Gray Genesis

by Alan McDermott

  As Gray approached Russell’s office, the captain strode out through the door. ‘Follow me. We’re going to see Durden.’

  That put paid to any hopes of reinforcements. Visiting Durden meant only one thing— another mission. Gray silently cursed. His men were close to exhaustion. They’d been out every night for fifteen days, clocking up over a hundred kilometres on foot. If they didn’t get some R & R soon, their ability to function efficiently would be severely impaired.

  ‘Please tell me you’ve got some good news on reinforcements.’

  ‘Three days,’ Russell told Gray. ‘They’re shipping via Incirlik this time.’

  ‘Great. Any chance me and the boys can have a few days off once they get here?’

  ‘No problem,’ Russell assured him. ‘I’ll sort something out.’

  ‘Thanks. Did Durden say what this was all about?’

  ‘They’ve located the Dagher woman—looks like you’re going in to get her.’

  Gray perked up. The only thing he wanted more than a sumptuous meal and a week in bed was to get his hands on that woman. She was responsible for many deaths, including, he suspected, those of Josh Miller and his patrol.

  ‘Let’s just hope it’s a ‘dead or alive’ deal, ‘cos I know which I’d prefer.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Russell told him, ‘but that’s not my call.’

  When they got to Durden’s office, they found that Balmer and Bridges were already there. The American captain made a show of looking at his watch, then at the British pair. Gray ignored him.

  ‘What do we have?’ Russell asked the CIA officer.

  ‘Miriam Dagher’s location,’ Durden said, rising from his desk and walking over to a wall map. ‘She’s here, thirty miles from the Pakistan border. It’s a small village, no more than twenty dwellings.’ From his desk, he picked up two files and gave them to the senior officers. ‘As you’ll see from the satellite imagery, there are just five people in the house marked with the big X. That’s where she’s being held.’

  Russell opened the file and saw the photo taken from miles above the planet. The blurred outlines of five white figures could be clearly seen against the dark background.

  ‘How come we’ve never had this type of intel before?’ Gray asked. ‘Up until now, we’ve been given a location by some shady character and worked from that.’

  ‘None of the other targets have been high enough on the JPEL to warrant it,’ Durden told him. ‘This bird was only launched eight days ago and is supposed to be over Russia right now, but JSOC had it moved to watch over her. We have to go in tonight and bring her home.’

  ‘Why not just bomb the bitch?’ Balmer asked. ‘Drop a couple of Hellfires on her head… job done.’

  ‘We need her alive,’ Durden told him. ‘That’s non-negotiable.’

  ‘We can’t guarantee that,’ Russell said. ‘Things happen in battle—the situation is fluid. A stray round, misplaced grenade, things can go tits-up pretty quickly.’

  ‘Then you’d better make sure it doesn’t. She has to get out alive, and that comes direct from the oval office. If we wanted ‘maybe’ or ‘might’, we’d have got the Albanians to do it. You guys are the best on the planet, so either tell me you’ll bring her home, or I’ll have you relieved and find someone else who can.’

  The captain was right; a multitude of things could happen during the operation, many of them out of Gray’s control. However, he wasn’t about to step aside to let someone else go in his place. It would be the ultimate humiliation, one that would see him kicked out of the army for good. While he planned to leave anyway, once Dina became pregnant, he’d prefer to do so with a pension. More importantly, he’d lose the respect of his only friends. His reputation in the service would be tarnished forever, and he could kiss goodbye to any chance of making a name for himself in the private security market. Though the clincher was his own pride—it would never allow him to walk away from a challenge.

  ‘We’ll get her out,’ Gray said.

  Balmer nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ll bring her back.’

  ‘Good,’ Durden said. ‘And if you’re thinking of concocting a story about her catching an unfortunate bullet, don’t bother. If you don’t bring her back in one piece, you’ll spend the rest of your lives in Fort Leavenworth. And no interrogation. You don’t so much as ask her how she feels, you got that?’

