Man of War

by Sean Parnell

  A mortar was different because they were indirect fire weapons, which meant that they went up and after reaching their max ordinate let gravity carry them down to their target. Mortars were silent and deadly, perfect for fighting in the city.

  The unfolding battle sent adrenaline radiating through him. The only thing West had in common with the man he was four years ago was his name. Everything else had been stripped away by death and flame. But the change was deeper than his scarred skin. There was a time when Nate believed in childish things like justice and hope. Now violence was his only religion.

  “The law of tooth and claw,” he said to his radioman as he took a cigarette from behind his ear. “Do you know what that means?”

  The man shook his head. He was just a hired gun and understood simple things like rate of fire and keeping fresh batteries in the radio. Like a good soldier, he left the thinking to others.

  “It means that this,” West said, lighting the smoke before sweeping his hand to encompass the entire city, “is the only law that matters in this world.”

  Everything else was empty promises and paper threats. They were illusions. A weak man had no more control over his life than a sailor in a squall. Charlie Daniels had found this out the hard way. Nate thought back to how quickly he had broken the spy.

  “You like my knife?” West had asked him. “A guy in Zaire made it for me.” There was fear in Daniels’s eyes, and West savored it the same way he’d savored the hate in Villars’s. Men were like dogs—all they really wanted was to know their place.

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  West continued like he hadn’t heard him. “What do you think he made this handle out of?”

  “I don’t know. Ivory, maybe?”

  “You are close, my man. He wanted to make it out of ivory, said he had some rhino horn he could use. But I wanted this knife to be special, you know, something that had meaning, and for the life of me I couldn’t think of a single time a rhino had done anything to me. I’ll give you another guess. Take a good look.”

  Daniels wanted nothing to do with this game.

  “Wood?”

  “Nope. It’s a femur. You know what that is, CIA man?”

  “A le . . . a leg bone.”

  “Yep. See, there are a lot of people out there who have done things to me. Like this one man, he raped my wife and kidnapped my son. When I found him I knew I wanted to remember him, so I took a little piece with me.”

  West was an expert at getting people to tell him things. The secret wasn’t in the fear. If you beat a man he’d tell you anything he thought you wanted to know. West knew that to get to the truth you had to let them think that they had control of their own destiny.

  After he cut off the first finger, Daniels started talking so fast that he had to tell him to slow down. The person West was looking for was a woman by the name of Meg Harden, and she was the only one in Algiers who had full access to the Gatehouse.

  So how did Breul get inside? Daniels didn’t know, and honestly it didn’t matter. Breul had pulled it off and left Nate’s prize inside. When he was sure that Daniels had told him everything he knew, West put him out of his misery. In a way he felt like he’d done the CIA a favor by shaving some dead weight off their books.

  He smiled at his own joke. “Dead weight,” he said with a shake of his head. “I crack myself up.”

  The sound of thumping rotor blades drew his attention to the ocean, where a pair of French Lynx helicopters zipped over the shore like a pair of green dragonflies. As usual they were late to the party, but unlike the Americans, who were still reeling from Benghazi, at least they were showing up.

  West knew the helos were on station to protect his target. The Americans didn’t have any assets in the area except for a drone that he knew was loitering over the embassy. He bent over the edge to spit and saw a knot of fighters milling about in the alleys.

  “Tell them to get to work,” he growled to one of his men, who nodded and lifted the radio to his lips.

  Across the way, another of his fighters lifted a Stinger surface-to-air missile and nodded to his boss. West flicked the cigarette up at the two helos and headed for the stairs.

  In the basement there were two armored vehicles waiting for him. They looked like Suburbans on steroids, and West knew they cost two hundred and fifty grand apiece. Not that it mattered, because he wasn’t paying for any of this anyway. Besides the machine guns mounted to the top, West’s favorite part of the trucks was the snowplow attached to the lead vehicle. He couldn’t wait to see it in action.

