The Towers

by David Poyer

  In the courtyard again as thermite M14s went off, trickling molten iron down into piles of weapons with hissing flares. Guys were carrying crates of ammo out and pitching it down into the wadi. Past the breach a Pave Low was settling, kicking up the same huge dust cloud as it had dropping them off. A burst rattled from Mud Cat’s 240. What the fuck was he shooting at? The wind gusted, booming a hanging sheet of tin on the burning garage and whipping great gouts of sparks away to whirl amid the stars. He got on the channel, got Echo One out the breach to set up security. Teddy frisked each prisoner as he filed past. They were small men, but, God, they stank. He found a knife under a droopy shirt and whacked the SEAL escorting the prisoner with it. “Good thing I found this, dickhead, or you’d be pulling it out of your kidneys. Quit cheese-dickin’ around and search these sand monkeys.”

  “Aye, Chief.”

  “Okay, hold ’em up there. Gangway. Chief coming through.”

  He was climbing the rubble at the blown hole at the back of the compound, boots slipping and grating, when he heard a cough. The whine of some kind of starter. Then, a clatter, and then, as it caught, the full-throated roar of a big diesel. He scrambled through the gap and oriented on the sound.

  From another wall, down the wadi, smoke was rising. It was down there, throbbing steadily in the night. Another bulldozer? A truck? That’s what it sounded like. A big-ass truck.

  A heavy crunching. The rattle of stones.

  With a bellow, something very large indeed crashed out through, or maybe over, a wall. He glimpsed it for a second, blackness in motion, then lost it. He ran to the edge of the wadi, pushing down his NVGs. Caught it shambling left to right, figures loping after it shimmering in the heat-detecting lenses. At the second glimpse, a chill passed through him like a low-voltage shock.

  The intel briefing had told them everything known about the enemy order of battle. Type, number, location, weapons, satellite photos, and written analysis. Not one had mentioned this. But he’d seen that black parallelogram, glowing heat-white from its rear deck, before. Not exactly state-of-the-art. But still not what any SEAL wanted to see on a battlefield.

  It was a Soviet-era BMP, the armored personnel carrier the Russians had left scattered across Africa and Eastern Europe as indiscriminately, though not in the numbers, as the ubiquitous AK-47. Hidden, like the bulldozer. So the satellites never saw it.

  For a moment he thought the wadi would trap it, that they could fire down at the weaker top armor. But the engine snorted as it pitched up and climbed at a forty-five-degree angle, then slammed down and rumbled out onto the field. Half armored personnel carrier, half light amphibious tank, the thing was all danger. Thirteen tons. Off-road speed, thirty miles an hour. Even as he thought this, a stream of burning light darted across the field at it from the helicopter, which was already slamming its rotors into positive pitch to take off. The 20mm shells hit square, but when the dust cleared the monster was still snarling, tossing its head as it took the undulations of the furrowed field like an angered bull, the long barrel of the 73mm smooth-bore coming around to search for prey. From somewhere in his memory, some drowsy briefing hall, came Later variants uparmored for service in Afghanistan.

  “Armor, left flank. Crossing left to right” came over the tac net.

  Ahead Dollhard was being carried between two men. His eyes were open, staring upward, but the way his head lolled, he was dead. Teddy looked left and right, finally caught Verstegen’s too-tall, stringy outline against the still-burning garage. These people must have captured and then hidden all sorts of equipment from the retreating Russians. Including the heavy MGs that now barked all around the valley, making it more and more dangerous for the helicopters. Shit, he hoped they didn’t have any old Stingers. The immediate problem, though, was still turning its turret, searching them out. It traversed past the now ascending Pave Low, then belched flame. The shell went wide and exploded somewhere in the distance. The chopper banked away, pouring on the power and firing a whole new series of flares, more or less in reflex, Teddy guessed.

  A renewed crackle of small arms began behind them, from the compound they’d just left. The M240 ripped, ripped again. The fire slackened. But as soon as Mud Cat stopped, it picked up again. A flash flickered, and something bulky and glowing flew slowly overhead, wobbling as it went.