  Both men acknowledged that they understood the instructions, but something didn’t sit right with Gray. Over the years he’d been on a few snatch missions, but the brief had always been to bring them back alive ‘if possible’. Now he was being asked—told—to put Dagher’s life before him and the team.

  This was all supposition, though. Dagher had to actually be there before Durden’s orders came into play.

  ‘What’s the source?’ Gray asked the spook.

  ‘That’s classified.’

  ‘Classified?’ Gray had never heard that one before. Vague hints at elint—electronic intelligence—or humint—human intelligence—but never classified.

  ‘Need to know,’ Durden added, ‘and that’s all you need to know.’

  The mission was getting stranger by the minute, but Gray knew he wouldn’t get answers here.

  ‘We’ve had a drone up for the last few hours,’ Durden said, changing the direction of the conversation, ‘and we’ve spotted just two hostiles. They alternate; one inside the house, one patrolling outside. We don’t expect that to change by the time you go in.’

  ‘When will that be?’ Balmer asked him.

  ‘Zero-two-hundred. I’ll leave the team structure and roles to you guys, but the chopper will be ready at zero-one-hundred, and a Predator and AC-130 will be on station throughout. The satellite will be overhead at all times, so we’ll have a real-time view of the operation. All eyes will be on you.’

  Gray wasn’t expecting that, either. Normally he had to beg for air support, and the answer was usually ‘if it’s available at the time’. This time, they would have a drone stuffed with Hellfire missiles and a Hercules gunship boasting more firepower than the average battle tank watching over them. On top of that, they would be able to see if anyone put a bullet in Dagher.

  It seemed like a hell of a lot of effort and resources to find one person. It was certainly more than had been available to tackle the Taliban leadership.

  ‘Why do you want her alive so bad?’ Gray couldn’t help asking.

  ‘We want all our targets alive,’ Durden glared at him, ‘but you guys much prefer to bring us bodies instead. As I said, though, this comes from the president. Fuck this up, you answer to him.’

  Russell slapped Gray on the arm with the file, then nodded to Durden and Bridges. ‘Captain, let’s meet at nineteen-hundred hours to discuss.’

  Gray followed his CO out the door and after walking ten yards, he leaned towards him and whispered.

  ‘Was it just me, or was that strange as hell?’

  ‘Lots of unanswered questions,’ Russell agreed. ‘My guess? They want what’s inside her head.’

  ‘The virus,’ Gray said. He suspected that his earlier thoughts about the US and British wanting to weaponise the virus for their own use was bang on the money. ‘You think the government would use it on our own troops?’

  Russell shrugged. ‘I’d like to think not, but when you consider the cost implications…’

  That would no doubt be a huge factor. It takes months just to get through basic training, during which time the troops have to be housed and fed. If that could be cut to a few weeks, the savings would be immense. No right-minded politician would turn their nose up at that.

  ‘Don’t dwell on it too much,’ Russell added. ‘Just go there and do your job. I’ll see you at seven.’

  The captain split off to return to his office while Gray went to pass on the news to the rest of his patrol. He found them preparing to head for the DFAC.

  ‘Good news and bad news,’ Gray told them.

  ‘Good news first,’ Smart said.
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br />   ‘Our replacements will be here in three days. The boss is sorting a few days off.’

  ‘About time,’ Sonny sighed. ‘Please tell me the bad news is that the chef ran out of liver.’

  ‘You wish,’ Gray said. ‘We’re going out again tonight.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Smart asked.

  ‘With Balmer,’ Gray told him, earning groans all round. ‘We’re going to pick up the Dagher woman.’

  ‘They found her? Excellent!’ Sonny produced a deck of cards from his footlocker and offered them to Gray. ‘Cut.’

  ‘We’ve no time for card games.’

  ‘No, it’s to see who gets to slot her. The bastards who killed Josh’s brick must have been given her virus. It’s only fair that one of us does it.’

