Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  They sat there awhile in silence, drinking and watching the soldiers deplaning, before she pointed toward the caskets. “You know, back in World War Two, the army did not allow the U.S. flag to be placed on top of the coffin of any female aviator because they were not considered part of the military.”

  “Are you talking about the WASPs?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I had no idea,” Wright said. “I thought they received equal—”

  “In your dreams. But it gets better. Because they were not considered military personnel, all fallen WASPs were sent home without traditional military honors—and at their family’s expense. How’s that for the ultimate fuck you from your country?”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah … and we still haven’t bottomed out. After the war, the chauvinistic brass wanted to sweep the whole WASP thing under the rug, so WASP records were sealed for thirty-five years.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “I wish. It wasn’t until 1977 that accounts of their amazing accomplishments were made public, but the military still didn’t allow the deceased WASP to be buried in Arlington until 2002. I mean, think about it, John, I was already out of the academy and flying A-10s in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those pilots who paved the way for me to do just that were not allowed a military burial.”

  “Looks like we’re slowly getting there,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she replied, pointing at the A-10 at the end of the line. “It took the military over six decades to bury female pilots at Arlington, but it took the same military less than—” she paused to glance at luminous dial on her watch “—four hours to find me a new bird. They even got my damn name on it already.”

  And unlike her last Warthog, this one had a mouthful of sharp teeth painted across its nose.

  “Well, it does fit your flying style.”

  She chuckled. “I’m wondering what Mrs. Clark would think of me now?”

  “Who’s Mrs. Clark?”

  “Fifth-grade teacher. We had to stand up and tell the class what we wanted to be when we grew up. So I said I wanted to be a fighter pilot. After the class stopped laughing, Mrs. Clark told me it was against the law for a woman to be a fighter pilot.”

  “That’s cold.”

  She shrugged. “True stories usually are.”

  “Well, sweetheart, technically you didn’t become a fighter pilot. You fly Hawgs.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Captain.”

  “Roger that, Captain.”

  “So, what did the good colonel want?”

  He frowned. “Took one of my LTs to backfill the LT I told you about at dinner who bought the farm.”

  “Wiley, right?”

  “You were listening. Yes. Him.”

  “Ah,” she said. “And who’s backfilling your team?”

  “New rotation.”

  She stretched a finger at the deplaning soldiers. “Fresh meat?”

  “Nah,” Wright said. “Should get here in a week or so.”

  “And until then?”

  He grinned and raised his brows at her.

  “Dammit, John! You’ve done your stint in a rifle platoon—longer than anyone I know who’s still in possession of their legs and their balls! I thought the whole fucking point of getting fucking promoted was to get you off the fucking field and on to Central Command to coordinate raids, not lead them!”

  “Honey, please tell me how you really feel.”

  She punched him on the shoulder.

  “I guess Duggan should have checked with you first,” he said.

  She punched him again. “Don’t screw with me, soldier.”

  “You didn’t mind it so much in Qatar,” he said, running the tip of his index finger across her palm.

  She pulled her hand away. “Perv … and don’t change the subject.”

  “Look … my unit isn’t due out for at least another week, maybe longer, so chances are I’ll have a replacement by the time we have to head out again.”

  She turned back to the newcomers still deplaning.

  “Besides,” he added, “leading a rifle platoon isn’t that much different from what you do, and you don’t hear me complaining when you pull stunts like the one this afternoon.”

  “It was textbook and safe. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation if I had a penis.”

  “Bullshit. It wasn’t textbook and it certainly wasn’t safe, penis or vagina. And besides, I thought we decided in Qatar that we weren’t going to do this.”

  She sighed. He was right of course. Somewhere during their R & R week they had almost taken vows not to get in the way of each other’s careers. Until they rotated out, they had a job to do, and it did involve a significant degree of risk. For this thing that started after a slow dance barefoot in the sand under the stars to have any chance of being anything more than … a thing, they had to respect the fact that their jobs were inherently dangerous. They were, after all, in the middle of a terrible war.

