Primary Target (1999)

by Joe - Dalton;Sullivan 01 Weber

  She allowed a small grin to crease her face as she initiated a climb to clear the mountain ridges leading to the Bekaa Valley. Jackie slowly moved her head from side to side in order to ease the tension in her neck. Just a few more minutes.

  Beirut, Lebanon Approaching the gateway to the ancient world, Scott and Greg were treated to an unforgettable experience as the ambient glow of Beirut slowly gave way to a vista of shimmering lights. In the distance, the mountains rising behind the legendary city were paintbrushed with softly glowing lights that blended into a sea of twinkling stars.

  At this early hour of the morning, most of Beirut's 1.5 million residents were fast asleep. The air traffic was sparse, and, for the most part, the pilots and controllers exchanged very little in the way of casual conversation.

  Passing almost directly over Beirut International Airport, Greg checked the Caravan's Global Positioning System against Scott's portable unit. Both receivers were in harmony.

  "Six minutes, thirty-five seconds to go," Greg announced as he punched the timer. "Recheck your gear and fittings." "Workin' on it," Scott said as he methodically smeared his face, neck and ears with a camouflage stick, then went through the familiar routine of rechecking his equipment. While he was tightening his parachute harness, random thoughts began to drift through his mind.

  "The last time I was in Beirut," Dalton said calmly as he inspected the two grenades attached to his assault vest, "I spent an entire afternoon at a cliffside cafe. I met a girl who was going to med school at Tulane, and we had a great day just knocking around and--"

  "Hey, Bubba," Greg interrupted. "I don't mean to throw a damper on your party, but it's time to start focusing on the present."

  "I'm trying to relax," Dalton said, then opened the Caravan's modified cargo door. "I'll focus on the present when I jump."

  "Partner," Greg said emphatically, "this is the Super Bowl of jumping. If you screw the pooch on this deal, you only get penalized once--I'm talkin' about graveyard dead." "I suspect you're right," Scott said while he checked the strap over his thigh holster. Despite his seemingly calm demeanor, Scott's heart was beginning to pound. "Thanks for the comforting words."

  "Semper fi," O'Donnell said firmly as he donned his night-vision goggles. We've gone too far this time. I should've talked him out of this crazy shit when we were in Alaska.

  The Hezbollah Camp The sounds were muffled, but Maritza recognized voices outside her spartan quarters. She quietly made her way across the darkened room and peeked through one of the small windows. What she saw frightened her. Instead of the usual two or three men standing guard at this early hour, there were at least a dozen armed militants walking around inside the perimeter of the compound.

  What's going on? she nervously asked herself, then moved away from the window. She carefully removed a bundle of wooden sticks and paper from her makeshift closet, then opened a small tin of matches and stuffed them into the compact bundle. When she was finished, she shoved the package under the foot of her wood-framed bed. Something is wrong with this picture.

  A moment later Maritza held her breath when she heard footsteps near her door. With her heart pounding, she slipped into bed and waited for the door to open. Ten minutes passed without another sound. She reached under the bed and gripped her Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic, then slid the weapon inside a pocket sewn into her Islamic garb. Maritza was about to swing her legs over the side of the bed when she heard footsteps walking away from her quarters. Be patient.

  Approaching the Terrorist Compound Greg O'Donnell eased the throttle back and began slowing the Caravan. "Twenty seconds," he announced, darting a glance at the GPS while he stabilized the big turboprop. "Negligible wind drift."

  "I hope you're right."

  "I'm always right."

  Scott made a final adjustment to his night-vision goggles, patted the flap over his Sig Sauer, then gripped each side of the door frame. "I'm ready to do it--let's go."

  "Ten seconds," Greg said over the wind noise whipping around the back of the cabin. "We're almost over the target." Dalton's heart was thumping like a trip-hammer. Concentrate . . . take it one step at a time.

  Greg continually tweaked the elevator trim as the Caravan slowed to just above stall speed. "Five seconds."

  Scott took a deep breath, then--

  "Four."

  --sharply exhaled.

  "Three."

  `Two."

  "One."

  "Go!" Greg said as Scott flung himself out of the airplane and disappeared into the moonless night.

