Echo Six: Black Ops 5 - Strikeforce Syria (29 page)

Idiot!

He watched them race to obey his commands. He had in excess of six hundred troops in the immediate vicinity of Al Jasan, more than enough to deal with the insolent invaders.

Infidel scum!

But if they came, the CX9 shells would wipe them out. It would be good to see one of the new weapons in action, and it would strengthen his men’s morale. Allah knew they needed it. They were clearly frightened at the coming battle with the Israelis. When they saw the effects of the gas, they’d gain new confidence in their ability to achieve total victory over the Jews. He called in his clerk.

“Call the battery commander. I have ordered three CX9 shells to be issued. As soon as the enemy are sighted, he is to open fire.”

"But, Sir, the wind direction.”

Hafiz groaned inwardly.

Another fucking whiner, what's wrong with these people?

“What is it?” he asked tiredly.

“Sir, the wind is very changeable on the side of the Golan Heights. There are civilians in the area, and our soldiers are not wearing NBC suits."

Hafiz held up his hand. “I don’t give a shit about civilians, wind direction, or anything else. Just open fire with CX9, and destroy them the moment they are sighted. Clear?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The man dashed off, and Hafiz allowed himself the luxury of a smile of self-congratulation. These arrogant foreigners were about to taste the wrath of Third Corps. They entered his country to wreak havoc and destruction, but one thing was certain. They’d never leave. Never.

Outside Al Jasan – The Sixth Day

Tuesday 13
^th
May

The town of Al Jasan loomed five kilometers in the distance as they crested the final rise on the long climb up the Golan Heights. A balmy breeze blew across the hillside, coming from the direction of Israel. It brought an infinitely more pleasant aroma than the Syria stench of degradation and filth. This was a delicate mix of oranges, lemons, and herbs, with a strong underlay of spice.

"It’s the smell of home."

He looked at Rebecca. "It sure makes a change after this place."

She grimaced. "There's no need for them to live the way they do in these Arab countries. They have more money than they know how to spend, far more than Israel. The wealth from oil has given them the means for their people to have good housing, roads, sanitation, and a developing industrial base. Instead, their leaders squander the money on palaces, limousines, and private jets, and they have luxury villas all over the world. Meanwhile their people starve and live like dogs, some of them worse than dogs. All they feed them is Islam, and more Islam. How can they eat religion?”

He couldn't argue. It was a simple truth. A truth he'd seen in every Islamic country he'd ever fought in. The people at the top managed to steal the nation's wealth and kept their population in poverty and ignorance. And so the poor had only one place to turn. The mosques, the Imams, the voices shouting for the destruction of Israel, America, and whichever country they decided to blame for their misery.

"Maybe one day they'll learn, and things will change."

She gave him a skeptical look. "And maybe things won't change, and we'll be fighting these battles against these extremists and lunatics forever."

He didn't answer. It was too gloomy to dwell on the idea of permanent war. Vince interrupted his thoughts.

"Something going on up there, Boss. Just beyond the town. A bunch of soldiers are maneuvering an artillery piece."

"I'll check it out."

He'd taken a pair of binoculars from the Syrian officer, and he raised them to his eyes. An artillery tractor had stopped outside the town, and troops were unlimbering a howitzer. He recognized the distinctive profile of the D30, yet more of the equipment supplied by the Soviet Union during the communist regime. He kept watching and saw the barrel slowly traverse, until it was pointed directly at their position. A puff of smoke appeared at the end of the barrel, and almost a second later, he heard the crash of the explosive shell. The projectile hit the ground a kilometer short of them, and a huge cloud of smoke billowed up into the air. The smoke was tinged yellow, maybe from the sand tossed up inside the cloud, unless there was another reason.

Surely not…

"You have to stop," Rebecca Dayan shouted from the back. Benjamin is saying something about that smoke. We have to let him up."

Talley gave the order, and Vince halted the UAZ at the side of the road. The other UAZ stopped nearby. She helped release Rothstein from the cramped space he occupied on the floor. The scientist was screaming, panicked, red faced, and dripping with sweat.

"You have to go back, immediately! It'll kill us all."

"What are you talking about?" Talley asked him. "Calm down. That shell missed by a mile."

"It didn't miss," he screamed back. "Can't you see? It's coming right at us. They’re using CX9.”

