The Crisis

by David Poyer

  31

  QRFville, Camp Rowley

  TEDDY Oberg swung over the wall and dropped, hard.

  Then bent, catching his breath where the others couldn’t see him. Sweat rained off his face onto his boots. A filleting knife twisted deep in his liver. He took five seconds, then straightened and headed for the next wall. Up and over, huffing and blowing.

  “Wet and sandy,” Whacker grunted, slamming down next to him so hard dust whiffed out of his gear, then wriggling under the wire. “Dig deep, boy. Dig deep.”

  “Whyn’t you go . . . find a goat and dig deep in his fucking ass, Whacker.”

  “Because they all fucking smell like you, Yo-Berg. You feelin’ all right? Sure draggin’ ass today.”

  A hundred twenty in the shade and the team was out in full gear doing an obstacle course the marines had improvised out of a couple of ruined houses and a shitload of busted concrete slabs from something that’d gotten blown up or bulldozed down. Berms, tires, wire, barriers made out of old telephone poles, chest-high walls, the works. Hell in the Desert, the way only the U.S. Marine Corps could brew it.

  It was him and Vic Cooper and Aleks Kowacki and a new guy, Donoghe, pronounced Donahee, fresh out of quals and paratrooper and sniper school. The kid’s first mission. Yep, a real SEAL pup, twenty years old, all “like awesome” and “that’s sick,” who cocked his head when he listened to you, like a smart dog. They’d taken one look at his earnest blue eyes, bulging biceps, and protruding incisors, and named him Chipmunk Cheeks.

  And here he was, right beside him. “You okay, Obie? Obie, dude, doin’ okay?”

  “Get the fuck off my face. Dude.” He scrambled up and lurched for the dangling rope, went up hand over hand for the second floor, cleared the top and worked his way down the stairwell, switching off with Kowacki.

  Sweating was good. Kept him from thinking. From remembering what Kaulukukui had done during the raid on Assad’s compound weeks before. He couldn’t shake his buddy’s last smile. The big round face creased into a dusty, grit-smeared grin.

  Before the grenade cracked.

  Could he have saved him? If he’d thought ahead, not charged them into a trap? No, it was Sumo who’d charged. Who’d saved his ass back on the Iranian sub and a couple other times before that.

  Before he’d saved it for the last time, and paid with his own. He blotted his face with his sleeve. Christ. “Some fucking fluid here, Cheeks,” he croaked, and caught the bottle the kid tossed his way. Hot from the sun, but that was supposed to kill the germs. The concern in the kid’s face put a snarl on his own. “Shut the fuck up, Donoghe,” he said. The fucker was always talking. If he was breathing, he was talking.

  They were out by the north end of the airstrip, near the helipads, where the quick reaction force had set up. Tents, modulars, even a shower. A range, too—they put in an hour there every day. Word was they were getting ready for a hostage rescue. But everything was on hold while the head shed figured out where. Obviously, they couldn’t drill the rescue till they knew the layout, but he and the gunny had hammered out a training schedule heavy on pistolcraft and teamwork through typical Ashaaran compounds and nomad camps.

  Teddy was lukewarm about marines. They were gung ho but they weren’t dedicated hunters, silent lethal killers. They were noisy and gear-heavy and didn’t move fast enough. Training was fine, but you could plan everything in anal detail, and maybe half the mission would go that way. You had to stay light on your feet, react instantly and right.

  It got worse when hostages were involved. The SAS and the Deltas, the IDF and the Russian Alpha Units, trained for it 24/7, with live ammo, and even they didn’t bring everybody home alive. When a bad guy saw he was fucked, his buddies being taken out, it was too easy to flick the selector to auto and hose down a roomful of helpless people. That’s where speed counted, being able to put two in the chest and one in the head without taking time to aim.

  Did he want marines on his six? If they stayed back there unless he yelled for help, sure.

  Did he want Cheeks on his six? He was pretty sure that he did not want.

  They’d had a sit-down with the major in charge of the QRF, Freidebacher. And Lenson, whom Teddy knew from two TAG missions. He’d walked out knowing less than he had going in. Only that Operation King Vulture might start with a helo feint. The insurgents feared helos. They’d learned that during what the marines were calling the Battle of Ashaara City. A helo insert was out; the Waleeli had a makeshift warning net that made it almost impossible to stay covert, but the Hammer Force might chopper in after the direct-action team pinned Al-Maahdi’s party down.

