by Jason Kasper
No words were spoken then—Worthy assumed his position as point man and moved into the trees to our right, turning to parallel the trail on its path forward. Cancer fell into the left flank position and I took the right, with Reilly trailing to my right rear as the last man.
We moved through the forest in a four-man fire team wedge, the most fundamental building block of infantry operations. Gone was the notion of any Agency status as elite contractors; we were going through motions taught in every military basic training around the world, our advanced weapons and equipment offset by injuries, our depleted ammo supply, and our complete and total lack of any semblance of a plan.
Worthy turned back to me abruptly, pointing to the side of his head and then shaking it to indicate his comms were down.
I transmitted in a whisper, “Radio check.”
No response, and a quick scan of my teammates mirroring Worthy’s hand signal told me that our radios had shit the bed along with everything else.
Then Worthy gave another signal, extending an arm to his front.
I made out what he was pointing to, but just barely—the slightest hints of glowing light that originated from further down the trail, casting a dim, shifting green glow through the trees.
With the extreme amplification under night vision, the real source was probably no more than a flashlight or two, their proximity difficult to determine through the woods. Still, we had no way of knowing who or what we were seeing—they could be enemy or civilians, riverside Fourth of July spectators or terrorists.
There was no time to troubleshoot communications—I waved a hand forward, telling him to continue our patrol. We were going old-school, a Vietnam-style foot patrol with the aid of night vision and not much else. At the same time, I was cognizant that my team was following me into hell—literally or metaphorically, take your pick—and I felt a deep surging gratitude, regardless of what was about to occur. I was a foster kid, an orphan with some distant memories of my father; but these three men were friends and brothers, along with Ian, though I cringed to credit him at present. He was putting us in a difficult position by notifying Duchess, but his heart was in the right place, and when I asked myself if I’d do anything different in his situation, my mind was silent.
Worthy continued slipping through the forest, leading the way until he abruptly took a knee and extended an arm to our left.
Scanning the trail beyond the trees, I saw what he was pointing to: a cluster of five men on the trail, facing the direction we’d approached from.
They were loosely arrayed, though I could tell from their posture that they were all likely armed. I could easily determine from context that this was an enemy observation post, meant to buy time in the event anyone followed the trail to their location.
Looking forward, I saw Worthy staring at me for guidance. He wanted to know whether to reorient our small formation to assault the men.
I gave an exaggerated shake of my head, knowing that at this distance Worthy probably couldn’t make out much more than my night vision device swinging from side to side. Sure, we could assault the observation post, but to what end? Whatever we sought was down the trail, an unknown target marked by the flashlights, and we no longer had the manpower to take on all comers.
Worthy obeyed, rising and continuing to advance amidst the chanting crickets and croaking treefrogs that covered the sounds of our movement.
As we advanced, I half wondered if Bari Khan was simply displacing the rockets far enough from the seafood processing plant to launch them into Fredericksburg proper. That course of action seemed too subtle, however, too low-profile for him.
But if that was his plan, all the better: it meant he was waiting in the trees ahead.
In that sense our team was an asset to Duchess whether she accepted it or not. She’d tasked us with killing Bari Khan, and we were about to. Sure, it was on the wrong continent and in violation of every classified national charter governing our existence even when we were a team, much less while operating as criminal fugitives. But a mission was a mission, and no matter the ultimate outcome, we were about to complete ours.
The question of whether we’d stop the attack before it was too late to do so, of course, remained up for debate.
We’d have our answer soon enough, I thought as we closed with the source of light through the trees. And amid the shifting glow, I was gradually able to discern the box-like shadow of what could only be Bari Khan’s delivery truck, parked at the end of the trail with its headlights off. The dark forms of men swarmed around it, probably moving the rockets into the launch assembly.
Then I discovered something far more concerning: the phosphorescent green hues of my night vision were too clear, revealing too much night sky to represent anything so hopeful as a rocket cache site or even a launch platform installed in a clearing.
Instead I was looking toward the river itself; they weren’t offloading the rockets onto land, they were offloading them onto the water. In that regard, I intuitively knew what I was looking at before I could visually confirm the structure.
A low, black swath of shadow too symmetrical to be of nature’s doing resided past the truck, and there was no possible explanation besides the one my mind was screaming in that moment: Ian had been right. But where the intelligence operative was expecting a semi-trailer, Bari Khan had used a boat—and it was about to sail up the Potomac as a floating artillery barge, its 633 rockets poised to fire on Washington, DC.
I charged forward to Worthy, waving one hand in an overhead circle to signal Cancer and Reilly to consolidate. Our mission was over—I no longer cared about incarceration or even death. Depending on the boat’s speed, they were twenty minutes or less from firing upon our nation’s capital, and regardless of what happened in the next sliver of time, we had to notify every possible responder, from Duchess on down, of what was about to occur.
