Jersey put the HumVee in reverse and floored the accelerator pedal. The rear wheels spun for a moment and then took hold, and the big truck backed itself off the jeep.

As Jersey was about to shift gears, a pistol shot sounded from off to the side and she felt a burning in her right shoulder. "G.o.dd.a.m.n!" she cursed, thinking, Not again.

Coop whipped the barrel of the big fifty around and let off a burst in the direction the sound had come from, though he was able to see nothing.

He stopped firing when he heard an earsplitting scream of pain and anguish from in front of him.

"Got the b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he said.

"Not before he got me," Jersey said, her voice growing weaker from the front seat.

"s.h.i.t!" Coop said, and climbed over the seat next to Jersey.

"You all right, babe?" he asked gently, his eyes narrowing at the dark stain on her shirtsleeve barely visible in the starlight.

"Don't call me babe . . ." Jersey said, and fainted.

"Sorry about that, darlin'," Coop said as he grabbed her under the arms and pulled her into the pa.s.senger seat. He took off his belt and hurriedly tied a tourniquet around her upper arm.

Turning back to the steering wheel, he put the HumVee 264.

into gear, and began to drive off away from the jeep. He could see several sets of lights in the distance as then-pursuers turned around to come back after them.

Making sure not to touch the brakes and give their position away with brake lights, Coop gunned the engine and raced away into the darkness and safety.265 As Coop drove the HumVee as fast as he could through the darkness, his attention was divided between checking Jersey to make sure her bleeding had stopped, and following the progress of the three remaining vehicles that were still on his trail.

Since they were able to use their headlights, they were slowly gaining on him, even though he drove a zigzag course through the desert.

His heart almost jumped into his throat as he pa.s.sed a dark object coming toward him out of the darkness, until he saw it was one of the jeeps from Tehran. He caught a quick glimpse of a woman driving and a huge bear of a man in the pa.s.senger seat that could only be Harley Reno.

When they pa.s.sed, Coop raised a fist in salute, and thought he saw the gleam of Harley's teeth as they flashed past, also running without headlights.

Moments later, Coop heard the rapid chatter of an MP-10, and saw in his mirror one of the pair of headlights following him veer sharply to the side and overturn, the headlights now vertical instead of side by side.

He chuckled to himself, thinking, good ol' Harley.

After another minute, a large fireball erupted into the 266.

night sky as another of the chasing vehicles felt the sting of Harley's wrath.

Coop slowed and turned in his seat to see the final pair of headlights change direction and head back toward the road and the convoy of troops heading toward Tehran.

As dawn sunlight began to tinge the eastern horizon with shades of orange and gold, Coop stopped the Hum-Vee and got out of the car. He ran around to the pa.s.senger door and flung it open, slipping inside to check on Jersey.

Still unconscious, she moaned as he gently removed his belt from around her arm to check on her wound. Slipping his K-Bar a.s.sault knife from its scabbard, he sliced through her shirt and peeled it down over her chest.

There was a small hold in the front of her right biceps, and a slightly larger hole in the rear part of her arm where the slug had exited after plowing through the muscles of the upper arm.

"Thank G.o.d they're using steel-jacketed bullets," Coop mumbled to himself, thinking the wound would've been much worse with lead-tipped bullets.

He squeezed around the edges of the wound, checking for any signs of arterial bleeding, which would mean he'd have to reapply the tourniquet.

There was only a slow oozing of dark blood-a good sign.

Jersey's head rolled to the side and her eyes blinked open. She stared down at her exposed b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then glanced up at Coop, whose eyes werefirmly fixed on her shoulder wound.

"Hey, partner," she croaked through dry, chapped lips. "You trying to get a free look?"

He glanced down at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s once, and then shifted his attention back to her wound. "What?" he asked scornfully. "You think I'd waste my time scoping out those little things?"

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He shook his head, a slight smile on his lips. "h.e.l.l, I've seen better b.r.e.a.s.t.s on a chicken, my dear."

Jersey managed a low chuckle. "In your dreams, mister."

