by David Poyer
Their faces brightened. They pumped weapons in the air. The cheers were quiet, muted by the wind. But they seemed to be heartfelt.
* * *
HOURS later, exhausted from the climb down, breathless and hungry, Teddy lay full length in an overwatch position. The cold rock under his belly felt familiar. He’d lain like this before on so many missions, from Africa to the White Mountains: Serbia, Iraq, Ashaara, the high desert.
How many more did he have in him?
Vlad had offered a promotion. Warrant officer, which was a big deal in the Teams. Warrants were little gods. Even the Det COs avoided giving them direct orders. Back pay, which had to be a sizable chunk after war bonus, POW bonus, and hazard pay.
And California. Salena? Medical retirement?
Or a second career as a high-level operator, running special ops with the spooks?
All he had to do was offer up his guys on their fucking altar.
But lying here, freezing his fucking balls, he still didn’t know what he wanted. Or what was right. Not since that night on the mountain, starving, lost, when everything he’d thought he knew had been turned upside down.
It wasn’t up to him.
Somebody Else was in charge.
A scuffling behind him, and a heavy body thumped down alongside. Yusuf, by the sound of it. Teddy focused the binoculars on the installation’s entrance. It was disguised by an overhang of natural rock. From overhead it would disappear into the mountainside. Only here, looking up from below, could he make it out.
Whoever had done the mission planning back at Langley had suggested two approaches. The first was this main entrance. If they couldn’t get into the complex that way, they’d have to climb the mountain, hauling the Package all the way, to a fissure near the top. The guess was that this cleft might lessen the thickness of the rock shielding to an extent that could let the pulse penetrate.
As to what would happen then, when you blitzed four dozen heavy multiple-reentry-vehicled nuclear warheads with an electromagnetic storm, Vlad had gotten vague. Oh, no, they wouldn’t go off, he’d said. The nukes would fry like poached eggs, but they wouldn’t detonate.
Right, Teddy thought, tracking the creeping figures below with his optics as they neared what looked like observation posts.
Or they could tear this fucking mountain range apart with a flash you could see from Alpha Centauri.
Yeah. Maybe this should be your last mission, Obie. Hang it up. Take the offer. He could still go to worship in the States. Join a mosque. Keep his head down.
Leave Xinjiang? Leave ITIM? His guys, who’d followed him to battle?
Fuck no. At least, not yet.
They had to finish this fucking war first. Then leave the next one to the fucking new crop. He was done. Past time, to judge by the agony in his ruined foot, the desperate need for air when he took a strain.
Flashes below. Then the claps of distant explosions. The RPG teams were taking out the outposts. Breaching their perimeter. Teddy crept into the eyepieces. Smoke rose, obscuring the view. Machine guns ripped. Below, figures ran and then sprawled. As he’d trained them, fire and rush.
Only a few, pitifully few, rose again and dashed onward.
From somewhere he couldn’t see, black specks darted skyward. They tilted and spread out like enraged hornets, seeking whatever had disturbed their nest.
Autonomous drones. But these seemed smaller, faster, more maneuverable than any he’d ever seen before. They dived more abruptly than the one he’d shot down during the attack on the computer center the year before. Yet unlike them, these didn’t fire on the rebels. Instead they swooped around them in narrowing orbits, as if picking targets. The rebels took a knee, as he’d trained them. They aimed the long clumsy antidrone weapons, or fired out magazines at their tormentors.
Which suddenly ceased circling and dove in. When they hit their targets they exploded.
“Smoke,” Teddy said into his cheap throwaway walkie-talkie. Line of sight, no scrambling, but a transmission now couldn’t give anything away the enemy didn’t already know.
Antitargeting grenades popped. A dense white smolder whirled up, blanketing the advance. Its upper layers braided into swirls as a second wave of larger, slower drones skittered back and forth above it, frustrated, unable to pick out targets in the haze. A pair collided, locked blades, and tumbled out of the sky into the murk.
