232 TIT-TWO
By early in the evening, the skies over the Middle East began to clear and the winds dropped down to almost normal levels. For the first time in almost a week, the moon and stars could be seen.
In Kuwait City, after being assured by his meteorological team that the storm was over, at least for the next twenty-four hours, Ben Raines scrambled the pilots that had been on standby for the past few days and told them to get their engines warmed up. His second call was to Jackie Malone, telling her to get her troops ready to roll.
Jackie put the phone down, called her second in command, Johnny Walker, and told him the good news. She had already divided her battalion up into two equal groups, with Walker scheduled to lead the second group while she retained command of the first group.
The men and women of her battalion were on active standby, which meant they’d be able to take off within one hour from the battle-stations call.
As soon as he had everyone moving toward the planes, Ben took the time to call his commanders in both Saudi Arabia and Iran to tell them help was on the way.
His first call was to Tehran to check in with Buddy’s group. He was a little surprised when Harley Reno answered the call instead of Buddy.
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“Harley, this is Ben. How come Buddy isn’t available?” Ben asked, sweat beginning to break out on his forehead at the thought of what might be wrong.
“Hey, Ben,” Harley answered, his voice more serious than usual. “Buddy’s okay, but he’s taken a hit in the gut.”
“How serious?” Ben asked.
“The medic thinks he’ll be fine. The bullet passed completely through and there doesn’t seem to be any serious internal damage, but he’s not in any shape to fight.”
“You in charge?” Ben asked.
“For right now,” Harley answered.
“Can I talk to Buddy?” Ben asked.
“Uh, I don’t think so, sir,” Harley replied. “The medic’s just given him a shot of morphine and he’s kinda out of it right now.”
Just then, a soldier walked into Ben’s office.
“Wait one, Harley,” Ben said, and turned to the young man. “Yeah?”
“The ship with the helicopters on it just arrived, General,” the man said. “They’re unloading and fueling them now.”
“Great!” Ben said. He keyed the mike again. “Harley, the choppers from our home base are here. Do you have control of the airport?”
“For the time being, sir, but it’ll be dicey holding it. We’ve got a bunch of hostiles on our doorstep.”
“Well, the weather’s cleared and I’ll be sending Jackie and half her battalion to see you. I’ll have the choppers make a pass over the airport first. Pop a green canister if it’s safe. If you can’t hold it, then I’ll have the choppers strafe it until it’s safe for Jackie and her troops to land.”
“Roger that, General.”
“Oh, and Harley …”
“Sir?”
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“Tell Buddy I’ll be coming along with the troops.”
“That’s good news, sir,” Harley replied, relief in his voice at the news.
Ben signed off, and immediately called Bartholomew Wiley-Smeyth’s headquarters in Riyadh.
When Bart was on the line, Ben asked, “How’re you holding up, Bart?”
“By the skin of our teeth, Ben,” Bart replied. “The hostiles are thick as thieves here. So far we’ve managed to keep them out of the city, but I’m afraid we lost the oil fields.”
“Hang in there, buddy,” Ben said. “Help is on the way.”
“We’ll do our best,” Bart replied. “We’ve retreated from the oil fields and are holed up in the city.”
“How about the airport?” Ben asked.
“We had to abandon it, Ben. I’m pretty sure it’ll be in the terrorists’ hands by the time you can get reinforcements here.”
Ben thought for a moment. “Okay, that’s no problem. We have some helicopters that should be able to clear the way for our troops to land.”
“We’ll do what we can, Ben, but tell the pilots not to spare the gas.”
“Roger that, Bart,” Ben said, and broke the connection.
As soon as he was off the radio, Ben went into his quarters, changed from his uniform into battle fatigues, and ran toward the airport to join Jackie and her troops.
Ten C-141 StarLifter aircraft were lined up on the tarmac, waiting to take off. The StarLifters, longer and wider than the older C-130’s, could handle more cargo and troops than the C-130 Hercules could. Whereas the C-235
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130s could transport, only ninety-two paratroopers or 128 battle-ready troops, the C-14s could transport 168 or 208 respectively, and at a slightly faster speed.
The first two StarLifters were loaded with paratroopers, while the other eight were loaded with regular troops.
Ben ran up to Jackie, who was preparing to board one of the planes with her paratroopers.
She turned and raised an eyebrow when she saw Ben in battle fatigues. “You comin’ to this party, boss?” she asked.
