by Peter Telep
Suddenly, sans any fanfare or even a word from Pepper, he drew himself out from beneath the stone, then finally cried, ‘Clear!’
Ross took a slight step forward, then glanced at 30K and said, ‘Let her drop.’
The hunk of stone came down with a heavy bass note, shaking the staircase and cracking in half.
Both Ross and 30K remembered their lessons on how to treat trauma victims and went over Pepper with a fine-tooth comb, checking each of his limbs for breaks, exposed bones, anything that might need immediate care. They examined his pupils, making sure they were equal and reactive to light. They looked for fluid coming out of his ears, which would indicate a head injury. They had him flex his arms and legs several times. His helmet had saved him from what could’ve been the very worst of it, but he did have a gash near his elbows, and probably a hundred other bruises that would only reveal themselves in the days to come. He was damned lucky to be alive.
‘All right, big guy,’ Ross began. ‘I know it hurts, but we need to leave. I’ll get your rifle.’
‘Thanks,’ said Pepper, being helped shakily to his feet. ‘I’m banged up, but I can walk. Just don’t ask me to dance.’
‘Let me get down there first,’ said 30K. ‘Need to clear some rocks from that door so we can open it up all the way and get him through.’
‘You saying I’m fat?’ asked Pepper.
30K laughed. ‘I wasn’t the one who ate an entire pizza.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Kozak kept close to the van, his rifle held high, his Cross-Com picking out a host of targets about fifty meters away, down the street. The gunship had just banked hard, coming around for another pass, laying down machine-gun fire that tore pockmarks in the road and struck the parked cars and the troops huddled behind them.
What happened next caused Kozak to blink. Hard.
Three of the rebels ran directly into the road, placing themselves in the gunners’ sights.
At first, Kozak thought it was a suicide mission. Then he realized with a start that the Hind’s pilot had been far too aggressive and had just made a fatal error.
Before the chopper’s gunner could bring his machine gun around, each rebel shouldered an RPG, and nearly in unison all three fired, the rockets whooshing up from the ground as if attached to thin plumes of smoke, the chopper hovering there, too big and too slow to evade this expertly timed attack –
And again, in a moment torn from the screenplay of Kozak’s imagination and brought to life against a pitch-black night rich with stars, three separate explosions resounded from the Hind, those rockets targeting the main and tail rotors, the smoke and roiling flames whipped by the heavy blades, the chopper beginning to list as the engines coughed and whined, and every rebel troop below screamed and turned their rifles skyward, showering the bird with small arms fire, the fuselage suddenly alive with a thousand sparking and ricocheting rounds. This poorly equipped band of warriors hooted and hollered, realizing they had just slain a dragon.
Trailing black smoke, the engines sputtering louder in their death throes, the chopper rolled to port on an erratic angle, then came around –
Plummeting straight toward Kozak.
He blinked again. Really? Right toward me?
With a stab of panic, he shot a look back, where 30K and Ross were helping Pepper hobble toward the van.
Off to the left came Naseem, running and waving his hands, screaming something, his voice completely muffled by the gunship.
‘Oh my God,’ 30K muttered as the light from the exploding chopper played over his face and the heat from the engines came at them like a million barbecues. He glanced at Ross and screamed, ‘Let’s get the –’
But he cut himself off, because the captain was already dragging Pepper toward the wall on their left – the nearest cover.
For his part, Kozak had already left the van and was sprinting toward the same rally point, his face contorted in an expression 30K had never seen before.
Naseem wasn’t as lucky. Even though he’d turned around and started running in the opposite direction, the Hind pitched again, colliding with the van, crushing it like a can of Bud Light, then rolling on to its side, the five rotor blades slashing into the ground until they snapped off and boomeranged away, the fuselage continuing to roll several times, coming up behind Naseem – and then, with a twin thunderclap, the 500-liter external fuel tanks exploded.
30K could barely watch.