  He caught up to Verstegen as the jaygee signaled the men into line from behind a stone fence slumped into rubble. They gazed up from where they lay, weapons pointed to the flank. One man was unlimbering an AT4, the only thing they carried that might make a dent. The warhead was warranted for 420 millimeters of steel, but any uparmoring had no doubt included a standoff plate, to set off and disrupt the shaped-charge jet.

  Verstegen must have recalled this too because he beckoned the man with the antitank rocket toward him. Another echoing blast of dust and flame, and a second shell screamed over their heads. Teddy jumped to his feet, sprinted over, and dropped behind the rubble. Where was the air combat controller? He put out a call on the tac circuit … no joy. A possibility chilled him: Could the Air Force controller have made it to the helo? Was he even now on his way out, leaving them behind? They were all trained to call in air support, but the ACC had the codes, the freqs, and the radios.

  “Could be a shit sandwich, Obie.”

  “Yes, sir, concur. What’s the plan?”

  “It’s an ambush. We assault into it. Covered by the AT4s.”

  True, this was one of their immediate action drills, but he didn’t think assaulting a BMP with small arms and AT4s was smart. “Maybe not a good idea, sir. And if they’ve got any more of them hidden away around here—”

  “What do you recommend, Chief?”

  “Be better to pull back. Into the compound, if we have to. Call the Spectre, let them handle it. We can’t use the primary extraction LZ. They can just follow us and knock the helos down when they come in.”

  “It’s too late to call off the extraction.”

  “No, sir, it isn’t. Tell them to abort and prep for an alternate LZ. Have the platoon fall back through the rally point and through the alternates until we find a position they can extract us.”

  Verstegen looked undecided. Which was not a good expression to see, at the moment.

  The BMP let off another round. This too sailed over their heads, but not as high. Why was it just sitting there? Maybe going down into that ditch had busted something? But as he watched it rocked, then rolled forward again. Uncertainly, slewing side to side. Whoever was driving must be learning on the job. Obviously he didn’t know how to aim the main gun. Making it slightly less dangerous, but if it just wheeled around and came in on them, they weren’t all going to make it. And he had the feeling that was exactly what it was about to do.

  “Stand by. Blast area clear—”

  “Clear—”

  A lance of flame and a cloud of dust and bitter-smelling smoke erupted behind the prone SEAL to Teddy’s right. The rocket motor flared as it left the tube, then winked to a glowing ember that shrank rapidly. It missed the still-turning vehicle, not by much, but enough, and exploded in a mud building beyond, blowing a hole an arm’s width across. The clods banged on steel but that wasn’t going to hurt anybody. Teddy had a momentary urge to grab an AT himself, but steadied down to concentrate on talking in the Spectre. Unfortunately it was at the north of the valley, dueling one of the antiaircraft sites; balls of fire were flying down from the Bofors and lighting up the hills. An incredible bleedover was on the frequency. It sounded like three, four people talking at once. He shook the handset, cursing.

  He was still trying to talk them back to Tantalum when with a deafening roar the Pave Low swept over the compound. Its minigun chattered and more dust and smoke leapt up.

  The long barrel trembled, cranked upward a bit more, and fired.

  The shell ripped through the helicopter like a flare off the surface of the sun. The aircraft staggered away, sagging to port, and nutated down into another compound. Hot pieces
came up glowing and tumbled back to earth again. A hollow, metallic crump.

  When he switched his attention back to the tank, the wedgy, slanted-forward snout was coming out of the dust and smoke at them. Whoever was driving had finally mastered the steering and the accelerator. Smaller figures shifted and blurred behind it, trotting forward.

  Verstegen rose up and yelled to advance, throwing a leg over the stone wall.

  Teddy took three swift strides, caught the leg as it swung down on the far side of the wall, and set his Bates Ultra-Lite inside the assistant platoon commander’s boot. He rolled Verstegen over his hip and slammed him into the ground. Pinned him there, on the far side of the wall from the others, and spoke into his ear. “You tripped. Sir. That’s a good thing. Because nobody’s going to follow you out there. Get that installed in your brain housing group, okay? Now, order me to handle this. Or I’ll hook your fuckin’ ass up, here and now.”

