After the events in DC at the National Cathedral nearly three weeks ago, the presence of Logan West on the field was the greatest threat. He’d told General Cordones exactly that, and it was also why his fail-safe was primed and ready to go. Once he was out of South America and over the Atlantic, he’d issue the stand-down order. Until then, every option was in play.
He was standing up to stretch his legs when he felt rather than heard a low thrum begin to vibrate in the wooden floor of the command post. He stiffened and listened as the vibration grew in intensity. He knew instinctively that whatever it was, it wasn’t good for him, and he grabbed the black backpack with his extra set of clothes, his wallet—although he knew he’d never need his ID again—and a few personal photographs of his son, Jacob, and bolted for the entrance to the front foyer of the command post.
The double wooden doors were open, and four of his guards stood outside, AK-103s at the ready, scanning the night sky for the threat.
Josh stepped outside, where the thrum had become deafening. It was as if the plateau was surrounded by an enormous swarm of mechanical insects that moved and circled above, hungrily stalking them before striking. But he sensed a cohesion, as if they moved with one purpose, and he knew what they were. Drones. It also meant that the base was under siege, although the soldiers hadn’t grasped that fact yet.
A figure appeared from behind him, and Josh turned to see Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez, the officer in charge of the protective detail. A man in his late thirties with black hair and brown eyes and a youthful appearance that belied his age, he processed the imminent threat.
Josh beat him to the assessment. “It’s drones, dozens of them, by the sound. We’re under attack, and we need to get the hell out of here, because they came prepared, and they’re here for me.”
“Why do you say that, sir?” Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez asked, concern evident in his voice.
“Why else would they be here? Your government still thinks that General Cordones is protecting the president. And after the ambush on the highway, it’s the same people—I know it. Somehow, they figured out I’m here, and they’ve come for me,” Josh said. He paused for a moment. “Is there a loudspeaker system throughout the base? And if so, can you patch me through to it? I have an idea.”
“There is, but we need to get you out of here, or it won’t matter what you want to say,” Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez said. “But there are several intercom stations throughout the base.”
Josh’s mind raced ahead of Alvarez’s decision-making. While Alvarez might be an outstanding soldier, Josh was both strategic and tactical in his calculations, and he knew they were running out of time and options by the second.
“Is there one on that?” Josh asked, pointing 150 yards away at the parked, looming beast of the train and the two cars attached to it.
“Yes, but why?” Alvarez asked.
“Because we’re never going to make it to the helo. It’s the first thing they’ll destroy to prevent us from escaping. I have an idea, and we can use that. In fact, if you want to survive, I recommend you stay close. They won’t shoot me, at least not yet. Now let’s go,” Josh ordered, naturally falling once again into the role of commanding people around him. He started moving toward the train, and the four soldiers flanked him, two on each side, as Alvarez jogged ahead of him. I hope he realizes he’s going to take the first bullet, but better him than me, Josh thought, his true nature on display, at least to himself.
CHAPTER 27
The drone swarm was surreal to Logan West. In all of the combat he’d experienced over the years, both in the Marine Corps and in Task Force Ares, he’d never charged into battle under the cover of a diversion like the micro drones that had descended upon the mountain. He’d run movement to contact ranges with machine-gun fire close overhead at the legendary Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, and he’d once had a Mexican navy helicopter fire 20mm cannon shells at the foothill he was on in Mexico—ironically, while he was locked in hand-to-hand combat with none other than Marcos Bocanegra. But a swarm of drones operating as one artificial organism? That’s a new one, even for me.
The deafening hum of the drones turned into a full-pitched shriek, and Logan realized the swarm had entered the camp at a low altitude. He looked up through the canopy of trees, thought he saw a few drone stragglers veering away and then toward the middle of the camp. Time to go, once again into the breach, he thought, and sprinted the remaining distance up the hill.
Moments later, Logan West emerged from the darkness like a wraith materializing from the substance of the night. He entered the base first, leading from the front, and searched for targets with the same MP5 he’d used at the mountaintop hotel. A split second later, the rest of his assault team appeared from within the recesses of the trees, assembling on both sides of him in two lines that curved away from him at the center of the northeastern corner.
For the briefest of moments, Logan processed the scene before him. Between the two buildings in front of him—one a small rectangle, the other a larger upside-down L shape—pandemonium had broken out, almost at a comical level. Figures darted back and forth across the base, some of them firing weapons into the night sky, although the reports from their weapons were muffled by the sound of the drones. Good luck with that tactic, Logan thought, knowing that luck was the only way they might hit one of the machines. A quick glance left to the southeastern far side of the railroad revealed the dark figures of Cole and his assault team in the process of securing the helicopter. But the most important thing that Logan realized was that no one had detected the hostile threat now in their midst. Time to work.
Logan moved forward, and the rest of his lethal squad moved with him. Twenty feet from the L-shaped house, the formation split into three elements the way they’d planned. Logan, Santiago, and Marcos had the central avenue of approach, directly between the buildings. The three shooters on the right would move around the L-shaped house; the three men on the left, around the rectangular building.
