“Tell them to do it. Take out the bunker,” Hawkins hear himself say twice, three times, and he turned around to congratulate Dixon, make him an honorary member of the Death Riders because goddamn he deserved it.
Except it wasn’t Dixon. And though he was sure as shit pleased to see his man back alive, what the hell had happened to his Air Force lieutenant?
CHAPTER 75
There was so much goddamn smoke it was screwing up the IR targeting head in the Maverick. Doberman cursed as the helicopter stayed on the ground, taking fire as the Special Ops people ran to retrieve their men. If they didn’t move quickly he was going to have to bank away and reposition himself to make sure he had a clear shot.
He was so low he could hop out and run alongside the damn airplane. These bastards were going to figure out where he was eventually and start firing at him.
And son of a bitch— he was bingo fuel.
“I’m going to cover for that helo,” said A-Bomb, slashing overhead.
“You check your fuel?”
“Can’t see the gauge from here.
“Don’t get in my fucking way,” said Doberman. He cursed and kicked the Hog into a turn to reposition himself, not really mad but stoking his emotions anyway, building the adrenaline as he spurred himself into the fight. He got a strong whiff of kerosene or something in his nose, imagining that his fuel tanks had sprung a leak. He started to laugh because that was just ridiculous. The oxygen was as pure as heaven, and he had a good view in the screen as he came back into his attack pattern. He was lined up and loose; feeling like he did the first time he ever fired a Maverick on a practice run— he’d nailed that sucker and nailed everyone dead-on since.
The helo skittered away. A-Bomb cleared.
It was his turn.
The Iraqis seemed to have a thousand guys down there, every one of them armed with a machine-gun, every one of them blasting away at him.
Good fucking luck hitting me. And I mean that sincerely.
Doberman put his head nearly onto the Mav screen, leaning as close to it as his restraints would allow, big fat cursor nailed two-thirds of the way up the door.
Next and nailed. He let it go, squeezed, and kept going, up and on— go, go, go. He pickled again— no thumb thing, no luck, no ritual, no bullshit, just squeezed the son of a bitch faster than anybody ever thought possible, faster than any engineer would calculate.
He kept going, watching the first missile slam in, the second missile flying right behind it.
Doberman banked through the hail of nasty, small machine-gun bullets. It was all up to the missiles now, all luck if it happened the way Wong said it should.
Luck.
What the fuck.
CHAPTER 76
Dixon threw the missile launcher away, rolling himself to the ground and scooping up the MP-5. He slammed a fresh clip into the gun and aimed it back in the direction of top of the crater, but no one was there. He slid out to the side of the ledge, leaned his gun over, then pushed his head down.
Nothing.
He scrambled ahead, the end of the submachine gun trained on the rocks. He reached the corner of the rock face without seeing anyone and ran across the ledge. Still no one appeared. He began picking his way down the boulders that had forced him onto the rock face earlier.
The helicopter’s loud whine reverberated through the quarry. Dixon lost his balance, slamming his chin into the rocks but scrambling up immediately. He took two steps, then felt himself going down again, only half conscious that he was doing it on purpose. Someone was shooting at him from the edge of the crevice leading back to Winston’s hiding place.
He pushed himself into the smallest space possible, waiting for the shooting to let up. When it did, he reached up and let off a quick burst from his MP-5. When he raised his head to see where his enemy was, he spotted the barrel of the AK-47 emerging from behind two large boulders. Dixon ducked as a fresh round salvoed behind him.
It was only a single shot, poorly aimed. Dixon ripped a quick burst from his own gun. It was answered by another single round.
The Iraqi must be preserving ammo. Didn’t matter now. Dixon decided he would fire again, wait for the round, then leap up and run forward. The two shots had flailed well to the left; he would hug the opposite wall.
The helicopter engine revved on the other side of the hill.
Dixon squeezed the trigger, waited for the Iraqi to shoot. He began running. He saw the gun barrel and a figure; he fired, squeezing the trigger as hard as he could, the gun’s smooth burp pushing the metal stock against his rib.
But only for a second.
Then nothing.
The H&K had jammed. Dixon squeezed twice as the Iraqi rose. He threw the gun and himself forward to the ground as his enemy fired a single shot. The bullet wailed harmless overhead. As Dixon hit the dirt, he saw the man take aim again.
Dixon rolled over and grabbed for his pistol. He fired, saw the bullet hit.
Then he heard a sound like a steam locomotive whooshing from a tunnel. There was a loud bang, followed by a rattling, muffled explosion and a second loud whoosh.
The mountain across from him erupted in every direction with a tremendous rumble. Dixon stumbled forward, off guard and unable to protect himself. Something hit his head and he slid into a warm bed, every muscle relaxing, every ache and pain evaporating— as if a down-filled comforter had slid over his body and his head had nestled softly into a deep, deep pillow.
CHAPTER 77
The first missile nailed the door precisely two-thirds of the way up. Its warhead burst a hole through the thick steel as easily a screwdriver piercing a can of tuna.
The second missile wavered momentarily, just far enough behind the first to survive the initial explosion, but now confused, unsure where to go.
Electrons danced in its control module, feinting left, right, trying to compute whether the interference was a mere diversionary tactic, or if the world really had turned upside down.
Unsure, they took the course that seemed most logical to them, directing the Thikol rocket motor to keep on trucking, riding the straight and narrow.
Precisely 1.8 second later, the missile flew through the hole the first Maverick had created. As it did, it flew into a shower of light debris.
Close enough, decided the electrons, and the warhead exploded, precisely on target.
A-Bomb had managed to get his plane stable and ready to take the backup shot as the first Maverick hit. Staring at his small TVM screen, he saw the shadow of the second missile enter the cloud where the door of the bunker had been.
The explosion that followed rippled through a massive fissure in the rocks, a fault line planted a million years before by the churning of tectonic plates, aggravated by years of quarrying and amplified by the F-111 strike a few hours before. Sugar Mountain collapsed inward, hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and dirt burying the deadly toxins Saddam had counted on as his ultimate vengeance weapon.