Collateral Damage (5 page)

During a lull in the briefing Liam flashed back to when he’d bumped into Honor a few hours ago. He hadn’t seen her in so long, running into her today had been one hell of a shock. He’d noticed immediately that she’d lost weight.

Her strawberry-blond hair was longer than it had been last time and there’d been shadows beneath her aquamarine eyes. The haunted, almost stricken look in them when he’d first seen her had knotted his guts. She’d tried to ask him about his injuries but he’d brushed her off because it was none of her business. He was no longer her concern. He’d moved on.

Or so he’d thought. The second he’d seen her, he’d experienced the entire avalanche of emotions all over again. Though mostly just anger and resentment now.

His co-pilot, Freeman, leaned over to murmur to him. “You hear that last bit about the DAPs?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You were off in space, man.”

He’d only caught part of it, but it was enough. The Direct Action Penetrators were Black Hawks essentially modified into badass gunships. They’d only be able to escort the Chinooks two-thirds of the way to the drop zone due to the target’s high altitude. A fairly common occurrence here, which was why Chinooks were used for these types of missions anyway. Not only were they big enough to transport a large number of personnel and equipment, the sheer lift capacity of its engines and dual rotors allowed them to fly at higher altitudes than the other helos. Maybe they weren’t the prettiest birds, but they got the job done.

“Business as usual,” Yates, his FE muttered under his breath on Liam’s other side.

Liam wasn’t worried. If everything went according to plan they’d only be without the DAPs for fifteen, twenty minutes tops and the relative darkness would provide an added measure of camouflage for them during the time when they were most vulnerable to enemy fire.

He shifted his weight and stretched his left leg out, the constant ache in the back of his thigh and hip easing from an annoying five down to a two on his personal pain scale. While he’d first been recovering the nerve pain had gotten upwards of an eight for a few days. If not for the pain meds he’d taken as a last resort to maintain his sanity, he might have resorted to biting down on a stick to cope with it.

There were still pieces of shrapnel in him from where those rounds had torn through the chin of the aircraft that day. Two nurses down in Kandahar had spent the better part of forty minutes pulling bits of metal from his skin and muscle before sewing the multiple lacerations up. The tiny bits they’d been unable to get to eventually worked their way through his skin. Seemed like he pulled little slivers out of his leg at least once a week.

He’d been lucky it hadn’t been worse than soft tissue and cutaneous nerve injury. No broken bones, no major blood vessels affected or spinal damage. Command had given him a few days off to heal up and he’d been able to go right back into the fight without any rehab. The docs had him doing extra leg workouts at the gym four times a week to keep his quads, hamstrings and glutes strong in an effort to counteract the injuries. He was strong and healthy except for the slight limp he’d probably have the rest of his life. Small price to pay compared to a lot of guys Liam knew.

The colonel turned the briefing over to the ops guys and Liam made notes about the exact route he’d fly, the various waypoints and vectors and altitudes ops would expect him to hit. He could change them at his discretion if a situation warranting it arose but he’d stick to the plan as much as possible. Once the various crews had their assignments, call signs and radio frequencies, the colonel took questions. There weren’t any, so everyone was dismissed.

Liam, Freeman and Yates walked out to the Spec Ops area of the airfield to meet with their two crew chiefs, who’d already been out inspecting the aircraft, checking fuel levels, the rotors, engines, avionics and other systems. “Anything to report?” Liam asked Grady, the youngest member of the crew, just twenty-two years old.

He slid his shades up higher on the bridge of his nose to help block the glare of the bright sunshine overhead. “No, sir. She’s good to go.”

Liam and Freeman gave them the intel on the upcoming flight, then left Yates while they reviewed the rest of their checklist. Freeman paused when Liam didn’t follow him past the hangar toward their barracks in their secure compound. “Where you headed?”

“Gonna go file our flight plan now. You go ahead, I’ll catch a nap when I’m done.” He preferred to fly more rested than he currently was.

“Okay. See ya later.”