Talley felt an icy feeling in his guts as he looked at the smoke, spreading outward. Spreading toward them.

"Is it the gas? Or is it just sand kicked up by the explosion?”

Rothstein was almost incoherent with terror and panic. "Yes! Can't you see? They've used one of the CX9 shells. That yellow cloud coming towards us is nerve gas. When it reaches us, we'll all die."

It was enough for Talley. He shouted at the men in the jeep behind, "We're getting out of here! Follow me. We're going cross-country."

He leapt into their jeep. "Vince, get off the road, and steer us out of here."

"Which direction?"

"Away from that fucking yellow cloud. Wherever it takes us. I don’t care. When we're out of the danger area, we'll head back to Al Jasan."

DiMosta stamped on the gas and went off road, vectoring away from the deadly gas. Rothstein was sitting up next to Rebecca. He looked at the direction they were taking and leaned forward to shout a protest.

"You're mad. You can't outrun the gas. Our only chance is to head away. We have to go back.”

"That's not the way it works.” Talley told him. “The job we came here to do lies in Al Jasan. We'll cut across the line of the cloud, and when we're out of it, we'll head back toward the town."

"You'll never make it! I told you. The gas will kill us all."

You should have thought of that before you helped them make it. Fucking moron.

Talley ignored him and called Brooks’ jeep. "This is Echo One. Nothing has changed. That shell just forced us to take a different route. As soon as…"

He stopped speaking as another shell exploded. It was less than half a kilometer away. They saw the yellow cloud spill out and float over the ground, melting into the first gas cloud, to make a huge, amorphous mass that headed inexorably toward them, to overwhelm them, to kill them. Vince spun the wheel, and the UAZ surged further to the east away from the gathering cloud, and away from Al Jasan. They hung on as DiMosta steered the vehicle across the treacherous rock-strewn hillside, trying to keep to flat ground and steer them away from the potholes and crevices waiting to ambush them.

And then another shell exploded. It was obvious the gunners could no longer aim. The huge yellow cloud from the first two shells had blotted out their view, and they could only estimate the position of the speeding vehicles. The movement of the cloud seemed to speed up as more gas exploded into the atmosphere, and the yellow mass came straight at them, gathering speed.

"Vince, head due east! We have to get out from under this crap."

He clung on as the UAZ tilted over on its springs, and DiMosta sent the vehicle plunging downhill, away from the cloud.

"It's getting nearer," Brooks called over the commo. "Now would be a good time to go faster."

"What the fuck do think I'm doing?" Vince snapped in desperation, although he hadn’t keyed his mic. "I've got my fucking foot flat on the floor, and we'll be lucky if we don't overturn and get smothered by this shit." He suddenly realized, and keyed his mic. “Doing my best, Sir."

Brooks didn't reply. Several times, the overloaded jeeps struck obstacles and nearly went over, but Vince refused to slow down, and the vehicle behind clung tenaciously on their tail. The only choice was to drive at top speed or to be overtaken by the gas. Slowing down wasn't an option, but it didn’t look like they were going to make it. Slowly, meter-by-meter, the terrible cloud came nearer and nearer. There was nothing anyone could do to assist. Vince was concentrating every fiber of his being on steering them out of trouble. They held on grimly as the bucking vehicle hit an even deeper hole, reared up on two wheels, and for long seconds kept going on the two wheels at a steep angle.

It almost tipped. It should have tipped, but at the last second, Vince flicked the wheel over to avoid a large rock, and all four wheels crashed back to the ground. As it righted again, Talley measured the distance to the cloud. It was almost on them. Vince must have read his mind.

"I know, Boss. I'm doing everything I can to steer away from it, but I don't think we can make it."

"Just do your best. We’ll make it.”

We won’t make it. I know that. But we’ll go out fighting.

He nodded and held on to the jerking steering wheel. The seconds crept by and became minutes. The cloud edged nearer and nearer, no matter which way they twisted. The leading edge of the gas was perhaps twenty meters from them, and every man knew their lives measured in seconds. They hung on, tense, waiting for the deadly toxic gas to overwhelm them, for the terrible, choking death. Vince kept trying, and he twisted the wheel again to send the vehicle plunging down a different slope. Still the cloud came. Talley stared at it for long moments, watching his death drift toward him. Ten meters. Yet something was different. He keyed his mic.

