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  Because Global Hawk needed satellite relays to transmit the data to receiving stations on the Washington Beltway, there was a time-lag of several seconds in the Pentagon's link to the UAV. Viper's line-of-sight links were instantaneous, however. The WSO's console-mounted thermal scope dedicated to UAV downlink showed what the large, plane-like unmanned aerial vehicle's long-range cameras were seeing from about twenty thousand feet above the battlespace.

  What appeared to be a mechanized Pasdaran scout patrol was moving across the desert toward friendly troops. The Whizzo hit the keypad on the instrumentation panel facing him a few times to increase magnification, and nodded his head. There it was in all its glory. No question now. Enemy.

  But he did one more thing too, and that was key IFF per international rules of engagement. Since the Gulf War's high friendly casualty rate, US rules of engagement called for IFF interrogation, even with a visual confirm, unless first fired upon. As he'd known it would, IFF returned a negative confirm. The WSO keyed his mike again.

  "Urgent Arrow shows two Bimps and a command vehicle approaching on Vector Bravo X-Ray Charlie Seven. I estimate we'll have 'em on thermal in thirty seconds."

  "Good copy," the snake driver said back. "Let's frag them muthafuckin' goat dick suckers."

  "That's affirm. I'm up for it."

  The snake driver pulled back on the cyclical, again canting the helo's dishing rotors into an angle some forty-five degrees from the horizontal and increased the revs to the aluminum-honeycomb and stainless steel tail boom rotor. The AH-1Z shot forward, nose slightly down, tail slightly up, in hunter-killer mode as it closed with the enemy formation.

  Within a matter of minutes the Viper's gunner had the unfriendly patrol sighted on forward-looking infrared. The FLIR scope presented a slant-range view of the two BMPs and an armored scout car. The helo closed fast at thirty knots but suddenly the false color FLIR images began to break up. The two armored personnel carriers each turned and rolled away from the contact's position on the desert, heading for the cover of nearby berms.

  The Iranian patrol had spotted the gun ship and was taking evasive maneuvers.

  The WSO already had one of the fleeing BTRs framed in his target acquisition reticle. He hit the joystick pickle button and the helo's onboard fire control system calculated a solution for a Hellfire strike. A heartbeat later, the helo bucked as one of the last remaining anti-armor missiles cooked off the AH-1Z's left stub wing dispenser and screamed down at the target Bimp on a contrail of white smoke.

  "Go, bitch, go!" shouted the WSO as the round streaked on its slanting trajectory. "Notch my gun, you sucker!"

  "Impact! Impact! Good kill! Good kill!"

  The night exploded as the warhead slammed into the upper glacis of the target armored vehicle, blowing a gaping, petaled hole in the steel-plate armor of the vehicle and killing most of the men inside. Those still alive spilled from the ruptured hull as the vehicle heeled over and began to snap, crackle and pop on the desert floor, sending up voluminous clouds of dense black smoke. The AH-1Z's crew saw a few figures tumble from the wreckage just before the ammo and fuel stores began cooking off, creating a spate of secondary explosions.

  Before the Viper turned to go after the surviving vehicles, the gunner turned his head to swing around the slaved M197 tri-barreled autocannon beneath the first cockpit. He hit the pickle and cooked off a sixteen-round burst -- the maximum per salvo -- of depleted twenty mike-mike uranium bullets at the survivors, seeing most of them blown apart in sprays of blood, one of them cut literally in half by a fusillade across the midsection. The WSO was about to finish off the stragglers when an explosion rocked the chopper.

  "Hoo-ah," shouted the pilot. "That's some close shit." A rocket had just gone streaking by.

  And close it had been. The surviving Bimp had turned and struck back at the helo while it was busy trashing the other armored vehicle. In retaliation the BTR crew had launched a Sagger antiaircraft missile at the AH-1Z. The Sagger had missed the chopper but exploded close enough to the target to box its ears.

  The helo had been rocked hard by the midair detonation. Shrapnel spewed from the warhead casing's fragmentation sleeve had torn holes in the gun ship's main rotor and right engine nacelle, damaging sensitive propulsion systems.

  Now, close behind the first, another Sagger missile streaked upward. The snake driver took immediate evasive action, jinking hard left and pulling for altitude. The incoming missile's vapor trail hissed past the cockpit canopies as the enemy warhead whooshed up into the night sky. In a moment the desert was lit up by the pulses of strobing explosions high above the sand.