  ‘Not gonna happen. They want her back alive.’

  ‘Yeah well… things happen in the heat of battle,’ Levine pointed out.

  ‘Not this time,’ Gray said. ‘They’ll have eyes on us throughout. Durden basically told me that if we don’t get her out alive, we might as well not come back. That came from the very top.’

  ‘Someone wants her virus,’ Smart said.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ Gray agreed. ‘Maybe the PM wants to even things up by giving it to us, too.’

  ‘Why bother?’ Sonny asked. ‘There’s plenty of performance-enhancing drugs around, but they’re not routinely given to troops. Why start now?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Levine added. ‘There’d be a political shitstorm if word got out that we were injecting our own men with this thing.’

  ‘Then maybe they want it for something else,’ Gray conceded, ‘but all I know is they don’t want her in a body bag.’

  ‘How did they find her?’ Smart wanted to know.

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Classified,’ Gray said sarcastically.

  Chapter 26

  No-one spoke as they flew south. Enough had been said during the hour-long briefing.

  It hadn’t been a cordial gathering by any means. The target building consisted of one storey and six rooms, so there was no need for all eight men to go in, especially as they would have a real-time infra-red feed from overhead and could pinpoint the locations of the enemy. Both Gray and Balmer wanted to spearhead the assault while the other team remained on the fringes to provide cover, with Gray arguing that in Sonny they had the best available—he was a CQB instructor at Hereford. Balmer had countered that his team had more missions under their belt. Not even the intervention of Bridges and Russell could break the deadlock, and in the end they’d drawn straws to see who would go in for Dagher.

  Gray had won, though Balmer had been quick to sour his victory.

  ‘If this goes to shit, it’s your ass on the line,’ he’d said.

  With just minutes before they touched down, the weight of the responsibility was sitting heavily on Gray’s shoulders. He told himself that all he could do was perform his duties as he had many times before, with professionalism. If the gods of war decided to deal him a shitty hand, so be it.

  ‘Two minutes,’ the crew chief said.

  Gray checked his magazine for the umpteenth time, then stood and walked to the rear of the chopper. Through the green tint of the NVGs, he watched the ramp drop, revealing a dark canvas dotted with stars. The moment the bird hit the ground, he was out running. He threw himself to the dirt twenty yards from the helicopter and pointed his weapon into the night. Seconds later, the chopper took off once more, and Gray waited for silence to descend before performing a radio check. The other seven members of the team acknowledged that they were good to go.

  ‘Balmer, you take point. Sonny, you’re tail-end Charlie.’

  It was forty minutes before the village came into view. They’d approached from the north, then tacked east to get a better angle on the building that Dagher was known to be in. There was now only one house between them and the target.

  They crouched down four hundred yards from the nearest dwelling. Gray took out his poncho and took a knee next to Balmer. He put the waterproof coat over their heads and took out the tablet Durden had given them. After powering it on and waiting for it to load, Gray clicked on the icon that connected them to the satellite feed beamed from over a thousand miles above. There were five heat signatures coming from the building where Dagher was thought to be, as was the case earlier that day. Three of them looked to be sleeping, while one was in a sitting position and the last was walking slowly outside in the garden. Gray zoomed out a little to take in the surrounding area.

  ‘Looks quiet,’ Balmer said.

  It did, but Gray knew how quickly situations could change. ‘Okay, keep me updated on movements. We’ll go in three minutes.’

  ‘Don’t fuck it up.’

  It was as close to a ‘good luck’ as Gray was going to get. He crawled out from under the poncho and gestured for his team to gather around.

  ‘We go in three,’ Gray told them. Sonny, Smart and Levine all nodded. They were ready, having gone over the assault a dozen times before boarding the chopper. Each knew his task, and Gray gave them a final update before they set off.

  ‘Good to go,’ Balmer said in Gray’s ear. He would feed live updates throughout the mission which would be crucial if they were to avoid turning this into a firefight.

