Overkill

by Ted Bell

  God knows these pilots, living out their days inside a mountain, rarely got airtime, and then only when mountain storms would cover their maneuvers in the skies above Der Nadel. Or dogfight simulations out over the Mediterranean. True, Joe had assured him that they were motivated and briefed, but the results in combat had been mixed at best.

  You know what? Fuck it. He whipped ass with his ground troops. Always his style.

  On the other side, the Swiss artillery emplacements up at the higher elevations had rained hellfire and brimstone down on his convoy. Good news was, they had eventually been silenced by the ferocious pounding of cannon fire they received from Beau’s Tiger tankers that had kicked ass, man.

  The tanks, the goddamn Tigers, were the most powerful weapons in his convoy, and, aided by strategic bombing by the Falcon’s Lair squadron, they had been strategically distributed among the trucks. Ground troop resistance along the roadway at this point had been reduced to nil by the superior firepower provided by the killer tanks.

  At the barricaded entrances to Riviera and Caesars Palace, Beau had paused the trucks just long enough to let the tanks and aerial bombardment soften up defenses and make way for the troops who would be returning from the Golden Nugget. Breaching the vault doors and overcoming resistance from security forces both inside and out just got a whole lot easier.

  “Bring home the gold, Beau!” he said aloud and powered ahead, blowing his horn for the sheer hell of it.

  Chapter Ninety

  Falcon’s Lair

  Hawke and company had dealt the enemy a serious blow. His evasive tactic had taken them completely by surprise. His men had knocked the enemy forces below back on their heels. Finding their positions on the mountainside completely exposed, with all hell raining down from above, Putin’s forces could do nothing but scramble around in the snow, hastily retreating back down as rapidly as they could.

  Hawke had sensed the moment and seized the advantage just in the nick of time. Life was simple: Carpe the Diem and the bloody day will take care of itself—that was his view of the world, anyway.

  The storm system he’d worried about on the way in to the LZ had entered the Bernese Oberland in earnest. It was now howling around him. It wouldn’t be long before they’d all be snow-blind.

  “Hold your fire! We’re moving out!” Hawke said. “We can be down there waiting for them at their front door if we run like hell up to that ledge now, before we can’t see a damn thing! Go! Go! Go!”

  Like Hawke said, they ran like hell, clawing their way along to the narrow ledge. Slipping, sliding, always with the danger of toppling from the ledge and falling to their deaths on the rocks below, the Thunder and Lightning boys held on to each other, grabbing the backs of their snow parkas, pulling their comrades back, inches from death, all twenty-four of them smoking down that mountainside like a runaway train.

  They made it down to a spot directly overlooking the broad entrance to Falcon’s Lair in fifteen minutes.

  When Hawke, who was leading the charge up on the ledge, a dead cigarette clenched in the corner of his mouth, saw the situation at the primary entrance to Falcon’s Lair, he raised his right hand and silently signaled a halt. He then radioed his three squad commanders, Harry Brock, Chief Charlie Rainwater, and FitzHugh McCoy, to give them a briefing on his immediate intentions. Intentions that were subject to change in the coming minutes . . .

  Down on Das Boot, somewhere in the swirling and blinding snow, the enemy was waiting for them. The giant ledge, where Hawke had briefly considered sequentially landing his choppers, was no doubt chockablock with armed fighters lying in wait behind the barricaded gates. Unaware of Hawke’s men and their steady and stealthy approach overhead, these Russian fighters were most likely all facing up the mountain, rather than covering the approach from below as well.

  Chief Rainwater, upon seeing how they were deployed, grabbed Hawke’s shoulder and said, “Commander, look here. My guys on the ledge have still got the three M60s with RPG capability. No need for us to go down there and engage in any hand-to-hand combat. Hell, no, we can just blow up their shit from up here. Launch a bunch of grenades right in the middle of them and—”

  “Hold that thought, Chief. Stoke, I’m putting you in charge here. The chief and I are going down there alone, stealth move. I want to personally scout the situation up close before I commit our guys in any way. If you hear shooting or we’re not back in twenty minutes, come get us.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “You’re not worried about some snowman down there shooting your white ass?”

