Fox Hunt

by James Phelan

  The commanders nodded in consent and began organising their troops for the jog back to the boat.

  The old jeep rattled to a stop near the smouldering helicopter wreck and Ridge and a Russian soldier climbed out.

  “How’d it go?” Sefreid asked.

  “Fine,” Ridge replied. “Geiger and Beasley are baby-sitting three wounded EU dudes back at the boat.”

  “Why do they always get the easy jobs?” Pepper asked mischievously as he, Gibbs and Goldsmith joined the group. Ridge left to retrieve the Stinger missile launcher he’d left at his previous position.

  “Once we get back to the Ahman Research Centre,” Sefreid told the others, “we’ll fly our new friends to the UN medical compound in Tabriz for treatment.”

  “Does the princess need a ride back to the boat?” Goldsmith asked Gibbs as she stretched the aches out of her neck.

  Gibbs pointed up to the sky, not acknowledging Goldsmith’s comment. “What’s that?”

  Sefreid followed her hand to a section of the cloudy sky above the lake. “A flock of birds— vultures, I’d wager. Been there since our little battle.”

  Gibbs peered with her sharp eyes, unconvinced. “Anybody got field glasses?” she asked the team.

  “Even better,” Pepper replied and passed her the scope from her sniper’s rifle, the only piece retrieved in working order from the cave-in.

  “Oh, shit!” Gibbs said with quiet dread, looking into the sky through the scope. “They’re Falcons!”

  The marines were coming in. Fast.

  Near the top of the hill above the theterium deposit, an SAS sergeant lay rock still, looking through the scope of his sniper’s rifle at dense shrub a kilometre away. He had been doing this for almost ten minutes, not daring to move a millimetre, even when an evil-looking desert spider had crept up the barrel of his gun. His patience paid off: the mass of shrubs moved forward ever so slowly.

  With a smile, he squeezed his trigger. A cloud of blood filled the air where the other sniper’s head had been.

  “Gotcha,” he whispered, before saying over his radio set: “Bird Eye to Farrell. It’s confirmed. We have company.”

  He scanned slowly for another target, soon finding one almost a kilometre away.

  Farrell had a sixth sense something bad was about to happen. He turned to order a man to higher ground—only to see the young SAS soldier’s head explode.

  The assault was on.

  “Take cover!” he yelled—too late. He spun around to see two more of his command fall to the ground in a hail of silenced sniper fire.

  Three of his soldiers were killed instantly, leaving only himself, Jenkins and their sniper. The Russian who’d ridden with Ridge in the jeep was killed as he ran to group with his comrades, as were two of the Germans scrambling for cover back into the cave.

  The GSR team dropped to the ground between the water tanker, jeep and sand-covered wreckage of the Hip as bullets whipped through the air around them.

  Sefreid looked up from the sandy ground to see Ridge running towards them. He stared help-lessly as Ridge snapped backwards and stood still in the air for what seemed like an eternity.

  “No!” he yelled.

  The bullets riddled his friend’s chest and he crashed to the ground in a bloody explosion.

  Farrell, Jenkins and Antinov lay on the far side of the sand-covered helicopter wreckage, away from the GSR team. They wasted no time in calling for situation reports from their men, who replied their positions were under heavy fire with very few targets to fire on in return.

  The SAS sniper on the hilltop began acting as a spotter for those on the ground, but suddenly all radio communications went down.

  “They’re jamming the radios!” Farrell yelled as he unleashed a torrent of fire at some figures running towards the campsite.

  “We have to move, sir!” Jenkins added, firing his MP7 at the same advancement.

  “Let’s go!” Farrell said.

  They raced around the helicopter mound and came back to back with the GSR team, fighting for their lives.

  Antinov watched his crack squad being shot down like rabid dogs beyond the water tanker. He couldn’t let them die alone like that. He got to his feet to run to their aid, but Jenkins pounced and wrapped his arms around the Russian’s legs.

  “There’s no point you dying as well!” the burly SAS sergeant boomed. He left Antinov stunned on the ground and stood and let rip with his MP7 in a vain attempt to help the Russians.

  Antinov shook off his daze and joined Jenkins and Farrell in the firefight.

  “This isn’t looking good,” Sefreid said, pleased to see Farrell by his side.

  “No,” was all Farrell said as he watched the last Russian fall. The man’s final action had been to launch a shell from the mortar, which flew wildly, almost vertically, in the air.

  “Any ideas?” Jenkins asked between clenched teeth, picking off another attacker who had ventured into his line of fire.

  “None. Except that we’re going to have to throw stones soon. I’m down to my last clip,” Sefreid said as he inserted it into his M16. A jolt in the back lurched him forward and knocked the wind out of him. Sefreid fought for breath, but fortunately the rounds had not penetrated his thick Kevlar flak jacket.

  Farrell turned to see two attackers charging over the mound behind them, only to be shot down by Pepper’s M60.

  Pepper continued to fire over the mound until the others could cover that front. A fresh belt in his M60 fed into the big gun as he attacked a retreating squad moving in on the unguarded flank.

