Strike Force Bravo

by Mack Maloney

  Kazeel’s mind began racing. Then a third guard, the one right in front of him, got a bullet between the eyes. His head, too, split open like an egg. Everyone noticed it this time. Someone killed the music. One of the mud girls screamed. Then came another loud pop! and the fourth guard went down, another bullet to the brain.

  Kazeel froze with drunken fear. Each of the bodyguards had been killed by a tap shot, a single round to the skull. This was a favorite means of dispatch by many of the world’s more notorious special ops teams.

  “Praise Allah!” Kazeel screamed.

  An instant later, Sergeant Dave Hunn came crashing through the window.

  He was 20 pounds heavier since the last time he’d done something like this. His forty days at Guantánomo Bay as both a prisoner and someone recovering from wounds received above Hormuz had done a job on his waistline. If anything he and his three associates had been fed too well in captivity. But if he was just a bit older and fatter, he was also a bit wiser. And as fired up as ever to grease some mooks.

  He’d come through the room’s plate-glass window, feetfirst. The crash alone was deafening. This was Hunn’s specialty back in Delta Force—he was a door kicker, the guy who went in first. He was armed with a shotgun, two pistols, and butcher’s cleaver. Landing in a crouch, he fired his 12-gauge at one of the room’s two lightbulbs. It exploded in a storm of sparks. Two more men came crashing through the window. These were Puglisi and McMahon, the other two Delta Force guys who’d shared Hunn’s prison down in Gitmo. Unlike Hunn, they came in headfirst, like two guided missiles, taking down the line of Filipino businessmen and firing into the ceiling as well, adding to the confusion.

  A fourth and fifth quickly followed behind. One was Red Curry, the heroic special ops helicopter pilot who’d also taken the unexpected vacation in Gitmo.

  The other was Lieutenant Mikael Ozzi, he of the DSA.

  Paper cuts. Falling on a slippery floor. Bad coffee in the cafeteria. These were the most dangerous things Ozzi had faced flying a desk back at the Pentagon. This? He’d never done anything like this. But he was different man these days. He was pumped to the point of feeling stoned. The excitement and terror were exhilarating.

  The epiphany he’d experienced after meeting the strange prisoners down in Gitmo had not faded a bit. In fact, it had grown. Why was he so enamored? He’d been able to boil it down to one simple fact: the Gitmo guys were different. Certainly Ozzi had known many fine soldiers in his career. Men who’d served their country with both intellect and brawn and who would lay down their lives for America in a heartbeat. But that was their job. They were professional warriors. Combat was a vocation, what they got paid to do.

  The Gitmo Four were different. None of the mysterious special ops unit had ever received a paycheck. Ozzi knew this because he asked them. Neither had they been given a promise of promotions or stellar duty in the future. What they’d done in the Persian Gulf and at Hormuz had come from the gut. And from the heart. Ozzi’s theology professor back at Yale would have said they were following their souls. After sitting in the Pentagon basement for most of the past three years, Ozzi wanted nothing more than to be like them.

  He got his chance when a secret communiqué forwarded to the NSC from the CIA crossed his desk by mistake. It had been intended for Fox, a follow-up to a previous report. It had been marked for his eyes only, but Ozzi read it anyway. The agency report said that Abdul Kazeel, the mastermind of the Lincoln attack and an architect of 9/11, was in Manila. The CIA even knew the five-star hotel he was staying in. This was the good news. The bad news was the Philippines Intelligence Service had forbidden the CIA to do anything about it. Not a big surprise. That higher-ups in the PIS were in the pay of the Aboo guerrillas was an open secret around the Pacific Rim. Diplomatic niceties prevented the United States from publicly accusing them of such. The ’Peens were still considered a strategic asset to the United States, a dictate larger than the lust for intelligence gathering. Because of this, the CIA had to live with Manila’s ban on anything but surveillance of Kazeel.

  But this didn’t mean the DSA had to. It seemed to fit right into their “Go Anywhere, Do Anything, Just Don’t Get Caught,” dictum. And being that they ran a very small shop, and with his boss, Major Fox, away, that left Ozzi the top DSA officer in Washington. And of course he knew all about Kazeel and what he had done and how much the guys in Bobby Murphy’s supersecret special ops team hated him. Yet here he was, right out in the open, walking the streets of a country the United States considered, on paper at least, to be a friend.

