by Dalton Fury
Just like going into Zar’s compound three days ago, he saw no alternative to risking his life.
While he sipped his chai he placed one of the two Kalashnikov rifles on the tiny kitchen table. In seconds he stripped it down to its component parts. He used a rag to wipe out the insides, inspected the color and the grit in the black grease that covered the rag. He then retrieved a toolbox Bob kept in his garage, and he lubricated the weapon and reassembled it. He slid the magazine back into the well and hooked it into place with a loud click. He racked the bolt and flipped the safety back up into position.
He then placed the weapon back on the table and reached for his tea.
He sipped the lava-hot milky liquid slowly. Bob Kopelman surprised him by breaking the stillness with a powerful voice.
“I’m going with you.” It was an announcement. A proclamation.
Kolt lowered his tea. “Into Darra?”
Bob shook his head. “Into the factory.”
Kolt laughed in surprise. “No … no you’re not.”
“I know I’m not exactly Delta Force material”—he looked down at his corpulent frame tugging at the fabric of his local clothing—“but in any scenario you’ll find yourself in down there in Darra Adam Khel, you will benefit with an extra set of eyes, my language skills, and an extra gun.”
“Grauer said he’d sacrifice me, but you were too important.”
Kopelman waved the comment away as irrelevant. “Forget Pete. He may send men into harm’s way to be sacrificed, but you are under my care here. If you go, I go.”
Raynor regarded the comment as he took another sip of tea. “That sounds a bit like Pashtunwali.”
Kopelman looked like he was going to disagree. Then he just sighed, said, “What can I say? I have gone native. Pashtunwali makes sense in a situation like this.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.” Bob’s eyes turned cold suddenly. “Plus, I have other skills. If you find Buchwald, I may be able to get him to talk.”
“You don’t think I can be persuasive when necessary?”
“Let’s just say my presence may relieve you of that burden.”
Kolt did not understand the comment, but he knew when there was no point in arguing. This was one of those times. “All right, Bob. I’ll have to go into the factory alone and then open a side door for you. I’m going to have to vault a ten-foot razor-wire fence, and, pardon me, but I don’t think you would survive climbing over that fence.”
Bob chuckled. “I don’t think that fence would survive me climbing over it.”
Raynor went into the garage to grab the other Kalashnikov. It could stand for a thorough cleaning, as well.
* * *
Bob contacted Jamal at eight in the morning. He’d given him a good night’s rest by delaying the call. Bob told him that they would need to go back to the factory. He gave the Afghan his address for the first time, instructed him to come directly to pick them up. Jamal arrived at nine and parked the Hilux in Kopelman’s garage. Together the three men set out on foot in Peshawar toward the bazaar, the same market where Jamal Metziel’s mother and brother had been killed back in 2010.
Under Kolt’s direction Bob bought a thick rug from an old shopkeeper. Raynor stood right there with him, made no eye contact with anyone, kept his head low. A few passing merchants tried to sell him their wares; he waved them away without a glance. Jamal stood close. It was his job to distract anyone here who paid any attention to Racer. He was nervous—Jamal was always nervous when Kolt was around. Kolt understood completely. He knew the danger Kopelman’s local agent was in.
After leaving the carpet shop, Raynor carried the heavy rug on his shoulder, used it to shield his face from half of the stalls and the vendors and customers that stood in them. They climbed some steps in the market, passed dozens of little metal-and-concrete shacks selling all types of weapons; swords, knives, guns, even morning stars and maces. The instruments were more decorative than functional. Bob, Kolt, and Jamal scanned each one with bored expressions, though they were, in fact, desperately looking for one item in particular. There were no words between them, and twice Kopelman stopped upon seeing something for sale, but both times Raynor slowed and followed the older man’s gaze, then just picked up the pace after determining the items to be unfit for his use.