  “You … you’d better take charge. Chief.” The jaygee was gasping, his tone mingled relief and resentment. Teddy knew he’d pay for this. But right now he wasn’t going to waste worry on it. He rolled back over the wall, scuttled on hands and knees along as someone in the oncoming armor figured out how to fire the machine gun. Slugs whacked around him, cracked past, but no one seemed to be hit. Yet.

  “Stand by … blast area clear…” The last two antitank rockets fired with a sound between a thud and a hiss, with a cloud of blasted-up dust that sparkled in the greenlit darkness. An explosion; another cloud; but no evident effect on the target.

  That was it. Nothing was left to stop the oncoming monster. It turned for the point the antitank weapon had fired from and rolled forward a few yards before hesitating again. Teddy turned his back to it and fired out a mag into the flashes from the compounds to either side. They all seemed to be aiming high. The bullets hummed and sighed above them. Firing blind, into the night. He was about to order fall back and cover, each man firing out his magazine in turn to cover the retreat of his buddy, but suddenly realized something. That was why the BMP was proceeding so hesitantly. The driver couldn’t see them.

  “Cease fire. Cease fire!” The order leaped from mouth to mouth along the ragged wall. Teddy followed it with the word to pull back toward the ditch. “Covering fire, but only on the compounds,” he told the 240 gunners. “Fall back through the compound, head for the alternate LZ. Everybody look for the ACC. We got to find the ACC.”

  “He’s back here” came an unfamiliar voice. Teddy rolled into the ditch, popped up, oriented, and hit the bone mike again. “Send him to the ditch, goddamnit! Where the fuck’s he been?”

  “Had a close shave. Roof fell in, knocked him cold.”

  “Well, get his ass up here! Now!”

  The controller was hustled up. A bandage patched his temple, but he seemed to have his shit together. The distant drone of the big aircraft changed pitch and grew louder. The BMP roared and slewed anew. Its gun boomed again.

  A bolt darted from the heavens and exploded. When the boiling murk settled, the tank lay like a stepped-on toy, burning fiercely. Teddy kept his reticle on it, but no one emerged. The flames grew. There were no more infantry out there, just shapes fading back toward the fields and compounds beyond.

  He remembered the shot-down helicopter. “Ski, take four guys and the corpsman over and secure the crash site. Survivors out, bodies out, rig for demo. I’ll be over in a couple’a minutes.”

  The drone of the Spectre retreated, floating out over the valley, echoing from the hills. The battle of titans had ended. The crackles and booms from below were waning too, as if taking down the armor had climaxed the action. Another 53 was lining up on the field. Abort? Go to the alternate? Teddy decided for the primary. He straightened, keeping a stone wall between him and the field in case someone out there had a sniper rifle. He sent Scooper out to pop a strobe for pickup. Then pulled out a PowerBar and wolfed it, going over the mission objectives. Get Dollhard on the first bird out, with the prisoners. Sanitize. Retro everybody else. He and Verstegen would be last off the ground.

  A last bullet whined disconsolately overhead. Fired at long range as the enemy pulled out. He rubbed his face, sagging, realizing only now how exhausted he was.

  Light armor. Heavy machine guns. Probably a hundred enemy, all told. A helo shot down. If the guy in the BMP had known how to drive it, the Talibs could have rolled up the platoon. Not one guy in the garage had surrendered. They’d fought to the end. It didn’t make him feel good about what would happen once they got these dudes cornered, where they couldn’t retreat. It would be bloody. Grunt-side work, for the Green Monster. Marine shit, not SEAL duty. Next time: claymores, AT4s, antitank mines, and have a heart-to-heart with Verstegen about who actually called the plays when they were in contact.

  The ACC, slumping past, burdened with gear. “You okay, Chief?”

  Teddy gave him the big grin, bent over, still sucking the dusty, freezing, smoky air. From the wadi came the wailing of the prisoners as they were herded up toward the chopper and captivity. “Just another easy day, buddy. Just another … easy day.”

  13

  Sana’a

  TO Aisha, the moonless night seemed twice as dark without a countersurveillance element supporting her, without contractor escorts, with no one in the car with her except for Hiyat and the other Yemeni women.