  “Yes, actually, I am. Like Churchill, I always prefer to be shot at without effect. We’ll be going now . . . Ready, Chief?”

  “Chief ready.”

  “Stoke?”

  “Roger that.”

  “I don’t ever use that phrase, terrible cliché,” Hawke said, and then he and Rainwater were gone, melting away into the swirl of snow.

  Man was something else, Stoke thought, watching him fade away.

  The two men proceeded along the ledge carefully now. The icy footing was atrocious and he was in no rush. Because now, for what Hawke intended, the snowstorm was his first and best ally. In the midst of a battlefield enveloped in a raging snowstorm, every man in white is just another man in white. Or snowman, as Stokely had said. Sow confusion among your enemies. Something a young cadet had heard in a classroom one day at Dartmouth Naval College.

  They picked their way carefully down the icy face of the mountain, using the crampons on their boots and their ice axes. He was exposed here and it was bitterly cold. As he climbed ever nearer the giant ledge known as Das Boot, he could hear the rattle of arms and the faint murmur of troops ready for a fight.

  Dropping five feet down to a snowy outcropping directly overlooking Das Boot, the two men were now only thirty feet or so above the heads of the snowmen gathering below for a fight. Rainwater had just caught a very brief glimpse of a cluster of heavily armed snowmen, guarding the entry to Falcon’s Lair. He told Hawke they were indeed all facing up the mountain rather than down.

  And what about all those troops initially deployed a thousand feet below?

  He’d been right—the two men saw shapes moving upward in the snowfall, more Putin troops headed upward to reinforce existing units above and below and at the entry itself. It had been intended to be a pincer movement, with forces simultaneously attacking both flanks of Hawke’s invading formation. But Hawke’s formation was now above the fray!

  “How many of them, Chief?” Hawke whispered to the big man crouched by his side.

  “Think we’re looking at a hundred or more right now . . . more still coming up and coming down. Call it one fifty, two hundred max.”

  “Against twenty-four.”

  “Not bad odds, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Considering our side has you and me on it,” the chief said with a wicked grin.

  “Got any big ideas?”

  “I see big explosions happening down there. But then I think, no, I have a better idea, sir.”

  “Surprise, surprise. No RPGs?”

  “Not yet, sir. I think we take knives to a gunfight. I mean, literally take knives! Know what a smart Indian warrior would do in such a combat situation, Commander?”

  “No. That’s why I asked you the question.”

  “Remember Little Bighorn?”

  “I went to the Royal Naval War College, remember?”

  “Kidding you, sir. So the Sioux have Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and masses of hopped-up warriors whacked on weed, sitting on their horses high above Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s crowd, the 7th Cavalry, you know. Two hundred and fifteen souls down in a valley who have no idea what they are up against. Soon to take on eleven thousand very pissed-off Indians.”

  “Got it, and we’re Custer,” Hawke said. “Only above instead of below.”

  “Yeah. But we also know
what we’re up against.”

  “Right. So?”

  “Ready? Okay, Fitz, Stoke, and Brock, those three only, remain in place up there on the mountainside with the big-boy guns. RPGs rule. Everybody else? Down the hill, now, join up with us. On my signal, the RPGs and M60s rain shit down, hellfire, right? Death, destruction, confusion down there. Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Hawke said, “and that’s precisely when we go down there and, how do I say this, we insinuate ourselves, we insert ourselves into the enemy mass, slowly, invisibly, dissolving into the crowd of enemy troops, moving and melting into them with such subtlety they’ll neither know who we are nor realize we’re among them. It’s all confusion and smoke grenades. And we’re not shooting anyone or calling attention to ourselves in any way . . .”

  “No, of course not, Commander. Brilliant. No, we’re using our assault knives, hidden inside our parkas. A quick and silent thrust up to the heart, the bad guy hits the snow, and everyone assumes he got shot from above. We take out as many as we can without calling attention to our presence, and they are none the wiser . . . until it’s too late . . . we’re like killer ghosts among them . . . zombies.”

