Rogue Forces

“With pleasure, General,” replied Angel Martinez, piloting a CID unit accompanying Yusuf Jaffar’s battalion. Martinez was a jack-of-all-trades in Scion Aviation International: he had police training; he fixed and drove trucks and construction equipment; he could even cook. When they were looking for volunteers to go to Iraq, his was the first hand up. On the long flight over, Wayne and Charlie gave him ground school lessons on how to pilot a Cybernetic Infantry Device; when Wayne Macomber ordered him to mount up after they had arrived at Nahla and were going to take down the local security force, it was his first time actually piloting a CID.

Now this was only his second time—and he was going to face an entire Turkish army battalion.

“Listen up, Angel,” Charlie radioed. “The armor and the rail gun are great, but your main weapons aboard a CID are speed, mobility, and situational awareness. Your main weaknesses are massed platoon-or company-level weapons because they can drain your power quickly. You have to move to avoid heavy weapons being able to concentrate fire on you. Shoot, move, scan, move, shoot, move.”

“Charlie, you drilled me on that mantra so much I say it in my sleep,” Martinez said. He was racing ahead of Jaffar’s battalion with breathtaking speed, well over fifty miles an hour across the open field. “Target’s in sight.”

“The Turks are concentrating on the platoons ahead of them,” Whack said, “but the minute you open fire they’ll—”

“Projectile away,” Martinez said. He dove to the ground in a prone position, selected a Turkish armored personnel carrier in his sights, and fired. The APC didn’t explode or even stop when the tungsten-steel alloy projectile hit, because the sausage-size slug passed right through it as if it never existed—but every man inside the vehicle was shredded to bits by shards of the APC’s thin steel fuselage flying uncontrollably inside the vehicle. “Damn, I must’ve missed,” Martinez said.

“No, but you gotta remember to go for the engine compartment, transmission, magazine, or the tracks, not just the crew compartment,” Whack said. “The projectiles will pass through the thin steel or aluminum easily. Every infantryman aboard may be dead, but the vehicle can still fight if the driver or commander made it.”

“Roger that, Whack,” Martinez said. As soon as he stood up, he started taking fire, including automatic forty-millimeter grenade rounds. He dashed sideways for a hundred yards, searching for the origin of those rounds. He soon found it—not one, but two APCs.

“Angel, keep moving!” Charlie shouted. “Those two APCs have you lined up!”

“Not for long,” Martinez shouted back. He took aim and fired directly through the front of one APC. It immediately shuddered to a stop, and soon a fire broke out in the engine compartment. But Martinez couldn’t enjoy the view, because two more APCs had zeroed in on him. He immediately loaded their locations in his target computer’s memory, aimed, and fired. But they moved quickly, and he was only able to get one before having to run because he was being bombarded by the other. “Guys, I have a feeling they anticipated finding us out here,” he said. “I’m getting clobbered.”

“Target on the run and shoot at as many as you can when you stop,” Whack said. “Don’t target while you’re stopped.”

“It looks like they’re gunning for us for sure,” Charlie said. She fired four ballistic rockets from her backpack, which had infrared and millimeter-wave radars that guided them to a group of four Turkish armored personnel carriers that had appeared out of nowhere from the east. “At least it gives Jaffar’s troops a chance to—”

“Helicopters inbound, bearing northwest, five miles!” Patrick shouted. “They look like gunships accompanied by a scout! Too low to spot them farther out!” Before Martinez could search for the newcomers, the Turkish Cobra gunship launched a Hellfire laser-guided missile.

“Evasive moves, Angel!” Whack shouted. Now that the scout helicopter, a U.S.-licensed but Turkish-built Kiowa, had to keep its laser on Martinez, it was an easy target for Macomber’s rail gun, and he blew the sensor ball atop the helicopter’s rotor mast apart seconds later…but not before the Hellfire missile hit Martinez on the left part of his chest.

“Angel’s down! Angel’s down!” Whack shouted. He tried to run over to him, but sustained fire from the battalion in front of Jaffar’s security platoons kept him pinned down. “I can’t get to him,” he said as he fired at more oncoming APCs, then reloaded his rail gun. “I’m not sure how much longer we can hold these guys off. I’m down to fifty percent power and ammo.”

“The Wolverine will be overhead in one minute,” Patrick said. “More helicopters inbound!”

“I’m going to try to get to Martinez,” Whack said.

“The Turks are too close, Wayne,” Patrick said.