Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (49 page)

 
          
“Thanks.”

 
          
“So
you will be departing soon?”

 
          
“I
assume that the Libyans will start getting curious about Jaghbub and send a
force down from Tobruk or
Benghazi
to investigate,” Patrick said. “I’ll bet scouts are already on the way.
The bomber needs to be gone by then. We can have a special-operations aircraft
meet us here tonight to get us out of the country.”

 
          
“Well,
we’re as ready as we can be,” Sanusi said. “My men picked up some
shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles from their underground arsenal, and we’ve
taken them out so we might have a chance of tagging an attack helicopter or two
before it gets close enough to lob a missile in on us.”

           
Patrick didn’t like hearing that.
“What will you do, Your Highness?”

 
          
“I
need enough time to cart the weapons away, that’s all,” Sanusi said. “I’ve
called for all the men I can muster, but they won’t start filtering in for
several hours. Once they get here, I’ll load up as many weapons and as much
fuel as I can carry, then head off to our desert bases. But we know Zuwayy’s
scouts will be back here before long—like you said, they could be here tomorrow
morning, or even tonight.” He paused, then nodded at the EB-52 Megafortress.
“We sure could use your little toy there to help us hold off the heavies.”

 
          
It
was risky—too risky. The EB-52 had enough fuel to make it to
Scotland
, where a Sky Masters Inc. DC-10
launch/tanker aircraft could meet them to refuel and take them back to the
States. Jon Masters used to have secret deals with the British government to
use their facilities in emergencies—perhaps that still held true. Bottom line:
They had a pretty good chance of making it out of here if they got out tonight.

 
          
But
Patrick also knew that angry Libyan soldiers could surround Muhammad Sanusi and
his men any minute now. He couldn’t just leave these guys to their fate. He
spoke: “Patrick to Luger.”

 
          
“Go
ahead, Muck,” David Luger responded. Sanusi shook his head and again silently
marveled at the technology these Americans possessed.

 
          
“Let’s
get the Megafortress uploaded with target information for Zillah Air Base and
Al-Jawf Rocket Base,” Patrick said. “We’ll have to use the intel we got from
the Egyptians.”

 
          
“It’s
several days old, and a lot of shit has happened since then,” Luger pointed
out.

 
          
“I
don’t think we have any choice,” Patrick said. “Time’s running out. We need
to...” Just then Sanusi received a frantic call on his portable radio. “Stand
by, Dave.”

 
          
“I’m
afraid time may have run out already,” Sanusi said. “My scouts reported a
convoy of four tanks and five armored personnel carriers heading south. They’re
about forty kilometers north of here, coming fast. They have also seen several
helicopter patrols heading this way, but they have lost contact.”

 
          
“Low-level
helicopters—could be attackers,” Patrick said. “Dave, let’s get the
Megafortress ready to launch. Me, Chris, and Hal will have to go out with the
king and his men and see what we can do, but if the helicopters get past us,
the Megafortress will fight better in the air.”

 
         
The
Sanusi Brotherhood “Sandstorm” warriors raced across the desert at full
throttle in their jeeps and Humvees, leaping up and over sand dunes and gullies
at more than sixty miles an hour. If they encountered a minefield, Patrick was
sure they’d never set any mines off because they hardly touched earth at all.
They passed the remains of one Mil Mi-8 helicopter gunship, downed by one of
the warriors with a Stinger shoulder-fired missile; a few kilometers away, they
found the remains of the warriors and their vehicle, blasted apart into a
twisted hunk of burning metal and human tissue.

 
          
“Sorry
about your men, Your Highness,” Chris Wohl offered over the roar of their
speeding vehicle. “They took on a gunship and defeated it.”

 
          
“I
wish I could say that their death made a difference, or that they will find
peace in God’s hands as a reward,” Muhammad as-Sanusi said. “All I can tell
their families and their fellow warriors is that they died trying to win back a
kingdom we all believe in so much. All the others can hope for is the chance
that their death might rally others to our cause. We shall see.”

