by Jon F. Merz
And then we were among the vegetation.
Talya immediately circled us up and we spent the next five minutes looking back the way we’d come, looking for any indication that we’d been seen or some type of alarm had been raised.
We saw and heard nothing.
Talya’s eyes crinkled and I knew she was smiling under her shemagh. The fact that we’d been able to make it this far already was good news. But we still had to cross the rest of the gardens without contact and then find a place to lay up for the day. Already in the distance I could hear a few dogs barking. I just hoped they weren’t located close to where we hoped to end up.
Talya rose out of her semi-crouch and we continued on a northeast bearing. We continued to move slowly, although our pace had increased. I think both of us wanted this slog to be over with so we could hole up and let the day pass. Tonight, after we’d rested, we’d try to pinpoint the hostage location and pass the word on to Niles.
We were close now. I just hoped the bastards that had the STA-F team didn’t do anything prematurely.
7
As we maneuvered through the gardens, the sky to the east started to get lighter. Our time was running out. In the distance just north of our location, the Sanctuary of Bel rose before us, its columns pockmarked by sandstorms and crumbling in other places thanks to the destructiveness of ISIS. It was a shame that they couldn’t see past their zealotry to spare the culture that had helped form their eventual belief system, but that was the problem with zealots the world over. Their ability to be shortsighted amazed me.
Talya paused to take another bearing and we headed directly east, bypassing the Sanctuary. If we’d had time and weren’t currently waltzing across a war zone, I would have really enjoyed taking a moment to appreciate the historic sites around Palmyra. But that wasn’t going to happen today. Or any time in the future until asshole terrorists stopped fucking good stuff up.
We crossed a small road and then dissolved into another grove of trees. A breeze blew up and ruffled our shemaghs. Talya eyed me and pointed at what she saw from her vantage point. I crept closer and looked.
A small farm house stood off by itself in the distance. Perhaps a thousand feet from where we currently squatted in the trees. The farm house was half demolished, most likely the recipient of a stray artillery round. Half of the wall was down, exposing it to the elements. And all around it, fields lay fallow. There was very little cover on the approach, but that actually suited us. If we holed up there during the day, we could see anyone trying to sneak up on us. And I thought the chances of anyone searching the house for us were slim to none.
I turned back to Talya and nodded. It looked perfect. Or at least as perfect as it could be given the environment we were operating in.
I took over on point and Talya faded back to cover our six. We approached the last of the trees and paused while I scanned the surrounding area. I couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean there weren’t eyes out there just waiting to raise an alarm if they saw something suspicious.
This would be where our safety was paramount. If anyone spotted us moving into the farm house, they could easily call down a whole lot of unfriendly attention while we tried to rest. At that point, we’d be pinned down with no way to escape. Ideally, the laying up position would have had multiple egress points and offer all sorts of tactical advantages. The downside to that is that any operator scanning the area for likely hiding spots would target those places first and forego the shitty place we had in mind.
It was a trade-off. By going to the unlikely place, we were giving ourselves potentially a good spot to hide in but one without the usual security advantages a better spot would afford. If we’d opted for the better spot, we’d potentially be inviting an awful lot of scrutiny. Scrutiny we most definitely did not want.
I glanced back at Talya and she gave me the thumbs-up. Time to move.
I eased out from the grove of trees, giving silent thanks to them for shielding us as they had. I moved with a purpose, crossing the fields and rows and heading right for the farm house. With each step, it seemed the sky was lightening even further. We couldn’t afford any pauses or breaks. If we had a contact with the enemy, we’d have to figure it out on the run. Not the ideal tactical situation, but those are rare anyway.
Two hundred meters from the house, I heard a car somewhere off in the distance. I allowed myself to simply shrink down closer to the ground, knowing Talya would be doing exactly the same thing. We were without cover, but that didn’t mean we had to silhouette ourselves against the sky if we could avoid it. The car passed by without incident and we rose and continued on our way.
One hundred meters from the house and a stray cat nearly scared the shit out of me. The soft meow it gave as I approached sounded like an explosion to me and it took every bit of discipline not to scream. I’m sure it took every ounce of control for Talya not to laugh at me.
Fifty meters and the sky was quickly bleeding all of the darkness out of it as the sun rose with a brilliant smear of orange and red.
Every step took us closer.
When we reached the doorway, the opening had been riddled with machine gun bullets. The door hung off its hinges at an angle. I eased it open and cleared the inside. Talya leapfrogged me and we took two minutes making sure we were all alone. Then we moved upstairs and checked out the vantage points it offered. We could see a small settlement to the northeast. If the STA-F team had been taken and was being held somewhere close by, I felt fairly good that they would be there. It was easier to defend than in the city of Palmyra itself, where tenements risked collapse from constant artillery barrages.
We huddled together.
“What do you think?”
Talya shrugged. “There’s no basement to hide in. We’re open on one side but we can make sure our movement isn’t across that view. It’s a hellish place to hide, but hopefully that works in our favor. I wouldn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary, though. But it’s not the worst place I’ve laid up in before.”
