Arctic Storm Rising

Surprised, the robed man swung toward him and stopped. “Ah, la. Ah, no,” he said hesitantly. “Shukrana jazila. Ana jidi. Thank you. I’m fine.”

Fine, my ass. Flynn could hear that the tribesman’s voice was slurred. He’d also gotten close enough to see that the other man’s pupils were dilated. The son of a bitch was drugged, he realized. Bad. Bad. Very bad. His right hand dropped to the Glock 19 pistol he carried in a chest rig on top of his armor. “‘Akhraj min hna! Alan!” he snapped. “Get out of here! Now!”

The tribesman’s eyes widened in sudden panic. He fumbled at the opening to his robe, pawing for something inside.

Flynn caught a split-second glimpse of wires and a bulky vest. He reacted instantly. With his left forearm, he slammed the other man’s hands aside. And in that same action, he drew his pistol, slid his finger inside the trigger guard as he swung it on target, and fired twice. Both 9mm rounds hit the tribesman squarely in the face, tore through, and exploded out the back of his skull. Already dead, the would-be suicide bomber dropped to his knees and then slumped to the ground.

With the ear-splitting crack of the two shots he’d fired still ringing in his ears, the world around Flynn seemed to blur into slow motion as adrenaline flooded his system. He slid the Glock back into his chest holster and grabbed his M4A1 carbine instead.

Through the HH-60W’s open door, he could see Bill Wade looking back over his shoulder at him in stunned surprise. On the other side of the helicopter, Dykstra and Kasper were doing the same thing, caught completely off guard by the sudden eruption of violence.

Beyond them, the group of white-robed men who’d been ambling down the sandy slope had also frozen in their tracks. But they were no longer smiling. Instead, their expressions were taut, with their eyes narrowed and intent — the look of men determined to kill.

“Hostiles! On the dune!” Flynn yelled as he sprinted forward at an angle to get a clear shot. “Take cover and engage, for Christ’s sake! This is an ambush!”

Now the remaining tribesmen were grabbing the weapons they’d hidden under their robes, awkwardly dragging out a mix of Soviet-era AK-47s and AKMs. One of them yelled an order, waving his arm wildly toward the grounded American helicopter.

Oh my God, Flynn realized. That smart bastard wanted to just overrun them. It was a good plan. If the attackers got in close enough to overwhelm them with superior numbers, it was all over. So he needed to stop their assault before it started. He dropped to one knee, brought his sights onto the shouting tribesman, and squeezed off three quick shots. Bright red splotches blossomed across the man’s white robes, and he went down hard.

The enemy doesn’t have body armor, Flynn thought, fighting to stay in control. Score one for the good guys.

For a second or so, the white-robed men stared down at the body of their leader in shocked surprise, but then they threw themselves prone and started firing downhill. Most of their 7.62mm rounds went high and smacked into the helicopter’s bullet-resistant armor panels, ricocheting off in all directions. One hit Bill Wade in the stomach as he scrambled out through the door. The combination of Kevlar and ceramic plates stopped the bullet from penetrating, but the impact knocked the flight engineer down. Another round ripped through his leg as he fell. More AK rounds tore up sand around where Dykstra and Kasper had already gone prone.

The two pilots shot back. Neither was an expert marksman, but they both had enough training to avoid the rookie mistake of aiming too high when firing up a slope. One more tribesman slumped over, drilled through the head. His assault rifle fell from his lifeless hands.

Suddenly, a blinding flash — brighter than the red-tinged afternoon sun — lit up the crash site.

WHAMMM.

And a huge shock wave slammed Flynn face-first into the ground with enormous force.

Blearily, he spat out blood and grit and raised his head just high enough to see a fire-laced cloud of oily black smoke rising beyond the wrecked C-130. Someone, probably another suicide bomber, had just blown the hell out of the black ops Mi-17.

Trailing smoke, a rocket-propelled grenade skimmed just over the downed Super Hercules and arrowed on to impact a couple of hundred yards beyond the HH-60W. It went off in an orange flash and a fountain of sand. The sight dragged Flynn out of his daze. Somebody out there on the other flank had an RPG launcher. And if they scored a hit on this last intact helicopter, he and the other Americans still alive at the crash site were royally screwed. Their enemies weren’t going to sit on their asses and wait while the Air Force flew another search-and-rescue helicopter all the way from Egypt.

His hearing was coming back a bit, just enough to let him pick up the harsh, staccato rattle of automatic-weapons fire coming from the other side of the downed cargo aircraft. Some friendlies over there must have survived the suicide bomber’s detonation.