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Harley answered the same way, explaining he was with General Raines from
the SUSA and they were there to see General Guerra.
After some confusion, the boy shouted for them to come on in to the camp.
Ben stepped out of the jungle, smiling at Harley, who was still lying on
the ground.
Harley glanced up and grinned. "I'm applying for hazardous-duty pay if
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we're gonna be working with these dopes."
Coop strolled by, smiling. "I guess you just look like the suspicious
type, Harley, not a clean-faced, all-American type like me," he said.
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"I didn't hear you volunteer to take point, Mr. All-Ameri-can," Harley
growled, jumping to his feet.
"My momma didn't raise no fools, Harley," Coop replied.
"No, just assholes," Jersey called from the back, but she smiled as she
said it.
Coop gave her an injured look. "That hurts, Jersey, and after all we
shared."
"You can share my bugs anytime, Coop, especially the fatal ones," she
shot back as they neared the guard post.
The young soldier, after a fearful look at Harley, who towered over him
by at least a foot, saluted Ben and said, "The general said for me to
take you to him at once, sir."
Harley gently pushed the barrel of the young boy's M-16 up toward the
ceiling. "We'll follow you, soldier," he said. "Wouldn't want you behind
me with that thing."
General Guerra rushed from behind his desk to shake Ben's hand, nodding
his greeting to the other members of the team.
"General Raines, I am very happy to see you, sir."
"Happy to be here, General. As it turns out, we have a common goal ...
to keep Loco and Bottger out of Durango and Tampico as long as we can."
"That is my hope as well," Guerra said. "Please, gentlemen and ladies,
have a seat and I will have my aide bring you some refreshments." He
looked over the bedraggled group. "You look as if you could use them."
"A couple of nights and a day in your jungles will do that to you,
General," Ben said.
"Please, call me Jose and I will call you Ben."
Ben shrugged. "All right."
After Guerra gave the orders for them to be brought food and wine, he
sat behind his desk, ready to get down to business.
"What are your plans, Ben?" he asked.
"Of course, I'd like you to remain in command of all the
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Mexican troops, Jose, but I'll have to insist on giving the orders
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concerning the disposition and conduct of my men."
"Certainly, Ben, that is to be expected."
"Good, I'm glad we agree," Ben said. "Now, what is your latest intel on
Loco's and Bottger's movements?"
Guerra whirled his desk chair around and pulled a large-scale map of
Mexico down from a roller on the wall. "Here we are at Durango, Ben," he
said, pointing to the map. "Bottger's mercenaries have taken Puerto
Vallarta, Guadalajara, and are now attacking Valparaiso, about ninety
miles to our south."
"How about Loco?"
"They are massed at Ciudad de Valles twenty-five miles south of Tampico,
and are now staging attacks against the Navy base there with helicopters
and some older-model jet airplanes."
"No foot soldiers?"
"Not as of yet. The terrain there is very . . . how you say, wild. My
officers think it will take them another two days for the troops to get
in position to attack them."
"Why aren't they just airlifting them in with Chinooks?" Harley asked.
Guerra smiled. "The base at Tampico is not without its own defenses.
While our helicopters are of the older, Huey vintage, my pilots are
fearless and have inflicted heavy damages to the more modern helicopters
of Perro Loco's army. I feel he is afraid the Hueys would shoot the
slower Chinooks down, so he is waiting until most of the Hueys are
neutralized, as they soon will be, by the vastly superior Kiowas."
Ben nodded. "That gives Ike McGowen a couple of days to get some
reinforcements to your base. If you will get me a radio, I'll get on the
horn and tell him to put it in high gear. We've got some helicopters
with the 502 that will make the Kiowas look like kids' toys."
"Oh?" Guerra asked.
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"Yeah," Harley said, grinning. "The Apaches will eat the Kiowas for
lunch, if they've got the cojones to face 'em."
Guerra grinned. "I've heard of the Apache helicopter, but I admit, I've
never seen one."
"The Apache is the most sophisticated and most expensive attack
helicopter ever built," Ben said. "It's equipped with night vision and
target acquisition and designation systems to enable it to fly and fight
in all weathers, day or night. It's armed with Hellfire missiles that
can lock onto and destroy any known tank, and for softer targets it's
also equipped with 2.75-inch rockets and an extremely accurate
thirty-millimeter Chain Gun."
Harley grinned. "And it flies at one hundred fifty-five knots and has a
range of three hundred miles. It kicked butt in the Gulf War and in
Africa against Bottger a few years ago."
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"Ike's also got a couple of Aardvarks," Ben said, "and their range is
over nine hundred miles. Maybe he could send a couple of them to keep
Loco's troops busy until he gets in range for the Apaches."
"That is excellent news, Ben," Guerra said. "Perhaps Tam-pico can be
saved after all."
Lieutenant Tommy Bartholomew took off in his Aardvark from an improvised
airstrip that'd been bulldozed in the desert by the big Catapillar
Cat-9's the night before. He'd barely had time after his night landing
to get six hours' sleep and eat a quick breakfast before Ike McGowen had
told him of Ben's request for a little harassment of Loco's troops at
Ciudad de Valles.
The General Dynamics F-l 11 Aardvark was the first supersonic
fighter-bomber with the ability to make low-level precision bombing
attacks by day or night, in any kind of weather. Known as the Aardvark
because of its droop-nose silhouette, the swept-wing F-l 11 entered
service over Vietnam in 1968. In 1986, F-lll's based in England struck
at Colonel Qaddafi's
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Libya, and in 1991 the F-lll was one of the anti-Saddam Hussein
coalition's most important aircraft. Now, almost fifty years since its
first combat flight, the F-lll was still a mighty killing machine, and
Bartholomew loved it as most men loved their wives.
Carrying almost eleven tons of bombs, it took almost three thousand feet
to get airborne, but once in the air, the fighter flew at almost eight
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