Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  “Like our bloody Dr. Khan,” added Maryam.

  “Yeah,” Gorman said. “And—”

  Larson walked in the room.

  “Colonel?”

  “Yeah, Chief?”

  “You’re not going to believe this shit.”

  They followed Larson out of the lab and into the tunnel. An electric cable ran along the ceiling, feeding small bulbs every hundred feet or so, casting a grayish glow on a shaft that angled up slowly for nearly a mile and a half into chest-high vegetation, leading to a westward clearing.

  Hagen stood in the middle of it, staring at a spectacular moon casting a silvery hue across the mountain range while smoking one of his Russian cigarettes.

  Gorman inspected his handheld GPS. “Colonel, this is one hell of a shortcut. On the surface we’re almost eight miles from the compound, if we were to follow the mountain to the other side.”

  “Well, Mr. Gorman, this is precisely why we can’t seem to win this damn war. The enemy fights us in three dimensions while we waste our time dropping bombs on the surface.”

  Maryam stepped away from the group and walked to the west end of the clearing.

  Stark motioned Martin to follow her and then tapped the mike of his MBITR. “Six Six Zulu, Sierra Echo One. SitRep.”

  “Six Six Zulu in compound. Three niner insurgents down,” replied Wright. “We also have the place surrounded. No one’s coming in or out without us knowing.”

  “Roger, Six Six Zulu. Our target escaped through a tunnel into west side of mountain. What’s the radius of the infantry division on outer perimeter?”

  “Ah … at the moment, around five miles. We have nine hundred men enclosing that area.”

  Stark turned to Gorman and Larson while Hagen continued smoking. “See what I mean? They’re trained to think like—”

  “Hey, mates!” Maryam screamed from the side, and Martin waved them over.

  They gathered around the Pakistani operative and Martin, who remained on their knees, inspecting a collection of footsteps and broken branches that led to a goat trail winding up this side of the mountain.

  “Looks like Miss Pakistan here is as good a tracker as me,” Martin said.

  “Keep dreaming, shorty,” she replied, before looking up over her shoulder. “Fancy a night hike, chaps?”

  71

  Close Encounters

  WEST OF COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Zahra had heard the commotion in the distance, echoing across the range, a fierce battle just east of her position, a mix of AK-47s and various American weapons. Crawling to the edge of a rocky overlook, she had seen the firefight raging around three miles away. And if the GPS was remotely accurate, it had taken place awfully close to her primary target, an old Soviet bunker where Akhtar, Pasha’s brother, had his supposedly secret headquarters.

  So much for that plan.

  Fortunately, her alternate target had been in the opposite direction, and after a five-hour hike, including sneaking past a detachment of American marines trying to cordon the area, she was finally approaching it.

  Less than a mile away—if she could trust her GPS.

  But she now heard another noise, beyond the bend in the trail as it hugged the edge of the gorge before it widened into a rocky clearing.

  The dozen men sitting by a wall of boulders were noisy—at least by her standards. They ate fruit and bread and smoked cigarettes while one of them stood guard. Their beards and loose clothes told her they were local, but that didn’t mean they were necessarily friendly. And besides, they were not in the right location.

  She inspected the group again, noticing the man standing guard in front of the group, dressed all in black and armed with what she recognized as a Russian SVD Dragunov sniper rifle with a large scope mounted on top.

  Sniper, she thought, trying to make out their faces, to see if she could recognize Pasha among them, but it was too dark and she didn’t want to risk getting any closer to take a better look.

  Zahra checked her GPS once more before moving away, shifting like a shadow from tree to tree while working her way around the bend in the mountainside. Moonlight cast faint shadows across her path, perspiration forming on her forehead and over her lips even as temperatures dropped into the forties.