  Fox and Gammaldi were side by side behind the jeep, which was taking a battering of bullets. They missed Pepper’s heavy machine gun in their group, but as Goldsmith’s M16 ran out of ammo he brought the underslung M203 into the attack, launching his remaining five grenades at known points of attack.

  “Okay, I want to go home now,” Gammaldi said to Fox, as the attacking fire seemed to wane in strength. He’d given his MP5 to Gibbs and only had his pistol left.

  “Just tap your heels together three times, Dorothy,” Fox replied.

  On the old fishing boat, Geiger and Beasley listened to the raging gun battle, unsure who was winning. Sefreid’s last command before the radios went off the air had been for them to hold their position at the boat; now the earpieces of the highly advanced radio systems whirred with static.

  “It’s the US marines all right,” Beasley said. “I recognise their radio jamming package. It’s one hell of a signature.” He pressed his earpiece deeper into his ear, as if listening to a Bach masterpiece.

  “What I don’t get is, if they aren’t using choppers for their assault and evac, how the hell are they going to get out of here?” Geiger asked with a puzzled expression. He locked eyes with Beasley as both came to the same answer.

  Geiger grabbed the field glasses and scanned the horizon. About five hundred metres away, a vessel surged at full speed towards the site. Geiger hoped to hell the camouflage netting he had covered their boat with would keep it concealed.

  They couldn’t take any chances though, so he and Beasley assembled the injured men and fled into the desert.

  The new arrival touched the bank around a head-land, out of sight of the GSR boat.

  “Set up the ramps!” Colonel Pugh barked at his resourcer troops, then switched radio bands to speak to the marines in battle.

  “Scot, this is Pugh. We’re in place.”

  His call was answered and a squad of marines was promised his way. Then he heard the gunfire slow and eventually cease from the battle zone.

  Through the ringing in his ears, Fox noticed the attacking fire dwindle. He raised himself from his position just enough to see two armed figures running away from the site.

  “They’re falling back!” he informed Sefreid and the others around him, and soon all fire in the battle stopped.

  Pugh’s team of experienced engineers set up folding aluminiu
m ramps from the boat to shore. Each man in the newly formed and top secret Resourcer Regiment could have passed for a professional football player, all with thickset shoulders and necks.

  Two men sat behind the steering wheels of a pair of Roadrunners—vehicles which were custom-built for Special Forces and had proved their worth in the first Gulf War and more recently in Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq. Built for speeds of over one hundred kilometres per hour and adapted to carry heavy firepower, the Roadrunner was in its element in the desert. Resembling a dune buggy, it sat a driver in front position and a gunner behind controlling a hefty punch—a mini-gun on one side and an anti-tank rocket launcher on the other.

  “Sergeant Miller, sir.” A squad of Scot’s marines appeared from nowhere, the leader saluting Colonel Pugh.

  Pugh looked at the men. They wore desert fatigues and face paint, but it was their irregular profiles that camouflaged them more than the colour schemes. Netting covered their clothing and equipment, and various desert shrubbery and tattered bits of cloth sprouted from their bodies.

  “They’re all yours, Sergeant,” Pugh said, waving his men to bring the Roadrunners to the marines. The big two-stroke engines hummed to life as the resourcers brought the vehicles to shore and handed over the controls.

  “Good hunting,” Pugh said with a rough grin as the marines roared off in the direction of the theterium site. The colonel then barked a series of orders to his men, which were, strictly speaking, unnecessary as they were well drilled and briefed. That was how Colonel Pugh liked to run things: plan twice, execute once.

  Crouched behind their scant cover, Fox and the others listened to the sound thundering through the afternoon air towards them.

  “What do you suppose that is?” Fox asked the Special Forces commanders.

  They were caked in sweat and grime and their faces bore ashen, desperate expressions. The situation was grim—ten of their number killed within ten minutes; three wounded, plus Geiger and Beasley out of the action as well. That left just fourteen lightly armed defenders against an unknown foe that comprised superior numbers packing superior firepower. The deep rumble of the approaching engines just made the situation seem more dire.

  The Roadrunners had split up, speeding off around either side of the hill in a pincer movement. One vehicle spun to a stop far past the campsite, turning to train its weapons on the main cave. A voice called through a loudspeaker as the second Roadrunner neared the centre of the campsite.

  “Drop your weapons and surrender. Resist and die!” The Midwest US accent echoed through the site as it struck the hillside and cave.

  To accentuate the point, the Roadrunner closer to the campsite began to make a wide circuit of the defenders on the ground.

  Fox looked again to the Special Forces commanders. Sefreid made a gesture as if leaving the decision up to his counterparts.

  Farrell and Antinov spoke a few hushed words together, then turned to what was left of the defenders on the ground and nodded their agreement. The group silently agreed that surrendering to the marines would be a better fate than dying in a dusty nowhere.

  The entire group looked up to the cave entrance above, where the German team were isolated, willing them to come to the same conclusion.

  In the cave, Zimmermann had only one of his GSG-9 men and the two army engineers left under his command. From his vantage point, he could see the Roadrunner direct its formidable firepower towards the cave entrance.

