Nice of the flyboys to leave some for us.
Ruffin's heartbeat picked up as the Hummer tore out of the parking lot of King George V Park. He glanced at Cheo's laptop, which showed a feed from Eclipse. It had one track, a Venezuelan Mi-17, which just passed over Port of Spain's harbor and headed due north.
"It's gotta be going for The Savannah." He referred to Queens Park Savannah. "Perfect LZ. Flat, lots of open space."
"And many targets for them to choose from," noted Sergeant Edward Jellicoe, their liaison with the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force. "The Magnificent Seven borders the Savannah, and the President's House is not far from there."
Ruffin's jaw stiffened. Would the Venezuelans actually try to capture, or God forbid kill, the President? Would that make the international community finally get off their butts and do something about this conflict? Would Venezuela want to risk that kind of trouble?
It's General Moscoso we're talking about. Who the hell knows what's going on inside his crazy mind?
He switched frequencies to the platoon net. "Alpha and Bravo Teams, converge on the President's House and set up a defensive perimeter."
The team leaders both replied, "Roger."
"Charlie and Delta Teams, get over to the Magnificent Seven and take up defensive positions."
More "rogers" came through his earpiece.
"I've got eyes on the chopper," a British accented-voice said from behind him.
Ruffin turned around and looked up at the stout form of Kevin White, a former Royal Marine who manned the Hummer's pintel-mounted M240 machine gun.
"Where is it?"
"Directly to the south, and descending."
Ruffin looked out the window, his NVGs turning the night sky green. He spotted the Mi-17 approaching the Savannah, just a couple hundred feet off the ground.
"Step on it, Cheo!"
The Singaporean mashed the gas pedal. Ruffin was slammed back in his seat as the Hummer sped toward the entrance to the Savannah. He glanced up at the chopper again. It dropped closer to the ground, less than a mile away. The veins in his neck stuck out. The Mi-17 could carry about thirty troops. Probably Venezuelan marines. Well-trained troops. His squad would be outnumbered three-to-one. It would have been best if they could have shot down the chopper before it landed.
But part of him wanted a piece of the Venezuelans. Back in the Marine Corps, his instructors had told him to never make the fight personal. He found that lesson hard to follow when he came across civilians maimed and killed by a bunch of scumbag terrorists or pirates. That ultimately led to his dismissal from the Corps.
He shook off those thoughts as the Mi-17 touched down. The helicopter's clamshell rear doors swung open. Men rushed down the ramp, most carrying rifles with long, curved magazines. Probably AK-103s.
"JQ! Come around the left side of the chopper. We'll take the right side."
"Roger," replied Jaqwuan Hughes, a former 82nd Airborne officer and Ruffin's number two man in the team's second Hummer.
"White. Akua. Lay down MG fire."
"Roger," replied Kennan Akua, a native of the small Pacific island nation of Nauru and former French Foreign Legion paratrooper.
"With pleasure," said White.
A deep chatter echoed through the Hummer. Two sets of tracers streaked through the air and into the Venezuelans. Six of them spun and flailed and fell before the others dove for the ground. Strobes erupted from their AKs. Two spider web-like cracks formed on the Hummer's bullet-resistant glass.
"Cut right!" Ruffin shouted.
Cheo twisted the wheel and slammed on the brakes. Ruffin shoved the door open and jumped out. White's M240 continued hammering away. Ruffin rested his elbows on the Hummer's hood, sighted a Venezuelan marine lying prone and put the G36's laser sight on the man's shoulder. He triggered a three-round burst. The Venezuelan spasmed and rolled on his side.
Bullets pinged off the Hummer's hood. Ruffin ducked down as rounds cracked overhead. He leaned around the front of the Hummer and fired a couple of bursts.
A deep chatter erupted from the Mi-17. Ruffin glimpsed the muzzle flash from the chopper's door-mounted machine gun. He ducked behind the Hummer. The vehicle shuddered as large caliber round pounded it.
"Somebody take out that door gunner!" he shouted into the radio.
"I got it, Boss."
Ruffin glanced at the other end of the Hummer. Jaelin Hughes, JQ's younger brother and the team sniper, lay prone, clutching his Remington 700. One second passed. Two seconds. A crack split the air.
"Door gunner down!"
Ruffin peeked around the Hummer. The door-mounted machine gun was quiet. A human-shaped lump lay beside it, unmoving.
"Best!" he called out to a burly man with a red-gray goatee.
Don Best, the former British paratrooper, hurried over. "Sir!"
"HE grenade. Door gun. I don't want anyone else using that damn thing."
"Neither do I."
Both men shoved high explosive grenades into the launchers under the barrels of their G36s.
"Cheo! Jellicoe! Cover fire on three."
