by Mack Maloney
Americans? Slakker thought in his last instant of life.
How did the Americans ever find us here?
*****
Unlike the four color-coordinated squads of mercenaries protecting the outer and inner walls of the palace, a hodgepodge of paid soldiers guarded the Hotel, many from black African nations, wearing nothing more elaborate than plain green camo battle fatigues and bush hats.
What these men lacked in aplomb and style, they made up for with numbers. Indeed, there were a hundred of them watching over the Hotel alone. They all carried AK-47 assault rifles and prided themselves in seeing who could carry the most ammunition on his person. It was not unusual to see men in this so-called Z-Squad walking about with five or six ammo bandoliers hanging around their necks.
A dozen men were on duty in the lobby of the Hotel this night. Six were actually standing guard duty next to the Hotel's expansive sliding door. Six more were playing cards on a long table inside what doubled as the Hotel's lounge area.
The men near the doors saw the two helicopters fly over the main wall, and at first thought nothing of it. Helicopters were constantly going in and out of the palace area—it was the easiest means to access the place. They watched the two choppers split up. One flew over the inner walls, heading toward Zim's main chamber. The other landed in the courtyard right in front of the Hotel itself.
Before the guards could react, the doors of the huge chopper burst open and men began pouring out. They were wearing what appeared to be Iraqi uniforms, but these men were not Iraqi. These were white soldiers, tall, powerful-looking, clean-shaven.
Terrifying . . .
They started shooting the moment they left the helicopter. The Hotel guards hardly had time to raise their weapons before being cut down in the brutal fusillade.
While the helicopter's landing barely upset the card game going on inside the hotel lobby, the sound of gunfire did. But before these interior men could even reach for their weapons, the Marines had broken through the plate-glass windows and were spraying the lobby with high-powered tracer fire. The cardplayers were dropped where they sat, their blood mixing in with the cards and piles of crumpled-up money.
*****
The Marines quickly spread out. Twelve men took the lobby, then three dozen more began flooding up the stairs. Smitz was at the head of this contingent.
It would have been easier by far to simply call in the Hinds and have them decimate the Hotel—but that would not have allowed Smitz to get another peaceful night's sleep ever again.
There was a question burning in his brain; it was a fire so hot, it would not be soothed until he confirmed what Angel claimed was true. The man who had set them up, who had a hand in pulling the strings of this whole bizarre affair, that man was in this building, Angel said.
In Room 6 . . .
But Smitz had to see it for himself. So now he was running full tilt down the Hotel's long first-floor corridor, firing his M-16 at anything that moved in front of him, usually a fleeing member of the Z-Squad.
At the same time, he could hear the gunfire intensifying outside. A quick peek out a window revealed a huge battle erupting between the troops left on the parapets and Marines firing from the second Halo, which was moving very slowly back and forth over the palace compound.
Time was now becoming a factor. The first group of Marines had infiltrated the palace thirty minutes ago. They had come in through the back door—literally. Over the jagged mountain peak, over the only unguarded wall in the palace, and through the rear door of the Black Squad's barracks, quickly eliminating the most dangerous threat within the compound with their silencer- equipped rifles—all on the advice and directions of the guy named Angel.
But there was still danger about, as the growing gun- fight outside the walls revealed.
This brought one thought to Smitz's mind. "We can't stay very long," he whispered. This made him run even faster.
He and the Marines finally reached the far side of the Hotel's expansive first floor. Leaving some men behind to watch critical passageways, Smitz and six Team 66 members moved swiftly down the last corridor.
Finally Smitz found what he was looking for: the door to Room 6.
The Marines automatically lined up three on each side and got ready to do a standard kick-in-and-start-firing entry. But at the last moment, Smitz held up his hand.
"No," he said "This one is just me. . . ."
The Marine squad leader began to protest, but after a month of being around Smitz, he knew better.
"Put three men at that end," Smitz told him, indicating the far end of the hallway. "You and the other two watch the near staircase. If I'm not out in five minutes, then you can kick the door in. . . ."
The Marines grudgingly acknowledged his orders and made their way to their positions. Once Smitz got the OK sign from both ends of the hallway, he took a deep breath, raised his rifle, opened the unlocked door, and stepped inside.
It looked like a Presidential suite within. It was enormous, with a big window looking out on the starkly beautiful scenery beyond. Smitz took a deep sniff—he smelled cigar smoke and alcohol.
He reached over and clicked on the light. A dim bulb popped on in the corner of the huge room; another flickered to life inside a hallway that Smitz assumed led to the bedroom. He walked slowly into the main living area, heel to toe, his gun up and ready for anything.
The room was empty, though. It was covered with newspapers, empty scotch bottles, and hundreds of pieces of scrap paper, scattered everywhere, with endless writing and doodling on them. The neatest part of the room was the kitchen area, where he found no less than a hundred bottles of nonalcoholic champagne stacked neatly into one otherwise dusty corner.
Smitz stepped into the hallway, which led to the bedroom, all the while realizing the gunfire outside was getting even more intense.
