Six

by Charles W. Sasser

  Taggart’s eyes narrowed at sight of the bastard leader of this band of savages who beat, tortured, abused, murdered, and raped captives. Rip had never had such an urge to kill anyone before as badly as now, even if it meant his own death.

  “Askr adi sa sha sra’ana diya. Allahu Akbar!” Hakeem burst out in a single breath, furiously gesturing at Taggart. “The soldier is planning an escape. Please? Allahu Akbar. I’m a muslim. Let me out.” “You stupid shithead!” Taggart shouted at Hakeem.

  A cold smile touched Aabid’s broad face as he turned his heavy head toward Taggart.

  “Navy SEAL want to bring help? Yes?” he said in English.

  With that, he grabbed Hakeem contemptuously by his buzzard-scrawny neck and tossed him into the clutches of his accompanying guards. He favored Taggart with any icy smile before he walked out and locked the door behind him. His thorny voice carried through from outside. “Nyi cida kirdiye diy amadu. Ku cida Alaye dimin.”

  You served the infidel. Now you will serve Allah.

  “What did he say?” Rip asked Na’omi.

  Instead of answering, Na’omi gathered her girls around her like a mama hen protecting her hatchlings. She turned her back to the door and said something to the girls that made them cover their ears. Taggart then understood what was about to happen. Apparently, Aabid had little regard for cowardly snitches, no matter their origin.

  A single gunshot from outside in the town square announced Hakeem’s execution. A disturbed flock of wild guinea fowl in the forest set up a cackling uproar as the echo of the shot faded. The schoolgirls screamed in nervous unison. Na’omi pulled them closer into her inclusive embrace.

  Aabid’s sneering face reappeared, this time at the window. He thrust the barrel of his rifle through the bars, breaking out the rest of the window pane, and pointed the muzzle at Taggart’s head. The former SEAL locked eyes with the Boko Haram warlord. He would not die sniveling and groveling in the dirt.

  Something invaded Aabid’s dark eyes, a glint of unexpected fear. He broke eye contact with the SEAL. His hands shook almost unperceptively as the rifle barrel slowly lowered until the muzzle pointed at Na’omi’s bowed head.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Abandoned Village, Nigeria

  After a long pause, Aabid walked away from the window. Taggart sagged forward in relief that Aabid’s threat to shoot Na’omi had been only a bluff, a show of innate cruelty. He let his weight hang against his bound hands and the post in order to ease the strain on his legs. He remained alert, however, listening and watching for some opportunity to exploit any advantage that might arise.

  Against Na’omi’s wishes, little Esther conceded to do as Rip asked. She had real grit for a kid. Both Taggart and Na’omi sweated out the long minutes after Chido later took her from the hut on her request to use the bathroom. The little girl tossed Rip a quick look before Chido impatiently ushered her out. There was no fear in the child’s eyes now, only a steely determination to do as Rip asked so she could go home and feed her bird.

  Rip had second thoughts when Esther wasn’t returned when she should have been. Maybe he had asked too much of her. Na’omi pierced him with a withering look. Both of them had noticed the way Chido ogled the kid when he took her away. If the pervert touched that little girl … What could Rip do about it, hog-tied as he was?

  A rifle shot cracked outside, jarring Na’omi to her feet. She ran to the barred window and looked out. However, it was doubtful these thugs would waste a bullet on a little girl, especially one that had trade value. Still, when it came to those who had no regard for human life, predictability could not be relied on. Toke them up on khat and Allah and they would slaughter their own families or send four-year-olds out with suicide vests to blow up infidels.

  They might not kill Esther—yet—but there were other unspeakable things they would do to her. All Taggart and Na’omi could do now was wait it out until she returned from her mission.

  More rifle shots rang out. At the window, Na’omi flinched with each report. Her gaze out the window seeking Esther’s return never wavered. Rip soon concluded by the number of shots and their spacing that someone was target-practicing.

  Over at the edge of the forest, out of sight of the detention hut, Aabid was giving the skinny boy soldier Felix some pointers on shooting an AK-47. Kids as young as nine were fighting and dying with ISIS and other terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Apparently Felix had gotten a late start in the game and was not yet a full-blown Boko Haram soldier. After all, he had refused to join in on gang-raping Na’omi. But give him a few more months and he would be as mean and bloodthirsty as any of the others.

