Bakr Majali had been a street child in Jordan until he joined the madrassa. There he was fed and trained in the Word of God. The madrassas were supposed to teach things other than just the Koran, but for most that was enough. He had been filled with the words of Mohammed, living on the sufferance of the good Islamics who contributed to the support of the madrassa, and growing day by day in his hatred of the infidel. He was a Palestinian, one of the millions that made up the bulk of the population of Jordan. And besides the Word of God he was filled with the stories of the suffering of his people, both at the hands of the Jews and at the hands of the Hashemites who ruled Jordan.
He had planted his first bomb when he was barely twelve and had lived his life as a mujahideen, first as a street fighter, then as a leader. Over the years his fervor had died, but he still fought for the only cause he had ever known. He had no other skills than those of a terrorist.
He had been sent on this mission because of his knowledge of English and his loyalty to the cause. And he intended to both survive and succeed, despite this infidel who stood in their way.
The man was very good, as good as an Israeli commando, but he was but one man. And he had never fought the likes of Bakr Majali. Bakr had learned long ago that standing in the middle of the street and firing off a whole magazine, like Rambo in some action movie, was never going to kill the enemies of Allah. Silence was required, and aiming and hiding. But a good grenade never hurt.
He heard the faint movement as the commando neared the house. It was so faint it was nearly lost on the night wind, but it was there, the soft compression of the sand, a crackle of leaf. He quietly pulled the pin on the grenade and then threw it around the corner.
Mike lay flat, taking the impact of the grenade as much as he could on his armor and helmet. Most grenade fragments tended to fly upwards when the device hit the ground, and they did this time. But he could feel some of them ripping into his legs and arms.
It was the latter that caused him to be slow as the figure leaned around the corner, quickly spotting him in the faint starlight and opening fire at the figure on the ground. Mike felt the aimed rounds track across his back, most of them stopped by the armor, and then into his legs. But he stayed in the prone, targeting the figure in return and put a burst into his chest. The figure, though, stayed upright, continuing to fire, and he felt more rounds flail into his legs and a sharp, stabbing, pain in his left arm that caused him to flinch and let go of the weapon with that hand. He pointed the weapon like a pistol and threw three more bursts of 5.56 into the target, sending him staggering backwards to fall on his back.
Allah's curse on all Westerners and their damned body armor, Bakr thought as he lay on the ground looking at the stars. The bullets had slammed into him like so many punches and while he'd continued to fire, he could feel his life seeping away. Now he could no longer move. He looked at the fading stars and thought of the words of the mullahs in that faraway madrassa. Allah, the Kind, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Allahu Akbar. Allah is Great. There is no God besides Allah. To die in battle . . .
His left arm was useless; the bullet seemed to have broken the ulnar bone. Mike used his right arm to pull himself forward, trying to get to the open area where he could cover the retreating mujahideen and stop them from departing with the bomb. He couldn't get to his feet, either, and he was worried that one or more of the bullets might have punched an artery. If so, he might bleed out before he could get back to the battle.
He crawled forward, the pain so great that it was causing an endorphin rush high, dragging his useless legs and arm, each bump making him nearly scream in agony. But he kept his mouth shut until he was at the edge of the sea grape that cloaked the west side of the building.
The remaining mujahideen were wheeling the bomb down to the waterline. He propped himself against a palm tree, compensating for the faint sway, and lined up the one who was doing the most pushing.
Haroun Arif was terrified and elated. Although the apparently lone commando had nearly stopped them from securing the bomb, they were almost to the boats. A few more meters and they would have it in the boat and be gone. Let the Americans try to stop them then. With all the losses the cells had taken, it would be hard to smuggle the weapon all the way into America, but they would persevere. Allah was with them and . . .
He felt the punch in his back before he processed the faint cracks behind him. Suddenly, his legs were not working as well and his vision was going black. His hands slipped from the handle of the bomb carrier and he slipped to his knees.
