by Peter Nealen
He was looking into the lower courtyard. The courtyard was lined with buildings like barracks and possibly an armory bunker on the uphill side. The inside of the outer curtain wall was lined with vehicles and heavy equipment. There was a fair bit of activity, but most of it was at the far end, where figures were scurrying around, heading for the barbican gate carrying weapons and ammunition. Two of the hulking armored vehicles parked just short of the entrance to the barbican, at the north end of the lower courtyard, were rumbling and starting to move.
The southernmost part of the courtyard was empty and dark. The Iranians weren’t worried about the seaward wall, apparently.
With a heave, his soggy boots scrabbling against the rock, Flanagan hauled himself over the lip and into the courtyard. He scrambled quickly out of the breach itself, which was, somewhat surprisingly, only about four feet wide at its widest, trying to get into the shadows of the wall as he pulled his AK-12 off his back and scanned for any indication that he’d been spotted.
He crouched there in the dark for a long moment, his rifle in his shoulder, watching and listening. He couldn’t hear much over the rattle and thunder of the fight at the gate, but neither did he see much in the way of movement nearby. He didn’t think he’d been spotted.
Of course, if one of those AMXs turned a thermal sight in their direction, they were fucked. And there wasn’t a damned thing his little 5.45mm peashooter was going to do against one of those behemoths.
He was about to drop his pack and pull the rope out, casting around for a suitable anchor point, when he heard footsteps above him. They were almost drowned out by all the other noise, but something warned him, and he looked up just in time to see a single Iranian soldier run down the wall to the southernmost tower. He had the look of a man who had forgotten something.
There was a flight of stairs leading down from the tower to the courtyard below, flush with the outer wall. Flanagan moved to that corner and buried himself against the stairs, hoping that the shadows would keep him out of sight if the Iranian happened to look down the steps.
After a moment, he started to think that the man was sticking. Which was a problem in and of itself. If he stayed there, it was only a matter of time before he looked down and saw the boats at the base of the cliff. Then the game would be up, and with only one of them through the breach.
Flanagan took a breath. He was about to break out of the shadows and mount the steps, to go up and kill the Iranian in the tower, but descending boots slapping against stone steps stopped him. The man was coming down the stairs.
Leveling his AK at the base of the steps, Flanagan went perfectly still, waiting for the Iranian to turn and see him crouched there. Maybe it would be the faint green glow of the Russian NVGs reflecting off his face that would give him away. Maybe it would simply be the hackles on the back of the man’s neck. Flanagan had seen stranger things.
He wished for a suppressor. He really didn’t think that, even with the fight going on out by the gate, anyone would be able to mistake an unsuppressed 5.45 shot inside the courtyard for anything else. As soon as he fired, they’d be blown.
Kinda wish I’d learned to throw knives. He knew it was dumb; nobody in their right mind really thought the Hollywood fetish for knife-throwing had anything to do with real combat. But it would be something he could always quietly and smugly rub in Kevin’s face, that he’d killed a guy by throwing a knife into his back.
The Iranian came into view, hustling down the stairs, carrying what looked like a MAG-58 and several belts of ammunition. He wasn’t moving that quick; Curtis would have been making much better time.
Flanagan’s finger was resting on the trigger, the selector lever on semi-auto, the red dot right between the man’s shoulder blades. If he turned around…
But the man didn’t turn around; he hit the courtyard and kept jogging toward the gate. In another minute, he was a dark blur of movement, a hundred fifty yards away, then he disappeared into the barbican.
There was a faint scrabbling sound behind him, and Flanagan turned, letting out a relieved breath. Hancock was coming up through the breach, dragging himself onto his belly as he got through the gap in the sandstone wall.
Flanagan hustled over and helped the older man the rest of the way up. “Almost had to schwack an Iranian early,” he whispered. “I’ve got a rope in my pack; let’s get it secured and send it down.”
***
Brannigan was a little annoyed as he clambered up the rope. He was the last man off the boats, and it bugged him. He knew the rest of the men didn’t care; he knew he shouldn’t care. They were all mercenaries at that point, and equal partners in this crazy job. But it still bugged him.
He clambered up through the breach. The rope was tied off to a stake hammered in the ground; he wasn’t sure where it had come from, until he looked up and saw one corner of a nearby camouflage net flapping loose in the faint evening breeze. Flanagan and Hancock must have cannibalized the stake from there.
The rest of the team was spread out in a line along the wall, hugging the shadows where possible, AK-12s aimed into the courtyard. It looked like the entire stretch was covered. Brannigan was already looking for the sally port that should get them up into the upper courtyard and the keep, preferably without going through the intensifying shitstorm of a gunfight out by the barbican, when Flanagan hissed at him.
“You’d better take a look at this,” the lean, black-bearded man said as he detached himself from the shadows along the seaward wall. Even soaked, he didn’t seem to make any noise, every footstep a gliding, rolling sort of step that was almost completely silent. He led Brannigan toward where the camouflage net was hanging down.
Lifting the corner of the net, Flanagan stepped aside and held it for Brannigan.
