The Crisis

by David Poyer

  “That hill.” The deputy nods. “The rounded one. We can see the road from there. Anyone approaching has to come uphill at us.”

  “That would put the saddle between us and retreat,” Hasheer points out. Ghedi considers. Looking from one to the other: the lean, ascetic disciple he’d once thought crazy; the young, affectionate one he once suspected as a northerner. He picks up binoculars and examines hill, crag, village.

  “We’ll do as Juulheed suggests,” he decides, kneeing the driver. “Top of that hill.” The engine snarls, and the truck grates into motion once more.

  HALF a mile away, flat in the ditch with the sand blowing over him and Cooper, behind him, as spotter-observer, Teddy rolled the scope away from his eye and cursed.

  It’d been the TI. “Target of interest” was the antiseptic way the operations order referred to the man they were here to shoot. Just as “standard operating procedure” translated into killing prisoners captured on a raid. The asshole they wanted, with the swollen jaw. In dark glasses and a green headwrap instead of a black one, but him. Too far for a shot, and the mirage was a jumbled boil, but for one millisecond he’d seen clearly enough through the 10–40 Leupold to be certain.

  Then the truck had rolled out to the left, not toward them, and the other vehicles followed. But not toward the well. Instead, trailing dust, they were climbing the rise. He tracked them through the scope. It was Cooper’s rifle, not his. His super scope on his super fucking useless rifle was still busted; it hadn’t healed itself. He didn’t expect it would. “Range now?”

  “Fifteen hundred yards. Seventeen. Two thousand. Two thousand five hundred.”

  The truck was still climbing. He deshouldered the rifle in disgust. “Fa-a-u-ck. Where are these bitchass motherfuckers headed?”

  “Somebody tipped ’em off,” Cooper muttered below him. Whacker was back at the hide, transmitting the SPOTREP with Cheeks.

  “You didn’t laze ’em, did you?”

  “Fuck no. Those were reticle ranges.”

  Did the turn away mean the enemy was aware of the team’s presence? Or just a last-minute change of plan? He didn’t think they’d given themselves away. The patrol at dawn, he’d have sworn it hadn’t made them. If so, the tall guy in charge had been remarkably cool about it. Teddy had watched him closely, and seen no sign of surprise. They’d low-crawled to the final firing position with infinite care, keeping their faces in the sand, using the ditches for the approach.

  He inspected Cooper critically. The spotting scope was netted and hooded, garnished with dried grass. They had black plastic grates over every piece of optical gear, so no flash could give them away. They had contingency plans, escape and evasion plans. But when the target decided to go somewhere else, you couldn’t plan for that. You just had to roll with it.

  “They’re turning again . . . no . . . dust plume’s stopped. They’re parking up there.”

  Teddy squinted through the blowing dust. The hill rose maybe thirty meters above the saddle. A pimple, in terms of relief, but in terms of dominating the approach, it was formidable. They’d have to cross over a mile of upward slope, with only a few rocks and bunches of dead grass for cover. The natural folds of the land might be enough to conceal a prone sniper perfectly camouflaged, but he hadn’t been over that terrain. Like a climber ascending a sheer face, he’d have to find his footholds in the tiniest cracks and faults, as he came to them.

  And if he couldn’t . . . but looking at the hilltop, and the saddle below, one thing was clear as the morning sun. Any possible shot would be at a much longer range than he’d expected. So long, in fact, considering the wind conditions, he wouldn’t be able to make it with the bolt-action. The bullet would get there, but it just wouldn’t be accurate at that range. As it shed velocity the gusts would grab it, and wrestle it farther off target with each hundred yards it traveled.

  He needed a bullet that would buck the wind.

  Skilley’s wonder bullet. And since Cooper’s rifle couldn’t stabilize that heavier bullet—the twist rate was too slow—he could shoot it only from Skilley’s wonder gun.

  But he still had no scope. Cooper’s Leupold was in working order, but you couldn’t jerk a scope off one rifle and slap it on another and expect to hit anything.

  He frowned, shaking his head so slightly no observer would have seen it from twenty yards away.

