by Dalton Fury
“No, no, no.” Spencer responded, shaking his head slowly but unconvincingly as he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose. “I’m just saying that what you wrote and what we believe actually happened on those two missions isn’t adding up.”
Spencer continued. “We know you guys were just innocent bystanders to Major Raynor’s insubordination and self-centered actions. I’m giving you soldiers an opportunity to save your careers.” Spencer slid the statements back in front of Slapshot and Digger. “All you have to do is rewrite your sworn statements and everything will be fine.”
Somewhat out of character for the quiet young operator, Digger exploded. “This is pure bullshit!” he barked as he hammered both fists onto the top of the table with every bit of force he could muster before standing straight up. His chair fell over as Spencer took two steps backward.
With a scowl that could kill, Digger laid into the army lawyer. “What the fuck is your problem, man?” he demanded. “You’ve got some brass balls to come in here accusing us of lying in our statements.”
The unit sergeant major stepped forward. “Take it easy, Digger, the colonel is just doing his job.”
Startled but holding his ground firmly as he sensed an ally in the sergeant major, Spencer came back at Digger. “We know what happened out there, Sergeant Chamblis,” he said with conviction but in a whiny adolescent-like voice. “You men don’t have to be party to a cover-up to protect Major Raynor.”
A few seconds of uncomfortable pause followed Spencer’s last comment, but the damage had been done. The temporary JSOC lawyer had pushed the wrong buttons. “This is your last chance!” he threatened.
Slapshot exploded straight up and lifted the table off its front two legs. The two statements and two ballpoint pens flew into the air as the table landed upside down. The lawyer frantically backed up to the wall and turned his body to the side as if to protect his vital organs. It was total fear. Almost as if their response was rehearsed, Slapshot and Digger closed on Spencer. He instinctively raised his hands to protect his face, yanking his glasses quickly off, fearing blows from the two operators.
“NO, NO! PLEASE DON’T,” Lieutenant Colonel Spencer yelled out as he looked toward the sergeant major for help.
Slapshot spoke calmly. “Do you think we give a damn about your stupid-ass investigation? Do you think we give two shits about why you are here? You don’t know who you are dealing with.”
Trying to calm things down, the sergeant major jumped in front of Slapshot and Digger, placing his big opened hands on both of their chests to hold them at bay. “That’s enough. Slapshot, at ease!” he said.
Slapshot ignored him.
“We have been teammates with Racer for a long time. He has earned our loyalty a dozen times over. I don’t expect you to understand that, but don’t ever try to come in here and get us to turn on a teammate again.”
Slapshot turned to the unit sergeant major. “Sergeant Major, unless you have any objections, Digger and I have a date with the Gracie brothers now.”
Not a word more was spoken as Slapshot and Digger headed for the SCIF door.
* * *
Lieutenant Colonel Spencer was just as surprised as the sergeant major that he didn’t shit his pants.
They walked out the main double doors and headed for Spencer’s black government-plated Crown Vic. As Spencer hugged the envelope marked CLASSIFIED under his right arm and awkwardly placed his black beret on his head, it was obvious that he was still shook up. He didn’t even bother to stop by Colonel Webber’s office to make a courtesy call on the way out. The sergeant major was glad he didn’t.
The sergeant major could tell Spencer was just happy to be out of there with his skin. He was definitely in a foreign land at the Delta compound. It was a place where brilliance and innovation were typically championed by the Delta noncommissioned officer. It was a place where some things that could never be overlooked in a conventional setting could be ignored. A place where big-boy rules applied to all and the distinction between officer and noncommissioned officer could only truly be determined by scrutinizing monthly pay stubs.
As Spencer fumbled with the key fob to unlock his door, the sergeant major tried to gauge what might happen next after Slapshot’s and Digger’s uncharacteristic outburst.
“Well, sir, it was good to meet you. Don’t let those guys get you down. They are a little wound up still from all the time down range. They have been at war a long time.”
