by Carl Bowen
Ducking out of harm’s way just in time, Cross reached around the corner with his rifle to throw out suppressing fire. The spray forced the Iraqi back into his hole, and also bought enough time for Walker and Shepherd to rush around the corner and get into cover positions down the hallway.
When the insurgent stuck his head out to see once again, he was surprised to see all three Americans open fire. Chief Walker managed to hit the Iraqi in the side by firing straight through the cheap drywall beside the door frame. At the same time, a one-in-a-million shot from Cross popped the insurgent in the wrist.
The injured man’s rifle skittered down the hallway as he retreated back into the room. Before Walker could close in on him, the Iraqi kicked the door shut. Then he locked it.
Cross, Walker, and Shepherd huddled together just outside the locked door. Walker and Shepherd glanced at Cross for orders. Cross took a position to the left of the door and motioned Walker to the opposite side. He signaled for Shepherd to get ready to kick the door in, but then gestured for him to hold position.
Cross tapped the small button on the two-way canalphone tucked into his right ear. “Fireteam Two, report,” Cross said, whispering just loud enough for the tiny earbud radio to pick up his voice.
“All clear here, sir,” Staff Sergeant Paxton replied on the line. “The only man not accounted for is the one you went after.”
“Good, we’ll bring him around,” Cross answered quietly. “Out.” He paused for a moment to let the line clear, then tapped his canalphone again. “Overwatch, report.”
“No rats, sir,” Brighton reported. He was stationed on the roof across the street with Yamashita, the team’s sniper.
While Yamashita scanned the building and the street through the Leupold scope of his M110 sniper rifle, Brighton scanned the area through the high-resolution camera on his remote-controlled reconnaissance UAV quad-copter. “No sign of reinforcements, either.”
“Good,” Cross replied. “Out.”
“Wait,” Yamashita said. “Your fugitive is holed up in a room on the south face of the building, right?”
Cross took a moment to check his relative position in the building. “Affirmative,” Cross said. “Do you have a visual on our target?”
“I can tell which room he went into, but I don’t have a shot from this vantage point,” Yamashita said. “I’m relocating now.”
“Roger that,” Cross said. “Out.”
“Sir,” Walker said when comm-traffic in the team’s earphones stopped. He nodded toward the closed door between them and the wounded insurgent. “Let me try to talk to him. I can get him to come out.”
Shepherd looked skeptical but didn’t say anything. Cross had his doubts, too.
“He can’t be more than eighteen years old, sir,” Walker said, reading their expressions. “He’s been shot twice already and he’s probably scared to death. Let me give him a chance to surrender with his dignity intact. He’ll take it.”
Cross knew all about the chief’s optimistic faith in humanity and how it occasionally clouded his judgment. However, Cross didn’t like the idea of kicking in the door and gunning down a scared teenager any more than Walker did. So, with a nod, Cross motioned toward the door. He kept his M4 ready, though, as did Shepherd.
“Son, I want you to listen to me,” Walker spoke in Arabic, leaning toward the door. “I know you’re in pain, and I know you’re losing blood. I know you’re scared. But if you work with me, I can get you out of this mess without —”
“I have a way out!” the insurgent barked back.
The desperation in the boy’s voice made Cross nervous, but at least it gave him a good sense of where he was standing. Cross exchanged a look with Shepherd, making sure the Green Beret would be ready to breach the door. Shepherd nodded.
“Let’s talk about this,” Walker said, his voice calm and steady, as if he were talking to one of his own kids back home. “What’s your name?”
“Don’t pretend you care who I am,” the insurgent snarled in Arabic. “All you care about is —”
The boy’s words stopped short as a muffled thump sounded from within the room. Cross thought he’d heard a sound like glass breaking but not shattering. Everything was silent. Cross didn’t like that. Ignoring the frustration on Walker’s face, Cross signaled Shepherd to breach the door.
