SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops IV (35 page)

“Understood.”

Will was jogging along the tunnel, his head bent to stop banging his helmet on the stone roof. Nolan followed him, and it seemed endless, but finally he saw the starlit sky ahead, and the dark shapes of the Platoon gathered just outside the entrance. Two men had positioned a Minimi M247 pointing back along the tunnel, in case any hostiles leaked through. The rest had formed a defensive perimeter around the outside to watch for any wayward Pakistani patrols. As he emerged into the night, he heard the welcome clatter of the CH-47 dropping down gently for a landing.

“As soon as the wheels touch the ground, let’s go,” he shouted. “The timing on this is operation is shot to hell. If we don’t get out of here fast, we’ll have the Pakistan military taking an interest. And they’ve got an Air Force with fast jets, guys, don’t forget that.”

“They’re already taking an interest,” Mariko called over to him. She’d been talking to the Chinook crew while she waited to board. She put the commset down and walked across. “The Pakistani Air Force has launched a couple of air superiority fighters. One of our AWACS aircraft over the border picked them up taking off from Peshawar. The electronic warfare guys say they’ve been targeted to investigate the airspace around Abbottabad for a suspected incursion.”

“Damn. How long before they get here?”

“Five minutes, no more.”

“Got it.”

He looked around as the Chinook landed, and the men started piling aboard. He looked along the tunnel, but there was no sign of Zeke and Vince. He ran to the tunnel entrance, shouting for them to hurry. Nothing. The machine gun was still staring into the darkness. He told the crew to get aboard the helo, and when he looked again, there was only Mariko on the ground waiting. He shouted across to her.

“Get on board. We’ll be leaving any second.”

She nodded, but she still waited. She was holding an assault rifle, an HK416, obviously mounting guard against anything unexpected. Nolan seethed, but there was nothing more he could do, except wait. Wait for his two men to arrive. Wait for the hostiles to come out of the tunnel shooting if anything went wrong with the explosives. Wait for the Pakistani Air Force to arrive and force the Chinook to land and take them into captivity. Or wait to get back to J-Bad, where the military cops may be waiting to take him in for murder. He thought back to Whitman’s confession.

Mariko heard it, but will they believe her, if the cops know we’ve
been intimate? We can’t hide it. There are few secrets on a base. Nazir overheard Whitman, but did he understand? And will they believe him? It’s ironic. We killed a rapist murderer, and yet that may have prevented me from dragging Whitman to justice and proving my innocence.

He felt his anger and frustration mounting. Mariko was on the encrypted commo again, maybe talking to J-Bad. They’d got what they wanted, the big bad wolf, Riyad bin Laden, was dead. All that was left was to get Bravo Platoon home safe, as well as the valuable Chinook helo and its crew, and all in the face of a pair of supersonic fighter interceptors. The irony was they were likely to be missile-armed F-16 Fighting Falcons, supplied to them originally by the US. The General Dynamics Company and subsequently Lockheed built fighters were obsolete inside the US Air Force, but it was still a lightning fast, highly maneuverable, and heavily armed combat aircraft. The Chinook would be a dead duck if they met up in the skies of Waziristan.

Suddenly Zeke and Vince ran out of the tunnel.

“We’re set, Chief. We have to get out of there before they trip the charge. It’s going to be one mighty big bang.”

“Understood, get aboard the helo. We’re leaving.”

They ran up the ramp, and he took Mariko’s arm, hustling her up into the fuselage. Boswell lay on a heap of improvised bedding behind the cockpit bulkhead, being tended to by two of the Seals, Lucas and Dave. He didn’t see the body of Richard Nixon, but he knew it would be close by. The twin turboshafts whined as the rotors picked up speed, and within seconds, the heavy aircraft was climbing slowly into the night sky of Waziristan. The nose tilted as the pilot banked and turned north, right at the moment their pursuers ran into Zeke’s booby trap. The sky lit up with jets of flame, followed by roiling clouds of dense black smoke. The Chinook was thrown over on its side by the force of the pressure wave that hit them, and they clung on to the internal struts for support. The pilot was no rookie, the 160th Special Aviation Regiment was chosen from the very best to be the finest in their profession. He hauled the aircraft around, tilting the fuselage along the outward direction of the explosion, running with it, riding it like an expert surfer on one of the mighty waves that periodically broke on the beaches at Maui. He twisted the heavy craft this way and that, following the invisible air currents that tore at the fragile airframe. Finally, he managed to regain full control, and the Chinook steadied on a northerly course, toward the distant mountains of the Hindu Kush, and Afghanistan. They were going home. The crew chief touched his arm, and he looked around.

“Skipper wants you up front, Chief. Go on up to the cockpit.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Could be, yeah.”

The nose was tilted up as the helo continued to claw for height. Nolan grabbed for handholds and swung his way forward. The co-pilot saw him coming and handed him a headset. He removed his helmet and clipped it on his head, immediately the pilot began speaking to him.

“You’re the guy in charge of this outfit?”

“I am, our platoon leader is back there injured.”

“Yep, I heard about that. I hope he’ll be okay.”

“He will if we get him back to a hospital fast.”

“Yeah, see, that’s the problem. You know they launched a couple of fighters to come chasing our tail.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve just had a heads-up from the AWACS aircraft watching this area. They’re heading this way like bears toward a honey pot. They will have picked us up on their radar already.”

“Can we hide from them?”

The pilot laughed. “In a Chinook? You jest, my friend. No, we can’t hide, not in the air. We can't outrun them, outshoot them, or even outshit them if it comes to that.”

Nolan smiled.

“What can we do?”

“Two options, Chief. We land somewhere we can go to ground and wait them out. It’s not guaranteed because they have their own AWACS systems and onboard lookdown radars. Chances are they’ll know where we are. Option two, we surrender.”

