by Dalton Fury
Not yet finished with his business, Kolt turned his attention to the southeast, toward the hotly contested city of Aleppo, some forty-eight klicks away. Dawn had yet to appear, and the heavy ground fog that seemed to cling to their little hilltop limited his visibility to a few hundred yards max. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the Syrian rebels and government forces would trade fire and jockey for terrain. Today, like every day for the last few months, Aleppo residents with ties to the city for generations would become refugees and flee the bombings, or simply relocate in search of much-needed food, clean water, and safe shelter.
Just as uncertain, Kolt wondered if he was close enough, once the fog lifted, to spot Russian-supplied Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters dropping barrel bombs on the slower, or more stubborn, innocent civilians.
Kolt brought his focus closer, down the hill, following the dirt road to the old wood-and-concrete bridge the agency assets had assured them was impassable. He couldn’t see the bridge itself, but did see half of two large logs lying across the road, near where he figured the bridge was.
Must be the locals’ way of saying “bridge closed.”
Kolt began to fold another few layers of shit paper together, careful to keep it dry. He froze.
He heard what sounded like a truck approaching off to his left and slowly turned to look. He spotted the dim headlights through the fog, barely illuminating their path of travel. Metal objects could be heard bouncing around in the back of the truck bed.
Kolt finished his business, wincing as the two-ply sandpaper rubbed his cheeks, and slowly stood to a crouch to pull his drawers up. He moved behind the tree and followed the headlights as the truck came to a stop on the far side of the cemetery.
What the hell? Not good!
Kolt could barely make out two, maybe three voices. He didn’t recognize the language as Arabic, figuring maybe Kurmanji, a Kurdish dialect spoken by Syrian Kurds mentioned in the target folder. It didn’t really matter; Kolt wasn’t in town to mingle with the locals. The Syrian mystery men obviously weren’t worried about waking them either as they laughed about something while removing some equipment from the bed.
Kolt worried that they would see Gangster’s van across the cemetery, now more thankful for the ground fog than ever. Then, three men, two middle-aged and one younger, maybe twenty or twenty-five, stepped over the rock wall. Two wore colorful wool hats to ward off the cold, one with the hood of his black leather jacket up, front zipper at the neckline and the top dropping over his eyes.
Shovels! Folding chairs? Shit!
Kolt reached down and grabbed a few handfuls of pine needles, shaking his greasy bangs out of his eyes before dropping the needles over the slit trench. He crouched down and moved toward the rock wall. Worried he would be spotted, he went into a high crawl, slithering through the dew-covered grass while hand-railing the rock wall to his right. He could still hear the voices, now more hushed, but the unfolding and squeaking of metal chairs and shovels piercing piles of dirt was telling.
Now at the van, completely soaked through at the thighs and elbows, Kolt slowly moved to a knee. He tapped lightly on the back door three times as he stole a peek back toward the three workers. Kolt paused for a second, giving JoJo time to cover the radio, then slowly opened the door and moved the ballistic blanket out of the way. Holding his forefinger extended vertically in front of his lips, Kolt crawled inside.
“Shhhhhh.”
Kolt reached for his rifle, quickly reslung it, touched the selector lever with his thumb to ensure the weapon was still safe, and checked the red dot in his EOTech holographic weapon sight. “We got company.”
“No shit?” JoJo said. “They make you?”
“Negative,” Kolt said, moving forward in the van, just past JoJo, to open the curtain separating them from Gangster. “Hey man, three males and a truck. Far side of the cemetery. Shovels and folding chairs.”
Kolt took in a whiff of a recognizable odor, an odd cross between Frasier fir Christmas tree and raspberry vinegar. He had smelled it before, many times back inside the Spine at the Unit, and knew it to be the signature body wash used by Gangster.
Gangster raised his hand in the air, showing Kolt his palm and giving him another death stare out of the corner of his eye.
“Assault One, stand by!” Gangster said, obviously irritated, before turning around in his high-back seat to address Kolt. “You had to get out and compromise us.”