The colonel was swept into a pair of fireballs that blasted across the cemetery, leaving dense clouds of inky black smoke in their wake. The stench of all that burning fuel and rubber and flesh came with the concussion, and 30K took one breath and gagged.
‘You see that shit?’ cried Kozak, fighting for breath. ‘Naseem’s dead. He’s dead, man. What now?’
‘Time to call Guardian,’ said 30K. ‘See if he wants to send in backup.’
They all looked to Ross, whose eyes were narrowed in thought, his lips set. He’d just learned that their contact was killed, their ride destroyed … but the captain’s expression was implacable.
‘He’s right, boss,’ said Pepper. ‘We ain’t gonna make it to the port. Not through this attack.’
Ross took a long breath and finally opened his mouth. ‘I know the address of the safe house. Kozak, get me the location of one of those APCs, the M113s used by the Army. We’ll commandeer ourselves a little ride.’
Pepper made a face. Kozak was already seeing the impossibility of it all, but 30K began to nod and smile. ‘I like it, sir.’
Ross snorted. ‘I knew you would.’
‘What about Pepper?’ asked Kozak.
‘What about me?’ Pepper snapped. ‘I won’t slow you down. I’m good to go.’
‘You don’t look good to go.’
‘I’m old. That’s my normal look.’
‘All right. Let’s head back behind the mosque. Get the camouflage up.’
As the rebels and government troops began to clash in the cemetery behind them, gunfire and grenades booming with an almost rhythmic pulse, the chopper wreckage still burning, the renewed stench of gunpowder heavy on the wind, 30K kept close to Pepper, and in a couple of minutes they were back at the mosque. They’d found the place empty, the imams and other staff all evacuated once the mortar fire had commenced, but 30K wished they’d run into some civilian who’d take one look at their desperate faces and large-caliber weapons and hand over his keys without protest.
The M113 Armored Personnel Carrier, better known by grunts in the field as simply a ‘track,’ always reminded Kozak of the chariot from the old Lost in Space TV show, whose episodes he’d downloaded on to his iPod and had watched with an almost religious fervor. He was a science fiction fan from the age of seven, with a penchant for 1960s sci-fi films and TV series, a secret hobby that he’d never reveal to his fellow Ghosts, lest they have another reason to talk smack about him.
They’d found the APC parked on Queen Arwa Road near the bank building, one of the six they’d spotted earlier. After a few minutes of close-in reconnoitering to confirm that only the commander and .50-caliber gunner had been left on board, Kozak and 30K moved in.
The commander stood in his cupola and chatted quietly with the gunner, standing in his own hatch. They felt the vehicle shift and creak, and as they turned their heads back toward those vibrations, they saw a curtain of water part before their eyes –
And then, at once, they were staring down the barrels of two rifles. 30K aimed at the commander, and Kozak had the muzzle of his rifle just a few inches from the gunner’s nose.
‘Where did you come from?’ gasped the commander.
‘From Pizza Hut,’ 30K said evenly.
‘Ghost Lead,’ Kozak began over the team net. ‘We’ve got two for you.’
That was the signal for Ross. The captain mounted the APC from the front and shot both men with the Taser while they were preoccupied and stunned over the appearance of these aliens dressed like soldiers.
Pepper hustl
ed up from behind and lowered the troop door from behind while 30K and Kozak dragged the stunned men from their hatches and with Ross’s help got them down to the asphalt.
‘Born to be wild,’ grunted Ross as he dropped into the commander’s cupola.
With that, he started the old diesel engine; she roared like a tyrannosaur and sprang forward, tracks clicking over asphalt.
Kozak manned the big gun, checked the ammo, and was already itching to fire.
Ross throttled up, and soon the wind was blasting in Kozak’s face as they sped up the highway, explosions rising to the east and west, the sounds of more helicopters thrumming near the mountains, the lightning flashes of fragmentary grenades crackling from the alleys ahead.
FORTY-EIGHT
It was nearly midnight, and Mitchell called to give Ross another update on the Ocean Cavalier’s ETA, now moved up to 2:41 a.m. local time.
