Dark Winter

by Anthony J. Tata

  As the first female Ranger School graduate, Cassie had lived up to the high expectations of her leaders and subordinates. Mahegan had concerns, though, given the recent tragic deaths of her parents at the hands of ISIS. Was she moving out too soon on a mission of this import? He had studied every war in American history. He knew that these types of operations and the machinations of spies and double agents usually won the day. It was always one or two people around which the entire war raged. Like the spies in World War II such as German journalist Richard Sorge, who’d handed Stalin Germany’s playbook, or British double agent Dusko Popov, who’d handed FBI director Herbert Hoover the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor, would Mahegan and Cassie discover that nugget of information that would give decision makers the opportunity to stop the world from imploding due to nuclear war?

  “Whatcha thinking about?” Cassie asked, her voice more confident this time.

  “We’re passing through ten thousand feet,” he said. “The mountains in this area get up to about seven thousand. Remember, there may be some backwash from that shamal. We jumped when it was still active in the target area. It’s moving south, so be ready to steer north. You’re going to want to climb above that thing if it isn’t gone.”

  “Roger,” she said.

  “Five thousand,” he called out. They entered a chute between two mountains not wider than a football field. Rugged mountain peaks poked into the misty clouds through which they had descended. “I’m seeing some lights. We may be okay on the shamal. Might still be windy.”

  “Roger,” Cassie said.

  As they descended through the early evening, Mahegan flipped his night vision goggle from its secured position atop his modified combat helmet that looked more like a camouflaged skateboard helmet. Through the green shaded world Mahegan was able to identify key markers, confirming they had followed the way points in the GPS sufficiently to land at their one kilometer offset landing zone. This was not his first jump with Cassie. They had used flying suits to penetrate the Syrian basecamp near Asheville, North Carolina.

  “Prepare to land,” Mahegan said. “I’ve got a pretty strong gust coming from the north, probably the back side of the shamal.” He waited a few seconds and then said, “Okay, pivot north now.”

  “Roger.”

  They followed a narrow passageway through rugged terrain that seemed to be rising too rapidly.

  “Got a tailwind through this pass somehow,” Mahegan said through gritted teeth.

  Cassie fumbled with her toggles, the square parachute catching the gust and thrusting her forward almost at a ninety-degree angle.

  “Toggle back, Cassie,” Mahegan directed. He wanted to avoid extensive radio conversations this low to the ground given the Iranians’ sophisticated intercept capabilities.

  “Trying.” She shot like a rocket through the pass, but managed to get control and stabilize her descent somewhat.

  Mahegan struggled with the swirling winds and they both landed hard in a rocky area that had about a twenty-five degree slope to it. Mahegan’s helmet struck a boulder, which essentially stopped his parachute landing fall. Cassie landed about fifty meters to his right front.

  He was instantly in motion, retrieving his M4 carbine and putting his weapon into operation. He unlatched his parachute harness and slipped it into a kit bag, which he promptly stuck under a rock pile. He shouldered his rucksack filled with IV bags, water, 5.56 and 9 millimeter ammunition for his rifle and pistol, frag and stun grenades, and radio equipment for communicating with Savage and the Rangers who should be launching from their refuel site about now, provided all of that went smoothly. Jumping from a B-2 bomber at 35,000 feet was far less risky than landing an MC-130 on a dirt road, whipping out some fuel hoses and refueling four MH-60 Blackhawk cargo and two conventional AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. B-2 bombers were flying protective air cover overhead with F-35 attack aircraft prepared for air-to-air combat or air to ground.

  To Mahegan’s knowledge, everything was going according to plan. He powered up his satellite radio as he jogged across the ankle-twisting rocks to Cassie’s location. He heard her muttering a string of expletives fit for any soldier.

  “My foot is wedged between two boulders, Jake,” she said. Her parachute was still inflated and catching wind, pulling her taut.

  “Release one of your canopy assemblies before you get hurt worse,” he said.