“Negative,” Kolt said, now a little irritated. “They didn’t see—”
Gangster quickly cut him off. “How can you be certain?”
“Look, man, they are a work crew, not troops, probably not armed,” Kolt said, hoping to calm Gangster down a little.
“Bullshit!” Gangster said. “You should have never left the van.”
“Hey, asshole, any of you guys spot the vehicle?” Kolt said, trying to control his volume. “If I didn’t go out there, we wouldn’t have any idea. They are setting up a funeral right now, you hear them?”
“No, I don’t hear shit!” Gangster said.
“Exactly!” Kolt said. “Trust me.”
Gangster turned his head from Kolt and moved his right hand to his earbud, reaching for his hand mike with his left.
“Boss, we’ve got movement,” Jackal One said from their sniper hide 130 yards from the red side of the target house. “Forty-something male, stepped out the front door, on the porch now … just kicked a bony dog.”
“Positive ID on our man?” Gangster asked.
“Not sure. This guy looks the part but no facial hair, over,” Jackal One said.
“Bald guy?” Gangster asked.
“Can’t tell, black over blue jeans, wearing a tan skullcap and pulling hard on a lung dart.”
Kolt listened intently to the transmissions between Gangster and his sniper team on target.
Kolt knew the Butcher wasn’t necessarily bald, but he did shave his head. He also was hardened from years of war, with tough features, wide, oversized jade green eyes, and sported a thick salt-and-pepper beard that covered most of his face. Yes, Kolt was pretty sure from what he just heard that the man the snipers were currently observing could very well be a dirtbag, maybe a body guard, or even a cousin, but not the Barrel Bomb Butcher himself.
Not our man.
Gangster broke his silence. “We have positive ID on the house, it’s most likely the Butcher.”
Kolt shook his head in amazement. Most likely? Where did Gangster get that from?
Kolt shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew Gangster led like he read it in a field manual: rigid, afraid to audible off the elaborate charts and tables he was force-fed at West Point or in one of his formal military schools. Gangster was encyclopedic with doctrinal terms and phrases, big-picture mission planning and decision-making process stuff. Shit Kolt avoided like a fat girl the morning after.
To Lieutenant Colonel Rick Mahoney, everything had a step, a specific sequence, and he wasn’t about to stray even for a second from what the book said. Indeed, things like intuition and gut instinct, things that Kolt Raynor placed the most importance on, were taboo inside Gangster’s brain housing group.
But even with all his vices, Kolt allowed, Gangster needed it to be the Butcher after so many dry holes.
“All elements, this is Noble Zero-One, depart LCCs, over?” Gangster transmitted with authority.
“Echo One, roger, moving.”
“This is Golf One, moving.”
“Fox, moving.”
Kolt understood Gangster’s desire to grab the Butcher, but he wasn’t tracking with his thought process. It wasn’t Kolt’s op though; he wasn’t anywhere in the chain of command on this one. No, he was there to learn the ropes of squadron command, not punk out the squadron commander. He may not have shared the warm and fuzzy with Gangster, but he knew the assault teams would figure it out. Even if it wasn’t the Butcher out for a morning stretch, he likely was rolling out of bed about now.
Kolt settled back in his
jump seat in the rear of the van, content to give Gangster some space and mind his own business. The Delta commander, Colonel Jeremy Webber, had counseled him—rather, warned him—not to interfere. Be a fly on the wall and nothing more.
Kolt pulled up the left sleeve of his tan wool sweater to reveal his quarterback-style armband. Two passport-size photos of the Butcher were taped to the upper right side of the grid target graph, or GTG aerial that showed what the CIA had fingered as the target house. He looked hard at both CIA-provided photos, studying the distinct features, further committing the Butcher’s hard look to memory.
A ten-year-old could pick this guy out.
“Gangster, you seeing this?” Trip said from behind the steering wheel.
“What the hell is that?” Gangster said loud enough for both Kolt and JoJo to hear from behind the curtain.
“Hard telling, but I’m counting twenty, maybe thirty,” Trip said. “They’re coming up the road right at us.”
