Warning Order (30 page)

His well-trained men avoided getting pinned down by the enemy and also managed to open up a lane for the convoy to maneuver through.

Mason knew they were cutting it close. He was already trying to visualize how they were going to locate al Qatar before the bombardment began.

“Do not worry, my friend, I will get you where you need to be,” Joe yelled from the front seat, noticing the American checking his watch. “The man you are looking for isn't going anywhere, especially after all the time he has spent setting up all of his guns.”

“What do you mean, all the guns?” Mason asked, suddenly concerned.

“Oh, they have been quite busy.”

“That's kind of important information,” Mason said.

“Everyone knows this.”

Mason flipped his radio to the air-to-ground net, hoping to relay the intel before the jets got on station, but before he could key up, a voice filtered over the net:

“Able 7 to Tomahawk Base, we are on station, how copy?”

“Roger that, Able 7, you are cleared hot. Good hunting, boys.”

“Good copy. Able 7 to Able flight: let's get some.”

Zeus looked at him, his eyes wide with disbelief. The timeline had been pushed up, and no one had bothered to let them know.

A
l Qatar stepped onto a small porch that ran the length of the terminal building and lit a cigarette. The flame from the lighter briefly illuminated the PVS-14s hanging around his neck. A welcome breeze wound its way over the hangars and through the hidden gun emplacements that his men had worked so hard to camouflage from the American drones. It had been a hot day, and the temperature was beginning to drop as the residual heat evaporated slowly into the night.

He could hear faint snatches of nervous conversation along with the occasional
tink
of metal-on-metal contact while his men waited for the Americans.

Al Qatar raised the PVS-14 night-vision monocular to his eye and scanned the horizon. He could see the lights coming from the Kurdish encampment to the east, but the sky itself was still empty, like an endless, inky-black ocean.

The tip of the cigarette burned brightly when he took another drag, and the small amount of light caused his NODs to flare as they greedily gobbled up the extra little bit of light.

“What if they don't come?” Jabar asked.

Al Qatar hadn't told him that his source had never called, and the question sparked an uneasiness the jihadist had been fighting all day.

“They will,” he said, feigning a confidence he didn't have.

The Americans had to come.

“I have always hated the waiting,” Jabar said, refusing to leave al Qatar alone with his thoughts. The Iraqi was just about to go back inside when he heard a faint rushing sound emanating from the north.

“Quiet,” he snapped.

Al Qatar raised the night-vision optic toward the sky and surveyed the sky in a frantic arc, the stars coalescing in shiny green blurs. The city lights blossomed yellow as he searched for the source of the sound, and he almost missed the flashing light cutting across the sky.

The Americans had come.

“Get to the trucks,” he commanded even as a part of his brain screamed at him to run.

He was caught in the open, not sure if he should run back into the terminal building or head toward the concrete bunker fifteen feet in front of him.

Jabar took off in a sprint, and al Qatar was just about to follow when an explosion detonated a hundred feet to his rear. The concussion shoved him forward, knocking him off his feet. Al Qatar tried to brace for the fall, his arms shooting out as he was twisted into the air.

He hit the ground and felt a sharp pain in his wrist as his hands skidded across the gravel. Shrapnel clattered, and a fierce heat washed over him a second before a fireball engulfed the airfield.

DShKs clattered to life from the roof of the terminal building, sending a trail of tracers bending into the sky. Al Qatar had instructed the gunners to wait until he gave them the signal to engage, but apparently they were too amped up to remember.

His brain yelled for him to get to cover, and his boots scratched the rocky sand as he scrambled to his feet.

The first missile screamed overhead, a flaming streak of light that slammed into the roof of the terminal, vaporizing the crew in a shower of sparks. Al Qatar shielded his face, changing directions to avoid being hit with the debris that geysered into the air.

A second fireball blossomed near the south end of the field, the concussion washed over the row of Black Hawks, sending a wave of glass tinkling across the asphalt. He screamed in terror. Fuel from ruptured helos splashed across the tarmac to his left, and the gentle breeze he'd been enjoying a moment ago now carried the earthy scent of burning blood.