  Wiping the sweat off with a sleeve, the Kurdish warrior paused to scan the woods with the scope on the suppressed UZI, all senses operating as one—the picture ahead, the clicking of insects, the aroma of pines, and the feel of the soft terrain through her boots. Any discrepancy in any of them would disrupt the natural rhythm and trigger an alarm in her operative mind, which would further elicit trained responses.

  Clear, she thought, moving again, her degree of caution increasing as she realized that the trail at the edge of the mountain continued to circle the red dot on her wrist GPS, set to nighttime mode, which she had further dimmed and also covered with a sleeve.

  She finally stood on a narrow outcrop surrounded by stone pines under a sky that would have seemed majestic with its blanket of bright stars and distant snowcapped peaks glistening in the moonlight. But it was all lost on Zahra as she tried to make sense of the GPS coordinates while recalling what Mani had said about not placing complete trust in maps in this part of the world.

  The gadget marked her alternate rendezvous in the middle of the gorge separating her from the clearing where she had spotted those locals thirty minutes ago. If she were to believe the map completely, it meant that the secondary location would be at the bottom of the gorge.

  She used the scope to look down into the abyss, which bottomed out in what looked like a riverbed and appeared completely deserted—which didn’t make any sense as a rendezvous. The base of that canyon had to be at least a day’s trek down switchbacks and goat trails.

  She lifted her sights and trained them across the narrow void, where she could still make out the locals a quarter mile away, just as she had left them, hugging one side of the rocky bluff.

  Was that my team?

  To be certain, she gradually covered the entire perimeter of tree line skirting her clearing, almost a thousand feet of it, while remaining thirty feet from the edge, her motion fluid and inaudible, like a phantom. Her eyes probed deeper, in small arcs of ten to fifteen degrees. She let her sight adjust to each tunnel-like picture, searching for any abnormalities that could indicate a hidden warrior.

  Finally deciding she was alone, she turned on her transceiver, tuning it to the predetermined frequency while looking at the locals through her scope.

  She said in Pashto, “Courier in position at alternate.”

  But she just got static through her earpiece in return and noticed no abrupt movement from the men.

  Double-checking the frequency, she tried again, with the same result.

  You are early, she thought, checking her watch, realizing that dawn was still two hours away. Plus, one of the risks of using these radios in the mountains was that ridges played havoc with the gadget’s range—not to mention that the wrong people could also intercept her transmission, even if it was encrypted.

  She spent another ten minutes searching for the best vantage point to wait it out, finally opting for a wide branch a dozen feet off the ground on a pine protruding over the precipice. Although it was a bit unnerving, since she could stare straight down a couple thousand feet into the dry ravine, it provided her with a perfect view of the clearing from all angles. And the thick foliage did wonders to break up her slim form.

  To maximize her stealth edge, she decided to switch to the suppressed Ruger. Its subsonic rounds and lack of a muzzle flash would make it impossible for anyone approaching the clearing to locate her—

  “We’re here, Zahra. Signal when you arrive.”

  She blinked at the mention of her name, and also at the comment.

  Seriously? Signal when I arrive?

  Frowning, she said, “I’m in position, Pasha. Where the hell are you?”

  “Akhtar sent me here to
get you and the components safe passage to our new headquarters up the mountains. Our old headquarters is under attack. We’ve been waiting for your arrival for a few hours.”

  “Well, you’re not off to a good start. I’m exactly where I need to be and there’s no one here.”

  “What are your coordinates?”

  Zahra frowned at the realization that this could be a trick. Someone—perhaps American intelligence—could have intercepted Pasha, forcing him at gunpoint to draw her into a trap.

  “Actually,” she said. “You tell me where you are.”

  After another static pause, Pasha provided his GPS coordinates, which matched hers—down in the middle of the damn gorge.

  “Wave your arms,” she said, while looking through the scope.

  A moment later the man in black with the SVD rifle behind his back waved his right arm.

  So that was he?

  “Hold your position,” she said. “I’m coming to you now.”