  He took a seat in the lead vehicle, and the armored door hissed closed on its hydraulic arm. Pulling a shotgun off the rack, he checked to make sure it was loaded, then told the driver, “Roll out.”

  Next to him Villars sat before a bank of radios. He was scanning multiple frequencies that were going in three different languages.

  “I’ve got a lock,” one of his men said over the internal radio channel.

  “Tell him to send it.”

  The driver hit the gas while Villars relayed the message. The turbodiesel roared like a caged animal and the vehicle leapt onto the street. West had the window cracked and heard the RPGs scream skyward. He knew that his man with the Stinger had locked onto the helo and the pilot thought the RPGs were actually surface-to-air missiles. The flares spilled from the back of the Lynx, hoping to fool the heat-seeking missile. The door gunner in the trail bird fired a long burst at the rooftop before juking away. West’s man knew his business; he waited for the Lynx to expend its countermeasures before firing the Stinger.

  “Missile away.”

  West caught a glimpse of the contrail rising up and then lost it to the building.

  The driver turned east, the knobby tires whining over the pavement. Up front the man in the passenger seat controlled the turret gun via a joystick tied into the targeting system. When a line of Algerian soldiers darted from cover, West was able to clearly see every detail through the monitor attached to the fire control.

  Two soldiers provided covering fire while a team tried to set up a machine gun. The 7.62 pinged harmlessly off the armor plate while the man calmly centered the reticle on the soldiers. He jammed his thumb over the button on the top of the stick and there was a shaking on the roof. Expended brass tinkled off the roof slats and rolled off the side. West snapped the harness over his shoulders while the first burst cut the soldiers down in the street.

  “Gun truck on your right,” someone called out over the radio.

  “I got it,” the driver said.

  “Ramming speed!” West shouted.

  The driver smiled and smashed the pedal to the floor, centering the reinforced plow on the Mercedes SUV painted army green. The soldier manning the DShK .51 cal machine gun in the back saw them coming and jumped clear, but it was too late for the rest of them. The impact sent the Mercedes whipsawing across the road. Inside the armored SUV West barely felt it.

  The driver cut the wheel to the left, letting the trail vehicle deal with any survivors. West grabbed the handmike and depressed the talk button.

  “Coyote to Eyeball, where are they?”

  “Coyote, they are one block over, five hundred meters south of the target.”

  “You are free to engage.” West clipped the handmike into the cradle and leaned up toward the driver. “As fun as this is, I have a date, and you know how I hate being late.”

  Chapter 23

  The embassy was locked down. It was standard protocol after what happened in Benghazi. The chief of station didn’t have a choice and told Meg to get to the Gatehouse and harden up. The only backup he could arrange were a pair of French Lynx helicopters that were supposed to pick the team up from the Gatehouse.

  Meg wasn’t worried about an extraction; she was just hoping they could make it to the Gatehouse, when the first AK rounds slammed into the van.

  “Contact front!” she yelled, ducking her head.

  James was drivin
g and he jerked the wheel to the right while she brought her rifle up and turned toward the window. In the front seat Colt was yelling into the radio, “Axle 1, this is Axle 3. Where the hell are those birds?”

  A bullet hit the hood, ricocheting up and through the windshield. The driver swerved, the round buzzing angrily past him and down the center aisle, barely missing Meg’s head. It blew out the back window and Meg reached down for her helmet. Her head was between her legs when the team opened up.

  “Mad minute, mad minute!” Colt yelled.

  It was the standard operating procedure in a near-side ambush, a tactic where everyone fired even if they didn’t have a target. Each member of the team had an assigned sector and their job was to lay down a wall of lead and hopefully back their attackers off long enough for the driver to get the van clear of the kill zone. The pressure from five rifles firing as one hit Meg like an openhanded slap to the ears. Besides worrying that her eardrums might burst, she had shards of glass, expended brass, and James’s erratic driving to contend with.

