The Ten Thousand by Harold Coyle Read Free Book Online Page A

few seconds that it took their attackers to disembark and form an assault line, was to shut the huge steel blast door and warn the guards inside the mountain. After glancing at their attackers one more time, both fled for the bunker.
    The faster of the two made it into the bunker and grabbed the phone to notify the guards inside the tunnel. The second Ukrainian guard followed after dropping down behind the concrete barrier and crawling to the bunker on his hands and knees. Once he reached the open doorway of the bunker, the second Ukrainian guard pulled himself up and faced the panel just inside the bunker door that controlled the lights and the blast door of the tunnel entrance. He only managed to hit the switch that started the thick steel door closing before a ranger tossed a grenade around the corner of the concrete barrier into the open door of the bunker.
    The door gunner on the helicopter that carried Ilvanich and First Lieutenant Zack had no problems with the exiting rangers. Without any orders being needed, the twenty-one-year-old native of Tennessee opened fire, raking the cinder block building that served as a guard shack with a quick burst. The six Ukrainian guards stationed there, who were responsible for securing the outer perimeter fence, instinctively chose to fight, ignoring in their haste the door gunner’s first burst. Pouring through the narrow door, parkas half on but weapons at the ready, they rushed out into the night to deploy and to repel the attackers. The lean country boy behind the helicopter’s M-60 machine gun held his fire as he watched, waited, and shifted his gun to the right a little. When he fired again, he dropped the first three guards. The remaining three, seeing their comrades chewed up by machine-gun fire so quickly, were thrown into a panic. Caught in the open, between the onslaught of attackers and the chainlink fence they were supposed to guard, the remaining three guards turned to run back into their guard shack.
    Kevin Pape stopped that. Holding the butt plate of his squad automatic weapon against his right hip, Pape trained his weapon on the first Ukrainian, who already had his foot in the door of the guard shack.
    Using his body to aim and direct the fire of his weapon, Pape opened up, holding the trigger down while he moved his entire body to the right, raking the file of Ukrainians. Like tin cans set on a wall for target practice, each of the Ukrainian guards was knocked back as Pape’s hail of bullets swept down their file.
    Following close behind Zack, Ilvanich watched the brief firefight with the six Ukrainians in the guard shack and the two guards at the tunnel entrance. All were dead or wounded in a matter of seconds. They were no longer a factor. But the two guards at the tunnel entrance, though they chose not to fight, had been far more effective than the six in the guard shack. In their haste, not one of them had even considered killing the floodlights that bathed the area around the mouth of the tunnel in a glaring green fluorescent light. That light, Ilvanich thought, was a gift to the Americans. It was a great aid to the demolition team, allowing them to prepare the charges that they needed to blow their way into the tunnel in record time. The light also made it easier for the rangers already on the ground to finish their deployment around the perimeter and assist in the landing of the next wave. Not killing the lights, Ilvanich thought, negated the sacrifice that the two guards at the tunnel had made.

    Standing upright for the first time since landing, Ilvanich looked around and watched the American rangers. A little sloppy, he thought, but so far there were no problems that the Americans were not prepared to deal with. With nothing to do and no need to advise anyone, Ilvanich began to follow the ranger company XO. The ranger company commander, Captain Smithy, had more than made clear during the planning and preparation for the raid, that he had no use for