Ross downplayed the exact nature of their situation, which was to say he did not lie but did not volunteer the full truth. He told Mitchell that Naseem had been killed and they were en route to the second safe house and would be there well before the ship’s arrival. There was a rebel attack in progress, but local forces seemed to be getting the upper hand.
Mitchell was pleased, but some suspicion had leaked into his tone. ‘Do you need help?’
‘Negative.’
If Ross requested backup, he would, in his mind, be admitting defeat. At the same time, if he deliberately endangered his men to protect his ego and reputation with the GST, then he was a fool and didn’t deserve the job. He was reminded of a quote from his favorite American president, Theodore Roosevelt, who had once said, ‘Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.’
Incoming fire forced Ross to cut short his update to Mitchell and put Kozak to work on some troops strung out along the highway and several snipers posted on the roof of a hotel. Ross ducked into his hatch as the rounds pinged and popped, and Kozak was going to town on the fifty, trying to silence the bastards, brass arcing over the APC’s roof and tumbling over the sides. Ross couldn’t pry any more speed out of the engine, barely doing 60 kilometers per hour, the steering yoke growing hot in his hands.
He hadn’t forgotten about the roadblock ahead, lying just before the Gate of Aden, a stone bridge that spanned the soaring mountains on either side of the road.
‘Pepper, what do you got?’ Ross asked.
After leaving the mosque, they’d called in both drones, but just before commandeering the M113, Ross had ordered one UAV redeployed. Pepper, who’d sworn he was okay, was now monitoring that drone from the troop compartment, and his report was about as morale-lifting as warm beer and stale pretzels:
‘Well, ladies, we still have four Panhards in the defile, which means we’re staring down the barrels of four ninety-millimeter guns. Looks like three squads on the roadside now, with some RPGs and even a few mortars – although there might as well be a thousand dismounts because those guns will blow the shit out of us before we get within a hundred meters of the checkpoint. They’ll need to call in some archeologists to dig us up and identify our remains.’
‘I say we go in there and kill those bastards with our good looks,’ 30K said. ‘Sorry, Pepper, we don’t need you.’
Pepper chuckled under his breath. ‘Okay, bro, you’re the scout. We’ll send you up there and see what happens.’
‘Glad you guys can joke around,’ snapped Kozak. ‘What the hell are we gonna do?’
‘Relax, gentlemen,’ Ross said. ‘The fact is, Pepper’s right. There’s no way we’ll breach that checkpoint. But we didn’t borrow a tracked vehicle for nothing. There’s a dirt road leading off into the mountains about a klick before the roadblock, just before a curve in the road so they shouldn’t see us when we duck out. We’ll ride this bitch into the mountains as far as we can, then if we have to, we’ll dismount and hike the rest of the way. It’s the best we can do, but I think we might reach the port in time. Are you in?’
‘Hell, yeah, I’m in,’ said Kozak.
‘You Navy guys are all right,’ 30K said.
‘I’m not in the Navy anymore,’ Ross reminded him. ‘I’m a ground pounder, same as you.’
‘Captain, that’s a good plan,’ said Pepper. ‘But we’re gonna burn a lot of fuel once we start climbing.’
‘I know,’ answered Ross. ‘But like I said, we’ll keep her going for as long as we can. So … hang on … it’s time for a little off-roading.’
Ross took a deep breath and squinted at the highway ahead, the flickering streetlights, the section of the city now lying dark and without power, along with that turn he’d noted snaking off to their left, the dirt fanning across the road. He was slowly earning the team’s trust. Now all he had to do was keep them alive.
Kozak was trembling.
As they turned off the highway and broke on to the dirt road, the M113 bouncing hard over some deep cuts in the path, he held up his hand and confirmed the fact.
What was the matter with him? He was better than this. Braver. But he kept hearing something Pepper had told him when they’d first met: ‘If you spend enough time on patrol, you develop a sixth sense. You’re out there just a few minutes, and you already know if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day. You can’t explain it. But you can feel it. People on the West Coast talk about earthquake weather, or how you can smell when a quake is coming. It’s kinda like that.’
