Stony Man - Triple Strike Part 21

Major Naslin was glad to have finally reached his destination-the hills overlooking the Serb-held town of Spivak. Though the town was less than sixty miles from the artillery park, it had taken him hours to get into position. One reason for the delay was that the area was crawling with PROFOR units, and they had been forced to use the back roads and forest trails to reach their position unseen.

Then, on Hukan Rezak's recommendation, he had abandoned the Toyotas he had driven since leaving the bombed-out camp for half a dozen ex-Yugoslavian army Mercedes Unimog trucks. As the Bosnian had pointed out, the Unimogs were painted olive drab like the PROFOR vehicles and wouldn't be as noticeable as the desert tan pickups. Now, back under the trees of the wooded hillside, they were well camouflaged and impossible to spot from either the air or the ground. As he watched the town below, Naslin went over the plan in his mind. Rezak's information was that there would be some fifty or sixty thousand people in Spivak in the morning. That would make a good first killing for what would become known as the Day of Death. Of the seventeen rockets, he would send eight of them screaming down on Spivak, spreading their yellow death.

As soon as he had launched the rockets at Spivak, he would hitch up the Katusha launcher and tow it to Daniva, where another twenty or thirty thousand people would be gathered. Two volleys of three rockets should take care of them. Then, the last volley of three would be fired at Zubor and another twenty thousand Serbs or so would die.

By noon, well over a hundred thousand Serbs and Croats would be dead, not counting their children, and Bosnia would be well on its way to becoming an Islamic state.

When word of the fate of these towns spread, and the agents of Rezak's party were prepared to see that the word did get out quickly, the ensuing panic would clean thousands more of the infidels out of Bosnia. Fear of more chemical attacks would send Serb and Croatian refugees stampeding out of Bosnia back to their national homelands.

Naslin would rather simply kill them now and have done with it, but that wasn't possible with so few rockets. He knew that every able-bodied man who fled to the Serbian or Croatian territories would one day come back with an AK in his hand to try to retake Bosnia. But by the time they returned, the Islamic troops would be in place to protect the Muslims and they would die then.

Even with all he'd had to overcome since leaving Asdik's fortress, the plan would still work. All he had to do to bring this to pa.s.s was to keep out of sight of the UN patrols until the morning. He had been informed that UN aircraft would be less of a problem because another attack had been launched against Aviano that would cripple their ability to send ground-attack fighters over Bosnia.

Even so, Naslin had been told before that the air base would be shut down, and it hadn't happened. And since he still had several Strella missiles, he ordered that they be sent out to the sentries with instructions that they keep watch for any aircraft flying too close to their hideout.

MCCARTER WAS FLYING in Grimaidi's copilot's seat and manning the weapons in the nose turret as they approached the location Hunt Wethers had vectored them into. In the back, Hawkins was on the door-mounted Minigun while the others searched the ground below for their targets.

Bolan was on the radio to Aviano, where Katzenelenbogen was forwarding the latest tracking coordinates from the Farm's borrowed satellite. "The Farm says they haven't moved."

"d.a.m.n," Grimaldi said as he nosed the Black Hawk even lower so he could look into the edges of the tree line. "They've got to be somewhere down there." The forest was thick here, and flying over it wasn't cutting it.

"There they are!" McCarter stated. "Two o'clock, fifty meters inside the wood line!"

Stomping on the rudder pedal, Grimaldi snapped the guns.h.i.+p around to face the trucks. McCarter's hands were on the firing controls for the 25 mm chain gun, but he couldn't find a target. Nothing was mov-ing in the wood line, and no one was firing at them.

"Set it down," Bolan told Grimaldi, "and we'll go in on foot."

"You sure?" Bolan nodded.

Going into a low hover, the pilot bled off his lift until the landing-gear wheels sc.r.a.ped the dirt. The instant he touched down, the Stony Man team, minus Hawkins, exited the chopper in an a.s.sault mode.

Grimaldi pulled the chopper back up in the air and kept both the nose turret and Hawkins's Minigun covering the trucks as the team fanned out. When no one shot at them, James and Manning ran toward the trucks. Once inside the wood, they found that the Toyotas had been abandoned.

"We've been suckered." James sounded disgusted over the comm link. "No one's here."

