“It was a jaguar,” Stark corrected again. “No tigers in Colombia.”
“Hey,” Ryan said, “the man here started screaming ‘Tigre! Tigre!’ That’s ‘tiger’ in Spanish.”
“That’s what the locals call jaguars,” Stark said. He looked over at Monica and whispered, “Jaguar.”
Hagen slowly nodded.
“So,” Ryan continued, “this Venezuelan tiger is staring at Mickey, who’s still squatting over his shit bag, screaming at the top of his lungs—so much that the tiger does a one-eighty and runs the hell away. That day we figured out why the man’s so quiet. Mickey here’s like Mike Tyson—scary, intimidating, and damn strong, but with a voice that doesn’t match the package. Go figure.”
Stark sighed while Hagen just took a long drag and exhaled through his nostrils.
“True story, huh, Mickey?” Ryan said.
Hagen remained impassive, the Russian cigarette wedged between the middle and index fingers of his left hand while his right remained glued to the pistol grip of the MP5A1, shooting finger resting on the trigger guard.
Just then, Martin returned alone from around the bend in the corridor and stretched a thumb over his shoulder. “Your girlfriend’s back there calling her people, sir.”
Stark looked at Hagen. “I guess we both gotta take some shit today.”
Martin paused. “Who’s been giving Mickey shit?”
“This guy,” said Monica, pointing at Ryan. “Told us the Venezuelan tiger story.”
Martin said, “Bet he didn’t tell you his Romeo story.”
Hagen actually smiled, while Stark rolled his eyes.
“Don’t you have some place to be, Danny?” Ryan asked.
“No, he actually doesn’t,” said Monica, also smiling. “I want to hear this.”
Danny unwrapped a lollipop, pointed it at Ryan, and said, “We’re down in Mexico, south of Juárez, going after this drug boss. Agency job … like a year ago.”
“Eight months,” Stark said.
“That’s right. So we took him out—Ryan here did it. Headshot from like a thousand yards.”
“Seventeen hundred,” Ryan corrected.
“Whatever,” Martin continued. “Bastard’s dead. Mission accomplished. So we’re driving back to the border in two pieces-of-shit Kia SUVs. I mean we’re really hauling ass, ’cause any moment now the whole Mexican cartel is going to figure out what happened and is gonna come looking for us. I’m in front with this character here,” Martin said, pointing at Ryan again. “And the colonel and the rest of the gang are behind us in the second SUV. Remember that, Mickey?”
Hagen nodded, taking a drag, while Stark said, “Last time we let Ryan drive.”
“Damn right,” Martin said. “Pretty Boy here is driving, but he’s also checking texts from some señorita he met in Juárez on the way down—you know, the ones that love you long time by the hour?”
“C’mon, man!” Ryan protested, while Monica crossed her arms and shook her head at him. “She was the daughter of—”
“Hey, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck … well…” Martin said.
“That’s disgusting, Ryan.”
“I’m telling you, she wasn’t a—”
“Anyway,” Martin said, “Ryan is sexting and don’t see this massive bull that’s coming charging from some field to our right.”
“A bull?” Monica asked.
“Yeah. Big fucking toro. But Pretty Boy here has his eyes off the road. So it smashes into our tin can, and I mean hard, man. The bastard rips the roof right off with its horns before going airborne and landing somewhere on the other side of the road.”
“Oh my God,” Monica said.
“And while we’re all wondering where the roof went, this Mexican guy comes running out of the same field screaming, ‘Romeo! Romeo! Gringos hijos de puta! You kill Romeo!’”
“That was the name of the bull?” Monica asked.
“Yeah. Why? You thought we call him Romeo because of his pretty mug?” Martin said. He tried to grab Ryan by the chin, but Ryan moved away.
Monica shrugged.
