"f.u.c.k that," Mike said, coughing again. "This is my place to stand. Hand me my rifle and then get back in the room."

"Look, macho man," Britney snapped. "You're bleeding all over the place. There's only so much blood in the human body. You're going to die if we don't get some of it to stay in you."

"Got any tampons?" Amy asked. "We don't have bandages, we don't have medicine and we don't have anyone else who can shoot. Throw the flare to the far end and then leave him."

"No, I'm going into this room," Britney said. "That way I can hand him ammunition and stuff."

"Okay," Mike gasped. "Do it." He laid his head on the AK for a second and then coughed. "Britney?"

"Yeah?" she asked softly.

"You're good people," Mike said, coughing. "The reason I did this is I just f.u.c.king care too much, okay?

I'm a bad guy, I know that, but I care, too. Too much. I'm sorry about what I said."

"It's okay," Britney replied, tears in her eyes. "I think we sort of knew that. You're going to make it, Ghost. Help's on the way. Fox said that Brandeis said they had forces on the way. I don't know how long, but you stay with us, okay? Please?"

"Yeah," Mike said, taking a breath. "Hold your head up high, for there is no greater love. . . G.o.d, I wish I had a Cruxshadows CD right now."

"Save your breath, Ghost," Britney said, rubbing him on the shoulder, lightly. There were more wounds there. There was blood pouring out of him . . . everywhere. "Save your strength, hero."

"Gotta fight the dark," Mike replied. "My way.And in the fury of this darkest hour, we will be your light .

. . we shall carry hope within our b.l.o.o.d.y hands . .." he continued to sing/whisper, coughing continuously.

"Movement," Amy snapped, triggering a round at the landing.

Mike could barely see the landing anymore, his vision was tunneling out. But he shot at the figures, like ghosts, that moved in the red light, as the pain from each recoil racked his broken body, kept firing and firing until he couldn't see anymore.

The bomb bay doors opened faster than the eye could follow. Without warning there was a blast of wind that filled the bomb bay.

"Tallyho!" the pilot said over the platoon net. "Good luck!"

The first jumper was Vahn, as the lightest of the group. As the clamps let go he felt the ram against his back thrust him out, and the foam rubber banging against him and then dropping away in the wind, and the wash from the B-2 tumbled him into the maelstrom.

He tucked into a fetal position until he was free, then opened out into a full spread, looking around with the Night Observation Device. With the NOD he could see that there was ground down there but nothing else. There was a high bank of thin clouds they'd have to drop through to get a view of the target.

Then he saw a flash of light, rising from the ground, that erupted from the clouds and tracked across the sky. He suddenly realized he was actuallyseeinga SAM missile targeting the B-2.

"SAM in the air!" he yelled on the tacnet, wondering just what good that would do.

He glanced over his shoulder and could see most of the team in the air behind him. He couldn't pick out who was who, but a quick check revealed seven members at least. Some of them were picking up to him pretty quick.

The ascending SAM was moving so quickly it was more like a laser than a missile, but suddenly it banked off to the right and went straight vertical before exploding like a firework.

"Lost track when the bomb bay closed," the OIC said over the net. "Glad it didn't track on one of us.

Form up in a stack. We're angling southwest."

The jumpers started to form their stack, maintaining separation, when Roman suddenly broke the silence.

"What in the h.e.l.l is . . ."

Vahn looked around and realized he could see something approaching at their alt.i.tude and at a high rate of speed. It looked like- "INCOMING!" Chief Adams screamed.

"Bulldog Four, Bulldog Four, vector bogie, angle one seven five, Angels thirty," the AWACs technician said, then changed to intercom. "Sir, I've got a Mig-27 closing on Bulldog Four, but I'm getting a weird intermittent on my screen in the area."

The group commander in charge of the Aleppo patch brought up the screen and gave it a quick read. He was an experienced officer with hours of managing mock dogfights and this one was going more or less like training. The Syrian fighter pilots were generally chosen for their social position, rather than their skill.

For all of that, they were probably the best the third world had to offer. Which simply meant that the F-15s and F-16s of the Combat Air Patrols were having a harder time killing them. So far, no American plane had been successfully engaged by either the Syrian pilots or their much more dangerous SAMs.

