Sand and Fire (9780698137844)

by Young, Tom

  DEAREST BERNADETTE,

  JUST A NOTE TO SAY I LOVE YOU. I DON’T KNOW WHEN THEY’LL SEND ME HOME, BUT I THINK IT WILL BE SOON. FEELS GOOD TO BE FREE. I’M OK, NOT HURT. DOCS WANT TO DO MORE TESTS, AND SHRINKS AND INTEL PEOPLE WANT TO DEBRIEF ME. SO SORRY TO PUT YOU THROUGH ALL THIS. ARE YOU OK? TELL THE GIRLS AND GRANDPA I SAID HELLO.

  A.E.

  Blount wanted to tell her more, but he decided that would have to wait. He always took care not to discuss anything that could harm OPSEC—operations security—and he knew the e-mail from here was monitored. He also didn’t want some stranger seeing his most personal feelings toward his wife. Bernadette would appreciate just getting an e-mail that said anything; it would reconfirm that he was all right, prove she didn’t just dream his phone call last night.

  At three o’clock, Blount went to the briefing room near the operations center. Lieutenants, captains, and NCOs sat in rows of folding chairs. A computer and a projector rested on a table at the front of the room, and beyond the table stood a pull-down projector screen. Blount’s company commander, Captain Privett, offered a handshake.

  “Damn it, Guns,” Privett said, “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.”

  “Same to you, sir.”

  “But what are you doing here, man? Get some rest.”

  “I just got about eleven hours of sleep. I’m good. Wanted to see what was going on.”

  “Well, you probably know more than me.”

  A sergeant major called the room to attention, and the battalion commander entered. Blount recognized him: Lieutenant Colonel Dixon. Loudon came in behind Dixon. Parson and Gold followed, along with that Kenyan officer, Major Ongondo.

  “At ease, people,” Dixon said. “Can we get someone to lower the lights?”

  A Marine at the back of the room flipped a switch to turn off the front row of lights, darkening the projector screen. Loudon tapped at the computer. A still photo from an aerial video came on the screen. The image showed a grouping of tents and primitive buildings. The surrounding terrain was marked by gullies and dunes. Wording at the lower right-hand corner of the image read SECRET.

  “Devil dogs,” Dixon said, “Lieutenant Colonel Loudon has worked with air assets to put this mission together, so I’ll let him take it from here.”

  “Thank you,” Loudon said. “This briefing is classified secret. Welcome to Operation Iron Maul.”

  “Oo-rah,” someone said.

  Blount liked the mission’s name. Reminded him of using a maul to split wood back before everybody bought a hydraulic splitter. You’d pound in a steel wedge by swinging an iron hammer as hard as you could. Best workout in the world.

  “Based on a combination of human intelligence and aerial surveillance, the terrorist leader Sadiq Kassam is assessed to have encamped at this location just north of the Libyan village of Al-’Uwaynat,” Loudon continued. “He has obtained chemical weapons left over from the Gadhafi regime, and he may also have received weapons from Syria.”

  So that’s where he was going when he wasn’t cutting off Farmer’s head, Blount thought.

  “We have with us Colonel Michael Parson from the Air Force, Ms. Sophia Gold from the UN, and Major Ongondo from African Union forces,” Loudon said. “They’re going to tell you how we know all this.”

  Parson rose to his feet and pointed to the screen.

  “This image came from a video feed from an RQ-4 Global Hawk,” Parson said. “In a second I’ll ask Lieutenant Colonel Loudon to play the video. If you watch carefully, you’ll see this camp doesn’t seem to have any women or children in it. Go ahead and play it, Bill.”

  Loudon tapped his keyboard and the video began moving. Sure enough, Blount saw a bunch of bearded men. Most carried weapons. The video ended and Parson continued.

  “This RQ-4 is marvelous technology,” Parson said. “I’m an old Air Force guy, and I love me some planes and drones and satellites.”

  The Marines chuckled, and Parson went on.

  “But all those machines are just expensive toys unless we know where to send them,” Parson said. “That’s when human intelligence comes in—‘humint,’ as we call it. Making connections, getting people to trust you, understanding life on the ground. I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine who specializes in that sort of thing.”

