Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  The moment he flew through it, he cut back throttle and leveled his wings while approaching the dry riverbed, which looked a bit surreal, even for the experienced smuggler. Dozens of torches were held by still figures along the makeshift landing strip, washing their bearded faces and the towering canyon walls behind them with flickering orange light.

  He applied thirty degrees of flaps while further reducing power, letting the Cessna settle naturally over the rock-strewn riverbed. The touchdown went fairly smoothly, just a slight vibration on the yoke and rudder pedals. This was due in part to the tundra tires and in part to the party waiting for him having removed significant obstacles—large rocks or fallen logs—in the reasonably lit thousand-foot stretch.

  He turned the Cessna around at the end of his landing run, as directed by a man holding two torches, who guided him as an airport ground crew marshal would, leaving the Caravan’s nose pointed straight into the landing strip, ready for a quick getaway. He would wait here until Zahra delivered the components and the bomb became operational, at which time he would fly back out of the canyon, at night, to a predetermined spot in the desert to pick her up, along with the functional bomb.

  That was the plan anyway.

  He took a moment to shut down the airplane and then stepped out, breathing in the cold mountain air. Figures surrounded the large Cessna, wielding more torches, resembling a mob, silent, dark eyes gazing at his airplane. Four of them walked closer, carrying a large dark canvas, which they proceeded to drape over the wings and fuselage. Then someone walked past the men standing in a circle. He didn’t carry a torch, so his face remained in shadows as he stepped around the engine cowling, placed a hand on one of the blades of the large aluminum propeller, and then turned to the prince.

  “Welcome to my land,” he finally said in his British accent.

  Mani just stood there in near shock as he stared at the bearded face of Osama bin Laden, who was smiling.

  “But … you’re supposed to be in … How in the world did you get here?”

  Bin Laden’s grin widened as he placed a hand on Mani’s shoulder. “There’s been a change of plans, my friend. The bomb is coming here.”

  Mani had to blink at that. “Here? But I just dropped off Zahra by the—”

  “We know. There is a team waiting for her. And I’m here to personally see there are no more … mishaps.”

  Mani controlled his facial expressions while trying to process the change in plans, thinking of Zahra and the components, fearing he had dropped her into the hands of the enemy.

  “It will work out,” bin Laden added. “I’m seeing to it personally. Trust me?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But you, my friend … The Americans control this region. I have no influence to protect you, like I do in Pakistan.”

  Bin Laden laughed, then said, “I go where the cause takes me, Mani. Always have. Always will. I am needed here, not hiding in Pakistan, and there isn’t a damn thing the Americans, or anyone else, can do to stop me.”

  61

  One Good Point

  KANDAHAR AIRFIELD. SOUTHWESTERN AFGHANISTAN.

  “So,” Wright said, sitting across the table from Harwich and Monica, a terrain map of the region around the suspect compound spread open between them. For the past thirty minutes they had brought him up to speed on the situation at Compound 57. While he wasn’t necessarily a fan of intelligence types, given recent events, Wright had to admit that these two seemed to have an interesting dynamic going, one he found refreshing, because neither was afraid to speak their mind. “You guys think this compound where I nearly got my head shot off could be harboring a nuke?”

  The CIA man nodded. “That’s my assessment.”

  Turning to Monica, who sat next to Wright and who seemed more interested in cleaning her fingernails with the tip of her SOG knife, he asked, “And you concur, Agent Cruz?”

  Looking up from her makeshift file, Monica said, “I concur that we need to stop talking about it and just blow it the hell off the map.”

  “And I told you,” Harwich said, “not until we get confirmation. We need to be certain that the nuke is there, and we’re not going to get that by turning the place into a crater. For all we know, they may have moved it already.”

  She stood slowly, grabbed the knife by its tip with the index and thumb of her right hand, and flung it at the table. The knife swirled twice before the tip stabbed the red X marking Compound 57, quite loudly. Both men jerked back in unison and stared at the knife embedded in the table.