  Meg brought her rifle up and was about to fire when a casing pinged off the ceiling, hit her neck, and slid down the back of her shirt. Ahhhhhh. The casing was hot and the pain scalding. She gritted her teeth and tried to shake it free instead of shooting. Her eyes weren’t off the street for a second before a man stepped out of an alley with an RPG raised and ready.

  She fired five quick shots. Meg was so intent on ducking her head to avoid getting glass in her eyes that she didn’t bother with a sight picture, and by the time she looked up she had no idea if she had even hit the target.

  You know better than that. Slow down and get a damn sight picture.

  “Watch out!” someone yelled.

  Out of the corner of her eye Meg saw another fighter run out into the street, a belt-fed machine gun at his hip. He wasn’t in her sector, so there was nothing she could do except pray that Colt was on his game.

  Staying alive in a situation like this was all about discipline and sectors of fire. Unfortunately, Meg had never trained with the team and all she had to work with was what she had done in the Army.

  Bullets punched holes in the van and snapped through the interior, carrying upholstery, plastic, and bits of glass. The back of Meg’s chair shuddered and behind the wheel James screamed in pain.

  Meg worked her sector but felt the van was slowing. They were getting hit from all sides and it seemed like behind every door and window there was a muzzle flashing at them.

  “James!” Colt yelled.

  She reloaded, and looked up front, where James was falling slowly out of his seat, his hands clawed around his neck. Bright arterial spray spurted through his fingers and splashed across Colt’s face.

  The engine shuddered and shrieked, reminding Meg of a dying horse. She knew they were screwed if the van stopped. Flipping the rifle to safe, she climbed between the seats.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, dragging James, the man she had sparred with earlier that day, from his chair.

  The wheel was slick with blood and vibrated wildly from shot-out tires. Before she could get it under control the van jumped the curb and crunched a wall with a glancing blow. Meg could barely see out the spiderwebbed windshield and it took everything she had to get the van under control.

  “Can you do something about the glass?” she yelled.

  Colt had his back turned. He was passing the dying driver to the team medic.

  “Hey”—Meg grabbed him by the plate carrier and shook it—“I need you up here, I can’t see.”

  She cautioned a quick look over her shoulder and saw Colt look at her. His eyes were wide and vacant behind the bloody mask that covered his face.

  “Colt, are you with me?” she yelled.

  He blinked rapidly and then snapped out of it and slammed the windshield with the butt of his rifle. After three hits it popped out and slid down the hood. Meg pushed the pedal to the floor, the wind hot on her face. Shredded rubber slapped against the underside of the van as she accelerated. Just keep going, she thought, instinctively pulling the seat belt on.

  The blood-spattered hula girl James had mounted to the dash bobbed back and forth with the vibrations of the van, and then it was gone, blasted to bits by a bullet.

  “Whoa.”

  Despite all the damage, the Garmin GPS suction-cupped to the “A” pillar was still mapping the route to the Gatehouse. While she knew its location, the driver had not. According to the arrow, she needed to take the next right. The Gatehouse would be less than two hundred meters away.

  “Hold on!” she yelled, letting off the gas and cranking the wheel as hard as she could manage. The rims screeched on the cobblestones and the back end started to slide. Meg manhandled the wheel, ignoring her burning biceps, and somehow she brought the van around like a ship in a storm.

  In the rear of the van one of the men screamed in pain. Meg didn’t realize she had looked back, but she must have, because when her eyes settled on the road again the last thing she saw was the sunlight reflecting off a metal plow.

  Chapter 24

  Eric Steele secured the Surefire suppressor to the H&K with a twist. He was a big fan of the company because they kept it simple. Unlike the Mark XI, which after two bullets was now just a million-dollar paperweight.

  “Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get you back to the nerds,” he said, patting the helmet before stuffing it into the assault pack.

  Three feet away the dead fighters lay face up on the ground. He bent over the bodies, ignoring the flies crawling over sightless eyes. They were Algerians and their AK-47s were brand-new, just like the jungle boots and Chicom chest rigs.