He didn't have much more time for this.
He raise the gun a bit more, walked into the bedroom, and flicked on the light. And there in front of him, he saw huddled beneath the bedclothes the man who had been living here in Room 6.
"Well, this is certainly ironic," Smitz said, stepping one foot closer to the huge bed. "Hiding under the covers, just like the last time I saw you."
With that he reached over with his snout of his rifle and snagged the bedspread. He gave it a yank and uncovered the partially clad man beneath.
Smitz just looked down at him and spat in his face.
"What kind of man are you?" he asked, his voice filled with rage.
George Jacobs looked up at him and said: "What kind of man are you, spitting at an old man?"
The question gave Smitz no pause. His anger only intensified.
"I respected you," Smitz said, standing over his very healthy-looking former boss. "I thought you were the only guy with a head on his shoulders and some ethics in his pocket in the whole fucking Agency. But you turned out to be just like everyone else at that place."
Smitz just shook his head. Jacobs was looking up at him the way a man looks at his executioner.
"And not even a classy way to go out either," Smitz went on. "I mean, faking your death? Running into the arms of the puke that owns this place—and actually helping him pick targets for the gunship?"
Smitz was nearly in tears. "What kind of an American does that? I came all the way up here just to get an answer to that question."
Jacobs just shrugged—the smell of scotch was strong around him.
"Well, it's an easy question to answer," he finally replied. "Certainly not worth the trip."
Smitz raised his M-16 so it was nose-high to Jacob's face.
"Talk," he told Jacobs. "Educate me."
Jacobs just shrugged again. "Sure, I knew what the gunship was doing was despicable—I knew it a year before I even made the arrangements to come here. Just like the guys flying the damn thing knew before they came here. But thousands of despicable things happen around the world every goddamn day. In deepest Africa. In China. On
the subcontinent. Where the hell is the great USA then? They are nowhere near the situation. Not because they can't do anything, but because they couldn't be bothered. If the person that's getting butchered is black or yellow, they certainly don't care. And if he's brown they might help out—but only if he happens to live in a country where the oil just oozes out of the ground.
"So where the fuck do you get off being so high-and-mighty, Smitty? Don't wave that flag in my face, sonny boy. I served it for forty years."
But Smitz was just shaking his head. He wasn't buying any of this.
"You still think you're so fucking clever," he growled at Jacobs. "And even when you're about to die—you're trying the same old Spook games. What do you call it? Distraction? Disinformation? Whatever it is—it ain't working. For one minute do you expect me to believe that just because a lot of immoral stuff happens around the world, it was OK for you to join in?"
He reached over and slapped Jacobs hard across the face.
"You're scum!" Smitz screamed at him. "Because I can see right through you. You told me that day in the hospital room why you did this—I remember now. All this—faking your death, coming here, directing the gunship, and tipping everyone we were coming—it was all for one reason."
He paused.
"Money . . ." The word dripped out of his mouth.
Jacobs began to say something, but couldn't. Smitz was right—and he knew it.
"Fucking government," Jacobs began mumbling. "Paying me a lousy eighty grand a year!"
Smitz slapped him again.
"Don't you dare bitch to me about your shitty paycheck being justification for what you've done. You were greedy. That's the bottom line here."
Jacobs just looked up at him and smiled. "That's the bottom line everywhere, Smitty."
The next thing Smitz knew, Jacobs's chest exploded in two bursts of blood. The old man looked down at his sudden wound and then at Smitz's rifle, as if the shots had come from there.
But they hadn't. . . .
Then a third shot hit Jacobs in the neck. His throat began gurgling. Then a fourth and a fifth shot got him right in the heart. With these, he finally slumped over, dead.
Smitz spun around and saw Chou standing at the door.
"Jeesuz, man," he screamed at the Marine officer. "We were supposed to take this guy back!"
Chou didn't say a word. He just walked forward and pulled the rest of the covers off Jacobs to reveal an Uzi in the man's right hand, his cold fingers still on the trigger. The way it was pointing, it would have blown off Smitz's genitals and sawed his lower torso in half.
"Never go into a hostile environment alone," Chou finally told him calmly. "That's the number-one rule of special ops."
*****
By this time the Great Zim was nearing a state of complete panic.
He'd heard the first round of gunfire and when he couldn't get hold of the Black Squad members in their barracks, he knew that catastrophe had struck.
Now he only had two bodyguards with him, and they were both looking very concerned. The Japanese girls had left long ago, fleeing to parts unknown. The lights were flickering inside the palace for the first time anyone could ever remember, which made things even worse. Zim was extremely afraid of the dark.
Yet even in this moment of calamity, Zim wanted to do something very strange: He wanted to climb up to the roof of his chamber, to see what was happening for himself.
It took much grunting and pushing, but somehow the two bodyguards managed to move him up the long staircase that led out to the top of the compound's main building.
Up here, the view of the ongoing battle was intense.
There was a massive helicopter sitting just outside the gate leading to the inner compound. There were dead bodies all along the parapets and littering the outer courtyard. All four of the Rapier positions were aflame.