  Teddy had probed for some idea of where they were talking about—mountain, desert, north or south—but Lenson kept that close hold.

  They staggered out of the ruined house and headed for shade. His gut rumbled and stabbed. They’d sent Arkin back with worms. Diagnosis: “Eosinophilia, possible helminth infections.” Teddy had to shit all the time, and often, if he cared to look, it was streaked with bright blood. Now he was trying to keep up with twenty-year-old jarfuckers.

  Grunting, he let himself down to his haunches, propping his back against a wall hot as a pancake griddle. A flimsy plastic bag tumbled by on the hot wind, writhing as if in agony. Teddy watched it gloomily. By definition, you fought in hellholes, but Ashaara took it to a whole new level. The flies, the human shit all over, the wasted stinking animals, the fucking dune coons—he was no racist, but he was getting there. And now, hooyah, fucking worms.

  The SEALs sat in the shade and watched. Till a Marine sergeant came over. A big one, with rock jaw and caveman brows. “Your spec ops pogies sittin’ this dance out, Oberg?”

  Teddy stared at him for a second, then heaved up. “SEAL Team Eight, comin’ through.”

  . . .

  A mile away, in the Special Compartmented Intelligence Facility, a wired and guarded cluster of choos and modules, generators and antenna farms that formed the secret brain of the JTF, Dan put a hand on Monty Henrickson’s spindly shoulder, then took a seat where the little analyst patted.

  For the past week he’d alternated between the JOC and the SCIF, working with Dickinson and the light colonel in charge of the QRF to write the op order for King Vulture. Now they had it signed off. All that remained was to frag, or modify, it when they had the final location.

  Now they might. “Pioneer?” he said, leaning to see.

  The scene was backlit, taken just after dawn. A lander shot of Mars, except not in color. A fissure, a pursed mouth, a crooked vagina across the screen from upper left to lower right. Boulders lay as if tossed by a giant bocce player. Dan peered as Henrickson zoomed in. “Those bomb craters?”

  “Not sure. Too small to be volcanic. Some kind of sinkhole?”

  “Where is this?”

  For answer he toggled to a map of Ashaara, then zoomed, hurtling down in a dizzying drop shot till Dan had to look away. “That’s the Tanagra,” Henrickson said, and Dan looked again. The crosshairs were between the southern mountains and the river, fifty miles west of the Tanagra Delta at R’as Zalurah. Not even the small red dots of hamlets on the map, and the dotted trails that meant dirt roads were missing too.

  “No population?”

  “The OGAs mention bandit hideouts in that area, back when they were fighting the Italian colonial government. A tributary of the Tanagra used to come out of there. Just a wadi now, no water at all. But”—the analyst called up another screen, a graphic with arcs leaping from a shimmering circle of streaming data—“we have intersections from local merchants, cell phone calls, camel trails. There’s a salt mine not far away. At first we thought the trails ran to it. Most do, but not all.” He shifted back to the Pioneer video and rotated it, moved an arrow across the screen with his mouse. “Between these rectangular rocks, winding down into this gap. You can only make it out only at sunrise. Otherwise the light flattens it, reduces the contrast till it disappears.”

  Dan peered as Henrickson went on.
“We couldn’t think of a reason for a trail there. Especially with no water and no salt. But guess what’s on that trail?”

  “What?”

  “Camel droppings. It’s in active use. So we started watching.” Henrickson nodded to two Air Force enlisted who sat listening. “Tysheka and Ronshende’ve put in many, many hours beyond their normal workdays on this. And we’ve had to fight for the overhead assets all that time. Finally Tysheka just happened to be watching when this happened.”

  The same tortured rent in the desert floor. But now, at the east end, a tiny star. Henrickson clicked, zoomed, and in the grainy mosaic of overenlarged pixels, a picture grew.

  “AK’s are notorious for this. The ‘glint,’ it’s called.”

  Dan nodded. Blurred, at maximum magnification, but the figure was clear. A man, legs extended, looking off to his left while the rifle on his lap, picking up the sun overhead, reflected it into the lens. “A sentry.”

