Undeclared War (29 page)

The fishing boat had pulled up to the dock and a bunch of shouting men charged toward the house and the hillside beyond. Bear let them exit the boat. Then he opened fire.

Normally, a machine gun is fired in short, controlled bursts. But Bear had no interest in keeping to regulation fire right then. He hadn't anywhere to go, and had plenty of ammunition. The time had come to burn some up. The belt zipped from the ammunition box, feeding the voracious appetite of the machine gun as Bear watched his bullets rip gouts of
dirt and grass from the lawn. A lot of those bullets also tore into terrorists. When the first ammunition box emptied, Bear pulled it from the weapon and tossed it away. Quickly reloading with another box, he laid the Shrike back down on his targets.

The long bursts of 5.56mm fired from the Shrike up on the hill ripped across the walls of the mansion. The thick limestone rock that faced the walls of the structure chipped a bit as they easily resisted the onslaught. Windows, doorways, and other openings proved another matter. The high-speed, steel-cored bullets whizzed through the open doorways and tore through the house, ripped and smashed furniture as cushions, dishes, books, and artwork burst and exploded off the shelves and walls.

Three of the terrorists took the weapons they had brought from the boat and ran up to the second floor of the mansion. Quickly diving through several of the rear bedroom's windows, the terrorists made it to the roof above the rear porch without being hit from the machine gun on the point of the ridge only a few hundred meters away. Shooting at that range would be nothing for the men of the Sons of Ishmael; they had trained to fire accurately at much longer ranges.

Bear knew that he would see some real trouble from the roof if he didn't do something about it. He fired the last of his belt through the Shrike in one long burst of fire, raking the lower floors and making sure that anyone who was there would be keeping their heads down for a while. Then he rolled over to the big Lahti antitank rifle. The limestone walls of that big castle might keep the bullets from the Shrike from penetrating into the house, but the
builders had never envisioned a rifle this big when they were putting that place up. And the terrorists who took cover behind those upper walls probably thought themselves safe for the moment.

Crawling up to the weapon, Bear picked up the butt end of the big cannon and loaded it. Bright shiny brass shone through each of the three holes in the back of the magazine, indicating that the box was fully loaded. That meant that ten of the foot-long 20mm shells sat in the mag, ready to be fired. Each hardened-steel projectile had been designed to penetrate more than half an inch of armor plate at five hundred meters. They wouldn't have a lot of trouble with the rock walls of the mansion.

Snugging the curved, padded shoulder rest into place, Bear grabbed the silver knob of the rack-and-pinion cocking mechanism on the right side of the gun, right above the pistol grip. Pushing in on the knob unlocked the mechanism. One and a half rotations of the knob pulled the massive bolt back against its springs until it locked in place in the fully rearward position.

A squeeze on the switch on the pistol grip, underneath the trigger guard, released the bolt and it surged forward, stripping a round from the magazine and ramming it into place in the breech of the barrel. Just the sound of the big bolt slamming forward startled Bear a little bit and he jerked his head up. Dirt and wood chips flew from the log he lay behind as a powerful rifle slug slammed right next to where Bear's head had been a moment before.

Somebody in the house had a good idea of where Bear was, but the SEAL had managed to catch a
glimpse of the muzzle flash of the rifle that shot at him from behind cover on the roof of the mansion. With the big weapon pulled in hard against his shoulder, Bear tracked the cannon across the house and settled in on the roof area where he had seen the shot come from. He started to squeeze the trigger.

The thundering concussion of the big antitank weapon smashed into Bear's face and the muzzle blast kicked up dirt and leaves in front of his position. Whoever had fired at him absolutely knew where the SEAL hid now. There was no use saving it, he wouldn't be moving this massive gun from his present position. So Bear gritted his teeth, and kept pulling the trigger and the Finnish war machine he controlled started to pump out over 2,200 grain (148 gram) slugs, pushing them through its fifty-one-inch barrel until they left the muzzle at more that 2,600 feet per second (800 meters per second).