Kolt bounced out of his seat, moved back past JoJo, and threw open the curtain again.
“Shit!” Kolt said, taking it all in and somewhat shocked by what he was seeing through the raindrop-splattered front windshield.
“We need to bug out,” Gangster said as he reached for his HK416C placed muzzle down on the floorboard between his legs.
Kolt jumped in as he saw Trip reach for the ignition. “Trip, don’t start the vehicle.”
Surprised Gangster didn’t respond to his comment to Trip, Kolt pushed his luck.
“We aren’t compromised, this can be easy … unless we make it hard,” Kolt said. “We try to leave now and we’ll have problems, unless you are willing to mow over three dozen noncombatants with the van.”
“That’s gotta be the YPG,” Gangster said, fidgeting in his seat. “We’re hard compromised.”
Kolt looked hard at the mob. He knew Gangster could be spot-on. The YPG, the odd acronym of the Popular Protection Units, had run Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government forces out a few years ago and claimed the city, establishing their answer to America’s red beret–wearing Guardian Angels to make sure the war didn’t reach the city’s edge again.
Trip quickly turned to the right, his fingers still on the keys in the ignition, just a few pounds of pressure away from turning the engine over, and looked at Kolt.
“Gangster, it’s your call,” Trip said, obviously wanting some guidance, unsure of who to listen to, his squadron commander or the strap-hanging Kolt.
“No, we need to go. Now!” Gangster said, shaking off the momentary vapor lock. “Back down the hill and we’ll cross the creek.”
“The creek?” Kolt said. “The bridge is out, man. Intel was right about that.”
Gangster turned toward Kolt. “And you know this how?”
“Dude, I just confirmed it outside. There are two big-ass logs across the road anyway. Only way we are driving out of here is straight ahead.”
Kolt looked through the windshield toward the crowd again. As he peered through the rainbow-shaped dirt streaks left from the worn wipers, he noticed something odd about the group. The group was all men—that he was now sure of. But it didn’t appear to be a gang of thugs. They were dressed mostly in black, which wasn’t odd to Kolt, but if truly the YPG, they would be armed. More telling, Kolt saw no women or children holding hands. No grown men carrying toddlers in their arms. Some distance into the middle of the moving crowd, they were carrying something on their shoulders.
The Butcher’s mother?
“Gangster, hear me out, man.” Kolt tried to maintain eye contact with him. “They are heading to a funeral. It fits. All males, the work crew with shovels, the folding chairs. Shit, this is probably the Butcher’s family cemetery.”
“Speculation, Racer—that’s a definite stretch. We don’t know that her funeral is today,” Gangster said.
“We don’t know it’s not, but it’s logical,” Kolt replied.
Before Gangster could reply, Trip cut in, “We gotta do something, boss, crowd is fifty meters, I can practically read their lips.”
Just then, over the assault net, they all heard the Phase Line Pinto call confirming the three assault teams were thirty seconds out from the Butcher’s mother’s house.
Kolt spotted Gangster keying his mike in his peripheral vision, but kept his eyes peeled on the crowd slogging up the muddy road. The wooden casket being shouldered, covered with red and white flowers and green garlands, was now clearly visible as they neared.
“Roger, Pinto,” Gangster said.
More sure than ever now that this very well could be the Butcher’s mother’s funeral, Kolt broke in.
“Gangster. Look, bro, think it through,” Kolt said, trying to keep calm in the face of what was turning out to be a certain shit sandwich. “Abort the assault on the house. The guy smoking out front doesn’t match.”
“What are you, Racer, psychic now?” Gangster was clearly fed up with Kolt’s interference in his op.
“No, but that crowd out there is about to deep-six someone. If the guy out front of the target house was the Butcher, why would he be at the house and not with these guys?” Kolt said. “It’s not him. You don’t have PID. Abort the hit!”
“Negative, Racer, I’m not aborting the hit. It could be the Butcher out front of the house. This could be anyone’s funeral,” Gangster said as he keyed his mike to transmit to his assault teams approaching the target house. “All elements execute, execute, execute.”
