The Red Horseman (41 page)

He had walked for five minutes or so when he
heard the first rifle shots. Single shots, then the
staccato ripping of an automatic weapon.

The reports seemed loud.

When Jake Grafton’s chute opened, he
bounced once in the harness and breathed a
tremendous sigh of relief.

He quickly took off the oxygen mask and grabbed
for the steering cords on the parachute risers. He was
directly over a big hangar. He didn’t have a
lot of options, so he steered for the dark area behind it.
He seemed to be covefing ground quickly. Going
downwind. There was no help for it.

The breeze carried him well clear of the hangar.
He tried to make out the terrain where he would be coming
down.

Vague shapes-was that a truck? Then his feet
struck something and he took a vicious rap on the
left shin. He smacked into something else, then was on
the ground with a thump.

Opening his eyes, he found he was in a parking
lot. He had bounced off two trucks before he
got to the ground.

His shin felt like it was on fire.

He rolled over and tried to get up. His leg
took his weight but the pain brought tears into his
eyes. Holy-to

He pulled the chute down with the risers. Only
then did he unfasten his Koch fittings.

Aagh, his shin! He sat down heavily and felt
his left leg.

It was swelling rapidly and maybe bleeding, but it
didn’t seem to be broken.

He got the goggles off, the helmet off, then
donned the infrared night vision goggles. He found
the switch and adjusted the sensitivity. After
replacing his helmet, he wiggled out of the parachute
harness and the unopened backup chute. Now for the
silenced submachine gun. He tilted the goggles
up and made sure it was loaded, with the safety on.

Massaging his shin, he sat there trying to recall
where the truck parking area was on the field.

Yes, the hangar he wanted was that big one he
had floated over, that one over there.

Jake Grafton got to his feet and gingerly
hobbled to the gate. It wasn’t locked. He stood
there scanning with the goggles He could see figures
moving out beyond the hangars.

These blobs of red stayed low, moving swiftly and
surely, then stopped to reconnoiter. SEAL’S!
But closer in …

there! A sentry by a guard shack, looking out into the
darkness. Even as he watched, the sentry contorted and
collapsed onto the concrete.

Jake scanned. The shooter who had drilled the
sentry with a silenced weapon from almost a
hundred feet away began to creep along the side
of the hangar toward the door.

Jake opened the gate and hobbled toward the hangar
as fast as he could go.

The shooter by the hangar wall watched him come.
When he was five feet away, the man said,
“Jesus, CAG, what happened to your leg?”

Toad Tarkington!

“Banged it up. You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. Landed on some concrete. But
I don’t think this hangar is the one we want.
Aren’t we on the wrong side of the airfield?”

“You’re assuming this is the right airfield.”

“Don’t tell me.” Toad Tarkington pulled
a compass from his shirt. He consulted it. “This has
got to be the right airfield, but the wrong hangar.
Ours is over there.” He pointed.

Missiles streaked overhead before they could react.
They heard the explosions of the warheads detonating,
then the roar of jet engines at full military
power.

More jets. One went over with his cannon spitting
bursts Jake Grafton sat on the ground. He
pulled his map and a pencil flash from a leg pocket
and studied it while the jets worked over the
Iraqi armor beyond the field perimeter. Finally he
replaced the map and flash in his pocket.

“Help me up.”

“How bad’s your leg?”

“Ain’t broke. Come on. Let’s go.

With Toad leading and Jake hobbling along behind, the
two of them headed into the darkness of the center of the field
toward the distant hangars on the other side.

They had gone no more than a hundred feet when
they heard the small-arms fire. It seemed to be
coming from the perimeter.

“Well, they know we’re here,” Toad muttered.

They came to a drainage ditch and were wading through the
mud in the bottom when they heard the first chopper.

It swept across the field only a few feet
above the ground without a single light showing. Somewhere off
to the left it slowed, almost a hover, then kept going
toward the airfield perimeter, Jack Yocke
heard the background hum of the chopper engines, and he
heard several more of the machines coming across the city. These
were the Apaches, he assumed, the gunships that were
to act as heavy artillery under the direction of the
SEAL’S on the ground.

