Black Flagged Apex (44 page)

"Rewind the camera feed," he ordered.

The black-haired, bearded man seated at the table clicked the mouse a few times, and the digital feed sped back in time twenty seconds. As the image flashed on the screen, Bishop saw a massive convoy of vehicles enter the screen, headed backward toward Route 15.

"Stop it there. Play it forward."

Bishop counted the vehicles as they slowly passed the night vision equipped security camera. Eight vehicles inbound, carrying maybe fifty agents. The lead vehicle had been a stripped-down Humvee, probably from a West Virginia National Guard unit. This made sense since none of the vehicles displayed headlights. The Guard drivers could navigate the road with night vision and lead the feds along safely to their target. The convoy was more than twenty minutes out, giving him more than enough time to deploy the compound's defenses. He wondered if they had him under some kind of long-range surveillance. He'd considered the possibility, but his array of motion sensors told him a different story. He'd overseen the placement of this array and had tested it from every direction. If working properly, nothing could get close enough to watch the compound without alerting him.

Still, he didn't want to completely spoil the surprise. He notified each of the barracks buildings with his radio and set them in motion. Within minutes, he'd have two heavy machine guns covering the approach road from the ground and the other two mounted in fixed rooftop positions. Located on opposite sides of the parade field, the rooftop guns could fire in any direction around the compound and would be their first line of defense against helicopters. Sniper positions on the rooftops and along the raised earthen barriers inside the fence could similarly fire in any direction, though he would concentrate their placement in the direction of the approach road.

The recruits would man the entire fence line armed with a variety of automatic rifles, equipped with state-of-the-art optics. Once the heavy machine-gunners made contact, he'd deploy the Road Warrior if they pressed the attack forward. He really hoped they were stupid and stubborn enough to try to breach the fence line. He'd love nothing more than to see the entire group of FBI agents slaughtered as they crossed 350 yards of open field.

He opened a tall metal cabinet pressed against the wall and grabbed his battle gear, which consisted of an AR-15 with 4X ACOG scope and a full tactical vest loaded down with spare magazines. He already wore his pistol in a drop-down tactical leg holster, along with a hand microphone-equipped command radio.

"Stay on the command channel. If you see any movement on the forest sensors, aside from the approach road, you notify me immediately. Understood?"

"I got your back, Ty. I wish I could be out there with you guys."

"You'll get your turn, don't worry. If we have a turkey shoot out there, I'll send someone back so you can empty a few mags."

"Fuck yeah! Save some of those dirt bag pieces of shit for me," he said, as Bishop disappeared.

"All teams report when in position. I want everyone ready in three minutes," he said into the hand mic.

He had a dozen snipers, four heavy gun team leaders, Road Warrior and the mortar team on the command net. Things would get busy very quickly. The recruits would be led by his regulars, separated into groups of ten. If he needed to contact them, or vice versa, the request would be relayed through a different channel that was monitored by his second-in-command, who was sprinting down the hall toward him.

Paul Thomas had been a competent soldier to have at his side for the past year. Wearing a Marine Corps-style "high and tight" haircut that matched his persona, the former Marine staff sergeant got things done around here. He considered Thomas to be an essential camp asset, which was more than he could say about many of the regulars that rotated through the compound.

"Wake your ass up, marine. We have a whole invasion force coming down that road. Make sure the recruits get into position, and don't leave my side. We may need to shift guys around pretty quickly."

"Roger that," Thomas said.

"I want to get down by the front gate to assess the situation firsthand," Bishop said and started running south, in the direction of the front gate.

On his way across the parade field, he saw activity on the rooftops designated to hold two of the heavy machine guns. These boys worked fast. Dark figures dashed in every direction, following orders barked by men and women who had been trained to lead freedom fighters into battle. The sound of equipment rattling sent a chill down his spine. He had never served in the military, but he imagined that this was exactly how it must have felt to be stationed in the Korengal Valley, at one of those hilltop firebases when the Taliban launched a surprise attack. The feeling nearly overwhelmed him as he reached one of the machine-gun positions established beside the gate. He had to stop and catch his breath, woozy from the excitement and adrenaline.