"Allah is Merciful," he whispered. "Great is Allah . . ."
Mike started to target the other two, but one of them pushed the bomb carrier over on its side and the two crouched behind it. He couldn't get a clear shot at them from where he was, so he painfully started crawling to the side, keeping one eye on them and the other on the boats.
Assadolah Shaath had been a physics student at Princeton University when he was recruited to the jihad. He had traveled first to Syria and then to the camps in Afghanistan before the invasion by the infidel. There he had tried to use his skills to create such a bomb as he now touched, but it was beyond his ability given the conditions and what he had to work with. But he knew how they worked. As had Jalal Azhiri, one of the Brethren who had waited in the darkness until the American cowboy came and sent him into Allah's arms.
But, as he had been told, the bomb had already been rigged for destruction. Setting it off in America would be better than here, but just having it go off near America was surely better than losing it entirely. And with only he and Halim Shahid left, it was more than likely that the American would soon recapture it.
However, while he believed in the Great Jihad, he had no interest in martyrdom. He had many skills the jihad needed. So he opened up the arming panel and keyed in a sequence.
"What are you doing?" Halim asked, nervously.
"Setting the bomb to blow," Assadolah answered. "When I am done, we will run to the boats and drive away. There will be enough time for us to escape, but not enough for the American to disarm it. This will send a message to the world that Allah is Great."
Mike could see one of the targets crouched behind the weapon but the other was still covered. He lined him up and fired carefully.
Halim let out a grunt and reared up as something thudded into his body. As he lifted himself, there were more thuds, like thunking a melon, and he collapsed. Assadolah reached up and wiped at a wetness on his cheek, the hand coming away black in the faint light.
"Allah is Great," Assadolah said, keying the last sequence and closing the box. "Let Allah be Merciful."
The second terrorist suddenly leapt to his feet and ran for the boats. Mike tracked him but couldn't quite hit the moving target despite two bursts in his direction. The tango darted behind one of the cigarette boats and then Mike could faintly see him tumbling over the side. Suddenly, the engine coughed to life and the boat started backing up, like the first one dragging its anchor.
This time, though, the terr backed straight up, engine at max, the anchor leaping out of the sand and bounding into the water. Mike tried to target the driver, but with only one arm he could barely keep the boat in his sights. He fired some shots but then the bolt locked back on an empty mag.
Changing out the magazine with only one arm, on his stomach, was a pain not only in the ass but in every wound. And his vision was going funny again. He realized he was bleeding out, but he wanted to get this last damned terrorist. However, before he could even get the magazine changed, the terrorist darted forward, cut the anchor rope, spun the boat around and was moving out of range.
Mike crawled towards the bomb painfully, wondering if there were any remaining tangos and not really caring anymore. He was going to do the same thing as the target, set up by the bomb and use it for cover until he either bled out or the FAST guys showed up.
It took him nearly three minutes to crawl across the sand to the bomb and slide around behind it. When he got there, he pulled out his bag of field-expedient bandages and tried to give himself first aid. Most of the rounds, however, were in places he couldn't reach anymore. He got a tampon in his arm, nearly screaming at the pain, and another in a big hole in his leg. The holes in his legs were filled with sand, as well, and the tampon wasn't particularly fun to put in.
By the end of getting the bleeding reduced—and he knew it was only reduced, not stopped—he was panting and his vision was going in and out. But he noticed a blue glow from a panel on what would be the top of the bomb. Cautiously, he lifted the panel and then blanched. There was a countdown clock and it was just passing twenty minutes.
He thought about that for a second and then did the only thing he could think of, crawling towards the nearest remaining cigarette boat. He could sort of use his legs, especially the right one, and he used his right arm and that leg to pull himself up with the anchor rope and onto the bow.
He cut the anchor rope and then slid across the front of the boat, around the windscreen and then more or less fell into the driver's seat, finally crying out at the pain of the impact. There was a dead body on the floor of the cockpit, but he ignored it, taking his weapon off and setting it on the seat beside him.