Both men acknowledged him.
"One . . . Two . . . Three!"
Cheo and Jellicoe opened up near the rear of the Hummer. White also hammered away with his machine gun. The Venezuelans not hit laid on their stomachs.
"Now!"
Ruffin and Best stepped away from the Hummer. Ruffin sighted the Mi-17's open door. A deep thump came from his grenade launcher. Best fired a second later.
Flame, smoke and sparks blotted out the machine gun.
Ruffin and Best loaded frag grenades into their launchers and fired. Two small explosions went up among the Venezuelans. Two marines rolled around on the ground, their screams barely heard over the gunfire.
One of the marines tossed away his AK-103 and held up his hands. Another did the same. Another. Before long all the surviving Venezuelans surrendered.
"Cease fire!" Ruffin waved his left hand in front of his face. "Cease fire!"
The guns fell silent. The stench of cordite hung heavy in the air, stinging his nostrils. A dull hum filled his ears.
"White, cover us. The rest of you on me. Secure the prisoners."
Ruffin led his men forward, shouting, "Don't move!" in both English and Spanish.
The Venezuelans obeyed.
The first one he reached grimaced in pain. Ruffin noticed the bottom half of his left pant leg stained with blood.
"Linc," he radioed.
"Here, Major," replied Lincoln "Linc" Morton, an ex-Green Beret and the team medic.
"I've got an injured prisoner on the port side."
"I'm tending to two more on the starboard side, one with a stomach wound. I have to stabilize him before I treat anyone else."
"Copy that. I'll bandage the wound as -"
The pilot's side door of the Mi-17 opened. Ruffin brought up his G36. Jaelin raised his SIG Sauer P226 pistol.
"Freeze! Hands on your head!"
"Don't shoot!" The pilot placed both hands on top of his helmet. "Please don't shoot! I surrender!"
"On you stomach!" Jaelin ordered. "Cross your left foot over your right. Try anything funny and you're dead."
Both Ruffin and Jaelin hurried over to the pilot. Ruffin covered Jaelin while the short, compact sniper expertly frisked the Venezuelan, just like he'd done to hundreds of perps during his days with LAPD SWAT. After taking the pilot's pistol and survival knife, Jaelin pulled the man up to his feet.
"Name?" Ruffin asked in Spanish, one of three languages he could speak fluently.
"Gustavo Trillo, Lieutenant, Aviación Militar Nacional Bolivariana Venezolana."
Ruffin grunted in bemusement at the long-ass title for the Venezuelan Air Force. "Well, Lieutenant, looks like you picked a bad day to go from soldier to looter."
"No, no. I-I just flew them here. I was not going to loot."
"Yeah, I'm sure that really gonna matter to the Trinidadians."
"What are you going to do to me?" Trillo swallowed. "You're an American, right? You're not going to water board me."
Ruffin studied the pilot's face. His fear was evident. He didn't come close to qualifying as a candidate for enhanced interrogation.
Still, no need to tell him that. Better to keep him scared. Who knew what information Trillo might give up?
"I guess that's up to the Trinidadians. Our orders are to turn any prisoners over to them."
"They . . . They won't torture me, will they?"
Ruffin suppressed a devilish smile. Oh, I can have some fun with this. "Hmm. I don't know. Jaelin, you're an ex-cop. You know all about the law. You know if Trinidad has any laws against torturing prisoners?"
Jaelin didn't need any prompts to play along. "You got me, Major. Then again, some of these little countries have pretty harsh rules. Hell, you graffiti up a wall in Cheo's country, they cane your ass."
"Yeah, you're right," said Ruffin. "Who knows what the Trinidadians'll do to a guy who flew a platoon of marines to the capital to loot the place."
Trillo's eyes widened. He visibly trembled. "I . . . I may know some things."
Ruffin stepped closer to him, lowering his rifle. Jaelin still had Trillo covered with his SIG. "What kind of things?"
"There's been talk around my base. My commanding officer, he knows people at headquarters in Caracas. He's says they've been talking about some kind of major operation, that these raids are just part of it."
"What sort of major operation?" Ruffin demanded.
"I don't know the details. All he says is that it's big. Really big."
XXXXX
For a split-second, Ulljrex wished General Moscoso was here in the control room instead of his office in Caracas. Then he could wrap his hands around that screaming lunatic's throat and squeeze until the life drained from his fat body.
"The Americans should have their carriers sitting off our coast by now!" Moscoso shouted, his fleshy, bearded face taking up much of the screen in front of Ulljrex. "You said this would work, that these raids would draw them out. But they haven't. And now the damn mercenaries the Trinidadians hired destroyed the entire raiding party!"
"Yes, that was unfortunate."