The machine gun was almost fully assembled on its tripod, which had been jammed against the two-foot-high berm. When in position, the barrel would clear the top of the raised earth by a few inches, giving the gunners cover from return fire. He doubted there would be any accurate return fire. With two or three .50 cals pouring hot steel into their vehicles, options would be limited for the agents that managed to crawl out of the wreckage. They could either hug the ground or kiss their asses goodbye.

**

Chief Petty Officer Carroll stared through the lens of his AN/PED-1 Lightweight Laser Designator/Rangefinder (LLDR) and depressed the trigger, firing an invisible, pulsed laser beam at the side of an ammunition can that had been placed next to a sandbag emplacement on the roof of one of the buildings. Within milliseconds, the Joint Fire Support Console connected to the LLDR had calculated the range and elevation to the ammunition can, comparing the data to the GPS signal provided by the chief's sophisticated communications rig. By the time he had released the trigger, the compact JFSC screen presented him with a muted orange, digital readout of the ammunition can's coordinates, which he quickly highlighted and transmitted, along with a brief target description, to the E-8C JSTARS aircraft circling far overhead. A similar process was conducted by DEVGRU teams in three other locations around the compound, aided by laser pointers from at least a dozen weapons aimed into the compound.

Within seconds, precise coordinates for all of the compound's heavy weapons and the single armored vehicle had been relayed by the SEALS to the JSTARS aircraft, where computers eliminated duplicate coordinates and packaged the data for transmission to Gunslinger Three One, a three-gun firing section provided by Fox Battery, 2
^nd
Battalion, 10
^th
Marine Artillery Regiment. The section had been delivered by three Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, under the cover of darkness, to a remote forest clearing located eighteen miles north of the compound. Their M777A2 Howitzers would fire six M982 155mm high-explosive Excalibur rounds in support of the mission. The Excalibur round was an extended-range GPS-guided munition, with a circle error probable (CEP) of less than five meters, allowing for near pinpoint battlefield accuracy. He had to give the Joint Special Operations Command planners some credit for creativity. The use of battlefield artillery against terrorist forces on U.S. soil had never crossed his mind. Then again, he had never foreseen the authorization to use Tier One Special Operations assets either.

He waited for the final list of targets to arrive, which appeared on his console a few seconds later. The list looked good. Four gun emplacements and one armored vehicle. He typed additional instructions for their "fire mission" on the small keyboard attached to the JFSC and transmitted the data.

He diverted his attention from the screen and glanced through the lens at the bright green image centered on one of the rooftops. One of the men picked up the ammunition can and placed it inside of the sandbag emplacement. The three-man crew had attached the heavy machine gun to a fixed mounting bracket and was in the process of loading the weapon. Panning out, Carroll took in a wider view of the compound. Personnel scrambled in every direction, with the majority of the terrorists manning positions toward the front gate. Suspected sharpshooters armed with optics-equipped .50-caliber sniper rifles started to take positions on several of the rooftops. Lasers calibrated to a frequency only visible to friendly night vision equipment reached out from the tree line and marked the shooters, guiding sniper teams from 1
^st
Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group to their highest priority targets.

The plan remained intact, as far as Chief Carroll could tell. The fake video transmitted from the JSTARS aircraft to the compound's security feed had catapulted the sleepy camp into action. Unknown to camp personnel, JSTARS technicians had completely hijacked the compound's security systems, disabling the motion sensors and using the camp's own cameras for close-up surveillance. The compound's commander had reacted in accordance with the battlefield intelligence presented by his hijacked sensors and deployed a majority of the camp's defenders to repel nonexistent vehicles approaching from the southern access road. Carroll's surveillance of the compound was interrupted by a low volume tone in his right earpiece, indicating that JSTARS had sent him an update. His JFSC console relayed fire mission data from the artillery battery.