“So get this,” Martin continues. “The little Mexican bastard wants us to pay for his big-ass toro laying dead on the road, never mind that it hit us. But it’s Mexico, right, and it’s also the middle of cartel country, so all logic goes out the window. By now, several of his amigos have caught up to him and are blocking the road while pulling out their machetes, so the colonel, Mickey, and the chief get out with their guns. But we don’t really want to use them, ’cause nothing draws more attention from the cartel than shooting guns. Plus, the whole idea is to get away quietly, right?”
“So what happened?” Monica asked.
“Bull returned from the dead,” Ryan said. “That’s what happened.”
“Yep,” Martin said. “Romeo suddenly wakes up, stands, shakes his big-ass head, and stares at us for a moment, apparently confused, before taking off toward the field across the road. So there go all of the Mexicans, running after it and screaming, ‘Romeo! Come back! Romeo!’ Right, Mickey?”
Hagen took another long drag, nodded, and exhaled skyward.
“Look,” Ryan pleaded with Monica, “the girl really wasn’t a—”
“Hey,” Monica said to Hagen, ignoring him. “Do that again.”
Hagen just stared at her.
“Exhaling smoke. Do it again.”
The former Navy SEAL complied, directing a puff of smoke at the narrow sky above the parallel rock walls while Stark, Martin, and Ryan looked on.
Instead of rising, the haze streamed right into the cave, as if in a wind tunnel.
Well, I’ll be—
“Your knife,” Monica said, pointing at Hagen’s massive twelve-inch serrated weapon that could qualify as a double-edge machete. The fixed blue steel blade had a gut hook on the back of the tip, designed to inflict more damage on the way out than on the way in, by latching on to entrails. “May I?”
Hagen looked at Stark, who nodded.
Unsheathing it, he handed it to Monica by the rubber finger-groove handle. She took it, feeling the weight and balance, before looking back at Hagen and smiling.
“Nice. Who makes this?”
“Custom,” said Ryan. “Some dude in Germany made it just for him. What was his name?”
“Boker,” said Stark. “In Solingen. And it’s too big for you, Cruz. What do you have in mind?”
Ignoring him, she looked about her, locating a piece of half-burned green canvas that had belonged to one of the men guarding the corridor. She used the Boker to slice several two-inch-wide strips, each about two feet long.
Stark looked on with interest as she wrapped one of the strips around the knife’s gut hook before locating an oil lamp, opening it, and dipping the tip into it.
She threw the other strips over her shoulder before walking back up to Hagen. “How about a light, cowboy?”
Hagen grinned, producing his lighter and igniting the soaked canvas.
The makeshift torch worked perfectly, producing a bright yellow flame that immediately bent in the direction of the breeze sweeping into the cave.
“All right, boys,” she said, heading back in with the fire pointing the way. “What do you say we go find us a nuclear bomb?”
118
Night of Nights
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Eight Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks leaped off the ground, powered by twin General Electric T700 turboshafts, soaring over the tarmac in the early evening breeze, dark shapes vanishing in the western sky.
Captain John Wright removed one of several twenty-five-round magazines secured to his vest and inserted it underneath his Heckler & Koch UMP45 submachine gun before pulling the bolt mechanism to chamber the first round.
“We’re in for one hell of a night, sir!” Sergeant Gaudet shouted over the rotor noise, while taking his seat next to Wright in the lead bird. They formed the tip of NATO’s spear, an elite rifle platoon depl
oyed to encircle the location identified by Maryam as the likely escape point of the insurgents from their mountain hideout. The gunnery sergeant held a standard M4 carbine, already loaded with a thirty-round box magazine, as did some of his men. The rest were armed with either M249 light machine guns or the heavier M240L machine gun. A dozen more rifle platoons from the marines, as well as several units from the Rangers and the Canadian Army, were being deployed to lower altitudes by the larger Chinooks, in an all-out effort to seal off the area.
“Yeah,” Wright replied, looking back at the airfield as countless helicopters took to the skies. It was quite a sight to see. “A hell of a night indeed, Gunny.”