  * * *

  Pasha ordered his men into defensive positions while he scanned the clearing across the narrow canyon with his binoculars, but he could not see any movement. Then he panned about the surrounding ridges, and again, all seemed quiet.

  Yet Zahra obviously had eyes on him, which he found disconcerting.

  Growing frustrated, he checked his surroundings again, this time slowly, remembering his training, limiting his movements to ten-degree arcs at a time. But after a few minutes, he still came up empty, nothing but rocks, trees, canyons, and bluffs.

  Yet Zahra was out there, stealthily moving toward him—and she was a damn woman!

  He frowned. The Muslim in him had had a hard time wrapping his head around that ever since Akhtar had conveyed the instructions to rendezvous with her, whom he remembered clearly from those meetings between Prince Mani and bin Laden. But he had accepted his brother’s orders, just as he had agreed to collaborate with her while working the security for those secret meetings, even if it conflicted with Sharia law.

  Putting away the binoculars and switching to the Dragunov, he used the Leupold scope to scan the clearing across the gorge, the only place where she could have been. Everywhere else, like the ridges above them, was hours away by foot.

  Too far.

  But even with the night scope, he still came up empty-handed. For the life of him, he could not locate—

  “Pasha, you have company,” she said on the radio.

  “What in Allah’s name are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I just spotted a force of men closing in on your position. They are trying to encircle you. Get out of there. Now!”

  Before he could reply, the crack of a gunshot thundered across the outcrop and one of his men fell, clutching his chest. More reports followed, a mix of AK-47s and other small arms fire he did not recognize.

  Ambush!

  He heard the thumping sound of an unseen grenade launcher before three shells landed on the far side of the clearing in bright explosions, engulfing two of his men. Realizing they were surrounded, with the canyon to their backs, Pasha rushed to the opposite end from the blasts, locating a collection of boulders that offered a sniper’s perch from where he could attempt to flank the incoming team.

  As his men put up a defense, he scrambled up the rocks with the Dragunov in hand, cursing himself for having given away his coordinates over the radio.

  72

  Tackle

  WEST OF COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Clutching the Colt 1911 in both hands, Vaccaro followed Aaron and Nasser as the group surrounded the Taliban on that outcrop, cutting off their escape before opening fire with their mixed weaponry.

  The Shinwari warriors had the advantage, with the dark forest to their back, while the enemy had the moonlit clearing gleaming behind theirs, making it relatively easier to discern them.

  Five hours ago she had argued against coming here, especially after hearing the unmistakable sound of an M2 Browning, along with dozens of UMP45 submachine guns and M4A1 carbines, the preferred weapons of the United States Marines.

  “The firefight is that way,” she had said, pointing to the east.

  “But you heard what we just heard,” Aaron had replied, the Taliban radio in his hand, flanked by Nasseer and Hassan.

  Vaccaro had stared at the Shinwari soldiers, hating to accept the brutal reality that they were right, that the real fight was to the west. They had to prevent the female courier—someone named Zahra—from delivering components to Pasha, the insurgent Aaron had been tracking since Islamabad. There was already too much action on that compound for any of them to make a difference.

  So she had come along, running alongside Aaron, the mystery man assisting these determined warriors joined behind a common and noble cause.

  They had approached the clearing carefully, waiting for Zahra, the courier, to arrive before engaging the Taliban contingent. But somehow she had spotted them and had warned the men in the clearing, forcing Aaron and Nasseer to launch the attack.

  “Over there!” Aaron screamed, pointing at two figures trying to escape the ambush.

  Vaccaro spotted them, loose clothing swirling as they tried to escape Nasseer’s noose. She tracked the closest one, letting his silhouette come to her, squeezing the trigger as the rebel’s center of mass aligned with the Colt’s sights.

  The flash splashed the forest with orange light and the report thundered in her eardrums as the .45 jacketed hollow-point round tore into the insurgent, who dropped out of sight.