Shepherd launched himself across the hall and bashed the door off its hinges with a powerful kick. Cross and Walker were right on his heels as the three of them spread out to cover the room in all directions. No sooner were they through the door when Yamashita’s voice came over their canalphones. “Clear,” the sniper said.
“Clear,” Cross confirmed. Walker and Shepherd spread out to check the rooms on both sides. They both reported clear.
As Walker and Shepherd returned, Cross assessed the state of the room. Except for sturdy tables in each corner, the room had no furniture. A single window dominated the wall opposite the door. It had a small hole in it near the top, surrounded by a spiderweb of hairline cracks.
The insurgent lay in the center of the floor, sprawled on his face with his knees tucked under him. A dark stain was spreading out across the carpet beneath him. To Cross’s shock, the boy looked up at him. He was opening and closing his mouth as if he were trying to speak.
“He’s alive!” Walker gasped. He tapped his earphone as he crouched by the kid’s side. “Medic! We need you up here now.”
“On my way,” Kyle Williams replied.
“Cancel that, Williams,” Cross said. He met Chief Walker’s wild, angry eyes with perfect calm.
“Sir,” Williams said, signing off.
“He’s not going to make it, Chief,” Cross said to Walker. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“Fine,” Walker said. He glanced down and saw that the insurgent was already dead. “But Yamashita and I are going to have a long talk later.”
“Maybe you should put him in for a medal,” Shepherd suggested in a low, respectful tone.
Walker glared angrily at Shepherd. Shepherd simply pointed below and nudged the fallen boy’s outstretched right hand with the toe of his boot. Walker saw a gunmetal-gray device in the Iraqi’s limp hand.
Only then did Walker take a good look around the room to see what Cross and Shepherd had already noticed. In all four corners of the room, on and under the tables, were stacked blocks of black market plastic explosives. One of the blocks on the table nearest the boy had an electronic detonator jammed into it. That one block alone would have killed everyone in the room.
“If all of those explosive had gone off,” Shepherd said, “the explosion would have easily destroyed the building. Along with us inside it.”
* * *
Several hours later, back at base, Shadow Squadron had squared away their gear and finished their after-action reports. As Cross entered the barracks, he saw that Walker was yelling at Yamashita.
“The kill wasn’t necessary,” Walker insisted. “I could’ve talked him down.”
“I didn’t know you were talking to him at all, Chief,” Yamashita said. “I just saw him pick up that trigger and start waving it around.”
As always, Yamashita was calm. Cross noted, however, that Walker was anything but composed. Even still, Cross waited and listened before intervening.
“What if it’d been a dead-man switch?” Walker demanded. “You would’ve brought that whole building down!”
Cross had to admit that was a good point. That kind of trigger would’ve been armed the moment the insurgent squeezed it, but wouldn’t have gone off unless the insurgent let go.
“It wasn’t a dead-man switch,” Yamashita said.
“You could tell?” Cross asked.
“Sir,” Yamashita replied with a nod. At the time, he’d been only about eighty percent sure. But Yamashita decided that Walker and Cross didn’t nee
d to know that.
“He was hurt and scared, Lieutenant,” Walker said, returning to his original point. “I could’ve gotten him to surrender. Nobody had to die. Especially not like that. I mean, you shot him in the throat.”
Yamashita hadn’t known that until now. “I was shooting through glass,” Yamashita said, his voice calm and even. “I was aiming for his chest. Some deflection is unavoidable, even at that range.”
“It was avoidable,” Walker snapped. “You didn’t have to take the shot! I mean, nobody ordered you to. If you hadn’t jumped the gun, that boy would still be alive!”
Yamashita suppressed a shudder of rage. He started to say something, but Cross interrupted. “All right, Walker,” Cross said. “You’ve made your position more than clear. It’s time to let me handle this.”
“Sir, I —” Walker began.
“Chief,” Cross said, cutting him off. “I got it.”
Walker was not satisfied, but he put up no further argument. He gave Yamashita one last cold look then stormed out of the room.