“Agreed.” I shifted my gear around. “Want me to take first watch?”
“If you don’t mind,” said Talya. “I’m going to relax and get some food in me. Two hour shifts?”
I nodded. “Yeah. And food sounds like a good idea.” I hadn’t had any juice in a while and if I was going to be on watch, I need every bit of the energy it would give me just to stay alert.
Talya opened a box of rations and sighed as she spooned some rice and beef into her mouth. “You always know how to show a girl a good time, Lawson.”
I smiled. “Dinner when we get home. I promise.”
She pointed her spoon at me. “You know I’m going to hold you to that.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said.
8
It was on my second watch of the day that things started getting interesting. From my vantage point, I could look east across the open fields to a small settlement that consisted of approximately a half dozen houses in various states of disrepair. For most of the day, there had only been limited activity around it, but around noon, things started popping off. Talya was still asleep and I didn’t see any reason to wake her just yet. We needed all the rest we could get.
The Toyota pickup truck was the first indication that there might be some ISIS fighters in the settlement. It rolled in at speed and jerked to a stop raising a cloud of dust as it did so. All along the sides of the truck, Arabic lettering spelled out a variety of slogans praising Allah. From the rear bumper, the telltale black flag of ISIS waved in the wind.
Three men disembarked from the truck, including an older guy sprouting a long wispy white beard. He looked about fifty and his eyes were fierce, shrouded as they were among the deep furrows of his brows and wrinkles along the edges. He looked battle-hardened and confident. Exactly the sort of bastard who would take people hostage.
I had no way of knowing if he was the mastermind behind the operation or not. But what he did next made me hope that he w
as.
From a field adjacent to the settlement, a dog came running over. I could tell it was hungry just from the way it put its nose down and sniffed around the men with a hungry look in its eyes. But beard wanted no part of the dog and before I could even process it, he whipped out a handgun and shot the dog dead. It was quick and merciless. The poor animal probably didn’t even realize what had happened to it.
The corpse shuddered once and then lay still.
The report of the shot brought Talya out of her sleep. “What’s going on?”
I leaned back and away from the vantage point. “Some fucker just shot a dog to death.”
Talya slid over and took a turn watching. After a moment, she said, “Bearded dude?”
“Yeah. The dog didn’t even do anything. He was just hungry.”
Talya sighed. “If he’s that cruel to an animal, I can’t even imagine what he must be like with human beings.”
“Is it wrong for me to hope that he’s involved with the hostage-taking so I can riddle his no-good soul full of hot lead?”
Talya shook her head. “You wouldn’t have a heart if part of you didn’t wish that. No animal deserves to be treated that way.”
I had to shrug it off. If Beard was involved, he’d pay a serious price for what he’d done later. But if he wasn’t, I couldn’t focus on it. The priority was rescuing the hostages. That was what we needed to find out as soon as the sun went down.
“He’s a new arrival, it seems,” said Talya.
“Hey, you still have an hour before you’re due to relieve me. You want to go back to sleep?”
Talya shook her head. “Frankly? No. Sleeping here is shit.”
“Well, it’s a long way from the usual five-star accommodations you’re used to.”
She sniffed. “As if. You know I once laid out in the rain and mud for five days just waiting to bag a bad guy? I’d never been so wet and cold in my life. This is palatial compared to that.”
“I don’t doubt it.” I had memories of my own times spent out in the cold and dark in search of a target. That shared misery was one thing that bonds people who do this kind of work. We all know the lengths we go to to get a job done. When most people would simply throw their hands up and say forget it, we keep going to get the mission accomplished.
Talya nodded at me. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on Beard and anyone else over there.”
“All right. I’m thinking we should head over after nightfall. I’ve got a feeling that our hostages might be there.”
Talya narrowed her eyes. “Is that a real gut feeling or are you just wanting a little quality time with Beard?”
“The priority is the hostages, you know that. I know that. But I haven’t seen much activity anywhere else around here. And since he seems like an arrogant fucker, my thought is something must be going on over there. Even if it turns out the hostages aren’t there, we might find something else out.”
Talya said nothing for a moment and then nodded. “All right, if you say so.”
I eased myself to our sleeping corner and tucked in among the piles of bricks and dust and tried to get my head down. With the shemagh over my eyes, I could even convince myself a little bit that it was night. That I was home in my bed, safe and sound, awaiting the dreams that I knew would inevitably arrive.
The reality was that I was in the middle of a war zone. That there were an awful lot of people around who would like nothing better than to behead me on video and then release that to the rest of the world. And that I was with the woman I loved on one of our most dangerous assignments ever. We had people counting on us, including hostages who didn’t even know we were on the ground. In a little over twenty-four hours, another STA-F team were coming in to extract the hostages and me and Talya. If things went well, we’d be home in two days.
And if things went to shit…well, who the hell knew what was going to happen then?
Somehow, I managed to eke out some sleep before Talya woke me up again for another watch.