 
          
They
proceeded another few miles until they met up with one of the Sanusi
Brotherhood patrols on a slight rise, about two miles west of the
Tobruk-Jaghbub highway. From there they crawled over to the edge of the rise,
where they could see the oncoming Libyan scouts approaching, now about five
miles away.

 
          
“I
think I found the one thing this battle armor doesn’t do very well—you can’t
fight very well on sand,” Hal Briggs observed. “You sure as hell can’t crawl
around with it, and the thrusters don’t work very well unless you find a patch
of hard-packed sand.”

 
          
“All
true—that’s why we can’t fight like the king does,” Patrick said. “Your
Highness, I recommend you stay in hiding and keep an eye out for newcomers or
anyone who tries to escape. We’ll engage
—our
way.”

 
          
“We
could use a few of those tanks and armored personnel carriers, Tor,” Sanusi
said, using his new nickname for Patrick in his battle armor, “Tor,” meaning
“bull.” “Try not to destroy all of them, my friend.”

           
Patrick nodded and moved off.
Patrick had Hal circle around to cross over to the east side of the highway,
keeping Chris on the west side. Patrick took the middle—the highway itself.

 
          
The
line of Libyan armor was following the highway but staying well off of it,
spread out about a mile either side of the highway. The armored vehicles stayed
on the road— they were wheeled, not tracked—with gunners at the ready in the
cupolas. The armored vehicles had AT-2 antitank missiles fitted out on the
front of the vehicles along with a fifty-seven-millimeter rapid-fire cannon and
a 12.7-millimeter machine gun for the commander; the tanks were ex-Russian
T-60s with one-hundred-ten-millimeter main guns. They were not moving very
quickly—they were probably playing it cautious after losing contact with their
helicopter gunship.

 
          
The
commander of the lead armored vehicle was surprised to see a lone figure
standing in the middle of the highway when he crested the slight rise in the
highway. He was standing right there, not moving or attempting to get away or
hide. He might have been a hitchhiker—except for the weird head-to-toe outfit
he wore. Both armored personnel carriers’ fifty-seven-millimeter cannons
trained on the solitary figure as they approached, but the stranger did not
move.

 
          
“Wa’if hena,”
the lead APC commander
ordered. The stranger was dressed unlike anyone he had ever seen. It resembled
a chemical warfare exposure suit, which is why he ordered his column to halt—if
there were biochem weapons around, he didn’t want to go charging in blindly.
“What in hell does he think he’s doing?”

           
“What kind of uniform is that?” the
other commander radioed in response. “Could it be one of our men, maybe a
survivor from Jaghbub? Maybe that’s a protective suit he’s wearing. Who else
would be stupid enough to be walking right up to an armored patrol unarmed in
the middle of the day?”

 
          
“Ordinarily
I’d say yes—but we just lost contact with one of our scout helicopters, which
means everyone’s an enemy until we find out otherwise. Stay back: I’ll go have
a chat with him. Everyone else, stay alert.” He ordered his men to dismount.
Eight heavily armed Libyan soldiers ran out of the back of the APC and took up
defensive positions on either side of the highway. The lead APC then began to
roll forward toward the stranger.

 
          
The
APC hadn’t gone fifty feet when suddenly two tanks, one on either side of the
highway, disappeared in a ball of fire—the dismounts heard only a faint
plink
sound, and then the tanks
exploded. The soldiers had just enough time to dive for cover in the depression
on the side of the highway before they were showered with burning debris. Huge
gushes of fire fed from ruptured fuel tanks poured across the desert floor, and
the dismounts got to their feet in a hurry and retreated back toward the
remaining APCs, firing in the general direction from where those projectiles
came.

 
          
“Attention,
Libyan soldiers,” he said through his electronic synthesizer and translation
system. “I am Castor. I order all of you to surrender immediately. Do not
traverse your gun turrets or you will be destroyed.”