"FM12-001. Two salvos-3 rds. 1
^st
salvo, 2 bldg gun empls-1 rd, vehicle-1 rd. 2
^nd
Salvo, 2 grnd gun empls-1 rd, vehicle-1 rd. TOF 141s. Ready."

He reviewed the fire mission and highlighted "FM12-001" to bring up options on the screen. Without hesitation he selected "Fire." Thirteen seconds later, his screen provided an update for the fire mission. "Rounds complete." The console kept track of the timing and provided him with a countdown to the estimated Time on Target (TOT). He didn't need the computer to keep track of the artillery rounds. The math was simple: Time of Flight (TOF) for the rounds was 141 seconds, and it took the artillery battery twelve seconds to fire a second salvo. Within 156 seconds, all mission-critical impediments would cease to exist.

There was no need to transmit voice data to any of the teams on the ground. All team leaders were equipped with a wrist-mounted Battle Feed console that relayed the same information. Carroll glanced at his teammate, Petty Officer Stanhope, who was focused on the scope attached to his suppressed Mk11 Mod 0 semi-automatic sniper rifle. Stanhope's rifle utilized a uniquely effective sighting combination, attaching the AN/PVS-27 Magnum Universal Night Sight (MUNS) in front of a Leupold Mark 4 scope.

"One-four-one seconds to impact," he whispered.

"Got it," Stanhope muttered, remaining perfectly still behind the scope.

Several feet away, one of the Delta support teams lay motionless, preparing to eliminate any high-threat targets and provide suppressive fire for the assault groups. Each support team consisted of four Delta operators, broken into a machine-gun section and a sniper section. The two-man machine-gun section operated a night vision equipped M240B belt-fed machine gun, capable of accurately firing 950 rounds per minute at targets up to 800 meters away. The sniper/spotter duo fielded the M107A2 Barrett sniper rifle, which accurately fired the unstoppable .50-caliber 661-grain BMG round to ranges of 1,800 meters.

Five additional Delta support teams ringed the compound, each similarly equipped, bringing the total number of support weapons aimed into the compound to sixteen. In a pinch, Chief Carroll and the other SEAL spotters could pick up their rifles and join the fight, adding four additional guns to the mix. He very much doubted they would be needed. His role was to observe the entire compound and adjust ground-fire support to maximize the neutralization of targets. His weapon would be the AN/PED-1 LLDR, unless a real problem developed. Given the number of weapons concentrated on the terrorist force, and the six inbound 155mm artillery shells, he didn't think the assault teams would encounter any resistance. There might not be anyone left alive in the compound. He glanced down at the JFSC console. One hundred and ten seconds until impact.

**

Master Sergeant Ethan McDonald pressed himself against the concrete foundation of the building and checked his Battle Feed wrist monitor. One minute and twenty-two seconds until impact, which he figured would be about one minute too long at this rate. The compound's militia had reacted faster than any of them had expected, and started to arrive at positions along the rear fence line ahead of schedule.

Twenty minutes ago, his assault troop had breached the fence at the northwest corner and spread out among the five northernmost buildings along the fence line, lying flat and melting into the shadows. The troop consisted of eighteen Delta operators, split into three teams of six. Armed primarily with suppressed, night vision-equipped HK416 assault rifles, breaching shotguns and grenades, his troop's mission was to clear the buildings of hostile personnel, starting from the rear of the compound and moving forward.

Mission planners had originally suggested two teams of six operators, figuring that the smaller group would have a better chance at remaining undetected. He agreed with that assessment, until he learned that they would be required to accept surrenders when practical. Taking prisoners would eat up his operators quickly, so he had opted for one more team than mission planners had suggested.

As the first wave of defenders trickled through the buildings to take up positions at the fence, he didn't think they would remain hidden for long. Fortunately, most of them had braced their rifles against the raised berm and scanned the darkness beyond the fence. If one of them glanced back at the unusual dark clumps along the bottom of each building, they would have a problem. With over a minute left until TOT, he couldn't risk detection and the possible discharge of an unsuppressed firearm. They would have to start neutralizing the defenders very shortly. He just wanted to wait until most of them had arrived.