9
The rest of the day passed without much activity. According to Talya, Beard spent a lot of time wandering around the interior of the settlement, barking orders and generally making it apparent that he was both in charge and a grade A asshole. When two of his men tried to dispose of the dog corpse, he ordered them to leave it where it was as a warning to other animals. By mid-afternoon, flies had swarmed all over the carcass and the body of the dog had begun to bloat.
I longed to put a bullet in that guy’s head, but I resisted. Plus, my M4 couldn’t make the shot from the distance we were at. So yes, I did think about it. I disregarded the idea after a moment, but silently vowed that if the opportunity presented itself, this guy was going to die by my hand.
Toward evening, Talya and I had some more of our rations and washed them down with water. I took an additional shot of juice that I knew would energize me for the night ahead. If things went well, we’d have firm intel on the whereabouts of the hostages and could pass that along to Niles and the incoming STA-F team. As it was, I owed Niles a sitrep and dialed him up on the phone via text, making sure that my phone was still set to silent mode.
He wasn’t happy, but then again, sometimes it seems like he never is: where have you been?
I texted back: laying up in a demolished farm house. Contact not possible until now.
Hotel Five is enroute. ETA is eighteen hours.
How are they inserting?
There was a pause while Niles fired back: Private jet into Palmyra airport. They will RV with you upon disembarkation, hit target, extract hostages, and exfil via same plane with Echo One.
Well, that was certainly ballsy. Flying right into the airport, then coming off and making the hit on the target and then flying back out again? I had to give it to Niles that the plan was audacious. I just didn’t think it was going to go as simply as that. Nothing ever did when you go into combat.
What do you need from us?
Confirm hostage location. Coordinate exfil.
Received. Out.
I stowed my phone and gave the news to Talya. I could tell right away she wasn’t crazy about the plan Hotel Five was going with. Frankly, neither was I. I wondered who had been in charge of planning it. The rule of thumb at STA-F was that we planned our own missions. The Council gave us the tasking but it was up to us to determine the how of how we went about completing it.
But this didn’t sound like one of the STA-F guys had planned it. It felt way too ambitious and way to risky. Something told me that someone else had managed to insinuate themselves into the planning process. And that was a dangerous thing, indeed. If the people who planned the op weren’t the ones doing it, then everything sounded great - especially when you’re a million miles away from bullets being fired at you.
Flying into an enemy held airport, storming off the plane to go hit a target even a quarter mile away before turning around and going back to the airport to fly out was indeed ballsy. But it was also rife with potential for massive failure.
Stupidity abounds when the decision-makers get involved. The best course of action was always let the guys on the ground do the planning. Clearly, that had not happened with this operation. I would have thought that with the Council being so concerned about the potential for exposure, they wouldn’t have risked screwing it up. Then again, the Council always exceeded my expectations for causing disasters, so this was really nothing new.
But I sure as hell didn’t like it and neither did Talya. Our asses were also on the line with this op and if things went to shit, we were in the line of fire. I looked at her and she shook her head again.
“I was supposed to be doing this as a favor for Niles,” she said quietly. “But this is turning into a shit show.”
“I’m not about to let it go down like this,” I said. “I don’t want my ass wasted in Syria.”
“I had dreams of dying in a tropical resort with a drink in hand and waves washing over me,” said Talya. “This isn’t doing
a thing for me.”
“So we’re decided then.”
“What do you have in mind?”
I checked my watch. “First things first: we’ve got to confirm the hostage location. Can’t do a damned thing until we know where they are and if they’re okay.”
“We can find that out tonight.”
I nodded. “Once we do, I say we take a wee bit of proactive action. Depending on the size of the force holding them, I say the two of us create a little hell on earth. If we can time it right, we can get the hostages freed, storm the airport and as the plane touches down, we jump on and they take off.”
Talya’s eyebrows jumped a bit. “Hell on earth?”
“Yeah. We hit them hard. If the STA-F boys are intact, we’ll instantly triple the size of our fighting force as we maneuver toward the airfield. It’s only a quarter mile away anyway.”
“What about reinforcements? Those ISIS guys won’t be operating alone out here.”
“Yeah, timing is going to a critical component. I’ll contact Hotel Five and let them know that we’ve found the hostages. Once they confirm their ETA, we’ll go off of that for the assault.”
“And if things spark up before that?”
“Like how?”
“Say our ISIS hosts get jittery and decide to bump up the executions.”
I looked at her. “Then we’ll just have to go in and take them on ourselves.”
Talya smirked. “I like the way you think, Lawson.”
10
We waited until the sun had long since faded from the sky before starting our infiltration. For some reason, even though I had no real intelligence on the location of the hostages, I felt in my gut that they were in the settlement with Beard. Sometimes in this crazy life, all you can do is trust your instinct and go with it. The times I’ve gone with my gut, it’s never led me astray. Learning to trust it, though…it takes a long time. And even when you do, you’re never quite sure. That’s because we’ve been conditioned to accept the rationale of the brain and logic and all that jazz. But the simple fact is long before we could rationalize anything, our instincts were the only things that kept us alive. If our instincts screamed “danger!” and we didn’t listen, we ended up dead.
