Empire of the Dragon Page 26

  “A couple off assholes who don’t understand they’re too damn old to be out here!”

  * * *

  The Master Chief lowered Everett to the ground behind a small dune as the six Air Force commandos set up a minimal perimeter to the left and right of the slight rise in terrain. The old navy man took a moment to catch the breath that had escaped his lungs after the mad dash, just after a hail of bullets announced in no uncertain terms, that they had just met up with the indigenous population of the Gobi Desert.

  “Damn, Toad, but you’re one heavy son of a bitch!”

  Carl shoved a full magazine of 5.56 rounds into the Master Chief’s chest. “Yeah, I’ll go on a diet if we make it out of here, you old bastard. Now, why don’t you try and place some of those rounds downrange, or are you going to cuss them to death?”

  The six commandos were having difficulty defining targets of opportunity. The tribesmen had dismounted their vehicles and were dodging from dune to dune in an attempt to make the Americans waste their ammunition.

  “Cease fire!” Carl called out from his back as he himself slammed a magazine into an M-4. “Wait till you have a clear target, we may be here for a while.”

  “Listen,” the Master Chief said as the tribal return fire dwindled down to nothing. Jenks cocked an ear. “Damn, our luck continues to go our way,” he said as he ducked behind cover once more after peeking up and over the small rise. “I think the rest of the Backstreet Boys have arrived.”

  Everett took a chance and raised his head up and looked just as three more all-terrain vehicles started disgorging more Mongolians who ran for cover. Everett ducked back under cover and shook his head.

  “Damn, they have enough men now to outflank us.” He leaned as far forward as he could. “Sergeant, take two men and cover our rear, they’ll try that avenue first.”

  “Why maneuver when they can just charge us?” Jenks asked as he started placing magazine after magazine into the sand in front of him for easy access.

  “I suspect these guys have been doing this since the dawn of time. I don’t think they’re stupid.”

  As the area quieted, they heard the sound of at least three more large vehicles as they joined their friends.

  “These bastards are going to ‘Custer’ our asses,” Jenks said.

  “Well, we’ll have to try and make it too expensive for them, won’t we?”

  Jenks looked at Everett like he had lost his mind.

  He smiled at the Master Chief. “We’ll have to do the one thing Custer didn’t do.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding?” Jenks said, as he felt like screaming, crying, or even fainting at what the Captain was suggesting.

  “Sergeant Wilkes?”

  The black commando appeared with a belly crawl as a few of the tribal rounds ‘zinged’ overhead. “Sir?”

  “If we stay here, we’re going to be picked off piecemeal. Suggestions?”

  The Air Force commando looked at the determination in the navy SEAL’s eyes. He hadn’t asked the question in the normal sense. He was speaking his thoughts aloud so that the other men could come to the same conclusion as he.

  “Let’s see if we can put a fright into them.”

  “Is the Air Force ready to make a cavalry charge, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. I think I’ll get two of my men to lay waste to their transports. We have fifteen M-79 grenade rounds for party favors. That may convince them of their folly if they’re on foot.”

  “Good thinking. Get your men ready. The Master Chief and myself will take the center. Tell everyone to stay low. Let’s see how determined these people are.”

  Carl looked at Jenks as the commando scurried off to issue the order.

  “Hey look, my chest is still a little sore. You have to use that bully voice of yours to make the call. Loud as you can. Make these jokers think the devil himself is coming for them.”

  “I want to know just who in the hell taught you this shit!”

  “Well, he kind of looked like you. Ready?”

  Jenks came up to his knees. He placed his two small fingers at the corners of his mouth and blew. The whistle was piercing in the late afternoon air. Suddenly, the six commandos, followed quickly by a limping Everett and a flustered Jenks, stood to charge the tribesmen.

  They all stopped in their tracks as the echo of the whistle died to nothing.

  “Okay, that just about covers the cavalry charge, Toad. Any other brilliant military maneuvers?”