But he was on the wrong side of the fight. He was
supposed to be inside the airfield
perimeter, under cover.

Goddamnit!

Nothing in war ever goes the way you planned it.
Wasn’t that what Jake Grafton told him as
they waited to board the plane?

Explosions ahead. Flashes, and after a few
seconds, the noise, which swept down the night
streets in waves that could almost be felt. And the roar
of automatic gunfire.

Burst after burst.

A man opened a second-story window and stuck
his head out. He saw Yocke and ducked his head
back in.

That lump in the pit of Yocke’s stomach turned
cold. He was sweating profusely now. Unable to do
anything else, he kept going, toward the gunfire.

He came to a corner and approached it
carefully. The firing was loud now, no more than a
block away. Close against the side of a building
and sheltered in darkness, he waited until a
helicopter swept over and eased his head around. And
found himself staring straight into the face of a man just a
few feet away.

Yocke swung the weapon and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.

Mother of God! The safety! He tried to find
it.

There was no time. The Iraqi came for him in a
rush.

Yocke swung the gun barrel, still trying to find
the safety, and literally pushed the man away with the
barrel. But he kept coming.

Galvanized, Yocke pushed him again, this time
using his left hand.

He felt the bite of the knife on his arm. It
stung.

The knife gleamed in the man’s right hand as he
crouched, then flung himself at the reporter.

Yocke was at least six inches taller than the
Iraqi and twenty pounds heavier and his terror gave
him tremendous strength, which probably saved his
life. Somehow he got hold of the Iraqi’s right
wrist and began to twist. As the two men fell to the
ground the knife came loose.

Yocke got it.

And rammed it into the Iraqi’s body. Twice,
three times, jabbing with all his strength.

The Iraqi groaned once, almost a scream, then
the strength drained from him.

Yocke stabbed him three or four more
times, then rolled away.

He lay beside the dead man, trying to get his
breath.

Sticky. His hands were sticky and wet.

His arm was burning.

Horrified, he looked at the blood. On his
hands, his arm, his clothes, the gear he wore. On the
Iraqi. Smeared on the sidewalk.

Jack Yocke managed to get to his feet and
stood swaying as the sounds of battle came echoing
down the empty street. Amazingly, he discovered
he still had the knife in his hand. He opened his fingers.
The knife made a hollow sound when it bounced on
the sidewalk, Sobbing, Yocke examined the
submachine gun still slung around his shoulders and found
the safety. He flicked it Off.

The Apache helicopters were pouring fire into an
area by the main gate, about two hundred yards
away, as Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington
lay in the darkness on the edge of the concrete parking
mat and studied the hangar looming ahead of them.
Lights mounted above the center of the main door and by a
sentry box at the left corner were still illuminated.

What the lights revealed were bodies. Jake
counted.

Eight. Even as he watched, one of the men lying
near the hangar moved, and drew immediate fire from out of the
darkness on Jake’s right. With the goggles on,
Jake could see the prone figure who had just fired.

“The SEAL’S are here,” Toad whispered.
“Isn’t this Saddam’s safety-deposit box, the
Treasure Chest?”

“I think so.”

“There’s a personnel door over behind that sentry
box.

We might be able to get in there.”

“Let’s check in first. Keep an eye
peeled.”

Jake extracted his radio and fumbled with the
switches.

Then he held it to his ear and keyed the mike.
“Snake One, this is the Doctor.” Snake One
was the commanding officer of the SEAL team, Commander Lester
Stick. Slick was a hell of a name for a naval
officer but if anyone snickered they did it well
away from Lester, who had the body of a professional
wrestler and the scarred face of a man who liked
to fight and had done far too much of it.

“Snake One, aye. Say your posit.”

“By the target hangar, west side.”

“Wait one.

They waited in the darkness, listening to the battle’
Jake removed his night vision goggles and let his
eyes adjust.

The radio squawked. “Snake One, this is
Snake Four.

There’s four of us out here in the middle of a whole
goddamn raghead platoon.”

