Bravo troop was as silent as wolves running through fog.
Corporal Sawyer’s voice came across the link. “I got two sentries by the entrance to the cave beneath camouflaged shelters.”
“You got a line of fire?”
“Affirmative.”
“Take ’em,” Dirk ordered.
Bolan was close enough to Sawyer to hear the action of his automatic rifle click twice and two spent pieces of brass tinkle to the ground. At the cave mouth, nothing seemed to happen save that an arm flopped out from what appeared to be solid rock.
“Sentries down,” Sawyer said.
“Move in,” Dirk ordered. “By the numbers.”
“Mind if I take point?”
“Oh, by all means, please.” Dirk waved Bolan forward expansively. “I’m sure Sawyer would love the company.”
Dirk spoke into his radio. “Sawyer, wait on Striker.”
“Copy that.”
Bolan moved forward to Sawyer’s position. “Corporal.”
“Nice to see you up front, Coop. In my experience, civilians tend to lead from the back.”
Bolan scanned the entrance. From Sawyer’s angle, the Executioner could see that the rocks overhanging the cave mouth were really awnings, blankets stiffened with clay and dirt and stretched across stick frames so that they looked like rock formations. It was an old trick and a good one.
“You ready to step into the funhouse, Sunshine?”
“After you.”
They moved to the mouth of the cave. Beneath the camouflaged awning, two men in local dress lay facedown with a single bullet hole through their heads. “We’re in, Bravo. Come ahead.”
Bolan and Sawyer moved down the tunnel. Bolan ran a hand along the wall. It was rough and appeared to have been recently widened. It was wide enough to drive a jeep through. Bolan knelt and found tire tracks in dirt among the many footprints. “Bravo Leader, this is Striker. Be advised there has been vehicle traffic in the complex. At least jeep size.”
“Copy that, Striker,” Dirk replied. “We’re coming in.”
Dirk left a team outside watching their six, and the rest entered. Bolan and Sawyer crept down the tunnel. Both men held up their fists for “Halt” and crouched at the entrance to a large chamber. There were about fifty men in the cave, and several fires burned. Many were asleep. Others crouched in small circles drinking tea and talking or running rags over their rifles.
Sawyer shoved up his goggles. “Well, I count fifty, and the map says there are four more caves.”
“Most of them are sleeping.”
“Well, how you wanna wake ’em up?”
Bolan reached into his gear bag, pulled out four grenades and handed a pair of them to Sawyer.
Sawyer stared at them. “Frags?”
“Stingballs. Each one holds several dozen hard rubber buckshot pellets.”
Sawyer scowled. “Okay, that will probably wake them up, but then—”
Bolan pulled out a couple of Claymores.
Sawyer frowned. “Claymores? I thought you said you wanted prisoners.”
“Stingmores. These contain hundreds of rubber buckshot pellets.”
Sawyer grinned. “I think I saw this in a movie.”
The lieutenant came up, and Bolan related the plan to him. “Then we hit them with flash-bangs and stomp them,” Bolan finished.
Dirk was grinning as he turned to the two commandos behind him. “You heard the man. They beat ’em, and then we light ’em up!”
Bolan pulled the pins on his grenade. “On your signal, Lieutenant.”
“By all means, please.”
Bolan and Dirk hurled the grenades strategically throughout the cavern.
“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!” Sawyer called out happily.
The men around the campfires jerked and rose, grabbing for weapons. Bolan and Sawyer crouched low and lowered their helmets, and the stingball grenades detonated. Men howled out in Arabic and Pashto as the blunt 20 mm rubber spheres traveling at five hundred feet per second struck them. Everyone else was leaping out of their blankets and rising while others fell around them.
Bolan and Sawyer stuck the stingmore mines into the dirt and pumped the detonator switches. “Gooooood morning, Afghanistan!” Sawyer sang out.
More than one thousand rubber buckshot pellets blasted across the cavern in two intersecting arcs, and men blinking from sleep were scythed down before they knew what hit them. Bolan and Sawyer stayed crouched, plugging their ears with their thumbs and shutting and covering their eyes with their fingers. Orange light still pulsed through Bolan’s eyelids, and thunder rolled through the cavern. The second salvo of flash-bangs detonated moments later, and then Bolan was up and in the cavern with Bravo troop swarming in behind him.
The devastation was almost total. Fifty men lay on the ground, beaten, blinded, deafened and disoriented.
Lieutenant Dirk roared, “A and B Teams! Secure the side tunnels! Everyone else secure prisoners!”
The two teams charged to the side tunnels and aimed overwhelming firepower down them. In the cavern, plastic zip restraints appeared like party favors and moaning, suspected Taliban where swiftly hog-tied.
Gunfire broke out in the right side tunnel. Sawyer bawled back into the cavern. “We got resistance here on the right, LT!”
Dirk shouted orders. “C Team! Reinforce B! D Team, you’re with me! Pincer movement!”
Bolan took point with Sawyer. Both of them had M-203 grenade launchers mounted beneath their rifles. The Executioner nodded at him, and they both fired the weapons down the tunnel and leaned back as the grenades detonated in the chamber beyond. They charged down the corridor, followed by Dirk with A and D teams. The chamber was dimly lit and filled with open metal racks. Two men lay dead on the floor, while another man clutched his face and fired a pistol in the general direction of the entrance. Bolan’s and Sawyer’s bursts peppered the would-be pistolero. He fell into one of the metal racks, and a row of six of them fell like dominoes.
Sawyer stared at the rows of racks. There were scores of them. Possibly a hundred or more. “What? Are they building a treehouse?”
Bolan stared at them. The racks were actually frames consisting of eight hollow aluminum rectangles bolted together. Each was about eight feet long and contained a series of metal hoops within them. Bolan estimated the diameter of the hoops to be approximately 132 mm. “No, those are rocket racks. The hoops inside are the launch rails.” Bolan peered at the dark entrance to the next tunnel and turned to Dirk. “I strongly suggest we don’t throw anything explosive into the next room.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” Dirk spoke into his radio, “Obie, what’ve you got?”
Obradors came back from the other side of the complex. “Two hostiles down. The chamber appears to be some kind of machine shop. Multiple generators and lots of welding equipment. Looks like they’ve been making frames and mounts for something, as well as a bunch of threaded collars, and I mean a lot of them.”
Bolan spoke across the link. “You got a diameter on those collars, Obie?”
“Yeah, uh, about five inches?”
Bolan frowned as his suspicions were confirmed. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, your map?” Obradors said.