  Parson explained that Sophia Gold had spent most of her adult life as a linguist in the Army, and that she once talked a senior Taliban commander into ratting out a bad guy.

  “That takes talent,” Loudon said. More laughter from the Marines. Gold took the floor. She wore khaki tactical trousers with a black nylon belt, and she’d looped a checkered Afghan scarf around her neck.

  “A few days ago,” she said, “at a UN camp in Algeria, we encountered a group of three Tuareg refugees: two boys and a man. One of the boys said his uncle had delivered grain and vegetables to ‘soldiers of God’ at an encampment near Al-’Uwaynat. At first they were afraid to talk, and with good reason. But once we got them here to Mitiga, they felt safe enough to open up.”

  Gold went on to credit Major Ongondo and a Tuareg teenager for the whole thing. They will have performed a great service, she explained, if this stops another chemical attack. She asked Ongondo if he wanted to say a few words.

  The major stood, faced the seated Marines, and said, “Ms. Gold gives me far too much praise. I will say only that I thank you for helping stop these men from using terrible weapons against civilians. Our brothers in Nigeria have a proverb: ‘Ashes fly back into the face of him who throws them.’”

  “Damn straight,” Parson said. Gold, Parson, and Ongondo took their seats, turning the briefing back over to the Marine officers.

  “Analysts now believe Kassam keeps at least part of his weapons cache at the location you saw on the screen,” Loudon said. “All personnel at this target are considered hostile. The Air Force plans to hit it tomorrow with what they call ‘agent defeat’ weapons.”

  Loudon changed the slide to show a B-2 stealth bomber. He explained that the B-2 would hit Kassam’s lair with CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapons. PAWs destroyed targets through kinetic energy rather than explosions, which made them ideal for wiping out a chemical weapons cache. Less chance of spreading a toxic cloud.

  “The bomb opens up and releases a bunch of penetrator rods,” Loudon said. “Think of it like hitting a target with a whole lot of big bullets. I know you guys can relate to that.”

  Laughter rippled through the room. Now the mission’s name made even more sense to Blount. Strike the enemy with solid metal.

  “Our job is simple,” Loudon said. “At a safe distance from the target, we will set up a blocking force. Any bad guys manage to get out of the objective area, we take ’em down. We’ll also lase the target for the B-2. As you might imagine, we will do all this in MOPP Four.” He added that once the bomber exited the battle space, the French would provide air support with their Mirages.

  Loudon changed the slide again. The new image was all text. At the top, it read BPT. That meant, be prepared to do the following. The bullet statements read:

  Establish blocking force

  Kill/capture enemy personnel who escape target area

  Conduct bomb damage assessment

  Maybe a little tricky in execution, but simple in concept. Take away the bad man’s toys. Blount loved it. Ivan and Farmer would have loved it, too, Blount thought.

  He remembered his grandfather’s words about not letting revenge burn you up. But this wasn’t fury-blinded vengeance; this was a Marine Corps mission. Blount wanted in. He waited to speak to Loudon after the briefing ended.

  “Sir,” Blount said, “I’d like to go.”

  Loudon stared at him.

  “Are you serious?” Loudon said. “Your mission now is to get debriefed and to rest up. You know that.”

  “Yes, sir, and I’ll do all that.
But I want to go with you tomorrow.”

  “Gunny, I think that shit they slimed you with is messing with your mind.”

  Blount didn’t appreciate that remark. He didn’t expect to get treated like a hero for wanting to go. But he did expect to get taken seriously.

  “Sir, due respect. Don’t patronize me.”

  Loudon turned his gaze down to the floor like he knew he’d said something wrong, then looked up at Blount again.

  “I’m sorry, Guns. I didn’t mean it that way. Let’s talk outside.”

  The two men stepped out of the briefing room and sat on a wooden bench outside the ops center. Starlings twittered on a nearby satellite dish. In the distance, a KC-135 glided toward a landing.