  Carl stopped counting the tribesmen when he reached close to a hundred. They were now confronted by every Mongolian in the desert, that was his closest estimation. At least two hundred men and weapons had arrived. They were now totally surrounded.

  The man leading the Mongolians stepped forward. He wore a wrapped turban and had the lower half of his face covered. He held an old Thompson submachinegun and looked to be a not-so-friendly type. He slowly raised the ancient American made weapon in their direction.

  Before any man, either tribesman, or American, saw what was coming, the few clouds covering the late afternoon sky started roiling and swirling above their heads. Carl pulled an amazed Master Chief to the ground before one of the Mongolians placed a bullet into his thick head.

  The wind picked up from nothing to what Everett estimated at sixty to seventy miles per hour. Sand and dirt pummeled them as the few clouds started to expand. Then bright flashes of lightning started to extend downward from the circling clouds that had gone from white and wispy to dark and foreboding in a matter of seconds. The tribesmen were caught off guard as many of the legends they were told as children came flooding back into their memory. Many went to their knees as their bodies were pummeled by piercing sand particles, while others tried to turn and run. Streaks of chain lightning started to reach for the ground.

  The Air Force commandos hit the sand as the world started to come apart around them. Rain began falling sideways as the winds took the moisture and whipped it into a frenzy of storm waters such as you would see as a hurricane started reaching landfall. Still the wind speed picked up in volume as it started to rip the scrub brush from their rooted places in the ground.

  “Jesus!” Jenks cried out as he attempted to shield his head and face from the buckshot-like sand as it tore into everyone and everything.

  Carl tried his best to brave the wind and look to see just what the end of the world looked like. He was nearly decapitated by an M-4 as it shot across his vision. In the briefest of moments, he saw an entire three-hundred-foot square of earth and scrub, with at least fifty of the tribesmen upon it, rise into the sky by a minimum of sixty feet, and then, before being blasted apart by the winds, a lightning bolt hit the raised portion of earth and the area just exploded, to be swept away by the wind and then rain.

  Jenks reached up and pulled Carl back to the ground. “You crazy bastard!”

  Hail started falling as the winds increased even more. He heard men being hit by softball-sized hail. Still, there was more thunder, followed immediately by lightning, which struck six times in less seconds than it would take to describe. The Earth around them shook and rolled as if a wave-like earthquake struck. Carl felt his stomach reel at the motion. The roll continued from there to snap tribesmen into the air like a blanket being whipped over a bed for straightening. The hurricane force wind claimed the men and they vanished into the blackness that had become more night than day.

  “Good God!” Jenks cried aloud.

  Several of the all-terrain vehicles, with men hanging onto the four-wheeler’s running boards and top, started moving. Before they got a hundred feet, a wave of sand that was higher than any tsunami recorded struck. The wave came on and there was no escaping its wrath. The base of the wave hit the three vehicles and shot them into the air. The mammoth wave of sand and rock crested and then rolled over the tumbling cars and screaming men.

  Then there was nothing but silence. It was if the Americans were buried alive in the total absence of air, wind, and rain. All noise h
ad ceased and, even before Everett could raise his head, he felt the warmth of the sun once more heating the back of his neck. When he did finally gain his feet, the view looked like something from an old moonscape photo. There was absolutely nothing to see. The sand had been so thoroughly scrubbed clean that only hard dark earth could be seen. This was earth buried under rolling sands for fifty million years. There was not one standing bush or tree. Even the rocks were gone, all the way to the base of the mountain a mile away.

  “Okay, that just about does it for me,” Jenks said as he joined Carl to view the devastation around them.

  Everett checked to see if the commandos were all accounted for. They were. They were digging themselves out of piles of sand so deep that it covered them to their hips. Carl nudged the Master Chief in the side and made him examine the ground they stood upon.

  “Just stick a banana in my ass and call me a monkey,” was all he said as they both looked at what had happened.

