Then, with unexpected suddenness, through a break in the swirling maelstrom of the shamal, he caught sight of the dull glimmerings of white-painted rectangular objects below. He thought there were numerical markings on them, the kind trucks often had on their roofs; the kind the captured lorry at the presidential palace had also displayed.
Breaux told the pilot to circle around for another look. As the convertiplane made a second pass, the swirling curtain of sand and ice parted enough to reveal the pumping station directly below.
To Breaux's relief the rectangular objects he'd spotted before turned out to be trucks.
Four of them.
Suddenly, and from out of nowhere, they had come under attack.
It was difficult to determine just who or what was shooting at them.
Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni looked up, shielding his eyes, trying to piece together exactly what had happened. He'd heard the unmistakable sound of helicopter rotor blades. That much was clear. Through the parting sheets of whirling sand and driving sleet Dalkimoni could make out the bulky black shape weaving back and forth across the sky.
It was a helo.
Yes. A large one. Almost like a plane.
And he soon saw men fast-roping down from its open rear hatch.
Commandos!
The Israelis perhaps?
Or the Sons of Dogs, the Americans.
Still more likely.
Whoever it was, they would die. Thankfully, he had brought along a force of Takavar and they were ably trained. Let them now do their job.
"Shoot them! There! Above you!" Dalkimoni shouted, gesturing upwards.
Pulling a Skorpion machine pistol from the pit holster slung across his chest, Dalkimoni began firing three-round bursts at the invaders from the sky as if to lead by example. His wild, desperate shooting accomplished nothing, struck nothing. But it encouraged the others to go into action.
All at once defensive small arms fire started up from positions scattered throughout the truck stop. Glowing tracer bullets spat toward the hovering chopper from which human targets were emerging.
There were commandos descending on the truck stop. Americans. There was no mistaking it now. From glimpses of the enemy's chocolate-chips BDUs it was obvious they were under attack by US troops.
The purple berets worn by the assault force completed the picture. Special Forces. From where had they come? It didn't matter. They were here. Fight or be killed was the name of the game.
Dalkimoni's men took cover wherever they could, reloading and firing again and again as the final red tracers in sustained automatic bursts informed them that their ammo magazines were running dry. The Eagle Patchers were now on the ground, outnumbered by unfriendlies. The unarmed Osprey cleared out, but the AH-1Z's rockets and nose cannon evened the score considerably. Once Omega was down and engaged with the enemy, the fight moved away from the trucks, spilling over into the abandoned buildings of the pumping station.
In sum, it became a melee, with part of the US strike force up to its ears trying to take out the Takavar in fierce close-quarter combat, and the rest attempting to secure the nuclear weapons trucks before their hell-bent-on-suicide drivers were able to get them rolling onto the highway again.
Breaux glimpsed the familiar face of the Arab bomb-maker amidst the shifting, surging chaos of combat. It was just as pug-ugly as in the three-position Bertillon mugshot that the German cop Winternitz had shown him back at the safe house in Berlin. Now, Dalkimoni was hotfooting it to one of the motorcade's SUVs where the bloodied corpse of a bullet-pocked Takavar commando was slumped over the steering wheel.
The bomb-maker struggled to pull the heavy, dead weight from behind the wheel and dump the corpse onto the ground. While Dalkimoni was busy heaving the cadaver, Breaux snapped off a burst of AK-74 fire and a brace of stub-nosed 5.45-millimeter bullets spanged and wheezed against the side of the cab, shattering glass and pockmarking metal. Unhanding the dead man, Dalkimoni quick-drew his Skorpion machinepistol and snapped off an answering nine-millimeter autoburst, forcing Breaux to drop down and kiss the sand.
When he rose back up again, Dalkimoni had ditched the troublesome corpse and was already behind the steering wheel with the ignition roaring. The SUV was now barreling away from Breaux, peeling off smoking rubber as its tires screamed for purchase on the shifting desert sands. Breaux tried to shoot out the tires, but the marker tracers he'd loaded showed him the bullpup rifle's clip only had a few rounds left in it. So far none of them seemed to have inflicted any severe damage on the getaway car. Breaux tossed aside the now dry AK and unholstered his Beretta service sidearm, a double-action weapon he carried unsafetied and hammer-down in condition-one mode.
Gun drawn, Breaux bolted after the truck, nearly taking a hit from another volley of Skorpion autofire that Dalkimoni backhanded his way out the driver's-side window. With the SUV still floundering in the sand, Breaux jumped onto the passenger-side running board and smashed the window to splinters with the receiver of this pistol, shards of safety glass peppering his face and temporarily blinding him.
As Breaux shook off the translucent blue flakes of shattered window glass, Dalkimoni leveled his machinepistol and fired a burst straight across the seat. Breaux ducked just in time to dodge the shot pattern as bullets went whipping past his head, triggering an answering Beretta round on the follow-through.
But nothing happened as the hammer dropped. The Beretta had apparently jammed and hung fire. Not surprising, the thought flashed through Breaux's mind — only an asshole would trust an automatic to function in the middle of a sandstorm after using it as a fire axe.
Breaux guessed that this clearly made him an asshole, but he could kick himself later. Right now he had a raging Arab terrorist pointing a Skorpion machinepistol at his head, and, unlike his own, the bad guy's gun seemed to be working just fine.
Breaux ducked below the shattered window as a burst of hot lead punched through the space his head had occupied a moment earlier. He considered pitching a mini-grenade into the cab and then jumping off the SUV, but at the reckless speed Dalkimoni was driving he'd probably wind up breaking his own neck. Besides, Breaux wanted Dalkimoni in one piece if he could at all arrange it. He had his own reasons for this.
Now the door went pock — pock — pock. Three steel rosebuds blossomed in quick succession to the right and left of the handle.
Then suddenly, from within the cab of the SUV, Breaux heard Dalkimoni howl in pain. Breaux intuitively knew what had happened. Dalkimoni had let his emotions overrule his common sense and continually aimed low to shoot right through the door frame hoping more easily to hit his opponent's vitals.
Inevitably one or more of the PB slugs he'd fired through the door had fragmented on impact. A ricocheting sliver of lead had probably hit him.
Breaux risked taking a Skorpion volley in the face and snapped back up to peer through the glass-less window frame.
Sure enough, Breaux saw that Dalkimoni was bleeding from a wound above his left eye. Blood was pouring down his collar too. A slug fragment had gouged a chunk of meat from his head, but it was a superficial wound. The bomb-maker was still very much alive and kicking. But at least he didn't have his gun anymore. In the heat of action he'd dropped it and it had tumbled out of reach.