Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (8 page)

 
          
No
wonder Patrick found little to smile about these days.

 
          
“Don’t
give me that ‘Nike out’ crap,” McLanahan radioed back. “This is supposed to be
a soft probe, not a search-and-destroy—that’s why we have the FlightHawks
overhead. I want you out now.”

 
          
“Then
I guess I’ll just ignore this SS-12 battery I just found.”

 
          
“What?”

           
“Pretty damned clever, hiding it in
a garbage dump,” Wohl said. He moved closer to the area. There was a short ramp
on the west end of the pit, ostensibly to make it easier for the dump truck
drivers to enter the pit. But on closer inspection, he saw that the garbage was
piled not on the ground inside the pit but atop a retractable net. “Normal
overhead imagery shows a garbage dump. It’s unguarded like a garbage dump—and
the organic waste gives off enough heat to block infrared and radar imagery.”
Wohl examined underneath the net with his infrared sensors. “And there it is,
boys—the aft end of a MAZ-543 transporter-erector-launcher and an SS-12
Scaleboard rocket, still in its marching sheath. I’ll bet there are at least
three more TELs in this pit, and if I check the other garbage pits, I’ll find
more. Not to mention the TELs hidden in some of the service buildings.”

 
          
“The
damned Libyans have SS-12s,” Briggs breathed. “Holy shit.” The SS-12 tactical
ballistic missile, NATO code name “Scaleboard,” was the upgraded version of the
ubiquitous mobile “Scud” surface-to-surface missile, in service with almost a
dozen nations around the world. The SS-12 was larger, had three times the range
of a Scud, was more accurate—and it carried a one-point-three-megaton nuclear
warhead. As far as anyone knew, this was the first known instance of an SS-12
missile based outside of
Russia
. “Can you see the warhead, Nike? Is it a
nuke?”

 
          
“Stand
by, Taurus. I’ll check.”

 
          
“Nike,
clear out of there,” McLanahan repeated. “We’ll have the FlightHawks take them
out.” The first FlightHawk UCAV carried only the laser radar array, but the
second FlightHawk was armed with four antitank BLU-108 SFW sensor-fuzed weapon
bomblets and four antipersonnel Gator cluster bomb munitions. They were
devastating weapons: A single SFW could destroy as many as three dozen main
battle tanks, and a single Gator could kill, injure, or deny enemy access
across an area twice the size of a football field. “Base, you copy? Stand by to
arm up the ’Hawks.”

 
          
“We
have a good location on Nike,” Wendy McLanahan radioed from the
Catherine
out in the Med. The Tin Man
battle armor contained a transponder to allow Wendy on board the command ship
to track and monitor all the commandos. “Ready to come in hot.”

 
          
“Negative,
Base, negative,” Wohl interjected. “The junk they got these things buried under
will keep the SFW from detecting them, or they might lock onto some other hot
object; and the junk might block the bomblets’ blast effects. We’re going to
have to expose them enough so the SFWs and Gators can do their job, or destroy
them one by one by hand. I’m moving in.”

           
No use in trying to hold him back,
Patrick thought, he’s on the warpath. It’s not every day that you’re sent in
just to take a few pictures and end up coming across a bunch of nuclear-tipped
missiles. Wohl must be salivating in his battle armor. “Roger, Nike. Stalkers,
let’s move in together. One coordinated attack. Stand by.”

 
          
But
Chris Wohl wasn’t going to “stand by”—he was already on the move.

 
          
He
hurriedly checked for a sentry. There were sentry shacks on all four sides of
the garbage pit, but through his infrared sensors he could see that all were
deserted. He descended down the incline toward the rear of the rocket.. .

 
          
.
.. and the second he reached the floor of the pit and touched the net covering
the rocket, four huge ballpark lights illuminated the entire garbage pit, and a
siren sounded. There were no sentries because the entire garbage pit was alarmed.
Time had run out.

 
          
From
his observation point, Patrick saw the lights come on. “Oh, shit,” Patrick
murmured. “Taurus, move in, check the garbage pit at Alpha Two,” he radioed.
“I’ll check Golf Six. Pollux, create a diversion around Tango Five. Base, order
the FlightHawks in to attack.”

 
          
“Roger
that, Castor,” Patrick’s younger brother, Paul, responded. One of the original
members of the Night Stalkers and the acknowledged expert in the use of the Tin
Man battle armor, he was the fourth man on this spy team, taking the east side
of the Libyan base.

 
          
“Copy,
Castor,” Wendy replied. “They’re coming in hot, two minutes out, SFWs and
Gators. Light up the targets as much as you can.”

 
          
Meanwhile,
Wohl dashed to the body of the SS-12 rocket, grabbed a cable running down the
side, and pulled. The SS-12 missile was encased in a plastic transport sheath
that protected it during transit but popped off easily during launch; it was
simple to peel it off now. It was a real SS-12 rocket—no decoys here. He dashed
forward, unzipping the sheath as he ran, then climbed up onto the cab until he
reached the warhead. It looked real enough too, although he had never seen a
live nuclear warhead before. “Castor, I just cracked open the warhead. Take a
look and tell me what it is.”

           
Patrick commanded his electronic
helmet visor to lock in on Chris Wohl’s visor image, transmitted from his
suit’s electronics suite via satellite. He recognized it instantly: “It’s the
real thing, folks—a Russian NMT-17 Mod One warhead, one-megaton-plus yield.”

