by David Poyer
“Or as close as we can come, someplace like this.”
“Right, I don’t—I don’t think we can be too fucking selective. But the ADA looked good.”
“They were weak sisters,” Pride said. “Talk, talk, talk.”
“So did the tribal elders,” Dan said. “So does Congress, for that matter.”
They looked over as if he was too junior to speak, but didn’t object. He mustered his thoughts. “Both the elders and the ADA are gone. At least, radically weakened. We can kill all the insurgents we want, hold any phase line forever, if we get political support. That’s not what’s at issue. We have to have somebody to hand over to.” He gave it a beat. “Who’s it going to be?”
Dalton was staring at his name tape. “Blair’s husband?”
“Yes sir.”
“I play golf with Childrey.”
Her father. Dan shook his hand, managing not to say anything stupid, such as “Who won.” Dalton’s hand was wet and tremulous. Well, it hadn’t been a good three days for anyone.
Ahearn got up. “Lenson’s right. It’s not a military question. Mr. Ambassador, I’ve got to kick that up to you and Higher, up both our chains of command. Till it gets to somebody who can make a decision and make it stick.”
“Are you recommending it?” Dalton asked, sweat running down his face into his shirt.
“Pulling out? No sir, Mr. Ambassador. Not yet.”
“Fair enough. Long as we don’t have to do helicopters at the last minute, like—well, you know.”
A corporal cleared his throat from a console. Dan rolled back, the wheels of his brand-new chair whispering. “Viper Convoy’s coming up on the village,” the operator murmured. “And we’ve got hostiles.”
Pride leaned. “Sounds like you got a job to be doing, Commander,” he muttered. “If you can spare the time from hobnobbin’ with the State Department, that is.”
THE beam reached into smoke, into whirling dust. All that was left of the door, atomized by the two-ounce charge. A body writhed on the floor, clothes shredded by splinters and the grenades he and Kaulukukui had hurled in. The floor was dirt, hard under their boots.
Past thought into conditioned reflex, Obie Oberg crouched, sights sweeping a deadly arc. A human form filled them and he tapped off two rounds, high chest, the kick of the carbine not even taking the muzzle off the target. The man went down and he swept left, still moving forward. Never stop in the kill zone. The SEALs’ guttural shouts clashed with the keens of the Ashaarans. He caught another figure, triggered again, missed. Assad’s boys were pulling back into a shadowy warren beneath the house they’d so confidently dropped down into. Fucking intel never got it right.
“Tunnel back there someplace,” he grunted.
“Tunnel?”
“Gotta be why they’re pulling back. Some back-alley way out.”
“Shooter, left,” Kaulukukui grunted. Teddy swung to glimpse a retreating back, occluded by a low wall. He tried for a head shot, missed again. He switched to burst and hosed the dark. Sparks exploded, red and fading, but he couldn’t swear he’d hit anything. He crouched, sucking dusty air as he reloaded.
The clatter of something heavier than a Kalashnikov. An RPD or an RPK, something that could let off burst after burst without overheating. What was a light machine gun doing down here?
“Door! Left!” his partner shouted. Without thought he swung and fired again, through it, till the bolt gave a hollow-sounding pock as it locked open on the empty magazine. His right hand had the fresh mag ready. He dropped and swapped, considered for a fraction of a second—grenade? Only one left.
They had to go through that door, but he didn’t want to. Trading glances with Sumo, across it, he saw the Hawaiian felt the same. That was the advantage of training together, fighting together, so long. They didn’t need to speak. Just the flick of an eye, the lift of an eyebrow. The angle at which a muscled arm tilted a smoking barrel.
He squinted and winked. Kaulukukui nodded. Together, they went through.
He was in the doorway when the machine gun chattered again, close, half hidden in a recess his retinas registered for a millisecond in the crucifixed flare of its muzzle flashes. He was down and rolling, head over heels, then up again and slamming off the wall on the far side. Pushing his weapon light left to right now, registering scattered pistol fire in a space much larger than expected. The ground floor must push out into one of the attached buildings. It smelled dank, cellarish. A face, fire, a chest, fire, the glint of a rifle turning his way, fire fire. Faster than conscious thought, like a Wimbledon player moving in for the kill. Kaulukukui’s huge bulk beside him in the balletic dance they’d perfected over so many missions.