A figure in combat fatigues appeared sixty feet away from behind the smaller building. He looked upward, his AK-103 held in one hand at his side. The soldier made a quarter turn, still looking up, as if trying to ascertain the size and scope of the drone swarm. He lowered his head and found himself staring directly into the path of approaching men, not realizing until too late that death had come for him on the mountain.
Without remorse, Logan fired a single shot into the soldier’s forehead, the suppressed thwack mostly inaudible under the roaring of the drones. The soldier crumpled to the ground, the AK falling uselessly to the grass.
Still, no attention was paid to the assaulting tidal wave of men and weapons. The chaos of confusion and disorientation continued unchecked beyond the two buildings. Logan saw five small black shapes dive toward a group of three soldiers. The men panicked and turned to run, reminding Logan of the victims in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, fleeing an imaginary horror in the sky, oblivious to the real threat on the ground. Unfortunately for them, they chose the wrong direction in which to flee, moving toward Logan and his team. A series of barely audible shots from Logan’s left dropped all three men before they’d taken two strides.
This can’t be that easy, Logan thought. Four down, and no one seems to know we’re here.
As if an unseen enemy were attuned to his thoughts, automatic weapons fire erupted from the rectangular building in front of him. The muzzle flashes illuminated a barrel that stuck out of a cut-out opening that served as a window in the side of the single-story structure. Logan heard a groan from his left, even as he dove to the right and landed close to Marcos.
Santiago returned fire, and the barrage of bullets drove the shooter back inside the building.
Logan saw one man down, and another member of the team knelt beside him, looked toward Logan’s direction, and shook his head from side to side. Goddamnit. We can’t start taking casualties this quickly.
The plan relied on aggression an
d momentum, two intangible concepts that often determined the outcome of combat. Logan hit Marcos’s shoulder and pointed to the set of wooden doors at the near end of the L-shaped building. Marcos understood, and the two warriors stood up in the grass and dashed toward the entrance to the building, even as the other two elements of the assault team moved forward toward the middle of the camp. But before Logan, Marcos, or Santiago could make any more progress, the shooter in the building had to be neutralized.
Logan studied the flimsy set of double doors, realized that they swung outward, and nodded at Marcos. In one fluid motion, the disgraced former Special Forces soldier dropped the MP5 against his chest, unholstered a Glock 19 suppressed pistol with his left hand, and grabbed the handle of the right door with his free hand. Logan nodded, exhaled, and waited.
Marcos yanked the door open, and Logan entered, the MP5 raised, even as he half expected to get shot. He moved quickly to the right side of the entrance and leaned up against the wall as Marcos entered and moved to the other side.
The wall against Logan’s back was rippled, and he kicked his left foot back against the surface. He heard as much as felt a soft swishing, a sensation he’d felt countless times before—sand moving. Logan stared down the middle of this part of the L-shaped building as his eyes quickly adjusted to the gloomy interior. A silhouette appeared as his eyes adjusted, and Logan nearly fired, realizing just in time that it wasn’t moving. Other shapes—a low-cut wall on the left, a doorway with no door on the right, a stack of tires near the wall—stuck out to him. Oh no, Logan thought, and recognized the purpose of the building, even as Marcos spoke it aloud.
“We’re in a goddamned shoot house,” Marcos said. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Logan had once heard a story about a squad of soldiers from the Philippine Army on a patrol in the jungle on one of the southern Philippine islands. The unit had inadvertently wandered directly onto the target area of an insurgent sniper range, as the insurgents were training. All twenty-four soldiers had died within a minute from precision fire. When he’d heard the story, his only thought was, Bad luck can kill, almost as quickly as complacency.
Logan and Marcos had just stumbled into an enemy shoot house in the dark. Advantage, bad guys.
“Good,” Logan said with determination. “Let’s beat them at their own game. We’re better at this than they are.”
“You’re the boss,” Marcos responded.
“You’re goddamned right I am,” Logan replied. “Let’s move.”
He didn’t wait for a response and crept forward toward the low wall as the incessant drones screamed for blood and mayhem outside.
CHAPTER 28
Cole Matthews moved with purpose. The former Tier 1 operator emerged from the tree line less than one hundred feet from the HLZ. The Russian attack helicopter was exactly where they’d anticipated, parked parallel to the railroad track, its bulbous nose that earned it the nickname “the crocodile” facing due west.
Jack Longstreet was on his right, while the far left element of four shooters pressed forward to take up a position on the side of the large building adjacent to the HLZ. The noise was deafening and masked their movement.
Cole, Jack, and the two government assassins had one objective—secure the HLZ and several vehicles they could use for their extraction. No one was hiking down the mountain once the shooting ended. The four mercenary friends of Marcos were tasked with eliminating any threat that originated from within the large adjacent building.
The cool night air wrapped around him as he moved, calming his senses as he looked for targets. Halfway to the helicopter, the first two hostiles appeared—two soldiers in dark flight suits carrying helmets running toward the helicopter. For the briefest moment, Cole considered sparing one of them, but then reconsidered. The plan was the plan, and there was no point in altering it until necessary. The pilot on the left slid to a stop and looked in Cole’s direction, even as his partner kept running toward the Hind.
