with his forward cannon and took out the chain gun on the eastern edge of the camp. Then came a quick turn, another cannon barrage, and the western edge chain gun was destroyed as well.
Nolan flew over the hideout a second time. Flipping down his special night-vision telescope, he scanned the ground below. Lots of heat sources were moving about—and for a moment, it seemed like more than just three dozen people running around. But one thing was clear—the pirates seemed in a panic.
Their plan was working.
Both copters now backed off and started a slow orbit 1,500 feet above the treeline. A small white mushroom cloud was rising over the camp, the aftereffect of the stinkpot explosion. Crash’s MP3 was still blaring as well.
Again Nolan studied the camp below. So much smoke covered the target area, it was hard to distinguish the heat signatures of the pirates from the residue of the flash bombs. But that was not surprising. Everything was unfolding as they’d hoped.
The team gave the stinkpot bomb two more minutes to do its work. Then Nolan and Batman turned their copters over and began to dive again.
“Now comes the fun part,” Nolan thought grimly.
He armed all his weapons. The .50-caliber machine guns mounted on his winglets were ready to fire, as was the huge 30mm cannon sticking out of the copter’s nose. Gunner and Twitch both had their M4s up on the starboard side weapons mounts, connected to continuous belts of ammunition.
Both copters were soon down to just ten feet off the deck, quickly slowing to half speed. In this dangerous maneuver, they wanted the pirates to fire at them and reveal themselves, so Whiskey would know where to fire back. Nolan was in the lead, with Batman a little behind and off to the right. Anyone who showed himself to shoot at Nolan would find himself in Batman’s sights an instant later.
The noise of the two copters flying so low was deafening—but Nolan could still hear Crash’s soundtrack booming between his ears. The attack quickly turned nuts. It was loud and fast and full of smoke and flames and flashes of light going off in all directions.
But … something was wrong.
Nolan knew it right away.
No one—not a single pirate—was shooting back at them. In fact, he could see nothing at all moving around the camp.
The pirates were not a disciplined army; there was no way they’d all taken cover and were keeping their heads down.
Nolan completed his pass and did another quick infrared scan of the camp. He saw heat sources strewn all over, but none of them was moving. It was almost as if they were all dead already.
His radio suddenly came to life. It was Batman.
“You see what I see?” he asked Nolan.
“I think I do,” Nolan replied. “It’s already a ghost town.”
Batman radioed back: “But there’s no way we greased any of these guys already. We just got here.”
Nolan’s head started spinning. The gig had been almost too easy up to this point. Now this curveball—and he had no idea how to explain it.
“We got to find out what’s happened down there,” he radioed back to Batman.
Batman clicked his radio mike twice.
“Roger that,” he told Nolan. “See you on the ground.”
* * *
A MINUTE LATER, the two copters had set down in a field just west of the small camp.
The five team members climbed out and checked their equipment. They were all dressed the same: black camouflage battle suits, flak jackets and oversized battle helmets. Each man was carrying an M4 assault rifle equipped with a night scope, and each was breathing through a gas mask. Each man was wearing his OAS badge as well.
But they were also wearing huge American flags on their backs. This was their version of the Jolly Roger. They’d believed nothing would put the fear of God into the brigands like seeing the Stars and Stripes coming at them.
That’s why Twitch quipped, “Maybe we scared them all to death.”
Whatever happened, though, the smell was awful.
“At least your stink bomb worked,” Crash yelled through his mask to Gunner. “It smells like one skunk crawled up another skunk’s ass and died.”
Could that have done it? Nolan wondered. Had the smell from the stinkpot been so overwhelming, it had actually killed all the pirates?
He didn’t think so. It had to be something else.
The team formed up on the edge of the hideout, then put about twenty feet between them. Weapons ready, they began walking into the encampment.