by Mack Maloney
He checked his watch. He still had ten minutes of artillery to be used. But where to shoot it? Everything to the north of him still had friendly personnel operating in it. Straight ahead was nothing but the demolished west side and the burning waters of the Farāh River. So he turned his eyes left, to the darkened south end of the city. Except for the two hits Ryder had delivered earlier, the blocks of warehouses had stood mute during all of this.
Hunn just shrugged and start shooting off flares in that direction.
What the hell, he thought. Maybe we can kill something interesting down there.
Ryder was enjoying himself. He’d joined Curry over the western end of the Habeeb Bridge, the roadway that, up to an hour ago, had been an escape route to Iran. It was now covered with wrecked vehicles and slick with blood. Even the snow on either side of the road was bright crimson; that’s how many people had been killed here.
Curry had been here the whole time, bombing and strafing the half-mile of dirt and asphalt that was filled with at first Al Qaeda fighters trying to escape, then leftover Taliban, then finally the city’s religious police themselves.
Hundreds tried to flee by foot and by car and truck. None of them made it. Curry had shot up several vehicles just before the road rose up and over the mountain pass. This sealed off the roadway—and everything behind it just added to the traffic jam.
After that it really was like a shooting gallery. Some chose to hide in their cars and get shot up. Others tried to run for it. But there was really nowhere to go. Certainly not in the river. Certainly not into Iran. And certainly not back into the city.
This had happened before. February 1991, the first Gulf War. On the road out of Kuwait City back into Iraq, retreating Iraqi units were slaughtered by hordes of U.S. warplanes as they were trying to escape advancing Coalition forces. Formerly known as Route 6, it had been renamed the Highway of Death.
Something very similar was going on here. All the wreckage and bodies were stark proof that the Ghosts’ bold plan had worked. Their efforts to sow confusion and chaos in Khrash had created a stampede of mooks. Cowards, really—as all terrorists were. This was where that stampede ended.
As fighting was winding down in the city itself, two of the Blackhawks crossed the river and joined in the destruction. Then Ryder showed up and began adding the last of his cannon shells and bomb load to the carnage. It was all brutal and without mercy, but no one involved ever considered bringing it to a halt. They knew if they let just one terrorist get away, that same mook might one day step on a plane with a bomb or smuggle a nuclear device into the United States and more American deaths would result. The Ghosts had a chance to kill as many terrorists as they could, here and now, and they were going to do it.
It was at the height of this mass murder that the Psyclops plane arrived.
It began flying so bizarrely above the ongoing attack that the pilots of the fighters and copters couldn’t help but take notice. Then finally the big EC-130 brought itself almost level to Ryder’s F-14. In a reverse of the first time they’d encountered each other, now it was the crew of the big four-engine plane trying to get the F-14’s attention.
Finally, the Psyclops plane pulled up beside Ryder’s fighter. Ryder looked over and saw Dow holding up a sign against the cockpit’s oversize windows.
Written in thick black letters, it simply said: Li Still Alive—maybe. Follow us. . . .
Fox and the Scramble copter had landed atop the Al Sharim berm.
Hunn and 1st Delta were still up here, and the artillery bombardment of the southern end of the city was still going on.
Fox had told Hunn the news about Li and how there was a chance she was still alive or had been before the Ghosts descended on Khrash. The problem was, information Fox had just learned from the prisoners at the bottom of the Holy Towers had led him here, to try to stop Hunn’s artillery barrage.
Their conversation was interrupted by two sounds. The dull roar of the Psyclops plane, for the first time not broadcasting any faux sounds of battle, and the high-pitched scream of an F-14’s twin jet engines. A desperate three-way communication minutes before among Murphy, the guys on the Psyclops plane, and Fox on the yellow cell phone had resulted in the EC-130 crew bringing Ryder here. Other written messages to the fighter pilot on the way over indicated that the only way he was going to learn more about Li was for him to bail out nearby and make contact with the friendlies atop the windblown Al Sharim berm.
The Psyclops plane flew over now, leading the F-14 to this meeting point. The F-14, however, came in very low over the old soccer field nearby. Its engines sounded like they were about to fall off.
“What’s that crazy bastard doing?” Fox cried. “Doesn’t he know he supposed to bail out?”
“Jesuzz!” Hunn yelled.“I think he’s trying to land. . . .”
Incredibly, the F-14 came down, wheels up, and hit the field hard. It began skidding madly, throwing up dust and sparks and leaving a trail of fire and smoke behind it.
Why the F-14 didn’t go nose over and kill Ryder outright they didn’t know. It took a long time, but finally the big battered fighter came to a screeching halt not 100 yards from the base of the berm.
The canopy popped open immediately and Ryder half jumped, half fell out. Some of the 1st Delta guys ran down the hill to help him, but Ryder was obviously operating on a different level by now. He bounded up the hill, out of breath, eyes wild.
“Li. . .,” he said, gasping. “Just tell me now.”
Screaming to be heard over the still-falling artillery shells, Fox told Ryder everything he knew about the preempted execution tape. Ryder’s face lit up; he smiled for the first time in what seemed like years.
