Уильям Дитц - Into the Guns

The 711s weren’t stupid, however… When the attack failed to materialize, they stopped firing. Mac turned to Munroe. “Give Hadley permission to fire.”

He did so. But a full five minutes passed before the sniper squeezed his trigger. Mac knew that Hadley and his spotter were on the opposite ridge—and that the marksman was using a rifle equipped with a night-vision device. “Target down,” Munroe said, as he relayed the report. “He’s lining up on another.”

“Good,” Mac replied. “Tell the special effects team to turn their lights on.”

Once Munroe passed the order along, it was only a matter of seconds before white lights appeared along both sides of the canyon. That gave the impression that soldiers occupied both slopes and were looking down on the refinery. The banditos fired at the lights until someone ordered them to stop. That was when another pair of illumination rounds went off.

Once that display was over, Mac gave the 711s half an hour to marinate in their own juices before ordering the flyover. The Apache arrived ten minutes later, entered the canyon from the south, and passed over the refinery at an extremely low altitude. The roar generated by the gunship’s General Electric T700 turboshaft engines bounced off both sides of the valley and made a deafening statement. “Okay,” Mac said, “I think we have their attention. Tell Kho to deliver the offer.”

Forward Observer Lin Kho and Private Brown had worked their way in close by then. Kho had a megaphone. “Listen up!” she said. “You are surrounded. We don’t want to kill you… But if you refuse to surrender, we will. So put your weapons down and come out with your hands on your heads. You will be escorted out of the valley and allowed to go wherever you wish.”

Part of that was true—and part wasn’t. The Marauders couldn’t kill all of the banditos. Not without destroying the refinery. But they did intend to turn the 711s loose if they surrendered. Would they try to return? Quite possibly. But once the locals had control of the facility, and the high ground, the banditos wouldn’t be able to roll over the refinery the way they had before.

Having received no reply, Kho repeated the offer, told the defenders which frequency to use, and gave them an ultimatum: They were to respond within half an hour or suffer the consequences. Mac was thinking about the potential cost of an infantry assault when Munroe interrupted her thoughts. “I’ve got a guy named Pasquel on the horn, ma’am. He wants to talk.”

Mac felt a tremendous sense of relief. Thank God! The plan was working. The next fifteen minutes were spent talking to Pasquel over the radio. The bandito said that he and his people were willing to surrender, but not until the sun rose, and they could see their surroundings. Then, if everything looked good, the 711s would walk north. Mac didn’t like that but was forced to accept it, and an uneasy truce was born.

But it wasn’t long before Mac’s initial sense of joy gave way to serious misgivings. In retrospect, the “surrender” seemed too easy. And, according to Munroe, scrambled radio messages were flying back and forth between what he assumed to be the 711s—and some other party. The questions being who ? And why ?

Mac wanted to confide in someone. But there was no one other than Evans that she could share her doubts with, and her XO was back in Superior, literally holding the fort. Besides, commanding officers were supposed to be strong, silent types similar to her father.

So all Mac could do was to make sure that the Marauders remained on high alert and wait for the sun to rise. The hours seemed to crawl by. But finally, as a pus-colored sun rose to backlight the clouds, Mac was free to act. She planned to push the 711s out through the north end of the canyon and bring her forces in from the south. To that end, four Strykers were ready to enter the valley on her command. “All right,” she said. “Tell Kho to order them out.”

Mac kept her binoculars focused on the refinery as Kho spoke. She and her assistant were in a well-dug fighting position behind a pile of rocks. “We kept our part of the bargain,” Kho said over the loudspeaker. “That means it’s time for you to do likewise. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands on your heads.”

That was when the thunder of aircraft engines was heard, an ancient Douglas AC-47 swept in from the north, and two door-mounted 3-by-7.62mm General Electric miniguns went to work. The weapons could fire two thousand rounds per minute, and they were devastating.

Mac knew that ships like it had been used during the Vietnam War to provide close air support—and had been responsible for saving a lot of American lives in situations where units were surrounded by enemy forces. The modern version of the so-called Spooky was the Lockheed AC-130, but some third-world countries were still using the old AC-47s. And the 711s had one of them.

Gunfire raked the top of the ridge as the miniguns opened fire. That forced the Marauders to turn and slide down the opposite side of the hill as the steel rain swept toward them. Mac shouted into her mike. “This is Six actual! All vehicles will disperse… All dismounted personnel will take cover! Over.”

It was the best she could do. Except for the machine guns mounted on the Strykers, the group didn’t have any antiaircraft weapons to call on. And that, Mac realized, was her fault. Because rather than consider all the possibilities, she’d been stupid enough to believe Hanson when he described the 711s as “a pathetic street gang.”

Now it was clear that the banditos had a backer with a lot of resources and a need for fuel. A Mexican drug lord, perhaps… Not that it mattered. All Mac could do was withdraw and hope to avoid casualties. The AC-47 roared past on its way to the south end of the canyon, where the Strykers had been waiting. Mac could hear the rattle of machine guns as the top gunners fired on the plane and could imagine the rooster tails of snow and mud the vehicles would throw up as the truck commanders put their accelerators to the floor.

Mac’s heart was pounding as she scrambled back up the hill to the top of the ridge. As her eyes swept the valley, she could see that the banditos stationed inside the berm were pouring out. That didn’t make sense at first. The 711s were winning… So why would they run? Then it came to her. The banditos were afraid that the Marauders would destroy the refinery! And that was a very real danger since her snipers were hard at work. “Watch your aim!” Mac said sternly. “Don’t hit the refinery… It could blow.”

Rifles cracked, gang members fell, and the AC-47 circled back. Had the gunship been summoned by one of the 711s? That seemed likely. And if the Spooky managed to kill the snipers, the battle would be over. “This is Six,” Mac yelled. “Take cover! The gunship is going to make another run!”

The words were barely out of Mac’s mouth when the plane arrived over the south end of the valley and opened fire. The pilot was unlikely to know where the snipers were—but could hose the slopes down and hope to get lucky. Columns of snow and mud shot into the air as the miniguns went to work. Then something unexpected occurred.

The sound of the Apache’s engines was obscured by the noise the Spooky was making. As the helicopter rose from beyond the east wall of the canyon, it was swiveling to the right. That was necessary because the gunship was carrying point-and-shoot rockets.

Mac watched in openmouthed amazement as Peters fired six of them. Not at the AC-47, but ahead of it, the way a hunter leads a duck.

Two of the missiles hit the starboard side of the plane. The fixed-wing aircraft exploded into a ball of flame, causing pieces of fiery wreckage to fall everywhere, the refinery included. That triggered a secondary explosion and a geyser of billowing flame. “Holy shit,” Munroe said as he looked out over the valley. “Did you plan that?”