  Her friend from the mosque did not look nearly as youthful or beautiful as she had at the tafruta. Her dark eyes were shadowed; her swan neck sagged her head against the window. Gaida was driving. Jalilah sprawled in the passenger seat. Aisha wasn’t sure whose Mercedes this was. Probably Hiyat’s husband’s. He built houses overlooking the city, on steep slopes no one had thought could be built on. When Aisha had gotten in, they’d clung to each other. Hiyat had wept, but without passion. As if tears held no relief anymore.

  “He was such an obedient boy,” she kept muttering. “So … good.”

  Aisha sat itching beneath full Kevlar, pistol holstered under a dark burka, Doanelson’s personal number already predialed in her cell. Tim Benefiel was trailing them some blocks back, but just now she was seriously doubting if this meeting was wise. Going out against orders … tonight could be the end of her career.

  The women were vying to bombard her with opinions. “Hiyat’s right,” Gaida spat. “These Salafis, they’re not Yemeni. We knew God before foreigners came along to tell us how to pray. And now they blow us up? It’s got to stop, that’s all. My husband went to their meeting. He told me. About how we had to restore the caliphate, how the Jews and the Americans had to be stopped. I told him, I don’t know any Jews, but I know an American, and she’s just like us.”

  Jalilah said, “Still, I don’t know if this is smart. Taking her to them? What if they decide we are murtadd and kill us? Such things have happened in other lands.”

  “If you allow it, they’ll happen here too,” Aisha told them. “You’re brave to do this. Many more must know about them. But they keep silent, I guess.”

  Gaida said, “Oh, we all know them, yes. They leased those apartments. They paid with riyals, Saudi money. The whole year, one payment. They bought air conditioners. Trucks. They have women in. And a guard in the hallway, with a gun. It’s in a bag, but we all know it’s a gun.”

  Which meant the PSO had to know too, Aisha thought. Did that make what she was doing tonight more or less dangerous? But if she’d gone through channels, gotten host-nation clearance, the people they were going to see would have disappeared. Warned, by the very officials who were professing their cooperation. She had no diplomatic immunity. If the PSO apprehended her, she’d be subject to arrest, a nasty spy trial, or PNG’d—declared persona non grata. None of that anything to look forward to, career-wise.

  But what should she have done? Huddled behind the embassy walls, as Caraño wanted? Let Yemen go down the same drain as Sudan and Somalia?

  “What kind of bag?” Aisha asked, trying to ignore a little voice insisting, Homegirl, you are way out of
your depth. “A black gym bag?”

  “That’s right. How did you know?” The older woman frowned, and Aisha reminded herself, Shut up. Let them tell you. Don’t tell them.

  “We knew,” Hiyat moaned. “But our husbands told us not to make trouble. So now Husayn is dead.”

  What Aisha found most astonishing was not that she was out here, but that they were. Most Yemeni women were illiterate. They had no health care, not even midwives. These three were wealthy—they had doctors, no doubt; their husbands were rich. But even so, driving was forbidden, and the way Gaida was swerving from lane to lane showed she hadn’t had much practice on an actual street. Even being out at night, with other women—this had to take a courage Aisha could only dimly grasp.

  “No more mothers should cry,” she told them. “We’ll end this. Where exactly are we going?”

  “You will see, you will see,” Gaida said, chewing on a fold of black cloth as she slewed around a corner, tires shrieking. Aisha was glad traffic was sparse. If anything had been coming in the other lane, they would have just front-ended it.

  * * *

  THE car eased to a stop behind one of the gingerbread high-rises in a thickly populated quarter. She took a quick look around as they got out, but couldn’t see the mosque dome; couldn’t make out, from the dim cutouts of the mountains, exactly where they were. Somewhere west of the Old Town, but inside the 60 Meters Road that ran like a beltway around the southwest. She counted five stories of lit windows. Craning back, she made out lights at the top too, archways, the writhe of palm leaves in a light breeze. A sun-cheating rooftop garden.

  Two women stood waiting near overflowing trash cans, muffled to the gills in black and strangely faceless in the dark. Gaida exchanged hushed words with them. Then one waddled forward and without a word took Aisha’s hand. Thick, powerful fingers padded with calluses explored hers. Dark eyes flashed from a featureless shadow.

  “She comes with us?” An accent Aisha didn’t recognize, the voice roughened, careless.