Hellfire- The Series, Volumes 1-3 Read online

  The Hellfire Series

  (Volumes #1, #2 and #3)

  Leigh Barker

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  Contents

  Hellfire Series

  A Whisper of Armageddon (Novel)

  The Hellfire Legacy

  The Call

  The Predator Nest

  The Assault on Creech

  The Compound

  The Folded Flag

  The Traitor

  The Hitman

  The Reckoning

  The Fugitive

  The Hellfire

  The Orpheus Directive

  Lone Wolf

  Orpheus

  Factory Number 9

  Jimmy Detroit

  The Contract

  The Viking

  Aces & Eights

  Death Squad

  Ultimatum

  Downfall

  Bonus: First Responder – Episode 1

  About the Author

  A Whisper of Armageddon

  1

  It was barely dawn, but it was mid-August in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and the temperature was already climbing towards sweltering. Harry Thorne took a sip of water from his flask and wiped a trickle of sweat off his eyebrow. He didn’t need to be in this dump, his father was a wealthy barrister, so he could have had a privileged upbringing and a cushy life, but he hadn’t, he’d fought authority all his young life and bounced from one school to the next until he’d burned out his welcome. Which made his decision to join the marines all the more surprising, but it had been the making of him. He’d been a fat kid, but now at twenty-eight he was as fit and lean as a marathon runner and tanned to mahogany by the desert sun. The same blazing sun that had put thin streaks of white in his dark brown hair and given his hazel eyes squint wrinkles that would have driven a vain person nuts, but bothered him not at all. With his light frame and lack of height, he could have been a jockey — except he couldn’t ride. His build was ideal for his chosen profession of sniper, where a light frame and compact height meant he could get into firing positions that a bigger man would have to pass up for second best. But his wiry build and lack of inches wasn’t the only reason he was an expert in his trade; it was the punishing training, the constant practice, and his God-given talent, for which he was eternally ungrateful.

  He took off his non-regulation camouflaged boonie hat and wiped the sweat off his brow, even though it would be replaced within a few minutes. He’d been watching the compound for four hours and was getting really sick of the view, the bugs, the discomfort, and the whole bloody thing. This had all the hallmarks of a total standard-issue screw-up.

  The spooks had received a tip-off from the locals that this dump was being used by the Taliban for some nefarious purpose — bomb making, training, or some shit like that. So here goes 3 Commando Recon again to check the place out for unfriendlies, which is how come he was sitting in the sparse cover of a bunch of scraggy fruit trees on a hill overlooking the tumbled-down mud-brick buildings. Nothing, precisely nothing, was moving down there, or had moved in the whole time he’d been sitting there. And just to make sure, he squinted through the scope of his suppressed L115 sniper rifle suspended from a branch by a cord and pointed steadily at the front door of the largest building in the compound.

  He heard the rustle of twigs and a tired sigh off to his left. That was Tom Daley, whose job, along with Big Jack Howe off to his right, was to prevent any ne’er-do-wells strolling in and finding Harry in an embarrassing position, so to speak. Everyone called him BJ, it being quicker to say in an emergency.

  Harry was still fed up, but what do you want, Harry? Work in a bank? Yeah, right, like that was ever an option. It was just like his ol’ mom always said — the sudden crackle in his earpiece stopped the ritual grumble before it got properly started, which was a pity because this one was going to be a classic.

  A disembodied voice told him the choppers were inbound. Captain Ian Campbell — a fine Welshman, as Harry would point out to any press-types nosing around — was telling them not to do anything. Now what did the little prick expect them to do? Jump up and shout “Boo!”? You know, inbreeding has a lot to answer for. No, to be fair, Scotty was okay, a bit stiff, but a good guy. He’d crawled out onto the open road to pull that squaddie back into cover when they’d walked into an ambush a few months back. True, they shouldn’t have walked into the ambush, but that’s the nature of ambushes, they tend to be surprises.