  “Can you take them?” he asked his last trooper, apparently unfazed by the marines’ warning.

  “I can—but the range is going to limit the effectiveness of the shots,” replied the German. He was lying in a corner of the cave and training his MP5 out at the vehicle.

  “Then do it. If we can’t get out of here, we have to at least stall them to the deadline,” Zimmermann said.

  The GSG-9 trooper tensed his grip on the MP5 and opened fire.

  Bullets peppered the Roadrunner in the centre of the campsite, most bouncing harmlessly off the interspersed armour plates, but some ricocheted into the semi-enclosed cabin. The driver set the vehicle into gear, but a bullet caught him under the eye and killed him instantly, leaving the gunner vulnerable.

  With an electronic whirring, the Roadrunner’s six-barrelled mini-gun came to life, spewing two thousand rounds per minute around the cave entrance, strafing the hillside with streaking orange tracers and shredding the cave’s roof.

  It had been sixteen minutes since the marines’ attack began. For the third time that day, the site had fallen.

  47

  SPACE

  The Dragon was defenceless. Floating idly in space, oblivious to predators, the giant weapon pointed at the pre-designated target below: Tehran. In less than twelve hours the deadline given to Iran to secede its westernmost slice of land would pass. By then, the Dragon would have built up enough charge to prime its magnets and strike again.

  The Pegasus Mk4 anti-satellite missile flew through the thin atmosphere at incredible speed. Designed to lock onto the specific electronic resonance put out by the pre-programmed target satellite—in this case, the generic military communications output deployed by the Soviets in the 1980s—the missile rushed to complete its task.

  Fifteen seconds to impact …

  48

  THE PENTAGON

  Peter Larter sat in his office, perspiring as the seconds ticked down to the Pegasus strike.

  Vanzet was in the room with him, as well as the Joint Chief responsible for the air force, who had his ear glued to a telephone handset. The other electronically secure phone on Larter’s desk was on speaker, the connection open to the Situation Room in the White House. A huge screen showing the missile nearing the target held the audience captive. Along the bottom of the screen, a digital counter clicked down the seconds remaining.

  “Ten seconds, Bill,” Larter said into the speaker-phone.

  “I’ve got it on screen here,” McCorkell replied. The remaining seconds went by in absolute silence.

  49

  SPACE

  The Pegasus never faltered. It hit its target right on the mark, exploding its eighty-kilo warhead on impact.

  50

  THE PENTAGON

  With a smile, Larter shook hands with Vanzet and offered to do the same with the Air Force Joint Chief. He declined the offer with a wave and remained glued to the phone handset.

  Larter shared the jubilation over the speaker-phone with a relieved McCorkell, then explained they now had to wait for confirmation of the Dragon’s complete destruction.

  Minutes of static silence ticked by, increasing in intensity.

  The Air Force Joint Chief finished the call and turned to face his Chairman and Defence Secretary.

  “We have bad news and, ah… not so bad news,” he said steadily.

  “Well?” Vanzet asked.

  “Well, the not so bad news is we hit our target.” He paused. “The bad news is, it’s still up there.”

  51

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  McCorkell clicked off the speakerphone, then stared at the inanimate device for a moment, before picking up the receiver. He asked the White House receptionist to put him through to the President.

  “Bill, how’d we go?” asked the President.

  “The Pegasus strike exploded on impact with the Dragon, sir, destroying the electronic control signature beaming back down to Earth—”

  “Great news, Bill!” the President interrupted, then stopped himself. “Wait. You said ‘destroying the control signature.’ Not the actual weapon?”

  “That is correct, Mr President,” McCorkell said from the Situation Room. “The Dragon remains in orbit, damaged and trailing debris, altering course in what we estimate will be eventual re-entry into the atmosphere.”

  “Can it still be fired?” the President asked.

  “It seems unlikely, sir. The Pentagon tells me the weapon can
not be re-tasked as its electronic command links have been cut off by the strike. But we cannot rule out the possibility that it is still functional to fire,” McCorkell allowed.

  “Okay, keep me posted, Bill. Have the resourcers begun their extraction?”

  “They are just beginning now. It seems Scot’s marines met a defending force that gave them a brief firefight,” McCorkell said rather slowly.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing Scot’s marines can’t handle. I just hope he went easy on them!” the President said, causing McCorkell to cringe.

  “So do I, Mr President,” McCorkell said sincerely. “So do I.”

  52

  SPACE

  The designers of the Dragon coilgun were no strangers to anti-satellite missiles, something the Russians had considered since the launch of their first Sputnik in the 1950s. To safeguard against such a strike, the Dragon’s main data downlink was held fifty metres from the main body of the coilgun by a tether—a compound cable transferring data such as targeting and firing coordinates. So an anti-satellite strike would take out the downlink, not the weapon itself.

  If the data downlink was destroyed, the Dragon changed to a pre-designated orbit to avoid or delay a second missile strike.

  The Pegasus warhead had rocked the Dragon violently and sent it off course, but the Dragon’s automated thrusters had quickly begun dispelling compressed air to shift it to its predetermined evasive course.