  Another near-miss.

  Heavy tracer fire was now spurting up at the helo too, as both the scout car and the surviving Bimp opened up with their NSV 12.7 millimeter heavy machineguns, replacements for the lighter DShKs on earlier versions. The Bimp's crew was all over the desert now, taking up positions in swales and declivities on the uneven desert floor -- anywhere they could find cover. Small arms and light machinegun fire soon merged with streams of bullets from the heavy MGs directed at the AH-1Z.

  The helo swiveled on an invisible axis in the sky as the WSO acquired the most dangerous of the two remaining vehicles, the second BTR-70 armored carrier, for a follow-up Hellfire strike. Pin flares were now being sent up from the desert floor, their hellishly flickering white phosphorous light illuminating the battlespace.

  Whether deliberate or unintentional, the action on the part of the Iranians had the effect not only of degrading the ability of the AH-1Z to hide in the night and strike from cover of darkness, but also affecting the helo's missile fire solution capability. The gunner's thermal sights were confused by the flares with the result that the Hellfire went dumb, slamming into the ground near the Bimp but not scoring a direct hit.

  The close call left the BTR unhurt, except for shrapnel strikes on its armored skin. But the explosion did dislodge the machinegunner from his position inside the embrasure up top of the vehicle, temporarily putting the MG out of action. Turning, the AH-1Z overflew the BTR, raking the nearby scout car with DU rounds. The driver and unhorsed machinegunner were killed instantly and the vehicle set ablaze.

  Now the pilot hovered the AH-1Z as the WSO acquired the Bimp with their last remaining Hellfire missile. He cooked it off, scoring a direct hit. The armored carrier burst into flames and began to burn up on the desert.

  The helo swung around to finish off the Iranian personnel on the ground. The spluttering light of the pin flares had died by now and infrared targeting was once more effective.

  However, as the AH-1Z hunted its prey, neither the snake driver nor the WSO saw one of the surviving Pasdaran troopers rise to his knees clutching a French-made Matra Mistral shoulder-fire missile launcher. Remaining at a half-crouch, the Iranian aimed the forty-millimeter weapon, acquired the target and quickly fired.

  The bird left the pipe amid a whoosh of back-blast, and his comrades began to cheer as the warhead streaked toward the blind side of the helo. It struck a second later, blowing apart inside the second cockpit canopy and instantly ripping the snake driver limb from limb.

  The WSO ejected, breaking his shoulder and collarbone as the explosive charges that ejected the survival capsule slammed him with crushing force against the instrumentation console. As the chute opened and he sailed down to earth, already losing consciousness, his last glimpse of the battlefield was the sight of the broken hulk of the Viper crashing to earth and erupting into a meteor shower of flame.

  He had hardly hit the ground when the Iranian troops began running toward the downed capsule, smashing out what was left of the cockpit glass and dragging the semiconscious airman out onto the freezing sand.

  Once in the mob's hands, the leader gave the signal. The bayonets attached to the enemy's AKM rifles thrust downward again and again, until their vengeance was satisfied, until all the bayonet blades were painted with the hated one's blood. Not satisfied with this, they further desecrated the corpse by
cutting off its head and booting it across the sand. The Iranians had no word equivalent to "hoo-ah." But what in their language came closest, they shouted as they kicked it back and forth between themselves.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Breaux and Sgts. Death and One Eyes were taking fire as they hard-charged toward the LZ, goosing the DPV to wring every last ounce of power from its overworked V-8 engine. The trio didn't know it, but they had been spotted by scouts attached to the second Iranian scout patrol, a follow-on unit at full combat strength that had been dispatched to aid the smaller patrol that had called in a report on the helo strike.

  Breaux punched up Urgent Arrow UAV data from Global Hawk on the integrated tablet PC unit fitted onto the console of the vehicle. The unit had an integrated touch screen display, JTRS and organic radio capability and was GPS-capable. Less than a minute later, the picture was clear to Breaux. The UAV showed the tactical situation in both thermal and synthetic aperture radar imagery modes.