  As ordered, Harry did nothing. After a couple of minutes of doing that, he felt the beat of the Chinook’s rotors as they swooped in to deposit the main assault team into the grey dust, and a few seconds later he heard the unmistakable sound of Kalashnikovs laying down heavy fire on the troops disembarking from the helicopters. He continued to do nothing. The crack of a Lee-Enfield sniper rifle came from forward and to his right, and he waited for the order to say hello to the insurgent sniper.

  “God One. Go,” Scotty said calmly in his earpiece. Tom and BJ heard the order too, and the three of them moved quietly out through the back of the copse, keeping the gnarled trees between them and the compound.

  Tom Daley was as ginger as it is possible to be without being Scottish and took any ribbing about it really well, by decking anybody stupid enough to try. He was the human equivalent of a giraffe, with stick legs and a thin, ramrod-straight body. Ginger and over-tall, a perfect target, and many had tried, only to find this giraffe was a carnivore. He bent low, like a folded pipe cleaner, and led the way out of the trees, his HK MP5 sub-machine gun scanning right and left ahead of them.

  BJ was on Harry’s six, holding a C7 assault rifle fitted with an under-barrel AG-C grenade launcher and EC97 sight, an awesome fire support weapon he called Santa’s Little Helper, in honour of Bart Simpson’s unappreciated mutt. It wasn’t through some squaddie-inverted humour that the lads called him Big Jack; he was a bear of a man, but like any friendly grizzly, he was as easy going as a jolly giant, until someone crossed the line, and then he tended to break them in half.

  Between them, Tom and BJ could lay down 1400 rounds per minute, while Harry’s L115 could castrate a gnat at a mile and a half. Some insurgent sniper was about to see how many virgins there are left in heaven — and that was likely to be a disappointing discovery, with the competition Harry had sent up there recently.

  They moved as quickly as they could without drawing attention and getting themselves killed to death, which meant it took nine minutes to move out of the trees, slide down into the wadi without raising dust, and creep round to the top of the bare and sun-baked hill overlooking the compound, where the Enfield was still cracking away.

  Harry was hot and sun-baked, and a swarm of flies had decided they liked the sweat running down his face. Probably the high alcohol content, he guessed. He spotted the place he’d been looking for and signalled his two watchers to flank him as he crawled up the dusty slope and looked through the scattered rocks that would be his fire position — if he didn’t get his head blown off in the next two seconds, that is. He inched back from the ridge, careful not to raise even a whiff of dust. So far so good and his head was still intact.

  He glanced left and right at BJ and Tom and saw they’d positioned themselves below the ridge, but in a good position to lay covering fire down his side of the slope. Okay then, show time.

  He took out his Tigger handkerchief and wiped his face left to right and up and down, twice. Then, ritual complete, he unslung the L115, slid the dust sock off the suppresser, pulled the bolt, and chambered a .338 lapua round, his favourite load for its awesome stopping power. Okay, enough pratting around, time to pay th
e piper.

  Normally Tom would be acting as his spotter, ranging the target and calculating windage and elevation, but at only twelve hundred yards, Harry could have hit the compound with a rock… well, almost. So Tom focussed on making sure nobody stumbled on their little camp-out.

  Harry slid the rifle through the small rocks, rested it gently on its bipod next to a larger boulder, and squinted through the scope at the compound below. He’d doped the scope for the estimated distance to the compound, intending to use the mil dots to fine-tune the shot. And right there, in the middle of the mil dots circle, was the sniper, lying on a roof between piles of rubble and taking shots at the boys in the LZ a half mile away to the west.

  As he started his slow breathing, he saw the sniper setting up for another shot, but didn’t change his pace or rush the highly practiced action, as missing wouldn’t save the intended target and would just give the guy a chance to move someplace else and get back to killing marines.