"Unfortunate?" Moscoco threw his arms out to his sides. "Unfortunate? We lost five ships and over a hundred marines to a group of people who fly airplanes older than me! The Americans will never come now, knowing that we can be beaten by a little band of ex-soldiers. Do you know how that makes me look to the rest of the world? They now see me and my country as feeble! All because I listened to your idea! Now I am a fool to the rest of the world, and it's all your fault, damn you!"
Ulljrex pressed his elbows into the armrests of his swivel chair. Blood pulsated behind his eyes. He couldn't believe he allowed a damn human to talk to him like this and let him live. His race had already conquered several star systems while these primitive scum lived in mud huts and threw sharpened sticks at one another. And this one dared to speak to him as though he was a superior? How dare he think himself better than even the most addled member of the Simbaaku?
Yet these primitives defeated us more than thirty years ago.
That fact made Ulljrex even more furious. Somehow, he kept that emotion from showing on his simulated human face. Curse the Infinite Night, he hated looking like these damned Earthers.
"Perhaps you can launch another raid." Ulljrex managed to keep his voice steady. Much as he hated Moscoso, liked he hated all humans, he still needed him . . . dammit. "A much larger one. One that will overwhelm both the Trinidadian humans and their hired warriors from Shield International."
"No! No more raids!" Moscoso slammed a fist on his desk. "These stupid raids you asked for have done nothing to force the Americans' hands. How can it with the president they have? He admits he detests using force. He thinks pretty words and treating his enemies with respect will resolve conflict." He turned his head and spat. "The man has the backbone of a little girl. You should have known that! What is wrong with you? You build spaceships that can fly across the galaxy but you cannot predict the actions of a single man? What sort of intelligent lifeform are you?"
Ulljrex tensed, wanting to leap into the screen and batter this primitive mud-eater with his bare hands. Instead he filed the insult away in his mind. He'd remember it when the time came to kill Moscoso once his usefulness was at an end.
"This time," Moscoso continued. "I will do something that is sure to lure the Americans here. I will not raid Trinidad. I will invade it! Even a coward like President Atherton cannot ignore a full-scale invasion of another country. He will have to send his carriers here, then your little pet can destroy them and show the Americans how weak they really are. That is, if you are competent enough to do your part."
Moscoso stabbed something on his desk. The screen went black.
"I have had enough of that damn human."
Ulljrex turned in his chair. A stocky Simbaaku in a silver one-piece suit and an Asian human mask stood in front of him, scowling.
"How many more of his insults must we endure?" Pelgret asked. "Even his predecessor was not this bad, and that human was barely sane."
"I don't like dealing with General Moscoso any more than you do. Were it up to me, we'd kill every human we came across. But there are only six of us left from the original mission. We, unfortunately, need these Venezuelan humans to provide us a secure location for, as Moscoso calls it, our pet."
Ulljrex looked up at one of the 3-D screens in the control room. It showed a large, grayish-red reptilian creature with a long neck, a flat snout and an orange fin running down the back of its neck.
"Why should we wait for these American humans to send their water ships here?" asked Pelgret. "They're no match for Titanosaurus. We should just send him to the American nation and wipe it out."
Ulljrex shook his head. "It is not enough to destroy the humans, not after they defeated us all those years ago. America is one of the most powerful human nations on this planet. Their aircraft carriers are the most prominent symbol of their supposed might. Destroying even one of them would deliver a psychological blow to the American humans. They will know that none of their weapons will be able to stop Titanosaurus. I want their spirit broken. I want them cowering in fear and despair. Then, and only then, will we exterminate all of them."
"But will they send one of those carriers here? Though I'm loathe to admit it, Moscoso is correct. The leader of these American humans is a weakling that prefers negotiating to fighting." Pelgret grunted. "How did a human like that ever become a leader?"
"It's a mystery to me as well, as are most things the humans do. From my research into American humans, they appear willing to participate in armed conflicts anywhere on this planet, even when their interests do not appear threatened. In that respect, it was somewhat surprising they did not seek to involve themselves in this conflict."
"Then how do we get them involved?"
"We will have to attack something that is of interest to them. Something near this region that will draw their carriers here, and we shall use Titanosaurus to do it."
"I thought the nanobots had not finished repairing him," said Pelgret.
"All physiological repairs have been completed. The upgrades to outer skin are almost complete. There is also Titanosaurus' new offensive ability. That has been finished, but it has yet to be tested."
Ulljrex grinned. "I think we can find a suitable test for it."
TO BE CONTINUED
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I decided to give the aliens the name Simbaaku because it sounded better than "The Spacemen from the Third Planet of the Black Hole," as they were referred to in the English-dubbed version of "Terror of Mechagodzilla."