Another doorway, and their last grenades. Kaulukukui swept left to right, Teddy right to left. Then he stopped, chest heaving, air sawing in and out through a throat dry as hot iron. Looking around. Not understanding.
The room was empty. But bullets were still slamming down around them. “What the fuck?” he howled. A burst cracked into the ground, spewing up dirt and stones.
He spun, looking up.
They were above, on a balcony or catwalk. All he could see was shifting shapes, then muzzle flashes in the dim. Down here, no cover. Nowhere to go. No way out except back through the doorway, where the machine gunner waited, between them and the other team.
They’d suckered the SEALs in, and pinned them in the kill zone. At least four shooters, pushing muzzles over the catwalk and firing down without exposing themselves. Not aiming, but sooner or later one of those bullets would hit. He snap-shot back, but with nothing to aim at. Beside him Kaulukukui was hugging the left wall, returning fire too, but the shooters had a clear shot down at him. Bullets ripped across rock walls, spewing chips. Hot brass spun through the air. Dirt flew, and something hard spattered his goggles.
“Obie! Y’in there?” Bitch Dog, yelling past the machine gunner.
“They got us stone, babe,” Oberg shouted back. “Set us up righteous. Some fucking assistance here.”
“Can’t get to you, man. Guy’s got us cold.”
He groped for a grenade, the only way he could think of to take the shooters out, then remembered: not even a flash-bang.
A shooter stuck his Kalash over the railing and emptied it wildly, spraying in their general direction like a garden hose. A bullet clipped his boot, another his harness. He couldn’t believe they hadn’t been hit yet, but it was only a matter of seconds. “Shit,” he muttered, backing toward a corner as he kept the sight on the balcony, waiting for the next weasel to pop up. “You bastards. Pop the fuck up, fuckers.” But they didn’t expose themselves, just kept sticking rifles up and spraying the room. Sooner or later—
Head lowered, he was slamming in another mag when something flew down from the darkness. It struck the ground and took a lopsided bounce. A small green spheroid. His peripheral vision identified it as a grenade at the same moment it struck the wall beside him and glanced off.
It rolled between them, spinning, and rocked to a halt midway between them. The drill was to duck or roll, but there was nowhere to duck or roll to. Kick it away. But there was nowhere to kick it. This whole end of the room was empty. A turkey shoot, with two SEALs as the prize gobblers.
His eyes met Kaulukukui’s across the four feet of space between them.
The big Hawaiian said, “War’s a motherfucker, ain’t it?”
Before Teddy could react he stepped over it and crouched, putting himself between Teddy and the grenade.
“No! Sumo!”
The shattering crack of high explosive interrupted him. Kaulukukui shuddered. He half turned, a smile still curving his lips.
Then he toppled, exposing the raw bleeding mass into which the fragments had chewed his back.
Teddy couldn’t grasp it for a long second. “SEAL down,” he croaked, reflex again, because he was still staring. Then he sucked a breath, kneeling beside his friend, pumping burst after burst blindly up at the gallery. “SEAL d
own!”
A sudden tremendous bang shook the walls, filled the air with flying debris, and he dropped next to his swim buddy. The gallery separated from the wall and pitched downward, throwing screaming men to the hard-packed floor.
The smell told him it was C4. Giving up on getting past the machine gunner, the other team had set its remaining explosive against the wall closest to him and blasted it down.
He got to his feet, drew his pistol and shot both insurgents, double taps to the chest and a head shot, then charged up the ramp that the now-collapsed gallery made to the upper floor. Arkin and Kowacki bulled through the doorway below. He twisted as he ran, screaming down into their upward-aimed muzzles. Then twisted forward and fired to take down a man aiming from the opposite gallery. Behind him came boot thunder as the other SEALs buffaloed after him up the makeshift ramp, which shuddered and swayed beneath them.
Another door, which he simply crashed through, pistol extended at eye level, and took each target as it presented itself.