  He rolled the scope to his eye again and raised his head, very slowly. The sun was behind him; there’d be no warning flash off the lenses. How to do this? His solution wavered, like a distant target in the heat-boil. No matter what, he had to get closer. A lot closer.

  But very carefully. Sandals or no, that patrol leader had looked like a dangerous opponent. One who used his eyes and his brain, who didn’t just spray and pray like most of the insurgents.

  He looked down at Cooper. The spotter/observer raised his eyebrows, cocking his head toward the hill. Teddy shook his very slightly. He glanced back toward the hide site; signaled keep low.

  Cooper began backing around. Teddy slid to the bottom of the ditch. Then followed, on his belly, sweating in the close heat, dragging himself back yard by yard.

  GRÁINNE huddled in the rattling bed of the lorry. Her stinking pajama-like trousers were torn in back, so she had to keep her face to any male or risk a beating. The light hurt her eyes. The wind burned through the crusts. She could see only a little, peering painfully, and only close up. It felt like things were uncoiling inside her eyeballs.

  But they were going to be released. Traded. Redeemed. Or so someone had told the hostages that morning. Too late for one older woman, an Oxfam volunteer, who’d been sinking for days. They’d buried her yesterday, two hours after she died, just before nightfall. An Ashaari custom, apparently. Her husband sat on the other side of the truck, clutching all she’d left when she died: her purse, a little address book, her passport. He looked very old and totally bereft.

  Her hand rose to clasp the claddagh before she remembered it was gone. After her conversion, one of the women had snatched it off her neck. A pagan symbol didn’t belong on a Muslim woman.

  After her mumbled conversion at the ravine they’d taken her back to the caves, but not the one she’d been in. The women had brought bowl and rag, and begun to bathe her eyes. She’d thought that was good, until she’d caught a whiff. Then the pain came, so incredible she’d fought and kicked as they held her arms and legs. It was salt, and camel urine, and who knew what else. When they returned she’d fought and screamed again until they let her alone. Not about the prayers, though. They’d brought her outside and put her in a line with the other new Muslims, forced them to bow, tried to teach them the routine. She’d been too sick and exhausted to even pretend. Just knelt with her head down until they jerked her up and pushed her back into the shadows.

  She loved the darkness now. It didn’t hurt. It was friendly and cool. Some spring or lever had snapped inside her. At that ravine, seeing the bodies . . . she wished she believed in something that strongly. Enough to die for.

  Science is truth, she told herself. This other’s rot. And anyway, she had to live. She still held the great secret that would transform the country. Once she passed that on, she could die if she wanted to. Most of all, she just wanted to lie down.

  She was in hospital, in a bed, all light and white. There were tubes in her arms and down her nose and up her growler, but she didn’t mind. The light came through the window so lovely. Specks of dust, floating with immense beauty. So clean, and she could see. She felt pleasantly languid, like lying on the beach after a long swim in the surf at Youghal, her favorite place on the South Coast. What they called the Irish Riviera.

  Then the lorry jolted and the smells of shit and dust rose through gaps in the floor. It braked and the hostages slid and clutched at each other, or just lay, resisting neither the jolting nor the skids. She wanted to brace herself, but didn’t have the energy.

  Suddenly she wasn’t there, or in the hospital bed. She was in Cobh. T
he bed-and-breakfast they’d stayed in when she and her husband first fell in love, high on a little lane that led up to the cathedral. Waking drowsy in the Victorian four-poster with Limerick crocheted lace coverlets. Knowing just from the smell they were setting out a full table of Irish fry downstairs. Eggs, grilled tomatoes, black pudding. Hot steaming oatmeal with cream. Fresh-baked scones. Great lashings of bacon, and bangers glistening with grease. She got up eagerly, pulled on jumper and slacks, and went down in stocking feet. Slid a sparkling Belleek plate from a stack and reached for a serving spoon.

  . . . And came back to men shouting and pulling at her. They were dragging the hostages out, one by one. Some they had to carry. The goateed old man blinked at them, holding his dead wife’s purse. They dragged him up and thrust him toward the back, lowering him roughly to the ground.

