Triangle of Terror Page 17

  “That much is true, but you knew this. I have attempted to hold him back, pledging some form of negotiation.”

  “Stalling, you mean.”

  “If you allow me to contact him, I can perhaps work out a deal…”

  “For whom?” he asked, watching the Turk’s gaze narrow.

  “You are willing then to allow us to be killed and all we’ve worked for to be seized in a moment of insanity?”

  Mohammed weighed the argument. They could defend the cave, his fighters already positioning themselves around the glacier, but only up to a point before the fearsome Apache began churning up bodies with its 30 mm Chain gun and Hellfire missiles. Perhaps it was worth the attempt to reach a settlement with the advancing Turks.

  “We’ll try it your way, Colonel Dagul. But, be warned, should they attempt to take what is mine by force, should I feel even remotely threatened, you and your men will be the first ones I kill.”

  “FIRE ONLY ON MY SIGNAL. Go for the tail and main rotors.”

  It was a judgment call, based for the most part on self-preservation, but hatred and the hunger for revenge ran a close second.

  The Turks were coming.

  Truth be told, Murat Ghirghulz knew he was overpowered by primal blood lust at first sight of the sleek, shark-shaped Apache gunship as it sliced through the mist, a stone’s throw out over the ravine. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could still his trigger finger on the RPG-7.

  He was crouched behind a row of rock shaped like wolf’s fangs, when the warbird sailed on. It went surging for some higher point, vanishing into the white plumes in seconds flat, but the buzzing of rotors remained strong. It told him the flying shark was sticking close, perhaps hovering now, this winged predator searching for meat as the two-man crew checked their heat seeking screens and sensors. His point men, he knew, had claimed a roost, another hundred feet higher and to the east, hunkered along a narrow ledge. Enveloped inside the mist, with darkness quickly falling, they were near invisible, even to his own eyes.

  Ghosts with sniper rifles, AK-47s and RPG-7s.

  Straining to hear beyond the Apache’s whining bleat, he tried to distinguish between the blowing wind and what he believed were more sets of rotors, deeper below, farther to the west. They were holding, waiting for the Apache, he suspected, to either draw fire or blast them off the side of the mountain. He knew the Turks had at least two Black Hawks, as he gave his men the nod to arm themselves with their RPGs, hand signaling for them to be ready to unload when the gunships appeared. Against the armor-plated Apache, assault rifles, he knew, were as useless as blowing spitballs.

  But if there were M-60 door gunners on the Black Hawks…

  He lifted his radio, then clearly made out the whapping buzz, climbing, rotor wash sweeping away mist, as the sleek warbird rose slowly across the far side of the ravine. There were two more sleek dark shapes, he spotted, holding their position, dipping and yawing, whether from wind gusts or the pilots working the throttles, he couldn’t say.

  Ghirgulz was a second away from telling his point men to fire at will when an explosion blossomed across the ravine.

  THE MOMENT SEIZED Tariq Khaballah. It was as if the RPG-7 had an angry life all its own, his finger taking up slack on the trigger.

  One second, he was reporting to Mohammed, hunkered behind the slab of stone on the north edge overlooking the ravine, the next moment the Apache gunship was roaring his direction. Memories of what he had seen the dreaded warbird do to his fellow Iraqis was the catalyst, he supposed, that drove him to—

  Then it vanished into the clouds.

  He cursed the flying demon, urging it to reappear, but it stayed hidden in the mist. Then he set his sights on the Black Hawk as it ascended, hugging what looked like an outcrop, jutting into the mist like a giant stone pillar. He didn’t care if they were Turks—rumor being of late, though, an American force was in the region—his mind raging with bitter recall of how many fellow Iraqis he’d witnessed shredded by the American gunships.

  He rose, attempting to line up a better angle on the shadowy form of the Black Hawk. Just as he squeezed the trigger, his feet slipped on a patch of ice, the warhead sailing away as he pitched backward. Howling, as jagged stone stabbed him in the back, he glimpsed the fireball erupt over the Black Hawk.

  25

  The blast nearly sent Braden tumbling out the door. Gauging the free fall was anybody’s guess, as the mist shot up for his bugging eyes, but he figured a thousand-plus-foot plunge, easy, to the floor of the gorge.

