McCoy had a small tablet out and was looking at the pulsing yellow dot on the screen. “Less than half a klick, skipper. Due west.”
The men fanned out in the woods and moved in complete silence, walking down a gentle slope in the thick tropical air. McCoy typed on his tablet and sent an e-mail to the reporter’s mailbox. He called the satellite phone number Langley had supplied, but it went right to voice mail. He looked at Moose and shook his head, then whispered into the phone, “Rescue team is on the ground. Keep heading uphill and call this number back.”
The team began running.
***
Hazrol led his men in a single column as they jogged through the jungle following the GPS position on their screen. He slowed down as they got closer. “I want the woman alive!” he ordered his men. The men fanned out and moved slowly and quietly through the woods. When they arrived at the location on his screen, they stopped and began looking around more thoroughly. Hazrol squatted down and picked up the lens cap of a camera and smiled. They were close.
***
Kevin and Val were standing, doubled over, as they tried to catch their breath. They’d been running all morning, and even though they were young and fit, they were also exhausted and without proper food and water for over twenty-four hours.
“We’ve got to keep moving. How’s the ankle?” asked Val.
It was purple and throbbing, but stopping to rest wasn’t an option. “I’m okay. Let me check in, one sec.” He pulled his sat phone and turned it on. He had a new voice mail. It was a man’s voice saying the rescue team was on the ground.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment. “Val, they’re here! They’re on the ground looking for us!”
“What did he say?” she said, now energized with an adrenaline rush of hope.
“Uphill. We just keep heading uphill. I’ll call him back.”
The two of them began running again, Kevin’s gait awkward as he limped, but he never complained as he used trees and plants to pull himself along through the jungle. He hit the call-back option on his phone and listened to it ring as he stumbled through the woods.
“Special Operations, McCoy here, go!” said the voice.
“Thank God you’re here!” said Kevin, stopping to catch his breath. “We’ve been running for two days. I have no idea where we are.”
“It’s okay. Leave your phone on now, okay? I can track you. How much battery life do you have?”
“At least an hour or two, I think.”
“Okay, good. You and your friend, are you injured?”
“No, no, we’re okay. I rolled my ankle and it’s slowing me down, but we’re on the move, heading uphill.”
McCoy was looking at his tablet at a map with Moose and Ripper standing over him. Moose pointed to the river.
McCoy nodded and spoke into the phone. “Listen to me. If you keep heading the way you’re going, you should come to the river again. It winds around all through the hills up here. We’re very close to it ourselves. When you get to the river, we should be able to get you out. Our helicopters can get in there where the river gets wider.”
“Okay. How far is it do you think?”
McCoy squinted at the map. “Maybe half a kilometer. Just keep heading straight up the slope.”
McCoy heard Val in the background of Kevin’s phone as she whispered, “Shh!”
Kevin’s panicked voice hissed into the phone at McCoy. “They’re right behind us! We need to run!”
***
Hazrol and his men had an easy time following the two reporters. Kevin had been using plants and trees for support as he ran, and he might as well have left a trail of spray-painted arrows behind him. The broken trees limbs and torn leaves had led them for hours straight after the pair of infidels.
“There!” shouted one of the men, pointing up the hill.
The man next to Hazrol raised his rifle.
“Wait! The woman has to be taken alive! Get them!”
The men began running up the hill toward where they had seen a brief flash of the reporter’s shirt moving through the woods. They were screaming with excitement like a pack of hyenas after a wounded animal.
Chapter 50
Kinetic
Mohammed and Hamdi waved and shouted blessings and encouragement to the men as the small flotilla took off downstream. Eight small motorboats carried sixty men, each armed with an AK-47 and an exploding vest filled with Semtex and ball bearings. The vests would be turned on the morning of the assault and could be detonated manually by the wearer, or would simply explode via a timer. The plan was to have each man at the correct location in Singapore a few minutes before noon, and then, at exactly noon, all sixty men would simultaneously turn into human claymore mines. If discovered by authorities before noon, the wearer could simply pull the cord and manually detonate. The wearers weren’t informed of the timers, and in the event that they chickened out, they would still martyr themselves.
The boats disappeared around a bend in the chocolate-colored river, and Mohammed and Hamdi returned to their hut to call Hazrol and check on the status of their two reporters. Hamdi had mentioned mut’ah, a temporary marriage, on more than one occasion to Mohammed, something permissible under Sharia law, and Mohammed was now considering it himself. He had seen the video, and the blue-eyed, blonde-haired woman was quite beautiful. Perhaps he’d enjoy the woman first, before Hamdi—a privilege of rank. Mohammed knew Hamdi would most likely kill her during the marriage anyway, as the man wasn’t quite right.
Once the boats were gone, Mohammed made the call, but it went to voice mail. Whatever was happening would remain a mystery, at least for the time being.
***
Fifteen thousand feet above Mohammed’s head, a small drone made quiet circles, feeding video real time to Langley, Virginia, half a world, and perhaps a few centuries, away.