  They came for her. Whatever favor she’d gained from converting was lost on these ladhbs. They handled her even more roughly than they had the old man, and one wasn’t above sticking his hand between her arse cheeks for a feel. Good luck to him. She lost her footing on the sandy metal and nearly pitched headfirst, but got a grip on the tosser’s sleeve to break her fall. She forced one eye open, gasping, but saw only light and sand.

  A hand on her arm; a Kensington toff’s accent but gentle. “This way, miss. I’ll guide you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The Yanks are here. I see their jeeps coming up the hill.”

  “Thank Christ,” she muttered, then bent over and retched. Not much came up as she stood trembling, the old man’s hand warm on her back. He patted her, then cupped a palm under her elbow.

  Together, they tottered toward the top of the hill.

  A mile away downslope, Teddy and Cooper wriggled in infinitesimal increments along a dry ditch drifted with sand. The ditch crossed the gradient at a diagonal. He figured it must once have brought water down from somewhere beyond the hill. They were crossing their target area’s front, moving slowly right to left and gradually closing. It would be a long crawl.

  The SEALs had stripped off all their gear except for rifles, knives, pistols, and optics. They also had water, but not enough for a long stay. Everything else was back at the hide. Dried grass stuck out from their boonie covers. Their faces matched the sand. They carried the rifles slung beneath their bodies, muzzles aft, so they wouldn’t come up clogged.

  Kowacki and Donoghe were crawling too, making for overwatch positions out to the flanks. If anyone stumbled over the sniper team, or came after them following the shot, they’d provide cover. He didn’t think these guys had much countersniper capability, but the other team would still be watching for movement, for glare, dust, the telltale sparkle of glass.

  Right now he was worried about a lot of things, but the worst, maybe, was the up angle he’d have to shoot at. Not in terms of the hold correction—that was simple to calculate—but the fact that, looking up from below, he might not be able to see the turnover. And if he couldn’t see, he couldn’t shoot. The well would have been so much better.

  But the well was history. He came to a shallower part of the ditch and raised his head in minute increments, cocked sideways. The gully petered out ahead. There really was zip for cover. The wind blew, gentled, blew. He looked long on the terrain and finally his head sank as slowly as he’d raised it.

  The SR-25 had backup sights that flipped down out of the way when the scope was installed. (He’d buried the busted scope back at the hide.) It would be a difficult shot, but iron sights were more accurate than most shooters thought, if you knew how to use them. No magnification, but with them he could use the new rifle, with its faster twist and heavier, long-range bullet.

  He still had to get forward at least another two hundred yards. He pointed to the ground and made a patting motion to Cooper: Stay put—five minutes—then follow me. Then pushed off with his toes, hugging the rifle, his busted collarbone jabbing, moving with excruciating slowness up over the lip of the shallow depression that until now had shielded him.

  In the open, he moved with a deliberation that made his previous progress seem like a sprint. He didn’t jostle a single pebble. Nor a blade of the dead grass-clumps he gradually wormed between. He kept his cheek to the sand, head turned sideways to further lower his silhouette as he oozed along a half inch at a time, matching each movement to the wind. Making its rhythm his own. It wouldn’t be the same at the top of that hill. It’d be different still where he’d fire from. It was switching, blowing first one way, then another, gusting till streamers blew off the sand humps that dotted the undulating slope up which he inched.

  A lizard froze, eyeing him. Its leathery lids flickered. He didn’t move. Neither did it. A standoff. He flicked his little finger and it blinked again and vanished. The hilltop above, the battered trucks, seemed close, but weren’t. Not in terms of a bullet’s flight. It would be a half-mile shot.

  A tug on his boot sole. “There’s the hostages,” his observer muttered, lips pressed to the ground.

  He squinted. Distant forms were exiting the far truck, but when they dropped below the lip of the crest he lost sight of them. The lead vehicle was parked on the side of the hill closest, but so far there was no movement from it.

  He tilted his watch. The ransom party would arrive at noon. He had to be in position then.

  He swerved in his snailing to put a head-sized rock fifty yards upslope between him and the silently waiting white truck. Wondering, meanwhile, how long it would take to swap a suitcase of cash for fourteen heads. Not long, probably, but he couldn’t take the shot until it was done. Otherwise, even if he connected, the insurgents could mow down the hostages.