  “Cruz!” Harwich exploded. “What the—”

  “If you’re that worried about those ragheads hauling the weapon on a fucking mule up the mountains, then define a search perimeter. It’s been less than—what?—two hours since the good General Lévesque decided to do us all a big fucking favor and telegraph our intentions with his rifle platoon?” She pointed a finger at Wright before adding, “And there are no real roads up there, so my guess is that the camel jockeys can’t be more than a few miles away, especially if they’re hauling a nuclear weapon the size of an RN-40, which weighs, like, a ton, right? I mean, think about it. They can’t be moving very fast.”

  Harwich regarded her for a moment before looking at Wright, who nodded and said, “She has a point, Mr. Harwich.”

  “Okay, okay,” Harwich finally said. “So we define a perimeter. And then what?”

  “Then … nuke it.”

  He sat back while Wright just stared at her.

  “That’s your suggestion? Nuke the side of the mountain?”

  “Don’t we have nuclear subs in the Indian Ocean? I think a ten megaton should handle a blast radius that large.”

  “Have you lost your mind, Cruz?”

  She shrugged. “It’s the only way to be sure, boss. Besides, it’s just goats and goat fuckers up there. Nothing the world will ever miss.”

  Wright had a difficult time containing a grin.

  “Well, Cruz,” said Harwich. “Tell you what. You suggest it to the general at the next staff meeting, and then tell me how that works out for you.”

  “I just might,” she said, working the knife off the table by rocking it back and forth until she yanked it out.

  “Now,” Harwich said, frowning at the inch-long tear in his map, and then at Cruz. “You did make one good point.”

  “Only one, boss?” she said, returning to her personal grooming. “You sure know how to flatter a girl.”

  “Captain,” Harwich continued, turning to Wright.

  “Yes, Mr. Harwich?”

  “How many men would it take to seal off … say … a five-mile-radius area from Compound 57?” He made a circle with a red pencil to mark off the desired terrain.

  The marine stared at the map, then his eyes shifted four miles to the west of Compound 57, where the Chinook had gone down, and that gave him an idea.

  “I’ll have to check to be sure,” he said, “but off the top of my head, probably a couple of infantry battalions should do it. Around nine hundred marines.”

  “And we have that manpower ready to deploy?”

  “Yes, sir. Ready and willing. Just have to get the colonel to approve the op.”

  “Okay. Knowing what you now know, what sort of force do you estimate would be required to take Compound 57?”

  “Now that we have eyes on the ground, a rifle company should do it.”

  “How many men is that?”

  “It’s three rifle platoons, each with forty-three men, so around a hundred and thirty. We’d come at it from all angles and overwhelm it with suppressing fire before blasting our way in. Then it’d be a matter of going room to room.”

  “What about IEDs and suicide vests?” asked Monica.

  “We deal with that every day, Agent Cruz,” Wright said. “As long as the intel is solid, we can take them.”

  “Very well,” Harwich said. “Let’s go find Colonel Duggan and—”

  “There’s something else,” Wright said, as Harwich and Monica
were about to stand.

  “What’s that, Captain?”

  Wright considered the best way to bring Vaccaro into this, and finally said, “A high asset over this area.” He placed his finger near the edge of the red circle, where Vaccaro was last seen, on the side of the mountain where the Chinook went down.

  “And what’s there?” asked Monica, suddenly interested.

  “Captain Laura Vaccaro, the pilot who saved our ass.”

  Harwich sat back down. “Yeah. I heard.”

  “You think she’s still alive?” Monica asked.

  “Until I know otherwise, yes, and she’s on the ground close to our area of interest, so…”

  “So she could actually be an asset,” Monica said. “Eyes on the ground right here.”

  Wright slowly nodded, suddenly taking a liking to the FBI agent.

  “All right,” Harwich said. “Let’s go brief Duggan, and then I’m going to see what I can do about Captain Vaccaro.”

  “And what would that be, Mr. Harwich?”

  Before Harwich could reply, Monica stood and said, “What he always does: light a fire under someone’s ass.”

