Collateral Damage d-14

by Jim DeFelice

  “Turning.”

  Turk circled back to get a better look at the trucks. Grizzly contacted the airborne controller, trying to see if the Predator overhead could shift closer for an image. He then tried to contact Groundhog directly, to check on their status.

  The Brits said only that they were “good.” By then the trucks had gone off the main highway, moving in a direct line toward the road that led to the village.

  “Those the same trucks as before?” Grizzly asked.

  “Can’t tell,” said Turk. “What about the Predator?”

  “The trucks are a little far from the road for the Predator to spot. He has to stay eyes on the village.”

  “By the time they’re in range they’ll be in the hills.” The geography would make it harder to watch the trucks there.

  “Let’s get in their faces,” said Grizzly. “See if we can run them off like before. I’ll come in first. They fire at me, light them up.”

  “Yeah, all right. Roger that.”

  Grizzly led him south before banking and pushing down, his nose angling toward the pickups. Turk waited, giving the other plane enough of a head start so he could react if he saw anything. He tucked down, pushing the Hog through 1,500 feet and picking up speed.

  He was on the back of a sleek stallion. The engines rushed behind him, a steady whoosh. He edged his finger on the trigger of the gun, double-checking the panel to make sure the weapon was ready.

  The two trucks were no more than thirty yards apart. The lead vehicle was just reaching the road to the village as Shooter Three came in ahead of him, low.

  Something winked below Grizzly’s A–10.

  Gunfire?

  Turk couldn’t tell if it was a muzzle flash or just a reflection from the sun.

  Another glint. A flash.

  Weapon. Guns. MANPAD!

  “Flares! Evade!” yelled Turk, warning the other plane even as he pressed the trigger to zero out the threat.

  The big gun in the nose of the A–10 began rotating. The force of the cannon was so intense that it seemed to hold the Warthog up in the sky. The burst lasted not quite two seconds, but in that time, somewhere over one hundred rounds burst from the gun. Nearly every one hit the truck — or would have, if there was truck left there to hit. The heavy slugs tore the front of the truck in half, igniting a huge fireball and vaporizing a good portion of the vehicle.

  “Missile in the air!” yelled Grizzly.

  Turk’s warning system was bleating as well, but he was too focused to pay attention. He leaned his body left and the jet followed, moving quickly as he lined up his second shot. He was a little too close to get more than a few slugs into the truck before he passed it, but they were more than enough to stop the vehicle.

  Turk dished flares and turned hard right, himself a target now. Gravity hit him in the side of the face and chest. He felt the bladders in his flight gear pushing hard against his stomach and his legs. The Hog floated a bit, moving sideways as it struggled to sort out the conflicting demands of gravity and its pilot’s will.

  The peak of the hill loomed dead ahead, a jagged slag of red and brown.

  “Power, baby,” Turk said, his hand already slamming the throttle. “Power.”

  The Hog’s nose pulled up and the aircraft lifted in the sky, almost hopping over the hilltop.

  He felt weightless. He wasn’t sure what had been launched at him. He was afraid it was on his tail.

  “ECMs,” he said, momentarily reacting as if he were in the Tigershark. He recovered quickly, hitting the panel to activate the electronic countermeasures — a fancy name for a radar jammer.

  The Hog continued to climb for a few more seconds before Turk realized that whatever had been launched had missed. Either it had been sucked off by the flares or was unguided to begin with, just a rocket-propelled grenade. He banked back around.

  The first truck was hidden by steam and smoke. The second was sitting on the side of the road.

  He had it on his nose. He glanced up, locating Shooter Three on his left wing at about ten o’clock, coming up from the south.

  “I’m going in on that second truck,” Turk called on the radio.

  “Roger that.”

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good, I’m good. Go for it — I got your six.”

  The truck was fat in his windscreen. The men on the ground were firing at him — Turk could see their muzzles blinking.

  One of his missiles would have wiped out all of the men, but he wanted to save them for the SAS unit. And in any event, he’d already made up his mind on how he was going to attack.

  The truck grew large in his pipper. He pressed the trigger, spitting a steady stream of spent uranium into it.

  The vehicle disappeared beneath a cloud of smoke. Turk cleared south.

  “We’re good, we’re good,” said Grizzly. “Hold south of the village.”

  “We need to move back east in case we have to run into the village,” said Turk.

  “Yeah, all right, you’re right. Good — let’s get there. Follow me.”

  As they pushed their aircraft back into a position that would make it easier to support the ground units, Groundhog checked in, asking what was going on.

  “Just smoked two pickups that fired on us,” reported Grizzly.

  “Copy.”

  “What’s your situation?”

  “We’re going through the building.”

  “You have subject?”

  “Negative.”

  “We’re standing by.”

  “Copy, Shooter.”

  The brief engagement had been more physical than Turk realized. His arms and upper body felt as if he’d been in a boxing or MMA fight, sore and drained.

  But his breathing was calm. The action had relaxed him.

  Groundhog reported that there were people on the street.

  “A lot of watchers,” said the British soldier.

  “Threatening?” asked Grizzly.

  “Negative. Just watchers. We’re moving to your south.”