  In SAR mode, which encompassed a wider field of view than TI, Breaux was able to observe his own unit, the pursuing Revolutionary Guard and other SFOD-O units nearby making for the LZ. The bad news was that the pursuing enemy force was a sizable one, but the good news was that so far no hostile aircraft were in the vicinity.

  Breaux keyed buttons on the MIL-SPEC magnesium alloy housing of the tablet's flat-panel display and called up a moving map display linked to GPS, showing waypoints to the LZ. He noted to his satisfaction that the dune buggy was only a short distance from the kill basket Breaux had established for just such a contingency.

  In the course of the team's patrol of the area over the last two weeks, Breaux had noticed telltale cratering surrounding a stretch of desert track. From his combat experience in Mideastern deserts and in the rocky hill country of Afghanistan with splinter factions of the mainly Tajik Jamiat-I-Islami Mujahideen, Breaux recognized the cratering for what it was -- an indication of a subterranean river that coursed beneath the desert, rising close to the surface before again plunging down into the deep layers of aquifer a few hundred yards down. The precise pathway of the part of the river close to the surface was marked by the procession of pits in a straight line that paralleled the desert roadway.

  Breaux had dispatched a team to reconnoiter the largest pit, and found what he'd suspected -- about thirty feet below a thin shelf of rock, there was a cavern, and at the bottom of the cavern, there flowed the river he'd known would be there.

  Breaux realized he had stumbled onto the perfect place to set up a kill basket on extraction, should unfriendly forces appear. The roadway went right across the roof of the cavern, and with properly placed C-4 demolition charges, the entire roadway could be blown down into the cavern in a matter of seconds, burying an entire mechanized column amid tons of rubble.

  Breaux's close attention to extraction security would now pay off. He quickly cued his comms and called Team Fang manning the detonator block a few hundred yards from the sides of the roadway.

  "One Zero Foxtail to Big Bear," Breaux said. "You listening?"

  "Five by five," Gunnery Sgt. Mainline answered. He was crouching behind a tripod-mounted binocular TI spotter scope. Sgt. Mainline commanded a three-man team, one member of which was already warming up their dune buggies for a fast exit. "Got the frag bait on thermal."

  "As soon as we pass, hit 'em, then head for the LZ."

  "Hoo-ah," Sgt. Mainline said back. "They are fragged. They are history. They are smoked. Shit -- I love the Army! Every day I thank almighty God for the Army. Makes my dick hard, makes my shit hot. I love the fuckin' Army."

  "Just do it, gunny," Breaux told him.

  "That's a roger. Out."

  Breaux hoped the gunny was as good as his bravado, for Team Fang's sake. A lot of enemy hardware was rolling toward the LZ and it was coming on fast. The extraction Osprey would be heavily loaded, even with the buggies and other field equipment left behind. The A/C would be more vulnerable to ground fire on takeoff than was normal.

  Top Sgt. Death, behind the DPV'S wheel, tapped Breaux on the shoulder, pointing into the night.

  "Complications, padrone," he said.

  "No shit," Breaux replied, as he saw what Death meant. Complications were right.

  Against the now lightening horizon, danced the telltale form of a Mil Mi-8 "Hip" helicopter. The chopper was basically a transport helo, but had limited multi-role applications -- its rocket pods and, in the Mi-8MTKO variant, optimized for night reconnaissance operations, 12.7 millimeter front-mounted heavy machinegun, gave it limited offensive capability. Tonight it was plenty.

  All at once the Mi-8's nose cannon opened up on the DPV. Bullets spanged off the dirt and rubble as Sgt. Death drove a zigzag path across the lunar terrain, the dune buggy's oversize tires keeping the wide-carriage vehicle stable at high speeds. Sgt. One Eyes jumped behind the TOW launcher mounted atop the tubular metal crash frame surrounding the top of the vehicle and got ready to counter-strike.

  Sgt. One Eyes acquired the Hip in the TOW's sights and triggered the round. The wire-guided missile sped upward, hissing and spinning on its curved stabilizer fins, spooling out a black fiber optic cable. The helo began to jink, but One Eyes trimmed attitude and course. Seconds later he had scored a kill on the chopper. It exploded in midair, raining wreckage and burning fuel slicks down on the ground.

