seeing?”
“It’s going all to hell between you and the extraction point,” the voice in DeLuca’s earpiece came back. “But we expected
that. Make time if you can.”
“I don’t think our escort is going to let us pass him,” DeLuca said. “We’ll do our best. Meet you on the sands of Iwo Jima.”
They were three blocks from the castle when they heard the first explosion behind them, a JDAM-5 destroying the building where
the rebels’ communication-jamming equipment was operating. The decision had been made to use laser-guided ordnance first,
because of the greater accuracy, but DeLuca understood that the destroyer USS
Minneapolis
was cruising eight miles offshore, ready to deploy six- and eight-inch guns that were nearly as accurate, should the first
round of smart bombs fail to do the job. Within seconds, they heard another explosion as a missile struck the mayor’s office.
Hoolie took the hood from DeLuca’s head in time for DeLuca to see the church steeple disintegrate in a ball of flames, and
then a fourth missile hit the red truck, flipping it and lifting it thirty feet in the air. The crowd dispersed and chaos
quickly followed, men firing their rifles into the air or toward the castle, where a pair of CH-47 Chinook helicopters coming
in low over the water climbed the seawall and descended on the courtyard, supported by a half dozen Apaches, swarming over
the city like very angry bees. A pair of F14 Tomcats screamed over the area, a mere fifty feet above the rooftops.
“Hit it!” DeLuca shouted to Zoulalian. He lay down atop the van and braced himself against the roof rack. Zoulalian floored
the accelerator and turned right down a side street. DeLuca saw, briefly, the look of surprise on the face of the rebel captain
from the back of the truck.
“
LBJ
—can you cut enemy radio traffic?” DeLuca asked, aware that the E-6 Prowler in the air high overhead carried communication-jamming
equipment.
“Not without doing yours, too,” the answer came back. “They’re using our stuff. It’s your call.”
“You getting SIGINT?” DeLuca asked.
“Negative,” mission control came back. “Our Ligerian friend here says they’re not speaking Fasori. It’s some northern tribal
dialect he doesn’t know.”
“Might as well keep the channels open, then,” DeLuca said, dismayed that the mission had already crept beyond what had been
intended, but then, he’d long considered “military planning” something of an oxymoron. “Loose the dogs of war” wasn’t even
the right metaphor, because loose dogs at least run in the same direction. “Shit hitting the fan” failed for the same reason—war
was Brownian motion, chaos and anarchy, and it changed every five seconds. “We’ll just have to outsmart them.”
“You being ironic?”
“Nothing personal,” DeLuca said.
As the van sped toward the sea, DeLuca turned and saw that the troop transport had backed up and was following them. He opened
fire, as did Vasquez beside him, but the Isuzu was veering and careening around or across potholes at a speed that prevented
firing with any accuracy.
“Any time, Pred One,” DeLuca said into his radio. “Let’s lose the tail.”
The AGM-114B Hellfire was a laser-guided solid propellant missile, five feet four inches long, seven in diameter, with a weight
of about one hundred pounds and a warhead capable of defeating any tank made. The M-113 following the van was no match for
it, the subsonic rocket penetrating the front windshield on the passenger side, where the captain in the red beret was sitting,
before blasting the vehicle into a million flaming particles.
“I’ll bet that lit his cigar,” Hoolie said.
Zoulalian, taking directions via his headset, turned left when the falcon view from INMARSAT told him the street connecting
to the beach road was blocked up ahead by an overturned vehicle that was burning. He was instructed to turn right at the