Ben nodded as he slipped into a parachute and strapped on his weapons. “Buddy’s been wounded, Jackie, and I’m gonna take over his command in Tehran.”
Jackie grinned. “Then, I’ll go with the plane that’s headed to Riyadh.”
“Let the choppers lead the way, Jackie,” Ben said. “Commander Wiley-Smeyth says the hostiles control the airport there.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Jackie drawled in her thick Texas accent. “We’ll let the whirlybirds soften ‘em up while we jump on the outskirts. By the time we hit the dirt, they should be on the run.”
Ben stepped in close and shook her hand. “Be careful, Jackie. Remember, we’ll still be outnumbered ten to one.”
She grinned. “Those odds oughta be about right then. We wouldn’t want it to be too easy.”
Ben turned and climbed into the cargo bay of the big StarLifter that was headed for Iran.
When the Scout paratroopers saw who was joining them, they all broke into wide smiles. “Welcome aboard, General,” one of the gunnery sergeants said, snapping off a quick salute.
“It’s been a while since I jumped, Gunny,” Ben said. “You may have to kick me off the plane.”
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“Not to worry, sir,” the sergeant said as he stepped up to Ben and gave his equipment a quick going-over. “It’s just like riding a bicycle … you never forget how.”
“From your lips to God’s ears, son,” Ben said, taking his seat alongside the rest of the Scouts.
“You get a sitrep from the target zone, sir?” the sergeant said, sitting next to Ben.
“Yeah. It’s gonna be a hot zone,” Ben replied.
The sergeant grinned. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.”
As the StarLifter gunned its engines, readying for takeoff, six McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache helicopters were already in the air heading toward the targets, three to Iran and three to Saudi Arabia. Since both Riyadh and Tehran were around three hundred miles from Kuwait City, the choppers would be at the extremes of their three-hundred-mile range when they arrived. There would be no time for refueling on the way, so the helicopters would only be able to make one or two passes on the airports before they ran out of fuel.
Ben gave a silent prayer the six Hellfire antitank missiles and the M230 30mm chain guns each of the Apaches carried would be enough to clear the airports so the troops could land. If they weren’t, the C-14s would have to try to land on the desert, which wasn’t a happy thought.
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As the C-141 StarLifter carrying Jackie Malone and her Scout paratroopers approached the airport just outside of Riyadh, Jackie made her way to the cockpit and asked the pilot if she could be put through to the lead pilot in the Apache helicopters that were leading the way in.
“Sure, ma’am,” the pilot said. He twisted a dial on the instrument panel and spoke a few words into his headset microphone. He slipped the headset off and handed it back over his shoulder to Jackie.
“You’re gonna be talking to Major Juan Gomez, ma’am,” he said.
“Major Gomez,” Jackie said after slipping the headset over her head.
“Yes, ma’am,” the pilot responded, his voice soft with the slight Mexican accent Jackie remembered from her home state of Texas.
“How’s your fuel, Major?”
She heard a low chuckle. “No problem. Probably got at least a teacup left,” Gomez replied.
“You have enough left for a couple of strafing runs over the airport?”
“That depends on how well this baby flies on fumes,” Gomez answered. “We’ll make at least one and we can try for another. I’ll try to position my birds so if we run
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out of fuel, we’ll drop on the heaviest concentration of hostiles. How’s that?” Gomez asked, only half kidding.
“Don’t take any chances, Major,” Jackie advised, grinning at the bravery of the man. “If you get too low, put the choppers down on the east side of the airport. That’s where we’re gonna be dropping, so we can give you and your men some cover.”
“I’ll try, ma’am, but my fuel warning light’s been blinking for the past ten minutes, and these birds have all the gliding characteristics of rocks. When the engine quits, we’re gonna go straight down.”
Jackie shook her head. There was just no reasoning with pilots. “Roger that, Major. Good luck,” Jackie said, and clicked off the mike and handed the headset back to the pilot of the StarLifter.
“As soon as the Apaches make their first run, drop us off to the east of the airport,” she said. “I’d like us to be on the ground by the time they line up for their second attack.”
The pilot didn’t answer, but just nodded his head.
Jackie walked back into the cargo hold and pumped her fist in the air, signaling her men to get ready to jump.
