The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny

by Tippins, Rick

  Matt nearly bit his entire tongue off at the root, but instead opted for compliance with what he was fast considering a rogue colonel. “Roger that, sir. I think we all know who’s in charge.”

  Carnegie hesitated a second, his lips pressed tightly together, causing creases in his face that aged the man ten years. Matt thought Carnegie was going to continue, but alternatively the colonel pivoted, leaving Josh and Matt to plan out the mission. Matt kept the conversation professional during the next two hours as the two men studied aerial photographs of the property where the soldiers had been ambushed. When they were done, both men went their separate ways in order to brief their men. Josh made it clear he would brief the pilots, and Matt needn’t bother himself with any involvement on the aviation side of things.

  The insertion plan was simple. They were going to fly right into the front yard, off-load, and hit the house. The two men tossed around a fast-rope option, but decided the yard was open enough to accommodate the two Black Hawks. If the target LZ were more confined, or they were bringing in five or six helicopters, they would have used the ropes with at least a few of the Black Hawks. Matt looked out across the airport as he exited the hangar and saw it was late afternoon turning to early evening. The plan was to be on target at 4:00 a.m. while everyone at the house was presumably sleeping.

  Josh’s team would make entry while the SEALs held a perimeter, looking for any squirters or people who escaped the structure and made a run for it. When Josh floated the idea of his team being the primary entry team, Matt gave no pushback, knowing full well Josh planned on killing every single soul in the house. Matt wanted no part of murdering civilians, so he agreed amicably and pushed on with the planning session.

  When Matt briefed his team, he didn’t give the same briefing Josh was giving his team not more than a hundred yards away across the tarmac. Matt made it clear they would take control of the helicopter as the teams approached the house, and theirs would not land, but instead circle and see what happened on the ground. Matt wanted full deniability for him and his team if Josh did what he thought he was going to do. What the SEALs would do if Josh’s team ended up terminating civilians would have to be a game-time decision.

  Matt was now familiar enough with the state of the country to know Carnegie was not acting in conjunction with anyone from Washington, DC, or even the NORAD people for that matter. The man was becoming what basically amounted to nothing more than a regional warlord. Carnegie was hoarding supplies, taking what he wanted from the local populace in the name of taxes, and after Josh went on a rampage during this mission, Matt would have his answer about what had happened to Kemper. He wasn’t sure what Dan had done or seen or even said that got him set up, but Matt’s belief system was fast aligning with his initial gut feeling.

  Jared wiggled his toes in a pointless effort to warm his freezing feet. He wanted to get up, dance about, do a hundred jumping jacks, maybe even take a jog up the other side of the hill and check on Clarence in order to get his blood flowing to his numb extremities. Jared stayed himself from too much movement on the off chance the people from the base came on foot and performed a stealthy approach rather than flying in. This thought unnerved Jared slightly. He didn’t like the possibility of other people skulking about in the night and preferred he be the only one skulking.

  The chilly winter air was making the wait a miserable affair as Stephani sat next to him on the cold hard ground, her arms crossed with her chin buried in her chest. Jared knew the woman was as cold or colder than he was, but there was nothing either could do at this point in the game. At 4:25 a.m., Jared heard them coming, and with the sound the chill left.

  Chapter 17

  Josh hung his head out the side door of the Black Hawk as the giant craft skimmed over the dark landscape. He wore eye protection, enabling him to stare straight into the black night as the air beat on his face. His heart was beating faster than normal with the anticipation of the impending battle. Josh’s headset crackled, and he immediately pulled his head and shoulders inside the helicopter so he could better hear what the pilot was saying.

  “Five mikes, boys,” came the pilot’s cool professional voice over the radio.

  Josh did a quick check of his gear, as did the rest of his team. They’d all checked their gear multiple times before this, but it was what guys did who were flying into battle, a way of releasing a few ounces of the tension that built in one’s body before plying their trade.

