Rogue Commander, Leo Maloney [classic books for 11 year olds TXT] 📗

those coordinates, and a thousand feet up on the left was a big soccer field and a red clay running track—no power lines above to mess with the birds. Five more minutes, then fire and exfil. Too easy. Then they’d race south to the mouth of the Thames, where Bishop had anchored the boat they had secretly bought. Maybe he’d use him as his bodyguard in the Alps. Or maybe he’d just kill him.

Sirens were going off all over the base—blue lights spinning and flashing off buildings. They were almost at the field, and he glanced over at the Korean in the seat next to him. The kid was grinning, pumping his fist. Collins grinned too—until a high-caliber bullet punched through the windshield and exploded the kid’s head.

Alex Morgan, lying flat in the open back of an MD500 “Little Bird” helicopter, worked the bolt on her Accuracy International L115A3 sniper rifle, resighted it, and fired again. But the freezing wind and rotor wash were screaming through the helo and making it buck, and she saw her second 8.59mm bullet smack through the passenger van’s windshield just above the driver’s head.

“Damn it, Cougar, hold it steady!” she yelled through her throat mike.

Peter Conley, who was flying the bird left-seat with no copilot, grunted back. “I’m holding this bitch as hard as I can!”

He had just swung the bird into a broadside hover, twenty feet high and two hundred feet from the front of the van. He looked down to the right, where the van was taking evasive action as it bounded over a red clay track and slewed right into a soccer field. Then he saw gun barrels thrusting from the side windows, straight up. He pulled power, banked the bird ninety degrees to the left, and then forward as a web of red tracers just missed the rotor.

“Jesus!” Alex howled as the floor tilted up and she slid backward. If she hadn’t been wearing a harness clipped to a D ring on the floor, she would have zipped straight out. Behind her, standing on the skids, Tac team operators Dizzy and Rip were jerked to the ends of their safety harnesses, wide-eyed and staring at the spinning ground.

Morgan’s bird, another black MD500, showed up next. It came screaming down from the north along Tang Avenue at fifteen feet and a hundred knots, with Morgan and Spartan perched on the right skid while Diesel and an antitank gunner named Pipe were on the left. All of them had switched out their M-4 rifles for Springfield Armory .308 SOCOMs, because Morgan had a hunch they’d be facing AKs. They were all wearing wind goggles and MICH helmets, but no night vision, because he knew the base would be well lit.

“Diesel,” he said through his throat mike as the wind whipped his cheeks. “You and me on that van.”

They both opened up from each side of the Little Bird, raking the van below stem to stern, but it just kept going as if they’d pinged it with BBs.

“Damn thing’s armored,” Morgan said. “Pipe, can you take it?”

“Negative,” said the antitank gunner. “I ain’t got a shot.”

“Zipper.” Morgan spoke to the pilot, a young Peter Conley protégé. “Take it hard around and set her down.”

“Roger.” Zipper heeled the bird over to the right, careening around the field’s perimeter.

Spartan, facedown with her boots on the skid and her head hanging down, twisted around and looked past the tail boom, where the eighteen-wheeler was just thundering onto the soccer pitch. “Cobra,” she said. “I got eyes on the launch vehicle.”

“Shit,” Diesel said. “Light her up?”

“Don’t bother,” Morgan said. “That’s armored too. Zipper, hustle up and set her down.”

“Hang on for a hard one!” Zipper grunted as he straightened it out on the far side of the field. He raced at ten feet over the whipping grass, pulled the pitch nose up, and slammed it down on the skids.

Morgan, Spartan, Diesel, and Pipe had already unclipped their carabiners. They jumped from the skids, spread out in a flying wedge, and charged straight across the field toward the van—their gun barrels spouting flame as their spent shells spun through the air.

Behind them, the helo lifted off again and disappeared while, over to the left, Conley’s bird touched the grass. Dizzy and Rip jumped off and hard-charged it straight at two Koreans who were sprinting up Tang Avenue from the abandoned dump truck.

Collins slammed on the van brakes, grabbed his.45-caliber handgun, popped the door, and rolled out onto the wet grass as the eighteen-wheeler roared close by on his left, then slid to a stop fifty feet on. It was facing south, but that didn’t matter. The Tomahawks had minds of their own. Bullets were punching into the van, but all the doors flew open and the North Koreans rushed into the field, firing and screaming. Collins rolled onto his stomach and crawled toward the launch truck as he fumbled for his MBITR—yanking it off his belt.

“These bastards are all kamikazes!” Morgan yelled in his mike above the gunfire. “Go flat!”

In the middle of the field, all the Zetas went prone, taking long breaths and squinting into their red dot sights as the Koreans came on. They looked wild and crazy, fully erect, marching forwards, yelling war cries and spraying their AKs at the black-clad Zetas spread out in the grass.

Spartan took one in the legs. He smashed down on his face but kept firing, and she hit him again. Diesel shot one in the throat, and that was that. Morgan dropped one center mass, but the dude got up, and he had to hit him again.

Then his bolt locked back, and just as he was switching magazines, the Korean on the far-right flank spotted him and came charging, his AK barrel spitting yellow flame, the bullets whip-cracking just over his head.

I ain’t gonna make it, he thought as he slammed the fresh magazine home. And then the Korean’s head snapped back, he dropped his AK, sank to his