But then Fox told Ryder his latest information, things he’d been told by the POWs found at the bottom of the Holy Towers.
“These guys we freed said they saw Li just before we came down on this place,” the DSA officer told Ryder now. “But when the Patch disappeared, he took her with him. They said he was determined to go ahead with her execution and all they were waiting for was a goddamn videotape.”
More artillery shells went over their heads.
“Here’s the problem,” Fox continued shouting to the wild-eyed fighter pilot. “These guys told me about a shit-bum TV studio here in the city where the Patch would bring his victims to execute them. The way they described this studio is exactly what Murphy saw on the execution video. And the POWs say it’s inside a white building with a red stripe running across the door. So if Li is still alive, she’s probably at this place with the Patch and God knows who else.”
Ryder was just about shaking the DSA officer now. “So where the hell is this place?” he yelled at him.
That’s when Fox’s face fell a mile. He just pointed to the southern end of town, even as the rain of artillery shells continued pummeling the place.
“Take a guess,” was all Fox said.
It took a moment for this to sink in—but then it hit. The south end of town. The place that was now being flattened. The place that Ryder himself had bombed on two occasions.
That’s when he went crazy for real.
“I’ve got to get down there!” he yelled at Fox.
Ryder started down the berm, but Fox just managed to grab him. “Wait!” he said. “There’s more you have to know. These POWs say that there’s all kinds of strange stuff down there. Really dangerous stuff.”
But it was obvious Ryder didn’t care. He unhooked Fox’s hand from his flight suit, then resumed barreling down the berm. Borrowing an M16 from one of the Delta guys, Ryder took off running, right into the storm of artillery shells still raining down on the south end of the city.
There was no way anyone was going to stop him.
“Well, that went well,” Fox said in frustration.
Not knowing what else to do, Fox climbed back aboard the Scramble copter. He was heading up to the Zabul’s mountain artillery emplacement to try to get them to stop the bombardment. But he kn
ew by the time he reached them it would probably be too late.
“Next time we do something like this,” the DSA officer told Hunn before leaving, “we’ve got to make sure everyone can talk to each other. Doing it this way is just fucking nuts!”
Inside five minutes, Ryder found himself approaching the dark center of the south end of the city. The artillery blasts were still going off all around him. He could hardly hear them; that’s how far around the bend he’d gone. But strangely, the only other real light down here was coming from the two fires Ryder had started during his improvised air strikes.
It was like running through his own version of hell. Dropping his bombs down here earlier had been purely capricious, little more than a result of the desire to kill even more mooks, a few of whom might be hiding in the shadows.
But now the thought of it—that one of those bombs might have killed Li after she had miraculously escaped death at the hands of the Patch—was burning a hole in both Ryder’s heart and his soul.
You should never have taken the ring off, he kept taunting himself, over and over, as he dodged the huge 125mm shells. You should have shot yourself when you had the chance.
Somehow, someway, he reached one of the buildings he’d bombed. This was the place that had attracted his attention after he’d spotted the glow from an acetylene torch. The fire was still hot, but at least now he was able to see inside. And thankfully it wasn’t painted white with a red stripe going across its door.
He stopped at one corner of the wrecked warehouse and looked in. Incredibly the first thing he saw was an American Stealth fighter—an F-117 Nighthawk—in pieces, smoldering on the floor. It wasn’t his bombs that had torn it apart. It had been in pieces before his attack and had obviously been in the process of being rebuilt.
How did a Stealth jet get into a warehouse in Afghanistan? Ryder had no idea. His only guess was that it had been shot down somewhere and the mooks or someone they were in cahoots with was trying to put it back together.
He moved on.
He began running again, wildly trying to find his way through pitch-black here, blazing light there, artillery shells still coming down all around him. Three blocks away, he found another building he’d hit. It was still totally engulfed in flame, but again, he could see somewhat clearly inside. Glass bottles—hundreds of them, some broken, some steaming—littered the warehouse floor. What were these things? He didn’t know. They all had Arabic writing on them, but he had no idea what the words said. However, more than a few were carrying an image he did understand: the skull and crossbones. The universal symbol for toxins.
Dirty bombs were the first two words that came to his mind.
He ran around the front of the building and was once again relieved to see that it was not painted white with a red stripe going across it.
Two for two, he thought. Neither of which looked like a TV studio. At least, he’d not killed Li.
But maybe someone else had.
He started running again. Now he had to find the building that the POW had described as the Patch’s execution studio.
All white, with a red stripe running across the door. That was the clue. But now, as Ryder was skidding through the oily streets, he was wondering if anything down here would ever be white again. Khrash had had a permanent layer of dirt on it in the first place. Now with all the smoke and debris falling, it would be hard to find a building colored anything but grimy.
But then, like an angel from above, he saw the Psyclops aircraft pass directly overhead. How they were able to find him in this maze of warehouses and storage bins he would never know. But as it streaked over him, it started dispensing flares at a furious rate. Suddenly the sky was lit up as bright as day.