Spencer eased into the driver’s seat and placed the envelope on the passenger’s seat. He slid the key into the ignition and said, “Sergeant Major, those two soldiers were belligerent and absolutely insubordinate.”
Trying to salvage the day, the sergeant major leaned down to nearly eye level with the distraught lawyer. “‘Sir, they were a little overboard, I’ll give you that. But there are very few officers around here that would get that kind of respect from the assaulters in the building.”
“A little overboard?” Spencer questioned in astonishment with his eyebrows raised.
“Sir, Major Raynor is a little eccentric and a bit extreme at times, no issues there,” he answered. “But the boys know a great officer when they see one, and they are hard to come by in the army these days.”
Spencer sat staring straight ahead. In his sixteen years of service, he had never experienced anything like what had just happened inside the SCIF. His left hand gripped the top of the steering wheel like a vice as he turned the ignition on with his right. “Is that the real story here, Sergeant Major?” he asked.
As he stepped back to close the driver’s-side door, the sergeant major answered, “Yes, sir. After close to twelve years of war, that is the only story that matters around here.”
Spencer backed out of the parking spot, ignoring the sergeant major’s crisp salute, and maneuvered out of the crowded lot and toward the main gate. He didn’t bother to return the wave of the security guards either, nor did he stop to turn in his temporary visitors’ badge. His head was spinning. His thoughts were confused. It would be a miracle if he didn’t wreck the car on the way back to JSOC headquarters.
Near the Saudi-Yemeni border
Kolt stood in his sandaled feet under his light blue, faded, and well-worn thobes as he watched the taillights of the Land Cruiser with the SEALs in it fade into the distance for the four-hour drive back to the safe house near Tahrir Square. The thobes, the traditional dress of Yemeni men, sported three simple buttons running down from the collarless neck to the top of the stomach. The baggy, long sleeves reached the edge of Kolt’s wrist, and a small pocket was sewn on the left chest area. Considered by some to be a man’s dress, a thobes drops naturally to just halfway between the ankles and kneecaps.
Kolt was comfortable enough in the getup. He knew it was a critical piece of his cover. He had no choice. A dark-brown twisted rope tied around his waist held a jambiya, a short dagger worn by Yemeni men from age fourteen until death, centered and vertical on his front.
Kolt wrapped the red and white kaffiyeh around his head. It wasn’t as cold as Kolt expected it to be, but his shaved head released a lot of body heat, so the scarf provided more than just cover for action. Expecting forty-degree weather, at least that was the report he had received from the JSOC weather guys before they loaded the Land Cruiser to leave the safe house, was why he had brought a zanna, a traditional jacket. The faded black coat lined with aged and stained cotton would fit a larger man like Slapshot nicely, but it looked three sizes too big for Kolt—as it should be in a place like Yemen, where luxury items are hard to come by and even harder to keep from bandits.
He opened the light-brown sack he brought and pulled out a traditional one-gallon water blivet. He took a long swig and wiped his mouth with his baggy right coat sleeve. He capped the container and placed it back in the sack with a wad of Yemeni riyals and a worn copy of the Koran. Kolt traveled light and was unarmed by design.
He then walked due east for thirty meters before stoppi
ng.
Kolt sat down and leaned his head back against a small rock. He needed to let his night vision develop after having spent the majority of the longer, more circuitous five-hour drive in the back of the Land Cruiser studying the Raptor X satellite images on the SEALs’ Toughbook. Now, out in the desert, he needed to see the dangers that might lurk ahead to keep from stepping on something or into something he shouldn’t.
After a thirty-minute wait, Kolt’s eyes had adjusted, and he moved out. He found the highway, but backtracked a few hundred meters to stay out of the peripheral footprint of any headlights from passing motorists.
Kolt laid low in a small erosion ditch and balled up to stay warm. He kept a keen eye on the highway off to the east that linked the Saudi village of Al Mubarakah and bisected the customs gateway, the centerpiece of the Jizan Province, serving both the Saudi and Yemeni side of the border. The sun hadn’t broken the horizon yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Things were lightening up, and Kolt edged a little deeper into the ditch. He wasn’t interested in being spotted by a youngster pushing sheep around the area. In the distance, emanating from a large group of egg-white and cream-colored UNHCR refugee tents struck no more than a few hundred feet from the highway, he heard the faint signal to move.
