Dark Light--Dawn

by Jon Land

  The chopper lifted off before Father Jimenez had gotten his shoulder harness snapped home, soaring into the air and rapidly climbing over the tree line.

  “I’m told this commission of yours exists to debunk these so-called miracles,” Arocha said, after signaling Jimenez to don his headset.

  “There must be a hundred percent certainty when it comes to such things,” Jimenez explained to him. “Otherwise, the church would fall prey to all manner of hoaxes and concoctions. There can be absolutely no doubt for a true miracle to be proclaimed.”

  Such was Jimenez’s mandate. He held two doctorates, in astrobiology and astrogeology, providing him the knowledge he needed to debunk phenomena that could be explained away on a scientifically rational basis. A memory flared of another investigation with a governmental and military presence of comparable magnitude, suggesting he was once again about to encounter something destined to challenge even his sensibilities. Just as he had in Nigeria, twenty-seven years ago, before he’d entered the priesthood.

  “Can you provide some hint, some indication of what happened to this Catholic mission?” Jimenez asked suddenly, to spare himself from pondering that further.

  “I know the missionaries were here to preach Christianity to the natives.”

  “That’s not what I asked you, Colonel.”

  “It’s my answer, all the same.”

  Arocha looked away, and Father Jimenez refocused his gaze forward as their chopper flitted over a rise in the tree line. Instantly what felt like wind shear shook the craft, the sensation hitting Jimenez like a punch to the stomach that sucked out his wind. He realized he suddenly felt cold and clammy, the ambient temperature beyond seeming to drop like a stone. The air looked ash gray, the blackening clouds swallowing the light as if determined to swap night for day. Thunder rumbled again, closer and louder, leaving a hollow pang in the center of Jimenez’s stomach. He thought it might be a panic attack, until a glance toward Arocha showed him gritting his teeth and breathing rapidly to ward off the very same effects.

  “Colonel?”

  “I should have warned you about that, Padre.”

  The chopper hit a thick wall of air that felt more like mud, pushing through it to soar directly over the Guapiaçu Valley.

  Jimenez focused his gazed downward, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes as he felt his breath catch in his throat. He stopped just short of making the sign of the Holy Trinity, reminding himself he was here more as a scientist than a priest.

  “What in God’s name…”

  Arocha didn’t break his stare from what lay beneath them. “God, Padre, had nothing to do with this.”

  FIVE

  Sana’a, Yemen

  The sky over the city of Sana’a was on fire, a shifting kaleidoscope beyond the lead assault chopper that continually dissolved into flame.

  “Now this,” Commander Max Borgia said to his lead SEAL team, strapped in tight against the bulkhead, “is a clusterfuck.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we got the Pope himself leading us,” smiled Griffon, holding a Solo cup turned makeshift spittoon. “I forgot, is it Max the First?”

  “Know what else you forgot?” said Chief Petty Officer Nathan Hobbs, now in his umpteenth deployment after accepting an honorable discharge, only to re-up a mere month later. “Fact that a griffon is a goddamn dog.”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “An especially dumb dog.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Woof, woof!”

  Small arms fire strafed the chopper, none of the SEALS on board riled much by it.

  “How much farther to the LZ, Pope?” Hobbs asked Max.

  “Less than two klicks if we don’t get shot to hell.”

  His fellow SEALs had started calling Max “Pope” because his last name mirrored that of the infamous Rodrigo Borgia who became Pope Alexander VI. But the nickname had stuck because of Max’s uncanny ability to work, or shoot, himself out of impossible situations time and time again.

  Petty Officer Second Class Townsend, the greenest of the group, looked up from a Stephen King paperback, peering out from behind glasses disguised as sports goggles. “This is Yemen. I’d say we’re already there.”

  “How can you read in all this shit?” Griffon asked him, his carrot-colored hair peeking out from beneath his helmet.

  “It settles the mind.”