“How about option three?”

They both looked around at the new voice in their headsets. Captain Mariko Noguchi stood behind them, holding onto the co-pilots seat for support. She’d donned a spare headset to join in, apparently. The pilot glanced at her.

“What’s option three, Ma’am? You want us to take them on in air-to-air combat, shoot them down?”

She ignored his sarcasm. “Not quite, but we may be able to arrange someone else to do it for us. I talked to Admiral Jacks in Jalalabad. He’s trying to get an escort up to lead us back.”

“They’d need some heavy firepower to frighten off those Pakis.”

“He knows. He said he’ll do his best, so we have to wait and see. But we haven’t lost, not yet.”

The co-pilot leaned over and spoke in the pilot’s ear. He nodded and turned back to them.

“You tell that Admiral they’ll need to get here mighty fast. The Paki birds are only a minute or so out. They’re already within range if they’re carrying air-to-air missiles, and last time I checked, they never left home without them.”

“Do you have any defensive capability?” Nolan asked.

“Some,” he admitted. “Chaff, not a whole heap more. It may help us, at first anyway, until they get too close. Then their missiles will home on our engines, and they won’t be diverted for anything at all. It may still be better to land and sit this out until the escort turns up.”

“No!”

He looked at Nolan, surprised at his vehemence.

“What’s up?”

“If we land and wait, Lieutenant Boswell will die. He’s on the edge as it is. We keep going.”

The pilot shrugged. “I hope you know what you’re doing, buddy.”

They all heard the Pakistani accented English in their headsets.

“Unidentified aircraft, you are in restricted airspace. You are ordered to identify yourself and turn around and land at Peshawar.”

The pilot looked at him. “What’s it to be?”

“Keep going.”

Every second in the air took them a little nearer home, and Boswell to a hospital.

“Unidentified aircraft, acknowledge and turn around, or we will launch our missiles and destroy you.”

“He means business, Chief,” the pilot warned.

“So do we. Keep it going, Skipper. The escort should be along soon, any second.”

“Soon may be too late. We’ve barely got seconds. Seconds, not minutes or hours. They’re about to launch. I may outfly the first pair of missiles, but this flying bus is not designed to go head-to-head with these fighters.”

“Missile, missile, incoming!”

The crewmember had picked up the first launch, and the Chinook crew went into evasive maneuvers. The pilot rammed the collective over, and the helo swooped low and banked hard to starboard, just as the co-pilot activated the automatic chaff dispensers. Nolan and Mariko held on grimly with both hands as the lumbering craft seemed to stand on its end, then fall out of the sky. Above and to the side of them they watched the two missile trails burn past, and there was a blinding explosion as the warheads exploded harmlessly inside the cloud of chaff.

“That’s it, we’re fucked,” the pilot shouted. “Now they’ve seen how it’s done, they’ll come in close next time before they launch, and we’ll take a hit.”

“How far to Afghanistan?”

He looked at the panel. “Maybe thirty kilometers.”

“Keep going, do your best to avoid the next missile launch. Just one more, Skipper, and I reckon Jacks will get those fighters here.”

“He’d better,” he scowled. He looked across at the co-pilot. “Jerry, when they launch again, dump all of the chaff, everything we have. It’s a small chance, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“Acknowledged, dump all the chaff.”

Nolan heard the man mutter, “May as well throw fucking MREs at them, all the good it’ll do.”

He smiled. MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, were the famous, or infamous, sealed ration packs given out to troops in the field. Most were not enamored of them.

Have I got it wrong? Should we land? But if we do, Boswell will die. If we stay aloft, we might all die. Will Jacks get them here? What the hell should I do?

“Missiles launched, two missiles inbound, estimated six seconds to impact.”

Nolan tensed.

Is this the end of a long road? Have I called it wrongly and consigned these people to their deaths? Where are our fighters?

He grabbed Mariko as the sudden lurch of the helo flew her toward him, and he held her tight. The vapor trail stormed past, less than twenty meters off the port side, another miss.

The fourth missile exploded on the aft rotor shaft. The Pakistani pilot had come in from above them, and his missile was attracted to the aft engine. It was interrupted in its plunge at the rear turboshaft engine, or rather the heat given off by that engine, to hit the rotor shaft. The craft staggered in the air, but they all knew the hit was a mortal wound. They were finished. Every man aboard knew that. The only question was whether the pilot could bring down the unwieldy helo intact and keep them alive. Nolan held Mariko to him and watched as the two men fought the controls, trying every trick in the book, and a few that had never been written, to make a soft landing. The fuselage began to turn, picking up speed as the counter-rotating effect of the surviving engine and rotors made it more and more impossible to fly straight and level. They were losing height fast, and when he looked down, there was maybe thirty meters of sky beneath them, and then the possible safety of a flat plain. He pulled Mariko closer to him.

We’re going in hard, but it might be survivable if we can get away fast from the wreck. The risk of fire’s heavy. We might just walk away from the crash
.
Well, crawl away.

But the damage was too severe. The rear turboshaft was still trying to turn. The pilot had cut the engine and stopped the fuel supply in an effort to minimize the danger. Their speed worked against them, the rotors were still turning fast. Abruptly, the aft transmission assembly screeched in a parody of an animal in pain, then the bearings seized solid. Fragments of steel and aluminum ripped through the cabin as the engine and gearbox disintegrated, and he pushed Mariko into the co-pilots lap, where the guy’s body would shelter her. Nolan was still wearing the headset, but his helmet lay on the tilting floor of the aircraft. He’d removed it to don the headset. When a heavy chunk of the Chinook’s shaft finally broke adrift and slammed into his head, he pitched forward. Into blackness, into failure.