  The ground they stood upon was now twenty feet higher than it had been before the strange storm. It wasn’t a mountain rising from the earth, it was because the sand and earth around their position had been so thoroughly scrubbed clean by the wind, that it only looked to be rising. They were now on an island of untouched sand that rose above the Gobi.

  “Thank you, thank you, we’ll be here all week!”

  Carl and Jenks turned to see Jason Ryan walking toward them. He was accompanied by two men. Neither Jenks nor Carl had words.

  Just as the remaining clouds overhead dissipated to a mere five or six white, unthreatening clouds, they heard Ryan laugh.

  “Brothers, you ain’t seen anything yet.”

  * * *

  Thirty-five Miles East

  “Hey look, while I’m trying to avoid slamming us into the Mountains, tell your small friend back there that accidentally shooting the pilot is not a good thing.”

  Jack looked from Farbeaux and then turned his head to see Tram cleaning and fiddling with the new toys that Henri had procured for him on the black market in Hong Kong. Jack smiled as he remembered Farbeaux’s harsh criticism when Tram had chosen an old American made Winchester model 70 scoped hunting rifle over the new, far more modern sniper rifles flooding today’s world’s markets. Tram had the Winchester’s receiver apart and was adjusting the over-travel spring and the trigger-pull weight adjustment.

  “He’s just adjusting the weapon to his own specs, Henri. He hasn’t loaded it yet.”

  “It’s not the Winchester that worries me,” Henri said as he adjusted the course of the twin-engine Bonanza they had stolen twenty-four hours before in Hong Kong.

  Collins looked back one more time at the cased specialty weapon that Tram looked upon as if a child had just received the greatest Christmas present he could have been given. The case was sitting on the left seat next to Tram and looked deadly even without being seen. It was a Barrett M-107 Anti-Material fifty caliber rifle. Jack had to laugh inwardly as he knew the weapon was more like a portable artillery piece than a sniper rifle. It was designed to not only take out an enemy with extreme prejudice, it was also designed to take out the very vehicles they rode to war in. It was the scariest anti-personnel system Collins had ever seen. He understood Henri’s nervousness about it. Just a single fifty caliber round going off would destroy in total the interior of the Bonanza. He turned back to face Farbeaux.

  “Hey, you’re the one that spoiled the kid, not me.”

  Henri snorted. “And then I would have to look at the disappointment on his face, no thanks.”

  The drone of the engines lulled Jack into thinking about Sarah. And it was this that made him give the Frenchman another hard look. He knew exactly why Farbeaux was on this merry little trip, and that reason was the small woman they both loved. These thoughts drove Jack mad after the way in which he and Sarah had parted. He now knew it was a mistake. Since he and Carl’s journey had started, he had concluded that these Siberian Russians were far more out of his league than first thought. He needed to be ruthless and that trait was just no longer in his DNA. The Event Group and the friends he had made there had changed him forever and he was just now realizing it. He had decided he would now embrace that change if he found everyone still alive. He had abandoned them when they needed he and Carl most. He felt like a heel.

  “According to my calculations, we should be coming up on the last fifty miles or so,” Henri said as he manually adjusted his flight navigation. He looked out of the Bonanza’s window. “I wish we had a better radar.”

  “Hey, you’re the one that stole the plane. It was your choice.”

  Farbeaux looked to his right with a scowl. “I guess this is blame the French day.”

  “Always.”

  “Sometimes I think you and that crazy man Everett are blood kin.”

  Before Jack could agree, the twin-engine Bonanza was rocked. The blast was so powerful that both men thought they had been struck by an air to air missile. The plane rolled and came close to flipping over as the aircraft was caught in a vortex of swirling air.

  “Missile?” Jack asked as he fought to hold onto the flight console.

  Henri fought the wheel until the Bonanza righted itself and then he pushed the control wheel into the down position and dove as if he were piloting a fighter jet.

  “Not exactly!” he cried just as Tram pointed out the left rear window.

  As both Jack and Henri looked, the nose of a shark appeared and came level with the propeller driven Bonanza. The Russian made Stealth Fighter eased into position next to them.