  O'Donnell slowly added power and keyed his radio. "Ball four--he's taking a walk."

  "Copy the runner going to first," Jackie said hastily. "Roger that," O'Donnell calmly replied.

  She checked to make sure that all of the helo's exterior lights were off, then quickly switched to the frequency for Scott's helmet-mounted radio. Come on, don't keep me in suspense.

  Fumbling with her sat-phone, she punched in the code that would signal one of the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites in near-polar orbit to trigger Maritza Gunzelman's miniature phone. When the connection was made, Jackie spoke slowly and clearly. "Take the midnight train."

  "Copy train," Maritza replied in a tense voice. "You're flying into an ambush. There's at least a dozen armed men waiting for you."

  "Say again."

  "We need to abort," Maritza said as loud as she dared. "It's an ambush!"

  Stunned by the unexpected revelation, Jackie finally found her voice. "What's going on? Give me a sitrep."

  "I don't know what to tell you, except that the compound is alive with armed men. We need to abort."

  "Negative!" Jackie's heart raced as she thought about Scott. "The jumper is on the way down. Get ready to go." "I'm all set," Maritza whispered as she heard a faint noise near her door. "Gotta go," she said, and terminated the connection.

  Jackie snapped the sat-phone shut, then concentrated on flying the helo as close to the ground as she could. While she waited for Scott's radio call, she continually scanned her instruments and the rising terrain. Something didn't feel right. She couldn't locate any of the telltale landmarks she expected to see by now. Is the CPS giving me erroneous readings?

  Without warning, the bright stars at her twelve o'clock position vanished. Startled by the sudden change, she flicked on the 30 million candlepower searchlight and gasped as she froze on the controls. She was staring straight at an outcrop of rocks surrounded by dense vegetation. Jackie desperately pulled on the collective, then rolled the helo to the right to avoid colliding with a cemetery at the top of the ridgeline. With her hands shaking, she leveled the LongRanger and quickly turned off the powerful "Night Sun" spotlight.

  You're making too many mistakes. Get it together.

  A few seconds later the stars appeared to rise above the ridge, prompting Jackie to let out a sigh of relief. She cleared the mountaintop by twenty feet, then turned to her original heading and began a rapid descent into the bowels of the Bekaa Valley. The topography of the valley provided a wide variety of landing strips for helicopters and rugged light planes.

  Less than two minutes after entering the valley, Jackie was startled when a stream of tracer rounds flashed past the right side of the LongRanger. She finked twenty degrees to the left, made an abrupt descent, jinked to the right, then climber! steeply. She continued the evasive maneuvering as more tracers slashed by the left side of the helo, then stopped as quickly as they had begun.

  After tumbling head over heels a couple of times, Scott finally stabilized his body in a classic free-fall position. He looked straight down and tried to locate the terrorist camp, but the vertigo-inducing counterclockwise rotation he'd developed was causing him to lose his situational awareness. He attempted to orient himself, then gave up and pulled the rip cord.

  The parachute opened with a muffled report, snapping Dalton upright. He peered at the ground through his night-vision goggles while he completed a 360-degree circle.

  Where t
he hell is it? Scott asked himself as he spiraled down toward the valley. He was about to yank the NVGs from his helmet when he finally spotted the compound. Able to clearly see the camp, Scott removed the goggles and tossed them away. He gazed at the surrounding countryside and quickly oriented himself to the irregular clusters of lights. "Charlie Tango, bull's-eye," he radioed to Jackie.

  "I'm over the hump," Sullivan replied as she chewed uncertainly at her lower lip. "Three miles and . . . ah, rapidly closing."

  "I'll be on the ground in about a minute," Scott replied. "We have approximately a dozen armed guards waiting for us," Jackie said as she squinted to locate the compound. "Shit!" A long pause followed. "Maritza confirmed that?" "Yes. She's standing by."

  Disturbed by Jackie's tone, Scott looked down at the dark compound. She doesn't sound very confident. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm not sure about the GPS. It seems like--"

  "Give me a quick flash on the searchlight!" Scott said firmly. A second later he saw the powerful spotlight flick on, then off. "Come left about ten to fifteen degrees, and hustle the descent."

