Capital Offensive

With a violent concussion, the two LAW rockets fired from the hills along the rocky shore exploded in midair, peppering the sea with hot shrapnel until the water appeared to be boiling.

The crew cheered and quickly reloaded their weapons. Riding low in the choppy water, the USS Canton was anchored just off the desolate Makran Coast of Pakistan. There were no fishing villages along most of the coastline, the sea being far too heavily polluted from the oil refineries of Iran to the west and the steel industries of India to the east. But this section was possibly the worst. The coast resembled the lunar surface with bare jagged mountain covered by stiletto-like spires. There was only sparse vegetation, raggedy plants and leafy weeds struggling to stay alive in a hostile land, only a few randomly scattered acacia trees. Nearby was a gurgling mud volcano, the geological phenomenon endlessly pumping out waves of bubbling mud, the sluggish river of muck flowing along the cracked ridges and dissolving the sandstone formations on its way to the murky sea. Visibility was almost nil in the thick waters, and if there were any fish in the area, the sonar operator of the Canton couldn’t find them. The crew knew they were still on the planet Earth, but had to keep reminding themselves of the fact.

On the bridge of the Canton, Captain David Henderson lowered his binoculars and grudgingly admired the strategy of the Afghanistan rebels. If they could get America embroiled in a shooting war with Pakistan, then the U.S. Navy would be hard-pressed to aid the NATO troops inside Afghanistan hunting down terrorist training camps.

“Ready a Tomahawk,” Henderson said calmly as the bow Phalanx fired again. Then it swung to a new position and fired twice more.

Barely visible in the swirling steam of the mud volcano, another missile exploded, only doing damage to the ragged plants along the crumbling cliffs.

“And let HQ know we are under fire from the hills,” the captain added over a shoulder. “These appear to be LAW rockets from the look of the contrail.”

“Sir!” a man replied from the communications board inside the bridge. Swiftly, the man started to relay the information to the Pentagon via satellite.

Stoically, Henderson went back to watching the shore. LAW rockets against a frigate? The Afghans had to be desperate to try that. Even if they hit the ship, which was highly unlikely, the rockets simply didn’t have enough power to punch through the armored hull. It’d be like throwing grenades at the Empire State Building.

“Tomahawks ready, sir!” a lieutenant reported crisply, with a salute. “On your command.”

“Double check the coordinates,” Henderson ordered, sweeping the coastline once more with the binoculars. “We want to hit that training camp outside of Safar, not the American troops encircling the damn place.” Three hundred miles wasn’t a long distance for a Tomahawk, but the old fortress the warlord ruled was small, and the troops in close quarters. The tiniest slip in the coordinates could spell a disaster.

On the stern deck of the Canton, sailors were returning fire at the snipers in the hills with an Armbrust. There was a snowy backblast of nitrogen flakes from the aft end of the launcher, and the rocket streaked away. But unlike the incoming LAW rockets, there was no smoke from the projectile to reveal its trajectory.

A few moments later there was a bright flash among the scraggly trees on a small cliff, and a fireball of white phosphorous spread across the ledge. Covered with flames, screaming men rose from behind the boulders to dash about madly. The sailors at the port-side gun emplacement opened fire with a .50-caliber machine gun and another Armbrust. In a muted crack, the ledge broke into pieces, slowly coming away from the sandstone cliff, bodies and boulders plummeting straight down into the gelatinous brown sea.

“Well done, men,” the captain said, trying unsuccessfully to keep a tone of satisfaction from his voice. “Lieutenant, fire the Tomahawks!”

In a double explosion of smoke, two metal lids blew open on the honeycomb on the main deck and a pair of sleek missiles lifted into the sky, then streaked away to disappear inland.

“Heading?” the captain asked, squinting after the Tomahawks. Funny, he actually thought that he could see the airborne missiles. But that was impossible. They were both much too far away by now to be spotted by the naked eye.

“Aye, sir,” a lieutenant replied, hunched over the radar screen. “Missiles are at…” He paused to work the controls, the beeps strangely coming faster and faster. Then the men looked up in confusion and horror. “Sir! One of them is coming right back at us!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the captain demanded, turning away from the coastline. “Double check your instruments! It must be just another LAW coming in, that’s all.”

“No, sir, this is a Hawk!” the man replied, the beeps almost a single tone now, they were happening so fast. His hand hovered over the self-destruct switch. “Should I abort?”

Was the man serious? Henderson thought. Snapping his head back toward the craggy coastline, the captain briefly saw something moving in the air, coming straight for the frigate. He waited for the Phalanx system to engage, but the guns did nothing, the military software of the computer-guided radar strictly forbidding the guns to fire upon any Navy missile, even one coming straight for the ship.

“Abort!” the captain bellowed.

The lieutenant slapped the switch, but it was too late. Moving almost too fast to visually track, the Tomahawk slammed directly into the open hatch it had just launched from less than a minute ago.

A strident explosion shook the entire vessel from stem to stern, the fiery blast blowing out the portholes and causeways, throwing burning bodies into the sea. For a single heartbeat, Henderson thought the internal firewalls might just hold.

In a thundering staccato, the rest of the complement of Tomahawks detonated belowdecks, and the Canton lifted from the water and burst from within, the armored hull rent apart from the multiple trip-hammer detonations.

For several long minutes debris and corpses rained from the sky, hissing as they plummeted into the dirty water. But when the hellish rain eventually ceased, the USS Canton was gone, completely obliterated.

T HREE HUNDRED MILES away from the coastline, the second Tomahawk cruise missile checked the GPS network and sharply veered around a tall mountain peak to flash down into a valley below, and then around another outcropping.