Nothing Kolt could do about it now. Either way, the Butcher or not, they would know soon enough. Kolt kept his attention on the closing crowd.
“Trip, Gangster, at least close it down and get back here behind the curtain.” Kolt slid back to his seat to make room. “Make sure the doors are locked, and pull the keys.”
Somewhat surprised they actually listened to him, Kolt watched Trip peel into the back, quickly followed by Gangster. JoJo put his fist up to get everyone’s attention and give the hand and arm signal for freeze.
The procession moved closer, faint sounds of singing and chanting in Arabic seeping through the van’s thin aluminum skin, tinted windows, and blast blankets. Kolt and the team were trapped.
THREE
Kolt held his breath. Of all the times he could have died and all the ways he imagined he might someday buy it, stuck in the back of a damn minivan had never entered his mind. The sound of the crowd grew louder as they reached the van and began to move around it.
A few moments later it felt to Kolt as if the crowd was bumping into both sides of the van as they made their way for the cemetery entrance. Funeral or not, Kolt knew the more switched-on men would be window-shopping the interior of the cab, probably looking for anything valuable like food or items to barter with at the Aleppo souk.
Kolt looked at Gangster, now squatting next to the radio. He could tell his nerves were pinging.
A few seconds later the crowd of men screamed in unison before breaking into what sounded most certainly like chants of Allah u Akbar, God is Great! Kolt looked around and thanked their training that no one had their finger on the trigger. He couldn’t speak for the others, but that collective scream had startled him.
Kolt looked at Trip, then to JoJo. Both men looked ready to explode. “American Idol material?” Kolt said, offering them a slight grin.
Neither man responded.
“That was close,” Gangster whispered as he looked at Trip.
“Too close,” Trip said.
Kolt reached for the blast blanket and slowly peeled it back an inch or two to peek out of the rear-door window.
“Shit!”
Kolt quickly let go of the blanket after seeing the blade edges of a hand just leaving the window glass and a male face turning from the van.
“Someone just tried to look in the window.”
Kolt waited a few moments and tried again.
“Crowd passing the coffin over the rock wall,” Kolt said as he watched the men gently but efficiently pass the
wooden coffin from one group to another to clear the short wall without losing a single flower.
And then he saw someone that looked familiar.
Kolt let go of the blast blanket and quickly yanked his left sleeve up his arm. He moved his forearm closer to his eyes, fixated on the two pictures of the Butcher.
“I’ll be damned!” Kolt whispered. “That’s him!”
Before anyone could respond, the assault net came alive. “Noble Zero-One, target secure, over.”
“Roger. Do you have jackpot, over?” Gangster asked.
“Possible, controlled pair to the face though, unrecognizable now. Three more fighting-age males, questioning them now, stand by.”
“Roger. Finish it and exfil, over,” Gangster said.
Finish it? What the hell does that mean? Kolt thought.
Kolt went back to the rear window. He looked again but his angle was off; he was barely able to see the backs of a few of the men halfway into the cemetery.
“Grave-side service under way,” Kolt whispered.
Gangster took the ball. “Let’s initiate exfil, best time is right now.”
“Gangster, you don’t have PID on the Butcher yet from your assault teams,” Kolt said, turning away from the window to make eye contact. “I’m pretty sure I spotted him outside, let’s hold for a few more.”
Gangster didn’t respond. He looked at JoJo and then Trip, likely trying to gauge their opinion. Kolt knew Gangster couldn’t argue with his logic. He didn’t have PID from the target and he damn well knew it. They all knew it. This hit was too important to the Unit to bug out before they knew for sure.
“Damn it!” Gangster said, trying to keep his voice down. “It’s illogical that the Butcher is in that cemetery. What are the odds? Ridiculous!”
Kolt looked at Trip and JoJo, surprised they hadn’t chimed in yet, one way or the other. Kolt didn’t expect them to specifically stiff-arm their commander, but he did expect all Unit members to speak their mind to help solve the problem.
Nothing.
Gangster had had enough. He made his decision.
“All elements, this is Noble Zero-One, we’re moving, acknowledge, over.”