  “Look, I just don’t want to lose you, like I lost my dad,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied. “But remember, I also lost my father and my grandfather in wars. And while I’d like to believe I’m going to beat the odds, we still need to respect our chosen profession, at least until we get stateside.”

  Vaccaro nodded, remembering their first conversation over beers at that beachside bar in Qatar. Their similar pasts, the pain and the pride of growing up knowing their fathers had paid the ultimate price for their country, had certainly played a role that evening.

  “I know what we said, John,” she finally replied. “But that was … well … before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Really, John?”

  Reaching for her hand and interlacing fingers, Wright said, “Qatar was…”

  “Textbook?” she said, grinning.

  “Yeah,” he replied, also smiling. “Definitely textbook … But not very … safe.”

  She rested the side of her head against him while remembering their postdance activities in that beachside cabana.

  “Safe is overrated.”

  “Sounds like something you would say.”

  “It’s too bad indeed we’re not in Qatar anymore, Captain Wright,” she said, tightening her hand, “or I’d show you just how overrated it is.”

  “Yeah, that’s too bad indeed, Captain Vaccaro,” he said. The various military organizations at Kandahar had strict rules against fraternizing among soldiers. And while some chose to take the chance, and to risk their careers in the process, Vaccaro and Wright had agreed to stick to the rules.

  Pointing at the caskets as the arriving soldiers vanished inside buses and the ramp ceremony began, he added, “We’re definitely not in Qatar anymore.”

  They stood and watched it in silence.

  15

  Reversal of Fortune

  ISLAMABAD. PAKISTAN.

  The warehouse’s door swung open at dawn and a dozen men poured out, single file, into the big E-350 vans. They were holding weapons, primarily AK-47s.

  Tired and sleepy, his mouth dry and pasty, Gorman forced himself fully awake, focusing the Zeiss binoculars on the narrow gap between the door and the E-350s, but the angle was wrong, preventing him from seeing their faces.

  The Fords drove off the compound and accelerated up Shaheed–Millat Road. Gorman put the RAV4 in gear and went after them just as dawn broke across the Pakistani capital, allowing him to keep his headlights off and maintain a respectful distance while dialing his team.

  “Sir?” came the tired voice of Karen Barns, one of his senior analysts, a career CIA woman of around fifty with a face lined by two failed marriages. She had been around the Islamabad station longer than anyone and had taken charge of the monitoring of UAV imagery from inside the vault at the embassy.

  “Tell me you have eyes on them.”

  “Two white Ford vans heading north on Shaheed–Millat Road.”

  Gorman eased off the gas and let them get a bit
farther ahead in the semidarkness, but without losing sight of their taillights as they went east on Jinnah Avenue and around Fatima Jinnah Park, turning north on Agha Shahi Road.

  “Looks like they’re headed for the university,” Karen reported in her matter-of-fact monotone voice.

  Gorman turned to follow them, the heavily wooded park now to his left while he cruised past row after row of private residences on his right. After a mile or so, the woods to his left opened to reveal the main campus of the University of Islamabad. Work and school traffic started to pick up in the form of small cars, mostly Kias, Suzukis, and Toyotas, plus an assortment of bicycles, motorcycles, and tons of mopeds—many spewing crazy volumes of exhaust smoke. But Gorman actually welcomed the toxic haze hovering in the morning air. It helped obscure his presence from those he followed.

  He remained focused, scanning his quarry plus his surroundings through the light of early dawn, keeping a buffer of five or six vehicles to avoid getting burned, especially since he was conducting this tail solo. The Agency would usually dispatch at least four cars to conduct a proper surveillance, each shadowing for a few blocks before another chase car took over, in overlapping sequence.