  She reached up and flipped the metallic cover over the canopy release and then popped the wire cable to allow one set of risers to fly free, thereby making it nearly impossible for the parachute to inflate. He lifted her and pulled her back to where her leg, foot, and ankle were properly aligned with her body.

  “Broken?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t feel like it. Just hurt. I’ve got an ace bandage if I need one,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Okay, let’s get moving then. Weapon into operation. Stow your parachute. Grab your ruck. Let’s move.” He was sensing that itchy feeling of time slipping away.

  “I know what to do, Jake.” Her voice seemed full of frustration at her situation, not anger at Mahegan.

  “Roger. Then do it. Need to move.” He clasped his hand to her forearm and pulled her up as she stumbled out of the rock pile.

  Her grimace told him all he needed to know about Cassie’s ankle. Sprained or broken. Not good.

  She shouldered her rucksack and lifted her rifle. “I’m good.”

  “Roger. Moving.”

  They continued to communicate over the small headset radio. While the signature was small, it was there. Yet Mahegan believed the risk greater to lose communications with Cassie, a relative neophyte on clandestine missions, than that of detection at the hands of the Iranians.

  He led them around the steep incline, shale crumbling beneath their boots. Through the night vision monocle he saw the trail that would lead to a perch above the tunnel complex where the armored cars had driven. To their right was the wall of the mountain, upright and powerful. He also noticed the glint of a small insect—like a grasshopper—sitting on a crease in the rock formation. The terrain seemed too barren for insects, but he hadn’t studied the wildlife of the area. He registered the anomaly and kept moving.

  Falling away to their left—east—was a valley with a concrete airfield that ran through the middle like a dash or hash mark. The runway was long, maybe two miles. The valley was bigger to the naked eye than it appeared from studying satellite images.

  Mahegan used a land navigation technique known as “hand-railing” around the terrain. It was impossible to get from point A to point B in a straight line, so he followed the natural contours of the ground as it rose, dipped, and curved. Finally, they were near the lip of a cave above the mouth of the tunnel. The outcropping was fifty meters to their front. He saw another insect resting on the rocks. It was maybe three inches long, the standard size of a grasshopper or locust. Perhaps they were indigenous to the region.

  Two men were chatting softly with one another. Mahegan understood some Urdu and Pashtu, but was not fully conversant in the sister language of Farsi, the native tongue of Iran. While he had taken on some Iranian terrorists of late, he could only make out a few words that the wind carried to him.

  “. . . the shamal was heavy . . .”

  “. . . ready for them to leave . . .”

  Mahegan touched Cassie’s shoulder lightly, looked her in the eyes using his night vision goggles, and leaned forward to whisper, “Watch my back.”

  Cassie nodded and lifted her M4 carbine slightly, an indicator she understood.

  He stepped forward quietly. The guards were not facing him, but his approach route was an unsteady path of slippery and noisy shale. He thought about the satellites and drones that might be watching him and wondered who could see him better in the dark, the drone operators or the unaware guards? There was little cover to be found on that narrow approach along the mountainside. To his right was a wall of rock that protruded upward maybe 10,000 feet. To his l
eft was a precipitous drop of at least 100 feet that would injure, if not kill, him.

  His movement was no different from that of an animal following a minor but well-worn trail to water. His boot slipped, though. Shale crunched and then crumbled seconds later down the mountain. He tried to push his massive frame into the wall of the mountain where he remained motionless, hiding behind the slightest of ridges, though given the size of his frame the effort was futile. If the guards moved toward him, he would have no problem killing them with his pistol, though he preferred to remain stealthy, move in for the close kill and continue the mission.

  One of the guards said, “What . . . ?”

  “Some rocks . . .”

  Mahegan caught pieces of the conversation, then suddenly both stopped talking. When he heard the two whispers emit from Cassie’s silenced M4 carbine, he ran toward the guards. One slumped backward and slid down the mountain wall, then fell onto the path. The other, however, spun and turned toward them, like a running back taking a hit but continuing to move forward.