As the morning call to prayer reverberated from a distant loudspeaker atop a tan-and-white mosque, he took to his feet, shouldered his pack, and made his move.
Kolt knew the area from a previous visit, but not from this angle. He had traveled this same highway once before, balled up in the back of a private taxi during a classified op with indigenous CIA assets and Saudi security police who took him to the border checkpoint with Saudi Arabia. Kolt headed for the nearby bus stop.
After six buses passed, at roughly forty-five- to fifty-minute intervals—the time it took each to process through the customs gateway and enter Yemen—the bus described by the agency had yet to show. The last text he received from the agency assets that had been following Nadal put the terrorist positively in Al Mubarakah, though Kolt was unsure whether the agency had assets on the bus or was simply following the bus. Finally, he spotted the strange light-pink and yellow bus with the correct Arabic number-letter combination. He had been waiting for more than three hours and had finished off the water blivet thirty minutes earlier.
Stepping up into the bus with several other passengers, Kolt handed a wad of Yemeni riyals to the driver and made his way to the back, taking an empty window seat three seats from the rear of the bus.
* * *
The overcrowded bus ride really sucked. Before leaving Fort Bragg, Kolt knew that being the only Delta guy with a team of SEALs would ensure he drew the short straw every time. The shit missions. But this time he had only himself to blame. And even though they all knew the last guy that should have been doing this singleton op was Kolt Raynor, none of the SEALs ponied up to volunteer.
So far, the hour-long ride southeast over potholed or desert roads that bounced the passengers around like rag dolls had been every bit the shit mission. He wondered if Rocco and the other SEALs were right.
On the bright side, at least Kolt had been able to stall the overconfident trigger-happy SEALs long enough to let him build a little filler for the target folder. SEALs were great at finishing stuff but had little interest in the find-and-fix portion of operations. That was fine by Kolt. He’d let them save the world with their joysticks and then call them when their muscle was needed.
All things considered, things were actually kind of going Kolt’s way. He was uncomfortably armed with a Galaxy II cell phone and three hundred riyals’ worth of kat stimulant leaves to barter with. He had already sent a text message to the SEALs at the safe house letting them know he found the correct bus and was aboard. The next text, assuming things went as planned, even if it was a hasty plan, would be a confirmation text that Nadal was on the bus as well.
Kolt tried to keep from dozing off during the journey back across the Saudi-Yemeni border. But he also didn’t want to engage in any conversation with fellow passengers if he didn’t have to. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his language skills. He wasn’t concerned about his Arabic dialect since the hajj ensured this route was welcoming to all Muslim sects. But if it could be avoided, it wasn’t smart to work a cover when exhausted. And Kolt was beat. The time change and jet lag, coupled with coming down off the two Ambien pills he popped before reaching Yemen airspace over a week ago, were still taking their toll. He craved shut-eye more than anything, though, and it wasn’t long before he dozed off with his head leaning against the sun-warmed glass window.
Kolt woke up to the sound of rain pellets striking the top of the bus and a fellow passenger shaking his left shoulder. It was the young man sitting across the aisle from him. Kolt rubbed his eyes to clear his head. He could feel the bus had stopped and saw passengers filing down the aisle to exit. The sun was no longer visible since the dark rain clouds had moved in from the west off the Red Sea.
“We must get off,” the young dark-skinned man said. “It is time to give glory to Allah.”
Black, loose, curly hair sat atop the man’s high forehead, crowned by a light-mauve Islamic knitted prayer cap. His nose had an unnatural-looking crook to the left and was split by a dimple, giving him the look of a Halloween witch. The man’s left earlobe was noticeably missing, giving him an unbalanced appearance when viewed straight on. He wore a light-purple salwar kameez over a very narrow body, obviously soiled around the rim area from overuse. Kolt followed the oversize shirt down to the stranger’s off-white baggy pants that rode high above his ankles. As the grip tightened on Kolt’s shoulder, surprisingly firm, he picked up on the worn brown leather toeless sandals protecting the stranger’s feet.
