Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack

by Eric Meyer

  “It’ll be fine. Those qanats have been standing for thousands of years. Make sure you clear the area immediately. Don’t forget, we’ll be out of contact while we’re underground, so the timing will be critical. It’s now 2030, and the President is due to arrive shortly after 2200 hours to give his speech. You have to hit it at 2200 exactly, just before he gets there. We’ll be in position, ready to enter the barracks as soon as the troops start rushing towards the Parliament.”

  “And if you’re not in position, if there’s a problem with the qanat, like a roof fall, or a blockage?” Guy had asked.

  “In that case, we’re in trouble. We can’t plan for every contingency. We’ll just have to wing this one. Anything else?”

  Guy had shaken his head. They’d planned as much as they could. Now it was all up to chance.

  If Lady Luck is on our side, we may just pull if off. If not, well, best not think about that.

  He tripped over an old bicycle that had been left on the ground, hidden by a tangle of weeds. The apartments either side of them were brightly lit, and a cacophony of Arabic music came from a score of radios, none of them tuned to the same station. Men shouted, children screamed as they played, and women called mournfully to loved ones. But the wasteland was dark, and they were using NV gear, and it didn’t reveal the rusting steel of the bicycle frame and bent spokes, camouflaged by weeds.

  “Anika, is there any sign of the well?”

  She’d borrowed their spare NV gear to hunt for the well opening, and he smiled at her face, half hidden by the four lenses of the goggles.

  “Nothing yet. It should be here, by my reckoning. Right where we’re standing.”

  “Is it possible they filled it in when they built the apartment blocks?”

  “I hope not, but they may have demolished the structure and left a cover over the shaft for safety.”

  He turned to the men behind. “All of you start searching for a well cover. It’ll be flush with the ground.”

  They hunted for another ten minutes. Nothing.

  “Are you sure it’s here?”

  “Abe, it has to be.” She sounded desperate. “These qanats are important in this country. You don’t just get rid of them.”

  “So it has to be hidden by this undergrowth. We’ll have to search for it the hard way. Use your combat knives, and start tapping the ground around us until you strike something solid. You know how it’s done, make it a grid search as if we were crossing a minefield.”

  There was a chorus of groans, but it was a token protest. The men got down on their knees and started. Ten minutes later Roy Reynolds’ combat knife hit pay dirt.

  “I’ve got it, a metal hatch flush with the ground. Has to be it.”

  “Can you get it open? Robert, give him a hand.”

  They used the blades of their knives to force the metal hatch open. The NV goggles showed up the shaft as being about six meters deep. Roy dropped a pebble, and there was a loud splash.

  “We've got water. I’ll drop a rope and go down to take a look.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “Boss, someone coming. It could be a cop,” he heard Valois whisper.

  “Everyone get down. Vince, Jerry, you got him covered?”

  “We’re on it,” DiMosta replied, his voice a soft murmur. “Yeah, it is a cop, but I think he’s been hitting the sauce. He looks a bit unsteady. I’d guess he’s been partying with his girlfriend in one of these apartments.”

  “Copy that. Let him go past. With any luck he won’t even notice us.”

  There was no need to kill the cop, providing he didn’t pose any kind of a threat. They waited in the darkness as he came nearer. He was singing some kind of an Arabic song, and he almost made it past. At the last moment something caught his attention, probably a noise from the nearby apartments. He changed direction and stumbled over Robert Valois. The Frenchman reacted automatically as the cop sprawled over him. Talley saw his huge combat knife rise, about to slash down and through the man's windpipe.

  "Stop! Just keep him quiet, knock him out. No need to kill him. We only have to keep him out of action for a couple of hours."

  Valois’ hand froze at the last second. He flipped the knife over and slammed it down onto the man's head. The cop slumped like a sack of potatoes. He was unconscious, and when he woke up later, he'd sure have one hell of a headache. But he'd be alive. Talley searched around with his NV gear, but the area was still quiet. He keyed his mike and spoke quietly.

  "Roy, how’re you doing?"