  Griffon checked what remained of the cover. “What, vampires, werewolves, and other assorted monsters?”

  Townsend closed the book. “No worse than the ones we’re about to come face-to-face with.”

  The chopper wavered in the air, bucking wildly as the pilot dipped and darted to avoid making them an even riper target for RPG fire.

  “One klick now,” Max announced. He squeezed his neoprene glove over his left hand and then started in on the right, studying the silver dollar–sized birthmark as if its impressionistic design might hold some message. “We’ll be coming in hot.”

  Their mission, he reviewed in his mind, was to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a’s new city of al-Jadid, a sprawling urban center in contrast to the Old City District better known as al-Qadeemah. All-out civil war had broken out between government forces and rebels who now had the capital surrounded, thanks to Iran’s backing of the extremist Huthie faction, supplying the rebel fighters with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of heavy weapons. The State Department had ordered the embassy evacuated, save for a small support staff to pack up vitals and shred the incredible volume of documents accumulated since its reopening.

  Then word was passed along that Ambassador Clare Travis had elected to stay behind, unwilling to order others to do a job she wasn’t willing to do herself. Ambassador Travis and her support staff were protected by a small contingent of marines working in tandem with a local warlord who’d been paid more money than he’d seen in his entire life for the effort. The last report they’d gotten from the compound indicated they’d holed themselves up in a protective bunker that had likely been breached, given the lack of any further communication.

  The warlord they’d hired, along with his fighters, had fled the city when faced with the magnitude and ferocity of the attacking rebel force. That left only the marines to face off against hundreds of armed fighters, separated from them by a perimeter security wall that, according to reports, was crumbling at this very moment. That stranded the embassy support staff trapped inside the compound bunker with no route of escape available and no options save for one:

  The SEALs.

  Specifically this particular SEAL Team 6, better known as the Pope and his Disciples. Beyond the chopper, there was only fire and smoke, the embassy’s location seeming to be right in the epicenter of it all.

  “Coming up on the LZ now, boys,” Max told his men in the lead chopper, fitting an old ring that looked like something he’d plucked from a Cracker Jack box onto his finger.

  “That again?” Griffon said, trying for lightness.

  Max regarded the scratched-up dark plastic jewel, held in place with superglue that had dried over the base, and squeezed a neoprene glove over his hand. “It’s my good-luck charm.”

  “How’s that?”

  “One true love of my life gave it to me.”

  “Bullshit,” Griffon chided. “No offense, Pope, but you and love in the same sentence don’t make for a good fit.”

  “Then shut the fuck up and get ready to do some fast roping.”

  “The Pope has spoken!” Hobbs exclaimed.

  The mission parameters were unambiguous. The two SEAL teams would fight back the enemy through all means necessary to create enough space for the third chopper to land to evacuate the ambassador, support staff, and marines who’d remained to guard them.

  As the embassy drew within view, though, Max saw the mission was going to be anything but routine.

  Rebel fighters had breached the walls, firing with their rifles pointed toward the sky, hooting and hollering over the gunfi
re of their own making. A few had spotted the marines clustered in an armored forward guard post and opened fire, the marines returning it through slats in the bulletproof glass. They’d positioned themselves for extraction there as ordered. But the timing of the breach had conspired against them, one clusterfuck piled atop another.

  “Donald, this is Mickey,” Max heard the mission’s commanding officer, Admiral Keene Darby from the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush, bark in his earpiece. “Do you copy?”

  “Roger that, Mickey,” Max said into his throat mic. “Approaching hot zone now.”

  As if to accentuate that statement, a fresh series of explosions flared within the embassy walls, creating a shock wave sufficient to buckle Max’s chopper. The primary buildings were being hit by a torrent of RPG fire. Target practice for the fighters forming the lawless mob laying siege to the compound.

  “Negative, Donald, we have an abort.”

  “And we still have Americans, including Snow White, in the Magic Kingdom, Mickey, alive and breathing at last check.”