But anything could change that so he gave the screen a close study, noting the marker for the F-15 and the intermittent radar tracks. He puzzled over those, hooking one for closer scrutiny, then noted the alt.i.tude change on the nearly motionless tracks, and blanched.

"Bulldog Four! Bulldog Four! Break left and dive! Say again,break left and dive!"

Bulldog Four was an F-15C, the best d.a.m.ned fighter in the world in Major Mike Speare's opinion and he was the best d.a.m.ned pilot in the world. And he didn't have anything on his threat receptors. But he was an experienced fighter pilot and he'd learned to trust the AWACs people in the bones, so without a thought he broke left as hard as he could handle, pulling the Gs up to fifteen and turning his head right to see if he could spot the threat. What he saw, literally, made him p.i.s.s his pants. Mostly it was just two very wide eyeb.a.l.l.s above a pressure mask and a heavily rigged figure dropping through the air. The wing of his F-15 missed the descending HALO jumper by less than five meters.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" he bellowed. "I almost hit a f.u.c.king jumper!"

"All aircraft, be aware," the AWACs mission officer said. "SEAL HALO team dropping near point 1148, currently Angels 32. All aircraft, avoid 1148 for five minutes and do not fire into region. Bulldog Four, turn right, descend to Angels Twenty and engage bandit point 1273 Angels Fourteen."

"Bandit locked," Speare said, calming. "Go Slammer."

Meat Two, the lowest jumper in the stick, had been nearly hit by the F-15 and the wash from it picked up him and Vahn and spun the two of them through the air like tops. The stick broke apart as it entered the wash, all of the jumpers going into out-of-control condition, which meant being whirled like leaves in a tornado.

"Ruck loose," Roman called as his rucksack bulging with ammunition and gear broke away from its rigging straps and dropped to the end of its descent line. Since he was spinning through the air at the time, the momentum of the heavy rucksack turned him into something like a bolo, spinning horizontally in the air with blood rushing into his head with the building G forces.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" Simmons shouted when he saw the ruck coming towards him. He desperately flopped into a position he'd never heard of, basically on his side and banking as well as he could, and saw the ruck flash past his face. He heard a grunt and looked over to see Meat One spinning off, limp and out of control, and the ruck dropping. It had apparently hit the Meat full force and lost most of its momentum.

"Meat One, you read?" The junior NCO got back into position and delta tracked towards the meat who was descending on his back.

"This is Vahn. Meat Two is either dead or unconscious from the miss."

"Ditto Meat One," Simmons said, catching up to the jumper and trying to get a look at him. His mask was still attached, which was all that he could say at the moment. "He got hit by Roman's ruck. Roman, you there?"

"Trying to catch my d.a.m.ned ruck," Roman gasped. "Okay, it's official. This job is just too f.u.c.king exciting sometimes."

"Vahn, Simmons, hold onto the Meats until we get to opening, then release. They'll drop towards the target and the chute will pop on its own at Angels Two. We'll try to find them and recover them after the mission. Team Check."

"Chief." "Simmons." "Vahn." "Roman, and I have to say that I take it back, this was a bad idea."

"Sherman, ditto." "Meat Three, here. With all due respect, ditto."

They raced through the clouds, descending at nearly 150 mph, and Vahn finally got a look at the ground.

They were following the OIC, who was tracking on GPS, but it didn't matter anymore. Below twenty thousand feet now, they could see the target and even see the smoke still billowing from the fires in the underground facility.

"Be advised, that smoke is hazardous to your health," the OIC said. "We're going to go in to the south, just inside the perimeter fence. Spirit in the Sky, I want a JDAMs at point North 23145 East 14315, now, now, now. Given forty seconds, we should be on the ground just after it lands."

"Sir, this is Meat Three."

"Go ahead, Johnson."

"I would like to state that I made a serious mistake when I didn't ring out in BUDS, sir, with all due respect."

There were chuckles on the team net and the OIC nodded his head.

"I think we're all with you there, son," the OIC said. "With the possible exception of the chief."

"Nope," the chief replied. "Gotta agree. This is even worse than 201." An air-to-air missile flashed by below them and they could see the silhouette of a Soviet style fighter, banking and climbing over the target. "Much worse."

"Mr. Ghost?"

