Clear by Fire: A Search and Destroy Thriller

by Joshua Hood

  “Anvil 7, this is Anvil 6, good copy. Stand by.” The colonel’s voice came across the radio net and Harden unconsciously let his gaze sweep to the far side of the village, where his boss was lying in wait.

  Harden read off the coordinates from his GPS before pulling a protein bar out of his cargo pocket. He ripped open the brightly colored wrapper, took a bite, and chewed contentedly as he watched Adieb cut wood. Harden’s only complaint was that he wished he hadn’t left his water back with his gear. The protein bar tasted like dirt and was sticking to the top of his mouth.

  A small cloud of dust appeared out of the east as he used his tongue to unstick the bits of chewed protein from his teeth. Spitting a bit of the bar on the ground, he fiddled with the focus knob, trying to make out the convoy that was speeding along the road.

  He waited patiently as the cloud grew, until they were close enough to make out the first Toyota Hilux speeding along the unimproved dirt road. He counted four vehicles in all. Each one had five heavily armed men in the back. As always, the colonel was right.

  As the second in command, he was the eyes and ears of the team, and it was a position he swore he’d never give up. He had learned a lot when Mason was Anvil 7, but the man had turned out to be a pussy, and Decklin, well, his time was cut short because he was a fucking psycho. Harden had waited, making the most of his time by learning what not to do from his predecessors. His only goal was to not screw up.

  “Anvil 6, Anvil 7, the guests have arrived,” he said, stuffing the wrapper back into his pocket.

  “Anvil 6, roger that.”

  The trucks sped into the village and pulled up to the target house. Seven men jumped out and formed a tight perimeter around the first truck. They waited while the short thick man stepped out of the cab, with his famous black head scarf wrapped tight against the cold.

  Children appeared out of nowhere and rushed the perimeter. The men stepped forward to stop them, but the squat Taliban commander raised his arms like a benevolent uncle and they stepped out of the way. The children ran to the man and grabbed on to his legs. They didn’t care that he was a murderer; in fact, they probably relished it.

  The commander made a big show of searching his pockets for something to give them as Adieb slammed his ax into the wizened stump and stepped outside the compound to greet his guests.

  “Risk 1, Anvil 6, how copy?” The colonel’s voice came over the radio as Harden stared at the most wanted Taliban commander in Afghanistan. The man didn’t look like a terrorist as he lifted handfuls of candy out of his pocket and held them just out of reach of the squealing children. Harden didn’t give a fuck about these people and shared the common belief that they were all terrorists in one fashion or another.

  “Risk 1, go ahead, Anvil 6.” The pilot’s voice was thin and mechanical as it came over the radio.

  Harden knew that the attack aircraft was somewhere in the area even though he couldn’t hear it. He kept his eyes glued to the optic and the fat man showering the children with candy.

  “Risk 1, I have a priority target at grid.” The colonel read off the coordinates Harden had given him and waited for the pilot’s reply.

  “Good copy, Anvil 6, I’m two minutes out.”

  Harden knew the pilot had no idea what he was about to bomb, but the colonel had the correct identification codes and the pilot would prosecute the target under the assumption that it had been authorized. Procedure made the military predictable and all too easy to utilize, if you knew how to exploit the inherent technological weaknesses of the “green machine.”

  “Anvil 7, stand by,” the colonel ordered.

  He imagined the pilot punching the target grid into the onboard computer that fed the data to the thousand-pound joint direct attack munition attached to the aircraft’s wing. The bomb’s GPS guidance system would steer the munition down on the target from whatever altitude it was dropped at.

  “Anvil 6, Risk 1, bombs away,” the pilot said.

  “Good copy, Risk 1.”

  The Taliban commander smiled as the children ripped the wrappers off the candies and stuffed them greedily into their mouths. He was recruiting the next crop of jihadists with a dollar’s worth of melted sugar.

  Adieb opened his arms wide for the customary embrace as the commander tousled the hair of a young boy and stepped free of the knot of young beggars. They knew he had more candy and ignored the bodyguards who tried to move them out of the way. He was just within reach of his trusted friend when the bomb hit.

  The force of the explosion evaporated any evidence of the meeting in a huge flash. A geyser of black smoke and brown earth erupted from the massive crater, and a second later the sound rolled up the mountains until it reached Harden.

  Wuuuummphhh.

  “Anvil 6, Anvil 7, good bomb,” he said over the radio as the inky black cloud rose high in the air.

  “Risk 1 copies good bomb. I’m clearing the area, thanks for the work.”

  “That’s what you think,” Harden muttered to himself as he looked through the scope at the wreckage below.

  “Roger, Risk 1, Anvil Out,” Harden said over the radio.

  There was nothing left of the trucks or the gate. A dull gray pall of smoke hung over the twisted remains of the compound as the women of the village rushed out to gaze upon the horror. For a brief second, before their plaintive cries rose heavenward, it was perfectly still.

  From his perch on the side of the mountain the villagers looked like ants milling around an inverted anthill. While the mothers of the dead children looked for any remains with which they could enshrine their grief, the men gathered in militant knots just a stone’s throw away.

