“You need to walk those rubbery legs. You’re hitting the ground later tonight.”
“Pain in the ass,” she muttered, pushing off the seat.
Farrington grabbed her arm before she plopped right back down. She didn’t look well, a slight film of perspiration visible on her face. He might have to reconsider sending her with the advanced party if she didn’t come around.
“Sure you didn’t eat something sketchy earlier?”
“I didn’t eat for more than six hours before our scheduled departure. I get airsick. Every time. I’ll be fine.”
“I need you steady when you hit the ground,” he said.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, shaking his hand off her arm.
Castillo headed for the door with most of the team, leaving him with Jared Hoffman, who would most definitely not be part of the parachute team. He was somehow whiter than Farrington. Hoffman, aka Gosha, was the Russian Group’s sniper, and one of Farrington’s most reliable operatives.
“She looks like shit,” Gosha quietly commented.
“I don’t have another sniper that doesn’t glow like a fluorescent light.”
Gosha smirked. “Funny. Never thought I’d be discriminated against for being too white.”
“You can file a complaint with HR when we get back,” said Farrington. “She says she’ll be fine.”
“Shaky hands make a useless sniper.”
“There won’t be any sniping when they land. Not right away. I need to make a call.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Not going outside?”
“What for?”
“Good point.”
Farrington walked toward the door, taking the satellite phone out of a cargo pocket. The loadmaster flipped switches at his station, looking up from his work and glancing past Farrington. A loud mechanical whine cut through the deep hum of the engines, drawing Farrington’s attention toward the back of the cargo bay. He caught some movement behind the vertical ramp, which was immediately noticed by the SEALs.
“Any reason you need the ramp open!” one of them yelled over the noise.
The loadmaster either ignored the question or didn’t hear it. The SEAL walked closer as the ramp started to descend.
“Hey! What’s up with the ramp?”
“Fresh air! I get to sit here and balance fuel while everyone else takes a break,” replied the loadmaster.
The SEAL shook his head. “At least dim the fucking lights! I don’t need my picture on the cover of Newsweek magazine.”
“Whatever,” mumbled the sergeant. “It’s not like anyone’s watching.”
The lighting scheme shifted to red, the best choice under the circumstances. Red light released less energy and was harder to detect from a distance.
“How long do we have until we take off?” asked Farrington.
“The pilot wants us rolling within thirty minutes,” the loadmaster replied. “I’ll give you a heads-up when it’s time to gather the flock.”
Farrington nodded and joined the last of his operatives waiting to get out, checking the satellite phone. No signal. Castillo stepped through the hatch, her deep red form bathed in silver moonlight. His phone buzzed twice, indicating he had a voice message. It buzzed again, once. A text. He read Sanderson’s words twice, fighting the urge to immediately scan his surroundings. Fuck. Maybe they had landed in Guantanamo. How the hell would he know the difference?
Farrington poked his head through the hatch, scanning the moonlit tarmac and the buildings beyond. It didn’t look like Guantanamo, even in the darkness. He saw nothing in the distance beyond the base. Facing the hangars in Guantanamo at night, you could see lights from the towns outside the base perimeter. He suspected nothing but Atlantic beyond these buildings. Headlights appeared in the fuel farm on the edge of the tarmac, followed by a long truck.
“Fuel’s inbound. No smoking, obviously,” said the loadmaster.
Something’s inbound, he thought.
His paranoid mind was taking over after reading Sanderson’s message. He glanced toward the SEALs, who now sat on top of the pallets of double-stacked Pelican cases, which contained the taskforce’s primary weapons and gear. They talked and laughed quietly, appearing to have no interest in leaving the aircraft. Nothing felt off to him. The SEALs didn’t have the numbers or weapons to take down his team. Everyone carried a pistol, a condition Sanderson had insisted on. Primary weapons would be removed from the cases and issued to the team infiltrating by parachute later in the flight.
The SEALs all carried rucksacks, which could contain a few surprises, but Farrington’s team had a few spoilers hidden in their personal gear just in case. Satisfied that nothing was immediately amiss inside or outside the aircraft, he backed up and approached Gosha, who looked surprised to see him.
