by Tom Kratman
“They’re right above you, Graft,” whispered the ear piece. “I mean right above you. Don’t answer; that’s how close they are. Two of them. One’s staying a little shy of the cliff, if you’re wondering. The other one would probably see you, if he had some night vision capability.”
Graft didn’t need that, except for the knowledge of the one that was hidden from view. It was the knowledge of that hidden one that kept him from firing at the one he could see, and probably screwing up everything in the process.
Instead he waited, one arm slowly turning to a kind of stone with outraged nerves running through it, the other pointed upward, aiming the silenced pistol at the stranger standing above him.
Baguinda laughed, calling back to Mukdum, “There’s nothing there. Must have been a bird, or maybe a high wave. Maybe even a snake. Loose rock? I dunno.”
“Well, come on then,” the other replied. “I still need you to explain to me why we’re not supposed to bury unwanted baby girls alive. Yes, yes, I understand that we’re not. I just want you to explain Allah’s reasoning, if you can.”
“Sure, sure,” replied Baguinda. “Be right there. Just give me a minute.” With that, he undid his organization issued trousers, pulled out his penis, and took a long leak over the cliff.
This is just . . . wrong . . . on so many levels, thought Graft, as his goggles, neck, and shoulders were liberally sprinkled with foul, nasty, human urine. I’m so going to make you pay for that, motherfucker.
He still kept the same position, as steadily as humanly, or even inhumanly, possible. The goggles weren’t worth a lot, at the moment, since tiny droplets were scattered on the lenses. Then the ship sent, “They’ve moved off, Graft, maybe a hundred and fifty meters to your right. You can go ahead now.”
This close, Graft had to be absolutely positive that his camming device was secure and that he had a quick and solid way over the lip of the cliff. Yes, the RPV showed that the two guards were still off to the right, and just possibly asleep, though, with the Moros, that was not something to count on. But this had the potential to be disastrously noisy. As bad, he was about to go into the area that the moon did illuminate.
No second chances . . . no chance for mistakes. Do it by the fucking numbers, Graft.
Step one, he thought, seat the camming device. He did this, in a small crevice about six feet below the lip, then applied as much strength as he could to pulling it out. It held. So far, so good.
Step two, make a loop of rope. This wasn’t a big deal. He did it, using teeth and one hand.
Step three, double the loop . . . step four, attach a carabiner . . . five...get the carabiner in the camming device . . . six . . . foot in the loop . . . goddamit quit wriggling, rope. Okay, got that.
Steps seven through one hundred and eight: get the pistol ready and breathe. Crap, twenty years ago I wouldn’t have needed the breather . . . .and my arms wouldn’t have noticed the strain. Now? Shit, I’ve gotten too old. Step one hundred and nine, clean the lenses . . .
With the loop set at a height that would lift Graft’s waist to the cliff’s lip, he pushed down with his leg. His pistol was in, close to his chest, as first head, then neck and shoulders, then his upper torso arose above that rocky edge. His goggled eyes snapped left, ahead, right, even as the pistol snapped out to follow his line of sight. Yeah, so Lox said the RPV shows them not here? So? Who really trusts technology, anyway?
“Congratulations,” whispered Lox. “How’s it feel to go ‘where no man has gone before’? Now I suggest to you that you kill those two.”
Graft didn’t answer. He just thought, Well, duh.
Leaning forward, Graft laid his upper torso on the ground and began to wriggle forward towards a likely tree. At the tree he stopped, reluctantly laid his pistol on the ground, looped the rope around one leg, and began undoing the rope coil about his waist. Once it was free, he ran it around the tree and tied it off, just enough to keep it from coming loose. Then he retrieved his pistol. He felt a lot better with that in hand.
To Semmerlin he whispered, “Don’t come up yet. The rope’s not fully set and I have to get the guards.”
“Roger. Waiting. Let me know.”
“You can hook up the bundle.”
“Doing it.”
Unseen, Graft nodded. Rising to a crouch, he began to follow the cliff to his right, as a distance from it of perhaps a dozen feet. “How far are they from the cliff’s edge?” he asked Lox.
“Right up on it.”
Good.
Graft walked forward slowly and carefully, setting his feet down, outer edge first, then rolling them inward to smother any sound they might make. After traveling about a hundred meters that way, he heard the voices of the two Moros. As far as he could tell, they sounded like the ones he’d heard before. Graft moved forward until he was on line with a line drawn roughly perpendicular to the cliff, and running between the Moros. He’d gradually changed the orientation of his body as he moved, to keep the pistol pointed in their direction.
The .45 had been left, from the beginning, cocked and locked, with only the grip safety to ensure against a premature discharge. That, too, was deactivated by Graft’s grip. He changed his grip from one-handed to two. With the pistol thrust out ahead of him, he slowly crept closer to the unsuspecting Moros.
At a distance of about twenty feet, Graft stopped and lifted the goggles from his face. They were good for many things, but aiming at a close target wasn’t among them. His pistol didn’t have a laser aiming device; like a lot of special operations types, Graft didn’t really trust anything that required batteries, and used those that did require them very sparingly, radios and night vision scopes and goggles being about the limit of his tolerance.