  62

  New Faces

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  The Avenger cannon exploded with an insane and blazing fusillade of depleted uranium rounds, each packing enough energy to rip apart a car engine. The river of fiery death shot across the clearing, shredding men and equipment alike, vaporizing everything in its path, gouging the hillside while pulverizing thousands of pounds of rock.

  She banked to the west, toward the thick of the enemy training their weapons up at her as she released the Hydras. The volley of 70mm rockets shot out from under silvery wings, cascading toward the windswept mountain as tracers rained up from a barrage of antiaircraft fire, the opposing ordnance crossing paths in midair in the blink of an eye.

  Metal-shredding bursts of flak engulfed her Warthog as insurgents vanished in a sheet of flames. Her control column vibrated off her hand while alarms filled her cockpit—while her turbofans detonated in a deafening inferno of sizzling metal that propagated toward the cockpit.

  She reached for the ejection handles but they were too far. She tried again and again, fingers stretched desperately skyward as the flaming debris from the engines engulfed the canopy with an ear-piercing crescendo. Cracks formed on the armored glass as the blast swallowed her, as the A-10 spun toward the ground.

  The canopy collapsed and flames pierced the cockpit, the heat overwhelming her, blistering the skin off her face as she writhed in unbearable pain, trapped in her seat, spinning toward the ground.

  Vaccaro screamed, sitting up, hands on her face, fingertips feeling her skin—startling the men gathered by the campfire.

  She filled her lungs with cold air as bearded faces washed in flickering red and orange light resolved, dark eyes under woolen pakols and turbans turning to her, hands wielding AK-47s.

  No!

  Raw fear gripped her gut as she bolted to her feet, reaching for her Colt, but her fingers once more sank into an empty holster. In the same motion, she went for her SOG knife, but it too was gone.

  This can’t be happening!

  Vaccaro felt dizzy from having stood too fast, felt blood draining from her head as her world began to spin, just like in the nightmare—as her legs gave.

  “Easy there!”

  She heard him in the same instant that she felt his arms catching her from behind, setting her gently on the ground. Confused, she looked at the stranger dressed in Western clothes—black jeans, a dark pleated woolen shirt buttoned down below his sternum, and hiking boots. He was a big guy, strong arms and legs, barrel chest covered in dark hair, and strong features under a closely trimmed dark beard.

  He took a knee by her side.

  A lock of hair fell over his rugged, tanned face, green eyes narrowing as he smiled a smile of slightly crooked teeth that sported a gap between the front two and somehow seemed to fit well with his lumberjack-like persona.

  “Welcome back, Red One One,” he said, in a bit of a baritone voice.

  “How do you…?”

  “We overheard your radio transmissions … and so did the bad guys who used you as bait for that Chinook.”

  The locals gathered by the fire approached her, and she recoiled against the stranger.

  “It’s all right, Red,” he said. “They’re with me.”

  “Name’s Captain Vaccaro,” she said, shifting her gaze wildly between him and the insurgents.

  “Of course it is,” he replied, his large face softening with dark amusement.

  One of the locals stepped ahead of the group, a man of short stature, quite thin, dressed in the traditional woolen tunic, baggy pants, desert sandals, and turban. He held a ridiculously large machine gun fed by an ammunition belt worn bandolier style, evoking images of Mexican outlaws. A much larger man—the largest of the group—followed him, similarly dressed but clutching an AK-47. They stared at her with what looked like genuine concern.

  “Who … who the hell are you people?” she asked the burly man kneeling by her side.

  “Friends, Captain Vaccaro,” he replied.

  “And who are you?”

  He considered that for a moment, then said, “Aaron.”

  “What are you doing in the middle of these mountains, Aaron?”

  “Same thing you’re doing. Killing Taliban.”

  Vaccaro took a moment to consider that, breathing deeply before pointing at the motionless insurgents standing like statues in the night, their baggy pants flapping in the breeze. “But they look like the…” she began, stretching a finger at the two in front.

  “Shinwari,” Aaron interrupted. “They’ve been at war with the Taliban for some time.”

