National Security

by Marc Cameron

  “Okay, listen,” Quinn said, thumb on the safety of his M4. “Fargo could be another half hour for all we know. If we wait for reinforcements—the guys upstairs are dead. If we charge the door and get ourselves killed—the guys upstairs are dead.”

  “Roger that.” Thibodaux nodded, one eyebrow crawling under the front edge of his Kevlar helmet as he wrinkled his forehead in thought. “You look like a man with a plan.”

  “Here’s the deal.” Quinn hoped the idea didn’t sound as crazy out loud as it did in his head. “We go in fast and quiet. Diaz will cut left to take a position in the back corner while you and I hustle up the stairs ... keeping an eye out for trip wires.” He added the last to show he’d cleared a building or two as well.

  “The way those ceilings sag they’re not much but plywood and rotten timber. Diaz, you give us a twenty-count, then spray the ceiling directly over that back corner with a good thirty-round burst. That’s where they’ll have their machine gun. After that, you better come running, because me and the gunny will be bootin’ the door when we hear you shoot. If you don’t get there quick, every bad guy in the place will be DRT before you get a chance to help.”

  “You’re a scary man, Chair Force,” Thibodaux grunted. “Death from below ... remind me not to ever let you talk to my Delta-Whiskey.”

  “Your what?”

  “Dependent wife ... she’s mean enough as it is. I don’t want her to learn any of your sneaky-ass ways.” The doorknob disappeared under Thibodaux’s huge left hand. “It’s open,” he whispered. “We go in on three.”

  Safeties snicked off in the darkness. Thibodaux slid the door open an inch at a time, searching for wires and other telltale signs of alarms.

  “What if the hostages are above the back corner?” Diaz said.

  “Then they’re dead anyway,” Thibodaux winked, pushing open the door. “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”

  Let the good times roll.

  They made it up the stairs in three seconds without meeting any resistance.

  “Since I got on my flak vest,” the big Cajun whispered, “and you came to our little fais do-do unprepared, I’ll take the lead.”

  “I’ll let you,” Quinn said.

  Though the two men had known each other all often minutes, they were professional operators—and good tactics were good tactics. Each moved with a fluid surety that made the other man trust him as though they’d trained together for months. War, like no other catalyst, could forge an instantaneous and lasting friendship between men—if they survived.

  Quinn held up his left hand, knifelike, pointing at the middle of the door. “Down the middle?”

  The Marine gave a curt nod. He pulled the pin on a flash bang—to blind and deafen anyone in the room. “You take hajjis on the right, I’ll take hajjis on the le—”

  A clattering rattle broke loose below as Diaz tore up the floor with a barrage of 7.62.

  Thibodaux reacted instantly, slamming a size-thirteen desert combat boot to the door. The flimsy, wooden jamb shattered with a loud crack. The door leapt from its hinges as if torn away by an explosion. A half second later, the Marine’s stun grenade shook the building. Dust, smoke, and panicked Iraqi voices filled the air.

  Quinn focused on threats in order of scale: guns first, blades second. He was aware of two bound men, kneeling in the center of the room. Both wore blindfolds, hands tied behind their backs. A dazed Iraqi stood behind each prisoner. Would-be executioners, they held short blades, no bigger than pocket knives—executions were supposed to bring agony as well as death.

  The cameraman spun toward the door, his rifle dangling on a sling over his shoulder. He was less than three feet away, close enough Quinn could smell his sweat. Thibodaux moved fast, already behind the cameraman, busy with another target on his side of the room. It was too dangerous for Quinn to chance a shot with the M4.

  Quinn’s right hand stayed on his rifle while his left dropped to the Hissatsu killing blade in his belt. There were too many threats to devote inordinate time to any single one. Quinn strode forward, engaging the nine-inch blade point-first to shove the stunned cameraman out of his way. The razor-sharp weapon entered the soft flesh just above the V on the Iraqi’s collarbone. The man’s eyes slammed open in stark realization that the only beheading he would witness tonight would be his own.

  Quinn was vaguely aware of warmth and moisture spraying his arm, and the sucking gurgle as the Hissatsu slipped though muscle and cartilage.

