Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

He was standing just on the outside of the open hatch and moved the MP5 to his side to draw his Sig Sauer P226. Cooper pumped his fist in the air to signal Charlie.

There was a loud bang and the street lit up in a flash ten yards in front of the APC. He heard the commander cry out in pain from above and heard someone inside yell in surprise. That was his signal. He stepped around the open maw of the APC and charged in, weapon up, Sparky right beside him.

Cooper raced up the ramp and pulled the screaming commander down through the turret and out of the way. As Sparky slipped past, he dispatched the driver with a shot to the back of the head from his silenced pistol. Cooper then plunged his K-Bar into the commander’s neck before ripping it free in a jugular spray. Without hesitation, he snapped his wrist and flung the bloody knife at a third North Korean who looked like a radio operator. The man died with a knife in his chest, slumped over at his station.

“Still got it, Hoss,” Sparky said from the cockpit. He grinned. “Nice.”

Cooper flipped his sniper the bird and keyed his mic. “Okay, we’re secure. Get everyone over here, Charlie. Move!”

Cooper let Sparky cover the advance of the Secret Service agents who carried the President over first, followed by the three doctors and a few nurses. They quickly and efficiently packed the open bins and shelves of the APC with the supplies they needed to keep the president alive.

Once satisfied that the President was secure, Cooper had Mike and Jax dispose of the North Korean bodies out the back hatch. They stripped weapons and vests off the corpses and passed the gear out to the agents.

Cooper wiped the blood off the computer screens in front of the driver’s seat and took the place behind the wheel. “Turret!” he said over his shoulder.

“Got it,” replied Mike, who reached up and quietly pulled the armored lid shut on the turret. He knelt next to Cooper. “They got NV binos just like ours,” Mike said in amazement.

“Okay,” said Cooper, scanning the controls and knobs arrayed in front of him. Everything was labeled in Korean symbols. He quickly spotted a blinking red light next to a toggle switch. “Clear the rear hatch!” he called out.

“Clear!” was the muffled reply from twenty feet behind him in the crowded crew space.

Cooper flicked the switch and could hear hydraulics come to life. A ding-ding alarm went off and an amber light flashed in the crew compartment as the heavy armored hatch began to move. The ramp retracted smoothly into the floor of the vehicle just before the hatch closed and sealed itself. The amber strobe light went out, interior lighting kicked in, and the entire cabin area was bathed in a red glow.

“Hatch secure!” someone called out.

Cooper tried to ignore the noise of the medical personnel tending to the President and the wounded agents they had carried with them. He could hear Dr. Alston calling out numbers to a nurse and tried to ignore the sound of her voice. That made him think about the way her hair looked—

“Hey, Coop, I think I know how to work the turret,” said Mike. Cooper reined in his thoughts and looked over his shoulder to see the smaller SEAL standing in the turret bell, watching some video screens, his hand on a joystick. He twisted his grip to the right and the turret came to life, electric motors whining as the little tube Mike was in rotated.

“Yeah, baby, Daddy’s got a new toy,” he said, laughing and swinging the turret around to the left as he practiced maneuvering the main gun up and down. The electric motors driving the turret drowned out the noise the doctors were making in the crew cabin.

Cooper noticed the APC’s radio was squawking excitedly in what he assumed was Korean. Different voices were competing with each other for airtime. Cooper frowned at the din. They were assaulting the building they assumed the President and his team to be in and he didn’t want to hear about it, even if he could understand the gibberish.

He found what looked like a headphone jack dangling from a bloody helmet the APC driver had been wearing. The helmet had been blown off by Sparky, along with most of the driver’s head. He inserted the plug into the jack and the obnoxious chatter was pumped through the helmet on the floor, effectively silencing the noise. As an afterthought, he snapped the microphone stalk off the helmet with a vicious twist. He was taking no chances.

Mike’s voice echoed down from the turret, “Coop, I think I got the hang of this thing. I think all I gotta do is line up this thing here on that line over there…then it should be on target and I pull the trigger. Like a video game, man.” He dropped out of the turret and crouched next to the driver’s seat.

“Should we go hunting?” Mike said with his characteristic lopsided, gap-toothed grin.

“Negative,” Cooper said, glancing at the crowded crew area behind him. “We’ve got to get the President the hell out of here. Just keep an eye out for me. Your new toy may come in handy if we need to clear the road.”

“Roger that,” said Mike. He stood up in the turret again. “Ready when you are.”

“Sparky, see if you can figure out comms. We gotta reestablish contact with…someone.”

“On it.”

Cooper looked at his computer screens, showing everything in front of the APC through a video feed. He could see there were armor plates blocking the actual driver’s window. There was a solid, green light to the left of the armored plate. He pushed the button next to it and the light went dark, while the metal shielding the arrow-slit of a window retracted and he could see straight ahead.

“That’s better,” he said. Even if it was just a tiny glimpse of the outside world, he wasn’t sure if he could successfully drive the massive vehicle looking down at a screen instead of out a window.

Cooper grinned. “All right…does anyone know how to drive this bitch?”