Everyone in Lévesque’s staff was now painfully aware of the strong possibility that the insurgents could vanish inside other caves in those mountains. So time was of the essence, and that’s where Wright and his handpicked team came in.
Typically it took only four Black Hawks to haul a rifle platoon of forty-three men and their gear into battle, each carrying a maximum of eleven soldiers. But the helos were only half-loaded this evening in anticipation of the high-altitude insertion, marked on the contour map at thirteen thousand feet, which would place them two miles from that speckle of heat in the UAV infrared video.
Meaning the enemy could be waiting for them.
And there were other problems besides a night insertion with hostiles in the area, including dropping into largely uncharted terrain. The face of that mountain just north of Qais Kotal was so damn inaccessible and located so far west of KAF that it had not merited NATO’s attention until now. And while there were plenty of UAVs circling the place, their cameras could only do so much, especially at night and in a mountainous terrain so heavily wooded that Vaccaro had told him it reminded her of Colorado Springs.
Wright stared out the side window and into a sea of stars and a silver moon, but in his mind he saw the feisty air force captain as he had left her at the edge of the tarmac. She had not been happy about him heading back into the line of fire, but she certainly understood, especially given the stakes.
Whatever it fucking takes.
Wright grinned when he thought about her pulling off her IVs and crawling out of bed with her pale ass exposed in that hospital gown, red hair swinging, cursing like a sailor when a nurse had tried to stop her.
But there was something different about her—something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He had gone through her debrief in detail, piecing together a most amazing survival story, including her encounter with that Shinwari tribe that knew Harwich. It was the stuff of legends. But there was something missing in her account—or someone. And whatever that was, it had altered the way she looked at him.
He sighed, staring into the cold darkness while feeling a chill gripping his gut, suddenly uncertain about their future. But then again, fighting in Afghanistan meant he couldn’t be certain about the next hour—even the next minute. No one could.
But if the Good Lord did indeed allow John Wright to survive this night of nights, plus the remaining 107 nights before the end of his rotation, he wondered if maybe, just maybe, he still had a chance with Laura Vaccaro.
119
Every Last One of Them
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Sipping her third energy drink in an hour, Vaccaro remained at the edge of the ramp, gazing west, until the last set of red and green navigation lights faded in the ocean of darkness separating KAF from the Sulaimans.
Waiting for the mild painkillers to kick in and take the edge off her throbbing shoulder and forehead, Vaccaro stared at the spot where they had disappeared. She hugged herself, but in her mind she didn’t see John Wright as he had left her, all geared up for violence.
She saw Aaron Peretz, her Kidon, as she had left him on that cliff, and she silently cursed the fact that she could not get him out of her mind.
There was something about that man—something that Wright, with all his charms, attentions, and even bravery, had not managed to stir.
Vaccaro was angry, not just at her conflicting feelings but also at the fact that she had been grounded until the fight surgeon cleared her. That decision had left her standing at the edge of the flight line while a dozen A-10s took off in support of the troops.
I should be with them.
But orders were orders, and that meant she wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was her new bird, one of the new A-10Cs incorporating upgraded electronics for work at night and in bad weather. The advanced close air support aircraft was even fully fueled, ready to go at a moment’s notice, as were all active planes on this ramp.
She sighed. The queasiness from the anesthesia had already worn off, and once those Tylenol-Codeine tablets kicked in, she would be good enough to grab her helmet, climb in, and get back in the war.
But orders were …
Never stop fighting, Red One One. Never.
And make your life matter.
There was that Mossad man again, staring at her with his dying eyes.
“But how?” she mumbled.
If you feel the urge to do something, then go see Harwich in the war room.
Wright replaced Aaron’s face as she recalled the marine captain’s parting words, just minutes ago, before he followed his men into the waiting Black Hawks.
So she did, stomping away toward a nondescript shipping container located near the rear of the USMC headquarters.
But when she tried the door, it was locked.