There was a glowing GPS on the dash with a track on it. Clearly that was the way the boats had taken in and it was, hopefully, a way out.
He started the boat, reversed it, spun it around much more expertly than the muj, and got the hell out of Dodge.
"What is he doing?" Colonel Pierson said, watching the take from the satellite. "I'm pretty sure that's Winter Born."
"I don't know," the guy in civilian clothes said. He was pretty clearly CIA, but one of the "field" hands, a big, burly, bearded guy who looked out of place in the suit he was wearing. "He's leaving the device."
"Is he after the remaining terrorist?" Captain Polumbo wondered. The captain was a SEAL currently working in OSOL like Pierson and had been called in for consultation on the waterborne aspects of the op.
"He looked at the device and then immediately went to the boat," Pierson said. "We don't have commo with him, yet, do we?"
"Negative," the technician manning the console replied. "The FAST team is inbound by helicopter," he added, pointing to an overhead map. "They're seven minutes out. The range on those radios is only about ten klicks, though. I'm not sure they're ever going to be in range."
Pierson thought about Mike's actions, then blanched. He picked up a phone at his place at the table and punched a button.
"General," he said. "Request that the FAST divert to close with Agent Winter Born. The nuke may repeat may be armed at this time."
Mike could barely keep conscious. He was driving in a pool of blood and his vision kept creeping in and out. But he kept his eye on the GPS and kept driving, going as fast as he could given his condition.
The track was not constant, since it wove in and out of the shoals in the banks. But he was reaching the edge of the Banks now, and as soon as he hit open water he was going to push this thing up to full speed and put his ass to the blast.
He was just reaching the edge of the Banks when his radio crackled to life.
"Winter Born, Winter Born," the voice said. "FAST Three. What is your situation?"
Mike slowed the boat for a moment and propped the wheel with his still mostly functional right leg.
"The nuke is armed," Mike said. "Get clear. I read it as about five minutes to detonation." With that he dropped the radio, put the boat back up to power and headed for the edge of the Banks.
"Holy crap," the pilot of Seahawk 412 said, turning the helicopter to the side and going to max power, nose down and hauling.
"FAST, this is SOCOM Six," the sat radio said. "Copy weapon armed. Abort, abort, abort. Move towards Agent Winter Born's position. After detonation, recover if possible. Navy surface support is inbound. If you have to ditch, they have your location."
"Roger," Captain Talbot said, keying his mike and nodding. "We need to get clear, ASAP." He turned to the team and waved. "Mission is ay-bort! Weapon is armed. Say, again, weapon is armed. Prepare for ditching maneuvers!"
Mike had strapped himself into the seat and the boat was now on autopilot, slamming southeast as fast as it could go. He couldn't really see anymore, his vision going gray and red at the impacts of the speedboat over the waves that remained from the storm. He wasn't sure if the thing was going to go airborne first or if he was going to bleed out or the bomb was going to detonate. When it did, it would send a tsunami in every direction. The girls were probably going to be fine. The Banks weren't going to allow for a major wave and they were not only ten miles away but shielded by the small islands. He, however, was still less than five, with nothing between him and the bomb but open water.
The boat hit a particularly bad wave, going airborne, its engine screaming, as the world suddenly went white. He saw that, but it was really the last thing he remembered.
"Oh shit," the Seahawk's pilot said, quietly, as a new sun erupted to her northeast. Captain Kacey Bathlick was a short-coupled brunette with moderate breasts and shapely legs who had wanted to be a pilot since she had read her first Dragonriders of Pern book. She had considered all three services before opting for the Marines. She'd joined the Marines because she considered herself just as much of a warrior as the "cargo" in the back, and over the years she had handled more than a few midair emergencies. But, as her stick and all her instruments went dead from the nearby EMP, she admitted to herself that she'd much rather have been fighting Thread on Pern. "BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!" she shouted in a throaty contralto as she prepared to autorotate.