  No thanks. Not after all he endured. He was holding on for number one.

  His free hand shooting out, Braden grabbed onto the harness that held his M-60 door gunner, Cronin, in place. The spiderweb clutch at the last instant spared him the swan dive. Whoever was howling wild—the load of prisoners, he suspected—served only to infuriate him, safe as they were, deep in the belly of the Black Hawk. Two close shaves in as many days, but why should the rat screw end, here and now?

  “Shut the hell up!” he roared at the prisoners, lurching back, HK swinging toward the jumble of orange jumpsuits as dust and smoke boiled through the hatchway.

  Braden then heard the pilot bellow for everyone to hold on, as he pitched the gunship to starboard, before dropping them hard and fast. Again, several of the militants were crying out, their anger and panic swelling the fuselage with an unholy racket, as they banged into the walls or ate the floor.

  Oh, yes, he had expected trouble before they went wheels up here, but all hell was breaking loose, and in a déjà vu of terror, blood and thunder that boiled his blood with a demonic fury. From what Locklin had informed him, moments ago, it sounded like he needed a scorecard to track all the players, but between the mist and every nook, cranny and crevice that could hide shooters like ghosts they would play hell to catch up and dish it back. The only upside was everyone outside their strike force was fair game.

  That damn sure included the American special ops cavalry they knew was on the way. If they were made by their own—and he had his suspicions who had rallied the black ops—and tagged for termination…

  Braden suspected it was about to become every man for himself.

  Good enough.

  He knew how to play that game with the best of them.

  Having detailed his own problems during his call to Locklin when they landed in Sierra Leone for the first of two refueling stops in Africa—a tense period all by its lonesome as he was forced to unload fifty grand and when their contact there was already greased, supposedly, in advance—the Company black op had warned him the situation on his end was growing dicier with each passing hour. They needed to hit, hard and quick, secure the cargo, bail Turkey. Easier said than done, but if he wanted easy, Braden figured he would have simply vanished into the jungle back in Brazil, shacked up with a native girl and buried the now seriously depleted war chest in the earth for a rainy day.

  And it was raining, all right, he found, pure hellfire and brimstone.

  Cronin was blazing away, the M-60 barking out a storm of 7.62 mm NATO rounds, but at what Braden couldn’t determine, unless he shuffled closer to the hatch. Rounds were drumming the fuselage, however, as he believed he spotted armed figures, cloaked in fur and rags, hunched and firing from above, staggered down some fanged precipice.

  Kurds.

  He was hoping the Apache crew had the good sense to start unloading the Hellfires or they were going down in a ball of flames. A second later, as several rounds screamed off the floorboards, one of the prisoners cried out, clutching a hole in his chest and toppling over. The south wall above and beyond the Black Hawk began lighting up with marching fireballs. The avalanche of rubble and bodies was sure to follow, as thunder pealed on, Braden bellowing at his pilot, “Back it up and get us up above this mess before we get slammed into the mountain or blown to hell!”

  WHETHER ONE SIDE or the other had fired a shot in panic or anger, Faisal Mohammed couldn’t say, and not that it mattered any longer.
>
  He was running up to the lip overlooking the western edge of the glacier, eight of his fighters fanning out and dropping for cover behind boulders and slabs of stone, when he took in the terrible pounding the Apache was laying on the south face of the ravine.

  Kurd turf, according to his spotters.

  The winged demon was becoming more visible as rotor wash sliced gaps in the mist, and there was no mistaking the flames its rocket pods breathed as he saw Hellfires streak away, slamming the Kurds at near point-blank range. While explosions raked the precipice and he made out what appeared to be torn stick figures sailing away from the fireballs, other gunships seemed to gyrate below the Apache, backing up, spinning, then rising as if to escape the rain of rock and mangled bodies.

  “We need to load as much as we can—now!—and fly out of here before they land on the glacier!”

  Mohammed squeezed his eyes shut, felt the rage burn every nerve ending, as Colonel Dagul screamed out his demand again. It was clear now what was happening. The Turks had come to slaughter them, and clean out the store.