She stared at the digital lock, frowned, and knocked three times.
The door opened, but instead of Harwich, the Pakistani woman she had seen by Gorman’s side at the ICU stuck her head out.
“Hiya!” she said, before dropping her thick brows at the bandage on Vaccaro’s forehead and over her right temple. “Bollocks … Please tell me the cheeky bastards who did that are dead.”
Vaccaro nodded. “Every last one of them.”
120
Torch
QAIS KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Stark had read about this and had even seen it in the movies, but he never thought it would work so precisely. The tip of the flame pointed the way at every intersection, steering the group toward one of the rear chambers, which he and Larson had already scrubbed. Twice.
He looked about the room, the torch splashing rock walls with a yellowish glare. This had been the place with the large tables loaded with trays housing various tools, presumably to work on the nuclear device—though at a glance they could have belonged in your typical mechanic’s shop. He scanned a variety of screwdrivers, wrenches, wire cutters, pliers, and socket sets. There was also a hydraulic lift and tons of odds and ends, including hardware he had seen before at Radio Shack—and at IED factories—like timers, detonators, and wires, but no explosives in sight. Some of the tools hung from makeshift wooden peg-boards on two walls, next to an acetylene torch and some power tools connected via an inverter to a set of large truck batteries. As with every chamber in this cave, the wood here was a bit singed from the intense heat following the missile strike, but because this was the last room in the beehive-like interior, it had sustained minimum damage.
Stark saw no sign of any door or exit hatch, nothing to support the UAV images reported by Harwich—until Monica followed the flame to the back corner, where two peg-boards met.
It was there, in the half-inch vertical gap between the peg-boards, that the tip of the torch flickered nearly horizontally, as if fighting the end of a vacuum cleaner. Stark frowned, not certain how he had missed it when inspecting this room an hour ago.
Placing his fingers along the crevice, he felt the air rushing between his fingers. Pressing his palm against one peg-board, he pushed firmly, but it felt solid, anchored to the rock. However, the second peg-board, and its supporting wall, gave a little under pressure, widening the gap to almost an inch. He also noticed that the whole lab table, also secured to the wall, moved as well.
“Ryan, Danny, Mickey, g
et in here,” he said, pressing his weight into the table while his guys also leaned their bulks against it, and the whole thing, peg-board, table, and even hanging tools, swung inward.
It was another hidden door, like the one in Compound 57. Almost five feet wide and as tall as the ten-foot ceiling, it was spring-loaded, designed to swing back into a closed position.
“Clever bastards,” he mumbled as they pushed it fully open.
Monica stepped forward, the torch held high, while Stark and Hagen covered her with the MP5A1s in case of hidden rebels. The yellowish light revealed a set of hazy stairs cut straight into the rock, going down into darkness. Everything smelled of smoke and cordite.
“So the shock wave must have pushed the door open for the duration of the blast before the spring-loaded mechanism swung it back,” Stark said.
“But long enough for the hot gases to reach the bottom of the stairs and get captured by the passing UAV’s thermal imaging camera,” Monica added, completing his comment.
Stark just stared at her, nodding slightly, before turning to Hagen and saying, “Mickey, Danny, go tell the chief to get word to KAF that we’ve found it, and get everybody over here. We’ll meet you down wherever the hell this leads. Cruz, Ryan, with me.”
Then he rushed down the stairs.
121
Into the Fire
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
They flew in from the east, very low and very fast, following the rising terrain, leaving the main force behind somewhere down the mountain. Turboshafts worked overtime to compress the thinning air into turbine chambers, mixing it with jet fuel to propel eight Black Hawks above ten thousand feet.
Wright did a final check of his gear. The dim red glow of the cabin’s light—designed to illuminate the interior without impairing night vision—washed the camouflaged faces of his men. Hands on their weapons, eyes glinting with the shared determination of launching into something worth doing, the warriors maintained the impassive demeanor of tried-and-true veterans.
Without Fear Page 44
