Six

by Charles W. Sasser

  One cop at the checkpoint was a tall, thin official in his late forties, the other younger by twenty years and shorter by several inches. They coughed and flapped their hands at the dust cloud that enveloped them from the braking truck.

  In-country roving checkpoints posed a common inconvenience for travelers. Never stationary for long, they changed locations frequently in attempts to keep smugglers and poachers off-balance. Inside the cargo truck, the Nigerian CIA asset driver traded an anxious look with his African American CIA handler.

  The senior cop hopped up on the running board to tap the muzzle of his rifle against the glass. The truck driver put on a friendly face and rolled down the window.

  “Good day, officer.”

  The younger, more nervous policeman remained standing in the road to keep a wary eye on the truck’s two passengers, his weapon at the ready.

  “Where are you heading?” the senior officer asked in heavily accented English. Although most Nigerians spoke English as a common language, not all spoke it well.

  The driver supplied his rehearsed cover story. “Cocoa factory.”

  “So what is in the truck?”

  “Bags. For the beans.”

  The official eyed the driver shrewdly, making his assessment of possibilities. “You are aware there is a toll?”

  “No.” Then he added quickly: “But I can pay it. How much?”

  The officer grinned. “How much do you have?”

  Nothing got done without palms being greased.

  The driver pulled out his wallet. The other cop on the road tipped the muzzle of his rifle upward to cover the cab’s occupants. The driver showed his hands with the wallet in them.

  “Him too,” the senior cop directed, indicating the passenger.

  The CIA handler obligingly extracted a thick roll of currency from his pocket, which inadvertently included US bills. The agent had just yesterday entered the country. The cop’s face turned suspicious.

  “American dollars?”

  Thinking fast, the driver attempted to explain. “He is with the shipping company. Just came off the boat. From America.”

  The officer wasn’t buying it, not right away anyhow. He stepped down from the running board and pointed his rifle. “Out! Both of you.”

  Tension built inside the enclosed cargo compartment as the SEALs overheard the exchange. Each man remained perfectly still, except for hands creeping onto their weapons. Caulder shook his head in exasperation. Held up by a couple of backwoods cops. Fucked up.

  The driver immediately obeyed and jumped down to the road. The black American scooted across the seat and got out behind him. Both men stood at the side of the truck with their hands lifted.

  “Officer, what is the problem?” the driver asked, striving to sound and appear as relaxed as a man could with guns pointed at him.

  As the older cop frisked the driver for weapons and contraband, he caught the anxious, inadvertent glance the man cast toward the back of the truck.

  “Ka sa ido a kansa,” he said to his partner in their native Hausa dialect, and jabbed his rifle at the other man, the passenger. Keep an eye on him.

  The junior officer stepped forward, his finger on the trigger of his rifle. The senior officer nudged the driver with his weapon. “Open the back,” he demanded.

  “Officer—”

  “I said open it.”

  That left the driver no choice. These cops, corrupt or not, meant business. The CIA man stood on the road, held in place at gunpoint, while the senior cop marched the driver to the back of the truck to unlock the double door. SEALs inside the cargo bay heard footsteps crunching on the road and got ready to confront a crisis. Killing these cops would cause an international incident. Not handling them, killing them if necessary, meant the mission failed.

  The nervous driver keyed open the lock, making as much noise as he could to alert the men inside as well as to help cover any noise they made. He looked back at the officer for further instructions. The cop motioned with his rifle for him to open it. His rifle barrel lowered momentarily as the driver in one brisk movement swung the doors wide.

  Daylight flooded the compartment, revealing what must have seemed to the stunned police officer an entire army with an arsenal of weapons all aimed directly at him. Bear Graves’s eyes bore into the policeman’s. He placed a finger to his lips. Shhhh.

  Up front by the driver’s door, the rookie cop who held the CIA handler at gunpoint was unable to see what was going on with his superior at the rear of the truck. The long quiet made him uncertain. He craned his neck, but he still couldn’t make out anything without leaving his prisoner.