  Hawke said, “Meanwhile, Chief, while Stoke, Fitz, and Brock are decimating the enemy from above, you, me, and the rest of the squad are slashing our way forward toward the barricades at the entry doors, rigging C-4 charges that’ll blow those steel doors wide open.”

  Rainwater said, “Yes, sir! And the moment when that happens, and our entire force is now within the mountain, inside the walls of the enemy camp, then all of us open up with automatic weapons, everything we’ve got, at very close quarters. We storm the interior like screaming banshees. They’ll never know what hit them.”

  “And just like that, Falcon’s Lair will fall to the invaders,” Hawke said with a small smile, knowing the two of them might have just cracked the one very strategic military code they’d needed to gain entry: how to confuse and subvert an enemy mass five times larger than your own!

  Chalk one up for Sitting Bull, Hawke thought, smiling at Rainwater.

  The white killer ghosts would enter the fortress en masse, hidden amidst and amongst the withdrawing forces, now being used in one of the oldest military strategies ever invented, the Trojan Horse.

  Hawke, sensing a victory at hand, said, “Get Stoke on the radio, Chief. Fill him in. We’re ready. Tell him the Chief says we’re all taking knives to this gunfight. He’ll like that.”

  Chapter Ninety-One

  The Vegas Strip

  Visible from the road, the twin fortified entrances to the two massive vaults at the Riviera and Caesars Palace consisted of mountainous natural stone blockades and barricades. Flanked to either side by guard towers bristling with searchlights and snipers. Didn’t look good for the home team.

  Beau grabbed his radio. “Falcon’s Lair squadron leader, this is Overkill, do you read? I need air support and I need it now. Got that?”

  “Loud and clear, sir.”

  “I’m just passing the Riviera en route to the Nugget. I got two guard towers at each location, need to be taken out. And I mean now, son. I don’t wanna see any of these bastards still standing on my way back down. Over.”

  “Uh, that’s a roger, sir. I’m directly overhead now, have eyes on the targets and will engage, over.”

  “Give ’em hell, son. Over.”

  He saw the pilot execute a barrel roll and then go into an almost vertical dive, unleashing a storm of air-to-ground missiles as well as his 20mm Vulcan cannon on the enemy towers.

  Beau could see that inside the entrances to the Riviera and Caesars Palace were steel portals that opened down into the underground vaults. At least to some degree, it looked as if some of the upper portions of the interior fortifications had already been reduced by earlier aerial bombardment to smoking rubble.

  “Softened up.” Beau smiled and chomped down on his trademark soggy stogie. The Falcon’s Lair squadron boys were about to make his life a whole lot easier.

  Those final two targets would be easy pickings by the time he hit them on the return trip back down the mountain. Once he had relieved the Golden Nugget of all that stolen Russian bullion, he would immediately wheel his forces and charge back down the Strip. Beau was ready, freddy, make no mistake about it.

  He had even pulled out his lucky twenty-four-carat-gold toothpick, the one he’d won in a crap game in Vegas. He stuck it between his teeth and admired it in the rearview mirror. He was feeling mighty good for a formerly washed-up soldier of fortune, half broke and down on his luck.

  True, he’d been worried about their untested airpower. And true, he’d been worried about an unglued Putin on the loose, wreaking havoc inside their headquarters and destroying morale. And the brooding, sullen presence of the killer Shit Smith everywhere you went. Man was seriously dangerous. And to some extent, he’d been worried about Uncle Joe, too. Joe was a genius in a weird way, kind of an idiot savant about politics and logistics and global infighting. But he was in no way a military man.

  And yet look at them now. They had a good fighting chance of pulling this sumbitch off! Going home with the gold! Putin be damned, he and Joe could retire to life of PJs, what Joe called private jets, yachts, hookers, and limos.

  Sure, there was always one more battle ahead and one more river to cross. But, hell, things looked kinda like the good lord was on old Beau’s side today, didn’t they? And you know, he was still a young dude!

  A strong, healthy man with a helluva lotta living to do!

  He had entered the beginning of the wide turn that would carry him around to the other side of the mountain . . . and the final approach to the great bridge across the crevasse en route to the Golden Nugget!

