Don Pendleton: Ambush Force

Sawyer shoved up his goggles. “Well, I count fifty, and the map says there are four more caves.”

“Most of them are sleeping.”

“Well, how you wanna wake ’em up?”

Bolan reached into his gear bag, pulled out four grenades and handed a pair of them to Sawyer.

Sawyer stared at them. “Frags?”

“Stingballs. Each one holds several dozen hard rubber buckshot pellets.”

Sawyer scowled. “Okay, that will probably wake them up, but then—”

Bolan pulled out a couple of Claymores.

Sawyer frowned. “Claymores? I thought you said you wanted prisoners.”

“Stingmores. These contain hundreds of rubber buckshot pellets.”

Sawyer grinned. “I think I saw this in a movie.”

The lieutenant came up, and Bolan related the plan to him. “Then we hit them with flash-bangs and stomp them,” Bolan finished.

Dirk was grinning as he turned to the two commandos behind him. “You heard the man. They beat ’em, and then we light ’em up!”

Bolan pulled the pins on his grenade. “On your signal, Lieutenant.”

“By all means, please.”

Bolan and Dirk hurled the grenades strategically throughout the cavern.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!” Sawyer called out happily.

The men around the campfires jerked and rose, grabbing for weapons. Bolan and Sawyer crouched low and lowered their helmets, and the stingball grenades detonated. Men howled out in Arabic and Pashto as the blunt 20 mm rubber spheres traveling at five hundred feet per second struck them. Everyone else was leaping out of their blankets and rising while others fell around them.

Bolan and Sawyer stuck the stingmore mines into the dirt and pumped the detonator switches. “Gooooood morning, Afghanistan!” Sawyer sang out.

More than one thousand rubber buckshot pellets blasted across the cavern in two intersecting arcs, and men blinking from sleep were scythed down before they knew what hit them. Bolan and Sawyer stayed crouched, plugging their ears with their thumbs and shutting and covering their eyes with their fingers. Orange light still pulsed through Bolan’s eyelids, and thunder rolled through the cavern. The second salvo of flash-bangs detonated moments later, and then Bolan was up and in the cavern with Bravo troop swarming in behind him.

The devastation was almost total. Fifty men lay on the ground, beaten, blinded, deafened and disoriented.

Lieutenant Dirk roared, “A and B Teams! Secure the side tunnels! Everyone else secure prisoners!”

The two teams charged to the side tunnels and aimed overwhelming firepower down them. In the cavern, plastic zip restraints appeared like party favors and moaning, suspected Taliban where swiftly hog-tied.

Gunfire broke out in the right side tunnel. Sawyer bawled back into the cavern. “We got resistance here on the right, LT!”

Dirk shouted orders. “C Team! Reinforce B! D Team, you’re with me! Pincer movement!”

Bolan took point with Sawyer. Both of them had M-203 grenade launchers mounted beneath their rifles. The Executioner nodded at him, and they both fired the weapons down the tunnel and leaned back as the grenades detonated in the chamber beyond. They charged down the corridor, followed by Dirk with A and D teams. The chamber was dimly lit and filled with open metal racks. Two men lay dead on the floor, while another man clutched his face and fired a pistol in the general direction of the entrance. Bolan’s and Sawyer’s bursts peppered the would-be pistolero. He fell into one of the metal racks, and a row of six of them fell like dominoes.

Sawyer stared at the rows of racks. There were scores of them. Possibly a hundred or more. “What? Are they building a treehouse?”

Bolan stared at them. The racks were actually frames consisting of eight hollow aluminum rectangles bolted together. Each was about eight feet long and contained a series of metal hoops within them. Bolan estimated the diameter of the hoops to be approximately 132 mm. “No, those are rocket racks. The hoops inside are the launch rails.” Bolan peered at the dark entrance to the next tunnel and turned to Dirk. “I strongly suggest we don’t throw anything explosive into the next room.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Dirk spoke into his radio, “Obie, what’ve you got?”

Obradors came back from the other side of the complex. “Two hostiles down. The chamber appears to be some kind of machine shop. Multiple generators and lots of welding equipment. Looks like they’ve been making frames and mounts for something, as well as a bunch of threaded collars, and I mean a lot of them.”

Bolan spoke across the link. “You got a diameter on those collars, Obie?”

“Yeah, uh, about five inches?”

Bolan frowned as his suspicions were confirmed. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, your map?” Obradors said.

“What about it?”

“It’s shit. There ain’t no fifth chamber.”

“What do you mean?” Bolan probed.

“I mean there ain’t no tunnel. The wall is blank.”

Dirk looked at Bolan. “And?”

“And ground-penetrating radar doesn’t lie. Tell B and C teams to hold position and don’t touch anything. Especially the walls.”

Dirk gave orders. Bolan jerked his head at the far tunnel. “Let’s see what’s behind door number three.” Bolan moved down the tunnel with Sawyer right behind him. There was no one in the next chamber, but it wasn’t empty.

“Shit,” Sawyer pronounced. “Missiles.”

Bolan stared at the pallets of weapons stacked in pyramids. “No, unguided artillery rockets, 132 mm. The Russians call them Katyushas, or ‘Little Katys.’”

“Jesus, they must have a hundred of them in here.”

Dirk had one of his men videotaping their find. “A lot of them seem to be missing their warheads.”

“Yeah,” Bolan agreed, “and Obie has a machine shop on the other side of the complex making 132 mm threaded collars.”

“Shit,” Sawyer said.

“Shit is right,” Bolan said. “You notice anything else.”

Sawyer looked around the room and stopped. “There’s no tunnel. No fifth chamber. Just like Obie said.”

Bolan clicked on his private link. “Strike Eagle, this is Striker. Give me another GPR pulse, and triangulate the position of the tunnel to chamber five from my position.”

“Copy that, Striker,” Schwarz responded. “Coming up.”

Bolan took out his little computer and watched as the GPR pulses flashed across his screen. Up in the stratosphere, Schwarz was scribbling with his stylus. The pulses faded, and the map of the complex appeared. A dot appeared in the chamber where Bolan was standing.

“That dot is you, Striker.” A straight line appeared on the little map that went from Bolan’s position through the tunnel to the fifth chamber. “The tunnel entrance is exactly ten degrees east from your position.”

“Copy that.” Bolan walked up to what appeared to be a roughly dressed but blank stone wall.

Dirk played the tactical light on his weapon across the rock face. “So, there’s like a secret knob or something?”

“No. The tunnel’s been sealed off from the outside. There probably isn’t even a door, just brick or concrete with a layer of clay and rock molded over it for camouflage.”

Dirk scowled. “You said sealed from the outside?”

“Think about it. If we hadn’t used GPR, what would have happened? We’d have come in, kicked ass, destroyed the rockets and then dropped the caverns with explosives and walked away happy, mission accomplished. We never would have known to look for a fifth chamber.”

“Yeah—” Dirk nodded as he saw it “—and the Taliban could come back later when the coast was clear and dig it up.”

“Right. You got some shaped charges?”