"Admiral, the wind. Do you think it's changed?"

He turned, to watch Brooks wet his finger and hold it up. "Hard to tell. We're going so fast, I can't get a reading, but it's possible."

Talley looked back at the gas.

Is the cloud further away? Yes, at least twenty meters now and receding. The wind has changed!

In jubilation, he slapped DiMosta on the back.

"Vince, you can slow down. The wind is blowing the gas back toward Al Jasan, and that means whoever is firing those shells is about to go and shake hands with Allah.”

He grinned. "Someone back there didn’t know his business. Thank the good Lord."

They stopped and watched as the gas cloud blew further away, back to where it had come from. Back to Al Jasan. Talley made an instant decision.

"Start up! We’re going to follow the cloud in. We’ll never get a chance like this. They’ve given us our way in.” He turned to Rothstein. “You’re sure this stuff disperses into the ground right away?”

“Yes, it does, but it doesn’t mean it’s safe. Anything you touch could still be contaminated. It’s just that it’s no longer airborne.”

“Good. Vince, get this thing moving.”

Rothstein immediately began shouting objections. "You can’t! The ground will be polluted, and anyone's bare skin that touches the sand or any solid object will absorb the toxin. It’ll take hours to disperse completely. We’ll die within minutes."

Talley nodded. "None of us are planning to fight barefoot, Professor, so we can finish off what we came here to do. You’re certain about the airborne risk?”

He nodded his head wearily. “The design is such that the molecules are heavier than air, and they fall to the ground and rapidly become inert. But it’s still in the experimental stages. We shouldn’t go near that place, not yet.”

“Yeah, you said. So all we need do, is make sure we don’t touch anything?”

“Theoretically, yes, but it’s madness. You’ll get us all killed. You’ve seen the way men die when they come into contact with the CX9. We have to go back. I keep telling you…”

Rovere stuck out an arm as rigid as an iron bar and dragged him down to the floor.

“Be a good idea to shut it, Professor. You would not like the alternative.”

He went quiet, and Talley smiled and continued to gage the drift of the gas cloud. He turned to DiMosta.

"Vince, watch for any wind changes. Right now, we have the advantage. They can't see us, and for all they know, the gas killed us."

"Or killed them. With any luck, there won’t be any of them left alive to see us coming," he growled, fighting with the wheel. "The stupid bastard that gave the fire order for CX9 has murdered his own men, himself too, probably. And if the wind keeps blowing, the gas should clear the town, so we’ll have a free run at the target."

“Unless they’re all wearing NBC gear,” Talley pointed out. “In which case, they’ll be waiting for us to come.”

“Anyone crazy enough to spread nerve gas over his own troops wouldn’t have the sense to issue protective gear.”

“I hope you’re right. There’re a lot more of them than us.”

They edged nearer to the town, and it became clear Vince had called it right. The first of the bodies lay twisted on the ground where the deadly cloud had changed direction and exposed them to the deadly toxin. Soldiers, their lips stretched back from their teeth in the agonizing rictus of death. A terrible death, their hands clutching at their throats, their eyes distorted, bulging with the horror of the death they knew was about to overtake them. None of them wore NBC suits.

Maybe they didn’t have any suits,
Talley thought to himself, the money spent on new Italian sports cars or gambled at the tables of Monte Carlo. It wouldn’t be the first time in an Arab state.

In the rear, Rothstein started babbling, "We're all going to die. It's crazy, insane." In the end, Rovere gripped him by the throat.

“Sir, you’re not helping any. Keep it quiet, or I’ll have to shut you down.”

The noise stopped, and they drove on to their destination. Incredibly, the Syrian commander really had done their work for them and murdered almost his entire garrison.
 

This is a bonus. We have a chance to finish this. Provided the toxin doesn’t finish us first.

He turned to Ali, who was propped in the rear and supported by Rebecca. “Where is this mosque?”

 
“Keep on this street, into the center of town. It’s the only mosque. Just off the main square, you’ll see the minarets. We need to enter the building by the front door. Immediately inside there is an entrance that leads down to the ordnance store. You must be careful. There is also a small laboratory down there, used for monitoring and analyzing the CX9 warheads. There are sure to be men down there, soldiers. If there is any shooting, you could easily breach the integrity of the biological seals."