side and dogleg to his left, there was a dirt access road that he figured would take him to the camp without having to contend with the thorn bushes.
Inching upward, McCarter propped his borrowed carbine in a niche between two rocks and sighted up on the far guard tower through the M-16’s scope. From his position he wasn’t able to get a clear bead on the sentry, but the enemy gunner had shifted his attention to James and Encizo, who were using their parachutes to clear yet another of the bramble clots. Taking advantage of his foe’s distraction, McCarter sprang forward, bounding up over the top of the rock heap and down to the other side. He hit the ground running and dodged left, crouching low as he made his way to the road. By the time he reached it, the remaining sentry had been taken out, courtesy of Encizo’s M-110.
As McCarter jogged down the road leading toward the camp, he saw the first sign of Hezbollah reinforcements rising up from their underground lair. Like ants, they began to emerge from several different openings and fan out in all directions.
“Not good,” McCarter murmured to himself. “C’mon, T.J., get busy with that bloody Gopher Snake already!”
CHAPTER NINE
The TCD-100 had essentially been the creation of Stony Man armorer John Kissinger, but Hawkins had spent time at the Farm’s weapons lab helping Cowboy construct the device and configure its computerized operating system. He’d also worked side by side with Kissinger during the Gopher Snake’s field trials, so it was no surprise that when the weapon was given the green light for the battlefield, Hawkins had been placed in charge of its operation.
As the battle raged around them, Hawkins and Roger Combs had detoured into an earthen culvert that ran along the training camp’s eastern perimeter. Sat cam footage had pinpointed several tunnel openings along the length of the ditch, and while the Stony Man cybercrew considered them to be escape routes, Hawkins figured they could also be used to access the Hezbollah’s underground lair.
There was water in the culvert, ankle-deep and filled with sediment that clawed at the men’s boots, forcing them to move slowly. Hawkins had the Gopher Snake tucked under one arm, leaving the other free to defend himself with a KRISS Super V submachine gun. Combs, who was carrying a pair of full-face gas masks, was similarly armed. The five-pound, .45-caliber firearms were light enough to wield with one hand, and the two warriors had a chance to prove it moments later when three Hezbollah soldiers emerged from the nearest tunnel armed with AK-47s. Combs and Hawkins had the drop on them and burped a quick half dozen rounds their way. The Super V’s muted recoil and muzzle rise allowed for deadly accuracy, especially at such close range, and all three men crumpled into the brackish water without having had a chance to return fire.
The intruders forged ahead, ready to empty their magazines should others appear. Nearing the tunnel, they sidestepped the bodies. When no one else came forward, Hawkins crouched near the raised entrance and unclipped the TCD-100’s remote transceiver from its underhousing.
“Cover me,” he whispered to Combs.
Combs nodded, his eyes on the tunnel. Hawkins adjusted the remote’s settings, then carefully set the Gopher Snake into the mouth of the tunnel. He flicked on the transceiver and stared at the small, embedded screen providing him with an image taken from the wheeled device’s front-mounted camera.
“Okay, little guy,” Hawkins whispered, activating the TCD. “Go do your stuff.”
“G ET UP AND MOVE OUT !” the Hezbollah commandant shouted from the doorway leading to the subterranean barracks. “We’re under attack!”
Half dressed and barely half awake, a dozen recruits staggered from their cots and grabbed assault rifles, then warily followed their burly leader into a leg of the networked tunnels carved out beneath the training camp. The nearest staircase leading up to the surface was to their left. As they approached it, the men came upon a faint haze wafting through the tunnel. Immediately they began to hack and cough, their eyes tearing with a burning sensation.
“Tear gas!” the commandant shouted, blinking furiously as he veered to one side, crashing against the tunnel wall. Glancing down the passageway, he spotted the TCD-100 rolling toward him like some oversize toy. The tear gas spewed from a spray nozzle just below the Gopher Snake’s angled Kevlar shield. His eyes stinging, a wave of nausea sweeping over him, the commandant nonetheless willed himself to raise his AK-47. He was about to unleash a round when strobe lights mounted on the TCD’s shield began to blink with staccato frenzy. The intense, flickering illumination temporarily blinded the man as well as the fighters huddled close to him, and though he managed to fire his weapon, only a few rounds glanced off the TCD-100’s bulletproof shield; the rest pummeled the ground.
Others fired as well with the same futility. Moments later they were brought to their knees when a partition in the Gopher Snake’s shield briefly parted, allowing it to launch a pair of modified XM-84 stun grenades. The flash-enhanced explosions echoed loudly through the enclosed space, further immobilizing the combatants. They fell upon one another, trying to flee the small, wheeled contraption that had effectively neutralized them. As the tear gas thickened around them, the men doubled over and retched violently, too caught up in their misery to notice Hawkins and Combs advancing toward them, their hastily donned gas masks equipped with built-in night-vision goggles that minimized the effect of the tear gas.
Combs gunned down several of the men and Hawkins knocked a few others unconscious with the butt of his KRISS subgun, then cleared the way so that he could use his transceiver to guide the Gopher Snake past them and around the next bend in the tunnel.
“Okay, I’m impressed,” Combs murmured through his gas mask.
“Gotta say, I am, too,” Hawkins confessed. The device had worked even better than he’d expected, and the TCD-100 had spent only half its arsenal. Hawkins figured the device was still capable of dealing with any other enemy forces still lurking in the tunnels.
“C’mon, boy,” he called down to the Snake as if taking a pet dog out for a leisurely stroll. “Let’s keep up the good work.”
R AFAEL E NCIZO AND Calvin James had cleared their way past the last briar hurdle. Both men were bleeding thanks to the barbed thorns, but the wounds seemed less threatening than the throng of dispersing Hezbollah warriors they now found themselves faced with. Veering past the sentry’s body at the base of the nearest tower, the Stony Man commandos took up positions on either side of the water tank and began firing. They were answered by AK-47s, a steady barrage of NATO rounds forcing them to press close to the tank, which took enough hits to begin draining water out onto the reddish hardpan.
“What do you think?” James called to Encizo as he reloaded his carbine. “We’re outnumbered, what, maybe five to one?”
“A least that,” Encizo shouted over the noise of his assault rifle. He saw two men go down near the tents, weapons falling from their lifeless hands. “That’s usually par for the course, though, right?” he added.
“Yeah, I guess they can’t all be picnics like in Damascus.”
Once James reloaded, he held back firing for a moment, instead grabbing at the ammunition belt slung around his hips. He unclipped a baseball-size M-67 frag grenade and quickly enabled it, then cocked his arm and flung it in the direction of a tunnel opening where still more terrorist recruits were surfacing. The explosive detonated shy of the hole, but its casualty radius was wide enough to kill half the emerging soldiers outright and pound the others with frag shards, voiding any chance they might help ramp the odds still further against Phoenix Force.
The grenade blast was still resonating through the valley when it was joined by another, this one care of a 40-mm high-explosive round launched from McCarter’s M-203 into a supply truck several Hezbollah gunmen had taken cover behind. The initial blast ruptured the gas tank, further disintegrating the vehicle. There were screams of agony as shrapnel sprayed the surrounding enemy. As the maimed terrorists fell to the smoke-shrouded earth, James and Encizo ventured clear of the water tank and advanced, raking the camp with their carbines. Behind them, Junior Hale had apparently stopped his bleeding