He watched her through his night vision. After a moment, he rested a hand on her shoulder. “I hope you get him.”
She nodded. “I will.”
“When the ambush is finished, move to my position. We’ll go up the ridge together. The team on the ground will bring your rifle, shell casings, and remaining ammo.” Stryker sat down beside her. “We can relax for several more hours, and then I’ll go to my position.”
They sat in silence as the night wore on. A dazzling spread of stars appeared overhead. After an hour, Stryker thought he heard a helicopter but wasn’t sure. He thought the last Hatchet team had been deployed.
At 3:00 a.m., Stryker and Rachel received reports from the Israeli and Hatchet teams. All of the teams were now in place and prepared for the ambush. At 4:00 a.m., Stryker said he needed to leave and gave Rachel a quick embrace. For a moment, he thought she was not going to return it. She hugged him tightly then and whispered, “Be safe.”
“I will. Aim true.”
He left Rachel and headed toward his position. He reached a small rock outcropping and buried his shooting mat under the rock. He laid out his ammo and magazines, which he loaded just like Rachel’s. He set out his binoculars, his laser range finder, and shooting glasses. Next he got out his ear protection, which had a built-in communications function he would switch over when he started firing. He brushed away dirt and sand in front of the muzzle of the rifle to keep from giving a signature as to his location. He waited outside of his position, stretching and going over the plan in his mind.
When it was almost dawn, he entered the cramped shooting space. He might be there until mid-afternoon. Herb would call Fedorov sometime after noon to confirm the pickup time for the Iranians. Now all that remained was what snipers did best—hide and wait.
Chapter 39
South of Herat, Afghanistan
July 2011
At 2:35 p.m. local time, Daniel called Stryker on his secure satellite phone. He reported the Iranians were on the way and advised about the type of vehicles they were driving, along with descriptions to ensure the teams attacked the right vehicles. Masoud and Ali had been spotted at the airport and had been met by men in two SUVs. Both Iranians rode in the second vehicle. The Mossad agents had followed them for several miles but dropped off the surveillance as the SUVs pulled onto the Kandahar Highway, worried they would be noticed.
Stryker relayed the information to the teams and advised them to get ready. Herb had already called and spoken with Fedorov, who had been instructed to call Herb when the Iranians arrived in the village.
Stryker kept his binoculars fixed on the farthest visible section of road. Because of the twists and turns of the road, the Russians were already nearing the ambush point before Stryker was able to see them. The two SUVs appeared, matching the descriptions Daniel had given.
“All teams, prepare to engage. Vehicles are inbound, quarter mile.”
Then a third vehicle appeared behind the SUVs—a light armored truck with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in the back and a gunner actively scanning the hillsides.
“We have trouble,” Stryker said. “There is a third vehicle, armored, with a fifty cal.
Rachel, you’ll have to fire on car number one, repeat, car number one, then on to car two. I’ll try to take out that gun. Abel, jam the transmissions. It’s now or never.”
“Copy. Jamming now.”
He ranged his scope as the vehicles approached and drove directly onto the ambush site. In moments they would be past. The gunner in the truck was protected by an armored shield that extended up and around the gun, with only his head and shoulders visible and forming a moving target as the truck bounced down the road. Stryker needed the truck to stop, which meant Rachel needed to take her shot. He was estimating wind and distance and about to fire anyway when Rachel’s Barrett boomed on the hillside below him, and the hood blew off the first SUV as the explosive round tore through the engine. The car stopped dead in the road.
The second car, instead of stopping behind it, pulled around the first and accelerated fast. The truck followed as it swerved and raced forward. Rachel fired again, but the shot missed the hood of the second car, exploding the side mirror and shattering the driver’s window. The fifty caliber machine gun opened up, firing full auto on Rachel’s position. She retreated behind the boulder as a hail of bullets knocked chunks out of it.