Zim looked down and saw the mysterious gunmen running through the building containing his precious cars—they were shooting everything to pieces. His house containing his vault of splendid art had already been dynamited. Nearly one third of his compound was on fire. Surely these soldiers would come for him next.
But then something very weird happened.
Just as it seemed the raiding soldiers would break into the main part of the palace itself, they began running back towards the waiting helicopter instead. And all the while, another huge helicopter was picking up even more of the raiders outside the main wall near the Hotel.
From all appearances, it looked like a very hasty retreat.
Zim was instantly delighted.
"See!" he began screaming to the guards. "They run at the sight of me!"
The guards shrank back a bit, but Zim seemed to have a point. They were the only two people with guns standing between the raiders and the Great Zim himself, and yet the soldiers did seem to be running away.
Why?
"Because they are afraid of me!" Zim was yelping.
It was hard to argue with him. The two huge helicopters were now taking off, their engines straining mightily as their pilots attempted to perform an almost true vertical ascent. Both helicopters finally did get off the ground, but just barely.
Zim was so excited with this turn of events, he actually began waving goodbye to the departing soldiers. The helicopters flew right over their heads, the guards cowering, again thinking someone was going to take a shot at them. But no one did. The pair of aircraft swung up and over the mountain and slowly moved away to the southwest.
Zim was beside himself now. He was absolutely astounded that he was still alive.
"Lose the battle, win the war!" he was yelling.
He turned back to his two guards.
"Together, the three of us will build another palace, bigger and better than this place. And for your loyalty, you two will be my four-star generals. What do you say to that?"
But the guards weren't really listening to him anymore. They had detected something over the shrill tones of Zim's boasts. It was a very low rumbling, so deep it seemed to be shaking the air itself.
And right away, they knew what it was.
*****
"Up there!" one guard yelled. "See it?"
It came out of the dark sky as always, looking like some kind of monstrous bird, its engines droning, its ghostly, unmistakable camouflage visible even in the night, four huge guns sticking out of one side.
It was the AC-130 gunship. Coming home to roost.
The guards fled and Zim tried to, but it was tough to beat the speed of a bullet. The airplane went into a left-hand arc about a hundred feet above the palace and opened up with all four of its guns at once.
It was like a hailstorm of fire and metal as the awesome barrage tore into what remained of the compound. The Hotel was decimated first. Then the remains of the car hall, the art vault, the power station, and the waterworks.
The plane dipped its left wing even lower, and this served to focus its firepower. Like a massive ocean wave, the cascade of bullets walked through the front gate of the inner sanctum, over the minarets, through the thick walls themselves. The tracers looked like a solid sheet of flame as they hit the pale blue dome of Zim's inner chamber. Everywhere was smoke, fire. The sound of things blowing up.
Three revolutions around the palace and the guns finally snapped off. There was really nothing left to fire at by then. The palace and every building within it had been leveled.
Nothing over twelve inches high remained standing.
*****
Inside the C-130, Delaney crawled back up to the flight deck and settled into the copilot's seat beside Norton.
The plane was handling like a breeze, so much so, Norton could hardly believe it had just cracked up a few hours before. But the C-130 was known for surviving rough landings and making scary takeoffs. As it turned out, the onion field had proved to be a reasonable runway.
"How'd we do?" Delaney asked Norton, whose eyes were still glued on the burning palace. "It's hard to see from bac
k there."
"The weaponry performed as advertised," was how Norton replied.
Deep down, though, even he was shocked at the destruction he and Delaney had managed to inflict. The palace looked like it had been carpet-bombed by a squadron of B-52's. Yet they'd been over it for less than two minutes.
"This plane is too powerful," Norton heard himself whisper. "Too dangerous . . ."
At last, Delaney got his first good view of the demolished palace.
"Muthafucker," he whispered. "That's a lot of hurt for just the two of us!"
"Well, whoever ran this bird before helped by rigging the software to fire on command," Norton said. "That's what made it so easy."
"Yeah, lucky us," Delaney mumbled.
Norton finally turned the big plane southwest and gunned its engines, anxious to leave the burning mountaintop behind. They would now meet the others back at the onion field, where they would abandon the helicopters and head for greener pastures. And not a moment too soon.
It was a weird place to end a story that had started just off the Florida coast so many twists and turns ago. Norton and Delaney weren't even sure who owned the palace they'd just destroyed or what this person's position on the planet was. All they knew was this: He was the man behind the gunship—and now he'd just tasted its wrath big-time.
"So, fuck you," Delaney said, taking one long last look at the flames lighting up the horizon. "Whoever you were . . ."
Chapter 31
Western Saudi Arabia
Colonel Larry S. Howard was the commanding officer of the secret American air base in the Saudi desert known as Al-Khalid.
It had been a long, busy day at the base. An unusual amount of military activity had been reported in the northeast regions of Iraq in the past forty-eight hours, and no less than fourteen U-2 spy planes had dropped in on Al-Khalid since the previous evening, needing gas-ups and fresh film for their cameras.