 

Kedar had been a sniper during the jihad against the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan. Many troopers fell to his marksmanship with the long SVD Dragunov rifle. His first shot had been rushed and aimed at nothing more than movement up on the ridge. He had missed but the machine gun fire had stopped for the moment and he had the patience of all who had fought the infidels in Afghanistan.

All Kedar had to do was get a single glimpse of whoever fired at them from the woods and he knew that he could bring him down easily. Distances on the island were nothing to someone who had shot across the crags and valleys of Afghanistan. Hidden
as he was behind one of the rock crenelations decorating this decadent infidel house, he knew it was only a matter of time before his prey fell to him. Then there came a brilliant flash up on the hillside.

Before the sound of the shot even reached the house, the first of the huge, hardened-steel projectiles fired from the 20mm rifle smashed its way through twelve inches of limestone. The round had been intended to kill the smaller and lighter tanks of World War II and the soft limestone of Ohio was no match for its power. Shards and chips exploded from the inner face of the rock, spraying the terrorists crouching on the roof with the razor-edged fragments. In spite of passing through several layers of rock, the shotgun-shell-sized projectile still had more than enough energy to kill.

Before Kedar could think “Allah is great” and long before he could react to seeing the dust and debris kicked up by the muzzle blast on the crest of the ridge, he fell dead. The Finnish-made tank killer entered his left shoulder, at the base of his neck. The thundering bullet bisected the terrorist's body completely—exiting at his upper right thigh after making a hash of almost every one of his internal organs.

Bear's second and third rounds struck little more than limestone as they smashed through what proved nothing more than a decorative parapet. The mansion may have looked like a castle, but it couldn't stand up to a siege with modern weapons—not even those sixty years old.

The blue-painted steel projectiles and whizzing rock fragments caused three of the terrorists—Mibsam, Dumah, and Adbeel—on the roof to duck
down and cover their heads. They had all been under fire in the mountains of Afghanistan, and 7.62mm steel-cored slugs from Soviet PKM machine guns had tossed rock splinters at them before. Even the finger-sized 12.7mm slugs from the powerful DShK “Dashaka” machine guns on the Soviet tanks had smashed up rocks and caused injuries from the chips and shards. But nowhere had they faced bullets that passed right through the rock, causing the stone itself to explode.

Some of the projectiles from the 20mm cannon may not have struck anything more than stone, but the stone itself did more than a little damage. Adbeel had faced Soviet fire in Afghanistan, military weapons in the Sudan, and Serbian steel in Bosnia. In his combat experience, he had never felt pain such as that coursing through his body at that moment. Screaming, he looked at the shattered remnants of his right hand, and the red-stained six-inch splinter of stone that stuck through it, severing the median nerve as it eliminated any future use of the now paralyzed lump of bleeding flesh.

Adbeel's suffering was short-lived, as was the terrorist, when Bear's 20mm cannon finished the job.

As Adbeel screamed and reacted to his wound, his left hand lifted the PG-7 rocket grenade it held. He had prepared the missile for Mibsam's launcher; his fellow warrior was kneeling right next to him. The blast of the powerful RPG-7v launcher was capable of killing a main battle tank, it would have made short work of a simple machine-gun position. But before the round had been loaded, it had been pushed into the path of Bear's fourth shot.

The 20mm projectile smashed through the fluted-metal cone that made up the nose of the RPG-7 rocket warhead. The 380-gram (over half a pound) loading of A-IX-1 high explosive in the shaped-charge RPG-7 warhead did not react to being violated by the 20mm steel slug passing through it. The smaller, but much more sensitive, base detonating element of the fuse was not so forgiving. When the 20mm slug smashed into the 21.8 grams of PETN that made up the detonating booster, it reacted and the fuse element initiated the detonation of the 95 percent RDX explosive filler of the warhead. The resulting blast also detonated the other two RPG-7 rocket rounds that were in a pouch lying on the rooftop. All three high-explosive warheads went up in a sympathetic detonation.

The multiple explosions turned the area behind the parapets into a maelstrom of thundering concussions, flying steel splinters, and ripping shards of rock. The blasts cleared the parapets of functioning terrorists. The body of Miasma, the most experienced RPG gunner of the Sons of Ishmael, flew from the roof, over the crenelations, and down to the flagstones below. Even in death, Miasmaa held on to the weapon he had used so much in life. The loaded RPG-7v launcher lay across the terrorist's body and it sprawled across the stones like an ugly, abandoned puppet.