  He was so preoccupied with the back of the truck that he failed to notice Caulder, who had crept around the front of the cab behind him. The muzzle of Caulder’s H&K tapped him gently behind the ear. He froze, his eyes and mouth popping wide in an expression so comical that the black CIA spook burst out laughing. Crisis averted.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Nigeria

  The cargo truck granny-geared down a secluded dirt road that erosion had gutted into deep ruts. It pulled off into a grassy clearing surrounded by forest giants and cut the engine. SEALs and support emptied into the ORP, or objective rally point. A flock of green parrots took flight while a troop of outraged monkeys hurled excrement at selected targets.

  The CIA handler and his asset remained inside the truck to keep armed watch over the two policemen from the checkpoint, who were now firmly hog-tied and out of commission until the mission was over. Team Leader Bear Graves got with the other team leader tapped for the op to coordinate with field tech support people running combat control, comm, medical aid, ISR, Intel, and other essential functions, most of whom would set up shop inside the truck.

  Afterward, Graves cut across the clearing to where Caulder and the others gathered underneath the spreading arms of a baobab tree to do stretches, inspect gear and weapons for the last time, and perform superstitious rituals they believed might keep them from harm. Bear would say a quick prayer—not now but later, just before the team went into combat mode and headed for the village where, hopefully, they would find and rescue Taggart and the others.

  “Soft timeline is to start infil at midnight,” he informed them. “Be ready.”

  The sun still rode high, just off its zenith. Operators had plenty of time to rest up and catch a few Zs before launch time.

  Bear moved on, checking and rechecking every detail, as was his habit. He and the other team leader, an angular senior chief with the unlikely nickname Mule, who, in fact, possessed that animal’s particular stubborn temperament, were going over a topo map when his radio chirped. It was their ISR platform, an AC-130 Gunship.

  “Foxtrot Delta One, this is Reaper Two-Two. Be advised four-vehicle package moving north on north-south dirt road. Appears to be heading toward target compound.”

  An Air Force combat controller looking for Bear rushed up with a Rover, a small portable laptop device with a thick antenna that provided a relay from Mission Control’s downlink with the ISR platform flying overhead at the edge of space. Bear watched two vehicles on the screen approach the village. Two other vehicles appeared to be following the first two, but at a distance so they wouldn’t be noticed.

  “Roger that, Reaper Two-Two,” Graves radioed. “I see them. Stay with the vehicles until they’re clear of the target compound.”

  Caulder joined Graves at the Rover screen. They watched the first two autos, one of which appeared to be a medium-size truck such as a Humvee, the other an SUV-type, until they disappeared underneath thick foliage that surrounded the abandoned village. Shortly thereafter, the two trailing vehicles, which on the screen looked to be either SUVs or Land Rovers, also passed out of sight in the trees. Graves and Caulder waited expectantly for the vehicles to reemerge on the uncovered section of road past the compound.

  Minutes passed. Graves’s jaw ached from gritting his teeth. Caulder rammed his fists deep into the pockets of his fiel
d cammies, his body rigid. Something was undoubtedly going down, but the SEALs had no way of knowing what until it actually happened.

  The rest of the team congregated at the Rover, including Mule and his men. Everyone in the clearing was now aware that the equation and mission might be about to change. Murphy’s Law.

  Then again, the four trucks might be merely delivering supplies and reinforcements. One factor, however, made that highly unlikely in Bear’s mind: the two trail vehicles were not with the first two and seemed to be surreptitiously tailing them.

  “Hey, do you still have them?” Bear radioed.

  “Negative. We lost them when they reached the target area.”

  Graves and Caulder locked eyes. Fuck. This didn’t look good.

  “Might not be anything,” Buddha suggested hopefully.

  “Or it could be a kill team moving in to take out the hostages,” Caulder speculated.

  Graves stuck to the radio. “Reaper Two-Two, Foxtrot Delta One. Any SIGINT or radio chatter over the target?”