  “And you?”

  “I … help them … with their problems,” Aaron said, rubbing his chin, before turning to the two warriors in front of them.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Who are you with?”

  “I’m someone who was never here, following orders that were never given.”

  “Seriously?” she asked. “You need to work on your lines. Who do you work for?”

  “That’s Nasseer, their leader,” Aaron said, pointing at the shorter man. “And the big guy is Hassan, his younger brother and second-in-command.”

  Vaccaro frowned at him before looking up at the men, trying to remember the Pashto from her survival manual.

  She finally said, “Salaam alaikum.”

  Aaron grinned while the Shinwari exchanged a glance. Then, pressing hands over their chests, they replied, “Salaam alaikum.”

  Then Nasseer also knelt by her, adding in heavily accented English, “Peace be with you, Captain Vaccaro,” and produced her Colt and the SOG knife. “I believe these belong to you.”

  She blinked at the man, not expecting to see her weapons or hear her language. She noticed his gums, red and swollen, as well as his rotting teeth. Sitting up, she put away the pistol and the knife. “Thanks, Nasseer. Could I have some water, please?”

  Nasser reached for a dark waterskin strapped behind his back, made from some animal hide, and unscrewed a metal fitting at one end. He took a swig and then passed it to her. Without hesitation, and putting those diseased gums out of her mind, she also drank from it. The water was cold and amazingly refreshing, and she closed her eyes as it cooled her throat and chest.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You should thank Hassan and Aaron,” Nasseer said.

  Vaccaro narrowed her stare at him, confused.

  “We are almost two miles west from where we found you, Captain. How do you think you got here?”

  “You guys … carried me?” she asked, realizing the feat, given the roughness of the terrain.

  Aaron tilted his head and gave her a devilish grin. “We sort of took turns on you, Red. But you didn’t seem to mind us manhandling you.”

  She frowned at him before making another attempt at stan
ding. Aaron tried to help, but she refused him, gaining her footing while breathing deeply.

  Slowly, she walked up to Hassan and placed the palm of her hand on the large man’s chest as he dropped his big brows at her.

  “Tashakor,” she said, smiling. Thank you.

  The giant’s face broke into a smile of brownish teeth and said, “Hark ala rasha.” You’re welcome.

  “Hey, Red, what about me?” Aaron said, also smiling, tapping his barrel chest, revealing that gap in between his front teeth, eyes narrowing with dark amusement.

  She ignored him and turned to Nasseer, who was studying her with penetrating eyes encased in dark circles, reminding Vaccaro of a skinny raccoon. “I need to get in contact with my people,” she said. “They’re probably still looking for me after—”

  “And we shall, Captain,” Nasser said. “As soon as we finish assisting Aaron in his mission.”

  “What mission?” she asked.

  Nasseer turned to Aaron, who looked away and slowly shook his head. “A mission that never happened,” he mumbled.

  “Really? Enough with that spy talk shit,” she said. “What mission, Aaron?”

  “Damn,” he mumbled. Looking back at Nasseer, he said, “Might as well tell her, since we have to take her with us.”

  When Nasseer spoke, Vaccaro felt her legs trembling again.

  63

  Hunky-Dory

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Moonlight-split clouds rushed past the side window of the Black Hawk helicopter as it shot down the side of the dark hill like a predator, its belly nearly grazing the sparse canopy projecting silvery ragged shadows over the wooded terrain.

  Gorman fought the gut-wrenching maneuvers as the pilot flew this nap-of-the-earth shit, which was meant to keep them safe from ground fire but which wreaked havoc on his digestive system.

  So he’d forced his eyes outside the cabin while breathing deeply, staring at the rushing landscape while Maryam slept peacefully, strapped in the seat next to him, wearing a green David Clark noise-cancellation headset.

  How can she do that? he thought. Rotor vibrations reverberated through the large fuselage as the helicopter suddenly pulled left, then right, then up, rattling his mind, his stomach—even his teeth—forcing him to keep his jaw tight.