Finally they hit the jackpot. They’d passed many tiny kiosks selling knives, but all the previous shops’ selections had been entirely ornamental, or else cheap jackknives or switchblades made in China. Raynor had given Bob a specific mission to find only quality-made, razor-sharp throwing knives, and he had all but given up hope they’d run across anything worth inspecting further, much less purchasing. But a simple stall nestled near the top of a narrow cul-de-sac of shops at a tiny kiosk all but hidden in deep morning shadow sold all manner of knives, and there, on a table near the back, over one hundred simple well-made, hand-crafted steel shanks lay on a red cloth.
Kolt spotted them and stopped. Bob noticed his partner’s fixed stare, entered the little stall, and a few minutes later walked out with a half dozen of the blades wrapped in a small square of burlap tied with string.
Soon they were heading south in the yellow Hilux, Jamal at the wheel on the right side, Kopelman in the passenger seat on the left, and Kolt Raynor in the backseat with their purchases and other gear. He knew he’d have to crawl back into the tiny metal hellhole that he’d used several days earlier to infiltrate the Tirah Valley. There was a checkpoint at the edge of Darra. He and Bob had managed to bypass it the day before, but the Toyota truck would have to drive on through.
He waited as long as possible, then lowered the rear seat and slid back into the tight confinement. Unlike during his first visit to the metal box, this time Bob was with him, so he could cuss out the heavyset spy for making the human-sized stash, at least to Raynor’s thinking, significantly less than human-sized.
Bob just chuckled and snapped the rear seat back into place after Kolt slid up the metal door.
The checkpoint came and went, the Hilux was waved through, and Raynor was released from captivity below the truck. Traffic was not one-half of what it had been the previous afternoon, so they made their way quickly to the intersection in front of Buchwald’s factory, and found the two guards in front. There was no sentry on the roof at the moment, but that was not necessarily good news. Kolt knew the man could be patrolling the grounds or using the toilet. Jamal dropped the two Americans off at the massive gun market arcade a few blocks away. Here, literally hundreds of kiosks, shops, tiny doorways, and even rolling carts sold the weapons made here and in the villages nearby. Every possible firearm one could imagine was copied here at Darra Adam Khel, and even though tension and fear were at the forefront of Kolt Raynor’s mind at the moment, he could not help but stop and look in wonder as he passed huge water-cooled machine guns, ancient Lee Enfields, brand-new HK knockoffs, and dozens of other models hanging from racks on walls or leaning against dirty windows.
And once again gunfire crackled at regular intervals throughout the bazaar as the weapons were tested by fabricators and potential customers alike.
Kolt turned away from the treasure trove of armaments, and Bob followed as they headed east toward their target.
As the first call to the noon prayer emanated from the loudspeakers of the mosque on the main road, Bob and Kolt moved into position at the rear of the factory’s property. The metal fence was ten feet high and capped with razor wire hanging from bars in a V pattern. Attempting to climb it free-handed would be suicide at its most excruciating. When the prayers were well under way, a quick scan of the back alley showed the two Americans that they were alone. Raynor hurriedly unfurled the thick rug and launched it high over the razor wire above him. It hung down several feet on both sides of the fence, covering the sharp barbs at the top.
Next Bob put his back to the fence and knelt down slightly. Kolt put a sandal on the sixty-year-old’s thigh and Kopelman braced it with his hands. Th
en the ex–Delta officer leaped up, launched off Bob’s thigh, grasped the fence next to the hand-spun wool, and then rolled himself over the rug.
He dropped inside the factory grounds, quickly spun back around, and climbed up to flip the thick carpet back over the fence.
Bob caught the heavy wool and then ran off to his right. There, a narrow alley ran alongside the building’s wall, and a heavy bolted door gave access through the gate. Here, Bob waited.
Within twenty seconds of approaching the fence, Kolt Raynor was over and clear, hidden between two drums of machine oil.