  “Negative. Whoever it is, they’re keeping quiet.”

  Bear Graves felt torn between either acting now—it was his call—or the possibility of not pushing hard enough fast enough. A thin line of decision and indecision separated the two choices. He mustn’t let the fact that this was all about Taggart influence him.

  Caulder had already made up his mind. “Bear, we gotta go now. Or they’ll be gone.”

  “We’re going in blind,” Fishbait pointed out. “In daylight. With zero tactical advantage.”

  The rest of the team along with Mule’s team waited, staring at the Rover screen as though by their intensity they might make something happen.

  “Bear?” Ortiz said in a hushed voice as excruciating minutes ticked by. “Bear, it’s what we came for—for Rip, for the girls.”

  Graves nodded, as much for his own benefit and the war that waged inside himself as for the benefit of the others. There was no clear answer. There often wasn’t in this business. He pushed away from the Rover and looked around at the grim faces of the other SEALs gathered around waiting for his decision.

  “We’re going in,” he announced. “Now.”

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Abandoned Village, Nigeria

  Rip Taggart hung unconscious from the cross in the village square, among the huts and sagging fences and wrecked car hulls and debris of a community that had died and its corpse reanimated but never brought quite back to life. The boy soldier Felix and a number of other Boko Haram loitered about in the wreckage like cockroaches in a deserted house. Some of them chewed khat to alleviate their existence, others napped in the shade of the hovels or sat entertained by the SEAL’s ordeal, watching him slowly die. For this infidel, as for all infidels, there would be no seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Allah would surely send him to Hell.

  In the afternoon when the sun was at its hottest, Felix and a few other ragtag fighters upon Aabid’s orders hacked through the SEAL’s bindings and let him fall to the ground. Felix and one of the others each grabbed a leg and dragged Rip across the square to the detention hut and dropped him inside with barely a glance at Na’omi and her three frightened little girls.

  As soon as the guards were gone, Na’omi ran to Rip with a cry of distress, thinking him dead or dying. Their captors no longer bothered to lock the rebar door that divided the hut. She dropped at Rip’s side and cradled his head in her arms, crying softly from relief to discover that he lived. Esther brought a gourd of stagnant water from which Na’omi washed his sunburned face and helped him drink. She shook him gently in a desperate attempt to revive him.

  “Wake up, Richard, wake up!”

  Abruptly, Rip inhaled mightily and tried to sit up. “The girls?”

  She rested a calming hand on his chest. “They’re here,” she said. “They’re safe.”

  Little Esther brought more water and sat on Rip’s other side clasping his hand.

  Vehicles suddenly arrived in the square, engines gunning. Na’omi stiffened. “Listen!”

  Rip attempted to concentrate as car doors opened and slammed and the square bustled with activity and excitement. He heard voices raised and orders barked. Booted feet raced about. He forced himself to his feet with the help of Na’omi and Esther. Blood- and sweat-stained, his energy sapped and his heart racing from deprivation and exposure, he nonetheless remained resolute to resist the best he could to protect this woman and her little girls.

  They heard men approaching and glimpsed movement outside through cracks in the hut’s walls. The door opened and Aabid’s long-limbed form stood in the doorway silhouetted against the sun.

  “Your new owners have arrived,” he announced.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Nigeria

  For Bear Graves, there was something eerie about the way things were going down. The discarded village lay on a little-used road with a cutoff to the oil refinery. The main route continued on through and past the village into the virtually unpopulated interior dominated by the Okomu National Park. Nothing about the abandoned village should have attracted traffic—unless visitors had specific business with Boko Haram.

  That was what troubled Bear. The first two vehicles—the SUV and what appeared to be a Humvee—were barreling straight to the village when they inexplicably vanished from ISR view and failed to reappear on the road leading out. Same thing for the other two vehicles that appeared to be tracking the first two from a distance. They also vanished beneath jungle canopy. Whatever was going on, Bear was willing to bet a month’s pay that it had something to do with Rip Taggart and the other hostages—and it wasn’t for their betterment.