And then she groaned as he wrapped a piece of her shirt tightly around the wound, pulling it tight to stop the oozing of blood.

"How bad is it?" she asked, not able to see in the early dawn light.

"You won't be shooting any a.s.sault rifles for a few weeks," he answered, "but you should be able to play the piano again."

"That's good," she said, her voice growing weaker as she began to feel faint again. "I've always wanted to play the piano."

As she slipped back into unconsciousness, Coop slipped his own shirt off and began to put it on Jersey.

When his eyes drifted downward, he smiled to himself. "Coop, ol' boy, you're a d.a.m.n liar," he mumbled. "Those are really nice b.r.e.a.s.t.s!"

Just as Coop finished b.u.t.toning his shirt around Jersey, the jeep containing Anna and Harley drove up. Harley and Anna jumped from the vehicle and ran to the side of Coop's captured HumVee.

"Hey, thanks for the rescue, guys," Coop said.

Anna moved to Jersey's side. "How's Jersey?" she asked as she noticed the dressing on Jersey's arm.

"She got hit in the arm, looks like a through and through wound that missed the bone," Coop answered.

They all looked up as another series of explosions from the direction of the road into town occurred, accompanied by the sound of automatic-weapons fire that carried a good distance in the thin desert air.

Harley grinned. "Looks like the mobile troops are do- 268.

ing a pretty good job of slowing the convoy down," he said, rubbing his jaw.

Coop glanced skyward. "Yeah, an' dawn's just about here. The reinforcements oughta be landing soon.""Why don't you take Jersey on back to the city where one of the medics can take a look at her?" Anna said. She looked over at the road and the long line of terrorist trucks in the distance. "Harley and I have some unfinished business over there."

"Will do," Coop said, and he got back in the driver's seat.

"Take it easy on your approach to town," Harley advised. "Remember, you're driving an enemy vehicle. We wouldn't want our boys to take you out without knowing you're one of us."

"Don't worry," Coop said, holding up the tattered remains of Jersey's BDU shirt. "I'll wave this like a flag as soon as I get close enough."

Ben was standing in the c.o.c.kpit door as the big C-141 StarLifter followed the three Apache helicopter gunships toward the Tehran Airport.

He was relieved to see columns of green smoke wafting into the dawn sky around the runways.

"Good," he said, "our men still have control of the airport."

The pilot nodded. "You want me to radio the Apaches to fly in a circle around the runways to make sure we get down okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ben answered, "if they've got enough fuel left."

The pilot got on the radio, and Ben moved back into 269.

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the cargo compartment where the rest of the Scout paratroopers were waiting.

"Shuck your chutes, men," he said, slipping out of his parachute. "Looks like we're gonna get the red-carpet treatment on this landing."

As the men began to get out of their parachute gear, Ben added, "But keep your weapons ready. I don't know how long we're going to have before the hostiles arrive, so we're going to deploy immediately in a line of defense around the runways until the rest of the big birds get down."

By the time all of the six C-14s had landed and the troops had disembarked and the Apaches had been refueled, Ben could hear heavy fighting going on in the city a few miles away.

He got on a SOHFRAD and got in touch with Major Jackson Bean, who was leading the forces in the city.

"Jackson," Ben said, "how are you holding up?"

"It's pretty heavy going, Ben," Bean replied, and Ben could hear the chatter of automatic fire and numerous explosions in the background.

"Okay," Ben replied. "Tell your men to hold on a while longer. I'm gonna send in the Apaches first, but it'll take a little while for me to get my troops there."

"Tell the 'Paches to take out the tanks first, Ben. They're blowing h.e.l.lout of the buildings we're holed up in," Bean said, evident relief in his voice.

"Roger that," Ben said, and switched his frequency on the SOHFRAD to the one used by the chopper pilots.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Dooley," the leader of the chopper squad answered.

"Hey, Tom, this is General Raines," Ben said. "Our 270.

boys need a little help with some enemy tanks in the city. Think you can oblige?"