The second SUV and the truck surged forward and would be out of the ambush site in seconds. Stryker swung the rifle around to aim at the hood of the departing SUV, but there was no time to compute distance or angle. He aimed and fired. The round blew up the engine, and the SUV lurched to a stop as the truck slammed into it from behind. The machine gunner continued to blast at the boulder as men poured out of both SUVs and ran for cover by the road. Stryker targeted the gunner, held his breath, and put an explosive round through the man’s head.
Rachel, hearing the machine gun silenced, crawled back around the boulder and began firing on the men that had left the SUVs. The Hatchet teams moved to engage, and gunfire erupted on both sides of the road. Through his scope, Stryker saw Rachel virtually vaporize one man, then another. He saw a man who looked Iranian bolt from the back of the second SUV, running for a small ridge where some of the Russians had taken cover. It looked like Ali. Stryker started to fire, but he had promised Rachel the shot.
Her Barrett roared, and the man was blown off his feet. He landed on the ground near the ridge, pouring blood, and one of the Russians grabbed his arm and dragged him behind cover.
Something didn’t seem quite right to Stryker, but Ali was already out of sight.
Herb Miller and the Hatchet teams were cutting through the Russians’ defenses and steadily moving up on their positions. The driver of the truck jumped out and climbed into the back to man the big gun, but his hands had scarcely touched it before Stryker blew him apart. He scanned the road and saw Sara and the Israeli team leader making their way to the convoy; the team leader lay down covering fire as they closed in on the second SUV. They must believe that Akbari was still inside.
Stryker sighted again, prepared to help Herb flush out the remaining Russians. Abruptly, three more trucks tore around a bend in the road from the direction of the village. As they neared the stopped SUVs, at least twenty Taliban fighters poured out of the trucks, and the sounds of gunfire multiplied tenfold as they began to fire their AK-47s at the converging Hatchet teams.
Impossible, Stryker thought. There was no way they had been spotted before Abel jammed the transmissions, and these reinforcements would have been hard pressed to make it here this quickly even if they had. Stryker saw three of the Hatchet soldiers drop under this new wave of gunfire, but Herb reacted quickly. He shouted orders and regrouped his men as they fell back and found cover behind the stopped SUVs and nearby rocks and ridges.
Stryker sighted down the scope and began to fire on the advancing Taliban. With every shot, another fighter went down. Below him, Rachel’s rifle began firing more rapidly as she swung from target to target. Men swarmed over the road, bullets flew everywhere, soldiers were blown off their feet in sprays of red. It was a bloodbath.
How had this happened? Fedorov had the motivation to set up this kind of ambush, but why not do it in the village? Ali had shown himself a cunning planner, but he would not put himself at this kind of risk, and now he was dying behind a road-side ridge. Then Stryker realized what had seemed off to him when he saw Rachel fire on Ali before. The man had been running from the SUV for cover. Running, without any limp.
It was not Ali. It was a body double.
Suddenly all of this made sense. Ali would let the Russians and the Americans kill each other, taking care of two problems at once, and should anyone survive, they would report that Ali Shirazi had been killed and he could resume operations at will.
Stryker grabbed his binoculars and began glassing the surrounding hillsides. There, on the hill some two hundred meters away, a man climbed a path to the top. He w
as limping.
Stryker snatched up his rifle, but as soon as he found Ali in his crosshairs, the man dropped over the crest of the hill and out of sight. He would surely have a vehicle waiting on the other side to take him down a back road to the village.
Stryker cursed. Ali had been watching this unfold more than one hundred meters from their position, which meant he had been out of range of Abel’s jamming equipment and could have called in the attack at any point. They had to get communications back. Down the hill, he could see Abel crouched behind a cluster of rocks, staying back from the fight as planned as he fired from concealment. He would wait to restore communications until after they secured the phones and radios from the SUVs, which had not yet happened. Stryker had to get his attention. Stryker switched to standard rounds. As Abel leaned out and fired at one of the Taliban, Stryker put a bullet into the ground two inches from his boot. Abel looked up and around, alarmed. Stryker fired again, placing this one three feet behind him. Abel turned and saw Stryker, who pointed at his ear and then gave Abel a thumbs up.