  “Then go!” Mohammed told him, then waited as the colonel wheeled, barking orders at his contingent, the group breaking away in a jog.

  And Mohammed made his decision. It was his mountain, it was his stockpile. It was his game to win, or lose. If there was no tomorrow, why should there be any reason to live on, other than to stand his ground?

  He called the names of two of his closest fighters, as he swung his AK-47 around, drew a bead on Dagul’s back and held back on the trigger.

  THE BURLAP SATCHEL of warheads went with his tumble down the slope. Ghirgulz heard the wrath of the Apache’s Hellfires, the explosions loud enough to spike his brain in two, senses so cleaved the sum total of pain and shock threatened to cut loose what was churning in his stomach from any orifice. Shock waves—like the seismic detonations from earthquakes often felt in Turkey—and flying rubble, what he figured were dismembered limbs slapped off his face and head, as he tasted blood on his lips and took the wet sting in the eyes.

  But he was still going, in one piece, from what he could determine. If only he could turn the tide of battle. But how?

  An invisible force alone, it seemed, was strong enough to almost hurl him off the edge of the precipice, as the rain of stone, blood and body parts kept falling.

  Would that thunder of hell ever cease?

  Once he stopped screaming from the pain lancing his senses, he looked out over the ravine, spotted the dark blur like a rapidly ascending wraith as the Black Hawk shot up, vanishing higher into the mist. Above, making out the howls of pain and rage, he heard the chatter of AK-47s, cursing his own men for fools for thinking they could drop the Apache with autofire. Then he caught the rumble of more explosions, saw the fire clouds peppering the distant north wall. A few of his fighters, then, clinging to stay in the battle, throwing RPG warheads at the gunship, but missing.

  Just one well-placed round, he knew, was all it would take.

  He dug into his bag, fisting a warhead as the blasts kept on coming, meshing in a world of fire that seemed to hammer down right on top of him.

  BRADEN FEARED WHAT WAS coming next would prove more disastrous than the close shave he’d just ducked. The Apache was rising, climbing above but nearly on top of them. The damn flight crew was miming his evasive move, but putting their own chopper in the scissoring paths of warheads flying up from the precipice as the Kurds tracked on, winging missiles away, crazy bastards aware there was no tomorrow.

  And the Apache was taking RPG hits. Wherever the other Black Hawks were in the formation was not his concern, since the world he watched was ready to crush them to shredded pulp.

  As Cronin kept sweeping the precipice with M-60 lead storms, Braden roared at the pilot to keep climbing. “Get above those shooters and drop us off!”

  They were rising, the world tilting to aft, when one or several of the Kurds scored big time.

  Braden ripped loose a stream of obscenities as the tail rotor was sheared off, two or maybe three more fireballs dismembering the main rotor. Cronin was shedding the harness, ready to bail as the Black Hawk swung out over what looked like a tabletop above the Kurd shooters. From the corner of his eye, he spotted prisoners and his own commandos rushing forward. The thought crossed his mind he might need to hold them back with a burst of fire or the stampede might knock him out the door before he was ready to leap, but the helicopter was already in a whirling dervish.

  And an errant Hellfire parted the dissipating clouds, coming on, in his face.

  Braden beat the stampede out the door, jumping, staring at the tableland. Twenty or thirty feet, he hoped there was enough snow to cushion his crash landing, no jutting rock prepared to break him in two. He was vaguely aware of Cronin hollering in his ear, free-falling beside him, as the explosion roared above and superheated wind came screaming from the sky.

  MURAT GHIRGULZ KNEW he was finished. If possible, though, he wished to take a few more of the enemy with him in his dying breath, a pyrrhic victory, at least, denying as many of them as he could of what was being snatched from him in death.

  Something had been hurled from one of the two blasts, and it was impaled deep through his ribs, angling up, into his chest. The sky appeared to be on fire, wreckage and stone hailing around his outstretched form, the screaming wind so hot as it boiled over him it seemed to suck the air out of his lungs. Breathing was nearly impossible, as blood gushed up his throat, spewing forth in a blackish tint that puddled the snow to melting slime before his eyes.