The trampled earth and tire tracks around the two tan Toyota pickups told the story. The Iranians had met up with someone and had transferred the chemical rockets to other vehicles. And since the satellite's computer hadn't been told to be on the alert for a switch, it wasn't tracking the new trucks.

"Now what in the h.e.l.l do we do?" James asked. That question was on everyone's mind, and he had just been the first to voice it.

McCarter's jaw was set. "I'll be b.l.o.o.d.y well d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l and back if I know. Unless the Bear can pull another one of his b.l.o.o.d.y rabbits out of his b.l.o.o.d.y hat, we're b.l.o.o.d.y well screwed."

Bolan was on the horn to the Aviano CP and gave Katz the bad news. After talking for a moment, he pulled out his map and turned to McCarter. "Katz says that he thinks they're going to hit three towns not too far from here." "Show me."

Bolan's finger traced an arc covering the three po-tential targets. "He's saying that it's going to be Spi-vak first."

"That's his hunch?" McCarter asked.

Bolan nodded.

With the exception of Hawkins, who was the new kid on the block, all of the Phoenix Force commandos had worked off of Katzenelenbogen's hunches for years and knew that they were usually better than hard intel. "You want to go with it?" McCarter asked again. "I can be there in twenty minutes or so," Grimaldi said, cutting into the conversation as he glanced at his nav screen.

"Let's do it," Bolan said.

The teton was loaded back on the Black Hawk and headed west as fast as the beating rotors could carry it.

Stony Man Farm HUNT WETHERS was working overtime trying to find what had happened to the Iranians. The vehicle switch had taken him completely by surprise, and he wasn't a man who liked surprises.

Operating on Katzenelenbogen's hunch, he was focusing on the area within a twenty-mile radius of the town of Spivak as the primary target. It was a gamble to put all of his efforts in just that one area, and if Katz was wrong about his prediction of the target, a lot of people would die. But there were those times when you had to go with a hunch, and this was one of them.

Using the borrowed satellite yet again, as quickly as he could identify them, he was marking the vehicles of the PROFOR units. Then, by telling the satellite to ignore all of the marked vehicles and only show him the ones he hadn't yet tagged, he was working his way through all of the traffic in the search area. He wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for, but he knew that he'd recognize it when it flashed on his monitor.

After tagging all the PROFOR units he could find, he marked all the buses and trucks in the belief that it would be unlikely for the Iranians to want to drive to their targets in something big and clumsy. They would want four-wheel-drive rigs if possible, or at least something that had good cross-country mobility.

With that done, he started to look for anything he had missed on the first go-around. He pa.s.sed on sin-gle vehicles, figuring that since the Iranians had stayed together since leaving the camp, they'd be do-ing that now. It was an a.s.sumption, but in this business a.s.sumptions had to be made or nothing would ever be done.

The satellite's radar showed him a group of vehicles that was registering as being Mercedes Uni-mog trucks. The versatile four-wheel-drive German trucks were used all over Europe by both the military and civilians. There was no way for him to tell if these were from a UN unit or a group of civilians. Their location, however, was suspicious. According to the radar, they were cl.u.s.tered in a tight group in-side the tree line of a hill overlooking the town.

When that was all he could come up with, he uplinked to Katzenelenbogen in Aviano.

"I've got a group of vehicles that look out of place," he reported. "According to the computer, they're Mercedes Unimogs, but I can't tell if they're military or civilian. Anyway, they're hiding under the trees, and I had to use the radar to find them."

"Even in Bosnia," Katz replied, "vehicles usually don't hide under the trees unless they're trying to hide from somebody. It might be a long shot, but they're hiding in the right area, so they're worth tak-ing a closer look at. I'll pa.s.s this on to the team."

"And I'tl keep on looking," Wethers said as he signed off.

Bosnia MAJOR NASLIN HEARD the sound of the Black Hawk's rotors long before the chopper appeared. Any helicopter flying over Spivak was his enemy, and this close to his victory, he wasn't going to let anything stand in his way.

"Use the missiles!" he shouted. "Bring that helicopter down!"

Fearing that the chopper might have radioed his position to other UN forces, Naslin raced for the Uni-mog that had the Katusha launcher hitched to the rear.

"Start the truck!" he yelled to his sergeant.