  “Negative. I repeat, negative. We have eyes on your sit and the view’s all wrong for a drop. Do you copy? Please confirm.”

  Max could feel all his muscles tensing. “We do what we do, Mickey.”

  “Say again, Donald, say again.”

  “I have garble from this end, Mickey,” Max said, buying himself time to think. “Please repeat all after bullshit.”

  “Mickey, be advised that this order comes from Walt himself at Disney World.”

  Meaning the president. At the White House.

  “You’re breaking up, Donald.” Max thumbed the throat mic’s extension to muddle his own words. “We are taking fire. Will reconnect when hostages are in tow.”

  “Negative, Mickey. Repeat, negative. You are to abandon all—”

  Max clicked off his com unit, meeting the gazes of eleven of the men under his command who didn’t need to be told what had just transpired. Their expressions told him they were up on the facts and good to go regardless.

  “Hey,” Griffon said, winking, “we could get our asses court-martialed for this.”

  “What?” Max responded, making himself look puzzled. “I can’t hear you.”

  “I said, let’s fry us some cockroaches.”

  “Now that I heard,” Max said.

  As another RPG took out the chopper’s tail section.

  SIX

  Sana’a, Yemen

  Max smelled smoke and fried wires, bells chiming and lights flashing everywhere in the cockpit before him. Through the haze, he glimpsed the pilot frantically trying to maintain a measure of control, enough to set down to avoid a crash certain to ignite the fuel tank with the flame burst already sprouting through the remnants of the tail. He watched the pilot working the throttle and steering mechanism, turning the craft into the oversteer to keep it from twisting onto its side from the spin. At the same time, he somehow managed to angle it for the embassy grounds, coming in fast, hot, and fiery.

  “Brace yourself, boys!” Max cried out, his words mostly lost to a wild splatter of fire coming from the other two Black Hawk UH-60s that had moved up to flanking positions.

  He heard the clamor of the M60D machine guns both were packing, glimpsed their fire strafing the embassy grounds and eviscerating anyone in its path. The gunners were clearing the field, training fire from the opposite pods toward the street mobs to hold them at bay. Buying time with enemy lives as currency. The LZ being cleared, the fire burning the air and leaving Max’s own ears scorched.

  Get Ambassador Travis, the marines, and embassy support staff, and get the fuck out of Dodge.…

  The original mission anyway, before Walt himself had tried to pull the plug on Donald and the other ducks. There’d be hell to pay for this, for sure. But Max could live in a cell; what he couldn’t live with was the haunting vision of trapped Americans being roasted to death by enemy fire.

  The sudden wash of air through his stomach told Max they were about to hit. The landing was hard, jarring, but left the chopper intact and upright.

  The windshield had cracked into spiderweb patterns on impact with the ground, fissures of flame visible everywhere in splintered fashion beyond. The ratcheting click-clack of gunfire was constant, as half of Max’s team emerged into the bullet-scorched night. The remaining SEALs from the trailing chopper, fast-roped down, while the evac craft hovered overhead unleashing a torrent of machine-gun fire from pods on both sides. That fire scattered the bulk of the fighters gathered outside the embassy gates, buying the SEALs the time they’d need to advance through the embassy grounds to retrieve the ambassador and her staff.

  Two of the SEALs fast-roping fell to enemy fire. One in Max’s chopper had been lost to shrapnel and another to a broken leg that left him immobilized. That one, Boone, named after Daniel for his Tennessee heritage and ability to track, was the best shot in the outfit and closeted himself within the smoking wreckage to pick off any baddie who crossed his path.

  In all, twenty-seven seconds had passed since impact with the ground, plenty of time for Max to assess the situation from all angles. The embassy grounds within the walled courtyard were laid out in a circle with the fortified guard post, in which the marines were clustered defensively, sitting dead center. Concrete and reinforced tungsten steel with eight-inch-thick space-age polymer a hundred times harder than glass that was built as a first line of defense in the event of an incursion, as opposed to a setting from which to wage a final stand. And, true to that assessment, the post was currently being battered by a barrage of small and heavy arms fire.