  At the window, Na’omi’s shoulders relaxed and her pent-up tensions released in a long exhale. The door opened and Chido pushed Esther into the hut and locked her in behind the rebar. He leered at Na’omi, who shuddered with contempt and turned toward Esther as the kid threw herself into the teacher’s arms. Esther was scared now that her mission was completed.

  McAlwain and Nick remained bunched inside themselves on the floor and gave no attention to what was going on around them. Hakeem was killed. Which of the two of them might be next?

  As soon as Chido left, Esther looked around while she absently rubbed her right arm where Na’omi had bandaged it with rags from the red headscarf. Na’omi tried to stop her from continuing her conspiracy with the SEAL. It was too dangerous. But the little girl bravely approached the bars to peer through at Rip.

  “I saw black smoke,” she whispered.

  “Where?”

  She pointed.

  Rip smiled at her. “Good job, Esther. Loosen my hands.”

  Esther hesitated. She glanced nervously at the door and at her teacher. Na’omi shook her head: Don’t do it. But what about Sama? Esther reached through the gap in the bars and struggled with the hard knots of the rope that fettered the white man’s hands. Rip caught Na’omi’s eye.

  “I need your help, Na’omi,” he said. “I need you to make eye contact with the guard. I need you to make him think you like him.”

  “No …” The thought of it made her stomach roil.

  “Listen to me, Na’omi. Think of the girls.”

  She wagged her head from side to side, her face contorted in disgust for what this man, this stranger, was asking her to do.

  “Na’omi! Esther could be next. Trust me.”

  She ran over and pulled Esther away from the bars, leaving Rip’s hands tied.

  “Why should I trust you?” she rasped. “You’re a mercenary.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Afghanistan

  Trust was the key ingredient in putting together a functioning team. Senior Chief Rip Taggart’s team boasted a reputation for being not only the best team in White Squadron but also throughout SEAL Team Six. Taggart demanded training to excellence, and he required excellence and proficiency in the field during operations. The man was a tough, hard-driving sonofabitch and he demanded his men follow that example. That kind of drive saved lives, and it pulled off successful missions.

  Graves, Caulder, and Ortiz had together completed training for Six and deployed on their first real-world Taggart-led op into Afghanistan. The mission was to capture or kill an HVT working out of the Hindu Kush; things sometimes went to shit even with the best of planning. The team found their asses caught in the proverbial crack, Murphy’s Law in action: Anything that could go wrong, would.

  The mission itself was accomplished according to briefing. Taggart, along with his three former students and a couple of other temporarily assigned operators called Tommy Hands and Mad Dog, were inserted deep into the rugged mountains along the Pakistan border. They made their way by night along goat trails to a hidden little mud-and-wattle village on the side of a green valley. Sure enough, the target was right where he was supposed to be. He resisted; he and two bodyguards ended up crumpled in one corner of a typical flat-roofed mud-brick house on the village outskirts.

  That was
when Murphy’s Law kicked in full force. Intel had not warned of a troop of Taliban fighters infiltrating across the border out of Pakistan and now spending the night in the village. Not only in the village, but some of them actually sleeping next door to the target. A fight was something you didn’t need that far off the grid.

  Hostile machine-gun fire chewed at the outside walls of the hut, trapping the team inside. The interior was as dark as the inside of a glove at midnight in a cemetery. The impact of enemy rounds kicking grit and dust from the walls made the air restricted and coarse. Sprawled in the dark on his belly, unable to see anything without NVGs, Senior Chief Taggart yelled into his radio in order to be heard above the staccato exchange of fire between his men and the attacking Taliban.

  “Viper Three-Three, this is Foxtrot Delta One. Troops in contact. Our location Building One Two. Taking fire. Multiple hostile IVO Primary Extraction Point. Break. Do you have eyes on Secondary Extract? Over.”

  A female voice responded immediately. “Delta One, Viper Three-Three. Roger, we have eyes on your hostiles. Route to Secondary Extract appears to be clear at this time. Dragon One-One is inbound.”