He knew that there would be even more Serbs in Spivak when the polls opened in the morning, but the town was already packed with them as it was. He wanted the greatest kill he could get. But as it was said in the holy Koran, G.o.d didn't promise any man tomorrow, so the time to do his work was al-ways today.

"What are you doing?" Hukan Rezak shouted. "They will see you if you drive out there."

"I am going to kill Serbs for you."

EVEN THOUGH the previous target had been a dry run, Grimaldi was taking no chances as he came up on the new target Katz had just called in to them. He came in along the back side of the wooded area, fast and low.

"Keep a sharp eye out, guys," he called to the team in the back.

From his observation post in the rear of the chopper, Gary Manning saw the puff of smoke as the Strella was launched from the wood line.

"Missile!" he shouted over the comm link. "Coming in from our six!"

Grimaldi shoved forward on the cyclic and aimed the Black Hawk for the ground. If he had been in a jet fighter, he would have zoomed up toward the sun to use the solar glare to confuse the heat-seeking warhead. As close to the ground as he was, though, that tactic wouldn't work. Their only chance to survive this was for him to get the chopper in the dirt and present a tail-on, jinking target to the Strellas as he was fleeing the area.

In the back of the chopper, the Stony Man commandos braced for an impact, but the missile was thrown off by the high-energy IR-emission units. Af-ter pa.s.sing by a little too close for Grimaldi's tastes, it impacted on the hillside and detonated harmlessly.

"We have another one coming in from star-board!" McCarter yelled.

"Another one on our six!" James reported.

With two Strellas coming in from different directions at once, Grimaldi had to stop running and go into missile-evasion maneuvers, but he made his move a microsecond too late.

The Strella coming in from the side missed them completely. But though the heat seeker of the missile coming in from the rear was thrown off by the IR emitters, its nose grazed the top of the Black Hawk's tail fin and detonated.

The hardened-steel triangular fragments embedded in the warhead's explosive charge sliced through the chopper's skin as if it were tinfoil. Some of the fragments slammed into one of the U-joints on the tail rotor's driveshaft and kept it from rotating properly. Under the driving power of the turbine, the spinning torque shaft flexed against the immovable U-joint and snapped.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," Grimaldi muttered when he felt the tail rotor give way. "We've lost the tail rotor."

Bolan keyed the mike to call Aviano.

"We're going down," Bolan said calmly. "You might want to inform the UN boys and tell them to come and collect the pieces."

"Good luck," Katzenelenbogen replied. "I'11 make the call."

Katz knew that Hal Brognola had been trying to keep the UN out of this because the President wanted it that way. But the time had come to get some outside help, and he wasn't going to bounce the idea off the Farm. This was his call, and he was making it. Even so, he also wasn't going to involve the European PROFOR units unless he had to. There were American PROFOR units in the Spivak area, and he knew what b.u.t.tons to push to get them involved. Reaching for the phone, he tapped in a number at the PROFOR headquarters on the other side of the base.

"U.S. PROFOR," the operator said after picking up on the first ring. "How can I help you?"

"This is Mr. Brown," Katz said, "and I'm calling on a Code Aurora Three Zero priority. Let me speak to the U.S. commander."

"Wait one moment, sir."

"This is General Tucker," a gruff voice said seconds later. "Whoever you are, mister, you're taking my time and I'm a busy man. So who the h.e.l.l are you and what do you want?"

Katz smiled. After dealing with the wishy-washy Colonel Waters, it was refres.h.i.+ng to talk to a man who knew how to get to the point.

"My name is Brown," Katz said. "As in boot. Code word is Falling Star. I need to have one of your units in Bosnia do me a favor."

"You've got the right buzz words, Mr. Brown," Tucker replied, "but there'd better be a d.a.m.ned good reason for this call. If you haven't heard, we're up to our collective a.s.ses in alligators right now."

"I know, General," Katz said soothingly, "and that's why I'm talking to you. I'm the man who can drain the swamp and make the alligators go away."

"I'm listening."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

Aviano Air base, Italy

When Katzenelenbogen put down the phone, he turned to John Hammer. "I know you're not a chopper pilot, but I'd like you to get down to the flight line and get another Black Hawk cranked up. rll have a rotary-wing pilot standing by to fly it, but I want you in command of the aircraft." "Are they still alive?"

"I don't know," Katz said bluntly. "You'll find out when you get there."