Abel nodded and crouched back behind the rocks, operating something inside the bag of equipment he had brought. A moment later, Stryker heard a crackle in his earpiece as their communications were once again live.
“Sparks,” he called immediately, “I need exfil in three minutes. I have to get to the village.”
“What the hell is happening over there?”
“Just get here. I need you to pick me up from my sniping position.” Stryker fired again, and another Taliban fighter dropped. He had not taken the time to switch back to explosive rounds, so he concentrated on placing headshots.
“I can’t land on a hillside,” Sparks said.
“So don’t land. Remember Iraq?”
“I remember it didn’t work.”
“Well, get closer this time.” Stryker checked on Rachel and saw she was still finding targets. “I’ll see you in three.”
Below, Sara and the Israeli team leader were trying to work their way to the second SUV, but every time they emerged from cover, several Taliban fired on them and forced them back.
“Sara,” Stryker called. “You need to get Akbari. Rachel and I are going to cover you. Get ready to move on my mark.”
He looked down at Rachel, who put her thumb and forefinger together for “OK.” She aimed downrange to where the Taliban were clustered, and Stryker did too.
“Mark,” Stryker said. Sara and the team leader burst from cover, firing their AKs. As before, four Taliban stepped out to fire on them, but this time two of them were shot dead before they could raise their rifles—Stryker’s target from a headshot, Rachel’s literally blown apart.
The other two, terrified, searched for the shooters, and the snipers fired again to take out the remaining pair.
Sara and the team leader reached the SUV, and he covered her as she pulled open the back door and dragged a man out. Akbari had cowered in the back of the car through the whole battle. The team leader fired on two Russians advancing on them, and Stryker and Rachel took out two more Taliban. Sara hauled Akbari back to a point behind Herb Miller’s line of Hatchet forces, and from there she would be able to get him to one of the extraction points.
“Herb,” Stryker said, “I need to leave in pursuit of a high value target. Do you have this under control?”
“It’ll be nailed down soon, and then I’ll clean up. Do what you need to do.”
“Rachel, cover the Hatchet teams and then get out of there. Herb’s men will grab our rifles and shell casings. I’ll see you back at the base.”
“Jake! What are you doing?”
He could see her looking up at him, and she shook her head. Don’t go.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He heard the sound of the rotors getting closer, and he pushed himself up off the ground and started to run. “My ride’s here.”
When he left his cover, the remaining Russians and Taliban below started to fire on him.
He ran across the hillside toward a small outcropping. The helicopter plummeted down the hillside directly over him, scarcely ten feet off the ground, the downdraft from the rotors nearly knocking him flat. Three minutes, right on schedule. He ran to the edge of the outcropping and leaped into the air.
The helicopter barreled down as he started to fall, and he reached for the closest landing skid as it passed. One of his arms hooked over it, and it felt like the arm would be jerked from its socket, but he held on as the helicopter pulled up and away from the hillside. They gained altitude fast as the attackers below fired up at them. Bullets whined past Stryker, and three of them blew holes in the side of the helicopter. He would hear about that later.
The ambush site dropped away as the helicopter soared up and angled toward the village. Below, Herb’s Hatchet teams spread out to flank the remaining Russians and Taliban. Rachel continued to fire, obliterating anyone who left cover.
The wind pulled at Stryker, and he wrapped another arm around the skid to keep from falling. He gripped his wrist with his other hand. Sand and grit filled his mouth and nose, and his eyes watered.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re crazy?” Sparks said through his earpiece.
“You,” Stryker shouted over the wind. “And if you could stop shaking the helicopter, I’d appreciate it.”
“You want to fly first class, buddy, you gotta climb inside.”
Ahead, the village came into view, a loose cluster of simple buildings surrounding a town square and bordered by a muddy brown ribbon of river. Somewhere in that village, Ali would be confronting Fedorov soon, likely planning to kill him and then disappear to plan more terror attacks. He had to be stopped. Stryker had been forced to leave the heavy Barrett, and he had not brought an AK-47, which meant he only had his pistol and knife. There was no knowing how many Taliban forces remained in the village or how much security Fedorov had kept with him.
