Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5) by George Wallace (different ereaders .txt) 📕

goggles. Without even thinking, Ward lifted his own weapon, hastily aimed, and took out the shooter with a couple of three-shot bursts. The man’s head exploded.

Then Ward rushed to check on his master chief, a key cog in his team. The older SEAL lay against a rock where the force of the bullets had knocked him down, face up.

The master chief groaned and rubbed his chest.

Ward let out a long sigh of relief. Johnston was alive and conscious. The chief handed Ward two spent slugs that he had extracted from his Kevlar body armor.

As he attempted to climb to his feet, Johnston groaned again, sat back down, and pressed the heel of his hand into a spot along his ribcage.

“That is going to leave an ugly bruise on my otherwise perfect torso.”

Meanwhile, Cantrell slid past the two and moved a little farther down the narrow trail. A couple of meters lower, he crouched behind an outcropping and scanned the cliffside below him, his M-4 swinging slowly from side to side as he checked out the terrain for potential targets.

Ward quickly examined Johnston but could not find any other wounds.

“I’m afraid you’re gonna live. But you good to go, Master Chief?”

Johnston started to stretch, to pull himself erect, but he fell back against a rock, moaning in pain.

“Skipper, feels like I may have busted a rib or something. That’s gonna slow me a step or two.”

Ward made a quick but easy decision. Having one of his lead shooters a “couple of steps slow” just would not work. Could be deadly and put the mission at risk.

He clicked his throat mike and whispered, “Tony, get your butt down here.” He turned to Johnston. “You stay here and cover us. Help the Ospreys as best you can getting people on and off. Tony, Cantrell, and I will claim all the glory from here.”

Johnston nodded. He was well aware of why the skipper had made the adjustment.

Martinelli moved past the two and disappeared around the bend further down the trail. Ward followed a couple of meters behind.

Another burst of heavy machine gun fire erupted, shattering the rocks just above the SEALs’ heads. That was closely followed by small-arms fire spattering all around them. The men dived for cover.

Someone well-hidden was unloading on them from a cave entrance above and a hundred meters beyond them. And the three SEALs would remain pinned down there alongside the trail until next week if they did not summon the cavalry.

Ward was about to make the call when he heard Jason Hall say, “Team, Puff has them visual. Keep your heads down for a second and let ’em take ’em out for us.”

The night sky immediately lit up spectacularly as the Ghostrider’s GAU-23 thirty-millimeter Vulcan machine cannon poured an intense stream of lead into the mouth of the cave at better than a thousand rounds a second. The bird’s 105-millimeter cannon spat twice, too. The hole in the rock cliff erupted in a brilliant flash of orange-red. Then all was silent.

Ward did not wait. Obviously that threat had been neutralized. Completely. He started moving quickly down the trail again, Cantrell and Martinelli close behind.

One thing was for certain. Any element of surprise that they may have had was now lost. They would have to move quickly and rely on tenacity, ferocity, and overwhelming firepower. And hope the bad guys would be too busy defending themselves to hurt their hostages.

Ward looked down just in time to spot someone running out onto the little pier. The figure stopped and aimed a shoulder-launch MANPAD missile in the direction of the Ghostrider. The missile arced up in the direction of the warbird but then exploded harmlessly, a victim of the plane’s countermeasures.

A second later, the shooter and the pier disappeared, sliced to shreds by a hail of bullets. At the same time, two GBU-39 small-diameter, precision-guided bombs slammed into the cave mouth at the foot of the pier. Clearly their helpers out there in the sky had seen some kind of ugliness there and eliminated it.

Desperate machine gun fire suddenly erupted from half a dozen different caves on the pockmarked cliffside. Tracers arced up into the night sky. Obviously, the rest of the rock island’s defenders had awakened and decided to resist. Shoulder-launched missiles and even rocket-propelled grenades added their flaming exhausts to the fireworks display. But all the firing was doing little more than make smoke, fire, and light. However, it did give the gunship several points of aim.

The AC-130J methodically worked down the cliffside, sequentially knocking out the well-advertised gun emplacements. When the Ghostrider reached the far side of its orbit, the Warthogs flew in to slam the caves, now well marked by blazes and smoke, with even more firepower.

By the time Ward’s team reached the foot of the cliffs, the night had grown eerily silent, save the distant whine and roar of the circling aircraft.

Then rappelling ropes from the second team began landing around them as Ward crashed into the first cave, stepping carefully around the rubble and pieces of human remains. He suddenly found himself in a large, brightly lit room stacked high with equipment. He seemed to be all alone until he heard shouts coming from the far side of the large, open space. Still looking all about for stragglers with guns, he hurried through the smoke and dust to reach a heavy steel door set into the solid rock. It was locked.

The shouting and calls for help were coming from behind it. They had found the prisoners. Now, how to get them out?

Ward could see the other SEALs through the smoke, searching every nook and cranny of the big cavern for any other fighters.

“Martinelli, get over here with that det cord,” he yelled.

Martinelli taped the thin, flexible plastic tubing across the heavy steel door and attached the nonel shock tube detonator.

As he worked, Ward called out, “Anybody speak English?”

“Yes! Yes! Are we safe? Who are you?”

“Never mind that. Right now, I need everyone in there to