Tier One Wild (37 page)

Doyle understood the logic of this, and he knew the Zetas knew the tactics of their adversaries better than he. He resigned himself quickly to the fact that they were not going to stay low-profile here in Mexico for much longer.

The two BO105s raced over the flatland to the east, toward the silver mine. When they were still three hundred meters out, small weapons fire erupted from two dozen positions in the buildings, hills, and rocks around the mine. An RPG raced away from the hillside on David’s right, but it streaked through the air far above the approaching helicopters.

A second RPG, this one fired from behind one of the aluminum buildings, hit the hard earth and exploded in front of the attacking choppers.

David ran toward the relative safety of the pile of iron ore that he’d climbed to help him with his cell phone reception earlier in the evening. As he ran he saw sparks flash across one of the black helicopters. The aircraft pulled out of the formation and turned away from the gunfire, but the second helo continued on. Just when David and two of his men dove down behind the rocks, a pair of outboard cannons on the remaining BO105 opened up, raking the ground in front of it and everything on it with 20mm shells.

David kept his head low, but he saw a Zeta minibus explode in flames and several Mexican gunmen eviscerated by cannon fire.

The helo shot past his position, not more than one hundred feet above the roof of his truck. It fired at the source of a third RPG launch, up on the hillside, and while it did this, Doyle stood to empty his AK into the tail rotor of the craft. He fired a thirty-round magazine at the helicopter, not caring if his rounds hit Zetas on the hill.

But the chopper banked to the north and began circling around for another pass.

David reloaded his rifle with the single thirty-round magazine he carried in his side pocket, but as he chambered a round, he looked back over his shoulder at the sound of another explosion. The second Bo 105 had retreated several hundred yards back to the east, and from here it fired rockets toward the silver mine. The rockets struck the aluminum outbuildings of the mine, and flames and smoke burst forth from the structures, sending three men near them spinning into the air.

Doyle knew they would not be able to stop this attack without a perfect shot from an RPG into the BO105. His four TerraStars were still alive, parked in a gravel lot to the south of where the Navy was attacking, but the raking rocket fire would hit them as soon as the pilot took out the resistance near the buildings.

“Henrico?” David called into the walkie-talkie from his position behind a rock pile, just ten yards from the nearest TerraStar truck. “Henrico?”

There was no reply.

David dropped the walkie-talkie, looked up at the closest truck to his position, and then he made the decision. He leapt to his feet, leaving his AK on the ground, and he ran to the rear of his green truck.

Doyle did not want to use one of the Iglas. He knew that knocking down a Mexican Navy helicopter with a shoulder-fired missile would alert the United States that Libyan SAMs were in the hemisphere.

But he saw no other options.

He pulled a case out of the rear of the truck, and let it fall to the gravel drive. The wood smashed as he did this, and he dug through the broken crate to retrieve the launcher, the missile, and the power supply from its foam casing.

Around him the chatter of AK fire continued, along with the lower drumbeat of cannon fire from one chopper and the
whoosh-boom
sound of rockets fired from the other.

The screams of men were all but drowned out in the melee.

As Doyle seated the power supply, Miguel appeared behind him. He helped David finish the assembly, and then he slid the rocket into the firing tube. With Miguel’s assistance, David got the forty-pound device on his shoulder, and he peered through the sights toward the attack chopper firing rockets.

An explosion close by knocked David off balance, but Miguel grabbed the weapon and held it up while his commander regained his composure.

As David’s eye pressed back into the sights, he saw a third helicopter arrive on the scene. This was a huge Mexican Marine Black Hawk, and David knew it could be carrying a dozen troops or more. It hovered over the highway, nearly two kilometers south of his position, well out of range of the Zeta RPGs and rifles.

This chopper was not armed, but it was bigger and slower than the other two and as it crossed into his sights he thought it would make an easier target. He half depressed the trigger on the SAM to initiate the warhead’s lock onto the Black Hawk.

It took only four seconds before he heard the tone that told him the warhead had picked up the heat register.

