Kiloton Threat by William G. Boykin & Tom Morrisey

Author:William G. Boykin & Tom Morrisey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/War & Military
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

The sound of the approaching aircraft changed. It was a throbbing, pulsing thunder now, like a helicopter, only faster and higher in pitch.

Blake pulled the flashlight from his pocket. Then he turned to the others, “Cover your faces the best you can, okay? It’s going to get pretty dusty.”

“What is it?” Nassiri asked.

“It’s a V22,” Blake told him. “An Osprey—tilt-rotor aircraft. It keeps its rotors forward, like an airplane’s propellors, when it’s cruising, but tilts them overhead, like a helicopter, to hover. They have selectable landing lights; they’ll use infrared here. They lit up the rotor tips just so we can see we’ll be clear of them when they come in.”

The green circles were nearly parallel to the ground now and the noise was growing.

“Listen up,” Blake said. “When they land, let them come to us. I’ve got the rifle stashed with our things, so they don’t see any of us holding a gun. But they’re deep in a country where they aren’t supposed to be, so this might become a little rough. Just go with it and let them get us on board. When they land, it’ll be too loud for us to talk.”

“All right.” It was Zari. She moved to the side and he could see she was bent forward over the vehicle’s hood, writing something.

Blake nodded. He then pointed his flashlight in the direction of the incoming aircraft and began blinking a series of rapid blinks to indicate it was clear to land. It was standard field procedure for situations in which the ground had no voice communications with the aircraft.

Now the twin green circles were parallel to the ground, even canted back slightly, very close, and they could discern the dark shape of the aircraft, almost like one of those boxy commuter aircraft, only with the two huge thiryt-eight-foot rotors whirling above it. It settled ground-ward and then hovered in a great cloud of stinging dust, the green rotor tips nearly obscured by the dust storm. The aircraft turned until the cockpit was facing away. Then the pitch of the rotors changed and the dust moved off to either side—it was oddly similar to the old movie, where Charlton Heston parted the Red Sea as Moses. As the dust cloud parted, they could see straight into the red-lighted interior of the aircraft and the first thing Blake noticed was the gunner on the ramp, standing ready behind a deck-mounted .50-caliber machine gun. Behind him was a cluster of men in camouflaged combat uniforms, one of them holding a rifle with an oversized hand guard and a long curved magazine; it took him a moment to recognize it as an H&K infantry assault rifle, a recent issue for the Marines.

That man and one other, carrying an M4 carbine, sprinted down the ramp of the Osprey and out to either side, panning the area around them with night-vision goggles. Then, weapons to their shoulders, they approached the group, the M4 covering them while the Marine with the

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