“Follow me, Lieutenant,” Cross said. He led Yamashita to the room that served as his office while Shadow Squadron was stationed there.
Yamashita understood where Walker was coming from, but the chief always believed he could save the world if he just tried hard enough. Walker had no idea what Yamashita had to deal with every time he pulled the trigger on his M110.
Cross sat down in the chair behind his wooden desk. He gestured for Yamashita to take the stool across from him. “Walker’s pretty salty right now,” Cross said. “Keep in mind that he’s not angry at you. It’s just the situation that bothers him.”
Yamashita glanced through the open blinds on the window behind Cross. In the distance, he could see the massive Ziggurat of Ur that lay within the security perimeter of the air base. The ancient pile of bricks was over forty centuries old. It would still be there when the Iraqis and Americans were only a memory. “I know how Walker is,” Yamashita finally said.
“Officially, you made the right call,” Cross said. “I would have ordered you to take the shot. Next time, though, I need to know what you know. When you’re on overwatch, you have to keep me informed of any new information you find.”
Yamashita didn’t reply, but some of what he was thinking must have shown on his face. Cross raised an eyebrow. “Something on your mind, Lieutenant?” Cross asked. “You can speak freely.”
Yamashita hesitated. His previous commanding officer had said the exact same thing only to bait a trap. Cross didn’t seem like the type, though. Yamashita decided to take the opportunity.
“I know I should have told you as soon as I saw the C4 blocks on the tables,” Yamashita said, looking at Cross’s desk. “I was about to, but when that guy stuck the detonator in and picked up that trigger, I didn’t think I had time. So I took the shot.”
Cross narrowed his eyes. “That’s fair,” he said. “Just don’t make a habit out of it.”
Yamashita met Cross’s eyes directly with his own. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Cross nodded, satisfied with the response. “While I’ve got you here, is there anything else you need to talk about?” Cross asked. “I keep an open-door policy for my team.”
“No, sir,” Yamashita said immediately, even though it was a tempting offer. He stood and folded his hands behind his back. “If that’s all . . .”
“Sure, you’re dismissed,” Cross said. He tapped his temple with his finger. “But if things start piling up in here, I need to know about it.”
“Sir,” Yamashita said. This time, Yamashita could see that Cross wasn’t pleased by his one-word answer, but it was the best Yamashita could manage at the moment.
Yamashita lingered for a moment. Then he saluted and left.
* * *
Within a week, Shadow Squadron had another local assignment. Cross called his team together in a conference room at Tallil Air Base. Staff Sergeant Brighton synced up a tablet computer with a palm-sized projector. It shone on the wall opposite the door.
The six squad soldiers sat around the conference table. Cross and Chief Walker stood at the front of the room on opposite sides of the projected computer display. For the moment, the screen displayed the swords-and-globe emblem of the Joint Special Operations Command.
“Morning,” Cross said with a nod to the team. “We’ve got a situation developing with one of our human intelligence assets in Dhi Qar province. He’s the same guy who’s been feeding us all of our recent intel about insurgent activities. He believes he’s been targeted for assassination, so he’s asked us to supplement his private security force at a special event two days from now.”
“He asked for us?” Yamashita asked, his eyes narrowed.
“He actually asked his CIA handler, Agent Bradley Upton,” Cross clarified. “Upton’s Special Activities Division unit is stretched thin, so we’ve been asked to help them out.”
“Why are we doing a favor for the CIA?” Brighton asked.
Cross shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade,” he said. Yamashita thought the commander didn’t look all too happy about this particular favor.
“So who’s the asset?” Brighton asked.
“His name is Heshem Shadid,” Cross replied.
Cross tapped on the tablet. An image of a middle-aged Iraqi man in an expensive suit popped up. He had a deep widow’s peak of iron-gray hair. “Shadid is a recent addition to the Iraqi parliament in the Prime Minister’s Islamic Dawa Party. Apparently, he’s been with al-Dawa since the Iran—Iraq War in the 1980s.”
