Silent Arsenal by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

David McCarter briefly thought about Somalia, and simply running the name through his mind conjured up one word, one image.

Somalia equaled Hell on Earth.

Phoenix Force was ready to dive off the ramp of the C-130, and the bowels of hell were fifteen thousand feet below. Beyond tactical high-tech support from the Farm and their CIA ride, with the Predator running back real-time imagery of the AIQ to the blacksuits in the comm center of the bird, they were on their own, the jaws of a lawless country poised to snap shut, grind them up if they didn’t go the distance.

Well, the Briton considered, Somalia wasn’t that lawless, if he wanted to count the Muslim law of Shari’a as the order of the day. Which meant thieves had their hands cut off, rapists castrated, adulterers smashed to pulp by stone-throwing crowds. Beyond that, there was no central government, just a bunch of clans—which meant fractured extended families running amok and slaughtering one another—seizing whatever food, women, guns and qat they could with the help of an AK-47. If Somalia couldn’t claim permanent residence by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, McCarter thought, then human suffering was just a bad sadistic joke played on humankind by the Cosmos. He had to wonder, in a land that gave new horrible meaning to genocide, starvation, plague, murder and mayhem, if God had abandoned Somalia.

Or was it the other way around?

The yellow light flashed on the bulkhead and Manning punched the button to lower the ramp. Each man had rigged his own chute, main weapons in hand but fixed to a bootstrap for when they jumped. The latest in battlefield high-tech, the sensor belts were snug around their waists. They were divided into four sections, north, south, east and west. Batteries for belts, GPS handheld units and the mini-video cams that would be Velcroed to their shoulders, had been double checked, with backup power units in the pocket of their combat vests.

As cold air blasted in from the black sky, McCarter glanced at the weapons and gear bin. Hooked to the static line, the bin would be rolled off the ramp before the troops went airborne. Their main battle pieces and Beretta 93-R side arms would go with them, but McCarter went to the comm center to check on the enemy’s western perimeter, just in case they might be greeted by hostiles when they hit the DZ.

“Pen-zone still clear of bogeys, sir.”

McCarter checked the monitors, the Predator still piping in imagery of the sprawling camp. If it looked as though they would have bad company as they made their penetration from the west, McCarter would order the Predator to fire a Hellfire missile. It would throw the whole attack plan off kilter, but battle, he knew, was a fluid situation.

There was, however, some good news. Despite the fact they were facing a standing eighty-plus fighting force, the Abadal clan—for reasons McCarter could only surmise—kept the campsite clear of noncombatants. Their women and children were housed in a village to the east.

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