Less than two minutes after entering the valley, Jackie was startled when a stream of tracer rounds flashed past the right side of the LongRanger. She jinked twenty degrees to the left, made an abrupt descent, jinked to the right, then climbed steeply. She continued the evasive maneuvering as more tracers slashed by the left side of the helo, then stopped as quickly as they had begun.
After tumbling head over heels a couple of times, Scott finally stabilized his body in a classic free-fall position. He looked straight down and tried to locate the terrorist camp, but the vertigo-inducing counterclockwise rotation he’d developed was causing him to lose his situational awareness. He attempted to orient himself, then gave up and pulled the rip cord.
The parachute opened with a muffled report, snapping Dalton upright. He peered at the ground through his night-vision goggles while he completed a 360-degree circle.
Where the hell is it? Scott asked himself as he spiraled down toward the valley. He was about to yank the NVGs from his helmet when he finally spotted the compound. Able to clearly see the camp, Scott removed the goggles and tossed them away. He gazed at the surrounding countryside and quickly oriented himself to the irregular clusters of lights.
“Charlie Tango, bull’s-eye,” he radioed to Jackie.
“I’m over the hump,” Sullivan replied as she chewed uncertainly at her lower lip. “Three miles and… ah, rapidly closing.”
“I’ll be on the ground in about a minute,” Scott replied.
“We have approximately a dozen armed guards waiting for us,” Jackie said as she squinted to locate the compound.
“Shit!” A long pause followed. “Maritza confirmed that?”
“Yes. She’s standing by.”
Disturbed by Jackie’s tone, Scott looked down at the dark compound. She doesn’t sound very confident. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure about the GPS. It seems like—”
“Give me a quick flash on the searchlight!” Scott said firmly. A second later he saw the powerful spotlight flick on, then off. “Come left about ten to fifteen degrees, and hustle the descent.”
“I’m on my way,” Jackie said as she increased her rate of descent, then flexed the yellow snaplights attached to the two nylon rappelling ropes. She shook the colored lights and quickly released the 150-foot ropes. “I have the camp in sight, and the lines are out!”
“Good work,” Scott radioed in a hushed voice. “Better hustle.”
“If I go any faster,” she said with a great deal of tolerance in her voice, “I might run over you before you’re on the ground.”
“I’m almost on the ground,” he said as he approached the compound. “I should’ve popped the top a little earlier.”
“I’m comin’ down like a brick!” Jackie had to force the words out, knowing that Lady Luck held their lives in her hands. “I’ll be there!”
19
Maritza Gunzelman’s throat was tight as she covered her nine-millimeter Glock with a thick pillow, then walked across the darkened room and cautiously opened her door. What she encountered did not surprise her. She silently maligned the lineage of the armed terrorist standing guard four feet away. The lanky, bearded militant was carrying an Intratec semiautomatic pistol with a thirty-six-round detachable magazine. An assault weapon, the TEC-9 was popular with gangs, drug dealers, and terrorist groups.
With her mouth as dry as sawdust, Maritza stepped outside and approached the young Shiite. Bred by a culture of violence and inhumanity, the man was a typical example of the crass and servile followers found in the terrorist camps.
She spoke in a Persian dialect. “Come quickly. I must show you something,” she said urgently as she motioned for him to follow her. “It is very important. Come quickly.”
The man hesitated, unsure about her earnest plea. He started toward the open door and looked back over his shoulder. No one was paying any attention to him.
“Hurry,” she coaxed with a no-nonsense edge to her voice. She preceded him into the room, then closed the door. “Look out the other window,” she whispered with determined urgency.
While he cautiously approached the window, Maritza reached under her pillow and quietly retrieved the Glock. Gripping it tightly, she raised the semiautomatic high above her head and slammed the butt of the weapon against his temple. He dropped to his knees and fell forward, smashing his face into the cement wall. Maritza quickly grabbed the TEC-9 and tossed it on the wooden table.
Stepping out of her cumbersome Islamic-style clothes, she slipped the Glock into a baggy hip pocket of her fatigues. She struck a match and set fire to the large bundle of dry sticks and paper stuffed under her bed, then scooped up the assault weapon and hurried to the door.
Squaring her shoulders, she stepped outside and immediately heard the reverberating sound of helicopter rotor blades. Holding the TEC-9 at the ready, she listened for a moment as the sound grew louder. Moving slowly and silently along the perimeter wall, Maritza was startled when a diaphanous ghost suddenly appeared out of the inky darkness. She felt a sudden chill as Dalton flared his parachute for a flawless landing in the middle of the courtyard.
Simultaneously, a trio of militants caught sight of Scott as he quickly released his canopy risers from his harness. The silence was shattered when the three men opened fire at the same instant Dalton spotted Maritza.
Running toward Scott, she sprayed a steady stream of rounds at the startled Shiites. Two of the shadowy figures crumpled to the ground while Dalton drew his weapon and dropped the third man in his tracks.
“Get down,” Scott shouted to Maritza.
She sprawled in the dirt and kept firing.
Indoor and outdoor lights flicked on as the beat of the helicopter’s mainrotor blades grew louder and louder. Scott dropped to a prone position and fired at two men who were scrambling for cover behind an empty flatbed truck. Dalton scrambled toward a stack of wooden boxes as he fired at three other men.
Ignoring the blinding hurricane of dirt and debris being sucked up by the LongRanger’s powerful downwash, Scott pumped three rounds into a side-mounted fuel tank on the flatbed. Without warning, Dalton’s discarded parachute canopy swirled overhead as Maritza low-crawled the final few yards to join him.
“We don’t have time to get you into a harness,” he shouted as rounds kicked up dirt and ricocheted around the compound. He shoved his Sig Sauer into his nylon holster, then yanked the pin from a grenade and lobbed it close to the truck. The vehicle exploded in a huge fireball.
“Cover me till I get a ring hooked,” Scott yelled above the swirling dust storm. “When I’ve got it latched, throw your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist and hang on!”
“Got it,” Maritza shouted as she fired the last rounds from the TEC-9. She reached for her Glock at the same time Scott lobbed his last grenade at two men who were charging them from behind the main barracks. The terrorists were cut down by the violent blast.
Muzzle flashes began to twinkle as Jackie slowed the helo to a crawl while she trolled for Scott and Maritza. With the element of surprise gone, she listened to Dalton as he instructed Maritza and fired at the militants. While Jackie attempted to maintain the proper altitude to allow Scott to see the glow of the snaplights, an AK-47 round pierced the helo’s chin bubble and grazed her ankle. The sensation was akin to having a branding iron sear her bare flesh.
“Hold it,” Scott yelled over the radio as he crawled toward the rappelling ropes. “Hold it! Hold it! Stop!”