Teddy sucked a hit of oxygen and glanced behind him. A four-man team crouched there, cradling the Package on an aluminum litter. As soon as the assault squad signaled they were in, he would order them forward. If this attack failed, he’d accompany them to the summit. Serve as sniper overwatch. They’d withdraw together, after emplacing the thing.
If anyone was left by then.
Heavier explosions thumped from within the murk below. The shaheeds were hurling themselves forward. With fifty pounds of C-4 strapped on back and chest, they were human torpedoes. Without artillery or mortars, he had to depend on them to reduce strong points. It was a wasteful way to fight. You lost your best, and kept the cowards. But the mission came first.
But it always did, didn’t it?
A crackle on the radio. They saw a way through. Should he stay up here? Yeah, he should.
But he couldn’t. Not watching them die, below.
Teddy hoisted himself, wincing as his leg nearly buckled despite the metal brace, but caught himself. He turned, and waved the litter team after him. They lurched down the slope, the swaying massive burden tugging them off balance. There. He was committed.
But who had committed him?
Had he done it himself?
There is no choice.
Everything that happened was inevitable as the sky.
They stumbled downhill two hundred meters and hit the smoke. It stank of sulfur, of burnt powder. It blotted out the entrance. Lost in it, Teddy led them toward where his compass told him it should be. Uphill now. Good.
But as the hill steepened bullets whined overhead. Someone was still laying down MG fire. Then a second gun joined in. Beneath the hammering, the pop of rifles, a faint chorus of high shouts.
A counterattack. He knelt, charged his carbine, and set the optic to his eye. A figure lurched toward him. He put a burst into it. Enemy, or one of his own who’d turned tail, didn’t matter. As it fell he caught the black tactical gear of Han security. Good.
But at the same moment shells began screeching in. They exploded on the heights he’d just left. Two ranging rounds were followed by a continuous, earth-shaking barrage. The black blossoms of high explosive blanketed the rise. Air bursts sprayed steel down to slash white gashes into the rocks. If he’d stayed up there, he’d be dead now.
The voice had said it on the mountain, immense as space, more unyielding than granite … yet not without compassion.
There is no chance.
You have always done My will.
The assault squad leader, on the radio. “Lingxiù. We are pinned down. In kill zone. All my men are wounded. We cannot break through.”
Without reflection, Teddy thrust a fist skyward. The men behind him braked too. A shell exploded mere steps ahead with a heave of earth and a shock wave that knocked him down. He lay full length as fragments whined and buzzed over.
When that salvo lifted he levered up again, only to have the damned leg fold under him. His searching hand came back bloody.
But he was still thinking even as his fingers scrabbled across the harrowed stony ground for his carbine. He couldn’t find it. Then he did: a twisted hunk of plastic and steel. A hit, crunching the handguard and twisting the barrel. Smashed. Useless. Like him. He threw it aside and pulled his Makarov, trying to think amid the battering sound. He had one squad in reserve. Should he throw them in too?
Mortars screamed down, bursting one after the other across their line of retreat and spraying the ground with white phosphorous. Fiery flakes drifted down, cauterizing through sheepskin, clothing, flesh. Throwing their weapons away, the rebels ran
, screaming and beating at themselves until they toppled and fell, unquenchable fire gnawing deep into their bodies. Mingled with that came the stinging reek of chlorine and the grinding bellow of some kind of armor, approaching from beyond the smoke.
As objectively as he could, he tried to decide. Push in the reserve? He should if there was a chance of fighting through.
But there really wasn’t a decision here.
The enemy was too strong. Just as he’d feared. They hadn’t even reached the entrance yet. Had been stopped at the second line of defenses. The Han had MGs, artillery, drones, mortars, white phosphorus, and gas.
They’d never break through.
Another nearby burst knocked him down again. He crawled to the litter. His men stared at him, those who were still alive, as he laid the pistol aside, fumbled open the cover, and went through the initiation sequence. Too far away to do the job, probably, but at least he wouldn’t leave the Package to be captured and dissected.