“Loyal,” Brighton murmured, impressed. “The ’80s and ’90s weren’t good times to be al-Dawa.”
In Yamashita’s opinion, Brighton had entirely missed the point. In the 1980s, during the Iran—Iraq war, al-Dawa had been a terrorist organization devoted to promoting the Islamic religion. It had supported Iran’s Islamic Revolution and received support from that country for efforts against the Baathists in Iraq. After a host of al-Dawa terrorist activities, including the bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait in 1983, the Baathists had all but wiped out the remaining al-Dawa members. The few who survived the crackdown had either fled the country or gone into hiding. It wasn’t until the fall of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime that the Baathists fell from power, which made it safe for the al-Dawa members to finally resurface.
Loyal or not, al-Dawa had still committed terrorist acts against their own people. In Yamashita’s opinion, they didn’t deserve sympathy.
“In two days,” Cross continued, “Shadid will be attending an exhibition soccer match at the An Nasiriyah Stadium. He’s giving a speech before the match, hoping to earn popular support for his party.”
“At least he’ll have a captive audience,” Brighton joked.
“That’s enough, Brighton,” Walker growled, apparently fed up with the chatter. Yamashita was getting a little tired of it himself. He liked Brighton, but the young soldier’s lack of focus was distracting sometimes.
“Sorry, Chief,” Brighton said.
Cross swiped the tablet’s touch screen, bringing up a street map of Nasiriyah. One route blinked in red. “This is the route Shadid will follow from his place to the stadium, along with alternates. Agent Upton’s SAD unit will be on station at the house and at the stadium, coordinating with Shadid’s personal security men. Our job is to secure the route and ride with Shadid. He’ll be traveling in his armored limo, and we’ve got our van. We’ll use Brighton’s UAV for aerial recon.”
Cross glanced at Yamashita and added. “We’ll set you up midway for overwatch.”
“Is there a specific threat against this guy?” the team’s newest member, Second Lieutenant Aram Jannati, asked. Jannati had come out of the Marine Special Operations Regiment, replacing the deceased Neil Larssen. “Why do we believe he’s been targeted for assassination?”
Cross swiped a few times
on his tablet. “The day after his people issued the press release that said Shadid would be at An Nasiriyah Stadium, he received this picture in an unmarked envelope,” the commander said.
Another photo of Shadid appeared. But this one had been altered. It showed Shadid getting out of his limo in front of the Baghdad Convention Center, which was where the Parliament met. In the picture, Shadid’s left eye had been blacked out with a marker. Arabic letters had been drawn on his forehead.
Shepherd slowly frowned. “‘Infidel,’” he said, interpreting the letters written on the picture. “That’s not good.”
“Infidel is kafira, with an alif,” Walker corrected. “This says kefira. It means ‘disbelief.’”
“On the back of the picture,” Cross said, advancing to a new image on his tablet, “this word was written in marker.” Printed neatly on the back of the photo in Arabic was the word Zulfiqar.
“Oh,” Jannati said. “I see.”
Yamashita didn’t understand. Frowns on the rest of the men’s faces told him that he was not alone. Cross motioned for Jannati to explain. “Zulfiqar is the name of the Blade of Evil’s Bane,” Jannati said. “‘On the day of judgment, the Twelfth Imam will strike down the Deceiving Messiah.’ Zulfiqar is the sword he will use to kill him.” He paused, then shrugged. “Or so the story goes, anyway.”
Brighton rolled his eyes. “So our VIP is targeted for assassination by a guy using the name Zulfiqar,” he said dryly.
Walker nodded. “Yes, it fits. According to the legends, that is how the Deceiving Messiah can be recognized. That, and the fact that he’ll be trying to drive people away from an Islamic state.”
“Do people think Shadid is doing that?” Jannati asked.
“Depends on who you ask,” Cross said. “There are some who don’t like the fact that Shadid and his party are disarming the militias. Some believe that disarming the militias is a step on the road back to a secular, or nonreligious, state.”