  A minute or two later he called back.

  “We’re on the street,” said Groundhog. “Can you take a pass?”

  “Stand by.”

  “I’m with you,” Turk told Grizzly.

  “Follow me through. Same game plan.”

  “Let’s make it fast,” said Turk. “We don’t want to push our luck.”

  “No shit on that.”

  Turk dropped the Hog through four hundred feet as he came down. Grizzly was another hundred feet lower. He dropped to two hundred feet as they came over the village. Turk worried his wingman would plow into the buildings or the nearby hill, but he cleared them and rose south.

  The flyover lasted only a few seconds, but each moment was a full day, weighted with tension. Turk looked left and right, heart pounding. He saw the broken edges of the roof tiles, a half-eroded garden wall on the largest house, a car that had lost its tires.

  And he saw the tops of heads ducking, a bald man, two startled teenagers, a woman white with fear.

  He punched the throttle, powering away.

  “Wooo-hoo,” said Grizzly as they climbed. “You see that crowd?”

  “Copy.”

  “Weapons?”

  Turk had to think about what he had seen. People moving, standing. Weapons?

  None that he remembered. He tried processing it again.

  “Negative. Not even rifles,” he added.

  “You sure?”

  “I think so. You see something?”

  “No.” Grizzly sounded disappointed.

  Groundhog began squawking. They were calling the helicopters in for a pickup.

  “We’re moving to the south side of town,” said the SAS soldier. “Do you copy, Shogun Six?”

  “Shogun Six copies.”

  “Point is marked as Landing Four on your map. It’s behind a low wall.”

  “Affirmative. We copy.”

  Turk spotted the two helicopters flyi
ng from the north, crossing in a wide arc west of the hamlet. They were aiming at a field behind a large building.

  “Got people in that building,” said the helicopter pilot.

  “Are they aggressive?” asked the controller. “Weapons?”

  “I just see people.”

  A three-way conversation between the helicopters, the controller, and the ground unit ensued. The voices were quick and sharp as the men tried to determine whether the people in the building constituted a threat. No weapons had been spotted, and the ROEs declared that they be left alone. That seemed to be a relief to all concerned, especially the ground unit.

  As a precaution, Turk noted the building. He could blast it with a missile if necessary.

  The dozen members of Groundhog hopscotched down the street toward the landing point. Turk could see knots of people moving roughly parallel to the soldiers.

  “A lot of people down here,” said Groundhog.

  “We want to keep them as far back from the helicopters as possible,” said Shogun. “More Hog psyops.”

  The helicopters touched down. The Brits fell into a dead run.

  They were still twenty or thirty yards away when one of the helicopters jerked upward.

  “Gun! Gun!” yelled someone over the radio.

  Turk, about a half mile east of the pickup area, strained to see what was going on.

  Grizzly radioed Groundhog and Shogun but got no answer. Bits of smoke appeared in a line on the ground about a hundred yards from the pickup area, near the village.

  “Shogun’s firing,” said Grizzly.

  “Hold back,” warned Turk. “Helicopter is circling.”

  Turk had to bank to give the chopper room. Smoke spread across the field. It looked like something from a smoke grenade rather than gunfire.

  “Groundhog? Groundhog!” said Grizzly. “Say your situation. What the hell is going on?”

  The first helicopter circled south, ramping upward. The second helicopter remained on the ground.

  “I don’t see any gunfire,” said Turk.

  “I can take out that building,” said Grizzly.

  “Negative, negative,” said Turk. “There’s nothing coming from there. Hold off.”

  The blades on the second helicopter began rotating furiously. The helicopter rose upward, cutting across a thick fist of smoke.

  “We’re good, we’re good,” Groundhog said. “All recovered.”

  Turk lost sight of the helicopter as it passed behind him, flying northeastward. He found Grizzly on his left and followed him upward, climbing away from the village.

  Barely two minutes had passed since the ground element began running for the choppers. It had been a tangle of confusion, at least from Turk’s point of view. He tried sorting it in his mind: the helicopter that lifted off had seen people coming and decided to hold them off with gunfire that missed but scared people away. The other chopper made the pickup, the trooper tossing smoke grenades behind to cover their retreat.

  Simple. Assuming that was the way it went. It was hard to decipher even the most obvious action in combat.

  The helicopters arced northward, getting away from the village. Turk started thinking about the long flight home — and how long he would sleep once he reached the hotel.

  “This is Shogun Actual,” called the helicopter commander. “All allied assets, be advised. We have two men still on the ground. They are moving through the field at the north side of the village. Mountain Three is coming for a pickup.”

  The men, providing an overwatch from the northern end of the village, had been separated as the units began exfiltrating. Confusion on the ground had sent the helicopters skyward before they reached the pickup point.

  Damn.

  The two SAS men on the ground were in radio contact with the controller. The men, using the call sign Rodent, were on the north side of the village. The helicopter pilot flying Mountain Three was closing in. He told them he would meet them wherever they wanted.

  “Hell if necessary,” added the man, who had the slight lilt of a Boston accent.

  They told him they would go north and meet him in the flat desert area. No one was following them.