  Time to E&E. Taggart cued Ortiz: “Buddha.”

  Ortiz slithered across the concrete floor to the back door, wending his way through the three corpses and on past members of the team defending at the windows. Bullets entering through windows pocked dust from the mud walls and splintered the wooden door above Ortiz’s head.

  Taggart was still on the radio, acknowledging transmissions. “Roger that, Viper. Moving to Secondary Extract point now.”

  The back door was chained; the assault on the HVT had entered via the front door and a side door. Ortiz pulled a compact bolt cutter from his belt and snipped the chain.

  “Open!” he called out.

  Taggart cut contact with Air Support and led his SEALs crawling across the floor toward Ortiz. “We’re gonna get out just fine,” he assured them. “Trust me.”

  That was one of Taggart’s most-used expressions. Trust me. Caulder didn’t have to have NVGs to see the big shit-eating grin on the chief’s face.

  At the back door, Taggart made hasty assignments. “Caulder, take us out. Graves on my six. Ortiz, take rear security. Let’s go.”

  Taliban fire mostly originated from the front of the building; the hajjis hadn’t had time to organize a siege offense. Like Viper reported, the back of the house looked clear. Ortiz flung open the door. Caulder darted to the left, Taggart right, the two of them covering the flanks. Taggart tapped Caulder and pointed toward an orchard that stretched downhill in rows toward an open field several hundred meters away. So far, they confronted no direct incoming fire.

  From practice and training together, the team moved in a well-choreographed ballet into the orchard and flowed like shadows down one of the channels, every man trotting hunched over to keep his head below the top level of the stubby trees. Caulder led the way, picking out a path with the aid of his NVGs. Taggart kept pace on the right flank, Graves on his left. Tommy Hands and Mad Dog ran with Buck and Fishbait. Ortiz brought up rear security. The IR beams from their rifle sights, invisible to the naked eye, flitted from side to side.

  They heard shouting coming from back at the HVT house they had just vacated as attackers discovered their prey had slipped away. Fighters were soon in full pursuit across the orchard, the only avenue open to escape. Green AK-47 tracers streaked above the fleeing SEALs’ heads, buzzing like angry fireflies. Bullets cracked through the night and snapped into trees. Caulder flinched when a round zipped past his head so close it seemed to steal his breath. Taggart trotted along so casually he might have been out for a Sunday morning jog in the park.

  Leading the exodus, Caulder spotted movement in the trees just ahead. Detecting a shifting shadow through his NVGs, he whirled and popped off two quick rounds. There were no friendlies in this kind of environment other than your own people. The target went down with a high-pitched shriek of pain and surprise.

  Caulder froze for a beat in mid-stride to stare at the motionless body in the grass. This was his first kill. He was awed at how fast it had happened, and how easy it was to kill a man. Taggart pushed him back into action.

  The SEALs continued their controlled flight, their pathway through the orchard made negotiable only by their night-vision devices. Soon, they broke out into a grassy clearing. At that very moment, a slight figure jumped out of the trees to the right and fled across the open. Caulder, amped up on adrenaline and his previous kill, tracked the kid with his IR laser. Taggart slapped his rifle barrel aside.

  “No!”

  Caulder went weak in the belly when he realized how close he had come to killing an unarmed kid wearing only a pair of the cotton drawers common among hajji peasants. It took him a moment to get his breathing and heart under control.

  The team traversed the clearing into brush and trees on the far side and automatically dispersed into a security perimeter while Rip got back on comm. Things were moving fast—and all in their favor now.

  “Viper Three-Three,” Taggart radioed. “Delta One peasey posture at Secondary Extract. Marking our position. Break.”

  At his command, team members turned on their IR strobes to mark their location for extraction. The signals were visible only through night-vision devices. Taggart heard an approaching helicopter. Enemy shooters were also drawing near, charging out of the village and through the orchard on the team’s heels. Taggart had a little surprise for them.

  “Requesting fire mission,” Taggart radioed. “Target 150 meters north marked by IR lasers. Over.”

  He gave Ortiz the go-ahead. Buddha aimed his weapon laser sight back toward the hut from which they had just retreated and rotated it in a lazy circle that could be picked up by supporting aircraft. Thousands of feet above the earth, an unmanned Predator drone picked it up and passed the target image on to the crew of a Blackhawk gunship.