  "I'm at the bottom of the shaft, Boss. The qanat is here all right. I've taken a quick look inside, and it looks as if it's still in use. The water is about twenty centimeters deep. The qanat is about a meter high and about the same width. I reckon we can get through, provided the water level doesn't increase too much on the way in."

  "We'll have to take a chance.”

  He took hold of the rope and started sliding down. Anika followed him, then Rovere and the rest of the squad. Reynolds was already partway into the tunnel, and he ordered him to stay on point. It was a long, difficult crawl, and it became even harder as the water level began to rise the nearer they got to their destination. The Pasdaran Barracks was almost two kilometers through the waterlogged passage.

  Reynolds called back softly. "We got problems, Boss. It looks like the roof has partially caved in, and it's funneled the water into a narrow tube. It means we have to go forward underwater, and the blockage could be any distance."

  "Can you give it a try, Roy? I'll come up and fasten the rope to you, and pull you back if you get into trouble. There won't be any way to turn around in that narrow space."

  "Sure, I'll do it."

  Talley shivered as he reached Roy and looked at the dark, flooded tunnel. It could easily become a man’s tomb. He fastened the line to his ankle and relieved him of his weapons, handing them to Rovere, who stowed them away in a waterproof bag and passed orders for the rest of the squad to do the same with their own weapons. Talley looked at Reynolds. "You've got enough rope there for ten meters. If it’s any longer than that, I’ll have to pull you back."

  Roy stared at him. In the dim light, Talley could see his expression and read his thoughts. If they couldn’t get through, they were fucked, and Arash had won. The black trooper climbed into the water and began hauling himself through the narrow pipe. In his head, Talley began counting the seconds. He'd already decided that if Roy were underwater for sixty seconds, he'd start to pull him back in, regardless. He paid out the line as the man went further and further through the water, and then the counter in his brain told him the sixty seconds were up. He started pulling back, but almost immediately the rope slid easily back through the water. When the end appeared, it looked as if the knot he tied had come undone. He began taking off his weapons and moved toward the black water.

  "No, you have to wait!" Rovere shouted. "If Roy is in there and trying to get back, you'll block the tunnel."

  "Domenico, he could be drowning. I have to get him out."

  "It's the wrong move, Abe. You have to give him a chance."

  He checked his wristwatch, ninety seconds, a minute and a half.

  How long can a man survive inside that flooded tunnel? Two minutes? Maybe three? It could stretch as far as thousand meters, or even more!

  "It's two minutes. I'm going after him."

  "Give him just a little more time. Three minutes, he can last that long without any major problems. Just a few seconds more, Abe."

  He watched the dial of his luminous wristwatch as the seconds went by. Two minutes. Two minutes and fifteen seconds, two minutes and thirty seconds, two minutes and forty-five seconds. Three minutes.

  "That's it, I'm going in."

  He crouched by the narrow tunnel, took a deep breath, and went to propel himself forward. As his head was submerged in the water, something slammed into him, and he was forced back. Roy Reynolds crawled out onto the floor of the qanat, gasping and choking, but alive.


  "Roy, what the hell happened? I was about to come in and after you. How the hell did that rope come untied?"

  Talley waited until the bout of coughing had eased, and the man began to speak. "It didn't come untied, I did it. I sensed I was nearly at the end of the flooded section, so I untied the rope."

  "You made it out the other end?"

  "I sure did. It's a long haul, but it can be done. I'm not sure about the girl," he said, looking at Anika. "It's okay for us. We're trained for it, but her, I don't know. It could be a problem."

  "I heard that!” she shouted. “I was a good swimmer in my time. If you can do it, I can. I won't have any problems."

  Talley stared at her. "It's not a question of swimming. You'll be in a narrow, cramped pipe, unable to breathe, and not knowing how far you have to go to get to the end. And it's pitch black. It might be worth giving this one a miss. You can go back with one of the troopers and meet up with Guy outside."

  She ignored him and was already unstrapping her weapons and equipment. "Take care of that for me, Domenico. Make sure none of it gets wet. I'll see you on the other side."