Minutes later, the StarLifter turned to the east and the loading ramp at the rear of the plane began to open. When the light changed from red to yellow to green, Jackie and her troops simply ran out of the back of the plane and dove into thin air.
The pilot had them at the very lowest possible altitude for a regular jump so as to minimize their time in the air, when they would be helpless against ground fire.
After instructing his fellow pilots to try to avoid doing any damage to the runways, Major Gomez tilted the nose of his Apache down and increased his throttle, going in low and fast along the edges of the runway. Through the
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Plexiglas windshield, he could see numerous vehicles and even some foxholes the enemy troops had dug in the desert along the runways. Taking the eastern side first to give some protection to the paratroopers, Gomez triggered his M230 30mm chain gun, and watched as thousands of slugs tore into the enemy troops and shredded the vehicles parked alongside the runway.
Major Billy Thornton, in the second Apache, concentrated his fire on the buildings and control tower on the west side of the airport. He could see many hostile troops on the roofs and as he began his run saw the glittering red dots of their guns as they fired at him.
Deciding against using his chain gun on the first run, Thornton instead fired his 2.75-inch rockets at the bases of the buildings. He pulled up over the buildings just as the rockets exploded, sending up huge billows of smoke and flame.
As he passed over the buildings, a line of holes stitched across his windshield, shattering it and sending razor-sharp shards rattling against his helmet visor.
“Bastards!” he yelled, and jerked the nose of the Apache around for a second run over the ruined buildings.
As his engine coughed once and then caught again, Thornton could see dozens of enemy troops scrambling to get away from the buildings and out of his line of fire.
He bared his teeth in a savage grin and opened fire with his chain gun, decimating the running troops and mowing them down like so much wheat.
Just as his engine faltered again, Thornton caught sight of a tank coming out from behind one of the buildings. He had time to fire one Hellfire missile before the rudder became heavy in his hand and he began to lose control of the Apache.
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It took all of Thornton’s strength to hold the rudder and collective as he auto-rotated down to a rather hard landing next to the runway.
He grabbed the Uzi off the floor next to his feet and bailed out of the cockpit, crouching next to the rocket tubes as several bullets pinged off the fuselage next to his head.
A group of eight or ten hostiles were running across the tarmac toward him, firing Kalashnikovs as they ran.
Thornton raised the Uzi and triggered off a burst that dropped three of the men, but the rest kept coming, driving him back behind cover with their fire.
Thornton reached up and wrapped his fingers around the cross that hung around his neck on a silver chain, figuring it was his time to die.
A roaring whup-whup-whup sounded overhead and Major Gomez’s chopper zoomed by, not more than twenty feet off the ground, and cut the men down with his chain gun before they could get to Thornton.
Thornton stood up and watched helplessly as Gomez’s Apache tilted crazily to one side and dropped onto the desert sand, crumpling like it was made of tin instead of reinforced titanium.
“Crazy son of a bitch,” Thornton growled as he ran toward the wreckage. He knew Gomez had used the last of his fuel to save his life rather than landing safely.
Luckily, the lack of fuel in the Apache kept it from bursting into flames. By the time Thornton arrived at the crash site, Gomez had kicked his door open and was dragging himself out of the cockpit. Both his legs were at funny angles, but he was alive.
Thornton pulled him free of the helicopter and laid him back up against one of the wheels. Then he reached inside
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the cockpit and took out the medical kit strapped to the sidewall.
Popping it open, he took out a morphine syringe and stuck it in Gomez’s thigh.
“Thanks, Juanito,” he said as Gomez’s eyes slowly closed in blissful sleep.
Thornton grabbed his Uzi and whirled around as a roaring, coughing sound came from behind him. He relaxed when he saw it was only Jack Ashford, the pilot of the third Apache, landing a dozen yards away. He’d timed it so close that his engine quit just as the wheels touched down.
Ashford jumped out of the helicopter and ran over to Thornton. He too had his Uzi in his hands. “Thought you boys might like some company,” he said as he took up position next to Thornton and Gomez.
“Hell, yeah!” Thornton yelled back. “There are never enough rednecks around to suit me.”
Ashford grinned and took a couple of long, fat cigars from his flight suit. It was a tradition among the chopper pilots to light one up after a successful mission.
He flicked his Zippo lighter and they both puffed clouds of evil-smelling smoke as they watched for hostiles.