Consequently, that powerful sense of foreboding had rested its heavy palms on Kozak’s shoulders, and he knew he had to wrench free from it, like a boxer ripping himself off the ropes.
The one thing Ross had failed to mention was that traveling into the mountains would turn them into a lone heat source against the sheer rock faces, and any gunship pilot looking for a target of opportunity might decide to unload his rocket pods. The Yemeni Army was, to the best of Kozak’s knowledge, not using any Blue Force-like tracking system that would automatically tell that pilot they were friendlies, and even if he assumed the M113 belonged to government forces, he could mistake them for deserters or even make the correct assumption that the vehicle had been, ahem, borrowed. Kozak’s shoulders slumped even more now. He began to shiver through his breath.
‘Pepper, this is Kozak. Are you scanning for aircraft?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, they’ve got four gunships running CAS, spending most of their time taking out some APCs and small armor, but nothing coming this way, not yet anyway.’
‘Cool.’ Kozak glanced over at Ross, who gave him a quick nod, as if to say, We’ll be fine.
They were kicking up one hell of a dust trail, the tracks grinding through the hard dirt and rock, Ross relying upon night vision to navigate around the larger rocks and keep them on the trail. But the farther they got from the road, the more vulnerable they became, Kozak knew, and his paranoia increased exponentially.
‘Still clear?’ he asked Pepper.
‘I’ll sound the alarm if the drone picks up anything, bro.’
‘Okay, stay sharp, man.’
‘What do you think I’m doing back here?’
‘Sorry. I just … I kinda like flying the drone myself.’
‘I noticed. Don’t worry, I won’t miss anything.’
‘Thanks.’
The dirt road veered off to the left, and the grade increased dramatically to perhaps ten or twelve per cent. The engine’s drone deepened for a moment then became much higher pitched as it strained against the slope.
Kozak stole another look at Ross. The captain’s face was hard and unreadable. He’d had a plan and was working that plan like a machine. So this was the way to develop fierce loyalty, to get your men to follow you into hell. You were always thinking two steps ahead of them and kept your emotions in check. Your commitment and courage allowed them to believe in you, t
he mission, and themselves. Kozak still had a lot to learn.
He pricked up his ears. Was that the engine straining again? The tracks crushing more rocks?
Or was that a helicopter approaching?
Down below in the troop compartment, 30K was seated next to Pepper and staring over his shoulder at the UAV’s remote. Pepper’s breath was a little strained, and 30K suspected the man might have cracked a rib or two but wasn’t saying.
‘Hey, Pepper, before when I said you gotta lead the straight and narrow, I wasn’t kidding.’
‘What?’
‘Seriously, you scared the shit out of me back there.’
‘What’re you talking about? I got banged up by some rocks.’
‘Dude, listen to me, you’re the most experienced guy we got. You’re the best shot. We can’t lose you.’
Pepper laughed under his breath. ‘Okay, I’ll try not to die.’
‘Dude, I’m serious.’
‘You’re just overtired.’
‘Look, every time we go out, I say the same thing: if Pepper buys it, I’m screwed.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because like I said, if they can kill our best guy, then I don’t stand a chance.’
‘What about Ross? He’s got more experience than me.’
‘He don’t count.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he just doesn’t.’
Pepper frowned. ‘Uh, you okay?’
‘Look, I want you to stay close. No more risks, all right? I’ll tell the captain we need to pair up from now on.’
‘Where’s this coming from? Maybe that pizza fried your brain. What’s the matter with you?’
30K shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But I can’t shake it. So just do me a favor? You stick with me.’
Pepper sighed, failing to hide his grimace. ‘Jimmy, you’re a good kid, but if I had a daughter, I still wouldn’t let her date you.’
30K was about to smile when the drone’s proximity alarm beeped, and Pepper’s glance riveted on the remote. He lifted his voice into his boom mike: ‘Kozak, you son of a bitch, you jinxed us.’