To his right cannon fire raked the men firing from behind the pile of ore, killing Mexicans and Middle Easterners alike.

David pressed the trigger on the launcher and he felt the same jolt he’d felt in Greece a few weeks before. The weapon sailed out of the launch tube and almost instantly its propellant ignited and it raced skyward. Behind it a wide spray of flame illuminated the night until it turned into a pinprick of moving starlight in the distance.

Doyle later wondered if the Black Hawk pilot two kilometers away had heard a warning from his machine that an infrared missile was inbound. He suspected the warning had come, but David also suspected the pilot would not have been expecting Mexican drug smugglers to be in possession of a surface-to-air missile capable of destroying his modern aircraft.

In any event, the pilot did not alter his flight at all, even as the missile raced down from above. No evasive maneuvers, no deployment of antimissile chaff or flares.

It was like he never saw it coming.

The pilot just held his hover while Mexican Marines in the cabin dropped ropes that they planned on using to rappel to the road, where they could set up a hasty blocking position by the highway to prevent the drug smugglers’ escape.

But the missile slammed into the Black Hawk from above before even the first Marines could slide down the ropes. The black craft spun on its center axis and then jacked hard to the side. Its rotor disintegrated in sparks and electric flashes just a fraction of a second before the aircraft pounded the hard earth next to the highway, instantly killing all on board.

The Igla-S also ruptured the fuel lines of the craft, and a fire broke out that would glow until dawn.

Two kilometers to the north in the derelict silver mine, a moment of quiet enveloped the scene. The Zetas had all seen what had happened. None of them, not even Henrico, had any idea they were helping al Qaeda transport antiaircraft missiles into the United States. All of the fifteen or so surviving members of the cartel’s security force had combat experience, but not one of them, not even those who came from the military, had ever seen anything like a missile launch against a helicopter full of men.

David and Miguel did not stop to admire their work; they were already back on their knees behind the truck, pulling a second weapon out of its crate. There were still two helicopters in the attack and, as far as Doyle was concerned, there would be no more damage to the security of his operation by using a second missile.

His first launch had destroyed any chance that they would remain undetected to the U.S.

Doyle rose with the weapon, Miguel helped him up, and he searched for a target. He found an attack helicopter, centered his sights, and prepared to depress the trigger.

But the chopper was clearly in full retreat. It shot to the east at high speed, pulling to the left and right, in a clear attempt to avoid any missiles on its tail.

Miguel then turned Doyle around to the second helicopter, but it, too, was getting the hell away from the site of the SAM launch.

After making certain the BO105s were not just circling around for another try, Doyle lowered the weapon from his shoulder and put it back in the truck.

Zeta fighters and al Qaeda operators cheered, the natural exaltation of surviving a deadly battle, but Doyle was all business. He turned from the truck, and then ran past the burning wreckage of the buildings and vehicles. Some one hundred yards away he found Henrico, shoving his men toward their cars. Blood from a cut above the Mexican’s left eyebrow stained his entire face.

Doyle grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. “Who set us up?”

“I don’t know!” he screamed back. “Maybe the helicopter that passed by earlier had thermal. Maybe they saw men and trucks here, maybe the—”

“Maybe your people sold us out to the government!” David answered back.

Henrico shook his head. “I … I don’t think so. Even if they did, you know I was not involved. I lost eight men, and I almost got blown to shit myself!”

“What are we going to do?”

“I’ve told my men to collect our dead. You should do the same. We will go to a ranch I know about twenty kilometers away. We can hide out for a few hours. There we can get more support before continuing on.”

“Will there be cops on the road?”

Henrico barked orders in Spanish in his radio. While he did so he nodded to the American al Qaeda man. He switched back to English to say, “Yes. Federal police, state police, municipal police. Marines, too. I will contact the regional commander of my organization and try to clear a path for us ahead. Maybe we will take a different route. I don’t know.” The Mexican shouted another order in Spanish, then turned back to Doyle. “Hombre, that missile you fired will put us all in danger.”