  Gorman almost laughed at the surreal—and even ironic—nature of his situation, especially if the master terrorist was indeed aboard one of those vans while he followed them in an old Toyota with no backup. Meanwhile, his country had sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into scouring the globe for his whereabouts.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled while steering the weathered RAV4 and wondering where that money was being spent. “Any-fucking-where but here.”

  “Sir?” Karen streamed through his earpiece. “Say again. We didn’t catch that.”

  Gorman frowned. “Disregard that last—”

  “Targets turning right on Khayaban-e-Iqbal, heading northeast, away from the university.”

  Spotting them just as the taillights disappeared around the corner, he accelerated and swerved past a couple of mopeds and a truck.

  Ignoring the driver of the truck honking at him, Gorman reached the intersection and cut right, continuing on the wide street for a couple of miles.

  The E-350s approached the cutoff for Damin-i-koh, the long and winding road connecting the north section of Islamabad with the southern part of Haripur—the same damn road he had taken the night before, coming the other way.

  But the armored vans remained on Khayaban-e-Iqbal for another four miles, until it dead-ended on Fourth Avenue, by a fruit and vegetable market. Its street-side kiosks showcased heaps of colorful produce—from mangos, dates, and apricots to squash and turnips. Turning left, they slowed when entering a suburban neighborhood in the northeastern section of the capital city.

  Ignoring vendors screaming by the sidewalk while holding up handfuls of ripe tomatoes and pears, Gorman steered the Toyota onto Fourth, flanked by woods to his left and several rows of houses to his right. The sun was just breaking over the rim rock of the mountains skirting the eastern edge of the city, bathing the capital in wan orange light. Streetlights flickered and went off.

  As he was about to ask where the hell they were headed, Karen reported, “They’ve stopped across the street in front of the fifth house on the next block. Two-three-seven Fourth Avenue.”

  “Whose house is that?”

  “We’re checking the housing database now.”

  Gorman pulled over on the residential side of the street, by the corner, a safe couple hundred feet from his mark, settling in the space between two parked cars, a black Kia coupe and a blue Suzuki minivan. This offered a diagonal vantage on the vans parked down and across the street while providing an acceptable level of concealment.

  A tall woman wearing a dark shalwar kameez robe, her features hidden beneath a dupatta headscarf and a veil, appeared in the middle of the street, carrying an empty basket, probably headed to the market.

  He focused on her arms, which moved freely, meaning no hidden weapons beneath the gown. He shifted from her to the vans as two men got out of the lead Ford, clutching AK-47s, and approached the lone female.

  Gorman fingered the focusing ring of the Zeiss binoculars, resolving their images. Neither man was bin Laden. A conversation ensued, involving a lot of hand gesturing that could suggest concern—or nothing at all, given the high-strung nature of these people. But the discussion ended abruptly when the woman pointed toward the market down the street.

  The men waved her off, and the woman walked away briskly as four men poured out of the second van and joined the first two, approaching the front of the house.

  Focusing on the men, Gorman ignored the veiled woman as she rushed past his parking spot and continued down the street. He shifted the binoculars from face to face, hoping to catch a glimpse of bin Laden, but none belonged to the master terrorist.

  “They’re going into the residence,” he said. “Got a name yet?”

  “Negative, but we have a visual. Still checking local records.”

  Gorman frowned while staring at what might be a kidnapping in progress.

  But who are they after?

  “Keep looking. I’ll be right back,” he told Karen, removing his earpiece and tossing it and the phone onto the passenger seat.

  He paused before reaching for the door handle, Harwich’s words echoing in his head.

  Keep your distance and just watch and report, okay?

  He frowned, getting out of the RAV4 and stepping around the space between his front bumper and the back of the Kia, peering past the Kia’s rear quarter panel for a better view.

  While half the men stormed the front gate, crawling over it before opening it from the inside, the rest kept watch by the vans.

  Gorman zoomed in to check the faces of the lookout team as the grabbing team vanished inside.