  He brought his radio mike closer to his lips, popped the transmit button, and said to the convoy troops, “Here we go! This is nut-cutting time, boys and girls! Don’t go wavering, don’t go faltering. Don’t lose courage now no matter what happens. There’s a huge payoff waiting for all of us at the end of this here rainbow! And more where that came from when we get back down the hill to the rest of the Strip. I’m proud of you men. And how you’ve acquitted yourselves on the field of battle today . . .

  “But we’ve got a fight ahead of us, make no mistake about that! And this one won’t be easy. I’m going to take this big fricking rig across that bridge like a bat out of hell. All guns blazing. And I want all you pencil dick headbangers to do likewise! To do otherwise would just be . . . well, hell, I know we’re just Putin’s paid dogs in this fight, but it would just be downright un-American, is what it would be. Let’s take it to ’em. This here’s Colonel Beau Beauregard, over and out!”

  And Beau pressed on.

  Moments later, Beau saw that he’d just been dealt a very bad card. Nearing the approach and entrance to the great span arching over the deep gorge, he saw nothing but trouble. The Swiss forces guarding the bridge, clearly alerted as to what was coming their way, had positioned two giant Swiss army Sno-Cats nose to nose at the entrance to the bridge! Shit!

  And, worse, out on the bridge proper, he could see that, behind this makeshift barricade of two bright red snow vehicles, there were mobs of Swiss army regulars ready to open up with automatic fire.

  He grabbed the radio: “Falcon’s Lair, Falcon’s Lair, come in! I need air cover! Fuck. Where the hell are those chicken-shit flyboys of yours? Over.”

  “What’s your location, Colonel? Over.” It was Joe and he didn’t sound good. “We’re under heavy attack here! I ordered what was left of the squadron to return to base. I’ve got to stave off Hawke’s forces assembling at the entrance! Must be a couple of hundred of them down there! Shit!”

  “Golden Nugget. I’m at the Crevasse Bridge at—aw, shit, Joe, I got me two fuckin’ Sno-Cats blocking my access to the bridge and a Swiss fighter jet diving straight up my ass! And more up there strafing my convoy. This is do or die, goddamn it! You want this gold? Give me some air cover over here! Give me one damn airplane! Now!
”

  “We’ve still got a couple of guys airborne, I’ll see what I can do. Over.”

  “How long, goddamn it?”

  “I’ll get back to you . . .”

  “Like fuck you will,” Beau said, knowing the little bastard was lying through his teeth. He’d save his own ass first and leave Beau with his dick in his hand.

  Beau ground his teeth, downshifted the truck, and mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor. With a good head of steam he might, with a little luck, be able to blow right between those two vehicles, shunting them to either side, maybe right off the bridge and down to the river. Fuck it. It was his life on the line, do or die. He was going for it.

  The big diesel roared and gained speed. He centered the truck on the approach road and gripped the wheel with both hands, shutting out everything except the narrow strip of daylight between those two Sno-Cats and shouting to his troops in the rear over the radio: “Close up on me and stay tight, you bitches! Stay together! We’re crossing this motherfucker as one unit, boys! Do or die!”

  Rounds from the diving Swiss fighter’s 20mm cannon were perforating what was left of his long hood—steam issuing forth in billowing clouds—and the cab’s roof was full of holes, hell, even the seat he was sitting on and he could see the road beneath his feet! The cab was full of swarming angry bees of lead . . . and it wouldn’t be long before ole Beau got stung bad. But as long as he was breathing . . . At this point, life is all about true grit . . .

  The twin Sno-Cats loomed larger, filling the view through the shattered glass of his windshield. Going to . . . going to hit them . . . now!

  He had tried to keep his eyes open at the impending impact. But the brain-stunning collision jarred him to the bone, hurt him so badly he almost lost his sweaty grip on the wheel. He was whipped about the inside of the cab—everything was flying about: his coffee mug, his maps—but still, and only god knows how, he got his arse back down in the seat and his foot back on the go pedal . . . do or die . . .