Infiltrating a guarded building at noon, even a guarded building not in use, is rarely an optimal situation, and this proved to be no different. Kolt Raynor picked the lock on the rear door and opened it slowly, sending a long shaft of light into an open metal-walled room the size of a basketball court. All around him in the dusty light coming from windows ringing the building from its open second floor, he saw sewing machines, metal presses, lathes, thick rolls of thread, spools of aluminum, tables, chairs, and other equipment that revealed the location to be a manufacturing plant of items fashioned from fabric and metal. The noonday prayers outside drew to a close—though Kolt could not recite or even mimic the Islamic prayer ritual, he had heard it so many times that he recognized the ending—so Raynor rushed to the side door that led to the alleyway. This door was bolted and chained from the inside, and it took him nearly two minutes to get it opened. Opening the door let more light into the room, but the light was all but blotted out by Bob Kopelman’s big form in his salwar kameez, his squat pakol hat, and the bulky rug over his shoulder. He carried the AK-47 in his right hand, but he did not have it up in the ready position. Instead, he focused on hurrying inside the building before anyone noticed his movements in the alleyway, and he let the rifle swing with his rushed steps. Bob dropped the rug on the ground inside the factory door.
Just as Kolt closed the door behind him, blocking out the light from the street and again darkening the large factory floor, the front freight door of the building slid up. It was large enough to accommodate a tractor trailer, and the wide shaft of daylight lit virtually the entire room. Both Americans crouched behind a pallet of gray canvas, their backsides low to the ground and their lower backs pressed against the wall behind them and next to the side door. Two men spoke in Arabic. Kolt could not decipher their words, but thought it sounded like the men spoke a Saudi dialect.
Kopelman leaned close in his ear. “Egyptians,” he said confidently.
Kolt chastised himself for not being a better language student, though he was painfully aware just how confounding the different dialects of Arabic could be to even a native speaker, much less a country boy from North Carolina.
Gunfire crackled again from outside. More shopkeepers displaying their wares. Raynor still had to fight the urge to hit the deck.
Kneeling now behind the pallet, they heard the squawking of a walkie-talkie, and then more men checking in over the radios. Presumably this was the rest of the AQ security cordon around the location. Paying close attention to the guard force’s comms check, Kolt determined there were a total of eight men in and around the factory.
He wondered where in the hell they all were. Two here, two more at the front gate. According to Jamal’s uncle, Buchwald’s office was on the upstairs landing, reached by a metal ramp in the northeast corner of the building. He suspected there could be a couple of bodyguards with the German up there, as well as a duo of patrolling guards roaming the perimeter of the property.
He’d love to avoid the security completely, but he did not see that as likely. He held a razor-sharp throwing knife in his right hand, and kept the AK steady and low in his left.
By the sounds of the footsteps, the two men separated. One stepped into a room across the factory floor—Raynor suspected it was a kitchen. The other walked through a door just a few feet from the other side of Bob and Kolt’s pallet. The door shut behind him, and Raynor caught a whiff of urine and human feces.
It was the bathroom for the factory floor.
Raynor decided in a heartbeat that he’d take the closest man now while he held an advantage. He neither spoke to nor looked at Kopelman as he rose, rushed past him, and opened the bathroom door.
All his senses were alert, his nerve endings on fire as his heart pounded against his ribs. The light was low. The flooring and walls were gray cinder block. The Egyptian sentry stood at the far wall, his back to Raynor as he urinated into a hole in the floor.
Kolt’s jaw flexed as he moved forward quietly and swiftly. The man had heard the door open. He spoke as he faced the wall, but Raynor did not understand. The man was relaxed, obviously assuming his colleague had followed behind to relieve himself.
Kolt reached around the man’s head with his left arm, covered his mouth completely. His knife was tight in his right hand, and he brought it up a half second later, just as the man’s body tightened in surprise. Kolt jabbed the sharp tip into the Egyptian’s neck, an inch or two below his jaw, and pushed the blade in to its metal hilt. At the same time Raynor pushed the man face forward into the wall, and he pinned him there with his body while the Egyptian twitched and writhed in the throes of death.