No matter, even through the trees overhead, the moon gave enough light to silhouette his targets.
Which one first? One had his rifle across his lap. The other’s on the ground at his feet. Lap loses.
Graft fired twice, pffft . . . recover . . . pffft. The slide made more sound than the firing did. His target pitched forward onto his face.
The other Moro began to bend and turn. Again, Graft fired: pffft . . . pffft. That Moro, too, went down.
Now was not the time for subtlety. Bounding forward, Graft placed the muzzle of his .45 almost against the head of his first target and fired again. Brains splattered, some of the mass onto Graft’s boots. Turning, he repeated the action with his second target. Again this was called, “overkill,” or “making sure.”
There were any number of human rights and international law lawyers and judges who would have claimed that Graft had just committed a war crime, since his targets were clearly hors de combat at the time of his fifth and sixth shots. Graft, however, was of a more practical and far less intellectual school. Just making sure.
“They’re down,” he said into the mike. He slowly pulled back the slide, ejecting one shell and loading the last one from that magazine, then took a spare magazine from a pouch and clicked it home. Seven and one, he thought, automatically. He then started rolling the bodies to the cliff. One after the other, down they went, with not a sound to be heard by anyone not actually on the beach. Certainly Graft didn’t hear the bodies as the rocks below ruined them even further.
“Wait a few minutes, Semmerlin, while I go back and secure the rope properly. You can go ahead and mark the landing point for the next wave with a couple of IRs.”
“Roger, doing it.”
“Bland?”
“We copied.”
MV Richard Bland, Sulu Sea
“Ahead slow,” commanded Pearson. The ship shuddered as it began to lose way.
“Lower the loading platform.” The crane whined slightly as it first picked up, then swung over the side, the floating platform used to load the Zodiac boats. The boats were already loaded and lashed down to the platform, while the men of A Company clustered by the nets nearest where the platform would be set down.
One of the naval crew guided the cra
ne by intercom, right until the platform softly splashed into the water. Then, at a signal, the operatives of A Company, under Warrington—Welch being stuck on the ship—began to scramble over. The first men at the bottom of the nets automatically began unlashing them and pushing them to the edge of the platform. Once all were down, they formed up to either side of the Zodiacs, picked up the boats, and walked forward into the salt. When the boats were fully in, the troops scrambled up from the water, over the gunwales, in an orgy of knees and elbows. The first men successfully aboard reached out to grab and pull in those who were still struggling.
Finally, where finally meant a mere couple of minutes, the boats were loaded and the men in their preassigned position. At command, the electric motors—large and fairly powerful, but very quiet—were started. Warrington, in the lead boat, gave the command, “Move out.” Three boats, forming into a line, began to undulate through the choppy sea to the western—and now unguarded—side of the island.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Only those who lack it use the adjective
‘excess’ in front of testosterone.
—Dan Goodman
Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,
Republic of the Philippines
Graft and Semmerlin strained at the rope, hauling up the last of the equipment they’d brought with them. Naturally, the package stuck at the very edge of the cliff.
“Go get it,” Graft ordered. “I can hold the rope here.”
“Sure.” Semmerlin sniffed “Hey, why do you smell like piss?”
“Just go do it.”
Semmerlin slithered out and got his hands on the bundle. By main strength he and Graft pulled it up and over. They quickly untied the main rope. Then Semmerlin took a piece of dark duct tape and an infrared chemlight from his combat harness. He attached the plastic tube to a point a about twenty feet above the rope’s free end, then tossed the rope back over the cliff.
From the bundle emerged all manner of wondrous things. First came two rope ladders. Each man took one of them to different trees flanking the main rope. To these the ladders were attached, then viciously pulled on to make sure they were secure. The ladders were pushed over the cliff as well, unrolling as they fell.
“You know,” whispered Semmerlin, “for the very first time I begin to suspect this shit might actually work.”
“Shhh,” said Graft. “You want to jinx us, ya dumb ass?”
“Sorry.”
Next came a brace of weapons, a suppressed .510 caliber rifle matching the one across Semmerlin’s back, and a regimental standard Pecheneg machine gun. Graft laid the rifle beside himself. It would be his primary weapon for the festivities if and only if things got out of hand.
A dozen claymore mines came out, filling the local air with the pungent, plastic aroma of C-4. Though still in their bandoleers, eight of the mines had already been rigged with det cord to form two daisy chains of four each. Each man slung one set of daisy chained mines across his shoulder. The clackers were in the bandoleers. The other four mines had been left as singletons, though each was equipped with a trip wire device that merely needed arming and setting to become a rather effective booby trap.
Thermal scopes came out. Graft took the first and, after telling Semmerlin to turn around, affixed it to the latter’s rifle. Then he did the same for his own, returning the rifle to its spot on the ground.
Semmerlin began pulling boxes of belted machine gun ammunition out, hanging these from his body as he did. Graft grabbed an entrenching tool and stuck it on his own gear.
This, plus draping themselves with still more goodies, didn’t take very long. They’d rehearsed it, over and over, back on the ship, unpacking and repacking their equipment bundle over and over as they did.
