“We might have to retreat, but I’m not leaving without Martinez.” Whack fired several more times, waited for the return fire to subside, then said, “Here I—”
At that moment several dozen flashes of lights erupted from the west, and moments after that Turkish armored vehicles started exploding like firecrackers. “Sorry I am late once again, gentlemen,” Yusuf Jaffar radioed, “but I am still not accustomed to your speed. I think you may get your comrade, Macomber.”
“On the way!” Whack fired the thrusters on the boots of his Tin Man armor, and in three jumps he was with Martinez. At that moment the earth in front of him began to sizzle and pop like water sprayed on a hot pan as the Wolverine began sowing bomblets and antipersonnel mines on the Turkish troops. The air was getting thick with smoke and the screams of trapped Turks. “You okay in there, Angel?” Whack knew from his biometric datalink that Martinez was alive, but most of the left side of the robot was shattered, and he couldn’t move or communicate. Whack picked up the robot. “Hold on, Martinez. This might hurt a bit on the landing.”
Just as he hit his thrusters, a Hellfire missile fired from the Turkish Cobra gunship exploded at the spot he had just left, and Whack and Martinez were swatted out of the sky like clay pigeons hit by birdshot.
The BERP armor protected Whack from the blast, but after he landed he found all of his helmet systems dark and silent. He had no choice but to take his helmet off. Illuminated by the nearby fires of burning vehicles, he could see Martinez lying about fifty yards away, and sprinted over to him. But just as he got within twenty yards, the ground erupted with heavy-caliber shells peppering the area around the robot. The Cobra gunship had moved into cannon range and was spraying twenty millimeter shells on him. Whack knew he was next. Without power, his BERP armor wouldn’t protect him.
He looked around for someplace to hide. The nearest Iraqi machine-gun nest surrounding the XC-57 was about a hundred yards away. He hated to leave Martinez, but there was no way he could carry him, so he started running. Hell, he thought grimly, maybe running made it a
And then he heard a tremendous explosion, big enough and near enough to knock him off his feet. He turned and looked up just in time to see the Cobra gunship crash into the field just a couple dozen yards away. As the sound and feel of burning metal wafted over him, he got to his feet and ran. The heat and choking smoke made him crouch down as he ran, and he could hear and feel the missiles and ammo on the burning chopper cooking off behind him. Wouldn’t it be a bitch, he thought, to avoid getting turned into Swiss cheese by a Cobra gunship only to have the chopper’s unexpended ammo get him? Of course, that’s my luck, he thought, that’s the way I’m supposed to—
Suddenly it felt as if he had run headlong into a steel barricade. “Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Mr. Jackrabbit,” he heard the electronic voice of a CID unit say. It was Charlie, who had run over from her position to the east. “You’re clear. Take a minute. You lose your headgear?”
“I lost everything…the suit’s dead,” Whack said. “Go get Martinez.” Charlie waited a few moments, shielding Whack with her armor, until the explosions stopped on the downed Cobra, then ran off around the burning wreckage. She returned a few minutes later carrying the other CID unit. She then dragged Martinez with one hand and carried Macomber under her other arm back to the security post near the XC-57.
“Those other gunships are coming in,” Charlie said, picking up her rail gun and scanning the skies with the CID unit’s sensors. “Most are going after Jaffar’s brigade, but there’s a couple after us.” She paused for a moment, studying the electronic images of the battlefield. “I’ll draw them away,” she said, then bolted off to the east.
Whack peeked out over the sandbag bunker…and when he looked in the sky he saw the unmistakable flare of a missile motor igniting, and he jumped to his feet and ran away from the bunker as fast as he—
He was instantly thrown off his feet, blinded, deafened, half-broiled, and pelted with supersonic pieces of debris when the missile hit just a few yards behind him. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t knocked unconscious, so all he could do was lie on the ground in pain, with his entire head feeling like a charcoal briquette. But a few seconds later, he was scooped up off the ground. “Ch-Charlie…?”