"EVAC!" Captain Talbot yelled, yanking open the troop door. He grabbed the FAST Marine next to him as the trooper dropped his armor, and tossed him out the door, then followed, yanking the quick releases on his armor in midair.
The technique the Marines used was called helocast. It was a fast water-entry method that could also be used for just such emergencies. Talbot rotated his body in midair to turn his back into the motion of the helicopter. By holding his nose and putting the body in a "half-pike" position it was possible to enter the water from rather high and rather fast.
But normally not quite as high as they were, and not as fast. And then there was the fact that the helicopter was falling towards them. The last thing Talbot saw before his feet hit the water was the rotating blades of the chopper above him coming down.
As his feet hit, his body was tumbled backwards so that it hit on the legs and then butt, breaking into the water in a V formation with a tremendous splash, the speed of the impact actually causing him to tumble in the water. The impact drove the air out of his lungs, but he automatically hit the inflator on his buoyancy vest and bobbed back to the surface just as the chopper hit, with a tremendous splash, less than thirty meters from his position, one of the still-rotating blades slapping the water not far from his nose and then sinking out of sight as the helicopter rolled over . . .
Autorotation was, conceptually, simple. As a helicopter fell, its blades tended to pick up the spin of the air running across them. By occasionally reversing the pitch of the blades, it was possible to use their momentum to get momentary lift.
However, it worked much better at, say, a thousand feet, than at two hundred. The props continued to spin for a moment, giving her a smidgeon of lift, then stopped and reversed. She was an expert pilot and had practiced autorotation hundreds of times. And she knew damned well there was not nearly enough rotation going to slow them as she reversed. But they were going in, no question, and any lift was better than no lift as the helicopter plunged towards the tossing sea.
"Oh, well," her left seat said. "At least the water will be warm."
"I'm just hoping to survive the impact," Kacey snapped, reversing the blades at the last moment possible. There was a smidgeon of lift again and then they hit the water's surface. Hard.
Mike came to lolling on the sea, boat engine dead. There was a new sun just dying to the northeast and in the light of it he could see a helicopter pinwheeling into the ocean to his northwest. It hit with one hell of a splash, then immediately turned over and began to sink, fast.
The engine had cut, but he managed to nurse it to life and turned the boat northwest, breathing ragged and the pain getting to be unimaginable. Spray had covered him, the salt like fire in his wounds.
As he was running northwest he glanced towards the direction of the dying fireball and, in the luminance of lightning crackling across its surface, saw one hell of a wave headed for his position. He turned into it, the boat lifting into the air again, and crashed to the water on the far side. He nearly passed out from the wave of pain and let out a shriek.
"Crap, that hurt," he muttered. "This had better be worth it."
The impact had been bad, but Kacey had gotten enough lift at the last moment that the water had only come up to cover the windows for a second. Then the Seahawk rolled over and started to sink. Choppers have, effectively, no buoyancy so the multiton aircraft went under like a stone.
"Everybody out!" she shouted, taking a last gulp of breath as the water in the cabin rose up to her chest level.
The water was already over the fast-sinking chopper, but she'd trained for this eventuality. She found her chest and waist and removed her harness. Then she moved her right knee to the door and used it to find the door handle. She opened the door handle, grabbed the edges of the door, and headed out into open water. Her side was down so she had to pull herself around the chopper into the open water. She had her eyes open so she could vaguely see the rotor of the chopper going past, windmilling, and it was a sight she hoped she'd never see again in her life. Assuming her life lasted more than a few seconds.
As lack of air got to her, causing a sudden panic reaction, she remembered the other thing she was supposed to be doing and reached for her Helicopter Emergency Egress Device. This was a small tank of air, generally kept on one or the other leg, that could be used for just such a situation. She yanked the HEEDs off her right leg, put it in her mouth and blew out, clearing the regulator, then sucked in a glorious lungful of air. That problem covered, she started kicking for the surface, breathing in and out as trained.