  "I'm on my way," Jackie said as she increased her rate of descent., then flexed the yellow snaplights attached to the two nylon rappelling ropes. She shook the colored lights and quickly released the 150-foot ropes. "I have the camp in sight, and the lines are out!"

  "Good work," Scott radioed in a hushed voice. "Better hustle."

  "If I go any faster," she said with a great deal of tolerance in her voice, "I might run over you before you're on the ground."

  "I'm almost on the ground," he said as he approached the compound. "I should've popped the top a little earlier."

  "I'm comin' down like a brick!" Jackie had to force the words out, knowing that Lady Luck held their lives in her hands. "I'll be there!"

  Chapter 19

  The Camp.

  Maritza Gunzelman's throat was tight as she covered her nine-millimeter Glock with a thick pillow, then walked across the darkened room and cautiously opened her door. What she encountered did not surprise her. She silently maligned the lineage of the armed terrorist standing guard four feet away. The lanky, bearded militant was carrying an Intratec semiautomatic pistol with a thirty-six-round detachable magazine. An assault weapon, the TEC-9 was popular with gangs, drug dealers, and terrorist groups.

  With her mouth as dry as sawdust, Maritza stepped outside and approached the young Shiite. Bred by a culture of violence and inhumanity, the man was a typical example of the crass and servile followers found in the terrorist camps. She spoke in a Persian dialect. "Come quickly. I must show you something," she said urgently as she motioned for him to follow her. "It is very important. Come quickly." The man hesitated, unsure about her earnest plea. He started toward the open door and looked back over his shoulder. No one was paying any attention to him.

  "Hurry," she coaxed with a no-nonsense edge to her voice. She preceded him into the room, then closed the door. "Look out the other window," she whispered with determined urgency.

  While he cautiously approached the window, Maritza reached under her pillow and quietly retrieved the Glock. Gripping it tightly, she raised the semiautomatic high above her head and slammed the butt of the weapon against his temple. He dropped to his knees and fell forward, smashing his face into the cement wall. Maritza quickly grabbed the TEC-9 and tossed it on the wooden table.

  Stepping out of her cumbersome Islamic-style clothes, she slipped the Glock into a baggy hip pocket of her fatigues. She struck a match and set fire to the large bundle of dry sticks and paper stuffed under her bed, then scooped up the assault weapon and hurried to the door.

  Squaring her shoulders, she stepped outside and immediately heard the reverberating sound of helicopter rotor blades. Holding the TEC-9 at the ready, she listened for a moment as the sound grew louder. Moving slowly and silently along the perimeter wall, Maritza was startled when a diaphanous ghost suddenly appeared out of the inky darkness. She felt a sudden chill as Dalton flared his parachute for a flawless landing in the middle of the courtyard.

  Simultaneously, a trio of militants caught sight of Scott as he quickly released his canopy risers from his harness. The silence was shattered when the three men opened fire at the same instant Dalton spotted Maritza.

  Running toward Scott, she sprayed a steady stream of rounds at the startled Shiites. Two of the shadowy figures crumpled to the ground while Dalton drew his weapon and dropped the third man in his tracks.

  "Get down," Scott shouted to Maritza.

  She sprawled in the dirt and kept firing.

  Indoor and outdoor lights flicked on as the beat of the helicopter's mainrotor blades grew louder and louder. Scott dropped to a prone position and fired at two men who were scrambling for cover behind an empty flatbed truck. Dalton scrambled toward a stack of wooden boxes as he fired at three other men.

  Ignoring the blinding hurricane of dirt and debris being sucked up by the LongRanger's powerful downwash, Scott pumped three rounds into a side-mounted fuel tank on the flatbed. Without warning, Dalton's discarded parachute canopy swirled overhead as Maritza low-crawled the final few yards to join him.

  "We don't have time to get you into a harness," he shouted as rounds kicked up dirt and ricocheted around the compound. He shoved his Sig Sauer into his nylon holster, then yanked the pin from a grenade and lobbed it close to the truck. The vehicle exploded in a huge fireball.

  "Cover me till I get a ring hooked," Scott yelled above the swirling dust storm. "When I've got it latched, throw your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist and hang on!"