  “Right, and whatever he’s guarding’s under these overhangs here, here, and possibly here. You see their shadows at midafternoon. Here’s someone’s leg sticking out. And here, a cookpot. Everything else is under cover, hidden from overhead surveillance. We e-mailed photos to a geologist. It’s called a karst topography. Could be be deep wells, caverns, cenotes. Caves big enough to hold a battalion.”

  Dan clasped his knee, wondering why he was underwhelmed. Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it. It’d be a nightmare to send troops into: a lunatic labyrinth of chaotic stone. Bombing, strafing, would be useless. You could pour troops in, but whoever knew the topography could chew them up and spit them out. “Anything point specifically to Al-Maahdi? These could be like you said, just bandits. Or villagers, holed up till this insurgency gets settled.”

  “CIRCE says it’s him. Probability above seventy percent. Based on the social-contact algorithm.” Monty looked up anxiously; keys rattled. “Here’s the chart. The lines are isoprobabilities; see how they stack up as we get closer to the site. There are other centroids, here in this refugee camp, Camp Number One, another down in the southern mountains. But they seem older. Maybe where he holed up previously. These indications are much more recent.”

  “What’s Dickinson think?”

  “He asked what you thought. That’s when I called your choo.”

  Dan rubbed his head, reluctant, but at last got out his cell. One more guy to run it past before they went to the general. Major Freidebacher answered on the first ring.

  Not too much later, the QRF leader was looking at the same screen, with the same expression Dan figured he’d had. The enlisted had left; Henrickson busied himself with his notebook.

  “No place I want to assault,” Freidebacher said flatly. He was surprisingly small, but with massive arms, a neck like a bull’s, sad dark eyes. “Troop on troop . . . be a meat grinder. The best way to winkle them out would be gas.”

  “Tear gas?”

  “Of course, tear gas, Commander. Blocking force here . . . reserve force here.” A forefinger sketched lines of advance, fields of fire, on the screen. “It’s heavier than air. Sinks into caves and ravines, and they won’t have masks. But it’d take massive concentrations. If there are spaces without good air circulation, some will die.” The marine sniffed. “But the ROE on gas . . . it’s tight. Clearance all the way up. Thinking about it, we don’t stand a chance. Getting approval, I mean.”

  “Well, how else do we do it?” Dan chewed the inside of his mouth, trying to grasp an elusive concept; something about infiltrating the caves from behind or below, moving the hostages out without alerting the mass of the Waleeli. “What about SEALs? They do hostage rescue, right? Can we get them in there in the dark?”

  “SEALs? Those guys aren’t Superman. Far from it. Hotshots. Arrogant cowboys. Need a good dose of military discipline, in my humble grunt opinion.”

  Dan wasn’t sure this was accurate, he’d seen them in action, but it wasn’t the time to argue tactical philosophies. “Then how? We’ll have to go to Ahearn with this, Pete. Tell him we know where the hostages might be. More than that, where Al-Maahdi’s probably holed up. He’s going to want a plan.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t want my guys in there.” Freidebacher made a fist, blowing into it. “I mean, if he says go, we go, but we’ll carry a lot of body bags out. And they’re not all gonna be insurgents.”

  “So what do we tell him?”

  The major rictused a smile. “That, we’d better think about. Long and hard.”

  32

  The Palais de Sécurité

  THE van buffeted in the wind as they slowed, pulled ahead of their escort, and turned in. Aisha felt strange being back after all this time. This had been her first stop in Ashaara, and even in the midnight darkness the spear-pointed fence, the abandoned moat, the outlines of mansard roofs and corner towers, brought creepy memories of meeting Assad in the basement lair of the SDI.

  The red-and-white-striped barrier was history, as were uniformed guards. Instead sandbagged machine-gun bunkers flanked the entrance. In the pulsing glare of generator-driven floods through windblown dust, hard-faced black men in coveralls waved the GMC to a stop. Their driver stared back, locked in some testosterone-fueled facedown. “Olowe’s personal security,” Peyster murmured. “Remember: We’re here to listen. We don’t promise anything. We don’t make offers.”

  She didn’t answer. A guard peered in, then jerked the rear door open and clambered in, shoving her to the middle of the backseat. A sharp object jabbed her ribs: the front sight of his rifle. She gripped her purse, feeling the outline of the SIG. Without a word, he waved them forward.