Suddenly it was over. No tunnel. Only a final bunker where those left living had taken cover. Metal thudded and jingled on a scarred wooden floor. Those not already dead were on their knees, hands raised. Panting, Oberg put his sights on one forehead, then another. He could kill them all. Article 556 them, like the major said. But then there’d be no one for intel to interrogate.
Fuck intel. They’d killed Sumo.
No. Professionals. They were professionals.
“Where’s Assad? Assad?” he shouted so hard phlegm flew and they closed their eyes. “Wayn fareek? Fareek? Wayn Abdullahi Assad?”
With a shaking hand, a kneeling man pointed. Kowacki, still covering them, bent to put a hand on a uniformed body. Felt the neck. Then, making sure he was on the far side, in case anything explosive lay underneath, levered it over.
The face was that of the man in the photo.
General Assad was off the board.
The killing fever ebbed. Teddy sucked thick gas freighted with smoke and the stench of blood and voided bowels and earth. That putrid stink seemed to underlie everything in this fucking stinking country filled with stinking, treacherous skinnies. He raised the pistol again, then cleared his throat and spat. “Sumo took a grenade. Stepped in front of it. So it wouldn’t get us both.”
“Go take care of him, Obie. We’ll zip ’em.”
He ran back to the killing room. Swung his way down the collapsed gallery, the beams creaking and groaning, to where the Hawaiian had dragged himself against the wall. He unslung Kaulukukui’s weapon and put it on the dirt. Then knelt.
His swim buddy was still twitching, but his eyes were rolled back and the twitches felt wrong, as if something were trying to get out from beneath those big soft muscles. Teddy searched frantically. He stripped off his harness and e-bag and belt. Kaulukukui shuddered, breath fast and shallow. Teddy got Sumo’s body armor off and felt the wet under it. Unbuttoned his blouse and pulled it out.
Wet and sticky, right where the armor ended. This was bad. Kidneys, liver, maybe spine. He’d turned his left side to the grenade.
Behind him came shouts and blows as Bitch Dog and Whacker pushed their captives down onto the dirt. “How’s he look?” Arkin said. “Gonna make it, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“That was Assad, all right. What about these guys? We really need ’em for intel?”
They’d suckered them in. Trapped them. And killed Kaulukukui. “I don’t need ’em,” he said thickly. “You want to fuck ’em up, okay by me.”
He was shaking even as some obscure corner of his mind fabricated a justification. They couldn’t get Sumo up to the roof and guard prisoners too. And they had to get him up there, now.
When the firing stopped he keyed the handheld. “Mountain Air, Rogue Hammer. SEAL down. SEAL down. Medevac, roof of Building A. Over.”
“This is Mountain Air. Get him to the roof. Bushido Six One inbound for casevac.”
They hoisted Sumo to their shoulders, three on one. His buddy’s head lolled onto Obie’s chest. His open mouth snagged on his spare knife, rigged to his harness. Teddy gently unhooked it. His shooting gloves were slippery with blood, Kaulukukui’s or the Ashaaran’s, it was all over the room where the high-velocity bullets had blown it.
Through the door. Left turn, everyone suddenly energized again after the agonizing intensity of the fight.
The man they gripped heaved, seemed to ripple. His arm flung out. His eyes blasted open. He muttered something in a fluid language too fast to understand.
Then he died. Teddy knew; he’d seen it enough. Smelled it, too. Still they pressed on, up the stairwell, hustling, until they emerged into dust-whipped air and strobing lights, the flutter-thump of blades and the reek of exhaust. Tears slicked his face. “You fucker,” he kept saying. “You rat bastard. You fat-ass Hawaiian asshole, you fucking prick.”
“We got him, Teddy. Nobody left behind. We got him.”
“Take it frosty, Obie. Corpsman’ll fix him up.”
He bowed his head, trying to breathe around something in the way. A howl like an animal would make being crushed welled from his gut and almost made it out before it died behind clenched teeth.
A guy swung out of the helicopter. “We got him. Slide him in. Anybody else? Prisoners?”