As Jackie Malone and the other 167 paratroopers floated to the ground, they came under some small-arms fire from terrorist troops, but it was slight, and ceased as soon as the Apaches began to strafe the enemy positions along the runways.
Once on the ground, the Scouts jettisoned their chutes, formed into a wide line, and began to jog toward the enemy positions, firing as they advanced.
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When they arrived at the foxholes of the enemy troops, they found hundreds of bodies torn asunder by the murderous fire of the Apaches’ chain guns. The few enemy troops left alive threw down their guns and rifles and held up their hands in surrender.
Jackie assigned a couple of men to take charge of the prisoners, and led the rest in a frontal assault on the ruined, smoldering buildings on the other side of the runway.
The slight resistance they faced was soon overpowered by the ferocious fighting of the Scouts, and in less than half an hour, they had complete control of the airfield.
Jackie motioned her radioman to her side and called the other C-14’s and told them it was safe to land. She spread her men out along the runways as a guard until the big birds had landed safely.
As the troops poured out of the StarLifters, Jackie began to get them organized for an assault on the enemy troops that were laying siege to the city in the distance.
Appropriating every vehicle that wasn’t damaged too much to be operative, she loaded her troops into the jeeps and Bradleys and tanks, and had them lead the way toward the city.
Some of the troops were assigned to carry fuel to the two Apaches that were still functional so they could aid in the counterattack on the city.
In Riyadh, Bartholomew Wiley-Smeyth had his meager force of men spread out among the city buildings, on rooftops and top stories so they’d have a good line of fire at the enemy troops that were attempting to enter the city.
As the Apache helicopters, with full fuel tanks, flew
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toward the city, Bart had his men pop green gas grenades to show the pilots where the friendly troops were.
Jamal Ahmed’s troops, caught between the pincers of several thousand SUSA troops and Bart’s men, were no match for the Apaches’ withering fire and Hellfire missiles.
By midafternoon, it was all over. Jamal Ahmed had been killed when his HumVee was blown to splinters by a Hellfire missile. Lieutenant Sohail Shaeen, seeing there was no hope of victory, had surrendered the few enemy troops remaining alive to Jackie Malone’s Scouts.
Of the ten thousand troops El Farrar had sent toward Riyadh, only three thousand remained alive, many injured severely. The prisoners of war were gathered in a large, open field and surrounded by guards.
Bart climbed down out of the building he’d been fighting from and walked up to Jackie. He saluted and then stuck out his hand. “Thanks for coming so soon, ma’am,” he said, not able to ascertain Jackie’s rank from her battle fatigues, which were without an officer’s ranking on them.
“Glad to oblige, Commander,” Jackie said, taking his hand and gripping it hard enough to make him wince. “And the name’s Jackie.”
“What’s the status of the oil fields, Jackie?” Bart asked, his face blushing at the informality of the American.
Jackie shook her head. “We haven’t cleared them yet,” she said. “I figured they’d be booby-trapped, and we might want to let the ranking officer of the terrorist forces try to get the hostiles there to give up without destroying the oil wells.”
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Bart nodded. “Good idea. Any idea who that might be?” he asked.
Jackie motioned to a small group of men behind her, and they moved aside to reveal Lieutenant Sohail Shaeen standing there, his wrists restrained by a plastic restraint.
She waved her arm at him. “Be my guest, Commander. You are still the officer in charge of this city.”
“Thanks,” Bart said, moving to stand in front of Shaeen.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
Shaeen nodded. “Of course, Commander,” he answered with a heavy accent.
Bart waved his arm at the numerous forces around them. “As you can see, Lieutenant, we have more than enough troops to take the oil fields back from your forces.”
Shaeen’s eyes followed Bart’s gesture. “Yes, Commander, I can see that.”
“Have your men mined the oil wells?” Bart asked.
Shaeen gave a sad half smile. “I’m afraid I cannot answer that, Commander. You are aware of the Geneva Convention and its rules concerning treatment of prisoners of war, I take it?”
Bart smiled grimly back at Shaeen. “Lieutenant, let me give you some facts. You and your men are not prisoners of war. You belong to no recognized country’s armed forces and you are not fighting in a declared war. You are terrorists and spies, nothing more.”
When Shaeen started to speak, Bart held up his hand. “And as such, I am sure you are aware we would be perfectly within our rights to execute you and your men on the spot.”
“But…” Shaeen began.