  But could Ozzi go after the superterrorist without running it by Higher Authority? He took a long walk along the Potomac that day, trying to figure out a way he could capitalize on this piece of information. He thought of every trick in the book, but nothing applied. The memo had been meant for Fox and as a follow-up; this meant Ozzi’s boss already knew that Kazeel was in Manila—and he’d certainly not left any orders for Ozzi to do something about it. Plus, it would be very out of character for Ozzi to do anything without running it by his boss. To do so was probably a court-martial offense as well.

  The first 10 minutes of Ozzi’s walk, then, were fairly glum. The banks of the Potomac were crowded with tourists and government workers, tens of thousands of them, as it was such a pleasant day. That’s when Ozzi finally felt something in his gut. A guy who would just love to drop a dirty bomb on these people was running around Manila, untouchable by the big boys of America’s intelligence agencies. If Ozzi did nothing and disaster struck, two months or two years from now, how could he live with himself knowing he could have saved all of these fellow Americans? How could he sleep? Eat? Breathe? It would have been impossible.

  So he returned to his subterranean office and simply wrote a bunch of orders to himself. Again, it was something he would never have done just a few weeks before. But now it came to him as easily as signing his name. It took him nearly an hour to fill out the correct paperwork. But when it was over, Ozzi had essentially authorized himself to go after the superterrorist.

  But Ozzi knew he still had to be careful. Anything he did would be beyond classified. Causing a rift between the United States and the Philippines would not be good for job advancement. In fact, going against State Department orders was career suicide. This meant he had to be superquiet. He needed some muscle, but using regular special ops troops would not make it the seamless mission he knew it had to be. It was a Catch-22. How could he pull off a top-secret operation without anyone knowing it?

  Then, a brilliant idea. A simple one, too. Ozzi knew Major Fox was tracking down the larger group of the mysterious special ops team to help in the emergency up near Fuggu Island. Why couldn’t Ozzi take a page from the same book? Work another supersecret operation with guys from a special ops team that didn’t exist. Incredibly, with one terse fax forged in Fox’s name, he got the Gitmo Four released to his custody. They were immediately flown to Mexico City, where in a cheap hotel room Ozzi told them what he knew of Abdul Kazeel’s whereabouts and the diplomatic impasse that allowed him to roam free. Ozzi wanted to go get the bastard. Could the Gitmo Four help him out?

  The reply was unanimous. “Superterrorist? Supermook is more like it. Screw the PIS. Screw the Philippines. We’ll go in and get Kazeel before he knows what hit him.” They would do their thing and be out of the country before anyone—the PIS, the CIA, anyone—knew better. It was exactly what Ozzi wanted to hear.

  They flew coach to Manila and bought four shotguns in a back alley behind a police station. Then a hunting rifle was found at an open-air market nearby. Puglisi fashioned a silencer out of a stolen motorbike muffler. They took a room across from Kazeel’s hotel and settled in to wait. It didn’t take long for the snake to show his tail. They saw him leave with Marcos and followed both to the Impatient Parrot. After that, the crash and smash had been routine.

  At least, so far.

  The Filipino businessmen dived for the floor at first sight of the Americans. The mud gi
rls went down, too. Only one lightbulb had been spared in the barrage. It was swinging wildly back and forth, casting strange shadows across the crowded, smelly room.

  The businessmen were quickly frisked; each had been carrying a pistol. The two girls were obviously clean, but Puglisi frisked them anyway. Red Curry frisked Marcos and found a list of all the underage girls who worked in his establishment. Curry hit the guy on the jaw with the butt of his shotgun. The man went over with a thud.