  He went through their pockets, trying to find out who they were and where they had come from. The pocket litter wasn’t much help. Together the men had a pack of gum, three condoms, and about fifty dollars American.

  Steele had no pity for them. They had tried to kill him and failed. He was on his own, and the only reason he wasn’t laid out on the ground was because he had been faster on the trigger. It was as simple as that. In combat he lived by three basic tenets. If you want to come home you have to be faster, louder, and more violent than your enemy.

  It was a lesson he’d learned many times over.

  Steele slung the H&K 416 and checked his GPS. His first stop now was the dead drop he’d instructed Breul to use in case they ever got separated. While he didn’t know why the Iranian had crossed the border on his own, he knew why Breul had come to Algiers.

  Because that’s what I told him to do.

  The spot was a low wall to the north, less than three hundred meters away. He and Breul had worked out a series of signs they’d leave on the brick with a piece of chalk, but to get there, he was going to have to cross the street.

  He stopped at the gate and peeked out, clearing as much of the danger area as he could. He was on the outskirts of the city, on the wrong side of a well-traveled road that cut through a jumble of warehouses and low-rent apartments. He needed to cross and cut through the neighborhoods to get to his target location. To his immediate left a group of fighters were posted beside a Toyota pickup with a machine gun mounted to the bed. On his right side another group of fighters had their backs to him. They were talking loudly and ambling toward the city.

  Steele waited for the machine gun to start firing before crossing the street, and halfway to the other side he ran across a fighter wearing a black Wu-Tang T-shirt and camo pants. They saw each other at the same time and Steele realized that the fighter had the drop on him. The fighter froze; Steele didn’t.

  He twisted his upper body toward the target and sent one perfect round through the man’s eyeball. The fighter dropped like a stone and Steele got off the street, moving deeper into the warren of houses that grew around him as he moved to the site of the dead drop.

  He rushed to the wall, keeping low while searching for the chalk mark that Breul would have placed on the brick if he had left something there. He found it after a few seconds of sea
rching—a white line near the bottom of the wall.

  Eric took a knee and pried the loose brick out with his knife. There was a sheet of paper enclosed in a Ziploc bag and he stuffed it in his shirt pocket, before moving deeper into the neighborhood. He used the shadows of the houses for cover and finally stopped near the corner of a one-story concrete house to check his watch. You are running out of time. Pick up the pace.

  He was about to jog off when a meaty slap followed by a pathetic whimper came from the window to his left.

  Stepping closer to the window, Steele found himself looking into a living room. Inside two men were wrestling a woman half their size to the ground. One of the fighters was on his knees near her shoulders, a toothy grin spread across his face. The woman kicked at him, and earned a slap across the face for her troubles.

  Steele heard a third voice. “I’m first,” it said. Eric tried to locate the third man, and that was when he saw the two children huddled beneath the table to his right.

  The older of the two was a boy, maybe nine or ten. His young cheeks were tear-drenched and he held his sister’s head tight to his chest.

  Demo’s warning echoed in Steele’s head.

  The only thing that matters is securing that bomb.

  But Steele was already pushing the door open with the muzzle of his rifle and stepped inside in time to hear a blade clearing leather.

  “Put this in her mouth,” the man said, handing the blade to the fighter holding her shoulders.

  He placed his knee between her legs and the woman cried out, which made the fighters laugh.

  “I like it when they fight,” the second man said, grabbing the woman’s blouse and exposing her breasts.

  Steele centered the reticle on the man’s left eye before pushing the door closed with his heel. The hinges squeaked and the fighter with the knife looked up.

  Thwap.

  The hollow point hit the man like a freight train slamming into a bowl of Jell-O and sent the contents of the fighter’s head spraying across his partner’s face. Not that Steele gave the second fighter long to figure out what was covering him. Steele put him down with his second shot, before stepping up to the third fighter and slamming the buttstock into the back of the man’s head, knocking him off the woman. The man screamed, and crumpled to the floor. Steele locked eyes with him for a split second, then put a bullet in his skull.