Rogue Forces

“Not long. Maybe another hour.” He nodded toward his son, who was busy fending off his younger brother from the few remaining baklava on the tray. “It’s nice to be out here with Neaz. He takes this task very seriously. He—” The man stopped because he thought he heard an approaching bicycle or small scooter, a sort of quiet hushing sound that indicated speed but not power. There were no lights on the road or highway beyond. He frowned, then placed his coffee cup in his wife’s hand. “Take Hani back to the community center.”

“What is it?”

“Probably nothing.” He looked down the dirt road again and saw no sign of any movement—no birds, no rustling trees. “Tell your brother I’m going to roam around a bit. I’ll tell the others.” He kissed his wife on the cheek, then went to retrieve his AK-47. “I’ll be ready to come in after I get…”

Out of the corner of an eye, high above to the west, he spotted it: a brief spurt of yellow light, not solid like a searchlight but flickering like a torch. Why he did it, he wasn’t sure, but he pushed his wife aside, into the trees beside the gate. “Get down!” he shouted. “Stay down! Stay—”

Suddenly the ground vibrated as if a thousand horses were stampeding right beside them. The husband’s face, eyes, and throat were choked by clouds of dust and dirt that appeared from nowhere, and rocks were thrown in every direction. The wife screamed as she saw her husband literally disintegrate into chunks of human flesh. The pickup truck was similarly chewed apart before the gas tank ruptured, sending a massive fireball into the sky.

Then she heard it—a horrible sound, impossibly loud, lasting only a fraction of a second. It was like a giant growling animal standing over her, like a house-size chain saw. The sound was followed moments later by the loud whoosh of a jet plane flying overhead, so low that she thought it could be landing on the dirt road.

In the space of just a few heartbeats, her husband and two sons were dead before her eyes. Somehow the woman got to her feet and ran back toward the wedding reception, thinking of nothing else but warning the other members of her family to flee for their lives.

“Lead is clear,” the lead pilot of the three-ship A-10 Thunderbolt II bomber radioed. He pulled up sharply to make sure he was well clear of the other aircraft and the terrain. “Two, cleared in hot.”

“Good pass, lead,” the pilot of the second A-10 Thunderbolt radioed. “Two’s in hot.” He checked the AGM-65G Maverick missile’s forward-looking infrared video display, which clearly showed the two pickup trucks at the end of the road, one burning and the other still intact, and lined up on the second pickup with a gentle touch of his control stick. His A-10 was not modified with a dedicated infrared sensor pod, but the “poor man’s FLIR” video from the Maverick missile did the job nicely.

Nighttime cannon runs were not normally advisable, especially in such hilly terrain, but what pilot would not take the risk for a chance to fire the incredible GAU-8A Avenger cannon, a thirty-millimeter Gatling gun that fired huge depleted uranium shells at almost four thousand rounds per minute? Besides, with the first target burning nicely, it was easy to see the next target now.

When the Maverick aiming reticle showed thirty degrees depression, the pilot dropped his plane’s nose, made a final adjustment, announced “Guns, guns, guns!” on the radio, and pulled the trigger. The roar of that big cannon firing between his legs was the most incredible feeling. In a single three-second spurt, almost two hundred huge shells flew to their target. The pilot centered the first second’s worth on the pickup, covering it with fifty shells and causing yet another spectacular explosion, and then raised the A-10’s nose to let the remaining hundred and thirty shells stitch up along the road toward a fleeing terrorist target.

Careful not to get target fixated, and very aware of the surrounding terrain, he pulled up sharply and vectored right to climb to his assigned altitude. The maneuverability of the American-made A-10 was amazing—it did not deserve its unofficial nickname of “Warthog.” “Two’s clear. Three, cleared in hot.”

“Three’s in hot,” the pilot of the third A-10 in the formation responded. He was the least experienced pilot in the four-ship formation, so he was not going to do a cannon pass…but it was going to be just as exciting.

He centered the target—a large garage beside a house—in his Maverick missile aiming screen, pressed the “lock” button on his throttle quadrant, said “Rifle one” on the radio, turned his head right to avoid the glare of the missile’s motor, and pressed the “launch” button on his control stick. An AGM-65G Maverick missile flew off the launch rail on the left wing and quickly disappeared from view. He selected a second missile, moved the aiming reticle to the second target—the house itself—and fired a Maverick from the right wing. He was rewarded seconds later with two bright explosions.