,” Chief Sorenson answered. “What do you have in mind?”

  “It depends,” Logan said.

  “Roger,” the chief said, and informed his commanding officer. He changed channels on the radio and spoke quickly, telling the team members in the back of the truck about the incoming helicopter and to load the M79s.

  “Now what?” Chief Sorenson asked, slowing the vehicle in the dark and maintaining a safe distance between himself and the jeep as he kept it visible.

  “Now we wait and see if he can find us,” Logan said in an eerily calm voice. “I’d be shocked if he doesn’t, since I’m sure he’s flying with night-vision goggles, but if he does, we knock him the fuck out of the sky.”

  ———

  Lau Gang watched the commandeered vehicles through night-vision goggles the copilot had provided him as the two vehicles worked their way northward. The heavily armored Russian Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship—one of six the Sudanese government had purchased—maintained a standoff distance of two miles, a distance the war bird could easily cover the moment Gang gave the order.

  He was furious with himself for letting the situation spiral this out of control, even though the main objective in Sudan had been achieved. He was a man accustomed to controlling all aspects of an operation, and in the last ten minutes, he’d been blindsided on two fronts. Liu had just called him from one of the cargo trucks to inform him that the rest of his team had been slaughtered in an assault at the campsite and that he was trying to get off the island before the Americans captured him. That call had come moments after an earlier call to the prison control room had been interrupted by gunfire. The line—and likely the guard—had gone dead.

  Somehow, the Americans and their allies had simultaneously reclaimed their two missing operatives and pinpointed the location of the ONERING. He’d told Liu that he’d be in route as soon as he dealt with the escaping Americans.

  It would be so easy to order the pilot to destroy the convoy with the Hind’s assortment of rockets, missiles, or its single 23mm twin-barrel cannon.

  Gang still wanted at least one or two Americans alive, to interrogate them to see what they knew, even though he knew it was a risk. Logan West and Cole Matthews could be on either the truck or the jeep. There was no way to find out which one. His mind raced through his options.

  The two vehicles continued to wind their way along the Nile, seemingly oblivious to the Hind’s presence, which wouldn’t be the case for much longer.

  “Catch up to them and pull alongside the jeep. I want to see all four passengers. Use the river but continue to keep internal and external lights off. They’ll hear us coming, but we don’t want to make it any easier for them to spot us. And even if they do, what can they really do about it?” Gang said. If he didn’t see Logan or Cole, he’d order the pilot to destroy the jeep.

  “Roger,” the Sudanese Air Force pilot responded. He’d been given explicit orders from the defense minister’s office—Do whatever Mr. Lau asks. A born pilot, he’d been trained on the Hind since his government had purchased it six years ago, and he loved every second he’d spent with the powerful war machine. He felt invincible, especially against the rebels in Darfur. Some of the aerial assaults he’d been ordered to execute on villages had felt like a video game, albeit one played with real lives. He relived every moment of every raid through the helicopter’s FLIR cameras and reveled in the awesome power of the mechanical beast. He would do nothing to jeopardize his assignment, least of all disobey a VIP he was ordered to accommodate.

  He twisted the collective control next to his seat with his left hand and pushed the cyclic control stick forward with his right. The Hind tilted forward and increased its speed as it descended from its thousand-foot altitude toward its targets.

  Gang stared at the barren alien landscape, accentuated by the lunar illumination. He longed for the lush, green hills of his homeland, but he knew they might be lost to him forever if he didn’t fully succeed in Sudan.

  The Hind had cut the distance in half when the two vehicles turned their lights off just before they veered right at a bend in the river, suddenly disappearing behind a low berm naturally formed by the sloping land. It didn’t matter. They’d be upon the Americans in another thirty seconds, and then he’d take action, ending this cat-and-mouse game. The situation would be easier to control if there were only one vehicle remaining—and fewer American commandos.

  “Drop down to the river and use it to make your approach. Don’t let them see us coming from above,” Gang ordered. He’d exploit any tactical advantage that presented itself, and the berm they’d just turned behind would serve nicely.

  ———

  Logan had been searching for an ambush site from the moment he’d heard the helicopter. Lieutenant Reed and Chief Sorenson had concurred, agreeing an ambush might be their only chance to escape.

  With clear fields of fire and concealment provided by the terrain, Logan had realized that inserting themselves in the ditch and surrounding rocks of the berm gave them the best chance they’d have to knock the bird out of the sky.r />
  Lieutenant Reed and Chief Sorenson had stopped the vehicles, and every team member had disembarked from the truck and jeep, taking only their weapons and sprinting into the ditch in a single line that ran parallel to the road and river behind it, establishing a perfect linear ambush kill zone. Logan and Cole were the last ones in place, diving into the ditch seconds before the helicopter appeared like the grim reaper of mechanical death.

  The roar of the helicopter shattered the landscape’s relative calm. The ground shook as the bird neared their location, and Logan watched ripples appear on the otherwise calm waters of the Nile.

  A few more seconds, Logan thought. The plan was simple but risky, and they’d only have a single moment to take advantage of their tactical surprise.

  Logan waited, breathing hard as he looked over the sights of his AK-47, aimed toward the river and its banks, only twenty yards behind the parked vehicles.

  The reverberation of sound intensified across the water and off the berm with each second.

  The SEALs were in position and needed no guidance from him, as Chief Sorenson had pleasantly reminded him. “We got this. Just enjoy the show.”

  The helicopter appeared from behind the berm and hovered fifteen feet above the flowing Nile, a black phantom with a deafening roar and a raging rotor wash that sent water showering over their parked vehicles. The helicopter maintained its position, exposing its starboard side, as if it were a living, breathing predator assessing its prey before it pounced.

  No one had realized they might be facing the most fearsome of attack helicopters, but it wouldn’t have changed the plan. From the large silhouette, the weapons hanging off two angled wings, and the bulbous low-profile cockpit that made Soviet pilots unofficially nickname it the “crocodile,” Logan identified the last thing he wanted to see—a Russian Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter. Fuck me.

  Also nicknamed the “flying tank” due to its heavily armored body, Logan knew it only had three vulnerable points—the tail rotor, the air intakes below the main rotor assembly, and an oil tank near the fuselage.