Blood gushed and sprayed onto Raynor’s right hand and arm, ran down to his elbow, and streamed to the floor.
When the Egyptian’s legs gave out and Kolt could hold him up no more, he stepped back and let the limp body slide face-first to the floor. The man’s head drooped facedown into the toilet hole.
Kolt turned around slowly, wiping the blood off the knife, and the door opened on the other side of the room. It was the other Egyptian. The sentry was not alert. He did not look up for a full second after opening the door, but when he did he saw only the bloody throwing knife spinning through the air, just an instant before it buried itself into his throat, just above his clavicle. The sentry brought his hands up to the pain. Blood sprayed through his fingers as he grasped the knife and pulled it out with a sick gurgle.
Removing the sharp blade only caused the blood flow to increase. The al Qaeda gunman dropped hard to his knees, holding his throat in a futile attempt to contain the spray.
Kolt Raynor drew another knife from his belt and moved across the floor quickly toward the man, ready to finish him off lest he make any noise before he died. But the man crumpled to his left hip and then slumped over, folding peacefully to the floor like a man nodding off to sleep.
The spray of blood slickened the concrete, but within seconds it reduced to a trickle from its source as the man’s heart stopped beating.
Kolt stood over the bloody body, looking down at it, and the door opened again. He launched forward, over the prostrate man, raised the fresh knife high to go after the third man’s carotid artery.
But he stopped his attack suddenly. It was Bob. His rifle was up. His eyes were wide. Kolt just patted him on his thick chest and passed him through the doorway.
Bob Kopelman remained behind a moment, his eyes fixed on the carnage in the bathroom.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Kolt heard the older man mutter in awe.
Back on the factory floor, the two Americans headed silently toward the ramp up to the landing on the second level. Kolt led the way, the folded Kalashnikov in one hand and a throwing knife in the other. There were four other men somewhere. If they were patrolling the grounds, there was no way to know if they would be close enough to register danger if Kolt started shooting.
Raynor neared the top of the ramp now with Kopelman on his heels. There was an open hallway on his left just ahead. He knelt low and peered around the corner. Bob remained just behind and out of the way. Kolt saw two men down at the end of the hall, maybe thirty feet from him. They stood on either side of a simple wooden door that, Kolt assumed, opened to Helmut Buchwald’s office.
Sustained chatter from a light machine gun outside. Five-round bursts, over and over and over.
Kolt Raynor stood suddenly, slid the knife inside his belt,
opened the folded wire stock on his weapon, flipped the safety down to the single-shot setting, and stepped into the hallway.
Both men were caught completely by surprise. Raynor raised the rifle to his shoulder, lined up the iron sights, and took each man with a single round to the head.
The guards were dead before their bodies hit the ground.
Four down now, and two out at the main gate. That left two unaccounted for, assuming the eight men who had checked in on the radio were Buchwald’s entire protection force. Kolt could not be certain. He was even confused about how many men he’d just disabled—his adrenaline did not help his arithmetic and his quick recall like it did his reflexes and his fight-or-flight response mechanism.
Four. Yes, he’d killed four, he was certain.
Raynor stepped back on the ramp and waved Bob forward. They shouldered up to one another and made for the door at the end of the hallway. Whoever was inside would be very aware that the two shots in the hall outside had nothing to do with gun salesmen showing off their merchandise in the arcade up the street.
Raynor leveled his weapon on his shoulder and kicked open the wooden door.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The office was just a small room with two windows that faced out toward the distant sandstone hills. A desk was centered against the wall opposite the windows, and it faced into the room. The door Raynor entered through was to the left of the desk, and this gave Kolt an easy target, as Helmut Buchwald sat behind the desk, totally exposed to Raynor’s Kalashnikov.
There was no one else inside the office.