Bart glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. “You have
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ten minutes to make up your mind, Lieutenant. After that we will begin to execute your men one by one until you are all dead. And then we will attack the oil fields and wipe our your troops there to the last man.”
Shaeen glanced around at the stony faces of the troops around him. “But surely you do not want the oil wells destroyed.”
Bart shrugged. “The most your men can do will be to blow up the derricks. The damage from such an act could be repaired in a matter of days.” He glanced at his watch again. “You now have eight minutes, Lieutenant, or the lives of all of your men will be on your head.”
Shaeen’s eyes dropped and his shoulders slumped. “I will see what I can do, Commander.”
Bart glanced at Jackie and winked so Shaeen couldn’t see him. “Give the lieutenant a jeep, please, Jackie. We’ll let him go and have a talk with his comrades.”
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Haji Kuchkool, with Farid Zamet riding in the rear of his HumVee, stayed well to the rear of the advancing troops as they moved closer to the oil fields.
He winced in sympathy and anger as he saw hundreds of his men cut down by the withering fire from the defenders, as well as the rocket grenades that, with no vehicles to concentrate on, were now landing in the middle of his troops and cutting them down by the dozens.
By the time his men overran the oil derricks and found the defenders had retreated, the field in front of the oil field was covered with dead and dying men, and the screams and moans were pitiful to listen to.
Kuchkool turned to one of his lieutenants. “Go out into the field and shut those men up,” he ordered. “Their cowardly crying is bad for morale.”
The young soldier nodded, not having the slightest idea how he was going to accomplish this, short of killing the men himself. However, as young as he was, he knew it was certain death to defy or question Commander Kuchkool’s orders, so he moved as rapidly as he could to get out of the sight of his temperamental leader.
As Kuchkool approached the area where the defenders had last been sighted, followed closely behind by Farid Zamet, he noticed a tent pitched between two oil derricks.
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The tent was lighted from the inside by what looked like a lantern hanging on a pole in the center of the tent.
Kuchkool pointed with the barrel of his Kalashnikov. “Look there, Farid, there is a radio antenna on top of the tent. Perhaps this is the enemy’s communications headquarters.”
Zamet nodded. “Maybe they left some important papers behind that will give us some insight into the strength of their forces in the city,” he suggested.
“Let us go look,” Kuchkool said, smiling at the thought of the praise he would receive from El Farrar if he found something important.
As he moved toward the tent, a tremendous explosion came from fifty yards away, followed immediately by screams of pain and terror as a giant fireball roared into the sky.
Kuchkool and Zamet both hit the dirt, landing on their faces in the gravel and sand as hundreds of pieces of molten shrapnel tore over their heads and shredded the walls of the tent in front of them.
Once he was certain there were going to be no more explosions, Kuchkool got slowly to his feet, dusting himself off as he glared toward the source of the explosion.
“What happened?” he asked a soldier who was walking toward him, a dazed expression on his face.
“The enemy soldiers left a box full of grenades behind, Commander,” the young man said, sleeving soot and dirt off his face. “It must have been mined, for it went off and killed almost a dozen men who were nearby.”
Kuchkool glanced at Zamet, and then at the tent in front of them, a speculative expression on his face.
Zamet, catching the meaning of his stare, backed slowly away from the tent, his eyes wide with fear.
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“Soldier,” Kuchkool said, “there are some papers in that tent over there. Go and get them for me.”
The soldier, still dazed from his close call of moments before, nodded and moved toward the tent.
Kuchkool, following Zamet’s lead, also backed away from the tent and moved over behind a nearby oil derrick.
Just as he got to the tent, the soldier stumbled over the wire Harley had left, and had time to look down before the plastique bricks attached to the wire exploded.
The soldier was blown into several pieces, and both Kuchkool and Zamet were knocked off their feet by the force of the blast.
“Allah be merciful,” Zamet groaned from his position fiat on his back. A small trickle of blood ran down his forehead and onto his cheek from where a small pebble had ricocheted off a beam and into his skin.
Once again, Kuchkool got to his feet and brushed himself off. Several soldiers ran up to him and asked him if he was all right.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he answered impatiently. He looked at Zamet as he was climbing to his feet. “Perhaps we should hold off searching the oil field until dawn. It will be easier to spot the traps that have obviously been left for us in daylight,” he said.
Zamet nodded, only too happy to get out of this accursed place before he too was blown apart.