  Harden turned off the GPS unit and slipped it back into his pocket. Gravel crunched behind him as one of his men moved up to the edge with an M240 Bravo machine gun. At seven hundred meters, the village was well within its range. Swinging the range finder to the north, he saw Colonel Barnes and the rest of the team creeping out of the low ground.

  Five minutes later, the colonel came over the radio as Harden forced a pair of earplugs into his ears.

  “All Anvil elements, engage,” he said simply.

  Harden’s gunner pulled the M240 onto his shoulder and squeezed off a short burst of 7.62s down into the village. The rounds slammed into the group of men just as a long burst erupted from Barnes’s position.

  The villagers were caught out in the open as the two gunners took their time raining fire into the village. Every few seconds a single shot from one of their snipers rang out, ensuring that no one made it out of the kill zone.

  The rate of fire from the two guns slowed as the last of the villagers crumpled to the ground. A moment after that, the valley lay silent, as if nothing had ever happened.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  Marrakech, Morocco

  Mason took the precautions of a hunted man as he walked to the Internet café. He was pushing his luck by staying in the city, but crossing the border wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Certain arrangements had to be made before he cleared out.

  As he walked, the American used the grimy shop windows to check for tails. He constantly changed direction and cut from one side of the street to the other in an effort to thwart any pursuers.

  Slipping between a group of tourists, he moved deeper into the heart of the city, but despite his hypervigilance, his mind began to wander.

  His fall from member of the most elite unit in the military to one of the most hunted men in the world had been as sudden as it was final. The years of war had turned his soul callous, and he’d lost the part of him that his friends and family had known. Like many of the men who’d fought nonstop since 2001, he had been changed by horrors civilians would never know.

  Mason had been married once, back when he had a chance to be happy. He had met Meg on a flight to North Carolina, and the chance encounter had blossomed into a relationship despite their differences.

  He knew he never deserved her, but she suppor
ted him when he went through Delta selection, and after he was selected to join the unit, he rewarded her by proposing. She wanted a diamond that wasn’t gaudy but was big enough to fill her friends with an innocent amount of envy. They planned a simple wedding in Florida followed by a honeymoon in Hawaii. But it never happened. Before he deployed, they stood before the justice of the peace. Afterward, he promised to make it up to her.

  Six months later, when he got back, they went on their Hawaiian honeymoon, but he could never fit the dream wedding into the unit’s schedule. The fights started, which surprised them both because they’d never really fought—before the war.

  Mason didn’t mind sleeping on the couch because, honestly, he didn’t sleep much anymore. He promised if she could just hold out a little longer they would be a real family outside the military.

  The next deployment to Iraq came four months after the first, and when he came home this time, it was to an empty house and a Post-it note that read, “I can’t do this.” Every room in the empty house smelled like her, but drinking seemed to help. After signing the divorce papers and putting the house on the market, Mason tried to move on.

  He volunteered for the next deployment because he didn’t want to stay in the States and figured that at least Iraq would be familiar, but he was wrong about that too. The country he’d left a few months before had imploded along the fractured lines of sectarian violence. The once-annoying insurgency had grown into a violent beast that roamed the cities and streets devouring soldiers and civilians alike.

  His wife had been his foundation. She was the light that brought him through the darkness, but now she was gone and he was lost. Worse than being lost, Mason realized that he was a cliché. He was a “Dear John” whose girl had been stolen while he was away. When he slept he dreamed about her fucking some other guy whose hands and mouth touched places he would never see again. His war wasn’t in Iraq; it was in the sweaty, twisted sheets of some other man’s bed, and it was killing him.

  One day he just stopped giving a fuck. Combat was the only thing that got him out of his head. What others called “heroic actions in the line of duty,” he called a way out.

  Stopping to light a cigarette, he casually scanned the faces milling around him. Nothing stuck out, but he knew better than to ignore his instincts. Making his way up the street, he could see the Internet café perched two blocks north.

  On top of the café’s roof was an ancient satellite dish whose exposed cables ran to a crudely patched hole in the wall. Inside, a dark-skinned Arab sat behind a small desk covered in cigarette ash and empty cans of Wild Tiger energy drink. Without looking up from the grimy television set, he peeled a cracked square of plastic from a stack and slid it to the American.

  Mason looked at the faded number six written on the plastic and walked back through the dense haze of cigarette smoke until he found the assigned terminal. He passed the desk, continuing to the rear of the shop, where he located the exit, before returning to the computer. Taking a seat, he checked his watch and logged in.

  The space was jammed with computer terminals and the people sitting in front of them spanned every nationality in the region. Arabs, Africans, and Asians sat side by side, blowing smoke into the air, while chatting over Internet phones in their native languages. It was a chaotic homogenization of culture and technology that was unique to North Africa.

  Mason scanned the room as he waited for the computer to boot up. The connection was slow. He’d already been at the computer for a minute.

  Being on the run was impossible without a network, and while Mason had been taught to kill in the military, he had learned to survive from his mentor, Ahmed. Like him, the Libyan was a fugitive, and a deep friendship had grown between them. Over the years Mason had been able to repay the man for saving his life, but he never forgot the debt he owed.