  All this happened in just seconds. With the room secured, Hunn walked over to Kazeel sitting petrified in his fancy padded chair and put the muzzle of his shotgun against the terrorist’s substantial nose. Meanwhile, McMahon’s gun was resting on the back of Uni’s neck. Hunn got up in Kazeel’s face. Hunn’s young sister had been in the World Trade Center the day the towers were hit. At 18 years old, she was among the youngest victims. That’s what gave Hunn the bones to be in the secret unit, and now here was a dream come true. His sister’s murderer just the length of a gun barrel away. One pull of the trigger, sweet vengeance would be at hand—and lights out for the world’s first superterrorist.

  There was no mistaking that now. Executing Kazeel was why the American team was here. There was no other reason. There would be no need for impossible sacrifice on Hunn’s part. He would not have to reel in his emotions and spare this puke for some trial at the World Court or somewhere. The Americans were executioners. Hit men. That’s what made them so scary, so off the reservation. Their target was anyone connected with the 9/11 attacks.

  And now, they had the top guy himself. Hunn looked to Ozzi. The DSA officer steeled himself, ready to see Kazeel’s skull blown apart. The room tensed. Kazeel had turned absolutely white. Hunn moved the double-barreled gun muzzle off Kazeel’s nose and put it square against his forehead.

  That’s when the cops arrived.

  Or more precisely, the Philippine national police.

  This was how things worked in Asia—and maybe America needed a few more lessons in it. The double cross was not enough in this part of the world, not when a triple cross was much more fashionable. What happened? It was hard to say. Word of Ozzi’s plan must have leaked back to the PIS. But how, when no one even knew he was here?

  Whatever happened, he and the others were now reaping the price. More than two dozen heavily armed Filipino cops were suddenly in the room. They were all holding their weapons up, a bad sign. The American team immediately took a defensive posture, their weapons raised, too, poised for a fatal shoot-out.

  That’s when Ozzi just laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it.

  “We drop in on them, they drop in on us…” he said, looking at the small army of policemen. “Wait till my boss hears about this. He won’t believe it….”

  But not everyone was listening, and especially not Hunn. He still had his 12-gauge on Kazeel’s brow, fighting an almost impossible urge to just pull the trigger and kill the monster anyway. The only reason Hunn hesitated was because otherwise his comrades would all get killed in the process. If it had just been him, he would have done it in a second. But he couldn’t die with the murder of his buddies on his soul. So while he kept his gun on the terrorist’s head, he eased his finger off the trigger.

  A man in the crowd of green faces stepped forward. His name tag IDed him as Captain Ramosa, a chief of the National District Police. He looked like he’d walked right out of Central Casting: oily hair, oily skin, a bad complexion, and very beady eyes. Oddly, he was wearing a cheap paper armband with the letters UN printed on it in blue ink.

  “What the fuck is this?” Hunn screamed. “The UN has no jurisdiction here!”

  “Well, they do now,” the officer, Ramosa, told them as another dozen or so policemen squeezed into the room, making it almost comically crowded. “This is an action taken on behalf of the UN Subcommittee on Refugees. I am here at their request. This man is a foreign national. We are here to protect him.”

  Hunn was furious. “You’re a fucking cop!” he screamed at Ramosa. “Don’t you recognize this guy? He’s the mook of mooks. The top guy….”

  Ramosa just laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said with a fake bow. “I am not so up on current events as you.”

  Hunn looked to Ozzi, who was just as perplexed. It was like they were suddenly in a bad kung fu movie.

  “How could you possibly know we were here?” Ozzi railed at Ramosa. “This thing was tighter than a drum.”

  “Apparently not tight enough,” the police chief replied. He nudged Hunn’s weapon away from Kazeel’s head, much to the relief of the Arab terrorist. “Better luck next time.”

  “You bastard,” Hunn said to Ramosa. “Whose side are you on?”

  The Filipino officer just smiled. He had a mouthful of gold teeth. “On the side of peace, of course,” he said.

  Hunn scanned the room. His comrades would never know just how close he came to pulling the trigger and greasing the supermook—and getting them all killed.

  But if the situation was now impossible, that didn’t mean Hunn was going quietly. He got right back in Kazeel’s face. He screamed at him: “Look at me, asshole! I’m from Queens, New York! My name is Dave Hunn! Remember me. Next time you see me, I’ll be chopping you to pieces!”

  At that point, the mighty Kazeel, superterrorist, wet his pants.