“Darren, it’s Dex. Cookie just called in to tell me they have Mohammed on drone video surveillance again. I’m watching it right now. Check your monitor. Those two are back at camp with a small group of men. Most of them are heading downstream in small boats. I can have a Raptor on station in less than forty minutes and we can hose the whole armada.”
Darren was putting on the video feed as he listened to Dex. “I told you, the president won’t allow an air assault inside Brunei. If the team can get in and out unseen, we’re green light. But that’s it. If these boats leave shore, that’s a different story. Plenty of options if they go out to sea.”
Dex was frustrated. “Well, we have the drone over the camp watching the two ring leaders. I either have to re-task the drone to follow the boats, or we risk losing them.”
Darren thought for a moment, and then said, “Keep it on Kampong Aht. Get another air asset off the Reagan to start following the boats. We know they’re heading downstream. We’ll find them.”
“What if they get off somewhere? We’ll never have another shot at them,” said Dex, starting to get wound up.
“There’s nothing out there worth blowing up until they get to the coast. By then, we’ll have them tracked again.”
“I hope so,” mumbled Dex. “What’s the plan for Mohammed and Hamdi and their little group of choirboys?”
“Once the team extracts the two civilians, we’ll have them find the camp and destroy it.”
“Assuming they find them. I’ve been trying to reach them with no luck.”
“The team or the two reporters?”
“Both.”
***
Moose and Ripper had split the team into a hammer and anvil. They took Hodges with his sniper rifle and O’Conner and sprinted right to flank the reporters and their pursuers. Once they had the two civilians secured, they’d force the enemy back toward the rest of their team, who’d be ready for them.
The four of them sprinted down the
hill full speed. Moose and Ripper looked like NFL linebackers when they got a head of steam up. They didn’t bother going around small shrubs and saplings, they barreled right through them. Hodges and O’Conner followed the two of them like running backs following blockers.
“Dead ahead!” Moose warned in a hoarse whisper.
All of them hit the ground and continued to crawl forward looking for cover and concealment. They could see movement in the heavy foliage, but it was impossible to see who it was. They had weapons at the ready. Moose had the bipod out under the SAW, and Hodges popped off the lens caps on his sniper rifle as he started slowing his breathing as he focused on the leaves whipping around down the hill.
Hodges scanned through his scope and finally smiled. “It’s our two civilians, twelve o’clock, headed to our nine o’clock. They’re making for the river.”
Moose decided to take a risk and yelled at them. “Over here! Over here!”
Fifty yards ahead, in thick foliage, Kevin and Valerie Jean heard the American voice. Kevin grabbed Val by the arm and pushed her in the direction of the voice. “Go!” he screamed. “Run!”
Their pursuers had closed on them, now only another fifty yards or so behind them. If they wanted them dead, they’d already have been shot, but clearly they wanted them alive. Kevin and Val knew all about what happened to ISIS prisoners, and would prefer death to capture. Kevin ignored the pain in his ankle and sprinted with Val as fast as he could, his lungs burning.
Valerie Jean was the first to appear through the foliage, sprinting straight for the team, who were camouflaged and hidden in the ferns. She didn’t see them until Ripper stood up and waved at her. “Here!” he snapped at her. She burst into tears of joy and screamed at him, “They’re right behind us!”
The team stayed where they were in their firing positions and Ripper just kept shouting at her to run faster to him. Kevin appeared behind her, a second later, running clumsily on his swollen ankle. When they were close enough, Ripper jumped out and grabbed them both and pushed them to the ground.
“Stay down! Do not get up for any reason!”
Hodges spoke into his throat mic to the other half of the team. “About to go kinetic. Prepare for assault. Out.” He lined up his target, the first of the line of men racing through the woods, and took a slow, steady breath.
Hazrol was screaming at his men to run faster. They could see the pair they were chasing on and off for the past five minutes, but had failed to catch up to them. Carrying their weapons and ammunition had slowed them down slightly—and perhaps terror had made their quarry faster.
Hazrol was yelling at the man in front of him to move faster when the man’s head exploded into a cloud of blood and brains. It took Hazrol a second to process what had happened. One second, the man was there chopping through the foliage as they ran up the slope; the second, the man’s head was just gone. He was still staring at the body that was dropping when his own head was removed from his body.
The men behind Hazrol saw their leader’s head removed by the sniper’s bullet and stopped their advance. A third shot rang out, hitting yet another of their men, who exploded in blood before spinning off into the foliage. The remaining men panicked. The eight of them turned around and started running without any plan—they were just trying to get away as fast as possible.
Moose opened up with the SAW and the woods around the men began coming apart. Leaves and branches were dropping out of the jungle as a hundred rounds zipped all around them, dropping two more of them. The red tracers added to the ISIS fighters’ terror as they ran away. They were getting further away from the sound of the SAW when they ran into the second half of the team. Apo, Carl, and Bruce were the only men that weren’t wearing jungle-camouflage BDU fatigues. They were in khaki cargo pants with T-shirts and Kevlar vests, looking like they could easily remove their vests and go out for lunch. Their marksmanship gave them away, however. They each began firing two-round bursts and killed five enemy soldiers before they even realized they had run into an ambush.