“I had to fucking fire it because your secret hide location was discovered by the fucking Navy!”

Henrico turned away and climbed into the back of one of his cars. David ran back to his men and their trucks, desperate to get out of here before more choppers arrived.

When he returned to his men he discovered that Arthur and Roger, two of his three Turks, were dead. Miguel had ordered them both loaded into the back of the yellow truck. Benjamin, from Saudi Arabia, was wounded in the arm and face, but he was still on his feet and seemed to be stable.

David would assess the man’s wounds when they made it to the next safe house. For now he ordered everyone into their trucks, and within moments they were racing back down the drive to the highway.

*   *   *

Kolt arrived at the compound just after six a.m. He went to the gym for an hour, got a light upper-body workout with the vertical ropes and caving ladders, and worked his grip strength on the climbing wall mockups. Nothing that would put too much stress on his weeks-old thigh injury. Then he showered, slipped into his OD green flight suit, and walked back into the squadron lounge for some coffee. He caught the last half of a news-flash story on the squadron flat-screen as he entered the bay. A gun battle between Mexican forces and narcos in the country’s interior had led to the deaths of thirteen Mexican Marines.

There was no mention of a missile shooting down a helicopter, and violence in Mexico had long been so commonplace that Raynor did not give it another moment’s thought.

Kolt went to his office, checked his e-mail quickly, then headed down to the SCIF to see if there was any news from either Yemen or Libya.

*   *   *

Kenny Farmer had worked straight on through the night, helping to prepare the target folder for the impending hit in Yemen. Webber and the Delta alert squadron, led by Major Rick “Gangster” Mahoney, had landed at their secure staging base in Eritrea just an hour earlier at 1700 local time, and Kenny and others here in the SCIF had just updated them with the latest in real-time information pulled from a Global Hawk UAV flying fifty-nine thousand feet above the AQAP training facility.

Farmer was confident that Gangster and his boys had all the pieces they needed to plan the hit, and even though he had initially wished they had let him deploy with the headquarters section, the thirty-year-old analyst was satisfied with his contribution, and now just wanted to put his head down on his desk and crash.

“Morning,” came a chipper voice behind him. Farmer turned to find Racer standing there with a cup of coffee and a dry whole-wheat bagel on a napkin. “Brought you breakfast, brother.”

“Thanks,” said Farmer, wondering if the major would actually make him take a bite of that nasty bagel.

“So … what’s going on with Gangster and the boys?” Kolt asked, and Farmer took the bagel and the coffee, placed both on the desk, and gave Racer a quick rundown of the situation in southern Yemen.

“Live G-Hawk feed on screen three right there.”

Farmer explained that the hit would take place at midnight local. It was several hours off, but Gangster and his squadron would leave their staging base soon.

“Would love to be in Eritrea,” Kolt said as he looked at screen three.

“Yes, sir. Me, too.”

Kolt changed the subject. “Any word on ST6 in the Med?”

Farmer updated Kolt on what he knew about the SEALs’ operation in Tripoli. As it stood, ST6 was still offshore on the USS
Kearsarge,
a helicopter carrier, waiting for final approval to launch an attack against a farm just west of Sirte, where intelligence from Aref Saleh himself had indicated a weapons cache was protected by ex-members of the Libyan military. Farmer explained that the intel was anything but absolute, and years ago the target would have just been another NAI—a named area of interest—that would receive intermittent attention from aerial collection platforms.

But missiles scared POTUS, and he’d given SECDEF the mandate to root them out wherever he could find them, so chances looked good for an ST6 hit in Sirte within the next few hours.

Kolt headed back down the Spine to his squadron a few minutes later. He had a ton of work to do today, and he wanted to get it over with before the Yemen hit so he could sit and listen to the action over the radio.

THIRTY-TWO

Fifty-five-year-old United Nations investigator Dr. Renny Marris stood on the edge of the highway, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun and wiping his forehead with a towel. The heat here reminded him of Libya, but the dust floating through the air was of a different makeup than the dust he’d experienced in North Africa.