“Drop the WP right on the road in case anyone tries to drive out,” Lyons told Schwarz.
Schwarz nodded, then twisted the elevation knob on the mortar down several clicks. He lifted a white phosphorous round and dropped it in. The mortar went off and the round lobbed outward in a tight arc. The WP bomb struck the earth at the sentry post and detonated. Instantly the corpses at the impact site burst into flame.
Satisfied, Schwarz dropped his second round on the same angle and turned the entrance to the FARC camp into a raging conflagration.
“Keep an eye out for our Korean guest,” Lyons told Blancanales.
The ex-Green Beret nodded and continued sweeping his scope across the camp below them, hunting for targets of opportunity. Lyons opened up with his M-60E and directed suppressive fire on the FARC compound.
JACK GRIMALDI lifted the Blackhawk straight up out of the shallow jungle valley and bunny-hopped the bird over the hilltop. He put the nose of the helicopter down and raced forward, flying at treetop level. Two hundred yards out, his thumb flicked up the red safety cover to his rocket pod.
The FARC compound had two 20 mm antiaircraft emplacements providing security and they were Grimaldi’s first priority. He banked the bird hard, brought it on line with the narrow, fast-moving creek below and gunned the Blackhawk hard toward the camp.
His thumb depressed the button.
Instantly twin seven-inch rockets from pods under his weapons platform launched toward the camp. The projectiles whistled out, leaving contrails of white smoke behind them as they flew.
They both hit the sandbag walls encircling one of the 20 mm AA cannons and exploded. Gunny sacks, body parts and pieces of the guns went flying. Grimaldi worked his foot pedals and maneuvered the yoke. The Blackhawk banked hard, then spun around on its axis until the nose was orientated 120-degrees on a separate plane.
Through the windshield Grimaldi could see the antiaircraft crew scrambling to bring the 20 mm cannon to bear. Men’s faces twisted in fear and anger as they swarmed like ants around the gun placement. The helicopter remained level under Grimaldi’s hand. Again his thumb found the activation toggle.
Two more rockets leaped from their pods and swept forward, spiraling inward on synchronous flight paths. FARC gunners threw themselves out of the artillery pit in a desperate attempt to avoid the blast, but the twin explosions caught them in a concussive wave of lethal force.
“Here we go!” Grimaldi yelled into his throat mike.
The Blackhawk yawed hard, then settled into a hover fifty yards off the broken, uneven ground. Camouflage netting across the compound was ripped off and tossed into twisted heaps around the aluminum pole frame work, revealing men, sheds and tin-roofed buildings. A cloud of dust sprang up like fog as the topsoil was ripped from the ground by the force of rotor wash.
A thick hemp rope was kicked out of the cargo bay door. An instant later T. J. Hawkins, ex-Delta Force operator, appeared in the doorway. He wore a black sporting helmet and clear visors over his eyes. His hands were covered by thick welder’s gloves.
“Go! Go! Go!” David McCarter shouted.
Instantly, Hawkins stepped off the helicopter and onto the rope, sliding down the hemp weave like a firefighter on a pole. He was halfway down when the second man appeared in the door, then grasped the rope. Rafael Encizo, veteran anti-Castro guerrilla commando and combat diver, stepped off and dropped like a stone.
On the ground Hawkins shuffled forward a few places and took a knee, weapon coming up. Encizo dismounted the rope and took up a position to Hawkins’s left, his own weapon up as Calvin James, former Navy SEAL and trained medic, hit the rope.
Hawkins saw two men in Russian military fatigues run out of an outbuilding, weapons up. He drew down on them and used his M-4 carbine to cut them down.
Beside him Encizo unleashed his own firepower, an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, in stuttering bursts.
James hit the ground, bending at the knees to absorb the force of the impact, and a second later Gary Manning, former Canadian Special Forces soldier and explosives expert, also landed. The Canadian put his own M-60E in the pocket of his shoulder and fired over the heads of his teammates as he shuffled forward.
James peeled off to Encizo’s left, forming the anchor point on one end of their wedge formation as Manning shuffled into position on the opposite side. Behind them McCarter was on the ground, his M-4/M-203 combination carbine grenade launcher up and tracking for targets.
“Clear!” McCarter shouted.
The ex-SAS trooper walked smoothly forward, weapon up and finger on the trigger. Behind him the assault rope was disengaged by the helicopter loadmaster and door gunner, a sergeant from the 75th Ranger Division on loan to Stony Man’s blacksuit security detail.
“Copy!” Grimaldi responded.
The helicopter’s turbine engines screamed as the pilot climbed the bird up to a better altitude. The loadmaster/door gunner slid over behind an M-134 Gatling gun and rotated the barrel cluster around to bear on the compound.
“Advance,” McCarter directed.
Instantly the unit began shuffling forward, firing their weapons as they moved. Above them the Blackhawk drifted along, the 7.62 mm minigun firing ahead of them. The weapon’s massive rate of fire had twinkling, smoking hot shell casings dropping down on them like metal raindrops.
In front of them FARC soldiers tried desperately to mount a defense, but the triple impact of speed of attack, aggression of action and firepower coupled with surprise was proving more than they could deal with. FARC guerrillas soaked up bullets like sponges, were scythed in two or battered into submission.
Hawkins walked his muzzle in measured angles from left to right, dropping running, screaming targets with each squeeze of his trigger. Encizo used his SAW from the hip, triggering one short burst after the other. He saw a door to a long, low barracks-style building swing open and he took it under fire immediately. Red tracer fire arced through the opening and dropped a knot of FARC guerrillas.
“Able, do we have eyes on?” McCarter demanded through his com set. Beside him Manning used his M-60E to blast into an armored sedan being used as cover by a handful of enemy combatants.
“Negative,” Lyons replied. “To your five o’clock I have the command bunker.”
McCarter looked in the direction Lyons had indicated and, as if to punctuate the ex-cop’s directions, Schwarz put an 80 mm mortar round down on top of a jet-black armored BMW SUV parked near a concrete structure. The luxury sport vehicle went up like a Roman candle. A moment later another mortar went off.
“I have eyes on bunker,” McCarter answered. Beside him Gary Manning mowed down three FARC soldiers attempting to set up an RPK machine gun.
“Good,” Lyons replied. “Blancanales said he scoped our target entering the bunker twenty minutes ago.”
“En route,” McCarter confirmed.
Machine-gun fire erupted from just ahead and to the left of them. Bullets cut toward the assault force in a lethal wave. The concussive force of the heavy-caliber rounds cutting through the air next to their bodies buffeted Phoenix