It immediately came to Ryder that the airplane was trying to get his attention. The pyrotechnic display would have been hard to miss. Maybe somehow with all their high-tech gear they had spotted the building he was looking for. The flares were falling about three blocks over. He turned a complete 180 and was soon running in that direction.
Following the glow of the flares, he turned another left, ran down an alley full of burning debris and on to the next street over.
At that moment, the Psyclops plane went over again, more flares shooting out of its fuselage. It was flying very low and wagging its wings as it went over.
Ryder followed the glow again, running down two more alleys, then emerging on a much wider street. He looked to his right. Nothing but old wooden buildings. He looked to his left and saw exactly what he was looking for: a line of warehouses, made not of wood but of aluminum and tin. They were painted bright white with a red racing stripe going right down the middle of each one. The whole street was filled with them.
Amazing . . . a few seconds ago he’d been lost. Now, suddenly, he was right where he was supposed to be.
But which building was it?
Two artillery shells came down dangerously close to him, reminding him that he really didn’t have time for deep thought here. He ran over to the door of the first building and yanked it open.
It was dark inside, with extremely pungent odors drifting around. There was no electricity anywhere in the city, so there would be no lights to turn on in here. But his eye was directed to a small red bulb burning about six feet down from the open door. This might be a switch for emergency battery-powered lighting.
Ryder felt his way along the wall, finally reaching the tiny red light and pushing the switch below it. Sure enough, some very dull emergency bulbs clicked on. Ryder found himself looking at a warehouse full of one-thousand-pound aerial bombs.
But these weren’t ordinary half-tons. Printed very clearly on their nose cones, among a lot of Arabic writing, was the skull and crossbones symbol again. But that wasn’t all. Along with it was the national insignia of not Afghanistan or Iran but the armed forces of Iraq. The old armed forces, back in the Saddam days.
Son of a bitch . . ., Ryder thought, the ramifications not yet sinking in. Good thing I didn’t bomb this place. . ..
He got out of the warehouse as quickly as he could and started running again.
He reached the next door seconds later, this as another pair of artillery shells came down nearby. Just his luck that Tarik’s cousin was giving them some bonus bombardment.
This second door was unlocked as well. Ryder went in, gun first again, to find another darkened interior. He found the emergency lights again and snapped them on. And again he was confronted with a room full of bombs bearing the insignia of the “old” Iraq military. But these explosives weren’t carrying the universal toxin symbol.
Instead they bore the very distinctive black triangle with the bright yellow cut-out circular icon inside.
The universal sign for radioactive materials.
And that’s when it hit Ryder.
The missing WMD. . .
The reason for the war in Iraq.
Here it was.
But he didn’t have time to think about this now. As globally significant as it was, Ryder had something even more important on his mind.
He still had to find her. . ..
He exited the building quickly and went toward the third door. But before he could reach it, the door opened on its own and two armed men walked out. They might have been guarding the entrance; he wasn’t sure. Strangely, they were not dressed like typical mooks. They were wearing uniforms, helmets, boots. They both looked up into the sky nonchalantly, checking to see if the artillery was still coming down, as casually as someone checking on the rain.
Whoever they were, they were so surprised to see Ryder tearing down the street that he was able to kill both of them easily with a burst from his borrowed M16.
A third uniformed soldier stumbled from the doorway. Ryder nailed him with a bullet to his head. A fourth soldier stumbled over his comrade’s body, losing his weapon while falling right at Ryder’s feet.
He looked up at Ryder and screamed, “Fatah!” Mercy!. . .Ryder put a bullet through his throat.
A fifth soldier stood paralyzed at the open door to the warehouse. He shouted something in Arabic, cut short as Ryder’s bayonet ran him through. This man’s uniform he checked. It was standard issue, Iranian Revolutionary Army.
Again Ryder didn’t have the luxury to contemplate the geopolitical significance of this. He burst into the warehouse itself.
Like the first two, it was dark inside here—except for one spot, in the corner the farthest away from him. Down there he could see bright lights, like movie lights, burning as if on fire. He could also see a man, holding a large video camera; he was inserting a tape cassette. Ryder could see wires and cables and large car-type batteries. There were other people around, too, technician types. But for whatever reason, they seemed so intent on their work, they hadn’t heard the battle taking place just outside the door.
No doubt about it—he’d stumbled upon a barebones TV studio.
Ryder kept his cool and crept into the murk. The closer he got to the klieg lights, the more people he saw in the illuminated corner. At least a dozen or so, maybe more. Five were dressed in black robes and rags. They were standing in the light, in front of a black curtain that had been hung on the far wall. There was Arabic scribbling all over this backdrop. One of the men was holding a huge machete-style knife.
And on the floor in front of him, blindfolded and once again awaiting the fatal blow, was Li. The way the light was hitting her, she almost seemed aglow.
Now it really was like Ryder was in a dream, because the next thing he knew, he thought he was flying two feet off the floor. He began firing his weapon, single shots all, each round looking like it was laser guided, each bullet finding its mark among the people gathered near the camera. It was like being inside his own video game, flying toward the small army of mooks, killing each one with just one bullet apiece. At the same time, bullets were coming his way; some might have even been hitting him. But still, he kept advancing.