Jon fired his M4 from behind a fallen tree and took out the last enemy soldier. The woods went completely quiet and nothing moved. Blue smoke hung in the air and the smell of gunpowder filled the noses of those people still able to breathe.
McCoy scrambled over to the two reporters. “Hey! We got you, you’re safe!”
The two of them hugged him and began thanking him over and over. “We didn’t think anyone would come,” said Val, overcome with adrenaline and relief. She was shaking.
“We happened to be in the neighborhood. Are you hurt?”
“No, we’re fine, thanks to you,” said Kevin.
“He’s not fine,” said Val, reaching for his leg. “I think his ankle is broken.”
“Yeah?” asked McCoy. “You ran through the jungle on a busted ankle? Maybe you can join up with us. We like that sort of attitude.”
Kevin forced a smile. “That attitude is called total fucking terror, mate. From now on we’re covering flower shows in Brisbane.”
Moose looked at McCoy, who gave Moose a thumbs-up. “Ankle, but mobile enough. We’re good to go.”
Moose touched his throat mic. “Moose to Apo, we’re coming in, don’t shoot, over.”
Apo’s voice came back on the radio. “Area is secure. Weapons safe. Out.”
Chapter 51
Langley
Dex and Darren were in the Ops Room with Cookie watching the drone feeds when the radio came in from their team. Though they could only see the camp at Kampong Aht and the ISIS boats moving downstream on the river, it was really the rescue they were trying to monitor. The foliage had made observing visually impossible, so they sat on pins and needles for an hour waiting for word back from their team.
Moose’s voice finally came in via sat phone. “Company One, this is Rescue Actual. Package is secure. Preparing for exfil, over.”
Darren, Dex, and Cookie all exhaled with relieved smiles. Darren spoke into his phone. “Roger, Rescue. Outstanding. Over.”
Dex looked at Darren with a raised eyebrow. “Well that was our good deed for the day. Now what about the evil deeds?”
Darren nodded. “Agreed.”
“Rescue Actual, once packages are secured, are you able to Charlie Mike to Kilo Alpha?”
Moose looked at his team of warriors. The boss had just asked him if they could continue mission to Kampong Aht once the two civilians were secured. His men were one hundred percent badass, but they also didn’t have much information on the enemy force.
“Company One, do you have additional intel on target, over?”
“Affirmative. Target has split in two. Kilo Alpha has two HVTs and approximately a dozen tangos. Larger force is on the move north by water. Destination unknown, but possibly to target along the coast or for exfil by boat or plane. We can supply target coordinates if you’re good to go. Over.”
“Send coordinates and intel. We’re waiting for medevac, out.”
Moose handed McCoy the phone and called his team over. The two civilians were nearby, eating MREs and drinking water with Kevin’s foot elevated on a tree stump.
“Boss wants us to Charlie Mike to two separate targets. There’s the camp at Kampong Aht with a small reserve force guarding two high-value targets, and the main force on the move. The larger force is traveling by boat downstream, heading north. They can be at the coast in a few hours. They’re either attacking a target along the coast, or they’re looking for a ride. We’ll need to split into two groups and hit both simultaneously after these two are secured.”
Apo spoke up. “Bruce and I can hit the camp.”
Carl nodded. “I’ll go with them.”
Moose nodded. “Good. Three of you should be enough to handle the camp. McCoy, open that e-mail from Dex and show them the two HVTs. Mohammed bin Awad and Hamdi Fazil. This is not a capture mission.”
Carl looked at him with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not real big on those,” he said quietly.
“The rest of us will head north by helo and drop in here. We’ll ambush the boats as they come up around this bend.”
McCoy pointed to his headphones. “Moose, birds inbound. I requested a third for medevac straight to the Reagan for these two.”
“Excellent. Prepare to unass this mosquito factory.”
The team went into fast motion gathering gear and securing weapons. Assisting Kevin, they led the two journalists down near the water where the trees wouldn’t be in the way of the Sea Hawks’ rotors. When they heard the birds inbound, McCoy grabbed his radio just as the pilot’s voice came on.
“Rescue One, stalkers inbound, over.”
“Popping smoke.”
“Roger, I see green smoke.”
“Rescue One, that’s me, over.”
“Bird One will be medevac. Over.”
McCoy relayed the information to Moose, and he and Ripper grabbed Kevin and helped run him out into the shallow water with Val close behind. As the bird hovered over the water, the side door slid open and a navy corpsman leaned out to pull Kevin in with Moose and Ripper lifting him off the ground. Once he was aboard, Moose grabbed Val and picked her up as if she was weightless, handing her up to the corpsman.
She surprised him with a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you! Thank you all!” she screamed over the noise. The corpsman pulled her in, slid the door closed, and the bird nosed down as it moved forward before roaring off over the trees.
The second bird came in straight behind it. This one had the door already open with a door gunner leaning out. He waved his arm, and Apo, Bruce, and Carl raced out of the jungle with their weapons, climbing up quickly with a wave goodbye to the team, and off they went. The third bird came in straight behind the second and repeated the procedure for the team headed north after the larger ISIS force.
Dangerous Ground: The Team Book Five Page 16