Finally, fully accoutered, the two men patted themselves to make sure everything was in its proper place. They each did a couple of short leaps upward to ensure they weren’t rattling, banging, or making any other distinctive sound. They then began the trek down to where they believed Mr. Ayala was being kept.
Their job was not actually to retrieve Ayala from the island. It was possible they could have, of course. But it was also risky, and would become especially risky once the presumptive means of early evacuation, the helicopters, were heard by the enemy. Instead, what Graft and Semmerlin were tasked to do was find him and secure him, then move him to as safe a spot as they could find, on the island, while the island was being cleared. Indeed, even the rest of A Company was not intended to clear the island, nor even help much. Once landed, they, too, had the job of securing Mr. Ayala, once the company, plus Graft and Semmerlin, linked up. Part of securing Ayala was keeping him alive, once secured. For that, Cagle had accompanied A Company.
Clearing the island, on the other hand, so that evacuation could proceed safely, once all the Moros were dead, was the job of C Company and the aviation detachment. That’s where the serious firepower was. At most, A Company could ease C Company’s way, as Graft and Semmerlin had eased the way for the rest of A Company.
Part of Graft’s and Semmerlin’s shipboard rehearsal had been to ensure that they didn’t clank when they walked. They didn’t; everything was either wrapped in something soft or, if not, kept away from anything hard or metallic. Still, they were carrying enough sheer mass that walking was a little awkward, especially since they really had to stay off the trail that led from the cliff to the main Moro cantonment. Fortunately, the island being mostly jungle covered, the ground was actually fairly clear of vegetation other than large tree trunks. The NVG’s, touch, and long experience helped guide them around those, though the goggles had a nasty tendency of making hanging vines look like draped snakes. That could be very creepy. No one ever quite got used to having what appeared to be a large fat snake suddenly and unexpectedly appear in their vision.
I fucking hate snakes, thought Semmerlin, jumping back from a swaying green apparition.
Navigation—or guidance, anyway—was helped a bit by the RPV. Its thermal imager was powerful enough to see them, at least most of the time, and would have provided warning if there’d been any unfriendly strangers, close by and ahead. This further allowed somewhat less careful walking, upright and hence faster, than if they’d been unescorted.
In a fairly short time they were at the edge of the cantonment. This was where things got dicey. Graft reported, just in case the RPV couldn’t see them for the nonce, “Crater.” We are at the edge of the cantonment.
MV Richard Bland, Sulu Sea
The operations chart suggested it, or perhaps demanded it, but Welch had to do his own calculations in his head. The Zodiacs are forty-five minutes out from the cliff. Graft’s almost at the target. The Bland’s about twelve miles from the island. With slinging it over the side, and loading the troops, that’s two and a quarter hours for the LCM. An hour and fifteen minutes for the Zodiacs to land, my people to scale the cliff, and to set up a perimeter to secure Mr. Ayala. I think . . .
“Skipper, land the landing force.”
“Aye, Major. All stop.”
“All stop. Aye, aye, Skipper.”
As usual, Kirkpatrick and his crew went over the side with their LCM. Someone had to be there to control the thing and cast off from the crane’s cables. No sooner was the boat settled in the fairly comfortably calm water then the crew sprang to undo the shackles. Immediately, and enthusiastically, the men of C Company began surging over the gunwales and down the net. Only two platoons plus Stocker’s headquarters were going in this load; the rest, under the exec, Simon Blackmore, would load and move to shore when the Bland had closed substantially on the island.
One reason, and not a small one, for the men’s enthusiasm was the news of their home regiment’s success, back in South America. It had seemed so impossible—an impossibility weighing on their souls like a tombstone—that the news had propelled their morale to the very heights. They felt they could take on the world.
Balbahadur went with that first group. His pipe
s were silent and would remain so until contact was made. He thought, No sense, after all, in warning them we’re coming. Lots of sense in frightening the piss out of them once they know we’re there.
Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,
Republic of the Philippines
From behind, Semmerlin overwatched, looking through the thermal scope of his suppressed .510 caliber rifle. Flat on his belly, Graft aimed the claymore out to graze across the main trail junction leading, on the one hand, to the main pier and, on the other, to the cliffs. Sixth inch thick detonating cord led from one side of the claymore to the next in the series. The other side of that claymore had a standard blasting cap and wire. The wire already ran back to where Semmerlin overwatched. The clacker was, sensibly, in Graft’s pocket.
Finished with sighting that mine, Graft dragged himself, his rifle, and the bag of claymores to the left, then began setting up the next in his series. Once finished with all four, he crawled back to the trunk of the grand old tree behind which Semmerlin covered and whispered, “Your turn.”
Crawling off with his rifle cradled in his arms, Semmerlin left his Pecheneg resting on its bipod, aimed up the trail. He, too, took his clacker in his pocket. His area for his daisy chain was a little farther forward, almost at the one true building—an almost pagoda-looking mosque—the camp boasted. Once he was done, he crawled back. Then he and Graft connected four clackers to the four wires running from the ends of their daisy chains.
And now, thought Graft, finally standing to make his way into the camp, . . . now it really gets dicey.