I’d gladly offer my wrists to handcuffs, happily surrender my freedom along with my team’s whether they were compliant or not, to stop that ship from proceeding north up the Potomac River. Because if we were all killed in some heinous crossfire, what good would our lives have served? What purpose was there behind the collective agonies we’d suffered around the world first as mercenaries, then as CIA contractors?
But there was another reason, too, this one more selfish than the rest.
My wife and daughter were sitting on the National Mall at this very second, and if I lost them, then nothing else that the world had to offer would ever keep me from self-destruction in the ensuing anguish. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, this was no longer about the survival of untold civilians—it was about my family, plain and simple, and every one of the myriad factors external to that faded to irrelevance in that second.
I slapped Worthy on the shoulder, kneeling beside him as Cancer and Reilly rushed to our side in a huddle.
Whispering just loud enough for them to hear me above the night creatures, I said, “Rockets are headed up the Potomac for DC. I’m sending up the SOS.”
“Do it,” Cancer agreed, and without the benefit of functional radios, I withdrew my cell phone to contact Ian.
But in addition to numerous missed calls and texts from Laila, the screen showed no signal.
There was no way we were far enough removed from civilization to justify this discrepancy. Instead, I knew in a fleeting second that our radios hadn’t malfunctioned after all.
I whispered, “No signal. The boat must be running a cellular and FM jammer to prevent civilians from reporting anything suspicious.”
Reilly replied, “Want me to evade back to the road, try to get a signal and call the cops?”
An outside observer could have regarded this inquiry as an act of cowardice, though I knew it to be the exact opposite: any of us would have been loath to abandon our team, to opt out of the proceedings, however catastrophic.
But Reilly was the most injured among us, useful for little beyond operating a pistol with his one good hand, and he�
�d volunteered to assist from the worst possible position out of a heartfelt commitment to stop the attack at all costs. If we were all killed, he’d spend the rest of his waking hours contemplating his survival; in that regard, death was a small price to pay.
I shook my head.
“We haven’t had comms since we left the car. They’ve got land-based units jamming radio and cell communication—that’s what I’d do if I were BK. So let’s use that to our advantage.”
Worthy replied, “How are we supposed to do that?”
“Whoever’s on that boat is reliant on audible gunshots to sound the alarm. We kill them off silently until we’re compromised, then hold our own until the cops arrive. At this point they’ve got to be a few minutes behind us at most.”
Rather than issue a verbal response, Cancer held up his fist to the center of our circle, and the rest of us tapped it with our knuckles as he whispered, “Fast and loose.”
Reilly advanced with his pistol gripped tightly in his right hand, painfully aware that if he fired a shot, his team would be done before they began their interdiction attempt.
So he reserved the handgun for a last-resort engagement of someone threatening the life of one of his teammates. It was unlikely they’d need any help from him anyway—with his left arm slung to his side, he couldn’t effectively operate a rifle and was relegated to the role of rear security at best and last-resort shooter at worst.
Which was just as well, he supposed, because the ball bearings in his left arm were fucking killing him.
Each step brought with it a new wave of pain, the metal spheres jostling for position among muscle mass that was surely infected. Even if he had painkillers to gobble, he needed his full wits for the effort ahead, whatever that might entail. Nothing was more detrimental to a team than a wounded medic, and Reilly’s only consolation was that the suicide bomber hadn’t advanced a few more paces into the room before detonating himself. If that were the case, David and Worthy would be alone.
He caught his first clear sight of the boat a moment later—it was a large river cruise vessel, with three levels of interior decks bordered by tall observation windows. But the real prize would be on the rooftop lounge, where the launch assembly had probably been soldered into place over the course of the previous week.
For Bari Khan, it was a smart play: the three-level boat would place the launch assembly out of view from any other vessels, and the elevation would give the rockets the maximum possible range.
The delivery truck was parked at the edge of a makeshift dock, two men positioned off the side, apparently waiting for the boat to depart.
As Reilly trailed his team toward the delivery truck, it looked like he wouldn’t need to shoot. Worthy advanced toward the trail, David and Cancer falling on-line at either side until he halted movement.
The three men began firing almost simultaneously, a whispered chorus of suppressed gunshots that dropped the two men in a hail of subsonic rounds.
Exalted at the silent kills, Reilly felt his hope give way to fear as a sound rose through the trees around him—the boat’s engines spooling to full power, sending the massive craft lurching slowly upstream.
Holstering his pistol, Reilly broke into a run in an attempt to catch up with his team, who were now emerging onto the trail and turning down a short wooden dock as the ship gradually slid away.
Reilly saw a single man appear on the middle deck, leaning over the rail as Worthy stopped in place, taking aim as the luminescent streak of his infrared laser intersected with the man’s head.
There was no way to hear the suppressed shot over the sound of the boat engine; instead, the man’s body tilted forward, over the rail, becoming a black shadow in freefall until it impacted the water’s surface amid the churning wake.