Alone, Liam walked over to the ops center to file his initial paperwork. He completed his flight plan and listed the names of the crewmembers scheduled to be on board with him. He stepped outside onto the tarmac, and froze when the faint but unmistakable crack of automatic gunfire came from the eastern perimeter.

He stood outside the door along with several others, everyone’s gaze fixed on the eastern fence line. Security Forces personnel were already rushing into position to engage the shooters, somewhere out of Liam’s view. His hand automatically dropped to the holster on his right thigh, drawing his Beretta. His M4 was back in his barracks but he never went anywhere on base without at least his sidearm.

The volume of fire suddenly increased sharply. Liam glanced to the north just as something exploded on the far end of the tarmac. The ground shook beneath his feet as a good-sized fireball erupted into the air.

RPG
. “Take cover!” he yelled.

Men scrambled all around him, looking for a place to hide. Liam ducked behind a Humvee parked close to the ops center entrance and got on one knee, weapon raised in case a close enough target appeared. Another explosion detonated to the north, closer this time.

Sirens began to wail around the base. More gunfire, getting closer now. Peering around the bumper of the vehicle he saw five men wearing black tunics and turbans storming the northern fence line, armed with rifles and at least one RPG. A suicidal and ultimately futile attack that would see them dead long before they got to the fence.

He’d no sooner thought it than another rocket slammed into the tarmac about forty yards to the left of his position. The blast hit the tarmac and back of a Pave Hawk, destroying its tail rotor. Seconds later another rocket impacted beside it, hitting one of SOAR’s birds.

Not an accident, Liam realized with a start. They were trying to take out as many aircraft as possible and they seemed to know which ones were Spec Ops models. Each one cost tens of millions of dollars and couldn’t simply be replaced with the next incoming transport.

He quickly glanced around him. Two 47-Gs were parked near the target zone. He spotted a Night Stalker crew chief he recognized and raced over to him, grabbing the kid’s upper arm. “Find another gunner and come with me. We’re getting that Golf outta here.”

The man whipped his head back and forth as he searched for someone to bring along. “I don’t see any gunners—”

“Then grab someone from maintenance, I don’t care,” Liam snapped. “Anyone who knows how to pull a trigger will work.
Go
.” He shoved him toward the closest hangar and took off for the Chinook sitting there like a lame duck.

Another Night Stalker pilot saw him heading in that direction and ran to help, climbing aboard to take the co-pilot seat beside Liam. Together they raced through the pre-flight checklist and got the engines going. The sound of the gunfire at the fence line grew muffled beneath the roar of the powerful twin engines. From his view out the cockpit window he could see other people firing near the fence line, trying to take out the insurgents while others followed Liam’s lead and jumped aboard remaining functional aircraft.

The rotors were going full tilt when the young crew chief arrived with two other soldiers and raced up to the cockpit. “Got us two shooters.”

Liam nodded. “Raise the ramp.” He had to get them in the air, fast.

The kid disappeared into the back to do as instructed as Liam eased the cyclic forward to tilt the rotors. As the Chinook nosed forward he pulled up on the collective, pushing them into the air hard and fast. To his right another Golf was taking off as well.

Once the belly of the helo cleared the top of the closest building Liam wheeled it around to face the threat and climbed, giving them a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield. Beyond the gates, more personnel on armored vehicles were returning fire from the .60 guns mounted atop them, firing at the attackers.

“Shit,” his co-pilot muttered when they got their first good look at what was happening. Four groups of at least twenty or more tangos were charging at the gates and there were at least a dozen vehicles approaching in the distance.

The other Chinook mirrored his movements, coming up about ten meters to his port side. Liam got on comms to his makeshift crew and spoke through the mic in his helmet. “All right, let’s give these bastards a taste of their own medicine.”

Turning his head to look back at the others in the belly of the aircraft, shock punched through him when he saw the end of the strawberry-blond ponytail poking out from beneath the bottom of the right forward gunner’s helmet.

Feet braced apart on the helo’s deck, Honor struggled to put on her safety harness, wincing as one of the straps dug into the wound in the top of her right shoulder. Something had hit her when one of the rockets had exploded, a piece of shrapnel or something, she wasn’t sure.