He felt like an animal caught in a trap. He wanted to activate the towers and save himself, but al Qatar knew that it was too early. Worse than that, he knew that this was only the opening salvo.

The bunker appeared before him like an open grave, and he dove headfirst into its black embrace, trembling as he crawled to safety. The radio jammed into his belt went clattering across the ground, and he heard a voice yelling “Fire, Fire, Fire” from the speaker.

His fingers clawed through the darkness, vainly seeking the radio. When his hands finally closed around it, he pushed the transmit button, hoping it was not too late to get his gunners to hold their fire. The radio beeped loudly, informing him that his transmission hadn't gotten through, and he cursed loudly—waiting for them to clear the net.

The men manning the weapons knew their job was to die, and they had all sworn to sacrifice themselves to Allah in exchange for an eternity in paradise. But most of them were high on amphetamines, and one of them was “hot miking” the radio, which meant no one else could use it.

He needed to get them to stop shooting, but as more jets rolled in to drop their payloads, more of his men tried to shoot them down.

One of the pilots came in so low that al Qatar could see the heat coming out of the F-15's engines a second before the bombs dropped from the pylons beneath its wings. They seemed to hang weightless in the air as the afterburners kicked on with a
thump
, and the aircraft shot back into the night sky.

The ordnance blasted into the already burning terminal, and the bright explosion backlit the chunks of concrete flying like matchsticks. Al Qatar saw a man's torso tumbling through the air.

Terrified by the slaughter, some of his men decided that it was time to run.

He got to his feet, moving to the front of the bunker, and bellowed for them to take cover. They knew better than to expose themselves to certain death, but as he raised the radio to his lips, he realized suddenly why they were running.

There was no mistaking the low droning sound filtering down from the darkened heavens, and al Qatar felt a wave of unadulterated fear wash over him the moment the AC-130's Vulcan cannons came to life in a roar of leaden death.

The powerful rotary cannons sent his mind reeling back to the dark night in Iraq eleven years before. It had been the AC-130 Specter that had kept him trapped inside the building and forced him to witness the death of his brother.

Once again, he found himself at the gunship's mercy, forced to watch the steel rain falling on his men.

The AC-130's Vulcan cannons suddenly fell silent, and he knew from past experience that inside the massive aircraft, the pilot was switching to another weapons platform. During his time in captivity, he had come into contact with mujahedeen who had faced the fearsome predator and managed to survive. They had all told the same tale: there was nowhere you could hide from the sophisticated gunship, but if you were bold enough, you could exploit its weaknesses.

Al Qatar raised the NODs to his eyes, scanning the night sky to see where the AC-130 was in its orbit. Through the PVS-14s he saw an infrared targeting laser settle on one of the hangars, and a second later the gunship opened up with its 105 mm howitzer, firing a high-explosive round right through the center of the building.

He realized the Americans must have someone on the ground designating targets for the aircraft. For whatever reason, he decided immediately it was the man who'd killed Ali.

“There is someone spotting targets for the airplanes,” he shouted into the radio. “Use your night vision and follow the laser!”

Al Qatar sprinted from the bunker, gripped with a sense of purpose that exorcised the fear holding him in place.

The gunship fired another round through the roof of the hangar.

“Allah, be merciful,” he prayed, running toward a stack of crates hidden under a camouflage netting.

“I see him. I see him,” an excited voice shouted excitedly as the gunship switched over to its 40 mm Bofor cannons, and began decimating the positions he'd worked so carefully to hide.

“Kill him,” he yelled.

The rounds hit the ground in rhythmic bursts of threes and fours, as a fighter fired an RPG toward the source of the laser.

Al Qatar heard another RPG scream toward the east side of the airfield as one of his men began engaging the gunship. He managed to get off two long bursts before a missile slammed into the position, cutting the man and his gun into a hundred pieces.