“Please, drink this,” the stranger said as he placed a light-green container of water in front of Kolt’s face. Kolt easily noticed something bizarre about the stranger’s hand. There were five fingers grasping the container, but the end two seemed much smaller than the other fingers. They looked as if they belonged to a four-year-old child instead of a grown man.
After an uncomfortably long stare at the stranger’s handicap, Kolt accepted. “Shukran—Thank you!” he said before pausing. “What is your name?”
“My name is Nadal. I am with my father, Malik Abu-Nadal. It was his lifelong dream to visit Mecca,” he answered proudly.
Fucking Nadal the Romanian? Kolt took a hard look at the stranger—he had to be sure this was his target. The facial features matched the CIA description sent to Rocco at the safe house, but Kolt was expecting someone much older. This Nadal seemed too young, too friendly, not much of a threat.
It’s gotta be him.
“And your name?”
“Yasu,” Kolt answered. Not entirely comfortable with the exchange, Kolt quickly added, “We better go,” as he motioned to the other passengers already outside the bus. Kolt desperately wanted to text the safe house to confirm positive ID on Nadal, but it would have to wait.
A few seconds after prayer, the driver, a heavy balding man in his midthirties, raised the front engine hood. Another gentleman handed him a quart-size aluminum can filled with water collected from the heavy rain. The driver poured it into the radiator spout to cool the engine a bit. Steam rose a few feet above the engine and dissipated in the heavy, damp air.
Within five minutes the passengers had reloaded and the bus was on the move south, down the mud-scarred paved roadway. Kolt feigned sleeping for a few minutes, hoping his new acquaintance Nadal would take the hint. Kolt considered everyone on the bus the enemy, not just Nadal. He had no reason to feel otherwise. Years of combat action in Afghanistan and Iraq had convinced him of the absolute requirement to be wary of the Muslim mind. Sure, they weren’t all Islamic extremists with a death wish for all infidels. But without any obvious markings, who could tell the difference until it was too late?
Back on the bus and seated next to the window, Kolt held the Galaxy II, typing in “PC POS ID confirmed.” But just as Kolt hit SE
ND, the connection to the satellites circling the Earth in a geosynchronous orbit dropped. His message to Rocco now hung in limbo, waiting for the storm clouds to clear out.
SIXTEEN
Northwest Yemen
The long ride took Kolt and the others southeast along Highway 5, which passed through the villages of Harad and Abs and eventually reached the hilly and rocky village of Al Ma’ras
It had been an entire day of wait-a-minute traffic along unmaintained asphalt and hard-packed dirt roads and thruways. Colorful single- and double-decker commuter buses, minivans jammed packed, pickup trucks with passengers in the bed barely hanging on, and motorcycles with two riders congested the highway to the point that the idea of being in a hurry was futile.
The sun hinted at reappearing through the dark ceiling as the bus crossed over the deep Wadi Maar. Likely the last chance before the cloud-hidden sun would finally set down in a few hours for the night. Another three miles beyond the wadi, and just a north of the village of Radmat Jubarra, the bus slowed to turn to the east, where it continued for another eighty miles, passing through the villages of Hajjah and Amran, before reaching the northern outskirts of Sana’a.
Kolt focused on the distant orange hue and the gorgeous naturally crusted and carved ridgelines and hilltops. The slow, bumpy ride tried to rock him back to sleep, but Kolt resisted, discreetly pinching his legs and sides to stay awake. No. Kolt knew he slipped up earlier in the day. He was on target, even if it was moving. Sure, he had PIDed Nadal, accomplished his mission, and even though his Galaxy II was still not tracking satellites, he kept checking to see if his POS ID text message had left his outbox to alert the SEALs, but it remained stubbornly unsent. And so he wasn’t about to doze off again.