 
          
“The
east tank’s turret is moving toward you,” Briggs reported.

 
          
“Kill
it,” Patrick said. Briggs fired a hypervelocity round into the tank, and it
blew even more spectacularly than the first two. That’s all it took—one by one,
the Libyan soldiers popped hatches and started climbing out of the tanks, hands
upraised. “Your Highness, the Libyans are surrendering,” Patrick radioed to
Sanusi. “You can move—”

           
The helicopter came out of nowhere,
popping over the sand dunes only a few feet above the desert floor—a Mil Mi-24
attack helicopter, fully configured for combat with a four-barreled
12.7-millimeter remote-controlled cannon in the nose and two stubby wing pylons
filled with a variety of rocket pods, bombs, and missiles. It was firing its
machine guns almost as soon as it popped into sight.

 
          
Hal
Briggs’s position was hit first, and the gunner’s aim was perfect. The hail of
bullets from the gunship was like a massive swarm of fifty-caliber bees—they
were beginning to sting, and after enough stings, they could kill. “Mother
fucker!”
Hal Briggs cursed. “That
bastard got my rail gun. Chris has the only one left.”

 
          
The
Libyan soldiers cheered and dashed back into their vehicles, ready to resume
the fight. Chris Wohl turned and aimed his rail gun at the retreating
helicopter gunship—but at that moment, another Mi-24 appeared from the east, no
more than fifty feet above the desert, and launched a salvo of rockets at
Wohl’s position, while the gunner started hammering at Patrick with the
steerable cannons.

 
          
The
gunner swung his cannon away from Patrick after only a quarter-second burst,
choosing to concentrate fire on the armed stranger and assuming Patrick would
go down under the barrage of gunfire. That gave Patrick his chance. As the
Mi-24 cruised over the highway, Patrick used his thrusters and leaped at it. He
landed on the left side of the helicopter right between the gunner and pilot’s
cupolas. Patrick drove his left hand through the bow in the pilot’s forward
windscreen, drove his left foot through the gunner’s left window, then punched
through the pilot’s left window with his right fist.

 
          
The
pilot screamed. Patrick grabbed the pilot’s throat with his armored right hand.
“Wa’if! Awiz aruh hena
,
ala tuli”
he said over the roar of the
huge rotor overhead through his electronic translator. “Stop and land it right
here.” The Mi-24’s flight engineer, seated right behind the pilot in a small
jump seat, tried to pull Patrick’s hand off his pilot’s neck—Patrick finally
knocked him out with a bolt of electricity from his shoulder-mounted electrodes.
Threatened with having his throat crushed, the Libyan pilot set the big gunship
down, and Patrick knocked him out too with an electric shock.

 
          
Meanwhile,
Chris Wohl rolled to his feet and checked over his rail gun—still operational.
He was going to line up on the second Mi-24, which was wheeling back around for
another pass. “Sarge! The tank!” He saw that the Libyan tank’s crew members had
almost reached the entry hatch. He fired one shot that blew the driver’s upper
torso apart, spattering the entire top of the tank with blood and gore. The
other tankers froze and raised their hands in surrender.

 
          
Hal
Briggs tried to make a jump for the road, but his thrusters wouldn’t push into
the sand, and he could only jump a few feet into the air. But suddenly, behind
him, Muhammad Sanusi’s Humvee roared toward him. Without slowing, Sanusi
steered right for Hal. With perfect timing, Hal jetted up just before the
Humvee reached him, and Hal landed on the Humvee’s hard top. He clutched onto
the roof as the Humvee roared toward the highway. Just before reaching the
highway, Hal jetted off the roof and landed on the easternmost armored
personnel carrier just as the last man was climbing aboard. He took command of
the 12.7-millimeter machine gun on the commander’s cupola, swung it around, hit
and killed one APC commander who was covering his men, then raked machine-gun
fire over the heads of the other APCs beside him until the crews froze with
their hands in the air.