  The air controller, meanwhile, tried to gather more information about the crowd that had been following. The SAS men said they hadn’t seen any weapons, something Turk and Grizzly confirmed. But someone aboard the helicopter believed he had.

  It was impossible to know the real facts. As a practical matter, the rules remained the same for the two A–10 pilots: they could watch, and buzz the crowd if necessary, but at the moment they couldn’t fire.

  How strange it must be on the ground, Turk thought. A civilian in the war zone was a voyeur, an observer, maybe reluctant, maybe against his or her will. Yet the fascination to find out what was going on must be incredible.

  You’d be drawn to the strangeness, if not the danger. The danger might not even seem real, because the situation was so bizarre — men with guns running through your village, a nightmare in the middle of the day. But it was absolutely real, and a false move or a mistake could easily lead to your death — either from someone on the ground or someone in the sky.

  Was that what it had been like in the village when the Sabre attacked? It must have been worse — hell simply broke open from the sky without warning, arriving on the nose of a fast-flying missile before the plane was close enough to make a noise.

  A terrible, terrible mistake.

  Not his, though. Not his.

  The troopers on the ground moved around the backs of two houses, toward the Y intersection at the center of town. Turk used the zoom feature on the satellite image to check the path they were intending to take — it cut through the hill off the northern road and down into the desert. The village was tucked behind the ridge there, cutting off the view from the buildings.

  He looked down at it. Clear, as far as he could tell. So far, so good.

  And what of the nightmare for the soldiers on the ground? They had two great fears — their legitimate enemy, trying to kill them, and the innocents walking through the village.

  If they were innocents. How could you even tell?

  It was easier in the old days, when you just decided everyone was bad and rolled over the place.

  The SAS troopers crossed the street near the mosque.

  “We’re going north on the street,” reported Rodent. “We—”

  He stopped talking. Turk heard gunfire in the background.

  “We’re under fire,” said the Brit.

  “Do you have a target?” called Grizzly.

  “Negative,” said Rodent. “We’re in cover. We can’t see the gunman.”

  “Rodent, is it the mosque?” Grizzly asked.

  “Stand by.”

  “I can take the mosque out.”

  “Stand by.”

  “Turk, you see the gunfire?”

  “Negative.”

  Turk, about a mile and a half behind Grizzly, zeroed into the area on his screen, using maximum resolution. He couldn’t see any gunfire at all. Hitting the mosque would be easy enough, but without a positive ID that it was the target he couldn’t take the shot. The helicopter, meanwhile, held short, about a mile and a half away.

  “We need a target, Rodent,” said Grizzly.

  The ground unit replied with a curse.

  “Rodent, can you beam them with your laser designator?” asked Turk.

  “Negative. We’re not sure where they are.”

  “Are you under fire?”

  No answer.

  “Rodent?”

  “We’re sorting it out, mate. We hear people moving east of us.”

  “East of you?”

  “And north. Both.”

  “I’m going to try and get eyes on,” Turk told Grizzly. “I’ll come through, then maybe we can nail them.”

  “Roger that. Good.”

  “Rodent, can you try and get them to fire?” Turk told the ground unit.

  “They don
’t bloody well handle requests, Yank. And if they did, that wouldn’t be one I’d make.”

  The haze from the earlier smoke grenades had drifted across the eastern end of town, obscuring Turk’s view as he came up from the south. As he cleared past it, he saw two quick flashes on the far right. They were coming from the roof of a building on the corner of the intersection. The location didn’t seem to have an angle on Rodent’s position, however.

  “How close is that gunfire?” he asked the ground unit.

  “Close enough to count.”

  He told the British soldiers about the building. They agreed it was the likely source, though from where they were they could see only a small corner of the roof.

  “May be why they’re missing,” said Rodent.

  “You sure that mosque is clear?” Grizzly asked Turk. “It has that whole road covered.”

  “I didn’t see anything there. You?”

  Grizzly didn’t answer. He told the SAS troopers to keep their heads down, then dialed his Maverick into the building Turk had ID’ed as the sniper nest.

  Ten seconds later the building exploded.

  Rodent called in to say that they were moving. More gunfire erupted on the street, coming from behind a parked car. This time the target was obvious. The Brits took cover, and Turk put a Maverick into the vehicle, setting it on fire and killing or wounding the two gunmen behind it.

  “You sure that mosque is clean?” asked Grizzly.

  Stop with the mosque, thought Turk. But he answered calmly. “I don’t see anything there.”

  “We’re moving,” said Rodent.

  There were a few more shots, but the pair made it to the northern fork and then ran down the hill. They were clear of the village.

  “Helicopter is inbound,” said the controller.

  “Let’s take a pass between the landing zone and the village,” said Grizzly. “Make sure things are cool.”

  Turk got behind him. Grizzly told the controller and the helicopter what they were doing.

  “You sure that mosque doesn’t have anything?” asked Grizzly.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll bet that’s where they came out of. Those places are nests.”

  Grizzly went across the top of the hill. Turk got his Hog a little lower. His airspeed kept declining; he was barely over a hundred knots, very close to getting a stall warning.

  “Looking clear.”