  He’d have to hold fire until they were out of the way, yet act before Al-Maahdi climbed back into his vehicle. The window of opportunity could be very narrow. But “mission failure” wasn’t a welcome phrase in the spec ops world.

  The heat grew intense, focused by the saddle below. The sun cauterized his pupils. His gut cramped and voided. He felt as if he were leaving a trail of slime behind him, like a slug. The sharp ends of broken bone ground and sliced each time he extended his arm. Every muscle in his upper body screamed. If anyone up there had glasses on them, if they shook a branch at the wrong time or sent a rock rolling, they were prime targets. It’d be a long shot for the skinnies too, but at the rate four or five AKs sprayed bullets, they wouldn’t make it back to the ditch without getting hit.

  He oozed from gully to gully like a torpid snake. No one could see him. No one could stop him. He was the Invisible Man. He was Death, inching closer to the one whose time left on earth was ticking away.

  Teddy Oberg couldn’t stop grinning.

  HOURS later, lying full length on a slope littered with shattered quartzite, he understood. This was as close as he was going to get. Pushing it even a yard farther would be like crawling across a tennis court and expecting to surprise the server. He estimated they were at least eight hundred yards from the crest. From time to time, when the wind was right, he heard voices.

  He glanced around, moving only his eyes, and waited for a gust. When it kicked up the dust he scraped a little rampart of rocks and sand and dead sticks together in front of him.

  That done, he began working the rifle around. When the barrel got within reach he slipped off the muzzle cap. He grasped the tab of the tan gaffer tape over the ejection port and peeled it off. He slipped a lemon candy out of his pocket, shucked off its silent waxy paper, and slid it into his parched mouth. Then reached down again, and came up with a disposable lighter and a flimsy white plastic MRE spoon.

  Holding the lighter down by his thigh, he lit the spoon. The tiny orange flame flickered in the wind. He passed it under the inverted front sight, playing the smoke over it. Then pushed the spoon into the sand.

  He pulled the rifle the rest of the way up. Peered. Carbon from the smoky flame had blacked the front sight, eliminating reflections. It was tapered aft to forward, so there wouldn’t be any shadows. He just hoped the ju
mp and all the marching and crawling since hadn’t knocked the backup sights off kilter too.

  Very slowly, he slid the rifle up and along his body until the suppressor poked out through the sticks and straw and pebbles.

  “NOT very far now,” said the driver, listening through headphones to an intraconvoy intercom. He tapped instant coffee out of a packet and crunched it between his teeth. “That’s it, between those two hills up there.”

  Aisha peered through the windshield, dazzled by light and heat. Their convoy had left the embassy just after midnight: two Marine armored cars and four Humvees, one the ambulance version, spearheaded by two Cobras that scouted ahead. The money was in a valise in the backseat. It wasn’t State money, and it wasn’t Navy. When she’d asked, Peyster had just said he had funds. And when she probed, said he could hide them “within the bureaucracy” as used to purchase information leading to the capture of a senior terrorist.

  When she’d asked what bureaucracy, he’d smiled and changed the subject.

  They’d crossed the dry bed of the Tanagra, shortcutting the coast road, miles back. Now they were climbing. The foothills rose around them, at first just gentle slope, but growing ahead into the southern mountains. Not tall enough to be snowcapped in these latitudes, but tall enough to impress. The Humvees were cramped, packed with the coveralled medical personnel Ridbout had insisted had to come. Only they didn’t act like medical personnel. They talked like marines, and the cases by their boots were shaped more like weapons than medical equipment. She sniffled and blew her nose.

  The LAV ahead slowed. Its lights flashed as it turned right. The other herringboned to the left, leaving the Humvees to pass through and onward as the camel track they’d been following grew steeper. She checked the map. It was new, put out by the Defense Mapping Agency, in beautiful full color. The well was clearly marked. She peered closer at faint blue dotted lines identified as abandoned irrigation canals. Abandoned villages too. Apparently this area had once been heavily populated. Was it the desert’s steady advance, the repeated droughts, or the Morgue’s ruthless “national communism” that had erased what must once have been a fertile, well-watered region?