  The knife slid back to its Kydex sheath with a positive click as Quinn advanced, a red palm print on his khakis where he’d wiped his left hand. The M4 back at eye level, he scanned the room for his next target.

  The cameraman twitched on the floor behind him, no longer a threat.

  Five feet away, a masked Iraqi who’d been in the process of reading a statement for the camera staggered backward in surprise. He tripped over a startled hostage to fall toward the left side of the room.

  “Allahu akbar!” he shouted, before two rounds from Thibodaux’s M4 tore his throat away.

  Quinn’s rifle spat and a tall Iraqi behind the two kneeling hostages stumbled forward, dropping his AK-47. The teenager who’d been posted with the 50-caliber machine gun, badly wounded by Diaz’s withering fire from below, poked his head over a row of sandbags in the far corner. He made a feeble attempt to fire a pistol.

  Thibodaux bounced a grenade off the back wall into the makeshift bunker and turned the kid to jelly. The sandbags directed the blast upward, away from everyone else, but the noise was deafening.

  Flanking each blade-wielding executioner, two more insurgents brought long guns to bear as they shook off the effects of the concussion.

  Quinn breathed in the smell of cordite and blood, swinging his rifle methodically, resting the glowing red circle on the M4’s EOTech holographic sight on the chest of one target, squeezing the trigger twice, then moving to the next a half a heartbeat later. He had no doubt Thibodaux was doing the same. If Marines were anything, they were expert riflemen.

  All the gun-wielding insurgents in his area of responsibility DRT, Quinn rushed forward to get a better angle on the one with the blade, who’d now grabbed the nearest hostage by the collar and used him as a shield.

  The young prisoner was difficult to identify through the filth that caked his face and grimy brown T-shirt, but his high-and-tight haircut above the duct tape blindfold made Quinn guess he was the missing Marine.

  He fought like a Marine.

  The hostage gave a muffled yell beneath his gag and pushed himself backward, rolling over the top of his assailant. Spinning as he rolled, he kicked out with bare feet, connecting with a satisfying thud to the masked Iraqi’s ribs. Enraged and still screaming under his duct tape, the young Marine lashed out blindly, legs pumping as if he were riding a bicycle. The Iraqi shifted away to avoid another blow, giving Jericho enough room to put two rounds below his left ear.

  “Clear!” Thibodaux shouted through gray curls of gun smoke and settling dust. His weapon still pressed close to his shoulder, tree-trunk arms tucked tight as he scanned the room.

  Jericho did the same.

  “I’m a friendly!” Corporal Diaz warned as he came through the door behind them. He blinked in dismay at the nine dead Iraqi’s that littered the room. “Holy shit, Gunny! You guys done already?”

  “Roger that,” Thibodaux said. He’d let the M4 fall against the sling on his chest and now knelt above the bound Marine. He cut the young man free and offered him a badly needed sip of water from the CamelBak attached to his ballistic vest. “What’s your name, son?”

  The young Marine stretched his jaw muscles, unaccustomed to being free of the duct tape. “Corporal Lark, Gunnery Sergeant. I got separated from my platoon two days ago. My buddy got shot and I woke up half beat to death with my hands tied.” His entire body shook from relief and adrenaline.

  Quinn tugged the tape away from the other hostage’s mouth and eyes. This one was older than the Marine by at le
ast fifteen years, with thinning blond hair and a scraggly goatee—one of the missing contractors.

  “I thought I’d never see Americans again,” the man said, his voice shaking. He blinked in dismay as his tearful eyes adjusted to the light. “You killed them all.” He swallowed hard when, for the first time, he looked to the floor and saw the tiny knife that had been meant to cut his head off.

  The contractor hung his head between his knees and vomited.

  Diaz looked impatiently at his watch and tapped the toe of his boot against the wooden floor, which was now awash with pools of blood and bits of Iraqi insurgent.

  “We should haul ass, Gunny,” he said. “Been here too long alre—”

  As if to punctuate the urgency of the corporal’s plea, a mortar round screamed in from the darkness smashing into the side of the building. The sandbag bunker in the corner exploded in a flash of light and yellow smoke. Wood and sand flew through the room as if sprayed from a hose. A shard of metal from the demolished fifty cal whirred into Diaz like an airborne saw blade. He dropped to his knees, screaming in pain.