When it was armed and the count started he hit Transmit. “Retire,” he shouted. “This is the Lingxiù. Abandon the attack. Bring back those who can walk. Shoot those who cannot. Retire. Retire!”
But the only answers were fragmented bursts of static punctuated by screams.
* * *
THEY pulled back through a renewed barrage, clutching to their faces scarves soaked in the antigas liquid the Agency had supplied. Taking more losses as they stumbled through hell, the earth shaking, steel scything the air, an acrid haze stinging their eyes and stripping the linings from their throats.
Teddy sucked the last of his oxygen and tossed the bottle away. He emerged from the cloud, stumbling painfully on the reinjured leg. He oriented and headed for the rally point, a gap in the mountains not too far distant. The reserve squad would be waiting there. They’d serve as rear guard.
For a little while he wondered if he was the sole survivor. Then through the pre-morning dark a few other forms took shape, lurching along, many dragging wounded comrades.
But all too pitifully few. If drones or fresh troops pursued, they were lost. He felt naked without a rifle. But all he had left was the pistol.
Oh, fuck … where was it? He fumbled inside his coat, but the solid little Makarov was gone. He’d laid it aside to initiate the charge. Then left it behind. Fuck. Fuck … So all he had now was the thin-blade, until he could pick something else up. He pulled the knife from its sheath and carried it point up, but it seemed a paltry weapon after what the Chinese had just thrown at them.
And no doubt the black uniforms were putting together a pursuit force. Well, he’d mapped out the roughest, most precipitous route he could find for the retirement phase. With numerous opportunities to ambush anyone following them. Some of the wounded wouldn’t make it. Maybe he wouldn’t himself. But the toughest just might. All he could do now was give them a chance.
He was looking for a place to set up his rear guard when heavy, running footsteps thudded behind him.
He wheeled, alerted by Team-honed reflex just in time to block the descending knife. It slashed his palm, but he managed to grip his attacker’s wrist and turn it outward, using the other’s momentum to throw him rather clumsily over one hip. But the fucking bad leg gave way and they crashed to the rocky soil together.
Teddy rolled, recovered, and went to a combat crouch, facing the shadow that rose from the ground, steadied itself, and moved toward him again.
“Yusuf,” he gasped. Then realized it wasn’t.
It was Abu-Hamid al-Nashiri. Qurban. The hajji, who’d been undermining him ever since he’d come to these mountains.
Who’d probably poisoned the old sheykh, Akhmad, when the old man resisted his murderous interpretation of the Koran. And shot their young spymaster, without trial, without investigation.
So this was his next move. Teddy hawked fluid from deep in his lungs and spat. “Qurban. What are you doing? It’s me.”
“I see you, al-Amriki.” Just the tone conveyed the smile. The thin, withholding, deadly stretch of the lips with which the al-Qaeda veteran had greeted him the first time Vlad had introduced them, and Teddy had tried, fruitlessly, to refuse the dangerous gift.
“Is this your true intent? To kill me?”
“Only if you survived.”
The guy was up-front, anyway. Teddy felt a little better about the situation. This wasn’t his first knife fight. They were about the same age. Qurban was a bit bigger, but that didn’t mean a hell of a lot given the right circumstances.
Unfortunately, his own circumstances weren’t that fantastic right now. Short of breath, half crippled, losing blood. So he’d better cut it short, so to speak. A knife fight? Bring it on.
The hajji gathered himself and rushed in again. Teddy feinted and tried to sidestep, but couldn’t get out of his way. They crashed together and once more went to the ground. Qurban’s knife grated into a rock beside Teddy’s ear as he twisted his face away. A big fucking pigsticker too. Twice as long as the four-inch Boker ceramic-blade he held himself. But the Boker was double-edged and the Uighur blades generally weren’t. He could use it stabbing or slicing, punching or thrusting.
Unfortunately al-Nashiri had an arm over his face and was trying for his throat. Looking for a spot to plant his blade that wasn’t covered by the sheepskin, the thickly wrapped scarf, and the layers of shalwar kameez and thick insulated vest beneath those.