  “I had to listen to what they did to Farmer,” Blount said. “I didn’t see it but I heard it. I had to leave behind a good man in the Legion because he got killed helping us escape, and we couldn’t carry him through the desert. And I saw what that poison did in Sigonella to my old platoon commander.”

  Loudon watched Blount speak, then looked out across the air base. Dug the toe of his boot into the gravel at their feet.

  “I understand you want payback,” Loudon said. “I would, too, in your boots. And I admire what you want to do. But the Marines are a big brotherhood. You don’t have to do everything yourself.”

  “I know, sir. But I want to be part of this one.”

  “What if something happens to you, after all you’ve been through? How would we ever tell your wife?”

  That made Blount pause. He worried about that, too. Before he could respond, he noticed something moving in the gravel. A camel spider nearly as wide as his palm crawled through the rocks toward the bench.

  “I been thinking about that,” Blount said. “But I figured something could happen when I get back to the ship. Something could happen on the flight home. I could have a wreck turning into my driveway. If I wanted to be safe all the time, I’d work in an ice-cream store. And then somebody’d rob the place and shoot me. Ain’t no such thing as safe. But taking out Kassam will make the world a little less dangerous.”

  Part of Blount’s mind knew his words rang a little hollow. Let me go on a mission because it’s dangerous everywhere? A thin rationalization, maybe. But he couldn’t come right out and say he needed vengeance.

  “Gunny, this is a highly unusual request,” Loudon said. “It’s not even up to me.”

  The camel spider reached the bench and began climbing.

  “Sir,” Blount said, “can you at least ask?”

  “I don’t know. I think if—”

  On the seat of the bench now, the camel spider began crawling toward Blount. Blount unsnapped the sheath holding his World War II KA-BAR. He withdrew the knife. Made a quick downward stab.

  The blade stuck upright in the wood. Impaled the spider.

  CHAPTER 36

  In the early-morning darkness, four Super Stallion helicopters lifted off from Mitiga. Stars strewn across the North African sky shimmered like a luminescent mist. Blount rode in the lead aircraft, Loudon beside him. The Corps had granted permission for Blount to take part in this op, but only if he remained with Loudon and the command element. Loudon and his staff would observe the attack from a rise several hundred meters from the target, and they’d issue orders and call in air support as needed.

  Blount would have preferred to get closer, to join one of the fire teams encircling Kassam’s hideout. But higher-ups had decided Blount’s direct knowledge of Kassam and his henchmen could provide good input to Loudon and Loudon’s ops officer. Perhaps he could identify Kassam—dead or alive—after the air strike. The thought of the terrorist leader in cuffs or a body bag filled him with expectation.

  Blount appreciated the chance to see this thing through to the end, even if seeing was all he’d get to do. And he had to admit this made a lot more sense than sending him into the middle of what Marines called “the point of friction.” His family had gone through enough already. The Corps had public relations to consider, too. Blount’s name would soon appear all over the news—the Marine who escaped his chains to free his buddies and kill the bad guys. Couldn’t let him take crazy chances now.

  “Thanks for this, sir,” Blount shouted over the noise of rotors and engines. “I reckon you went out on a limb for me.”

  “Yeah, I did, Gunny,” Loudon said. “If you get hurt, I’ll kill you.”

  Blount nodded. He shifted in his seat, checked his gear again. He still carried the M16 he’d brought with him on the first mission, but he wore a brand new MOPP suit. The gas mask rested in a carrier on his side. Night vision goggles, now in the stowed position, added weight to his helmet. The other men wore the same equipment, and they gripped an assortment of weapons—including many for hitting bad guys at a distance: An AT4 rocket. An M40 sniper rifle. An M107—a semiautomatic .50 caliber monster. The M107 gunner had loaded his weapon with Raufoss rounds, incendiary projectiles with a tungsten core, capable of setting cars on fire. And one Marine assigned to Loudon’s command element had a laser designator to provide pinpoint guidance for the bombs from the B-2 aircraft.

  All that weaponry made him want to use some of it. He felt like a bullet with a hang fire—the cartridge primer popped and sizzling but delayed in igniting the powder. The round had to go off, but when and how?