  Inside the second helicopter, Matt received the same announcement from his pilot, only he didn’t check his gear. He’d done that already; instead he glanced at his team. They eyed the single crew chief, who hung on a machine gun mounted in one of the helicopter’s doors. The crew chief was personally armed with a pistol, which by the looks of how it hung off his hip, the man would not likely be proficient with the weapon. Two of the SEALs gave slight nods while coiling their legs under themselves, wanting to make the takedown of the crew chief as quick as possible. A lucky shot and one of the SEALs could have big problems, and none of them wanted that. Matt keyed his mic and spoke to the pilots.

  “Slight change of plans, boys, we are not landing with the other team. Orbit the mission area, but do not land.” Matt emphasized the word not.

  The co-pilot turned in his seat, staring back at the SEALs. “What the fuck are you talking about? We are landing. You’re getting off,” he finally yelled into his mic.

  Matt moved up to the opening that separated the pilots from the rear of the aircraft. He drew his pistol and watched the co-pilot’s eyes go wide. Matt didn’t look, but he felt his two SEALs secure the crew chief before he could interfere. Matt held his index finger upright and twirled his hand in a circling motion to the co-pilot, then reached up and tapped the pilot on the head with the barrel of his pistol. The pilot looked back briefly, his eyes going wide at the sight of Matt’s unholstered pistol.

  “Keep flying and we can all remain friends. Try to land, and when you do, I might shoot both of you,” Matt said over the radio. He knew both pilots and the crew chief could hear him, which was what he wanted.

  Matt could see the other helicopter ahead and to the left of them through the Black Hawk’s windscreen. When his pilot began complying, Matt watched Josh’s helicopter drop below them as it descended toward the target below. Matt smiled and gave the co-pilot, who was still staring bug-eyed at him, a thumbs-up.

  “One day you’re all going to thank me for this,” Matt soothed, trying to lessen the discord that now filled the helicopter.

  The two SEALs tasked with securing the crew chief had him sitting with his back against the bulkhead, his body language confirming his acquiescence, his empty holster signaling the SEALs’ success. Matt pulled his night-vision goggles (NVG) down over his face and moved to the aircraft’s door, peering down. There was enough ambient light from the heavens to enable Matt a decent view through the NVG of the other helicopter as it turned and began its short and final approach to the landing zone (LZ) near the house’s front yard. Matt had witnessed so many helicopter assaults he couldn’t remember them all, but tonight he continued watching, wondering what the fallout would be when this operation was finished if Josh didn’t do what Matt was almost certain the man would do.

  As Josh’s Black Hawk came to within fifty feet of the ground, Matt caught movement out of his peripheral and quickly aligned the NVG to get a better look. He saw a tractor parked on the side of a hill near the house, which didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Matt wasn’t a farmer, but he’d seen equipment left where work ended the previous day, and this didn’t seem any different. Now he saw it again; a man was climbing into the tractor’s seat.

  Matt keyed his mic. “Hey, I got a guy climbing onto a tractor on the hill north of the house, can you fellas up front roll out a little wider so we can include him in our orbit?”

  Neither pilot responded, but Matt felt the aircraft bank slightly as the sour-faced pilot widened his orbit. From what Matt could see, the man appeared to just
be sitting in the machine’s seat. Matt thought briefly about warning Josh, but decided the guy was probably trying to start the old piece of farm equipment so he could escape. All the better, thought Matt. The less blood spilled tonight, the better Matt would sleep, even if the guy on the tractor had been involved in killing the tax team.

  Matt scanned back and forth between the tractor and Josh’s approach as he orbited the scene below. When the tractor began to move forward and away from where Josh’s helicopter was making its landing, Matt was thankful he hadn’t alerted the bastard to the presence of the guy on the tractor.

  Matt swung his NVG back toward the second Black Hawk just as a flash came from Josh’s helicopter as if the machine had been struck with a rocket or some other munition.