  "Got it," Maritza shouted as she fired the last rounds from the TEC-9. She reached for her Glock at the same time Scott lobbed his last grenade at two men who were charging them from behind the main barracks. The terrorists were cut down by the violent blast.

  Muzzle flashes began to twinkle as Jackie slowed the helo to a crawl while she trolled for Scott and Maritza. With the element of surprise gone, she listened to Dalton as he instructed Maritza and fired at the militants. While Jackie attempted to maintain the proper altitude to allow Scott to see the glow of the snaplights, an AK-47 round pierced the helo's chin bubble and grazed her ankle. The sensation was akin to having a branding iron sear her bare flesh.

  "Hold it," Scott yelled over the radio as he crawled toward the rappelling ropes. "Hold it! Hold it! Stop!"

  Jackie grimaced in pain and concentrated on the blazing truck as she slowed to a motionless hover.

  "Stay down!" Scott said to Maritza as he struggled to latch his parachute harness to one of the D rings. He lurched toward the nearest snaplight and felt the exhilarating tug of success.

  "Maritza," he bellowed as he drew his weapon and fired twice at an unarmed terrorist who was running straight at them. One of the rounds knocked the man to his knees as Maritza holstered her weapon and lunged toward Scott. She leaped on him and held his neck in a death grip while she locked her legs around his waist.

  "Go," Dalton shouted to Jackie as the back of his body armor stopped a round, partially knocking the breath out of him. "We're aboard!" he blurted in a hoarse croak. "Go, Go!"

  Staggering to his feet, the bleeding terrorist charged Scott and Maritza as the rope became taut.

  "I'm slipping," Maritza exclaimed as they left the ground. Before Scott could answer, the militant slammed into him. Screaming at the top of his lungs, the powerful man wrapped his arms around Dalton's lower legs.

  Scott struggled to get a leg free, but the crazed man held him in a viselike grip. Seconds later a round caught the terrorist in the head and he plummeted into the side of the burning truck.

  Applying full power and a prodigious amount of collective, Jackie tripped the "Night Sun" searchlight. Petrified by cold fear, she hoped it would blind the militants long enough for her to escape being shot down. As the helo struggled to climb, she heard several rounds rip through the Long-Ranger's thin aluminum-and-magnesium fuselage. Time seemed to stand still as another fusilla
de shattered the cockpit windshield and showered her with fragments of Plexiglas and aluminum.

  Turning to avoid overflying the burning truck, Jackie was shocked and temporarily blinded when the truck exploded in another thunderous fireball. She blinked her eyes several times as she struggled to read her flight instruments, then realized that she had slung Scott and Maritza straight through the middle of the blazing inferno.

  "Scott," she frantically radioed, "do you read me?" The radio remained silent.

  Jackie killed the searchlight. "Scott, do you copy?" The silence was deafening in the windy cockpit. "Hang in there!"

  Angered by knowing that someone had set them up to be ambushed, Jackie stared at the shattered instrument panel as she climbed away from the terrorist camp. A few heartbeats later she again triggered the powerful spotlight and rotated it downward, then leaned to her right to see if Maritza and Scott were still attached to the line. Although she could barely see them, they were hanging from one of the ropes. Jackie was ecstatic. "Give me a thumbs-up if you can read me."

  When the searchlight was directed downward, Dalton holstered his weapon and looked up at Jackie. His eyes conveyed a sense of urgency that bordered on desperation. Swinging in the wind, Scott repeatedly jabbed his thumb toward the ground.

  Something's wrong, Jackie told herself as she abandoned the plan to land at the original site to take them onboard. She switched off the searchlight and looked for an alternate place to set down.

  "Charlie Tango," Greg O'Donnell calmly radioed from the Caravan. "Do you read the umpire?"

  "That's affirm," Jackie shot back. "They're on the hook, but I'm going to have to stop short of the dock. Stand by." "Copy," Greg said, glancing at his GPS. "I'm going to have to make my move soon."

  "Give me a couple of minutes," she said loudly. "We've taken some hits, and I don't know how much damage it's caused."

  "Do you need assistance?"