  THEIR minder pointed them to a back court, an entrance new to her. The hallways were spookier, if possible, than on her first visit. No desks anymore, no chain-smoking clerks with haunted eyes. Whatever had stalked them had come and gone. All that remained was drifted paper, toppled file cabinets, side rooms whose very doors had been stolen off the hinges. Broken glass, smashed plaster, holes where copper had been mined out. The overhead fans were gone too. The intensely close air smelled of dust and mold, slow rot and terror.

  People had a habit of suddenly disappearing, in this country. She’d never found Nuura, either, though she’d asked every Ashaaran she knew. Most just shook their heads, not even daring to speak.

  The baby . . . she couldn’t leave Nuura’s newborn girl there to die. She’d taken her in through the compound gate with her huge carpet-purse riding in the passenger seat, the clasp undone. Fortunately the infant hadn’t made a sound. Tonight she was with one of the cleaning women, in a makeshift crib in the employees’ shed.

  The guard led them up a stairwell, AK at port arms.

  Olowe received them in a partially restored office in a corner tower. Tall windows with bowed antique glass that distorted the lights outside looked down on the forecourt, the fountain, all semiobscured in the wavering veil the wind drew, then pulled back. A desk lamp was tilted up to reflect off the freshly painted ceiling. In the corner a crone with a widow’s hump sang to herself at a desk, tapping slowly at an antique cast-iron Olivetti with a platen a yard long. Aisha did a double take. The transcriptionist who’d spoken Italian to Erculiano. As indestructible and enduring, apparently, as the brick walls.

  The general appeared less imposing tonight, almost ingratiating as he came forward with hands outstretched. But he was still too huge to feel comfortable with indoors. He wore not a uniform but a dark blue civilian suit, buttons straining over his massive chest. His black tie was inexpertly knotted. He enveloped Peyster in a bear hug from which the RSO emerged with sandy hair tousled and shirt spotted with the general’s sweat. To her surprise, he reached for her hand too. Aisha tried both to meet his eyes and to not stare at his face. Was this the man whose troops were evicting whole neighborhoods? Could that pale patch of unpigmented skin have grown?

  Olowe spoke sharply to the guard, who about-faced smartly, British-style, and took up a position in the hallway. Aisha met the old
woman’s sly glance over the typewriter; they exchanged minute nods.

  A slim shadow hesitated at the door. The young man looked uncomfortable in the short-sleeved white shirt and dark slacks that seemed to be business formal in East Africa. Olowe spoke and the old woman tottered to a side table. She served tea and biscotti. The young man shifted on his chair, not meeting their eyes. He gazed at the moving shadows outside the window, then at his tea. Steam rose, curling in the dim hot air.

  “Ali Wasami Hasheer,” Peyster murmured. “One of Al-Khasmi’s closest associates.”

  “Actually, we’ve met. In the desert.” She smiled at the young man, who dropped his gaze to her feet. Oh, yes, she remembered him. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been pointing a rifle at her GrayWolf bodyguard’s head. He looked away, then back, as if reluctantly drawn to her shoes. She set her purse on the floor, the unclasped top facing him.

  Olowe began speaking. This time, to Aisha’s surprise, in crude English. He’d obviously been studying. When he hesitated she or Peyster would suggest a word and he’d repeat it, slowly, as if tasting it, then resume. He introduced the young man as Ali. “He is with one some call Al-Maahdi. One of his young fedahin.”

  “We know of Mr. Hasheer, and his high position with the Waleeli Brotherhood,” Peyster said. “We’re looking forward to exchanging views. If that’s the purpose of this meeting.”

  Of course it wasn’t. All four knew that. Peyster had explained on the way. “One of Al-Maahdi’s boys wants to come in from the cold. Our job’s to milk him for all he’s worth, then see if we can turn him like Whiteface thinks we can. If we can recruit him, he may be the key to your hostage-swap takedown. Olowe wants to be the go-between, but doesn’t want it known. That’s why we’re going at night. Just us, him, the guy, and his personal SS.”

  “Can you trust him?” she’d asked.

  The RSO had just smiled. “Can I trust you? Can you trust me?”

  “I hope you can trust me.”