  The guard lifted his rifle. Mahegan reached down in one fluid movement and clasped his Blackhawk knife from his ankle sheath, flipped the blade open, and then dove toward the man. The knife came arcing down into the guard’s neck as Mahegan tackled him to the ground. He looked into the eyes of the defender and dug the knife a bit deeper. As he covered the man’s mouth, blood trickled between Mahegan’s fingers. He looked up and saw the alcove from which the two men had been guarding the entrance. There were other guard towers and locations, he was certain.

  As Cassie limped toward him, he felt the neck of the first man and confirmed he was dead. Mahegan stripped each guard of weapons and communications devices after he dragged both men into the alcove. There were two metal folding chairs canted toward one another. The alcove was a natural fifteen feet deep cut into the wall of the mountain, narrowing as the opening tapered to solid rock. He adjusted his night vision goggles and turned toward Cassie, who was lying in the prone, providing cover across the valley.

  They had no idea what type of radars were scanning in the valley and it was possible that hyper spectral audible radars had registered Cassie’s silenced shots. He would discuss with her later, but he didn’t think the shot was worth the risk.

  Never one to waste time on what might have been, he said, “Good shot.”

  He inspected the rear of the small cave and found nothing but empty water bottles and dead cigarette butts. Nothing ever happened here, Mahegan thought.

  Bored guards and cigarettes lead to complacency.

  “Anything?” he asked, lying next to Cassie.

  “Just some dudes scurrying around the hangar about a mile away,” Cassie said.

  Though they were side by side, they still spoke in their internal radio communications system to keep their voice at a whisper.

  Mahegan felt the ground beneath him churn and immediately knew that the tunnel door was beginning to open. One of the handheld radios he had removed from the guards chirped to life.

  “All okay?” a voice asked in Farsi.

  Mahegan knew the Farsi word for clear and used that term.

  There was a hesitation in the caller’s voice before the voice came back with a sentence he couldn’t answer. “Mishe tekrar konid?”

  It sounded like another question. Mahegan repeated his first comment. “Clear.”

  Through the handset, he could hear another voice booming loudly in English. “I don’t have time for this bullshit! Let’s go!”

  While he couldn’t recognize the voice through the radio, he was glad someone was there to urge the lower set of guards in the target tunnel along.

  As he focused on the noise below, he felt a soft breeze switch direction. It was subtle, but it was there. He also smelled human sweat beyond his or Cassie’s. He knew both of those smells and this new odor wasn’t part of either of their DNA. Without looking, he rose and began to charge across Cassie’s back.

  But he was too late.

  * * *

  Dax Stasovich leapt from the opposite side of the alcove from which the two intruders had come.

  About thirty minutes prior, he had lumbered into Tunnel 7 to find his employer, Gorham. Prior to that, he had conducted a high altitude low opening jump from the Gulfstream airplane and had landed near the runway during the tail end of the shamal. His landing wasn’t pretty, but he had survived.

  Minutes after finding Gorham, Shayne’s iPad had beeped, indicating what appeared to be one or two flying objects that had penetrated the radio wave shield provided by the connectivity of towers atop the four highest mountains. While the miniature ManaSat constellations had continued to move westward with the advancing Persian force, the four antennae on the surrounding mountaintops provided some type of early warning. The plan all along was to never rely on the Iranians.

  Gorham had repositioned two small ManaBlade drones to locate and track the potential intruders. Once spotted, Stasovich would do the rest.

  He now had a knife to the smaller soldier’s throat. He carried a Gurkha Kukri knife, its large curved blade ready to chop or cut, whichever function he needed. He sensed the smaller soldier was a woman. He could feel the softness of her breasts beneath his powerful forearm that clasped her to his chest. He had scooped her up in one motion, catching the two invaders defenseless. Of course, he had perfect intelligence because the ManaBlade grasshopper drones streamed into his ManaGlass, which doubled as intelligence feed and ballistic eye protection.