“Back so soon?”
Farrington lowered his voice. “Sanderson wants us alert during the refueling. Didn’t say why. Any chance they hid another team on this thing?”
“We checked before takeoff in Buenos Aires. Lower deck and lavatory were empty. Flight deck had two pilots in the cockpit. The rest empty. If we have a problem, it’s going to come from the outside.”
“That’s what I was thinking. What about our friends over there?” he asked, without glancing up at the SEALs.
“DEVGRU is good, but not that good. If something went down, my guess is they’ll disappear right before it happens,” said Gosha, cocking his ear. “Fuel truck?”
“I hope so.”
“Maybe one of us should keep an eye on it,” Gosha suggested.
“That doesn’t sound like you’re volunteering.”
“Wouldn’t it look suspicious if I suddenly developed an interest in leaving the aircraft?” said Gosha, smirking.
“Put your earpiece in. Primary tactical channel.”
Before heading back, Farrington pulled a wired earpiece free from a Velcro hook hidden in his collar and pushed it into his left ear. On his way out the door, he heard Gosha joking about kosher MREs, the team’s previously agreed upon code to watch their hosts very closely. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he tapped a reply to Sanderson’s message.
LANDED IN RIGHT PLACE. ALL KOSHER HERE.
The reply came instantly: MSG FROM FLT DECK WHEN UR BACK IN AIR.
He pressed K, followed by SEND.
“Aleem, Gosha said he’s going to fight you over the kosher MREs,” said Farrington.
“He’s about as kosher as my Saudi grandmother,” replied Fayed, pausing a few moments before walking a little further out onto the tarmac.
Nobody immediately reacted to Farrington’s use of the code word, but over the next several seconds, the operatives casually spread out from the hatch.
Chapter 51
Royal Air Force (RAF) Base
Ascension Island
Jared Hoffman dug through his pack, removing what was indeed a kosher MRE from the depths. His hand brushed the pistol grip of his MP9 on the way out. He placed the tan plastic pouch on the seat next him and pretended to rearrange the contents of his pack, instead maneuvering the compact submachine gun into a readily accessible position. The weapon was loaded with a twenty-round magazine to keep it concealable. An additional thirty-round magazine lay flat along the left side of the weapon, kept in place by a magnetic strip attachment. A few more magazines had been hidden in various external pouches on the pack. It was one of their insurance policies. He had others.
The fuel truck arrived, its squeaky brakes audible through the aircraft hull behind him. The loadmaster slid out of his seat and peered through the window in the emergency exit hatch next to his station.
“Fuel’s here!” he announced.
Hoffman nodded politely, and the loadmaster went to work on the switches.
“Gosha,” said Ashraf Haddad, grabbing his attention.
Two of the SEALs headed in their direction, one of them stretching his arms and yawning while walking, the other yapping about a new rifle he’d fir
ed. He resisted the urge to put his hand inside his pack, secure in the knowledge that all seven Black Flag operatives were thinking the same thing and were ready to respond in the blink of an eye. The de facto leader of the SEALs spoke to them for the first time since Sanderson’s team boarded the aircraft.
“Headed up to the flight deck, gentlemen,” said the leader. “Take a look at this dump from the cockpit so I can tell my kids I saw it. You’re welcome to join us.”
Hoffman held up the tan pouch. “I have a date with a kosher MRE. Maybe later.”
“Not much to see up there anyway,” said the commando.
They passed through the small knot of Sanderson’s operatives and climbed the stairwell without saying a word to the loadmaster. Hoffman casually glanced at the red, monochromatic forms of the two remaining SEALs, not detecting any change to their behavior or posture. He relaxed a little, giving the MRE some thought. Chicken and black beans didn’t sound so bad right now.
Hoffman reached for the MRE, and the cargo bay went dark. Before he got the MP9 out of his pack, suppressed gunfire rattled from the top of the stairwell, striking one of his teammates with a wet thud.