Cole fired three shots from his suppressed Colt M4 Commando, and the pilot who had stopped short now fell to the grass as the three rounds caught him center-mass.
The other pilot kept running, oblivious to his friend’s fate, at least until Jack fired several rounds, and he stumbled and rolled into the grass, his body still, the lone round that had struck him in the side of the head ending his dash to freedom.
Cole crossed the HLZ and reached the side of the enormous attack helicopter. It was the one used to attack them on the mountain after the earthquake. There were the same distinct markings on the nose, including an emblem of the Venezuelan army decaled just behind the forwardmost and lower cockpit.
Jack reached him a second later and said, “The exhaust port just below the propellers. Toss a grenade in there. It will shred the motor, and she won’t fly anywhere.”
Cole remembered the Mi-24 that had ambushed them seven months ago after they’d escaped a black-site Sudanese prison. “Believe it or not, this isn’t the first Hind we’ve seen since I joined Team Logan. The fun never stops with this task force.”
“Sorry. I forgot about Sudan,” Jack replied, as he watched Cole grab an M67 fragmentation grenade off his Kevlar vest. “I read the after-action report you guys filed with the CIA when you returned.”
“Of course you did. You seem to know everything,” Cole muttered, reached for the safety pin, and paused.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
“I know we’re supposed to disable this beast, but why not wait until the battle is over? You never know when we might need a quick ride out of here,” Cole said.
“It’s your call, but I support it,” Jack said, and then suddenly changed the subject. “Targets, twelve o’clock. Get down!”
Cole glanced up just in time to see five more soldiers running toward their position. He reacted instinctively. His finger already near the grenade’s pin, he pulled it, and threw the grenade as far as he could in the approaching hostiles’ direction and dove into the prone position. He unslung the Colt Commando and sighted down the reflex scope.
The grenade detonated twenty feet short of the group of soldiers and sent shrapnel and clumps of dirt and grass flying in all directions. It was enough to stop the group in its tracks.
Cole Matthews and Jack Longstreet, side by side in the damp grass, opened fire at the disorganized group of men 120 feet away. Simultaneously, two of the Killer Team shooters who had taken a position on the side of the building stepped out from behind cover and opened fire on the soldiers at a closer distance. The five Venezuelan soldiers never had a chance.
In less than three seconds, the five men were on the ground, dead or dying.
The drones continued to swarm through the camp in a racetrack formation just above the buildings, bisecting the camp from north to south.
The shooters at the corner remained in position to provide cover as Jack and Cole stood up and jogged around the helicopter toward the parking lot and the four rows of military trucks and SUVs.
* * *
The explosion of the grenade from the direction of the HLZ sent a mild vibration through the shoot house. Helicopter disabled. No way out, now, Baker, Logan thought, unaware of Cole’s tactical change of plan.
The inside was still dark, but with each passing moment, the black transformed into varying shades of gray, which seemed to shift back and forth. As long as they don’t have night vision, we should be good. The drones had become a steady backdrop to the action, and the mechanical high-pitched whirring masked their movements.
Once Logan and Marcos had reached the low wall, they’d crept over it, Marcos covering Logan and vice versa. They found themselves inside a square room with two human-shaped metal silhouette targets. Another door—this one closed—stood between them and behind the targets. It was the only way out.
Logan realized they had to be near the juncture of the building where the two parts of the L met. They’d moved at least thirty feet into the building since they’d entere
d it.
Logan reached the door first and listened. No sounds came from the other side, although he wasn’t sure he’d have heard them if there were any, due to the drones’ death-metal screeching.
“Wait,” Marcos said quietly, and yanked an M84 stun grenade off his vest and handed it to Logan. He stepped back against the wall out of the line of fire from the unknown room. “Use this, and I’ll go in shooting.”
Logan didn’t argue and accepted the grenade. Crouched down on one knee, he secured his MP5 under his right arm, pulled the pin on the grenade, and held the spoon in place. He grabbed the door with his right hand, nodded, and yanked it open. Several shots rang out from inside and struck the door above Logan’s head and the far wall where Marcos had stood moments before. He flung the grenade into the room, slammed the door shut, and moved back against the concrete wall, placing his hands over his ears and opening his mouth.
Even outside the room, the 180-plus decibel noise was deafening, and the flash of more than a million candela shot from under and around the door and then vanished, leaving an afterimage in Logan’s retinas. A second later, Logan pulled the door open, and Marcos entered the room, MP5 raised.
The unfortunate soldier was on the ground in the far corner, one hand held against his right ear. His left hand was on his AK-103, which was all the justification Marcos needed: he shot the soldier once in the head, and the dead man slumped farther to the ground, falling sideways.
Marcos reached the next door, which was set on the left wall and led to the other part of the building. The window the shooter had fired from was toward the end of the building at least forty-five feet away, but they had no idea what was on the other side of the door.
“Use a frag,” Logan said, and handed Marcos an M67 fragmentation grenade. Seconds later, their roles reversed, Logan waited as the grenade exploded, shaking the walls and floor of the building. Logan heard something split on the other side, and he thought he heard a low scream of pain that cut off abruptly.
Rules of War Page 17