The civilian MD 530 MG the AH-6G was based on was itself a variant in a popular line of civilian and military utility choppers. The latest version of the helicopter, the MD 530N, came equipped with a NOTAR system which eliminated the rear rotor and made the small helicopter into one of the most maneuverable aircraft in the world. Those versions were in short supply in the service, however, and would never have been allowed up here.
But the AH-6Gs touching down on the Iraqi concrete weren’t slouches. Each had a pair of .50 caliber machine-guns and seven-tube 70 mm rocket launchers mounted on their stubby wings, and featured forward-looking infrared radar mounted under their chins. TOW anti-tank weapons and mini-guns— not installed but packed in the helicopters’ small holds— added additional firepower.
Hawkins trotted forward as the whirlies spun down, hesitating long enough to make sure he knew where the tails were. He had once seen a trooper get his face shaved by the back-end of a helicopter, and the experience gave him a healthy respect for rear rotors.
“Captain Hawkins?” asked the pilot, pushing open the door and pulling off his helmet. His night flying gear weighed several pounds, and he was obviously an experienced flier— he had the bull neck that typically came from years of working with the heavy sights.
“You Fernandez?”
“Yes, sir. Where do you want us?”
“We’ll unload you here. We’re working on a little bunker and camouflage for you across the way,” said Hawkins, gesturing. “Won’t be O’Hare.”
“Hey, I’m used to LaGuardia. Anything you can do.”
“How was your flight?”
“Piece of cake, once I got it off the ground. We’re a bit heavy,” said the pilot. He turned back to his controls, which were arrayed around near state-of-the-art multi-use screens, and finished securing the helicopter. “Shit, how much runway you got here?”
“At the moment, just under a thousand feet. Iraqis left it so smooth we don’t even have to patch it.” Hawkins pointed toward the far end, where six of his men were laying out metal grids that had been parachuted in a few hours before. “We’re extending it. I should have fifteen hundred by the morning, maybe the afternoon.”
A frown flickered across the pilot’s face; he knew that wasn’t long enough for a C-130 to land.
“Hey Captain!”
Hawkins turned and saw Sergeant Gladis running toward him. Gladis was moving quicker than the helicopters had.
“We got something from Team Ruth you got to hear,” said the communications specialist. “Their radio’s breaking up big time, but you’re going to want to talk to Leteri or Captain Dixon yourself.”
“Leteri? Where’s Winston?”
Gladis shook his head. “You want to talk to them yourself. They stepped in a mountain of shit.”
“Good shit or bad shit?”
“Both. Very big shit. A mountain of shit. They’re calling it Sugar Mountain, but it’s stinking shit.”
CHAPTER 33
The position was vulnerable, certainly. He was definitely over-extended, with only a wire-thin defensive chain; if his perimeter were pierced, he would sustain heavy casualties. His opponent was crafty, fortified, and exceedingly cool.
But Wong could tell that the deep penetration of his bishop on his opponent’s right flank had left the black commander off-balance. The Caro-Kann defense was ordinarily a solid one, fighting white for control of the middle and often, though not necessarily, shifting the balance of power from the attacker to the defender. And certainly the man behind the chess pieces, Sergeant Curtis, was a worthy opponent, a veteran not only of the Special Forces but Army chess wars. But he had stumbled on the last move, nudging his knight forward unimaginatively and leaving his queen to be guillotined. He made the only available move now, pushing his queen to the far side of the board— a concession that she was toast.
“Check,” said Wong, pulling his knight forward.
“Damn,” said Curtis.
Wong nodded thoughtfully. Curtis had no option but to take the knight with his bishop; the queen would then be taken by Wong’s bishop. Besides the exchange, a strategic hole in black’s defenses would be opened, leaving the entire side ripe for onslaught.
“You out-commandoed me, huh?” said Curtis, initiating the sequence.
“I was inspired by the setting.”
“Another game?”
“Of course,” said Wong.
If King Fahd was a scorpion-infested, third-rate trailer park, Al Jouf was a burned-out VW microbus in a sand trap. Still, there was no amenity like chess, and even at the Pentagon it was difficult to find an opponent both competent and worthy. So when a runner came to summon Wong to see Colonel Klee, he got up with something that actually approached regret. Surely the only reason Colonel Klee wanted to see him at this hour was that he had agreed to entertain his request to be shipped to Washington. Wong consoled himself with a promise to look up Curtis again.
But Wong’s transfer was the furthest thing from Klee’s mind, a fact Wong realized when he approached the colonel’s command bunker and saw that fully half the commander’s officers were already inside.
“Wong, about time,” growled the colonel. Glowering at Klee’s side was the ubiquitously ignorant Major Wilson. “Look at these images.”
A bleary-eyed lieutenant passed what seemed to be a fifth-generation copy of a satellite photo to him. Wong’s first impression was that he was looking at a pimple on a walrus’s nose.
He kept that, as well as his more graphic second impression, to himself.
“Yes,” he said finally, giving it back to the lieutenant.
“Well?” asked the colonel.
“A storage facility. Unmanned. High-value-asset facility, limited access, high-grad protection. The viewing angle is particularly poor, which is quite surprising, actually, given the performance specification of the satellite’s…”
“You get that from a ventilation pipe?” asked Goodson.
“Of course, there are infinite possibilities in a theoretical sense, and I have to base my assumptions on a best-use thesis, meaning that my theory is based on the facility being fabricated in a manner best suited for its intended use, though as we all know…”
“The bottom line, Wong,” said the colonel.
“Dry and secure storage facility,” he said. “Originally for inert materials by design. Weapon-wise, I would say it is suited for chemicals, but the Iraqis have demonstrated such ill-informed planning that it could be and probably is for biological assets.”
“Give him the description of the door,” the colonel told the lieutenant, who passed a piece of yellow paper to him. The paper was an intelligence briefing describing a combination mechanical and electrical lock on an over-sized but non-vehicle entry in a natural-feature-enhanced bunker facility.
Pretty much what he’d expected. The Iraqis showed a consistent lack of creativity.
“So?” asked Goodson.
Wong rolled his eyes and proceeded to the front of the bunker, where a large pad sat on an easel. He drew a big circle, then the small roadway, and what had to be a passive ventilation pipe.
“Our key features are the lack of a substantial air-exchange mechanism and the narrow aperture of the doorway,” he started. “The locking mechanism clinches it. It was designed for chemicals or perhaps small-scale valuables such as diamonds, though it would now be a prime candidate for the Iraqi dispersal program. I would suspect some agent on the order of anthrax. My reasoning is not complex. The use of existing geographical features to enhance storage systems dates to the Neanderthal period, and thus parallels are naturally hazardous. Still, we have the benefit here of a paper written in 1978 by no less an authority than…”