At first, it had looked like there was a row of heavy-equipment haulers or fuel trucks parked along the wall, under the camo netting. But Brannigan quickly realized that those weren’t heavy tanker trucks.
They were ballistic missile carriers.
CHAPTER 12
“So,” Brannigan murmured, “I think we know what the Iranians are doing here.”
“Yeah,” Flanagan replied. “This island’s well within range of just about every Saudi city on the Gulf coast.”
Brannigan took a quick count. There were at least twelve missiles. “This makes things a bit more complicated.”
“We don’t have time for complicated,” Flanagan protested. “It’s the missiles or the hostages. We came for the hostages. Frankly, I’m far more concerned with getting them out than I am with the possibility of some Saudi cities getting smoked. Fuck the Saudis, anyway.”
But Brannigan was already thinking. While he might generally agree with Flanagan’s sentiment—in his experience, the Saudis had taken far more than they’d given, and tended to play the US like a puppet with one hand, while supporting Islamist terrorists with the other—he knew that he’d never be able to live with himself if these missiles flew, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people died, and he could have stopped it.
“Back to the wall,” he whispered. “We’ve got to regroup and figure this out.”
If they’d still been in the military, the decision would have been entirely on him. Well, not entirely; he would have had to consult higher, possibly as high as the White House, if he’d come into possession of this kind of intel. The ultimate decision would have been made multiple paygrades above his head, he would have passed on the orders, and his men would have executed them. That was it.
This was different, and he knew it, even as the two of them hustled back to the wall next to the breach. “Bring it in!” he hissed, as Flanagan found the darkest spot he could, back in the corner beneath the southernmost tower.
They weren’t in the military anymore; they were mercenaries, independent contractors, and he was commander as much by reason of their acceptance as by the fact that he’d effectively hired them for the job. That meant he had to approach this a little di
fferently. He couldn’t just order them to risk their lives to save a bunch of faceless Saudi civilians. He had to convince them. And in the middle of the enemy’s fortress was hardly the most auspicious place to have that conversation.
“There are at least a dozen ballistic missiles on their carriers here in the courtyard,” Brannigan whispered, once the squad was in a tight knot in the shadows, AK-12s pointed outboard and eyes searching for enemies. “Given that they are Iranian, we have to assume that they’re aimed at Israel or Saudi Arabia, and they probably have some kind of CBRN warheads.” Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear was every soldiers’ nightmare acronym. “I’m not inclined to just leave those in the hands of a bunch of Islamist fanatics. I’m willing to sacrifice some of our Semtex to blow them sky-high.”
No one objected. Flanagan had said his piece. “We get to blow something else up?” Curtis asked. “Sounds like a good time to me. Might help cover our exfil, too.”
It was a good point, one that Brannigan mentally kicked himself for not thinking of first.
“Somebody has to stay back here and hold the breach, anyway,” Hancock said. “They can set the charges, while the rest of us go for the hostages.”
“This pig won’t be much use inside a damn castle,” Curtis pointed out, hefting his PKP slightly. “I’ll stay.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Flanagan said, “and set the charges.” Brannigan glanced at the quiet man. He suspected that his change of heart had more to do with not leaving Curtis by himself than anything else, missiles or no missiles.
A long, thumping burst of heavy machinegun fire ripped through the night from the direction of the gate, answered by a ragged fusillade of lighter-caliber fire. Tracers were suddenly skipping through the sky overhead, coming from the direction of the Old City. There must have been more Al Qaeda fighters out there than Aziz had thought. They were raising all kinds of hell, trying to get into the Citadel.
Which only made their window of opportunity that much narrower. “All right,” he hissed. “Flanagan and Curtis stay here, the rest, with me.” He thought he’d seen the route to the sally port; it was going to be a precarious climb, but it beat trying to fight their way into the barbican.
Keeping low, he got up and dashed toward the escarpment, keeping seaward of the old garrison buildings. The rest of the assault team followed him.
***
The sally port had been built into the inner wall as a route for the defenders to slip out and attack an enemy that had taken the inner courtyard. It was not supposed to be conspicuous, and in fact, Brannigan wasn’t one hundred percent sure that the spot he’d picked out was the actual sally port. But he thought he saw narrow, zig-zag steps cut into the cliff beneath the inner curtain wall, and if nothing else, they could still use ropes to get over the wall if they had to, provided they could get high enough.
Of course, they’d be exposed, but hopefully, if somebody started shooting from inside the castle, Curtis could quickly tear into them with that PKP.
He hit the side of the long, low garrison building, pointing his AK up at the wall above them, just in case. The rest fanned out around him, Hancock and Santelli covering around the corner, toward the gate, and Childress watching the dark, arched window at the end of the building. Villareal was huffing, but took a knee behind Santelli, hitching his med bag into a slightly more comfortable position.
Brannigan was looking around, frowning behind his NVGs. He’d thought that he’d seen the stairs leading up to the sally port, but now that they were closer, the cliff just looked like a cliff. Had he imagined it? He didn’t think so, but then, the castle’s builders wouldn’t have wanted those steps to be obvious to anyone below them.