 

The size and ferocity of the explosion surprised Bear as he lay next to the Lahti antitank rifle. The SEAL didn't know what he had hit, only that the results were spectacular. The orange-white ball of flame from the
exploding Soviet munitions put on a good show in addition to the bad guys on the other side of the wall.

Five more rounds from the big antitank rifle fired across the parapets, the big slugs smashing stone, wood, and anything else that got in their way with equal contempt. Even a man as big as Bear got slammed around by the recoil of the Lahti as it rocked back against the springs in its bipod mount. If it hadn't been for the efficiency of the multiholed harmonica muzzle break mounted to the barrel of the gun, the recoil would have been uncontrollable. As it was, the recoil, though fierce, seemed not as bad as the thundering concussion of each shot as it fired.

It took a lot of powder to push that big slug down the long barrel of the Lahti. And that much powder also made a really big bang. His ears now rang painfully, so Bear could no longer hear anything around him, but he could still see quite well.

From the far side of the house, initially out of his sight, the remaining terrorists made a break for the boats that they had left only short minutes before. The docks lay almost four hundred meters away from the house, but the remaining terrorists made a good attempt at imitating Olympic sprinters. They had no idea of the nature of the big gun that had started to tear through the house around them, but they did know they wanted no part of it. Besides, the bulk of their remaining weapons and ammunition remained aboard the two boats.

As the terrorists ran, Bear yanked the now-empty magazine from the top of the Lahti. By his count, there was still a round in the chamber. But he would need something with a little more power, though
maybe not as much penetration, as the armor-piercing rounds had given him. One magazine had a broad red stripe around its body. That bright red tape identified the only magazine out of the four they brought that held high-explosive (HE) rounds.

Pulling the big magazine over to him, Bear struggled to lift the heavy ammunition device up and into the Lahti. The massive muscles of his strong body started to fail him at last, his shoulder being badly bruised from the 20mm's recoil not helping any. But he still had the energy and determination to lift the HE magazine up and snap it down and back into place.

Bear knew that his end had finally come. He didn't fear it—death was not only something he had worked with during his SEAL career, but something that he had learned to live with over the past six months. Everybody died, no one got off the planet alive, at least not permanently. But he still had this job to do. His Teammates, his friends, his brothers, all depended on him. It was not in his makeup to let them down and it somehow made his dying have more meaning.

For a few seconds the world seemed to darken, the raging tumor announcing itself in a new way.

The terrorists split up into two groups, the larger band of four men piled aboard the broad-hulled fishing boat and fired up its still-warm engine. The smaller group of three men, including the retreating leader, Ishmael himself, clambered aboard the Fountain Fever speedboat. The big, twin 320-horse-power Mercury engines of the speedboat rumbled and then roared as they started and quickly came up to full throttle. The big, heavy diesel of the fishing
boat made much less noise as black smoke belched out of its exhaust stacks.

The speedboat pulled away and accelerated swiftly as Bear finally brought the big 20mm gun into play against the vessels. He slid the rear sight adjustment forward to account for the range he had to use to get to the boats. The speedboat moved too fast for Bear to expect to get a clean shot into it. The fishing boat was another matter.

Steeling himself against the recoil and punishing noise of the shots, Bear opened fire on the fishing boat. From the muzzle of the cannon, 20mm high-explosive shells, intended to destroy light-skinned vehicles or rip apart World War II fighter planes, slashed into the boat hull, passed through the fiberglass and exploded on the other side.

Tearing open the fuel tanks of the fishing boat, the HE rounds soon had even the hard-to-burn diesel fuel merrily ablaze. As the small vessel started to list to one side and founder, survivors of Bear's high-explosive fusillade tried to jump overboard. When the flames and explosions of the 20mm shells reached the ammunition and explosive stores aboard the terrorist boat only a few seconds later, the thunderous blast left little more than a hole in the water, which immediately closed over the heads of the terrorists' bodies to form a watery grave.