“Fight your way in, Snake Four. You’re
behind schedule.

That was Lester Stick. If you wanted sympathy,
write home to mama.

“Roger.” Jake looked at his watch. In six
minutes the first of the Blackhawks was scheduled
to arrive.

“Okay, gang, this is Snake One. Let’s
start moving in on the Treasure Chest.”

Jake and Toad rose from the ground and scuttled
toward the hangar. As they came into the light he saw
five other men, SEAL’S, coming at a trot.

“Let’s get inside,” Jake told Toad,
and went for the personnel door by the sentry box.

Jake opened the door and stepped into a foyer, a
dead space to keep out blowing sand. Toad was right behind
him. They paused and listened, then Toad
opened the inner door several inches while Jake
peeked through the opening.

He stepped back and motioned for Toad to close
the door.

“Over a dozen men. Some armed,” Jake
whispered.

“The nukes?”

“A lot of them.”

“Whoo boy!”

“There’s a door in the east side, by the
aircraft door,” Jake said.

“It’s open. I’m gonna step out and look around
the corner. Open the door for me.” His heart was
hammering, he was perspiring freely, and he was
breathing hard, as if he had run ten miles, but when
Toad opened the door he slipped back outside.

The light over the doorway outside had to go.
Jake reached up and broke it with the silencer on the
end of the submachine gun. Then he inched his head around
the corner of the hangar. Just bodies visible. He
ran the length of the building as fast as his sore leg
would allow and paused at the next corner by the sentry
box, then cautiously inched his head out.

There was a trailer or something, a dozen or so
armed Iraqis, some of them looking this way.
He jerked his head back.

The fat was in the fire. They must have seen him. A
grenade!

He got one from his web belt, pulled the pin,
then threw it as hard as he could around the corner. When
it blew he leaned out a few inches and let go with the
silenced weapon.

Three men were down. The nearest man was picking
himself up off the concrete, just twenty feet away.
Jake’s slugs smacked him and he went over
backward, his weapon flying. Jake sprayed
another burst at the men by the trader, then ducked
back into shelter.

Bullets splattered into the metal of the hangar just
above his head as the ripping of a weapon echoed off the
clustered buildings. Jake crouched, looking for the
muzzle blasts.

There! He squeezed off a burst as he
scuttled sideways for the dubious safety of the
sentry box.

More bullets spanged in.

Now he took his time, sighting carefully: this was
what the Iraqi hadn’t done. He squeezed the
trigger and held the muzzle down. And saw the
Iraqi fall from behind a barrel where he had
taken cover.

Quickly he took the empty magazine from his
weapon and inserted another.

Now back to the corner. Another burst at
figures now trying to get behind the trailer.

There was a car there. A car? A limo, it looked
like.

Shots from inside the hangar. Toad must have gone
in.

Jake heaved another grenade.

After it exploded, he looked again. The car was right
beside the trailer, the passenger door open. Two men
were hosing lead in this direction. The car was also facing
this way.

Jake got down on his belly and aimed his
weapon at the front tires of the car. The two men
who were upright now went down, dropping their weapons.
Jake gave the tires a whole clip.

New magazine inserted, Even though its front
tires were flat, the limo started to move.
Grafton pumped a burst into the engine compartment and
watched as a cloud of steam came out. The limo
stopped.

The gunfire on the western side of the base was
building into a sustained racket.
Grafton looked around. A SEAL was running
toward him, his weapon at the ready.

The SEAL flopped down behind Jake. “Go into the
hangar and help out,” Jake said. “One of our
guys is in there.

Be careful where you shoot.”

Without a word the other man got up and went into the
hangar.

Jake lay where he was, watching the limo and the
trailer by the hangar wall. No one moved.

A helicopter swept over. Then another.
Running without fights. Rockets rippled from a
third machine and streaked away to the west. Now
Jake heard the roar of a 30mm cannon. This
machine was barely moving, pouring fire at several
tanks just outside the perimeter fence. The wash from the
rotors of this machine fanned Jake.