Cancer and David were sprinting down the dock then, leaping aboard the rail of the moving ship and hauling themselves over the side. Worthy was only a second behind them, clambering aboard as Reilly realized with muted horror that he’d be too late; if anything, he’d be lucky to place a single good hand on the final second of railing before the boat cleared the dock.
He ran forward anyway, struggling through the pain of his lacerated arm shifting in its sling. Charging the final steps toward the edge of the dock, Reilly leapt with his lone functioning arm outstretched.
His leap ended when he collided with the ship’s side, hand slipping from the top railing rung and catching hold of the one below. Reilly held tight with all the force he could muster, feet struggling for purchase on the slick hull.
But he was too heavy, his grasp too tenuous to hold on; he was bracing himself to plunge into the water when he felt hands across his back, saw the dark forms of David and Cancer bracing against the rail as they struggled to hold him in place.
Worthy arrived a moment later, deftly straddling the rail and grabbing the back of Reilly’s tactical belt to hoist him upward.
Together, the three men struggled to lift Reilly’s immense weight as he did what he could to walk his feet up the ship’s sidewall toward them. He felt himself shifting upward, hands scrambling across his body as his torso cleared the top rail, and finally he swung over it in a pendulum before slamming onto the deck with an explosion of pain in his left arm that immobilized his entire body as he fought not to scream.
Reilly panted for breath, rolling to his back and looking up at his teammates.
But they were gone.
Clambering to his feet, Reilly saw the three men moving away from him, advancing toward the nearest doorway with their weapons raised.
Drawing his pistol, Reilly made a move to follow them but registered a new sound over the groaning engines and rippling water—police sirens screaming down the trail, far too late as the boat surged upstream, churning a frothy wake across the Potomac.
63
I followed Cancer through the first door, clearing a foothold for our team on the interior deck.
The room was a long corridor with life vests mounted on the walls from floor to ceiling. But it was otherwise empty, and that much proved to be a small mercy—after our desperate scramble to board the ship, we needed to get out of sight and determine our plan of action. Worthy had already shot one man off the second deck, and it was a matter of time before his absence was noted, if it hadn’t been already.
As soon as Worthy and Reilly entered the room behind us, Cancer directed them to pull security and then approached me for a quick huddle.
He whispered, “You thinking we sabotage the boat?”
I shook my head. “We don’t have any munitions big enough to put a dent in the hull or the engines. And we could take over the control room, but BK would just fire the rockets as soon as the boat stopped moving. Right now, the only thing in our favor is the element of surprise—we need to get topside, take down the launch assembly.”
Pulling out my phone to check for reception, I saw that it still had no signal—and then, for the first time, I looked at my last missed text from Laila.
Cancer asked, “You think he’s gunning for the White House?”
“Not the White House,” I said, feeling my neck flush with heat. “The National Mall.”
I showed him my phone screen.
One million Americans celebrating freedom. Wish you were here. I love you, babe.
The picture was what I wanted him to see—a selfie of Laila and Langley, both smiling.
But it was the “one million Americans” comment that the picture conveyed more than anything else: spectators were packed nearly shoulder-to-shoulder around them, the silhouette of a child sitting atop his dad’s shoulders standing out in relief against the Lincoln Memorial in the background.
Cancer nodded, sounding almost reverent. “Shit, this guy is good—with 633 rockets he’ll be able to turn the National Mall into a kill box from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol Building, and destroy everything in between. Vietnam and World War II memorials, Washington Monument…”
“And the people,” I r
eplied, putting my phone away.
“Yeah,” he said, “and the people. What about DC’s air defenses?”
“That’s why BK is doing it now. Any low-altitude countermeasures will be disabled for the duration of the fireworks display.”
Cancer muttered two words.
“Well...shit.”
Then, before I could speak, he addressed Worthy and Reilly, both pulling security on their respective doors.
“Party’s on the roof, fellas. Racegun, take us to the stairs.”
Worthy began moving at once, following the arrow beneath a sign labeled STAIRWAY TO DECK 2. I took up the second-man position behind him, with Cancer and Reilly following at a jog.
In that moment I didn’t care about the million bystanders on the National Mall, or the immeasurable heritage of the priceless monuments about to be destroyed on what was the national sacred ground of my country.
Every ounce of my concern, my rage, my anguish, was centered around protecting two people: Laila and Langley, my wife and daughter stranded in a crossfire that had yet to commence. I didn’t care about my life or anyone else’s, would have done anything and killed anyone to protect those two people from harm. Bari Khan suddenly didn’t seem any more savage than I felt in that moment; only our root cause differed.
Entering the stairwell behind Worthy, I followed him to the central deck.
Worthy emerged onto the middle deck interior, cutting left near a long dining hall packed with tables and chairs, a set of four long buffet tables sitting empty. It was a ghostly sight, the lights of buildings on both shores sliding past through twin observation windows. This ship was moving fast, and as he cleared forward with his team behind him, Worthy considered that was both a good and bad thing.