All that Mike was able to grab was a Colt AR-15 carbine, with two magazines taped together with duct tape. Mike dove out of the Suburban and headed for the underbrush.
As Mike ran for the underbrush, bullets struck and ricocheted all around him. The battle had begun. As Mike reached the woods, he dove into the dense underbrush.
Breathing heavily, Mike muttered, “Shit, I’m getting too old for this crap.”
In the front car, Lee, bleeding from a gash on his head suffered during the explosion and flip over, struggled to control his shaking. The Marine who had been sitting in the right front passenger seat hung from the seat/shoulder belt, his head hung down in an unnatural position, blood spurting out of a deep gash in his neck, the thick bright red fountain pulsing with each beat of his dying heart. Dave knew instantly that there was nothing that could be done for him.
“Everyone O.K.?” He shouted.
“Jones, O.K.”
“Gomez, O.K.”
“Mulligan?” said Lee.
“I’m cut pretty bad, Dave.”
“Can you make it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get your gear and get the hell out of here,” said Lee. The four men grabbed whatever weapons were available, kicked the rear panel doors open, jumped out and headed for the woods. Lee ran to the underbrush, dove and landed next to Bernstein.
“Damage assessment, Lee.”
“One dead, two wounded.”
The third Suburban was able to come to a full stop. The door panels of the Suburban now bristled with gun muzzles. Marine Sergeant Tom Wicker had given his men the command to arm themselves as soon as he saw Unit 1 flip into the air. Bernstein’s call over the communicator merely confirmed in Wicker’s mind that the convoy was in trouble.
As the sole remaining functional vehicle, Wicker’s unit was now responsible for stopping any heavy duty attack by an adversary.
Carelessly, Mitchell stood up to assess the damage his missile had wrought. A Marine sharpshooter saw Mitchell raise his head, put a red ruby laser beam on the middle of his forehead, and squeezed the trigger of his Colt AR-15 sniper carbine. The force of the nine millimeter caliber slug striking Mitchell in the forehead propelled his lifeless body up and back into the air. The explosion of the bullet created a Roman fountain of red as the bullet found its mark. The body of Mitchell lay beside the gravel road in a tangle of briar and underbrush.
“Son of a bitch,” said the young sharpshooter.
As the men scrambled from the two damaged Suburbans, the dark blue helicopter began a strafing run. A gunman leaning out of the opened window of the helicopter sprayed the running men with an Uzi. One Marine was hit by the fire from the helicopter. The multiple bursts of fire from the Uzi picked up the Marine and suspended him for an instant as if he were a marionette. Finally, he fell to the road as if someone had cut his strings.
Bernstein screamed into his handheld communicator, “Unit 3, Unit 3, kill that damn motherfucker.”
“Unit 3, Roger,” Wicker said. Turning to the Marine at his rear, he shouted, “Get the Stinger out and pop the top.”
That was all the Marine needed. He pushed a switch and a sliding roof panel opened. Shouldering the Stinger missile launcher, the lance corporal took careful aim at the circling helicopter. The Stinger missile launched from its tube with a whooshing sound and sped toward its target, leaving a white contrail.
The helicopter pilot saw the Stinger missile launch from the Suburban and immediately pulled back on his joystick in an attempt to escape. His attempt to shake the Stinger missile was of no avail once the heat-seeking Stinger had fixed on the exhaust of the turbine driving the rotor. As the helicopter turned, the Stinger missile followed.
Because of the pilot’s final attempt to escape, the helicopter was caught in a rotation that continued even after the tremendous explosion of the Stinger entering the turbine exhaust tubes.
What remained of the helicopter began a slow, rotating dance to the ground, when secondary explosions of the helicopter’s fuel tanks erased the existence of the helicopter and its crew completely.
Intent on the attacking helicopter, the lance corporal was not aware of the fight on the ground. The Catonsville Furniture & Bedding truck had slammed to a full stop about fifty yards from the three Suburbans. The back doors of the truck were kicked open from the inside. Twelve armed men jumped from the truck and assumed positions around the truck and along the underbrush of the roadside.
One of the attackers, armed with a commercially available Colt AR-15 carbine with laser scope, drew a bead on the lance corporal. Hoping to prevent the lance corporal from launching the Stinger, the attacker had fired just as the young Marine launched the missile. Enhanced by the laser sight, the attacker’s accurate shot caught the lance corporal in his right rib cage, below his armpit. The bullet passed through his right lung, savagely ripped the atrial chambers of his heart, and passed up through the left lung before shattering his collar bone and tearing a gaping exit wound in his left shoulder. The force of the bullet caused the lance corporal to drop the rocket launcher. His lifeless body fell over the roof of the vehicle, legs dangling limply inside. The spent missile launcher clattered to the pavement. The right rear quarter panel of the Suburban was awash in the Marine’s blood.
Inside the Suburban, Wicker shouted to his remaining Marines to haul the lifeless body back into the vehicle. The body inside, a Marine slammed his fist into the roof switch and the roof panel slid silently into place. The interior of the Suburban now reeked of the smells of gunpowder and smoke, the residue of fumes from the Stinger missile, the sickening smell of blood, and the closeness of sweating combatants.
The firefight raged fiercely outside.
Mike was firing a Colt AR-15 for the first time in many years. The kick of the weapon required some effort on his part. He tried hard to remember his trainers’ admonition not to simply pull the trigger, but to fire in short bursts. That way, in the words of Mike’s trainer, “You don’t get the walk-up that machine-gun users often experience.”
The attackers fanned out into the woods on both sides of road. The Marines didn’t know how many attackers were in the woods. Luckily, the attackers had chosen to ambush the convoy in broad daylight. This gave the attacked the advantage of seeing minute movements. The woods crackled with the report of semiautomatic rifle fire. Occasionally, the loud boom of a Striker 12 shotgun could be heard. Every once in awhile the woods shook with the explosion of a hand grenade.
In the sole operating Suburban, Wicker reached for the secured radio. “Base, Base, Echo Fox-trot!”
The scratchy voice over the radio responded. “This is Base, copy.”
“Base, this is Fox Leader 3, we’re under attack, repeat, under attack. About fifteen miles west of Highway 235 on Huntersville Road.”
“Echo Fox-trot, advise you activate transponder. ETA twenty minutes.” The radio operator at CSAC picked up the black handset that connected to the duty officer at Pautuxent Naval Air Test Center. “Pautuxent, our convoy is under hostile attack. Location: about fifteen miles west on Huntersville Road from intersection with State Highway 235, copy.”
“Pautuxent copies.” The officer of the day calmly pressed a red button on his console.
The bell clanged loudly in the ready room. The officer in charge picked up the telephone and listened quietly. Putting the telephone back on its hook the Marine Lieutenant shouted, “Alright guys, this is it. Let’s go!” Twenty men from Squads 1 and 2 of his platoon scrambled for their AR-15 assault rifles and piled into the HumVee and the transport truck parked outside the ready room. The platoon was a unit of the Marines’ Special Operations Regiment.