  He was about to double back to his vehicle when one of the lookout men screamed, pointing at him.

  Shit!

  He tried to get into the RAV4 but never made it past the fender before a volley of rounds tore into the Toyota’s grill, hood, and windshield, tearing it up in seconds. The staccato gunfire reverberated down the sleepy street, its thunder marking the start of just another day of violence in Islamabad.

  Gorman rolled back to the sidewalk, surging to a deep crouch and running away from the Toyota while using the parked vehicles as a temporary shield. His right hand instinctively drew the Desert Eagle, the web of his hand pressed snug against the top of the grip. He thumbed the ambidextrous safety while his left hand automatically came up for support and stability. Tucking his wrists against his right pectoral, he kept the muzzle pointed slightly down, shooting finger resting on the trigger casing.

  The firing stopped as he raced past five or six vehicles, dropping into the narrow space between an old Nissan truck and the front of a brown car he could not identify. Lying flat on his left side, he peered under the truck, spotting three pairs of legs running toward his hiding spot. They looked to be about forty or fifty feet away.

  Taking a deep breath, he aimed the Magnum at the closest set and fired multiple times.

  The .50 Action Express rounds made a hell of a racket, flashing under the truck and certainly telegraphing his position, but not before one of the jacketed hollow-point bullets vaporized someone’s foot.

  Gorman fired twice more and dropped the spent magazine, listening to the shrieks as his victim collapsed on the asphalt. He reloaded while switching targets, shooting rapidly at the next set of legs, the reports deafening, a shell taking off a leg at the knee with ridiculous force and a cloud of blood, flesh, and bone.

  He dropped his second magazine and loaded a third while jumping back to the sidewalk as a volley of rounds pounded the truck and the brown car in a blaze of sparks.

  Spinning away, he again rose to a deep crouch, his operative mind weighing the choice of keeping this fight in the street—especially after the grabbing team emerged from the house—or taking it to the thick woods across the road.

  Making his deci
sion, Gorman did what he hoped the Taliban soldiers would not expect: he left the protection of the parked cars and ran straight onto the road, in plain view. But he did it while emptying the Desert Eagle, aiming it at the third man he had seen running toward him, catching him kneeling down by his wounded comrades.

  Shooting sideways while sprinting greatly reduced Gorman’s accuracy. Still, a slug tore into the man’s chest, pushing him in the direction of the other lookouts, who dove for cover when a couple of stray rounds struck the rear of the trailing Ford van.

  Temporarily out and lacking the time to reload, Gorman pounded the pavement while pointing his momentum at the tree line. The soldiers abandoned their assigned posts and went after him, swinging their weapons in his direction.

  Gorman reached the edge of the trees and dove headfirst behind a wide trunk as the fast rattle of AK-47s hammered the blacktop and then the woods. Bark exploded in a shower of mulch.

  He landed on his side and once more rolled away. The leaf-littered ground and the thick canopy overhead swapped places as he pushed his body while clutching the Desert Eagle against his chest.

  He hit something hard, which stopped his momentum. It was a group of moss-slick boulders a dozen feet from the spot where he’d entered the forest. His shoulder stung from the impact, but he ignored it, wincing in pain while managing to get back up as bark splintered to his immediate right.

  Gorman sprinted left, zigzagging deeper into the woods, where darkness shrouded him. He rushed past towering trees and rock formations, ducking under hanging vegetation and low branches, hoping to lose his—

  He tripped on an exposed root, crashing headfirst into knee-high shrubs while tightening his right hand, keeping his grip on the Desert Eagle.

  Struggling to regain his footing, he pawed on all fours, finally staggering up and looking over his right shoulder while hurrying behind the protection of a wide trunk. He caught a glimpse of the silhouettes of the incoming trio, backlit by the sunlight from the street, which made them easy targets. By going into the murky woods first, he had given himself an edge. The men after him could not see him as clearly as he could see them.