Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (readera ebook reader .TXT) 📗

But then his eyes widened as he saw something loomingover Flynn’s shoulder.

Crap. He desperately grabbed for his weapon and whirled around, already knowing it was probably too late. One of the tribesmenhad emerged from the thick black curtain of smoke, with a rictus grin like the Angel of Death plastered across his face, andan AKM pointed straight at Flynn’s head. The Libyan’s finger was already tightening on the trigger.

Crack.

The tribeman’s chest exploded, torn apart by a 5.56mm round fired at close range. He fell in a boneless heap and bled out across the sand.

Zalewski appeared out of the smoke, still holding the short-barreled carbine he’d fired one-handed. The big PJ’s left arm,apparently broken, hung limp at his side. Flecks of dried blood were spattered across his camouflage and body armor. Grimly,he prodded the Libyan he’d shot with the toe of his boot. “Pretty sure that was the last of ’em,” he said softly.

Flynn breathed out. “Sure hope so, Zee.” Slowly, he got back up. “And . . . thanks.”

Zalewski looked away from the dead tribesman and toward him. Lines of pain and exhaustion were drawn across his broad face.“What are your orders, sir?” he asked. “That we’re bugging out, I hope.” He nodded at the burning helicopter. “Because ifthere are more of these bastards out there, that smoke’s going to draw ’em like flies to rotting meat.”

The big man’s warning agreed with Flynn’s own somber assessment. They might have destroyed this first band of attackers, butthere was no telling how many more enemy fighters were lurking at the nearby oasis—waiting to see the results of their carefullyplanned ambush. And with so many dead and wounded of their own, the smart move for Wizard One-One’s survivors and what littlewas left of the black ops team was to abandon this crash site . . . and fast.

 

Thirty minutes later, Nick Flynn sat with his legs dangling outside the open door of the heavily loaded HH-60W helicopter. Rotors beating hard, the CSAR bird lifted slowly off the ground, fighting for altitude as it flew east into the darkening sky. Bone-tired, he held on tight to the doorframe, craning his head to scan the desert rippling past below them—watching closely for any sign of another enemy ambush. Behind him, injured men were crammed into every available space inside the Jolly Green II’s cabin. There hadn’t been room or payload capacity to bring away any of their dead.

Between them, the black ops team and Wizard One-One’s crew had lost more than half their strength. Bill Wade would probablylose his leg. Mike Camarillo was dead, gunned down by the terrorists just outside the wrecked C-130. Zalewski’s arm was fractured,snapped when he’d been tossed around inside the downed turboprop’s crumpled fuselage by the suicide bomb blast. Most of theex–Special Forces veterans working for White had been killed, some by the bomb, the rest during the ensuing close-quartersgun battle—but they’d gone down hard, taking most of the attacking tribesmen on that flank with them.

White himself was still alive, though he’d been shot in the chest. Apparently, the AK round had missed his heart, assuminghe actually had one. Right now, the intelligence officer was propped up against the rear bulkhead, swathed in bandages, butconscious and glaring at Flynn.

“Fast movers at ten o’clock high,” Dykstra reported over the intercom.

Flynn looked up and spotted twin contrails arrowing westward across the sky, coming their way.

“Wizard One-One, this is Hammer Three-Five,” a crisp voice called over the radio from one of the two U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles vectored to this location. “Can you confirm the target is clear?”

“Wizard One-One confirms the target is clear, Hammer Three-Five,” Kate Kasper replied. “Anyone still breathing down thereis a bad guy.”

“Copy that,” the Strike Eagle pilot acknowledged. “Target locked.” And then. “GBU Thirty-eights away.”

Flynn blinked, not sure if he’d actually seen several small specks falling off the distant F-15s or not. GBU-38s were five-hundred-pound gravity bombs converted to precision-guided munitions by bolting on control surfaces and combined inertial guidance–GPS systems. Once released at high altitude, they were capable of steering themselves to targets up to fifteen nautical miles away.

He leaned farther out the door, staring to the west and silently counting seconds. It should be any moment now—

“Impact,” the Strike Eagle pilot reported.

Orange flashes rippled across the desert in rapid succession as bomb after bomb plummeted down out of the sky and detonated.Huge clouds of smoke, sand, and debris billowed high into the air. When they drifted away, there were only overlapping craterswhere the wrecked C-130, its cargo of illicit weapons, and the burned-out black ops helicopter had once been.

Flynn sat back with a sigh.

“Don’t get too comfortable, Captain,” White said bitterly. “Your recklessness triggered this disaster. And I’m going to makesure you don’t just walk away from the mess you’ve created.”

For a moment, Flynn stared back at the pale-eyed intelligence officer. Was the other man really serious? Or just desperatelyhunting around for someone else, anyone else, to take the fall for his own obvious failure? Then he shrugged and looked away.Let White stew in his own rage and pain. There wasn’t any point in arguing with the man right now. There’d be time enoughto make sure the facts were straight when they were all debriefed. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned back against thedoor, steeling himself for the long flight to an emergency extraction point deeper in the Sahara.

But deep inside, Nick Flynn couldn’t quite shake a growing sense of unease . . . and the uncomfortable awareness that notall enemies necessarily wear different uniforms or speak different languages.

Three

The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Some Weeks Later

Doing his best to control his nerves, Captain Nick Flynn followed the uniformed Pentagon police officer escorting him downa long basement corridor. Overhead LED lights glowed brightly, illuminating a bare concrete floor and walls painted a fadedinstitutional green. Other than a firm, but polite “Follow me, sir” uttered right after they met at the entrance, the sergeanthadn’t said a single word to him. Nor had any of the multitudes of people hurrying onward