  “Cochons! ” The big Cajun’s head jerked up from tending a blood-caked Lark. His eyes bored holes through Quinn. “Rat bastards are givin’ me the red ass! Chair Force, get on the horn and call us some close air support, pronto!”

  The gunny rushed to Diaz’s side. The huge piece of shrapnel had hit him below his calf, severing the Achilles tendon and both bones in the lower leg. His foot was attached by only a thin strip of skin.

  Thibodaux applied a tourniquet from a pouch on his vest. He shot a worried look at Quinn. “How about that air, beb?”

  Another mortar exploded outside. Twisted oilcans flew by the gaping hole in the wall. Like dogs to a dinner bell, insurgents were drawn to the sound of American presence.

  As soon as Quinn tried the radio, Lt. Colonel Fargo launched into a fulminating volcanic eruption, screaming as if Quinn had single-handedly started the whole Iraqi war. Quinn ignored him. If Fargo wasn’t going to help when they were under direct fire, it was hardly worth the trouble to mount a defense over the radio.

  After two calls for help on the open radio net, a patrolling pilot answered. “Copper Three-Zero, this is Psycho bringing my Warthog in from the north. Is that you, G-Man?”

  A third mortar whoomped in front of the tire shop, destroying the dead Iraqi cameraman’s rusty Opal. Whirring metal reduced the palm tree across the street to a three-foot stump.

  Thibodaux arched massive shoulders over Diaz, shielding him from falling debris. “The sons of bitches got us dialed in for sure now. Tell your flyboys to light a shuck!”

  Quinn gave him a grim nod, then turned back to the radio. Psycho was Major Troy Bates, an Academy classmate who’d gone on to fly A-10 Warthogs. “Psycho, this is Copper. That’s affirmative. It’s me all right.” Jericho was careful not to give out much information. Too many bad guys had stolen U.S. communications gear. He already had a price on his head—no point in jacking up the pot.

  A hidden fifty-caliber machine gun opened fire from the dark tumble of clay buildings less than half a block away and began to chew up the tire shop.

  “Psycho ...” Quinn keyed his radio, his voice a taut wire. “We could use that support sooner rather than later. Lt. Colonel Fargo has Echo Company coming back from the northeast and we’re taking fire from our west.” He checked the GPS on his wrist and gave his coordinates.

  “I’m cleared hot and I got good eyes on your bad guys,” Psycho said, a half moment later. “Hold your ears, G-Man.”

  The Warthog’s GE turbofan engines roared overhead a moment before the GAU 8 nose gun burped with a throaty growl, like a smoker’s cough on steroids. Seventy rounds per second, each roughly the size of a fat carrot, shredded the rooftop insurgents like coleslaw.

  Quinn sighed, relaxing for the first time in a week. With an A-10 spitting death from the sky, other bad actors would lay low for a time. “I owe you, Psycho.”

  “Yes, you do,” the Warthog pilot came back. “But it’ll have to wait. I’m getting another call. The bad guys must be smokin’ crack tonight... .”

  A Marine Corps Huey landed two minutes later to medevac the wounded. The pilot offered to take the American contractor as well, but Lt. Colonel Fargo would not permit it. He had to have something to show for his efforts. He treated the contractor little better than a prisoner, forcing him to ride in the command Humvee instead of taking the relatively quick chopper ride back to a hospital and hot food.

  Insurgents or no insurgents, before Fargo left the scene, he wanted a piece of Quinn. Spittle flew in all directions as he ranted and fumed. A desert camo helmet perched on an ostrichlike neck; veins throbbed and tendons tensed. His words were little more than seething, apoplectic grunts, but his meaning was clear. He had “important” connections—all the way to Congress—and he intended to see that Quinn was drummed out of the service for his disobedience.

  Through the dust at the landing zone beyond the splintered palm tree, Quinn caught sight of Thibodaux loading his brother Marines into the Huey amid flashing lights and rotor wash. Two Apache gunships circled overhead, patrolling for any bad guys who might want to crash the evacuation party. Thankfully, their engine noise drowned out most of Fargo’s tirade.