Villareal suddenly got up and stepped close, touching his shoulder. The doctor pointed, and then Brannigan saw it. The steps had been cut back into the cliffside, and there was still a gate across their base. He had no idea how old that gate was. Maybe the king had wanted it kept up or restored for some reason.
Brannigan pushed off the wall at his back and moved quickly to the gate, with Childress and Villareal right behind him. Hancock and Santelli followed a few yards behind, always keeping at least one rifle pointed up the length of the outer courtyard.
The gate was shut, but apparently it wasn’t locked. Why should it be? The Iranians controlled the outer courtyard. If they even knew about the sally port, they had nothing to fear from it.
The hinges creaked a little as the gate swung open, but the noise was all but inaudible over the crackle of gunfire and the occasional thunder of explosions. The fight in the Old City was waning and waxing, judging by the noise, and it increasingly sounded like the heavier firepower at the Iranians’ command had forced it away from the gate. That could be a problem. Brannigan’s heart was pounding as he slipped through the gate, aiming his AK-12 up the steps. They had to get inside and get to the hostages while most of the Iranian force still had its hands full.
Unfortunately, he quickly discovered that rushing up the steps was not a good idea. No two steps were the same height, and he nearly tripped and busted his face on the stairs in front of him before falling off onto Childress’ head. He just barely caught himself, and realized that he had to slow down and take every step by feel. A muted curse below him told him that Villareal had just learned the same painful lesson.
It could have been by design; asynchronous steps would slow an attacker down, giving the defenders an advantage. But Brannigan had also spent enough time in the Arab world to know that it could just as easily be because whoever had cut the steps simply hadn’t cared.
He didn’t think about the fact that the Khadarkh Citadel had been a Persian fortress. It really didn’t matter, and he had other things on his mind.
His legs were burning by the time he reached the sally port. The ancient, iron-bound door was shut fast, and there was no latch on the outside.
He put his shoulder to the gate and shoved, as hard as he could on the narrow landing. The gate didn’t budge. It didn’t even creak under the pressure, and he felt a boot slip on the dust and grit of the crumbling sandstone steps. Childress had, fortunately, stopped about ten steps below him.
No one had ever accused John Brannigan of indecisiveness. Slinging his rifle, he swung his assault pack off his back and dragged out a block of Semtex and a priming system.
There were no protrusions on the gate that he could try to hang the charge from, and the ancient wood and iron were dusty, too dusty for tape. But the Semtex was sticky stuff, and once Brannigan ripped off the wrapper and jammed the lump of explosives into the corner of the gate and the jamb, it stayed put.
He quickly rigged the priming system, shoved the blasting cap into the slightly deformed wad of plastic explosive, yanked the initiator, and hustled back down the steps as fast as their unevenness and narrowness would allow, praying that the Russian priming system worked the way it was supposed to.
Childress had seen what he had been doing, and hadn’t waited around. The younger man was already another ten meters down the stairs, hugging the cliff wall. There wasn’t going to be a lot of cover from the blast, and as Brannigan descended, he was counting down in his head. He hit “ten” and flattened himself against the cliffside.
The detonation was a sharp crack, and the pressure wave hammered against them as fragments and grit whispered through the air and rained down on the men huddled against the cliff.
Now they really had to move fast. They had just announced their presence inside the Citadel. His legs already starting to ache, Brannigan forced himself back up the steps, forging toward the blasted gate.
The gate was broken and partway open, but even the blast of a block of Semtex hadn’t quite managed to completely obliterate it. It had been built solidly, and Semtex, like C4, has a high enough burn rate that it cuts more than it pushes. It had severed whatever latch had been holding the gate open, splintering the thick timbers and pushing the gate almost a foot and a half inward, but that was all.
Ancient wood and iron scraped against sand and rock. The gate was mounted flush with the ground, and evidently hadn’t been opened in a very long time. The hinges squealed and the grit beneath the edge of the door resisted every inch of movement.
Finally, the gate was open wide enough for a man to get through, even one of Brannigan’s considerable size. He pushed through, his rifle in his shoulder, ready to snap it up and engage in a split second, clearing enough room behind him for Childress to follow.
The lanky young man hooked around the partly open gate, to clear Brannigan’s six o’clock. Then Villareal, Hancock, and Santelli were coming through. Santelli was puffing a little; he was stouter than the rest, and despite his many miles of weekly running, his shorter legs made it harder for him to keep up with the others.
They were now against the seaward wall of the upper courtyard. The main Citadel loomed immediately to their north, black against the stars. Several smaller buildings had been built against the wall, not unlike the garrison inside the outer courtyard. The arched windows were black and lifeless in the green glow of their NVGs.
A good deal of the courtyard was taken up by the Super Puma helicopter squatting on the helipad. From the markings, dimly visible through the NVGs, it had been the Khadarkhi king’s personal helo. It would provide some concealment as they moved toward the Citadel.
As soon as he felt Hancock bump him, signaling that everyone was through and ready to move, Brannigan began to glide along the wall, making for where the Citadel’s side entrance was supposed to be. He hoped that it wasn’t as hard to spot as the sally port had been.
It was not. Especially once the doors banged open and four Iranians with rifles held at the ready poured out. Someone must have noticed the breaching charge going off.