"Tell your men to give us five minutes and we'll be in their faces,"

Dooley answered.

Ben saw the three helicopters take off and make a bee-line for the city, flying at high speed no more than a hundred feet off the ground.

Ben almost felt sorry for the tanks . . . almost.

As he sped toward the city, Lieutenant Commander Dooley flipped a switch that locked his h.e.l.lfire missiles into the ship's targeting radar, and got ready to make life miserable for some tank jockeys.

On the way into the city, Dooley triggered off his chain gun as he pa.s.sed hordes of enemy ground troops, grinning as the saw hundreds of bodies torn asunder by the thousands of sh.e.l.ls from the gun.

He didn't slow or change his course until he saw an old Army-surplus Abrams tank in the middle of a wide boulevard firing at a six-story building.

He put the tank in the middle of his targeting screen, locked it on, and pressed a b.u.t.ton. He felt a jolt as one of his six h.e.l.lfire missiles launched from the pod on his right side. The missile streaked downward almost faster than the eye could follow.

The tank exploded in a huge fireball, and Dooley had to jerk the stick to the side to miss the ball of flame that shot into the air.

As he circled around, looking for another target, his Plexiglas windshield was pocked and starred by bullet holes as he came under fire from a fifty-caliber machine gun in the back of a HumVee on the street next to the burning tank.

Dooley triggered his chain gun and tore up the street 271.

271.

on all sides of the HumVee, but somehow managed to miss the vehicle.

As he dove toward the rattling machine gun, Dooley felt as if someone had kicked him in the leg, and he looked down and saw a hole in his thigh he could put a fist in.As his vision began to blur, Dooley shifted his aim slightly and saw with satisfaction the HumVee disintegrating beneath the onslaught of his chain gun.

Sweat pouring from his forehead and dripping down into his eyes, Dooley knew he had only seconds before he blacked out completely. Blood was pumping from his ruined leg at an alarming rate.

He looked around, but saw no place to land. "The h.e.l.l with it," he gasped, and wrenched the stick to the side. Another tank came into view, surrounded by enemy troops who were using it as a shield while they attacked a building that had several Scouts on the roof.

Dooley couldn't see well enough to target the tank with a h.e.l.lfire missile, so he just lowered the nose, pushed the throttle to full speed, and watched as the troops below scattered trying to get out of his way.

They failed. The Apache hit the tank at almost two hundred miles an hour, and all five of the remaining h.e.l.l-fire missiles exploded on impact, blowing a crater twenty feet deep and killing almost three hundred troops in the explosion.

The blast was so intense it knocked the Scouts on the building rooftop off their feet, but saved their lives.

By this time, Ben and the rest of the troops had begun to arrive in the city, catching the enemy troops between them, the defenders of the city, and the two remaining 272.

Apache helicopters that were wreaking havoc on the armored vehicles below.

Ben, unlike most generals before him, didn't command the troops from the rear ranks. He was right at the forefront of the arriving troops, carrying his own Thunder Lizard, an ancient M-14 that he preferred in combat.

Since this was practically hand-to-hand combat, Ben had told his squad leaders to do whatever they thought necessary to save the men defending the city. He knew he wouldn't have time to personally direct the battle.

The SUSA troops attacked in a wide line, spread out enough so that they wouldn't make a concentrated target. They attacked with a ferocity never seen by the terrorist troops, screaming and running right into intense enemy fire. There was absolutely no back down in the Scouts commanded by General Ben Raines.

Within a half hour, the terrified terrorists, though they outnumbered the attackers five to one, began to retreat under the vicious onslaught of the Scouts.

When some of the terrorists tried to surrender, they were summarily mowed down by the advancing SUSA troops, who didn't have the time or the manpower to deal with prisoners of war.

273.

Coop, driving like a bat out of h.e.l.l, made it though the checkpoints atthe city limits ahead of the enemy troops, but just barely.

The Scouts positioned there as advance guards grinned as he waved Jersey's b.l.o.o.d.y BDU shirt and raced through their positions.