Chương 106: Irene (10/03/1993 | 03:32 PM EAT)

DATE: Sunday, October 3, 1993 LOCATION: Super 6-4 (Black Hawk Helicopter) | Over the Bakara Market LOCAL TIME: 03: 32 PM EAT"IRENE! IRENE! IRENE!" The code word crackled over the radio, sharp and cold. The Black Hawk banked hard, gravity pulling at my chest as the city of Mogadishu sprawled below us—a dizzying maze of blinding white structures, corrugated tin roofs, and dusty streets. I sat in the open doorway, my legs dangling into the empty air, the hot wind whipping my face.

Below, columns of thick, black smoke were already rising from burning tires. The militia was mobilizing.

"One minute out!" the Crew Chief screamed over the roar of the rotors. I locked my eyes on the target building. The overlapping heights, the tight angles, the vertical density—it was a flawless, one-to-one replica of the Gotham Narrows set back on Stage 4 in Burbank. Every alleyway, every structural choke point I had spent six years navigating as Robin hadn't been a piece of Hollywood fantasy at all. It was a physical blueprint.

You had built my rehearsal space years ago, prepping my body for the exact gravity of the war I was dropping into right now.

"ROPES GONE!" The thick, heavy fast ropes kicked out into the void.

"GO! GO! GO!" I grabbed the line, but I didn't slide down with the rigid, heavy posture of a standard Ranger. I let my body relax into the fall, trusting the physics Jackie Chan had beaten into my bones throughout my childhood and adolescent years. Don't fight the gravity; manage the momentum. The custom Nomex flight gloves with the polymer grip I'd stitched from the Fractal labs bit into the hemp.

I slid with terrifying speed, letting the friction heat up but never locking my grip, letting the rope slide smoothly across my palms.

"Blackburn is down!" someone screamed over the net. My heart stopped. No.

"Say again?"

"Blackburn! He missed the rope! He fell!" I looked fifty yards to my left through the swirling dust. The pilot had violently banked to dodge an RPG, and the sudden, erratic whip of the helicopter had bucked the eighteen-year-old off the line before he could adjust. History was fighting back, clawing its way back toward the original tragedy.

I hit the dirt, but instead of taking the brutal, jarring impact on my knees, I executed a flawless, kinetic break-fall—tucking my shoulder, rolling smoothly across the sharp gravel, and absorbing the energy through the lightweight boron-carbide plates on my chest. I came up onto one knee, weapon already raised, completely fluid.

"Secure the perimeter!" I shouted, taking charge of the chalk.

"Get a litter! Move!" The air erupted. Pop. Pop. Rat-tat-tat. The Bakara Market was waking up, a hornet's nest of gunfire. Two blocks down, a Toyota Hilux technical swung around the corner, a heavy DShK machine gun mounted in the bed. In the old timeline, that gun was meant to rip Sergeant Pilla apart in the alley. I didn't wait to find cover.

I sprinted toward a crumbling concrete barrier, planted my left hand on the edge, and executed a clean, low-profile vault—a movement I'd performed a hundred times over prop cars in the Narrows. It kept my silhouette completely below the technical's line of sight. As my boots touched the ground, I brought the M4 up in one continuous motion. The Aimpoint red dot hovered over the truck's windshield. Range: 200 meters. Crack. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The driver's head snapped back. The technical swerved violently, its tires screeching as it plowed full-force into a brick wall, crumpling the front end before the gunner could clear his weapon.

"Nice shot, Tillman!" Struecker yelled, firing a suppression burst down the lane.

"Move the convoy!" I screamed, the spatial layout of the Narrows firing in my head.

"Get Blackburn loaded! We have to move!" We threw the injured kid into the back of the Humvee. Now came the critical fracture point. The overhead Orion surveillance plane was feeding Danny McKnight conflicting intel, telling the main column to wait. If they sat still, the militia would close the outer rings. I sprinted through a hail of stray rounds, weaving and changing levels—using a classic Chan-style zig-zag rhythm that made it impossible for the street snipers to track my center of mass.

I reached McKnight's lead Humvee, grabbing the doorframe.