  The sniper lifted his head to take a peek before firing. Harry squeezed the trigger, and a moment later, bits of the peeking head sprayed over the rubble around the ex-sniper. Harry had never favoured head shots, they were for the flash lads, but that guy had just stuck his up like a prairie dog, so bugger it. He slid back down the hill without worrying about dust, as the kick of the super magnum had put up a plume that would mark their position well enough.

  “Playtime’s over, lads,” he said and set off down the slope towards the LZ and the relative safety of the eighty or so marines dug in behind the rocks, wadis, and in any handy itsy-bitsy rabbit hole.

  Tom led the way, and BJ brought up the rear. Harry’s rifle, having done its job, was now near useless if they had to fight their way out, so was slung over his shoulder. Normally he would be carrying his C8 CQB carbine for close up get-going work, but in this terrain, it would have been too much, too heavy, and just too many guns.

  Without a word, Tom turned and fired up the hill back towards their little shooting spot. His sub-machine gun on full automatic was capable of hosing the hilltop at 800 rounds per minute from the hundred-round Bet C-Mag drum magazine he favoured, but common sense dictated that emptying the mag might be spectacular, but it would probably be fatal when the rest of the insurgents turned up, so he settled for dropping the four guys who’d suddenly appeared on the ridge, with a short and acceptably accurate burst. He grinned back at Harry.

  “Take a bow later, flake,” Harry said, and they set off at a steady run that would cover ground, but without risking a broken leg or a twisted ankle that right now would be a terminal disorder. He saw the dust kick up around him before he heard the crack of Kalashnikovs, but he didn’t need a diagram to tell him what was next if they didn’t get to cover in the next few seconds.

  Just for a change, Fate was playing fair, and they slid backside first behind a tumble of boulders, just as a machine gun opened up, its lace of 50 calibre rounds tracking them. Harry squinted through the dust and spitting rock chips to see BJ and Tom face down behind the tiny, tiny cover.

  “For Chrissakes, shoot a few of them!” Harry shouted above the scream and whine of rounds looking for their little pink hides.

  Easier said than done, but one thing was a racing certainty, if they just lay there, that’s where they were going to die. The sniper rifle was just too long to get into action without getting Harry’s head blown off, so it was down to BJ and Tom.

  Oh, lucky them.

  Tom disobeyed his common sense and looked up through the gap in the rocks to see the insurgents swarming over the rise. Word had clearly got out that three sun-crazy marines had got themselves cornered, and every mother’s son had grabbed a weapon and headed over for the turkey shoot. Jesus, there were hundreds of them. He rested the MP5 on the rock, swore loud and hard, and squeezed off a five-second burst that sprayed fifty nine-millimetre rounds into the mass of bodies spilling over the ridge, dropping them in rows as if they’d suddenly lost the use of their legs, which strictly speaking, they had.

  The insurgents took cover from the sudden and unexpected slap from the cornered invaders and gave BJ the space he needed to get the under-slung grenade launcher into operation, with devastating effect, as dust and body parts blasting across the hillside proved.

  Okay, cool. Harry swung the sniper rifle round and up. At a hundred yards, it was like shooting tiddlers in a small barrel. Sure, he was limited by the five-round mag and bolt-action single shot, but every shot blew an insurgent’s head clean off. Not as effective a mass-killing machine as the sub-machine gun or the assault rifle, but the shock value of seeing the guy in front of you lose most of his head had a lot going for it.

  Outstanding, boys. Except the shock stopped the mob for only a moment and mostly pissed them off. A few seconds later, they’d rallied and were on the move again, almost oblivious to Tom and BJ mowing them down and Harry blowing bits off anyone who looked to be in charge.

  Harry looked at the hilltop and had a sudden flash from the movie, Zulu, when the braves chugged up like a train. It looked for all the world like some sad padre would be paying the folks a visit.

  A dust storm blew up. Well, thank you, Lord. Then he heard and felt the familiar thud of rotors beating the air, followed by the unmistakable rattle of a 30 mm chain-gun pouring 625 rounds a minute into the mass of bodies on the hillside.