“Nobody else. Don’t take him—Yeah. Take him, the stupid motherfucker.” He stepped back and lifted his gloves, realizing only then they were empty, somehow he’d done the unimaginable, left his primary weapon on the dirt floor, by the bodies. “Fucking asshole,” he said, punching the flaccid shoulder as the crewman rolled the body into the helo. “Fucking asshole. Fucking asshole.” Hands gripped him, pulling him back. The strobes made him blind. He stared up into them as the shrieking filled his ears.
DAN still had an operational Pioneer at five thousand feet. The DSs patched it through to the central screen as Ahearn boosted himself into the commander’s chair. The picture jumped like an amateur horror film, but showed the ridgelines pinching into a defile a mile ahead of the convoy.
The very place he’d picked as the most likely ambush site.
Juggling windows at his terminal, Dan estimated the point Humvee of Viper was less than a mile from the pinch-in. He put the headphones on in the middle of a transmission from the drone pilot in the control van and his next-level supervisor. “. . . to fourteen.”
“Sure they’re not sheep?”
“Gettin’ so I can tell sheep from goats, and these ain’t hoofies. Unless sheep carry things.”
The image trembled and zoomed, monochrome in chlorine and charcoal, but now he saw them: pale blobs, undulating across the desert. Shapeless and fuzzy-edged, Michelin Man rotund in the poorly focusable infrared. One bent for a moment, put down something long that glowed less brightly. Its arms worked around its head. Then it bent again and, like a white cell engulfing a bacterium under a microscope, sucked up the long rod into the central blob. The frame pulled back. He counted ten, twelve, fourteen, maybe more, undulating in clots toward the overlook. Some blobs smaller than others, moving differently, though he’d have been hard put to say how.
He took deep breaths, fighting a bad feeling. Not wanting to be here, in the seat he was occupying.
The corporal was still talking to the UAV. “Still seeing movement . . . catch the four guys on the left. Back and forth, then they go down prone.”
“Aiming?”
“Don’t know. Doin’ something weird.”
Dan was rechecking the coordinates reading out at the edge of the Pioneer download against a paper UTM chart of central Ashaara. The numbers matched, but his unease deepened. He knew where it came from. Years before, he’d had to defy an incompetent commodore to save a column of marines inside Syria.
Was Commodore Isaac Sundstrom’s indecision, the wavering Dan had rejected with a young man’s contempt as incompetent dithering, now infecting him?
The murmuring grew louder. Dan toggled to audio, hopped channels. Thirty-eight mil
es to the north, in Fenteni, the quick reaction force was hitting resistance at Assad’s western headquarters. The J-3’s voice: “This is Desert Darkness, Desert Darkness. Is Arrowhead Two One on station?”
“Two one, copy, on station.”
Dickinson asked for an ordnance-remaining report and got back seven hundred rounds of twenty-millimeter and all eight Hellfires aboard the Cobra. As the J-3 acknowledged, Dan switched channels to the AC-130H Spectre, orbiting far overhead.
Ahearn got up and came to the watch officer’s terminal. Dan felt the two fingers on his shoulder, like being seized by vise grips. “Can we divert the gunship yet?”
Dan wasn’t sure whether he meant the Cobra or the C-130. Both were called “gunships” in different contexts, by different services. He said carefully, “We’ve got a problem on the ground in Fenteni, sir. But the Cobras have IR capability too. And so far it’s localized to one building.”
“You’re saying, put Jockey over the convoy? Commander?”
“Jockey” was the Spectre’s call sign. “Yessir. My recommendation. But I have to check with the aircraft. Their fuel state’s close to bingo, I know that.”
Ahearn muttered, “Fuck.” Then added, “Do it. If you can.”
Dan spent the next minutes relaying that order to the Air Force special tactics sergeant controlling the AC-130H. The okay came back, but it sounded reluctant. “We only got twenty more minutes on station,” the sergeant told him. “It’s a long flight back to Mombasa.”
“Right, the general understands. Can they vector?”
“Vectoring now. Time on top, time three seven.”
When he got back to his seat Ahearn and the J-3 were back to the UAV imagery. “Can we get lower?” Ahearn called, elbows on knees, intent on the screen.
Dan made out the convoy. The lead vehicle’s hood was a glowing glob, with a tenuous, ever-shifting ghost from the exhaust. Rocks coruscated, pinpoints of solar energy retained from the bake-oven day.