  Muzzle flashes illuminated the night from assault rifle bores protruding through the fire slots. For a time, the fighters remained so focused on breaching the grounds that they failed to notice twenty SEALs converging on their position, caught now in virtual crossfire, chewing them up from both flanks. A pair of fighters readying grenades to toss at the post hurled them at the SEALs instead.

  The SEALs scattered and rolled from the grenades’ path, but that exposed three of them to enemy fire they were powerless to fend off. Max was opening up on their killers even as bullets whipsawed their bodies, each hitting with a thump loud enough to hear, even through the maelstrom. He knew other SEALs had added their fire to his, but couldn’t say which ones or from where they were firing. The world had slowed to a crawl, almost preternaturally slow until …

  Until …

  … the birthmark that looked like a crisscrossing grid carved into his palm, currently squeezed inside a neoprene glove, began to hurt. Not just hurt, but also burn, burn enough to make it bleed.

  Max shoved the thought aside, pushed past the pain in his gloved hand now sticky with blood, and kept firing, shifting to move into defensive position around the armored shed. Secure it as best he could and keep it secure during evac of those trapped inside. The focus of it all intensified his senses. Max couldn’t explain why he turned, swung, dropped, fired this way or that. Enemy fighters kept pouring over the walls, cut down in waves by a combination of fire from the SEALs on the ground and heavy machine-gun fire from the chopper above. Meanwhile, Griffon led three other SEALs through the incessant hail of fire toward the armored shack to begin the evacuation process.

  For now those inside were holding out, but holding out wouldn’t do them much good much longer. So Max kept firing to change that, three-shot bursts now to conserve as much ammo as he could. He glimpsed five SEALs now shepherding the wounded marines, and a few members of the embassy’s support staff, out from the armored guard post. He became conscious of the trailing chopper adding its heavy machine-gun fire to that of the evac craft. In order to get out of here, both would have to land amid the mess and clutter into which the courtyard had dissolved. Max’s mental count had fourteen SEALs still standing to go with six wounded and four dead now. That hadn’t hit him yet, but it would once they were airborne with hostages in tow, the time when everything settled in.

  Bullets continued to whiz past him in a s
tream interrupted by brief flutters of silence that left Max wondering if he was still alive. His answer came in the next enemies he downed, death reminding him of life. The wave attacking now was wielding machetes and long-bladed knives, interspersed with Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles.

  Two medics were tending to the wounded and had already readied the dead for transport too, when both surviving choppers angled noses down for landing behind streams of fire blaring from their heavy machine guns. Through it all, the clanging of the expended shells banging up against each other on the ground claimed his hearing. Max was backpedaling now, herding the rescued marines and staff members toward the choppers just settling down with their powerful rotor wash kicking stray debris into the air that rained back down like confetti.

  That final marine, limping with blood soaking through a thigh of his fatigues, veered Max’s way suddenly out of the smoke and vapor cloud, enemy fire lighting up the air around him.

  “Where’s the bunker?” Max yelled over the constant din of fire.

  “Basement in the office compound, set back from the guard post,” the marine said, thrusting a shaky finger to the complex’s most modern structure. “The ambassador ordered us to hold the bitches back while she finished the job there, like she’s got a death wish.”

  “Then it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t come true,” Max said, swinging away from the marine and eyeing the main compound.

  SEVEN

  Sana’a, Yemen

  RPGs, fired from the neighboring rooftops of similarly charred buildings, took out more walls and windows from the embassy’s surviving structures. The high ground belonged to the enemy, the logistics of the mission offering no opportunity to get one of their own snipers into position to rule the air, not tonight. Max snapped a fresh magazine home, Griffon and Bates flanking him on either side charting the clearest path to the main complex.