Don Pendleton - Hostile Dawn

Blancanales looked out through the bay opening and saw Grimaldi drifting toward him in the OH-58C. Schwarz was leaning out of the chopper, pouring more rounds into the second story. Blancanales waited out the assault, then waved to his colleague and gestured that he was heading up the steps. Schwarz nodded and pulled himself back inside the chopper. As Grimaldi flew over the building, Blancanales cast aside the QBZ and charged the steps, taking them two at a time, M-16 in firing position.

Clearing the last step, Blancanales saw the second assailant stretched out dead on the floor. He started toward the body, then flinched, hearing a noise behind him. A beam of sunlight glanced off the knife blade streaking toward him, and the next thing he knew, Blancanales felt the sharp edge rip through his shirt and glance off his ribs. The man holding the weapon had lunged at him, and when the two men collided, Blancanales was sent reeling backward. He grabbed his attacker and both men went tumbling down the staircase.

Blancanales took the brunt of the fall, cushioning the knifeman from the steps. By the time he reached the ground, the Stony Man commando’s wind had been knocked from his lungs. He lay, stunned, as the Iraqi rose to his knees, still clutching the now-bloodied knife. He was about to plunge the blade into Blancanales’s chest when a volley of 7.62 mm NATO rounds streaked into the service bay, eviscerating the terrorist’s midsection. The knife fell from the Iraqi’s hands as he pitched forward on top of his would-be victim.

Groaning, Blancanales shoved the man aside and gasped for breath, blinking away the stars that flashed across his field of vision. Lyons caught up with him a moment later.

“You okay?” he asked, helping his colleague to his feet.

Blancanales ripped his shirt open and inspected the bleeding gash along his rib cage. “Could’ve been worse,” he said. “Thanks for the backup.”

“No problem,” Lyons said, eyeing his teammate’s wound. “You’re going to need stitches on that sucker, though.”

“Later,” Blancanales said. He turned his attention to the two men lying dead next to them. Both looked to be in their late twenties, dark-haired and olive-skinned. Neither was Kouri Ahmet.

“Our sleeper cell guys?” Lyons said.

“Gotta be,” Blancanales said. He gestured at the Dodge Caravan. “The van matches the one that grease monkey saw up in Barstow.”

“I kinda like the irony of them driving around on American wheels.”

“They probably swiped it, same as Ahmet did that ranger’s truck.”

“Speaking of that scumbag,” Lyons said. “If we didn’t get him here, odds are he’s still out—”

The Able Team leader’s voice was drowned out by a fresh outbreak of gunfire. He and Blancanales glanced toward the bungalow Lyons had been headed for before the assault at the outbuilding. They could see another gunman standing in the open doorway of the smaller building, directing fire up at the OH-58C.

“The fun never stops,” Lyons said, slamming a fresh cartridge into his M-16.

“S WING AROUND !” Schwarz shouted at Grimaldi, bracing himself in the chopper’s open doorway.

“Gladly!” Grimaldi answered. The Stony Man pilot had just missed being hit by the slug that had punched through his side window. He dipped the chopper sharply, then brought it about-face so that Schwarz could see the gunman, who’d ducked for cover behind a flagstone wall extending out from the bungalow. Schwarz tattooed the wall, keeping the enemy pinned behind it. From the corner of his eye, he saw Lyons and Blancanales spread out so they could advance on the gunner from separate directions.

“Up a little higher,” Schwarz told Grimaldi. “Then ease in a little closer.”

Grimaldi urged the OH-58C up and forward, trying to bring the shooter back into view. As he did so, rounds from yet another gunman began to pepper the chopper’s underside. Grimaldi turned to his right and saw the enemy leaning out from a large, wisteria-choked pergola behind the bungalow.

“Three o’clock!” he shouted.

“Got him!”

Schwarz shifted position and leveled his M-16, firing before the assailant could retreat behind one of the pergola’s wooden colonnades. The rounds found flesh and the gunner keeled to the ground, his upper torso freshly embroidered.

The first shooter, emboldened by Schwarz’s distraction, rose from behind the flagstone wall and sent a fusillade whizzing through the chopper doorway before Gadgets whirled back around and nailed him.

By now Lyons and Blancanales had reached the bungalow. Grimaldi left them to raid the interior and pulled away, guiding the chopper above a meandering walkway that led back to the remaining building, a larger, one-story cinder-block orientation center with a sun-faded sign out front that still beckoned visitors with an inviting come-on: Our Spring’s Just the Thing!

The first of the SWAT ground units had begun to materialize from out of the vegetation surrounding the orientation center. Wearing flak jackets over their camo fatigues, they spread out, encircling the building. From Grimaldi’s aerial perspective, he could see that the main entrance was still boarded up, but a side door was ajar. As he watched, two of the SWAT officers approached the entryway, one brandishing a MAC-10, the other a semiautomatic Benelli M-1 shotgun. They were within ten yards of the door when it suddenly flew open. A short, wiry man dived out headfirst, rolling on impact with the ground and scrambling quickly to his feet, a 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 cradled close to his chest. He managed to fire a killshot into the face of the SWAT shotgunner before being brought down by the other commando’s MAC-10.

As the rest of the SWAT team converged on every available opening to the O-building, Grimaldi brought the chopper up higher in the hope of gaining a vantage point from which Schwarz could effectively lend fire from the air. The maneuver was a fortuitous one.

Seconds later, with a deafening roar, a series of explosive charges detonated inside the building, blowing its cinder-block walls outward and turning the roof into a frag shower that hailed upwards, pelting the OC-58’s skids and underbelly. Had Grimaldi not just changed his position, the flying shrapnel would have likely sheared his rotors, bringing the bird down. As it was, the flyboy was hard-pressed to keep the chopper aloft when the blast’s shock wave tossed the craft about.

The jolt caught Schwarz off guard and threw him out the Bell’s open doorway, M-16 flying from his grasp. If not for his martial arts training, the Stony Man warrior would likely have plummeted sixty feet to certain death on the flagstone walkway below. Instead, with nimble instincts, Schwarz was able to throw out his right arm and break his fall by grabbing the chopper’s right skid. His fingers clamped tightly around the cold metal, buying him the time needed to raise his other arm and secure a firmer grip.

“Still here!” he shouted through clenched teeth.

Grimaldi couldn’t hear Schwarz over the rotors and the din of the explosion, but when the displaced weight pitched the chopper to one side he realized Schwarz was still aboard and quickly compensated, righting the aircraft and then slowly bringing it down.

Lyons and Blancanales had been knocked to the ground by the blast, but by the time the OH-58C had dipped to within ten yards of the pathway, both men were on their feet. They scrambled over and grabbed Schwarz’s dangling legs, allowing him to let go of the chopper’s skid. As they eased him down to solid ground, the helicopter floated off, bound for the parking lot where the whole ordeal had begun.

“Nice stunt,” Lyons told Schwarz. “You had us going there for a minute.”

“Tell me about it,” Schwarz said, flexing the life back into his numbed fingers. “Don’t try this at home, kids.”