"Sir!" I yelled over the din.

"We can't wait for the prisoners! You have to run the casualty back right now! Split the column!" McKnight's eyes narrowed through his dust-covered goggles.

"I need all gun trucks to hold the perimeter!"

"You need speed, sir! If we sit here, they block the exits!" I pointed down the western corridor—the exact path that corresponded to the safe exit vector on the soundstage.

"Send Struecker's three Humvees back now! Before the tires burn!" McKnight looked at the bleeding kid in the back, then looked at me. The urgency in my voice wasn't just panic; it was absolute, structural certainty.

"Struecker!" McKnight roared into his radio.

"Take the casualty! Get back to base! Go!" Struecker's column peeled away from the main group, heavy tires throwing up dust as they executed a hard left onto Marehan Road. The left turn. The clean turn. They bypassed the primary ambush alley. Pilla was still firing his weapon. The first major casualty of the day had just been erased from the script. But the sky above us wasn't done rewriting itself. A sudden, sharp whoosh cut through the air.

A rocket-propelled grenade streaked from a nearby rooftop, striking the tail rotor of Super 6-1. Cliff Wolcott's bird. The massive Black Hawk spun in a sickening, chaotic circle, its turbine screaming as it lost tail authority. It plummeted, crashing heavily into the dense maze of the market blocks away. The plaza went deathly quiet for a single heartbeat, the metallic echo of the crash vibrating through the ground. Then, the entire city erupted in gunfire.

"We got a Black Hawk down," the radio buzzed, filled with static and sudden dread.

"Six-One is down." I looked at the squad around me. They were pinned behind the vehicles, their faces pale under their helmets, looking at the wall of fire spreading down the main street. Eversmann was cut off from me by a heavy line of militia advancement. A second RPG slammed into a wall right above my position, the concussive blast throwing me backward into a narrow, trash-choked side alley. When the dust cleared, the main street was gone, blocked by a collapsed awning and a curtain of lead.

I was completely isolated. I looked up at the rusted rebar and the low, flat mud-brick roofs rising above the alley. The layout was identical. The heights were the same.

"Go vertical," I whispered to myself, a grim smile cutting through the grit on my face. I slung the M4 across my back, took three rapid steps up the side of a crumbling brick wall to gain height—a classic parkour wall-run—and grabbed the edge of a corrugated tin roof. I hauled myself up, using the rolling momentum to stay low as a sniper's bullet snapped through the air right where my legs had been a half-second before. The street belonged to the militia. But the Skyway belonged to me.

From the high ground, the nightmare was visible in panorama. To the north, smoke billowed from Wolcott's crash site. That was the Alamo. The Rangers were converging there. But then, I looked south. Another RPG trail. A streak of gray smoke. It slammed into Super 6-4. Mike Durant's bird. My stomach dropped. I watched the helicopter auto-rotate, crashing into a cluster of huts a mile away.

"Not today," I growled. I started running. I didn't take the streets. I took the "Skyway." I sprinted across the flat roof, vaulted a three-foot gap, and kept moving. A sniper on a water tower took a shot at me. Zip. I didn't stop. I slid behind a ventilation box, popped up, and put two rounds into his chest. I reached the edge of the block. Below me, in a courtyard, a Toyota Hilux was idling. It was a "Technical." Mounted in the bed was a Browning M2. 50 caliber machine gun. I dropped.

I landed on the gunner, driving my knee into his spine. I threw the bodies out. I reached into my dump pouch and pulled out the 550 paracord. I cranked the T&E mechanism on the gun, locking the heavy barrel facing dead forward. I tied the cord to the butterfly trigger, running the line swiftly through the roll bar and down into the driver's seat with the practiced precision of a stunt rigger setting a blind pull-line. I shoved the ammunition cassette in. I cranked the volume knob on the dashboard until it stopped.

I turned the key. The heavy, palm-muted riff of Enter Sandman began to growl from the blown-out speakers—a low, menacing, rhythmic pulse that seemed to vibrate the very air of the marketplace. It wasn't just noise; it was an ominous, industrial lullaby for the militia. I floored it.