Teddy clapped his cupped hands on both sides of his attacker’s head, and got the result he wanted. Screaming from a burst eardrum, holding his ear, the other rolled away again.
Qurban moved more warily now. Both on their feet again, they faced each other once more, panting, crouching. “You will die today,” the Arab, if he was an Arab, snarled. Not even the CIA had seemed to know where he was originally from. Just that he’d been through the catch-and-release program in four different countries. No doubt, making converts all along the way.
Teddy glanced around. Where were the others? Were they getting to safety, before it was too late?
Then he saw them.
They made a circle in the dark, like a pack watching the old wolf fight a challenger. That big shadow in the front must be Yusuf. But the dark too was bleeding away. In a few minutes it would be light enough for whatever recon was circling overhead to make them out. And another artillery barrage, or another wing of killer drones, would be on its way. Though, what had happened to the armor? Their engines seemed to be dying away, not approaching. Taking a wrong turn, maybe.
Regardless, he had to wrap this up. Don’t wait for the attack, he’d taught raw young SEALs in hand-to-hand training. Be the attacker. I’m not training you to defend yourself. I’m going to show you how to take a human body apart, fast, quiet, and permanent.
And maybe he was a little too caught up in remembering that, what he’d used to teach, instead of being here now, because he didn’t see the kick coming. It was so swift and unexpected that somehow his hand, already slick with blood, lost the knife. It rattled down somewhere out in the dark.
No knife. Not good. Not facing the pigsticker his adversary was carving the air with. And grinning evilly, just like the bad guys in the video games.
Better get serious, Obie, someone said in his mind.
“Sumo?” he grunted.
He coughed up warm fluid and gagged. Flashes in front of his eyes. For the first time he wondered if this might be his last fight. On a mountainside deep in China, as the day hurtled toward them. With an aging but deceptive opponent, one who’d just surprised him with a kick that would have made a UFC champ proud. In what Brotherhood training camp had he picked that one up? Almost like savate. But the figure-eight business he was doing with the knife was straight tahtib.
He had to get this over with. He was losing blood and breath, while the other guy looked fresh. The circle was contracting around them, the watchers pressing in. Over Qurban’s back Teddy glimpsed the big young disciple, holding now not the drone rifle but a pistol. Teddy’s own Makarov. How had he
gotten that? The answer was obvious. He’d picked it up where Teddy himself had laid it aside, left it … He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. Getting confused. Feeling like heat stroke. But in this weather? Not a good sign.
Okay, identify his target … if the guy had actually trained tahtib, Egyptian traditional fighting, they watched the eyes, and their preferred target was the head. Which meant if he could sucker him in … Teddy went in just the barest bit slow, leaving his face unprotected. Concentrating on the knife hand. Grab, twist, groin strike.
But instead of engaging, al-Nashiri backed away, smiling deep in his gray beard, still spinning the knife, as if trying to hypnotize him with it.
The circle sighed.
The dawn light grew. The hum of engines swelled. One missile from a helo, or from one of those big drones … Teddy shook his arms out and circled with his partner. Allemande left. Do-si-do. The mortal dance that would end with one of them bleeding out. Qurban was sidestepping with him, the big blade weaving, just out of lunge-reach. The fucking guy was teasing him! Spinning it out, to entertain his fucking fanboys. So they could tell the story around their fires. Make one of their songs out of it. How the hajji killed the American. The CIA spy. The infidel.
Only Qurban was making a mistake. He was already thinking of that, of the song. Playing to his audience. Glancing past Teddy to grin at the men behind him.
Teddy hit the knife hand on the backswing, turned inside it, and back-elbowed him hard to the gut. The heavy sheepskin absorbed most of the strike, but he kept turning, jerked the knife arm up and close in, and gave it all he had to the groin with his knee.
But his bad leg gave way and the crotch strike barely connected. He toppled to the left. But he kept his death grip on the knife wrist, making sure the cutting edge was turned away. His weight pulled the other fighter off balance. Teddy kicked backward as he went down, sweeping away his legs, trying to break a knee.