  As two Navy corpsmen took custody of Diaz’s stretcher, the corporal pushed himself up on one elbow. Quinn watched as he tugged on Thibodaux’s arm, then pointed back across the street, directly at him.

  “... putting you on report, mister!” Fargo’s threats jerked Quinn’s attention back. “Captain, are you hearing me?”

  Quinn decided he’d had a gut full. “I am, sir, loud and clear. Your wife’s sister is the President’s dishwasher’s nephew’s nanny, and you plan to use these connections to get me kicked out of the Air Force.”

  Fargo snorted. “Laugh it up now, bucko. You think you’re some kind of hero, but that kid got his foot blown off because of your stupidity. The Marines will want your hide—if, and that’s a big if, bucko—there’s anything left after I’m through with you. I had tactical command on this operation and you disobeyed my direct order. You are done!” Fargo started to poke him in the chest with a finger, but luckily for both of them, had enough brains to decide against it at the last moment.

  Quinn turned away, shrugging off the encounter before he did something that would really get him in trouble. It was impossible to take seriously anyone who used bucko twice in the same breath.

  As Fargo stomped off, Gunny Thibodaux rattled Quinn’s fillings with a smack between the shoulder blades. The two men stood together, shielding their faces from flying sand as the Huey spooled up and leapt into the black night. It disappeared quickly, flying lights-out to confuse RPG shooters among the rooftops and mosques.

  “Chin up, Captain.” Thibodaux grinned. It was no small thing that he’d elected not to call Quinn “Chair Force.” “Forget about that sand-crab son of a bitch. We saved two American lives today. That’s gotta count for somethin’. How you gettin’ back to your base?”

  Quinn nodded toward the wispy boughs of a haggard tamarisk bush across the street. “My bike’s stashed over there where you snuck up on me. It’s a piece of crap, but I’ll ride it back. I think more clearly when I’m in the wind.” He glanced up at the giant Marine. “How’s Diaz?”

  “He’ll make it.”

  “And his foot?”

  “The foot’s DRT, beb.” Thibodaux gave a somber grin. “That dumb-ass Puerto Rican, he’s worried ’bout you. He asked me to pass you a message.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hell yes, he did.” Thibodaux shook his head in disbelief. “‘Gunny,’ he says to me, ‘you tell Chair Force not to worry none. I’d give my left nut to save another Marine. A foot—well, that ain’t nothin’.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Paris

  By the time Ian Grant cleared security and reached his gate an hour later, his neck was incredibly stiff. He shrugged off the pain as a side effect to the collision
with the big Algerian and made a mental note to go see a chiropractor once he made it home to Iowa City.

  Northwest Flight 2 began to board forty-five minutes later, just before 10:00 P.M.

  Ian’s seat was 61E, near the back, so he was called early in the process. His passport was checked for the sixth time by a sneering gate attendant who seemed eager to add one last layer of bureaucracy before his victims got out of France.

  Finally on board, Ian found the loud behavior of the American crew disconcerting after so many months among the quieter people of West Africa. A smiling flight attendant with blond hair piled high and a gold tag that said her name was Samantha, helped him find his seat—which happened to be crammed between two gray-haired women from New Jersey.

  “Are you all right, young man?” the woman on the aisle said, as she gathered up her knitting to let Ian slip into his seat. “You look green at the gills.” The lines on her smiling face said sixty was a distant memory.

  “I’m fine,” Ian lied through a halfhearted smile. He kept his neck locked in place as he lowered himself into his seat.

  The old woman reminded him of his Aunt Ellen back in Iowa City. If the resemblance went any further than physical this was going to be a long eight hours to New York.

  Aunt Ellen leaned forward to talk to her traveling companion, who turned out to be her sister, Theresa. “He look a little peaked to you?”

  Theresa lowered her paperback bodice-ripper and put the back of a veiny hand on Ian’s forehead. “Feverish, indeed.” She peered across gold-rimmed granny glasses that were chained to her neck. “I trust you’re not contagious.” She looked and sounded very much like Ian’s seventh-grade English teacher. A more humorless woman, he’d never met.

  He tried to shake his head, but had to make do with shifting his eyes. He was beginning to worry that he’d broken something. “Touch of malaria.” He swallowed. Razor blades suddenly appeared in the back of his throat.