  The small soldier was tugging at his arm, which was doing no good at all. His grip was like steel, her hands scratching at metal. The big soldier, slightly larger than Stasovich, stood five feet from him, calmly staring at him. He held a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. Stasovich assumed they spoke English and were probably Americans. The same ones who were tracking Gorham in the bar less than twenty-four hours ago.

  “You move, this one dies immediately. Simple,” Stasovich said in thickly accented English. His Slavic tones made him sound all the more menacing.

  Stasovich felt a stinging sensation in his right leg. The clawing hand at his arm was a ruse. The girl had stabbed him. The big soldier closed the distance and put a knife in the arm holding his Kukri. The small soldier spun away as she used surprising power to push his wounded arm away. Quickly, he was in a hammerlock with the larger solider behind him and the female lifting a pistol to his chest.

  “You shoot me, you kill your partner. Bullet will go right through me. Let’s deal,” the attacker said.

  * * *

  Mahegan cranked his powerful forearm like a vise against the man’s neck. He watched Cassie as he wrestled the man to the ground using his foot placed against the back left heel of his opponent in a back trip wrestling move. Once on the ground, Mahegan removed his Tribal and swatted the man in the head twice until he went limp on the ground. He dragged him into the cave and used flex cuffs to bind the man’s wrists. He knew they had only thirty minutes to capture the target and move to the landing zone.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” Cassie asked.

  “They know we’re here,” Mahegan said. “Monitor comms with the Rangers. They should be inbound in thirty minutes or less. If nothing else, we take this guy.”

  “Roger, but what the hell?”

  Mahegan walked about ten meters up the trail, flipped his night vision goggles down, and saw the anomaly. Black and three inches long, looking like a grasshopper. He quickly snatched it off the mountain wall. It fit in the palm of his hand. As he squeezed tight, the device buzzed, as a captured fly might, trying to escape. “A hundred bucks this is a surveillance drone and that there are more than one.”

  Cassie stared at his hand and then into Mahegan’s face. “You’re probably right.” She flipped her goggles down and began scanning the mountain wall above them. “There!” She ran after a second device, but it flew away before she could grasp it.

  “We’ve got to move,” Mahegan said.

  “They’re
watching everything we do.”

  “We have to deal with it. Maybe we just need him. He seemed . . . different from the first two. Balkan accent. He doesn’t belong here. He’s an anomaly. Could be a good find.”

  “No. We’re supposed to capture at least one of the leaders or keys. Not their help. No way this is one of them.”

  “But you’re hurt, Cassie.”

  “Jake, don’t go teddy bear on me. I can hang.” Cassie was an intelligence officer and she wanted the top prize, not a third-tier capture that most likely wouldn’t talk in the first place.

  But he pressed ahead. “A bird in the hand, Cassie.”

  “We can do this, Jake. We wait for the Rangers. That will overwhelm their intel systems and these little insect drones. Then when they’re moving, we move and get one.”

  “Ambitious,” he said.

  The large garage door rattled open beneath them. Armed men came streaming from the mouth of the cave, AK-47s at the ready. The enemy soldiers were wearing metal helmets that made them look like new recruits. Each had black body armor that covered their torsos. Through the green shaded world of night vision goggles, Mahegan registered two dozen men, half running north with the other half going south. Assuredly they were sealing the only two routes of escape.

  “No choice. Let’s grab the big guy and go to the landing zone. It’ll be close.”

  “Roger,” Cassie said. “I can cover from here.”

  “Bullshit. We’re going to the LZ now. They have eyes everywhere. We’ll be lucky to make it out alive.” Mahegan entered the mouth of the cave and lifted the unconscious man onto his shoulders. He emerged and said, “Go. Now.”

  Cassie led the way to the landing zone, which was basically the same area where they had landed. She walked with a noticeable limp, obviously eating pain. Holding her M4 at eye level, she pulled the trigger twice. Ahead, two enemy soldiers dropped. How they had gotten there, Mahegan had no idea. He was still watching the squads of twelve run in each direction below them. Perhaps there were twelve more somewhere.