  They heard another rumble and turned and saw an equal terror move into position to the right of the Bonanza. The first fighter which had buzzed them a moment before had turned and was now flanking the aircraft.

  The SU-57 was a fighter for the Russian air force that replaced the MiG-29 as the fifth-generation fighter of that nation’s air force. With the exception of the new American built F-22 Raptor, the new king of the skies had arrived.

  “Can we get low enough to give these boys a hard time?” Jack asked as he could see the masked faces of the two Russian pilots as if they were merely looking into his living room window.

  Before Henri could answer, the fighter on the left rolled slightly to its right as the bright red star of the Russian Air Force became visible. Then the pilot made sure the Americans could see the heat seeking and radar guided missiles inside the now opened and recessed weapons bay of the stealth aircraft. The Russian rolled back to level and pointed with a gloved hand to the north.

  “I think he’s inviting us to go north,” Jack said thinking furiously about what their options were.

  “You think?” was all the Frenchman said as he raised his left hand from the flight wheel and flipped the Russian the finger.

  The stealth fighter jinked to the right suddenly, coming mere feet from the left wing and fuel tank of the Bonanza.

  “I think he knows what that gesture means, Henri. It pretty universal by now.”

  “Well, do you have any options other than to join the Russian Air Force?” Farbeaux asked.

  “Look for a soft place to sit this plane down.”

  Henri looked in his mirror and Jack couldn’t help but turn and face Tram who was busy.

  “Excuse me?” Henri asked, incredulous.

  Without speaking, Tram tossed Jack a steel-jacketed round. Then he reached for the cased Barrett fifty caliber rifle.

  “Colonel, take your knife and split the tip of that .30-06 round by about a third of an inch, and cross the cut, please,” he said calmly as he uncased the Barrett. “You have to use much pressure to split the steel jacket.”

  “Uh, may I ask just what it is you are doing?” Henri said through the side of his mouth as he turned and faced the Russian fighter to their left and smiled widely.

  Tram didn’t answer as he brought up the Barrett, which he barely had room in the backseat to maneuver with. Jack finished cutting the .30-06 round and then handed it to Tram who laid the Barrett
aside and chambered the slit round into the Winchester.

  “I will take the left aircraft first,” he said as Henri felt the blood drain from his face. “Colonel, please use your nine-millimeter to shoot out the left-side glass back here. The bullet would lose too much velocity going through the plastic, and I will need all of the energy the grains can provide me.”

  “What about the right window?” Jack asked as he made sure his Glock was ready.

  Tram just smiled as he took a firm hold on the Winchester and deftly removed the scope from its mount.

  “Colonel Farbeaux, please hold the plane as steady as possible. We must strike before they realize they are under attack.”

  “Under attack? Have you lost your little communist mind? Did you happen to notice the missiles in that bay? And possibly the twenty-millimeter cannon at its nose?”

  “They were rather hard to miss, Colonel. Ready?”

  “Not at all!” Farbeaux yelled.

  Jack nodded as Tram kept the sniper rifle only inches out of sight of the Russian pilot to their left.

  “Let us just hope that this one is the flight leader, that could also help us in the confusion.”

  “Oh, you damn people!”

  “Now, Colonel!”

  Jack took quick aim and the next thing they knew the cabin was filled with a blast of wind. Tram didn’t hesitate, he pulled the trigger. The .30-06 round went through the hole Collins had just made and the next thing they knew a perfect hole punched through, the SU-57’s canopy. The round expanded as it ‘flowered’ as it struck the pilot’s helmet. The pilot slumped forward in his ejection seat, and then the fighter rolled lazily to the left and started spinning out of control.

  Tram didn’t hesitate, he discarded the Winchester and immediately brought the heavy Barrett up. He hadn’t enough room to bring it to his eye level for aiming. Just as the weapon came up, they saw the pilot commanding the second fighter hurriedly start a right turn to peel away from the sudden threat from the twin-engine Bonanza.