  Somehow, call it sheer willpower—or perhaps hatred of the fact he was doomed to fail in his quest to create an independent Kurdistan with the blackmail of WMD—he rolled up on his good side, AK-47 in hand. And the gates of hell, he found, had erupted wide open, along and above the precipice, the damned in full wailing flight.

  Whether they were his men or the ones who had leaped from the Black Hawk before the missile plowed into the cockpit was impossible to tell. They were engulfed in flames, maybe six in all, about half of the burning scarecrows rolling down the slope, shrieking as they thrashed in the snow in hopes of extinguishing their shrouds of fire. Another three human comets simply jumped over the edge, their hideous wails whipped away with both the plummet and a wrenching noise that warned him the sky was again falling.

  Looking up, he spied two shapes in orange jumpsuits, clinging to the edge of a promontory that stretched in for the tableland.

  Human flies.

  He’d take it.

  Choking back blood and bile, he managed to squeeze off a burst of autofire. He thought he stitched both flies on the wall, in the legs or lower back, but couldn’t be positive, as the flaming hull of the downed Black Hawk thundered off the lip near his targets in a shower of fire and flying wreckage, then came plunging to bury him where he lay.

  26

  The Executioner discovered they were late for the beginning of the war for the WMD, suspected the blame would land on his head if it fell apart for their side. Other than slogging through a conspiracy slowly unraveling around him with each body, dodging bullets and chasing his own bad guys nearly halfway around the planet, there were no good excuses, even if he was so inclined to explain himself. And only the Presidential Directive in the hands of what he read as a stewing Major General Eugene Thomas kept him from sitting on the bench back at Incirlik.

  They were there now, bottom line, six gunships total, and surging into the gorge. Nose up, they were climbing, rapidly grabbing higher altitude, Thomas barking for as much over Bolan’s com link, as small-arms fire from the Turk convoy hundreds of feet below broke out. But the flying armada was sailing on, out of range of everything save a surface-to-air missile. That show of force indicated to Bolan that America’s only NATO ally in the Middle East had more than a few militants, even traitors in uniform in the neighborhood, willing to go the distance. He figured Thomas could always mop them up later with one of his two Apaches—since it would take several hours at the ver
y least for the convoy to reach the glacier in question—once the WMD was secured.

  Bolan had plenty of questions about Operation Thor, but decided to let the fighting piece together the whole puzzle. The M-16/M-203 combo was locked and loaded, his tried and proved side arms ready as backup, webbing hung with spare clips and grenades.

  In some way, he supposed it was fitting to nail down the WMD mystery, once and for all, in a land that was the crossroads of history, the bridge between East and West. Where countless civilizations from the ancient Hittites to the Ottoman Empire had risen and fallen. Where mass migrations of Indo-Europeans and scores of invading armies had left their mark, everything from culture and architecture to bloodlines. Where, yes, the Great Flood had deposited the Ark somewhere, allegedly, high up the mountain, where the snow and the cloud cover was eternal, hiding whatever the truth. And now, in the new century, he thought, one of the most horrific of potential scourges, albeit man-made, could plunge an entire region…

  The truth would soon enough reveal itself.

  Still, Bolan wondered, why distribute gas masks and atropine injectors to counteract the effects of exposure to nerve gas, with no sign of a HAZMAT team among the strike force, nor even a hint that such was on standby? Nerve agents attacked both through the respiratory system and skin absorption. There was no guarantee his blacksuit—with double-layered thermals beneath—black-gloved hands and nylon hood would spare him the lethal touch of VX. Not only that, but if this sorcerers’s brew was similar in chemical composition to what he’d witnessed eating men alive as if they’d been dipped in acid, only a NASA-customized spacesuit would save him. And why did the general hint he already had a good idea where the stockpile was tucked away, but was tight-lipped on how he knew all of this?

  There were three intelligence operatives from the Turk MIT on-board the General’s Black Hawk. Bolan suspected they had paved the way in, from what little he gathered during the briefest of combat briefs he’d ever sat through. Very little, though, surprised the soldier when it came to black ops. Given his experience in spookdom, where all sides often jealously guarded intelligence and informants, and where very little was actually as it appeared…