When she got there she did a quick head count. The wind was blowing like a son-of-a-bitch and it was hard to count bobbing heads. But she got a glimpse of her co and crew chief and that was all she really cared about. Her responsibility for cargo ended when she got them on the ground, or in the water as the case might be. She hit the release on her Personal Flotation Device, called a Mae West by all and sundry, and rolled up to the surface of the water.
"Hey," her co called. "Nice landing. Any one you can walk away from . . . or float as it may be . . ."
"Oh, shut up, Tammy," Kacey snapped.
"Form up!" Captain Talbot yelled, grabbing Private Gowey as he passed. "Get in a group! Don't get separated!"
Gunny Hilton came crawling over dragging Sergeant Goweda, who seemed to have taken a hit on the head and was mildly incoherent. They'd managed to hang onto their Mae Wests on the exit, at least.
"Where's Pawlick?" the Gunny said, looking around the group.
"I think we lost him, Gunny," Sergeant Klip said. "I don't think he made it out of the bird."
"Fuck," Hilton muttered. "Sir, all of the team is present and accounted for except Lance Corporal Pawlick."
"Thank you, Gunny," the captain said. Everybody had their Mae Wests inflated and he could see the pilots and their crew chief moving towards the group. "The good news is that we were being watched as we went down. The bad news is that our locator beacons probably took a hit from the EMP just like the chopper. So I hope they find us fast."
"I hope they find us, period, sir," Klip said, looking around. "There's lots of sharks in these waters."
"Hey," Captain Bathlick said as she backstroked over and hooked into the group. "Sorry about that. The EMP took out all my controls."
"Figured as much," Captain Talbot replied.
"Anybody got any shark repellent?" Klip said. "I got followed by one of those bastards on an op and I don't care for them at all."
"Got it," the crew chief said, lifting out a canister and dumping it in the water. It quickly spread and dyed the waters bright yellow. "There's supposed to be a frigate out there somewhere. Hopefully they'll find us soon."
"I dunno," Talbot said, looking towards the dwindling mushroom cloud. "We're drifting pretty fast. And there's going to be worries about fallout. We'd better be prepared to spend some time in the drink."
"Great," Bathlick said, grinning. "Know any good dirty jokes? I've got a million of 'em."
"Sir," Private Gowey said, kicking upwards. "I think I just saw a boat." He pointed southwards and kicked up again.
"Sure is," Gunny Hilton said. The sun was starting to rise and it was just possible to glimpse a cigarette boat inbound on a snaking course. "But I'm not sure if that's good or bad. There's lots of cigarette boats in these waters we don't want to meet."
"And whoever is driving that doesn't look as if he knows what he's doing," Captain Bathlick observed.
The cigarette boat seemed to spot them and came forward, occasionally crabbing on the waves. It stopped just short of their position and started drifting to the south in the north wind.
"Gowey," Talbot snapped. "Dump your Mae West and try like hell to catch that thing."
Gowey slid out of his vest and down under the group, surfacing to the south and crawling fast towards the boat. He'd dropped his boots earlier and was a very strong swimmer, but by the time he got to the boat it was nearly a hundred meters away.
It was drifting away nose forward and he managed to snag the dive platform at the rear, dragging himself into the boat. The first thing he saw was a body on the floor of the cockpit, but he ignored it. There was another person, in armor, behind the wheel, slumped to one side and only held up by the four-point restraints for the driver.
He wasn't sure if the guy was alive or dead, but he had other things on his mind. He undid the restraints, dumping the driver unceremoniously to the side, and keyed the boat to life. Then, inexpertly, he turned it towards the group.
"There's a guy on here I think's the agent we were supposed to reinforce," he shouted, as he neared the gaggle of drifting Marines. "He's in pretty bad shape."