“Jake.” It was Rachel, almost out of range. “Don’t forget our plan.”
Despite everything, he smiled. “I haven’t.”
He passed out of communication range, and his earpiece buzzed and went silent.
The village grew closer. Stryker began to wonder where Sparks would choose to set down, when ahead a figure stepped from behind one of the first buildings and raised something up to his shoulder. The man fired, and the RPG soared up toward them, trailing a plume of smoke.
Chapter 40
South of Herat, Afghanistan
July 2011
Sparks banked the helicopter hard to the right, and Stryker nearly fell off the skid as he swung sideways with the sharp turn. The rocket-propelled grenade flew straight by them, nearly blasting into Stryker where he hung. It was a near miss and passed harmlessly by, and below them the man set about reloading the launcher. Instead of continuing to bank away, Sparks altered course and took them directly toward the man. The helicopter had no offensive capability, so Stryker knew what Sparks wanted him to do.
He cursed under his breath and let go of the skid with one arm. With his right hand, he unholstered his Makarov and aimed. It was a nearly impossible shot—dangling from the skid with one arm, the helicopter careening toward the building’s wall where the man hurriedly fit in the rocket and raised it to his shoulder again.
Stryker fired three times. The man dropped the RPG and staggered back against the wall. Sparks pulled up until the helicopter went nearly vertical, and Stryker was forced to tuck his legs up under him to keep them from clipping the roof.
In the street below, men poured out of buildings into the main square. Some were curious local villagers, but many were Taliban if the guns in their hands were any sign—most held assault rifles, a few gripped RPG launchers. To Stryker’s astonishment, Sparks slowed as they passed over the roof, despite all the guns pointed in their direction. He realized again what Sparks wanted from him, as easily as if their comms still worked, and he could almost hear Sparks shouting at him from the cockpit to drop.
He let go.
The
helicopter had slowed but was still moving forward, and he tucked and rolled as he struck the roof. He managed to keep a grip on his Makarov. In the square below, weapons fire opened up on the helicopter, and Sparks moved into an evasive climb. Two more RPGs soared up, and Sparks twisted the helicopter through a tight figure eight to dodge them. He passed back over the roof at high speed.
For just a moment, they saw each other through the bullet-cracked glass, and Stryker held up his left hand with all four fingers extended and his thumb over his palm. Then he lowered one finger. Plan B, extraction point 3. One thing they had learned was to always have contingencies for their contingencies. Sparks nodded, and the helicopter arced away, bullets pinging off its skids. Nose down, it flew back toward the ambush site and was soon out of range.
This left Stryker the sole remaining target. Crouched down, he was not visible from the street, but they knew he was here. Ducked low, he ran toward the back of the roof. He slipped over the edge and lowered himself down until he dangled by his fingers. It was a two-story structure, but he had survived far worse falls than this. He dropped and rolled again. His knees ached when he stood, but nothing seemed to be broken.
Stryker broke into a painful jog, slowing just enough to peer around the edges of buildings before he crossed the open space between them. He worked his way around the back and gained distance from his last known location. He did not have the time or firepower to engage a village full of Taliban. He was here for Ali.
As he traveled along the edge of the village, backed up directly to the river, several of the buildings had only a few feet of riverbank between them and the water. It moved more quickly than he would have expected. After about fifty yards, he slipped into a narrow alleyway and then crawled through an open window. A woman wrapped in a berka was seated in a chair and rocking a small child. Stryker held his finger to his lips, and she nodded. He put the gun back into its holster.
From that house, he was able to slip out a side window and climb over a railing directly into another house. He heard shouts inside this one, and the front door opened, so he ducked quickly out the back. When he looked down the row of buildings, he saw Taliban at the far end, searching for him. A ladder leaned against the rear of this house, and he scaled it rapidly.
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