  Talley made a grab for her, but it was too late. She dived into the flooded tunnel, and in less than a second had disappeared.

  "I'm going after her," he said to the Italian. "You can send the men in, one at a time. I'd suggest thirty-second intervals. That'll give the man in front time enough to get through."

  "Is thirty seconds enough? What if the man in front freezes or gets stuck? We could build up one hell of a traffic jam inside that pipe. It might be better to give each man more time to get through."

  "Time is a luxury we don't have," he replied.

  He pushed into the water and almost immediately found himself plunged into a narrow, dark hell. Even though he knew Reynolds had been through to the end and back, there was the realization that the tiniest mistake could mean death, and not an easy death; death by slow drowning, trapped in an airless tube, feeling the slight pressure of the current as it pushed him inexorably through and toward the end. It reminded him that the water he was submerged in had begun its journey many kilometers away in the mountains, and here it was almost at the end of its journey. But he had done this kind of thing many times before since his days as a Navy Seal, beginning with the exacting BUD/S training that sorted out those men who had the strength, the skills and the tenacity to go on, and those who couldn't make the grade. He relaxed. This should be an easy swim, and then he could emerge the other end where Anika would be waiting. He was almost there, and there would be another man half a minute behind him. He reminded himself to get out of the pipe fast, and then he hit the obstruction and stopped dead.

  It wasn't a solid mass of earth and rock. It was soft, organic, moving.

  Anika!

  She was trapped underwater, and her limbs were threshing, trying to break free. Her body was twisting and turning, and he sensed the panic welling up in her. He touched her, to try and reassure her that he was there to help, but already she was starting to drown. Her movements were slowing, her body starting to go limp. Then she realized someone was there, and her panic increased. She grabbed for him and managed to hold his collar, clinging to him with a manic determination, as if the presence of another human being was enough to save her life. It wasn't. Already his air was almost exhausted, and he knew he had only seconds to save both her and himself. A few seconds more would bring the next man into the submerged pipe, making a tangled blockage that would be almost impossible to clear and result in more deaths. Anika held him tighter and tighter. He knew she was gripped by a real terror, the certain knowledge she was dying. He did the only thing possible. He reached for her neck and found the carotid artery. He pressed hard, and after a few seconds, her movements ceased as she slid into unconsciousness. He had to work fast. There were three factors working against him. She was drowning, unable to prevent her body from sucking water into her lungs, he was almost out of air, and the other man was almost on him. He felt for what was holding her and found a webbing strap had snagged on a sharp outcrop of rock. It was only a few centimeters long, but enough to kill three people if he didn't free her fast. He jerked on the webbing, and at first it refused to move. The force of her panicked movements had jammed the strap into a narrow cut in the rock. He took out his combat knife and sliced through it, and immediately felt her body come free. Now he had to get her out before she died. He started to push her forward, feeling his lungs bursting with hot agony as his last reserves of air disappeared, and the carbon dioxide in his lungs tried to pressure him to take a breath. Summoning up every last vestige of strength and determination, he pushed her body in front of him, easing it through the narrow pipe and refusing to go any quicker, for fear that she would jam again. It could only have been a few meters, but it felt like the longest journey of his life. Every second was like an hour as he pushed through the pipe, beginning to despair that he’d ever make it. His brain told him insistently that it was all a waste of time. There was no point. He may as well give up and die, and submit to the torture of drowning. Everything flashed through his mind in a confusing jumble, his training in the Seals, his appointment to NATFOR to command Echo Six, and this mission to prevent the nukes from reaching Iran.

  Iran! No fucking way! I accept that one day my work might kill me, and I'll die in combat in one of the world's trouble spots, but in Iran? In this shithole flooded tunnel? No fucking way!