  Blount looked over his equipment one more time, and he saw something he’d not noticed earlier. Some kind of stain marred the receiver of his M16. He looked closer and realized it was a bloody thumbprint. His own, judging from the size. Whose blood? Maybe Ivan’s. Maybe Rat Face’s. Maybe even Farmer’s. In an instinctive reflex to keep his weapon clean, he wiped away the stain. Now he wanted even more to see destruction visited on his tormentors.

  By the green glare of a penlight, Loudon studied his objective area diagram. The chart trembled with the vibration of the aircraft as Blount looked on. From the contour markings, he could tell the terrain did not lie as flat as the area where he’d been held captive. This land featured hills and outcroppings, some fairly steep but not high.

  Loudon wore a headset, and he pressed a talk switch to speak with the chopper crew. Blount, without a headset on this flight, could not monitor the conversation, but an announcement from Loudon told him the subject matter.

  “Five minutes to refuel,” the lieutenant colonel shouted. “Gonna get a little bumpy.”

  Blount looked forward toward the cockpit. With the unaided eye, he could see only the soft glow of NVG-compatible lighting on the instrument panels. Nothing visible out the windscreen. But when the helo began to turn a few minutes later, Blount pressed a release lever and clicked his NVGs into place. The black night turned to a glimmering green, with the bulk of an Air Force HC-130 directly in front of the Super Stallion.

  Just as Loudon had warned, the helicopter began to bounce in the HC-130’s wake turbulence. A pair of hoses extended from the airplane’s wings, a funnel-like drogue at the end of each hose. Blount’s stomach began to churn just a little, the effect of the irregular motion. Other than that, he felt pretty good. He’d slept well until alert time, and whatever the exposure to toxins had done to his body, the effects seemed to have worn off, at least for now.

  Even without a headset, Blount noted the cross talk on the radios and interphone. Some of the fliers had their headphone volumes turned up loud enough for Blount to catch tatters of conversation. He could not make out the words, but he could just barely hear the short syllables, the static-scraped phrasings of technical procedure. Voices devoid of all emotion, conveying nothing except command and response. The sound of long study and training.

  A drogue loomed large in the windscreen, and the helicopter’s refueling probe eased into it. The gurgle of fuel flowing through lines joined all the other noises of wind, engines, and electronics.

  Blount and Loudon both checked their watches. The refuel had come righ
t on time, and this mission depended on precision timing. The blocking force needed to get into position only minutes before the bomber strike, so as not to alert the enemy. The B-2 could not release its weapons without a call that the choppers had cleared the airspace. And the Mirages could offer no support to the men on the ground until the B-2 was gone.

  After several minutes on the hose, the Super Stallion broke contact with the tanker. As soon as the helo banked out of the wake turbulence, the ride became smoother. Blount turned off his NVGs to save the batteries. He might need them one more time, at landing, and after landing he’d switch them off for good. The air strike would take place in morning nautical twilight. That first hint of sunrise would wash out night vision goggles.

  The other choppers refueled, and the formation made a final turn on course to the objective. The men spoke little as the aircraft neared the target. The gunners manned their weapons, belts of ammunition curving from the breeches like metallic serpents.

  For the remainder of the route, Blount tried to let his mind enter a neutral place. He had a lot of strong feelings to keep at bay right now if he wanted to think like a professional, especially after seeing the blood on his rifle. He sought not to go blank or tune out, but rather to leave all his channels open so his training could kick in quickly for any given problem. As a student of the martial arts, he was reminded of drills when he had to close his eyes and wait for a classmate’s mock attack. No point in anticipating what was coming; that could lead you to do the wrong thing and get your butt kicked. He forced himself into a kind of silence, but it was the silence of a shark gliding the depths: a lot of potential power that might get set off unpredictably. Just stay loose and alert, he told himself. Breathe deep. Battle Zen.

  The sound of wind and rotors shifted into a different key, and the Super Stallion began to descend.

  “Three minutes,” Loudon shouted.

  The Marines straightened in their seats, prepared to exit the helicopter in the order assigned. Blount turned his NVGs back on.