Rogue Forces

“My rail gun’s DOA,” Charlie said as she ran. “I’m getting you out of—” She suddenly stopped, turned, and crouched down, shielding Whack from a thunderous burst of cannon fire from the Cobra. “I’m going to put you down and get that thing,” she said. “He doesn’t want you, he wants—” The Cobra pilot fired again. Whack could feel the heavy-caliber shells shoving him and Charlie as if they had their backs to a hurricane. “I…I’m losing power,” she said after the last fusillade ended. “That last blast got something…a battery, I think. I don’t think I can move.” The Cobra opened fire again…

At that moment they heard an explosion behind them, the cannon fire ceased, and they heard the sounds of another helicopter crash. Neither of them moved until they heard vehicles approaching. “Charlie?”

“I can move, but it’s real slow,” she said. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.” Whack painfully wriggled out from the CID unit’s mechanical arms and looked around for the Turks. “Stay put. We’ve got company.” The vehicles were almost on them. He had no weapons, nothing he could fight with. There was nothing he could—

“Raise your hands and don’t move,” he heard a voice say…an American voice. Whack did as he was told. He saw the vehicle was an Avenger mobile air defense unit. An Army sergeant came up to him, wearing night-vision goggles, which he raised. “You gotta be a couple of the Scion guys, because I ain’t seen nothin’ like you two before.”

“Macomber, and that’s Turlock,” Whack said. “I’ve got another guy back there.” The sergeant whistled and waved, and a few moments later an open-back Humvee came up. Whack helped load Charlie up on the Humvee. As she was taken back to Nahla, he got another Humvee, went back and found Martinez, had some soldiers load him up, and took him back to base as well.

Martinez was unconscious and had several broken bones and some internal bleeding and was taken to the infirmary for emergency surgery; Charlie and Whack were checked out and were fine, with Whack suffering a number of cuts, burns, and bruises. She and Whack were taken to a guard post near the departure end of the runway, where two Humvees, a Stryker wheeled armored command post vehicle, and an Avenger unit were partially hidden by runway end light structures and the Instrument Landing System transmitter building. Standing outside the Stryker watching the battle through image-intensified binoculars were Patrick McLanahan, Hunter Noble, Jon Masters, Captain Kelvin Cotter, the air traffic management officer, and Vice President Kenneth Phoenix with his Secret Service detail.

“Glad you guys are all right,” Patrick said. He handed out water and energy bars. “That was close.”

“Why are you guys out here?” Macomber asked.

“The jamming has knocked out all our radars and most of our communications,” Cotter said. “The Triple-C is pretty much dark. I can get line-of-sight laser comms out here.”

“What’s the word, General?” Wayne asked. “How bad did we get hit?”

“The word is, it’s just about over,” Patrick said. Wayne lowered his head dejectedly…until Patrick added, “It’s almost over, and it looks like we won it.”

“No shit?”

“Between the CIDs, you, and the Wolverines, we pretty much stopped the Turks completely,” Patrick said. “The Turks weren’t expecting the Iraqis to fight so hard, and Jaffar’s guys went berserker on them. Then, when Wilhelm joined it, the Turks turned and headed north.”

“I had a feeling Wilhelm wasn’t going to just sit around while Jaffar went out there,” Whack said.

“It was four brigades against two, plus you guys and the cruise missiles, but that was enough for the Turks,” Vice President Phoenix said. “I have a feeling their hearts really weren’t in it. They came to Iraq to hunt down PKK, not fight Iraqis and Americans. Then they started fighting robots and armored soldiers firing Buzz Lightyear rail guns, and they split.”

“I hope so, sir,” Patrick said. “But I don’t trust Hirsiz one bit. He’s already been pushed over the brink by the PKK, and now we handed him a defeat. He’s likely to lash out. I don’t think it’s likely he’ll stop at bombing some suspected PKK-friendly businesses in Irbil.”

“Looks like Jaffar will be reinforcing his forward battalions and start taking his casualties back to base,” Cotter said, stepping out of the Stryker and scanning the area to the north of their position with binoculars. “Colonel Wilhelm and Major Weatherly will keep their battalions on the line in case…yaaah!” Cotter screamed as an impossibly bright flash of white light pierced the night sky, exactly where he was looking.

The first flash was followed by hundreds more, each one brighter than the last, and then the thunder of massive explosions and the roar of superheated air reached them. Clouds of fire rose hundreds of feet into the sky, and soon they could feel the heat wash over them like ocean waves rolling onto the beach.