  The helo was out of commission, but the mechanized Pasdaran patrol was rapidly closing with the DPV. Breaux felt the tension lessen somewhat as Death highballed the small, fast vehicle across the mined section of desert road, past the concealed places where Sgt. Mainline's crew waited in ambush. From behind his thermal spotter scope, Mainline watched the Iranian column roar into the kill basket, not suspecting that the road was mined to blow the ground out from under them.

  "On my signal," Breaux said over the radio net. "Wait ... wait ... Now!"

  Gunnery Sgt. Mainline flipped a switch on the main control panel, activating the electrical ignitors that would blow the detonator caps screwed into the blocks of C-4 arranged in a rough rectangular pattern around the roadbed. Mainline had checked the circuits twice and once again. He was sure everything was good to go. He wasn't proven wrong by events.

  In the near-silence the night was rent suddenly by a flashbulb-popping series of magnesium-bright, quick-pulsating strobes. Light travels faster than sound, and the explosions still had to earn their miles. Moments later the rolling boom and echoes of multiple explosions rumbled like thunder across the arid desert landscape.

  Enemy troops shouted in pain and uncomprehending horror as the ground supporting them gave way and they and their war machines were swallowed up, tumbling thirty feet down into the cavern where secondary explosions from the burning vehicles boomed and thudded violently up into the rain of falling rubble. For a few long minutes the earth seemed to be vomiting up its fiery guts.

  When the fireworks died down, and the screams of the dying subsided, Team Fang mounted up their DPVs and bolted away from the flaming havoc they had unleashed upon the enemy.

  Sgt. Mainline hollered praise to the Lord for creating the US Army, and this time nobody was about to stop him.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Breaux and his crew arrived at the LZ to find that most of his units had already boarded the Osprey. Others still on the ground were busily stripping classified gear from their vehicles, carrying what they could take with them onboard, and blowing the rest with demo charges.

  Breaux's team gathered up code books, personal gear and weapons, and tossed grenades into the DPV. The explosions in the night would give their position away, but their situation was compromised anyway by now.

  The V-22 pilot leaned out the flight deck window, waving Breaux over.

  "Let me know when we can take off, sir, and we're out of here."

  "Won't be long, captain."

  The convertiplane's twin engines were upturned in helicraft mode, the rotors spinning and the engine warm. The multimode transport was ready for im
mediate dust-off.

  Breaux took a head count. Only Sgt. Mainline's Team Fang was missing. Where the hell were they?

  The sudden sound of approaching vehicle engines made those standing guard train their weapons in its direction. Breaux looked out into the night and lowered the barrel of his AKMS. It was the last DPVs with the four Team Fangers inside them.

  "Shake your asses," he shouted at the latecomers. "Grab your gear and blow the rest. You know the drill."

  "Yes sir!" Sgt. Mainline yelled back. "Man, I love the Army! Shit, the Army's better than any pussy I ever ate. Every day's a good day in the Army. Every night's a party. The latrines in the Army smell better than a sixteen-year-old virgin's cunt. God bless the Army!"

  The team knew the drill backward. Within two minutes time the DPV was a burning hulk and its former passengers had joined the rest of B-Comm inside the waiting Osprey.

  "Come on, get this bird airborne," Breaux shouted at the pilot, who flashed him the OK sign. The V-22's copilot immediately raised the rear hatch and the convertiplane ascended straight up into the night.

  Flying nap of the earth, ten minutes off the LZ, the tilt-rotor aircraft took fire from something out on the desert, but it was now moving too fast to be accurately taped by small arms bursts and there was no more incoming after that.

  Only when they returned to Jauf did ground maintenance crew notice the pattern of bullet punctures just inches from a critical part of the Osprey's left engine nacelle. In the end it had been a closer call than anybody had realized.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Book I

  Valiant Venom

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Chapter Three

  At the Berlin bureau headquarters of the Weisbaden-based German Federal Criminal Police Agency, the Bundeskriminalamt, otherwise known by the acronym BKA, which is the rough (but by no means exact) equivalent of the American FBI, they called Helmut Mauthner "Starsky" and his partner Karl Voss "Hutch." The two cops cultivated the association -- Mauthner was a Bavarian with the dark hair, ruddy face and swarthy build of a mountain gnome, while Voss, whose lineage was Tyrolean, had blonde hair and a fair complexion -- earning a reputation for playing it fast and loose on the job.