Mike looked up into a fairly beatific face and a pair of really shapely b.r.e.a.s.t.s and smiled.

"Thank you," he muttered. "Valhalla is real."

"You pa.s.sed out," Britney said. "They ran away again. What do we do?"

"Get in the room," Mike whispered, trying to move and realizing that he just didn't have the blood left.

He was surprised he could think and his vision was going again. "I'm done. All of you, in the room. Get guns. Amy show. Hold the door.I hear the angels call my name . . ."

"He's out again," Britney said. "Thumper, help me drag him into the room."

Between the two of them they got him into the torture room and laid out by the dais. Then, with a great deal of trepidation, Britney picked up one of the rifles.

"How do you use this?" she asked Amy.

"First of all," Amy said carefully, "you put the safety on."

"What's a safety?"

"Coming up on pull," the OIC called. "Spread the stack."

The thickening air was noticeable as they descended and they had actually slowed. But they were still approaching the ground rapidly. The jumpers rotated away from each other and spread out, Vahn and Simmons moving to position and then more or less tossing the two dead or unconscious jumpers away.

"And . . . pull," the OIC called.

Almost simultaneously, seven chutes opened and began banking towards the darkened facility below.

"Oh, Spirit in the Sky," the OIC caroled. "Where's our JDAMs?"

As he asked the ground below was riven by a ma.s.sive explosion and the shockwave slammed into their bodies.

"Thank you, Great Spirit," Roman said.

"Head for the impact point," the OIC called. "Ready personals. We're going straight in."

There were a series of screams as a ma.s.sive explosion shook the room and concrete dust drifted down.

Amy rolled into the room, her hands clamped over her ears and screaming in pain.

"Amy?" Britney yelled, grabbing her by the arms. "Are you okay?"

"Ow f.u.c.k!" Amy shouted, shaking her head. "The blast must have gotten magnified by the corridor.

Thatreallyhurt!" She rolled back into the doorway, shaking her head and clearly disoriented. "Babe!

Flares!" she yelled, pointing down the corridor. "Flares, Babe!"

Babe picked up three of the flares and triggered them one by one, throwing them to land expertly right at the base of the stairs.

"Are you going to be okay?" Babe asked. When there wasn't any response she tapped Amy on the shoulder and got a rifle pointed at her. "Hey! Watch it! Are you going to be okay?"

"What?" Amy yelled, shaking her head.

"Can you hear me?" Babe shouted, pointing at her ear.

"Barely." Amy rolled back into the doorway and shook her head, leaning her chin on the rifle.

Britney's head came up at a series of popping noises. They sounded like guns, but not the ones that had been firing. Instead of the way the soldiers had been shooting, ripping off long bursts, this was short and sharp, more the way that Ghost fired.

"What's that?" she asked as one of the long rips started then stopped at a series of short bursts.

"I don't know," Babe said, then looked at Amy who was staring intently down the corridor. "AMY!"

The girl looked up and Babe squatted down by her.

"THERE'S FIRING," she shouted, pointing to the landing. "DIFFERENT FIRING. NOT THE SAME GUNS.".

Amy looked confused for a second and then her face split in a grin.

"LIKE POPCORN?" she yelled.

"Yeah," Babe replied, nodding.

"STAY HERE," Amy said. "BE MY EARS."

"Okay," Babe said with a nod. But she picked up one of her grenades, just in case.

"Holy. f.u.c.king. s.h.i.t," Roman said. The area outside the entrance was torn by the blast of the JDAMs, which had caught some of the Syrian commandos in its path. But it wasn't the torn bodies that got that expletive out of him. It was the sight inside the doorway. There was a landing and then a series of steps down to the left. Then another landing and a right angle turn. The second landing was, literally, covered with bodies. There was nowhere for a person to set a foot without stepping on at least one body and in some cases more than one. Some of them seemed to have been torn by blasts as well. The entire landing was drenched in blood, the floor covered in it, the walls splashed with it, even the ceiling. "This issocool!

It's like . . . Doom or something!"

"What?" the OIC called. The team had stacked on the door to the entrance, while two SEALs pulled rear security and Roman wa.s.supposedto be probing, not standing there gawking.

Roman actually paused, speechless, for a moment and then shrugged.