  Unlike conventional armies that relied upon numbers and force of weaponry, US SpecOps depended upon the stealth, surprise, and striking power of small, highly trained, and resourceful bands to conduct specialized warfare close-up and dirty. White Squadron SEALs saddled up and immediately fragmented into two attack elements as they departed the ORP in order to close on Boko Haram from separate quadrants that provided an interlock of overwatch and mutual security. Senior Chief Mule and his team would circle wide and come in from the left flank while Bear and his team took a fast, straight-in approach. The truck and most support remained camouflaged on-site at the ORP, with the exception of pararescuemen and a few other vital assets. Medevac helicopters stood by on-call at the warehouse staging area outside Lagos with the acquiescence of the Nigerian government.

  Broad daylight provided less than optimum conditions for maneuvering on an enemy. SEALs normally are night fighters, but the approach of the mystery vehicles and the possibility of their being a hostage kill team had persuaded Senior Chief Graves to act promptly. He hustled his team cross-country through rugged terrain furred with tropical rain forest and gashed by gullies and tumbling streams. Caulder took first point on a tactical southeasterly azimuth calculated to break the team out on the village outskirts in about two hours. Senior Chief Mule and his element would be arriving shortly thereafter on the flank prepared to cover in the assault.

  Team members required little urging to keep up the pace. This might be their last and only chance at rescuing their former troop leader. As the team scrambled up the brushy side of a ravine, Buddha Ortiz’s injured knee gave way and he slipped and fell.

  “Motherfu—”

  Graves glanced back, concerned. Buddha sprang to his feet.

  “I’m good.”

  Caulder on point shot up a hand and called a listening halt. He thought he heard gunfire in the distance, but soon concluded it must be monkeys foraging in the trees and the roar of a nearby waterfall. The forced march continued.

  On another listening halt, Caulder looked around. “Where’s Chase?”

  “On your one,” Fishbait said. He nodded to where the SEAL running flank stood frozen almost in midstride at the top lip of a ravine.

  Chase recovered and signaled for patrol leader up. Bear Graves made his way forward while Chase remained riveted to a horrific s
ight he had come upon. A dead, partly-decomposed African man, noose around his neck, hung from a tree branch ten feet off the ground. He had been stripped naked and both hands chopped off. Below at his feet in a single scorched pile lay the charred remains of a woman and two small children who appeared to have been burned alive.

  Since this area largely lacked population, it was Bear’s guess that the man may have been an employee of the nearby refinery who had somehow gotten crosswise of the local Boko Haram cell and been left here with his family like so much discarded spoiled meat as a warning. Carrion eaters and insects squabbled over what was left.

  Chase’s stomach roiled with revulsion, disgust, and rage at the young SEAL’s first actual face-to-face encounter with the atrocities for which the world’s terrorists were capable. Harvard had not prepared him for anything like this. It struck him with awful clarity why his teammates might be so cavalier about killing Jihadists. A hand squeezed Ghetto’s shoulder. “Gotta keep moving,” Buckley said gently. “Bastards have gotta pay for this.”

  You got that right, Chase thought as they moved on. Buckley cut a last look at the grisly scene before he fell back into patrol formation.

  As Bear’s team neared the outskirts of the abandoned village, whose rusted and damaged rooftops became visible through the forest, he set an overwatch element. Half the team “leapfrogged” forward while the other half held and covered. Cover then leapfrogged forward and through the first froggers, who held cover. This maneuver continued until contact or an enemy area was cleared.

  Caulder and Graves exchanged meaningful looks. Things were too damned quiet. The village materializing ahead appeared to be as it was advertised—abandoned. Graves sorted through several possibilities: the terrorists had gotten wind of their presence and fled with the hostages; the terrorists had murdered the hostages and fled; terrorists had not been here in the first place; or a trap was being laid. Whichever it was, the four vehicles that had seemingly vanished as they converged on the village had to be at the crux of it.