Hoffman launched backward, gripping the submachine gun and his pack, the next tightly spaced pattern of bullets zipping through the space he’d moments ago occupied. He hit the metal deck hard and rolled onto his left side to face the source of gunfire, his MP9 firing at the top of the stairwell a fraction of a moment later. A weapon clattered down the stairs, indicating his burst had been accurate, but it was immediately replaced by more gunfire from the same location.
A warm splash hit the back of his neck, followed by suppressed and unsuppressed gunfire from the rear of the aircraft. A body dropped behind him, momentarily shielding his back from the new threat. Deafening gunfire from the team’s nearby pistols echoed off the cargo bay walls, the muzzle flashes lashing out toward the front and rear of the aircraft. Bullets struck the body behind him again. Someone was desperate to put his MP9 out of action. They couldn’t win this fight. Not caught in a crossfire with nowhere to maneuver.
He reloaded the MP9 with the attached magazine and dug through his pack again, retrieving a flashlight. While the sharp reports of his team’s pistols slackened, he unscrewed the top and shook a flash-bang grenade onto the deck, tossing the flashlight shell aside. The grenade’s safety lever released automatically, the device’s pin pulled before it was squeezed into the flashlight.
“Grenade out!” he yelled, tossing it toward the rear of the aircraft.
Chapter 52
Royal Air Force (RAF) Base
Ascension Island
Farrington dropped to the hard tarmac the moment the red light disappeared from the crew door next to him. His quick instinct was rewarded by the hollow metallic thunk of a bullet above him. Aleem Fayed spun and fired two quick shots toward the nose of the aircraft.
“Two targets! Front landing gear,” said Fayed before his body crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.
Flashes erupted behind Farrington from the rear wheel housing, bullets cutting through the team from a third direction. This would be over in a few seconds if they remained exposed like this. There was only one place to go, and he had no idea if the situation would be better or worse when they got there. Holloman’s head snapped back, a dark splotch appearing against the side of the gray aircraft. It couldn’t be any worse than this.
“Go under! Get to the other side!” he yelled, rolling underneath the aircraft.
Bullets chased him across the concrete for half of the trip, the initial gunmen quickly losing their firing angles from positions best suited for catching them in an ambush along the port side of the aircraft. When he emerged on the opposite side of the C-17’s belly, he caught two men in full tactical gear crouched in the open next to the refueling truck.
They either didn’t see him or didn’t expect him. It didn’t matter. Farrington lined their dark forms up with his tritium sights and fired center mass. One of the men dropped into a seated position on the ground. The other spun against the truck’s front wheel well and went to his knees. Knowing they weren’t out of the fight, he closed the short distance, alternating bullets between them until he was close enough to shoot them in the face. He drilled the seated man in the nose; then the pistol’s slide locked back.
“Shit,” he muttered, ejecting the magazine while his free hand retrieved another.
He’d practiced swapping pistol magazines more than a thousand times, under every possible condition, but when the second commando unexpectedly twisted on his knees to face him, Farrington knew it wasn’t going to happen. A thousand times? Two thousand times? When your time was up—your time was up.
He slammed the new magazine home anyway, staring down the barrel of a compact rifle. The man’s head jerked backward against the tire well, the rest of his body going slack. Farrington crouched between the two dead men and searched for his savior. Dihya Castillo lay flat on the tarmac directly underneath the aircraft, her pistol extended in both hands. She was the only other member of the team that had made it under the C-17.
“Keep going!” he yelled.
She started to crawl, but fell flat on her stomach with an agonized groan. Farrington started forward, then froze. Castillo held her left hand out, telling him to stop, while the other rapidly fired her pistol at a dark form barely visible to him on the other side of the aircraft. The shadowy figure slumped to its hands and knees, head down. Farrington picked up the suppressed M4 carbine and fired twice. The shooter’s body flattened. He started toward Castillo again.
“No! There’s a sniper out there!” she yelled. “I’m done anyway.”
“Fuck that,” he muttered, determined to grab her.