Running across the barren landscape, U.S. Army troops and tanks were steadily surrounding an ancient fortress carved into the rock of a hill. The resilient walls had withstood attacks by Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon and the Soviet Union. But now the rocks were cracked and weakening from the nonstop barrage of shells unleashed by the American tanks. A thousand Afghani fighters along the walls of the fortress were firing at the American soldiers with old AK-47 assault rifles, and doing very little to stop the steady advance.

The row of Abrams tanks fired again and a huge section of the sandstone palisade burst apart, the explosion and halo of rock splinters killing dozens inside the ancient fortress. Smoke and flame and blood was everywhere, and the screams of the dying men seeming to last forever.

Standing defiantly on the parapet, the Afghan warlord grimly watched the enemy come ever closer, knowing this was his last day alive, and that there was nothing he could do but try to die with dignity.

The Yanks will not pull me from some hidey-hole to parade on TV for the amusement of their fat children, the warlord raged internally, working the arming bolt of his Kalashnikov. I will die on my feet with a weapon in my hand like a man!

“Shar, incoming missile!” the bearded man cried from the old WWII radar console. A luminous green arm swept around the graduate screen, beeping softly.

The warlord raised an eyebrow at the pronouncement. Vaguely in the distance, he could see a streaking firebird, weaving a patch along the convoluted contours of the hilly land, avoiding the boulders and outcroppings as if it could see. Another Tomahawk so soon? So be it. Time to die. Damn the Americans and their technology!

Working the arming bolt of his assault rifle, the warlord started firing his weapon at the incoming missile. It wouldn’t work, of course, but there was nothing else to even try. Only a few more seconds now….

Incredibly, the American missile flashed by overhead, streaking past the old fortress and rolling over to dive down and impact directly upon an Abrams tank rolling up the sloped hillside. The titanic explosion covered the landscape in fire and thunder.

But even before the mountain breeze cleared away the smoke, the warlord heard the terrible grinding noise of an avalanche. Still shaking from the concussion, endless tons of rocks and dirt came pouring down the side of the mountain to cover the startled American troops like a roiling blanket of death. The invaders disappeared from sight, then there came a series of dull explosions from under the rocks as the assorted munitions and ordnance of the Yankees detonated from the crushing weight of the devastating landslide. In a few minutes there was only a handful of American soldiers scattered about the valley.

“Ready the Jeeps!” the warlord bellowed, feeling his heart quicken with the taste of victory. “Charge the remaining troops and kill them all. Kill everybody you find! No prisoners! I want heads laid at my feet within the hour!”

“By your command!” A bearded man saluted and rushed off shouting orders to the troops.

“I rule Safar!” the warlord shouted at the sky, brandishing a gnarled fist. “Death to America! Death to all infidels!”

As the mob of screaming Afghan fighters came charging out of the old fortress, the few remaining American soldiers quickly made a defense circle and fought bravely, but it was all over in a few minutes. Without any support from the buried tanks, they were outgunned and outmanned. Soon, there were only still bodies strewed about the dusty ground. Then rusty axes began to rise and fall, gathering grisly trophies.

Utaudo, Puerto Rico

F LOCKS OF RAUCOUS PARROTS sitting in the tall banyon trees squawked loudly in protest as a VW truck rumbled past them on Route 111.

Smoking a cigarette, the armed driver ignored the noisy birds and shifted gears to take the steep hill coming ahead. The modified V-12 engine responded smoothly with a low growl of controlled power.

Although battered and dented, the truck was clean, and the smooth asphalt of the highway hummed beneath the six new tires, the outer rubber washed with diluted acid to make them appear old and worn. The ripped canvas sheet covering the sides of the vehicle had been expertly patched. The rear section was closed with a pair of hinged wooden doors instead of the usual loose flap, and several of the knotholes artfully were enlarged to now serve as crude gunports.

A passing police car paid the truck no attention, the uniformed officers completely unaware that twenty Kalashnikov assault rifles remained pointed in their direction until the natural rise of the landscape carried them out of view.

“Stupido.” The driver sneered, casting the lit cigarette out the window and expertly starting another using only one hand.

“Did you really want them to pull us over for littering?” the man sitting in the passenger seat asked incredulously. A sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun lay in his lap. It was the perfect weapon to use inside the tight confines of the cab. Even at only a yard of distance, a man could miss with a pistol, but not with a twin load of buckshot. There were a series of small notches on the wooden stock, one for every fool who had shoved his unwanted face into the crew wagon of the Miguel brothers, and was promptly blown straight to hell.

“I am not afraid of the police,” Esteban Miguel boasted hotly. But the driver checked the sideview mirror to make sure the officers were indeed long gone.

Shrugging in reply, Julio Miguel went back to watching for the exit. The sloped fields on both sides of the highway were heavy with tobacco plants, the broad leaves spreading wide to absorb the bright tropical sunshine. On the rubber floor mat between his shoes was an Uzi machine pistol, along with a canvas bag of spare clips and a plastic box filled with grenades.

When the call had come in through their agent in San Juan, the Miguel brothers had been uneasy about accepting the job. Nameless men asking for other nameless men to be killed on sight sounded like a sting operation by the U.S. authorities. Or worse, the military police. But then the bank confirmed the wire transfer of funds to their Swiss account, and the brothers dutifully gathered their full crew to head into the deep jungle mountains. It seemed like overkill, twenty guns to take out five tourists and blow up a building, but the client had insisted and paid the asked-for price, so who were they to complain? Besides, a job was a job.

We’d kill the pope, Julio thought, if the price was right, that is.

The cultivated farmlands fell behind and soon the truck was driving past a shimmering expanse of blue water. Hundreds of families were strolling along the public beach of Lake Coanillas, dozens of sailboats skimmed the low waves, and there seemed to be a endless supply of teenage girls in skimpy bikinis sunning themselves on the shore. The open display of young flesh was delightful.