The terrorist had no way of knowing if they had hit the AC-130, but he heard its engines roar as the pilot throttled up, yanking the bird out of its lethal arc. Al Qatar could see the camo netting now, and forcing a last burst of speed out of his tired legs, he dove through the opening.

His hands shook as he tore the lid off the wooden crate and grabbed the plastic launcher from within. The Stinger surface-to-air missile weighed almost thirty pounds, and it was awkward to get into action in the dark. Al Qatar activated the PAS-18 thermal imaging sight before slamming the battery coolant unit into the hand guard and lifting the unit onto his shoulder. Sweat was pouring down his face, burning his eyes, as he waited for the sight to come online.

“Hurry, hurry,” he urged himself, raising the missile skyward. The thermal sight kicked on, revealing the heat from the AC-130's engines as it struggled to gain altitude.

“
Allahu Akbar
,” he shouted as the sensor acquired the target. Gas rushed into the firing system, and a growl told him that the missile was locked on.

The missile's ejection motor spat it from the launcher, and a second later the rocket engine kicked on, rushing skyward in a flash of exhaust. Its contrail bent in the air, the infrared seeker head tracking toward the target, but he was already throwing the empty launcher to the ground when the missile disappeared.

The men he had set up along the edges of the airfield began to fire, and he knew that the paratroopers were about to be dropped. His hand shot to his pocket, searching for the device that would activate the EMPs, but it wasn't there.

Al Qatar felt the massive rip, torn through the bottom of his pocket, and quickly turned to see where the activation device had fallen out. He frantically retraced his steps, not even noticing the explosion in the sky.

Bombs and missiles were hammering every inch of the airfield, and he ducked instinctively as he searched the ground. The fuel that had leaked across the tarmac ignited in a woosh, sending a wall of flame leaping into the sky.

All around him, his men were dying, their screams filling the air as more ordnance rained down like a plague. Another explosion went off near him, scorching his face and knocking him back to the ground. He struggled to breathe, crawling across the ground. The night suddenly turned to day—and then he saw it.

The flames danced off its shiny black case, and al Qatar greedily snatched it off the ground, flipped it open, and mashed down on the red button.

He watched the tiny LED light blink as it sought to connect with the first receiver, and he knew that in a few seconds it would all be over.

R
enee sat on the nylon bench seat, trying to think of anything besides how bad she had to pee. Her assault pack was nowhere near as heavy as the rest of the paratroopers' oversized rucks, but her legs were going to sleep.

The jumpmaster stood next to the troop door, his grim face bathed in the red light emanating from the ceiling. He extended his arms and held up both hands, showing the jumpers ten fingers, while yelling, “Ten minutes.”

“Get ready,” he shouted a second later.

She felt the C-17 begin to slow. He pointed at her stick and yelled, “Outboard personnel, stand up.”

Struggling to her feet, she almost lost her balance when the bird hit a pocket of rough air. Holding her static line in her left hand, she grabbed at the skin of the aircraft with her right, steadying herself as she bumped into the paratrooper behind her.

“Inboard personnel, stand up.”

Renee felt like she was going to puke as the rest of the jumpers got to their feet, and the jumpmaster instructed them to “Hook up.”

She clipped the static line snap hook into the metal cable that ran the length of the aircraft, holding on to the yellow static line like her life depended on it.

The jumpmaster held up both of his hands, making two small O's with his thumbs and forefingers, which told the jumpers to check their static lines. Then he patted his chest, signaling them to check their equipment.

Renee was trying to focus on the man giving the commands, but as the air force loadmaster knelt down at the bottom of the troop door, rotated the lever, and pulled it up and open, she found her attention diverted by the view of empty sky.

The sounds of the huge engines, along with the rush of outside air, blasted into the interior of the C-17 like a tornado, carrying the smell of exhaust with it. From her position as the first jumper, she could see a hazy cloud of exhaust floating against the backdrop of lights rushing below the bird. Her adrenaline spiked, racing through her body like a jolt of electricity and forcing her attention back to the jumpmaster who yelled, “Sound off for equipment check.”