  Vaccaro went after the second target, who was scurrying to hide in the darker woods. Once more, she waited, biding her time, letting the rebel enter her sights. She fired twice, the first round splintering wood, the second catching him on the shoulder. The impact spun him around and he crashed face-first into a tree.

  She considered following up but chose instead to stay with the group, rejoining Aaron and the others as they moved steadily against the trapped rebels.

  And that’s when she saw the shadow off to her far left, shifting from tree to tree. But unlike the two rebels she had just shot, this one raced in the opposite direction, toward the clearing. And also unlike the two rebels, every time she tried to bring it into her sights, the figure, much smaller and nimbler, would vanish, as if swallowed by the mountain, but not before she was able to discern the profile of a petite woman.

  The courier?

  “It’s … the courier,” she hissed, before shouting, “Aaron!” over the rattle of AK-47s and the detonating grenades. But he was too far away to hear her through the racket.

  Dammit!

  She ran up to him as he huddled shoulder to shoulder next to two of Nasseer’s men, their weapons trained on four insurgents on the right side of the ridge. “Aaron! I think I just spotted the—”

  Both men next to Aaron dropped to the ground as silent rounds smacked their temples, but he never noticed it, keeping his focus on the clearing, firing his UZI while standing next to a stone pine.

  Vaccaro reacted, tackling Aaron from the side. It took effort on her part, considering his formidable bulk, but she had a running start, using her momentum to take him down, landing on top of him just as bark shattered where his head had been.

  “What the hell?” he mumbled, hands on her shoulders as he lay on his back under her, his face inches away in the darkness as splintered wood rained on them.

  Vaccaro felt his breath on her as she pointed at the two dead Shinwaris. “Not what but who,” she said. “I just spotted Zahra. She came in from over there, and very fast!”

  She rolled off him and rose to a deep crouch, trying to reacquire. Aaron joined her, UZI at the ready, as she aimed her Colt at the woods.

  But the courier, like a ghost, was long gone.

  73

  Rescue

  WEST OF COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Zahra fired the suppressed Ruger while moving, killing another man, punching a hole in the leftmost edge o
f their offensive line as they closed in on Pasha and his team, who had their backs to the gorge. But she was surprised so see that the assault was being carried out by another group of locals, not by any of the U.S. Marine platoons she had seen a couple of hours ago while making her way to the alternate rendezvous.

  Perhaps a warring tribe?

  In a crouch, she sneaked through the break she had created, using the thundering battle to hide her presence, hustling between trees, shrubs, and boulders, concerned primarily with her right flank, where the battle raged.

  Muzzle flashes dominated the clearing now, their stroboscopic light peppering the attacking forces closing in for the final kill as the ensnared men started to panic. Apparently recognizing the futility of their situation, some of them abandoned their cover and made a run for it while firing wildly, until well-placed shots smacked their chests, their faces.

  Where are you, Pasha?

  Maneuvering along the far side of the ridge, she leaped across waist-high brush, taking aim at one of the attacking fighters rushing to this side of the clearing, weapon aimed at a spot just ahead and above her. And that’s when she noticed the man in dark clothes hiding behind the rocks, trying to bring his large Dragunov sniper rifle around.

  Wrong weapon, Pasha, she thought, lining up the incoming threat and smacking a .22 subsonic slug into the middle of the man’s forehead. He crash-landed headfirst, tumbling in one direction while his AK-47 skittered in the opposite.

  * * *

  It happened very fast. In one instant Pasha witnessed the onslaught of mixed-caliber volleys decimating his team, and in the next he saw one of them swinging an AK-47 muzzle in his direction. He was about to hoist his sniper rifle around when the man fell from a round to the face.

  Pasha stared at him, puzzled, wondering who had just saved—

  “Pasha!”

  He turned to see the woman huddled by the tree line, calling out his name, a suppressed pistol clutched in both hands. He recognized her features in the pulsating glow of the gunfight as the last of his men made a final stand.