Her body shuddered from a high-velocity impact, the supersonic crack startling him. Gunfire continued to rage inside the aircraft, but he could tell that battle was dying down. Farrington resolved to make this as painful as possible for whoever was behind this. He’d use the fuel truck to blow the whole fucking plane up before he was finished. He snatched three thirty-round magazines for the M4 from one of the vests and took off behind the fuel truck, stuffing the magazines in his pocket as he ran.
A shooter hidden behind the bulging wheel well fired at him when he poked his head around, striking the edge of the fuel tank. Scratch the fuel truck idea. He’d find another way. Farrington peeked again, drawing fire, one of the bullets creasing his hair. He dropped into a prone position behind the back wheels of the truck and leaned quickly into the open, finding his target in the rifle’s holographic sight. A single trigger press sent a bullet straight into the shooter’s chest before he could readjust his aim. The man staggered sideways, trying to recover from the hit to his body armor. Farrington followed up with three shots to the upper chest and neck area, putting him down.
He searched the shadowy area around the massive landing gear, coming up empty, which didn’t mean he was in the clear. His view was limited, and he knew it. The pistol fire inside the C-17 had nearly stopped, the sound of Hoffman’s submachine gun conspicuously missing. Even the suppressed fire from the hostile rifles had slowed, replaced by more methodical bursts. They were mopping up the last survivors. He had to act.
Farrington burst into the open, sprinting for the rear cargo bay ramp. He’d almost reached the ramp when he heard a familiar voice.
“Grenade out!”
They were still in this.
Chapter 53
Royal Air Force (RAF) Base
Ascension Island
Hoffman’s intentional use of the word grenade had the desired effect. Unable to see what he’d thrown into the rear of the cargo bay, the gunmen scrambled out of the aircraft, shouting panicked orders. Fragmentation grenades and fuel-laden aircraft didn’t mix. The moment they scattered for the ramp, he rolled to the left, drawing fire from the top of the stairs.
A pistol low to the deck and across from him unleashed several shots at the elevated gunman before Hoffman pressed th
e MP9’s trigger, adding to the sparks flying off the top of the metal staircase. A tightly spaced series of earsplitting explosions crunched his eardrums and lit the cargo bay, spurring him into action.
“Clear the front! Clear the front!” he screamed, barely able to hear his own words.
Hoffman leapt forward onto his feet and rapidly moved to the front of the cargo bay, firing short bursts up the stairwell and scanning for the loadmaster. Ashraf Haddad sprinted past him on the right, checking the loadmaster station before pressing himself against the side of the aircraft and aiming his pistol at the open crew door.
The loadmaster had disappeared, either out the door to help ambush the team outside or down the short passageway next to the stairwell to hide behind the stairs. Both scenarios presented a problem he needed to solve in the next few seconds before the confusion sowed by the flash-bang grenade dissipated.
With Haddad covering the door, he chose to clear the area behind the stairs. Another flash-bang would do nicely right about now, but he didn’t have the time to dig through one of the packs behind him to retrieve one. Hoffman improvised, firing the rest of his MP9’s magazine into the dark red space, igniting it with sparks before yelling, “Grenade out!” He tossed the spent submachine gun into the loadmaster’s possible hiding space and dropped to the ground with his pistol drawn.
Much to his surprise, the ruse worked. A dark figure lurched into the dark red passageway and charged forward, firing a compact weapon on full automatic. The bullets zipped harmlessly over the Black Flag operative’s head, the fusillade answered by several swiftly fired bullets from Haddad’s and Hoffman’s pistols. The loadmaster twitched from the repeated hits, careening into the stairway’s handrail and sliding to the deck.
Hoffman picked up the rifle dropped earlier by one of the shooters at the top of the stairwell and signaled for Haddad to follow. They had to get off the cargo level. The sound of suppressed gunfire raged behind them. Without a moment to spare, he rushed up the stairs, sweeping the open space above and to the left with the compact rifle. The business end of a suppressor poked over the top of the stairs, a dark stain sprayed against the bullet-riddled wall beyond it. As he continued to climb, a facedown head appeared. Another body lay close by.
OMEGA: A Black Flagged Thriller (The Black Flagged Series Book 5) Page 26