  When Jared heard the beating blades of the helicopters in the distance, he leaped to his feet along with Stephani. “They’re coming,” Jared exclaimed through chattering teeth.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Stephani shot back, her face shivering visibly, causing her voice to vibrate almost comically.

  As the aircraft drew closer, Jared realized there were two Black Hawks as they raced past the property, taking a wide turn to the left in order to line up with the driveway and front yard. Jared hadn’t planned on two helicopters coming. He’d only seen them flying solo until now. This meant if they downed one helicopter, the men on the second helicopter would be on top of Jared and company in a matter of seconds. He tried remembering how many men he’d seen come out of the helicopter when they came and ferried John away. Ten, maybe twelve guys, was the best Jared could recall.

  As the helicopters turned, Jared noticed one dropped toward the property while the second Black Hawk began a wide circle of the property while maintaining its altitude. The helicopter that seemed to be landing slowed while the second aircraft maintained speed in a high orbit around Clarence’s house. The trees around Jared and Stephani were whipped this way and that as the landing Black Hawk’s rotor wash tore through the branches, kicking up dust and whisking dead leaves high into the air.

  Jared tried focusing on where he thought the line was buried across the incoming helicopter’s path, but couldn’t be sure he was eyeing the correct spot with all the commotion. Jared never in his life had been this close to a helicopter landing and was mesmerized by the amount of chaos a simple landing caused to those nearby on the ground. He’d seen people holding their hats and ducking their heads on TV, but this was madness.

  Although Jared was unable to see Clarence, the other man had begun driving the tractor up the hill. The first indication that told Jared Clarence was engaged in his assignment was a thwack sound immediately followed by three crashes in rapid succession along with a change in pitch to the helicopter’s engine. The lower rumble of the aircraft was replaced by a slightly higher-pitched whine as the Black Hawk yawed hard to the right as the pilot lost any semblance of straight and level flight.

  When Clarence’s tractor chugged up the hill, the lines were torn from their underground lair, whipping skyward into the approaching aircraft’s path. Josh’s Black Hawk actually flew under the lines, which neither pilot ever saw whip past their windscreen. The line narrowly missed the main rotor, passing over its top, but was caught and chopped down by the tail rotor. The first line was severed immediately, but the second and third lines were slammed down into the tail rotor shaft. The violent thrashing brought with it two large chunks of concrete, which slammed into the tail fuselage of the Black Hawk before breaking into bits and falling away. The result was the upright portion of the mangled tail ripped away from the rest of the aircraft, leaving the flying machine with no anti-torque capabilities.

  The sudden and violent counteraction at the tail rotor caused by the power line laden with the hunks of concrete either destroyed or caused significant damage all the way up the tail, through the gear box and into the machine’s engine. In short, the Black Hawk would be a total loss even if the pilot were able to land safely.

  Helicopter pilots train for all manner of mechanical failures, such as loss of anti-torque, engine failure, and stuck pedals. The key to surviving most of these failures was altitude, which the pilots flying Josh and his team greatly lacked. If the tail rotor failed at two thousand feet altitude, the pilot could lower the collective, nose the aircraft over into the proper angle to maintain the required speed for straight and not quite level flight, and then navigate to a safe emergency landing zone. This was called autorotation, and all pilots must be proficient in this maneuver.

  When a pilot was within fifty feet of the ground, he or she would flare the aircraft by flying it in a nose-up position in order to bleed off forward airspeed in an attempt to arrest all the helicopter’s forward momentum. When the aircraft was low and slow, the pilot would then nose the machine back to level and pull up on the collective, which would cause the helicopter to spin, but by then they would hopefully have slowed sufficiently and would be low enough to survive contact with the ground. It was a touchy game achieved through finesse and experience, which worked splendidly in training.