  The Internet provided a level of ambiguity, but e-mail accounts could be hacked and traced, so he still had to be careful. Obscure chat rooms provided a way to hide in plain sight by using simple codes, and Ahmed had set up a list of such sites, which they rotated to avoid detection.

  It had been a week since their last contact and the site Mason logged in to was for Nissan car enthusiasts. The Web page allowed people to chat on various blogs or privately message another member. After typing in his password, Mason composed a quick message explaining his need to get out of the country.

  The message was addressed to “gearhead71” and Mason wrote, “I need a new brake job on my old truck and wanted to know a good time to bring it by the shop.”

  Leaning back in the plastic chair, Mason lit a cigarette as the phone in his pocket chirped. Vernon was making a call.

  Mason plugged an earpiece into the cloned phone and, shoving the earbud into his ear, hit the answer button. On the same day he shook Vernon’s hand to begin working for him, he’d broken into the spy’s apartment and found the cache of burner phones that Vernon rotated sporadically. Mason hadn’t had time to clone them all, but luckily the CIA man was lazy and soon tired of rotating the phones, which gave Mason the upper hand.

  “Yes,” a man’s voice answered. Not someone Mason could recognize, but definitely someone in command.

  The connection was bad and Mason assumed that whoever was on the other line was using a satellite phone.

  “Are you secure?” Vernon asked.

  “I wouldn’t answer if I wasn’t.”

  Mason leaned forward and closed his eyes against the babble of the room. He didn’t recognize the voice, but he was immediately struck by the inherent command of the speaker’s tone. This was a man used to giving orders.

  “The target made it out of Kona, he’s going to Libya.”

  “Libya.” There was a long pause on the line.

  “Yes, sir, is that a problem?” Vernon asked hesitantly. He was obviously intimidated by the man on the other end of the line.

  “No. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure. Look, I’ve released his file to the locals, so there’s nothing to worry about. Is everything set on your end?”

  “Does he know about me?”

  “No, how could he?”

  “Because he’s a lot smarter than you are.”

  “Look, he has no idea what’s going on. Trust me.”

  “I find that people who ask for trust are usually the ones who don’t deserve it. Send Decklin to deal with him, and tell him not to fuck it up this time.”

  “Yes, sir, what about the drone?”

  “As long as you have done your part, Barnes will take care of the rest.”

  “I loaded the override software, and the target’s itinerary has been forwarded to the colonel.”

  “Get Decklin to Libya, and take care of this problem,” the voice replied.

  “Okay, I’ll—” The line went dead before Vernon could finish his sentence and a second later the spy ended the connection.

  Mason felt a chill creep up his spine as he tried to process the conversation. Obviously Decklin and Vernon were up to something, and it involved Barnes pretty deeply.

  He’d heard rumors that his old teammate had sold his soul to the private sector, but it sure sounded like someone was putting the band back together. Decklin had many talents, but his lack of ethics was what made him valuable. There was nothing the man wouldn’t do if he thought it would profit him.

  Mason had learned this lesson firsthand.

  The local intelligence apparatus was a joke, but if Vernon leaked the fact that he was in Morocco, there was no way for him to know who would come out of the shadows for a chance to take him out.

  Mason’s hand slipped subconsciously to his pistol. The bulge was reassuring but not practical in the tight confines of the Internet café. Checking his watch nervously, he decided to give Ahmed five minutes to reply and then he had to leave.

  He lit another cigarette and felt his foot tapping nervously on the chipped concrete floor. Mason strained to see the front door. It was out of sight, hidden just of
f to his left.

  The computer tab blinked suddenly and a small white envelope appeared at the bottom of the screen. He clicked it open and greedily read the message that appeared.

  It read, “Can fit you in on Thursday. Do you need a ride home?”

  Mason typed, “See you then—need a ride.”

  He hit the enter button, sending the message, and was about to log off when he saw that Ahmed was typing a reply.

  His watch told him he’d been at the computer for six minutes.

  The new message popped up at the top of the previous one, and Mason leaned in to read it.

  “You’re burned, get out now.”

  Fuck.

  Mason quickly logged off the computer and moved to the front of the café. He handed the man the plastic card and turned his back to the desk while the shopkeeper checked the computer for the amount of time Mason had used.

  A black sedan cruised slowly past the shop, its windows tinted dark against the sun.

  Relax, you’re good, he told himself.

  The Arab was counting out his change and trying to watch the TV at the same time. He fumbled with the coins, dropping them on the floor with a curse. Outside in the street, the sedan had come to a stop near the curb.

  Mason’s hand reached for his pistol as a man with a cropped haircut got out of the passenger seat and looked down the street before closing the door behind him.

  “Keep the change, my friend, I need to use your toilet anyway,” Mason told the man in Arabic.

  The shopkeeper handed him the key to the restroom and returned the bills to the register without taking his eyes off the Bollywood remake he was so engrossed in. Mason weaved his way back to the rear, passed the bathroom, and pushed on the back door. It was locked.