 
          
Wohl
turned at a sudden sound behind him and saw soldiers rushing to the edge of the
garbage pit, gesturing inside. The best proof he had a live warhead here wasn’t
McLanahan’s assessment—it was the fact that none of the Libyans surrounding him
dared raise a rifle muzzle in his direction or even come any closer to him.
They were afraid of creating a nuclear yield if they hit the missile with a
bullet. Wohl knew it took a lot more than one bullet to set one of these things
off—but then again, maybe they knew something he didn’t. “How do I disable it,
Castor?”

 
          
“You
can’t, unless you brought a whole truckload of Snap-On Tools,” Patrick replied.
“Your best option is to create a heat source and let the FlightHawks finish the
job.”

           
“I can do that,” Wohl said. He
jumped down from the front of the TEL and searched until he found the diesel
fuel refilling port, between the third and fourth set of wheels on the right
side. The fuel tank itself was underneath the chassis and protected very well
by slabs of steel, but he didn’t need it. He opened the filler port, stepped
back a few paces, and activated his self-protection weapon, sending a bolt of
electrical energy from electrodes on his shoulders directly into the fuel port.
A few moments later, Patrick saw a flash, and a second later heard an
explosion, then another just a few moments later. So much for their little
sneak-and-peek operation.

 
          
“All
right, Nike, you dropped your drawers—we might as well have some fun too,” Hal
Briggs chimed in.

           
“I’m in.”

           
“Go for the fuel filler port on the
right side between the rear wheels,” Wohl said as he moved to the third SS-12.
“The TELs aren’t grounded, and there aren’t any flame suppressors in the filler
tube.”

           
“Hey, Castor,” Briggs asked, “what’s
the chance of one of those babies popping off with a yield in a fire?”

           
“Very slim,” Patrick replied. “If
they have no safeties in them or if the ones the Russians installed haven’t
been maintained by the Libyans, the worst that will happen is that the
high-explosive jacket surrounding the core will cook off and scatter
radioactive debris around.”

 
          
“What
if the trigger gets activated by a concussion or even by our shock beams?”

           
“I don’t know,” Patrick said. “Try
not to hit the warhead with your beams. But there would have to be no pressure
or acceleration safeties and pretty unstable triggers that then happen to work
perfectly to produce a yield. Don’t worry about it. Expose your missiles with a
heat source as best you can so the FlightHawk can drop on them, and let’s get
out of here.”

 
          
Several
seconds later, Patrick saw another explosion, this time farther north. “Hot
damn, that works good!” Briggs crowed. “I’m liking this!”

 
          
Patrick
started running for the perimeter fence, then hit his boots’jump-jets. A shot
of compressed air propelled him twenty feet into the sky and almost a hundred
feet forward. When he landed, he jogged forward while scanning the area with
his helmet-mounted sensors. Libyan soldiers were pointing in his direction. He
had to run several yards until the accumulators built up enough pressure, then
propelled himself with ease over the perimeter fence. His sensors and
self-protection weapons worked automatically—any soldiers within thirty feet
were knocked unconscious by a bolt of energy strong enough to start a jet
aircraft.

 
          
Two
more jumps and six blocks later, Patrick was at the southernmost garbage pit.
It was exactly as Chris Wohl described it: a strong net, steel or even Kevlar,
with enough real trash piled atop it to hide a huge wide truck carrying a large
rocket. One step inside the pit revealed a second transporter about fifty yards
away. He immediately found the fuel filler port and set the first SS-12 afire
just as Wohl and Briggs did, and the TEL’s right rear wheels blew apart,
sending the SS-12 rocket rolling right off its launch rail. In a few seconds it
was going to be covered in burning diesel fuel—he hoped the nuclear warhead
would just melt away and not cook off. He had no idea how sophisticated the Russians’
nuclear warhead safety mechanisms were, or how well the Libyans had maintained
them, so he had to assume that the explosive material surrounding the nuclear
core would explode and scatter radioactive debris everywhere. He wanted to be
off the base before any of them did just that.

 
          
Patrick
quickly attacked the other two SS-12 launcher vehicles. Now there were
explosions everywhere, mostly in the north where Hal Briggs was creating havoc.
He turned just as his battle armor’s defensive weapon downed another Libyan
soldier that had run out from an underground shelter, an AK-47 raised and ready
to fire. “Base, status of the FlightHawk?”

 
          
“Inbound
sixty seconds, coming in hot,” Wendy McLanahan responded. “FlightHawk One has
good imagery of all three garbage pits and good downlink to FlightHawk Two. You
guys can bug out anytime. I took the liberty of calling for the Hammer too.”
The “Hammer” was the CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor aircraft. Accompanied by
another tilt-rotor aircraft acting as an aerial refueling tanker, the Pave
Hammer had flown them in across Egypt from the S.S.
Catherine the Great
in the Mediterranean Sea and had been waiting
for them about a hundred miles to the south in the Sahara Desert.

 
          
“Good
thinking, Base. Stalkers, rendezvous at Sierra One.” The team had buried caches
of battery packs, spare parts, water, and medical supplies in various places in
the desert for their withdrawal; if they were not used within three days,
explosive charges would destroy the evidence.

 
          
‘Taurus
copies.”

 
          
“Nike
copies.”

 
          
“Pollux
copies.” Patrick had just turned to start jumping out of the base when he heard
Paul cut in, “Wait, Stalkers. I found something.”

 
          
“What
do you got, Pollux?”

 
          
Paul
McLanahan was too stunned to take cover—he was standing out in the open in
front of three shabby-looking tin service buildings. Just before he was going
to jet away, the big overhead doors to each building opened—and two MAZ-543
transporter-erector-launchers carrying an SS-12 Scaleboard nuclear rocket
started to roll out. “Stalkers, I’m staring at six huge rockets coming out of
those service buildings. I think they’re the same SS-12s you guys have been
setting on fire. Should I—?”