  Gray tapped his mic twice in acknowledgement, then stood and walked towards the village.

  ‘Still clear,’ Balmer said when Gray was a hundred yards from the nearest building. As rehearsed, Smart and Levine split off, the two pairs of men going either side of the first house. Gray and Sonny would take out the guard in the front garden, while the others would assault the building from the rear.

  ‘Got you on visual,’ Balmer said. ‘Clear to the target.’

  Gray moved slowly across the street with Sonny in close attendance. They stopped against the wall, three yards from the wrought-iron gate that gave access to the house. They would give Len and Carl two minutes to get in position and lay their explosives. The plan was for them to set a framed charge on the rear wall, and on Gray’s signal they would blow it and rush in through the back doors. Gray watched the seconds tick down, then pressed his throat mic to signal Balmer that he was ready to go.

  ‘Exterior guard is behind the wall, two yards to your south, three yards from the perimeter.’

  Gray indicated the position of the guard to Sonny who nodded before slowly pulling out his suppressed pistol.

  ‘He’s maintaining position,’ Balmer told Gray, who acknowledged the report.

  The wall was nine feet tall, and Gray had to cup his hands so that Sonny could climb up and take the shot. Even with the silencer, the round sounded like a clap of thunder as it left the handgun.

  ‘X-Ray one down,’ Sonny announced as Gray heard the body crumple to the ground.

  He let Sonny down and they sprinted to the gate. Sonny shot out the lock and Gray pulled the iron rail aside.

  ‘Clear,’ Gray heard. He clicked his mic three times to let Smart know there were ten seconds until the strike began. He used that time to creep up to the front door, counting as he went. On three, he aimed at the lock. On one, he fired.

  Sonny pushed past Gray and kicked the door open, rushing inside and sweeping the house with his rifle. They knew from the satellite feed where the occupants were, though they couldn’t tell which was Dagher. They would have to go room to room to determine who lived and who died.

  Gray heard a loud crump! as Smart’s explosive charge blew a hole on the back wall. That, and the door being kicked in, would be enough to wake the residents.

  Gray stood beside the first door on the left, where the tablet had informed them a figure had been sleeping. He pulled a stun grenade from his webbing and removed the pin.

  ‘Bravo One,’ Balmer said, indicating the two-man team of Gray and Sonny, ‘the occupant of the room is up and active.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Directly behind you.’

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sp; Gray’s first instinct was to fire through the wall, but there were two problems; the structure was solid brick, meaning his rounds wouldn’t penetrate, and there was no telling who it was. It could be the other armed guard… or Dagher.

  Gray whispered the person’s location to Sonny, then stepped back and let his companion kick in the door. Gray tossed the grenade inside and got out of the way of the blast that came two seconds later. As soon as it blew, Sonny was inside, and before Gray could join him, two shots rang out.

  ‘X-Ray two down,’ Sonny informed all those listening in.

  ‘Cover them,’ Gray told Sonny, pointing to the next room that was known to be occupied. Two heat signatures had been seen here, suggesting it was a husband and wife. They would be allowed to live as long as they stayed where they were, but if they tried to intervene it would be a fatal decision.

  Gray ran to the only other room where the satellite had picked up body heat. He was joined by Smart and Levine.

  ‘Sit rep on X-Ray five,’ Gray asked Balmer.

  ‘Still motionless on the bed. Looks like she’s got her hands up.’

  By a process of elimination, it had to be Dagher. But why was she just lying there? She must have heard the commotion by now. Perhaps it was a trap.

  Gray kicked the door in and saw her staring at the ceiling, her arms above her head, palms up and empty.

  ‘Get up!’

  She swung her legs off the bed and stood, her hands still in the air.

  ‘Turn around!’

  She did as Gray barked and he held the muzzle of his gun to her head as he patted her down. She was clean. No explosive vest under her clothes, and no weapon of any description. Gray was silently willing her to make a move, to give him an excuse to blow her away, but Dagher was following his commands to the letter.