“Gather the troops,” Kuchkool ordered a nearby junior officer. “We move against the city.”
As he walked toward his HumVee, Kuchkool growled, “I swear by Allah I will destroy the infidel dogs for what they’ve done to my troops tonight.”
Zamet kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t about to tell the commander he hadn’t done all that well so far.
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Once he was sure the medic had done all he could for Buddy, Harley called a strategy meeting of the squad leaders of the Scout teams holed up in Tehran.
Major Jackson Bean, Willie Running Bear, Samuel Clements, and Sue Waters were all in attendance.
“Major Bean,” Harley began, “as ranking officer, you are next in line to Buddy to take command.”
“I’m told Buddy asked you to take command, Harley,” Bean said, smiling. “Let’s hear what you have to say before I decide whether to take command or not.”
Harley shook his head. “That order by Buddy was just to get us out of the desert and into the city, Major.”
Bean nodded. “All right then, here’s how I see our situation. We’re outnumbered a hundred to one. The only thing we’ve got going for us is we’re small enough to be extremely mobile, while the larger force will be forced to move at a snail’s pace.”
Harley grinned, seeing where the major was going with his talk.
“The other thing in our favor is that it is the middle of the night. Scouts are trained to fight in darkness, while most regular troops are not.”
He paused. “My idea is to leave half our forces here in the city, spread out among as many buildings as we can so they’ll seem like a larger force. When they draw the hostiles’ fire, the rest of our men and women, divided up into small two-and three-man groups, will attack from the flanks and rear, hitting hard and fast and then disappearing back into the darkness. Pretty soon, the bastards won’t know whether they’re coming or going.”
Harley laughed. “And with our silencers, half the time they won’t even know they’ve been attacked until they’re already dead.”
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Bean looked at his squad leaders. “Okay, guys and gals, let’s get our teams put together and get them out of sight and ready to move.”
He glanced at Harley. “I think your team is most used to guerrilla warfare, so we’ll have your guys be some of our mobile troops, if you agree.”
“Absolutely,” Harley said, glad he hadn’t been consigned to sit on a rooftop waiting for the enemy to come to him. He knew the rest of the team felt the same way: They’d all rather take the fight to the enemy than the opposite.
Back in the room where the rest of the team waited with Buddy, Harley told them the good news. “Coop, you and Jersey team up; Anna, you come with me; Hammer, you and Beth take Corrie with you and you’ll be in charge of communications with Major Bean and the other mobile teams. He’ll let us know through you if any of the stationary troops come under too much fire so you can send a mobile team to take the heat off them.”
“What about Buddy?” Jersey asked, looking over at his sleeping body on a cot against a far wall.
“Major Bean is going to leave some men here with him. He’ll be a lot safer than any of us, Jersey.”
Everyone nodded, and began to move off together in their teams, discussing among themselves how they were going to work the attack.
As they went down the stairs, Coop leaning heavily on the handrail and still limping, Jersey glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Maybe you’d better ask Jackson if you can take a position in one of the buildings, Coop. That ankle still looks pretty bad,” she said.
Coop pressed his lips together and shook his head.
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“Not on your life, Jersey.” He paused and looked at her. “But it might be better for you to ask Harley to assign you another teammate. I’ll probably just slow you down.”
She stopped and turned to look square at him. “You say anything like that again and it won’t only be your ankle that’s swollen … it’ll be your jaw too.”
“But… but I just…” Coop began as she turned and walked away down the stairs.
“Shut up, Coop,” she growled over her shoulder. “For once in your life, shut up!”
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Coop said, grinning at the back of her head.
“Wait right here,” she ordered when they got to the door. “I’ll be right back.”
Five minutes later, she returned, driving up in an old U.S. Army jeep that looked as if it’d spent the last fifty years in the desert. The tires were worn almost flat and the paint had faded to the color of rusted metal, but the engine still sounded good.
“Jesus,” Coop said. “What museum did you find that in?”
“I saw it on our way in to town earlier,” she answered. “Remember the history of World War II?”
“Yeah, what of it?” Coop asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.
“In the deserts of North Africa, there were squads of men driving these jeeps against the Germans. They called themselves The Desert Rats, if I remember correctly.”
Coop laughed and grabbed the windshield as Jersey took off in a cloud of smoking exhaust. “Well, fellow rat,” he yelled over the sound of the engine, “let’s go get us some cheese!”