  Sheer anger and bloody mindedness drove him on, and he refused to die in such a place. He made a last despairing effort, and inch-by-inch he edged forward. His mind was blank from the lack of oxygen so that it was almost an automatic function of his muscles that pushed him on. He felt Anika's body tip forward, and it registered in his dulled brain that she had come out of the water. He made a huge, final effort, and suddenly he was out, gasping for air, just as Domenico Rovere came up behind him, and pulled himself out of the flooded pipe.

  "What the hell happened?" Rovere gasped, staring at Anika’s limp body.

  He couldn't reply. He sucked in a few breaths of the dank stale air, and then threw himself on Anika, starting to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Domenico waited, watching him with a puzzled expression, but then Anika's chest heaved, and she spewed out a jet of water from her lungs as she started to breathe again.

  "She nearly drowned?"

  He explained how she snagged her webbing inside the pipe.

  "You were lucky she was unconscious," the Italian commented. "I've had problems in the past with people drowning. They tend to panic and make it next to impossible to rescue them."

  "Yeah, I guess I was lucky she was out."

  She opened her eyes, squinting at Tally and Rovere in the beam of the flashlight. "My God, I thought I'd had it in there." She looked at Tally. "I guess it was you behind me, so you must have got me out." She massaged her neck. "That hurts, I must have hit my neck on an outcropping of rock while I was struggling to get free."

  "It must have been something like that."

  While she recovered, the rest of the squad came through the flooded pipe one by one. When they were all through, he got them moving again, toward the end of the qanat, the well underneath the Pasdaran Barracks. The going became much easier, as the blockage had been holding the water back like a dam. Now, there was very little water on the floor of the tunnel. They got close to the Nezam Abad Barracks with ten minutes to spare before Guy detonated the explosives.

  "How will you know when we're directly underneath?" he asked Anika.

  "According to my research, the well is the last opening before the qanat reaches the center of the city. As soon as we come to a vertical shaft like the one we came down, I'm pretty certain we'll be there."

  "And if we're not?" Domenico asked.

  She shrugged. "Then we go on until we find the one we're looking for, but I'm sure there is only one. Dom, when we find that shaft, we'll be right underneath the Tehran Headquarters.”

  "Great, I’ve always wanted to visit th
at place.” No one smiled. “Abe, I suggest we get our weapons and equipment ready now. We're likely to need them in a few minutes."

  "Pass it on," he agreed. “Then we move on, I want to be underneath that shaft when the charges detonate. If there is going to be a roof fall, I'd like to see some sky above my head."

  "I can't argue with that," the Italian smiled.

  He gave the order, and they took their weapons from the waterproof bags and began the familiar task of checking them ready for action, making sure they were loaded with full clips, and in the case of the snipers, their delicate night vision sights were undamaged after the underwater swim. Talley checked his own MP7 and Sig Sauer automatic. They’d been thorough, and everything had come through the swim undamaged. He adjusted his NV goggles, turned off the flashlight, switched them on, and the dark tunnel lit up with ghostly green light. He nodded to Anika, who had her own goggles in position.

  "You'd better take the point. You know what you're looking for, but move fast. Guy's explosives will be detonating any moment now. Are you okay?"

  She nodded as she squeezed past him. "I feel better, thanks. It can't be more than a few meters, I'd guess a hundred at most. We're almost on it."

  She set off along the tunnel. The roof was slightly higher now, and she was able to walk bent over. The rest of them were taller and didn't have that luxury. As a result, she went ahead. After only two minutes she called back to them.

  "I think this is it. There's a shaft that goes straight up with a diameter of about a meter, so there's plenty of room for us to climb. It looks to me as if there are rungs set into the side of the shaft, probably to allow for maintenance when debris collects in the qanat."

  Talley came and peered up at the shaft. It was about thirty meters high, and at the top he could see a faint circle of light. He looked around as Rovere came alongside him.

  "I'm going up to see how it looks outside," he told him. "It won't be long before..."

  He didn't get any further. The earth trembled from a nearby explosion, and they felt the vibrations of the explosives Guy had detonated. Pieces of masonry and dirt showered down over their heads. When the debris cleared, there was an eerie silence, but only for a few seconds. Then they heard the screams and the shouts.