  He closed his eyes against the dust and sand blasting into his face, smiled, and said a silent thanks to the God he didn’t believe in. Adding a request that the Apache pilot didn’t get carried away and start firing the Hellfire missiles, or they’d all be toast.

  The gunship roared over the hilltop in pursuit of the insurgents, who’d suddenly realised they had other pressing business elsewhere.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Harry said, to the backs of the other two, who were already heading south for the winter. “Hold up,” he shouted after them. “What about protecting your principal, here?”

  Tom shouted something that sounded like “rock you”, but the Apache is a noisy beast.

  Harry looked back at the hillside littered with sprawled bodies and unrecognisable bits of flesh that had looked for a while like being their final resting place. Not a bad result, then, though it could be said that orders to stay under the radar might now be a thing of the past, and Scotty would almost certainly say that, or something similar and a bit more colourful. Still, at least Harry would get to hear it. So yeah, a result.

  By the time they’d covered the half mile to the compound that was the target of the dawn raid, they were in full sun and sweating again, and Harry raised his arm and smelled his armpit to prove it.

  “Oh, very attractive,” Tom said with a slow shake of his head.

  “His mother would be so proud,” BJ added with his customary grin.

  “Leave my mother out of this,” Harry said, feigning hurt feelings. “You know what my ol’ mom always said—”

  “Who are you? Get out of here. I’m calling the police!” The other two recited together.

  “Oh, I’ve mentioned that before, then?”

  “Once or twice,” Tom said, pushing the big wooden doors open and stepping into the shade of the compound. “Once or twice a day, that is.”

  Harry stepped into the compound and backed up to the mud-brick walls. The other marines were already in there, going from house to house in search of bomb factories, drug labs, or stacks of ‘how to be a good Taliban’ magazines, but one thing he didn’t do was rush in where wise men fear to tread.

  BJ and Tom had forgotten their banter and were crouched low in the hard shadow of the high walls, scanning the interior for any sign of hostiles. The place was probably crawling with them, but they were keeping their heads down. Wise boys — except for the dead ones lying sprawled in the dust as breakfast for the swarms of flies. It looked like a half-dozen insurgents had won the chance to stand and fight the company of highly trained marines storming the compound, to give their bosses the chance to get the hell out of Dodge. Idi
ots.

  Harry signalled BJ to go left and Tom right, while he walked straight down the middle of the narrow alley leading up to the square, twenty yards or so ahead.

  A noise from up ahead saw the three of them move further into the deep shadows along the side of the alley and take up kneeling firing positions. Harry signalled them to hold and crept forward, scouring the shuttered doors and windows and peering at the rooftops silhouetted against a blazing sky.

  He bent down without taking his eyes off the buildings and scooped up one of the Kalashnikovs from the valiant rearguard, who hadn’t fired a shot before being blasted to bloody rags. The recycled weapon was much better suited to the alleys and flat-roofed buildings than his L115. That delay saved his life. He’d advanced maybe another fifteen feet when something or somebody detonated the IED.

  Weirdest thing, in the microsecond after the flash and before the shockwave hit, he replayed the lecture from that boring little man who’d explained how an explosion kills you, as if anyone really wanted to know. The first thing that would hit him would be the highly compressed air particles travelling faster than sound, and it was this that would cause the most damage and kill him. He was pleased to know he’d be dead before the shockwave, white-hot shrapnel, and searing heat hit him. Always thinking positively, that’s Harry, he should be called Pollyanna — but only once.

  That was as much as the slow-motion explosion allowed. The blast hit him. He felt it for an instant, felt his body leaving the ground, and then crimson shards cut off his thinking.

  BJ and Tom were twenty feet away, but the shockwave tossed them up against the building like rag dolls before the blast-wind sucking back into the vacuum pulled them off the walls and hurled them towards the blackened hole in the wall. By the time they hit the ground, they were unconscious, which shows God can have kind moments.