Hammer took a deep breath. If Grimaldi had run afoul of those Strellas, he could be shot down, too. But going in was the least he could do for the men who had risked their lives to rescue him. "I'm on the way."

"I'm going with you," Lyons said. "You'll need someone on the door guns."

"Bring them back here, Ironman."

"One way or the other," Lyons vowed.

He didn't have to add that he meant he'd return with them dead or alive.

JACK GRIMALDI HAD BEEN able to keep the stricken Black Hawk under some control almost all the way down. With the tail rotor disabled, the torque of the turbine shaft wasn't being counteracted, and it made the s.h.i.+p's fuselage want to turn against the rotation of the main rotor. As long as he kept his airspeed up, he could do what was called slip stream. That meant using the pressure of the air streaming past the fuselage to keep it aligned with his flight path. But he had to kill his speed so he didn't crumple the Black Hawk into a ball when it hit.

The instant he came off the throttles, the fuselage started to turn, sending the s.h.i.+p into a slow, flat spi-ral. Feeling that he was losing control, he yelled out, "Hang on, we're going down!" and dumped pitch to the main rotors.

The Black Hawk fell out of the sky like a stone. At the last possible moment, Grimaldi hauled up on the collective, pulling full pitch to the still spinning main rotor. The blades caught the air and cus.h.i.+oned the impact.

The abrupt stop jammed the landing gear legs up through the bottom of the fuselage and tipped the chopper over onto its side. Grimaldi killed the fuel feed, but the spinning rotor tips slammed into the ground and snapped off at the hubs. The Stony Man team could only hold on while the machine beat itself to death.

By some miracle, when the chopper came to a rest, the fuselage was right side up.

Dazed by the impact, Hawkins pulled himself up to his feet by grabbing on to the Minigun mount. Looking out the open door, he saw the winking of muzzle-flashes in the wood line 150 yards in front of him. Then he heard the pings of AK rounds punching through the chopper's skin.

Getting shot down and cras.h.i.+ng was bad enough, but to have someone shooting at him when he was down really angered him. Checking the ammo feed for the Mini, he saw that the indicator light for the gun's power source showed that it was still on.

Settling his hands on the b.u.t.terfly grips, he smiled as he depressed the trigger. Shoot at him, would they? He'd show them what it felt like to be shot at!

The Mini growled and whined as a solid stream of 7.62 mm tracers reached out and savaged the wood line like a laser beam. The slugs tore through everything in their path, animal, mineral or vegeta-ble.

HOK~a~ REZ^K'S Bosnians, Naslin's Iranians and trees alike suffered under the hail of lead. At first, the Bosnians didn't know what was happening to them; they had never experienced the raw fury a Minigun could unleash. The eerie, whining howl of the motor driving the gun barrels echoed inside the hollow fuselage, adding a frightening note to the ripping roar of the steady muzzle blast.

The stream of fire went from one end of the enemy line to the other and back again, as if the man in the fallen helicopter were holding a water hose. Unlike a stream of water, however, this fiery stream brought sudden death. After watching their comrades instantly chewed to death as dozens and dozens of 7.62 mm slugs tore into them, the fainthearted broke and tried to save their lives.

One of the first to run was Hukan Rezak. The Bosnian had once been a soldier, but the slow poison of Balkan politics had leached all traces of courage from his character along with his humanity. The man who had planned to murder tens of thousands of his fellow citizens didn't make it even three steps before Hawkins saw a flash of movement and gave him a short squirt.

At six thousand rounds per minute, even a short burst from a Minigun meant complete destruction. After the stream of fire pa.s.sed over him, the Bosnian was no more than ragged chunks of bleeding meat.

With Rezek gone to b.l.o.o.d.y ruin, there was no rea-son for anyone else to stay. As fast as they could run, Iranians and Bosnians dropped their weapons and fled.

Suddenly the Mini fell silent except for the whine of the electric motor spinning the barrels, and Hawkins released the trigger. "Yeeee-haaa!" Hawkins yelled over the comm link. The adrenaline racing through his veins made his voice shrill as he sounded the battle cry of his ancestors, the rebel yell.

Waves of heat s.h.i.+mmered above the overheated Mini, and the barrels glowed dull red. He had just delivered some twenty thousand 7.62 mm rounds on target, and he felt fine. In fact he would have liked to have another twenty or thirty thousand to give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Shoot at him, would they?