She’d been running away from the hangar when the RPG exploded and sent her flying backward. The next thing she knew, Ipman was leaning over her, his face a mask of concern until she’d mumbled that she was okay and reached for his hand. A few minutes after that she’d heard someone shouting that they needed gunners and she’d raced after the crew chief with Ipman, who was currently manning an M240 in the back.

Thankfully she’d been wearing a helmet from the time the first alarm had sounded, but the bang to the back of the head had still given her a doozy of a headache. The flesh wound burned like hell though and she could feel the blood trickling down her back. Her elbows were scraped up and she’d have a big multi-color mark on her left hip where she’d hit the ground. All that was nothing compared to one victim she’d seen being carried away from the scene closer to the impact site, a soldier with his arm blown away at the shoulder.

Filled with hard, cold resolve to end this attack, Honor loaded a belt of ammo into the M184 minigun as the Chinook soared upward away from the base. She’d primarily fired M240s in the past, but even though she wasn’t technically qualified on this weapon she knew how to operate it. Besides, there’d been no time to hesitate and no one else around to do the job. When the crew chief had shouted for gunners, it was either get on and pitch in or allow the attackers to take out vital aircraft.

She consciously slowed her breathing and scanned out the right shoulder window, trying to get a better look at the threat they were facing. It felt surreal to be in this position, weirder still to know she’d unknowingly hopped on Liam’s bird with the Night Stalker crew chief. She’d always wanted to fly with him and never had the chance, but not like this.

Liam expertly pulled them up over Bagram and banked hard right, taking them out over the desert. Honor braced a gloved hand against the window frame and kept her eyes trained on the ground below.

“Contact, two o’clock low,” Liam’s voice announced over the ICS in her helmet.

Ignoring the throb in her head and whatever was going on with her shoulder, Honor immediately focused on the area and spotted a group of eight old pickup trucks speeding toward the base, each spaced wide enough apart that a regular machine gun would have a tough time hitting them. But hers wasn’t a regular machine gun.

She swung the muzzle of the six-barreled minigun at the trucks, pulse pounding in her ears as her thumbs made contact with the triggers. To Honor’s three o’clock, another aircrew engaged the tangos. She watched as rounds burst from the forward weapon in the Black Hawk’s starboard side, hitting one of the trucks.

“Let’s light ‘em up,” the crew chief said from behind her at the left shoulder window. He opened fire on the targets below just as the guns mounted in the beds of the pickups fired up at them. The Chinook pitched upward as Liam took them out of the path of the bullets, then banked hard and dropped as more fire came at them. Honor’s muscles were rigid as she braced herself.

The moment she had a clear view of the targets on the ground she aimed the muzzles of her weapon at a group of three trucks still speeding toward the base and hit the triggers. All six barrels opened up with a loud buzzing noise.

Brrrrrrrt. Brrrrrrrt
.

The hail of lethal fire streaked downward like a deadly lightning bolt. But her aim was off.

Her initial burst missed wide of the far left truck. It swerved, veering toward the one closest to it. Both trucks took a sharp turn and chose a different path. Honor clenched her back teeth together and readjusted her aim. This time when she pulled the trigger, her aim was dead on. Her sweep hit the ground beside the first truck an instant before hitting the vehicle. The barrage of bullets pulverized the target, which burst into flames even before she’d struck the next vehicle, turning it into a burning pile of metal.

Honor engaged the next target. She didn’t think about what she’d done, didn’t allow herself to think about the people she’d just killed. They were targets to be eliminated, a threat bent on unleashing death and destruction on her fellow soldiers, insurgents who would have attacked the base and killed countless service members if no one stopped them.

She took out two more trucks before she ran out of targets.

Still scanning the ground for more, she became aware of how hard her heart was slamming in her chest, of how fast and shallow her breathing was and the cool film of sweat covering her upper lip and back. Pulling in a deep breath she battled her body’s reaction to what she’d just done and kept searching for another target to engage. Behind her the crew chief was firing at something out the port side. To her right, Ipman was still manning his own weapon at the end of the ramp but not firing.