  Moments later, the gunship came in hot with its 20mm miniguns roaring like an echo of doomsday, pulsing out pearls of death at 5,000 rounds per minute, chewing up earth and billowing up clouds of dust out of which unearthly screams erupted. Satisfied, Taggart lifted his goggles onto his helmet and gazed off toward distant mountains gleaming in the moonlight. He grinned at Caulder and Graves. Damn! War could be so spectacular, so beautiful.

  “Don’t you boys just love this shit?” he said as the down-blast of a chopper’s rotors washed over them, signaling their ride up and out of here.

  A good mission was when every shooter who went out came back in. Taggart’s team unassed their Blackhawk at a field FOB. Team members had gone quiet after their pick up. That was normal after-action behavior. Out there in the midst of things, there was no time for anything other than to act and react. Reflection about it came later during the decompression cycle.

  A battery lamp illuminated cots and sleeping bags in the team’s GP large tent. Taggart paused at the tent opening to gaze back into the night. He opened his hands flat and looked at them. They remained perfectly steady. He made fists and threw all his energy into gripping them so hard that his fingernails dug into his palms. He had to make himself feel something, if nothing more than self-inflicted pain. Something.

  His hands began to shake. Maybe he was still human after all.

  Caulder flopped down on his cot and stared straight up into the flickering of light at the tent’s apex. Still amped up, he chewed gum with the speed of a piston in an engine racing downhill. One leg hung over the side of the cot, his boot nervously pounding the ground.

  Taggart walked over and stood looking down at him. “So? How’s it feel to lose your cherry?” he asked, referring to Caulder’s kill in the orchard.

  Caulder feigned nonchalance, a little Dennis the Menace mixed with Freud. “Unbelievable,” he decided after a moment’s thought. “Awesome. I mean … in the Old Testament sense.”

  “Yeah. You get to break all Ten Commandments and get away with it.”

  Graves listened in fr
om his bunk. “That’s because God’s on our side,” he decided.

  “Amen, brother,” Ortiz chirped.

  “First few times it’s like a video game,” Taggart mused. “Like Call of Duty or some such shit. When you realize the hajjis shoot back, you get even better at pulling the trigger.”

  He shifted his attention speculatively toward the open flap of the tent and the night outside that only the weak light from the lantern held at bay.

  “The hard part,” he said, as though talking to himself, “is learning when not to shoot. Like that unarmed kid back there. Watch out for the guys who can’t—or who won’t—tell the difference.”

  Caulder didn’t understand. He was still a newbie at this game. But there would come a time when he would understand.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  SEAL Command, Virginia Beach

  Buck Buckley homesteaded a stool at the end of the bar in the team house. He sagged with both elbows on the bar and stared intently at the screen of his iPad, resembling less the Miami Vice cop than a man who had just been sucker-punched in a back alley. Out on the floor, Fishbait Khan hurled darts at a corkboard on the wall displaying an image of Osama bin Laden. Each time he scored a hit, he pumped a fist and sounded off with a Marine Corps boot camp Hoo-rah! Several other White Troop SEALs sat scattered at tables playing penny-ante poker, shouting at video games, or scuttlebutting with plenty of laughter and ragging on each other.

  Fishbait did a double-take, dart in hand, when Robert “Ghetto” Chase entered with a case of Bushmills Black Bush whiskey under one arm. The team rookie crossed the room carrying his cargo and deposited it on the bar near Buckley.

  “Hey, Beer Meister,” Fishbait challenged. “Thought you didn’t drink.”

  “You frogmen fuckers drove me to it. Skipper says the Beer Lamp’s lit.”

  Fishbait lifted his palm to Heaven in supplication. “Isha’ Allah.”

  Chase hit the switch to the Wolf Head lamp. The bulb in the feminine crotch of the life-sized nudie was already burning. Fishbait slammed his last dart hard into the bull’s-eye on the forehead of Osama and joined Chase at the bar. Ghetto looked at him and pulled a bottle from the case of whiskey. He opened it, sloshed generous portions into two glasses, and handed one to Fishbait. They clinked glasses.