  Tonight, the pilot worked the controls, but sadly he and the rest of the men on board were no more than test dummies along for the ride with nothing to say about the outcome. With the tail section gone, the Black Hawk’s flight characteristics were so categorically altered, the pilot’s control inputs were pointless. Neither the pilot nor his co-pilot ever trained for such an aerodynamic failure such as the one they were experiencing tonight, and the more the pilot wrestled with the controls, the more he realized no manufacturer of any helicopter was able to replicate a training scenario anywhere close to what he was dealing with.

  Jared watched in morbid fascination as the helicopter spun to the right slowly at first, went into a slight nose-up position, then spun faster as the stricken flying machine headed toward Clarence’s house. What remained of the Black Hawk’s tail struck the hard ground thirty yards from the front of the house, inducing a violent longitudinal axis roll as the Black Hawk impacted the earth, tumbling into the front of the house.

  Jared ducked instinctively as the Black Hawk’s main rotor blades detached from their anchor points located at the main rotor hub. Debris, bodies and equipment ground through the front of the house like a giant bucket-wheel excavator as the helicopter’s forward momentum prolonged the horrendous misfortune. Physics wasn’t content with simply allowing the helicopter to crash to earth, it now was putting the machine and its crew through the paces in correlation with their forward airspeed when they’d impacted the ground. As cruel as it was, the entire calamity lasted only about four seconds.

  When the helicopter stopped tumbling, it came to rest nearly halfway through Clarence’s home. Jared squatted, waiting for survivors to come into view, but no one emerged from the smoldering wreckage. Jared could see smoke, but oddly there was no fire. He thought briefly about moving forward, but his feet were stayed by the sound of the second helicopter roaring overhead.

  Jared knew once Clarence saw what they’d done, he would be headed to his horse and then off to meet up with his wife and daughter. Jared was also surprised when the second helicopter didn’t come down and land in the yard in order to mount a rescue of potential survivors. Alternatively, the helicopter pulled away from the scene and disappeared over a hill. Jared could still hear the Black Hawk, but it was apparent the crew on that helicopter were deeming this area too dangerous to attempt a landing.

  Matt was a seasoned warrior, having participated in multiple rescues of downed personnel, but when he watched Josh’s team tumble into the front of the house, he was genuinely stunned. He felt the pilots flying his aircraft nose over slightly as if they intended to land. This compelled him to key the mic.

  “Don’t go anywhere near that property. We don’t know what just took them down. Did either of you see a flash like a rocket or anything along those lines?”

  “That’s a big negative,” came the pilot’s shaky voice over the radio. “What do you want us to do?” the pilot asked
yieldingly. Both pilots were seasoned war veterans, having served several tours in the sand box, but neither had been shot down nor seen a fellow air crew shot down. They were rattled to say the least, but the fact that the SEAL in the back pointed a gun at them was forgiven, at least for the time being.

  Matt glanced back at the wreckage on the ground below them and knew immediately they would not be landing anywhere near the crash site. He had no intel on what had just downed the other Black Hawk, and was not interested in having his own bird dropped out of the sky.

  “Head north a couple of clicks,” Matt continued. “We’ll get off, come back, and see what’s up with the guys at the crash site. Once we secure that property, we’ll secure an LZ, and you can come pick us up.”

  The pilot’s answer came in the form of a northern heading coupled with a bleed of altitude as the Black Hawk swung past the hill Matt had previously seen the tractor on. Matt made a mental note to check that damn piece of farm equipment before he went anywhere near the crash site.

  Jared watched the second helicopter retreat over the hill they’d used the tractor on. He once more thought briefly about approaching the crash site, but decided against any contact with these men. Jared knew he would not execute any wounded men from the helicopter, and if there were men well enough to fight, he didn’t want to risk Stephani or himself getting shot. Jared felt positive any crash survivors would not hesitate to kill one of them after what they’d just pulled off.

  There was also the issue of the other helicopter and its crew. If they dropped men off on the other side of the hill, they could descend on the house within half an hour or less, Jared estimated. He turned to Stephani, who was peering at the mess out in front of them through a pair of binoculars.