  On a curt nod from Ramosa, two of the policemen lifted Kazeel to his feet and quickly carried him out of the room. Uni followed close behind. Ramosa turned back to the five Americans. “I assume everyone here has a valid passport?”

  Hunn spit in his face. Ramosa wiped it off with a neatly folded handkerchief. He never lost his snide grin.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” he said.

  He gave a quick “hup-to!” to the rest of his men. They began filing out, but with their weapons still up, still ready for anything.

  Ramosa went out last, walking backward, protecting his tail.

  “My condolences on Nine-Eleven, gentlemen,” he said, flashing his seedy gold smile again. “My prayers were with you that day….”

  Manila International Airport was a typical Third World mess.

  Dirty, dark, chaotic, dangerous. It was all breakdowns and plastic baggage and noise, filthy windows, and broken doors. Tens of thousands of people, running, walking, staggering, sleeping, many wearing SARS masks, many carrying knives. It was Saturday morning, an insanely busy time. The line of passengers waiting to depart stretched through the main terminal, out the main doors, and all the way to the curb. Nearly every scheduled flight coming in was at least an hour late. Those going out were even further behind.

  It was even worse out on the runways. Air traffic control at Manila International was more rumor than fact. Planes were taxiing everywhere with no reason to their movements. A major accident seemed likely at any moment. A bottleneck of airliners was jammed up at the end of the airport’s main runway; all were waiting for some kind of signal to take off and get out of this place. Some of these planes had been waiting here since before sunrise—and that was three hours ago.

  A dirty white cargo plane suddenly appeared in the middle of all this. It rolled onto the tarmac from a part of the airport off-limits to commercial aircraft. It was an Airbus A321, the smallest version of the cookie-cutter European airliner. Two large letters, UN, had been hastily applied to its fuselage behind the wing; streaks of blue paint were already running off them. A small drama played out on the field. The airplane suddenly stopped. A police Jeep drove up to it. The plane’s cockpit door opened and a boarding ramp appeared. Two men were led out of the Jeep and sent up the steps. They were both draped in long, hooded robes. Once they were inside, the door was quickly closed, the ramp was pulled away, and the plane started moving again.

  The Airbus rolled right past the traffic jam of commercial airliners, taking a place at the head of the line. This infuriated passengers and pilots alike on the waiting airplanes. But no measure of outrage directed toward the airport’s control tower would change anything. The t
op three people at Manila International—the airport chief administrator, the traffic captain, the security chief—had all been paid off. The UN airplane had priority over every other aircraft.

  It waited at the head of the line for just a half-minute. Then it revved up its engines, covering the rest of the planes in dirty exhaust, and went screaming down the runway.

  Past the airport’s fences, over the highway, over the dump, over the shantytowns, the shacks, and up on a hill overlooking the southern end of Manila International a battered rented Ford Taurus was parked, engine running, AC blowing, all four doors wide open.

  Ozzi was sitting on the hood, shoulders drooped, ball cap pulled low. He watched the UN plane a half-mile away pull up its gear and start to climb.

  In the backseat of the Ford were Puglisi and McMahon. Both were trying to sleep. Red Curry was sitting behind the wheel, chain-smoking. They were all exhausted, except Hunn. He was stalking around the car like a madman, talking to himself and swearing mightily.

  “Jesus Christmas!” he screamed, shaking his fist as the airplane carrying Kazeel went right over their heads. The noise was tremendous. “I just can’t believe these Zips let that asshole go! Didn’t we free these people from the Japs a while back?”

  “Gratitude isn’t in much supply these days,” Curry said over the roar of the departing jet’s engines. “Not for guys like us.”

  “Then how about we just nuke this shitty little place?” Puglisi asked with a yawn from the backseat, eyes still closed. “You can get a nuke, can’t you, Lieutenant?”

  Ozzi took the question half-seriously. “It might take a few weeks. But…”

  He looked out on the mountainside slums. They stretched for miles. “I’m not sure it would make much of a difference here,” he added.

  A brutal, smelly wind blew by them. They were quiet for a long time.

  Then Ozzi let out a moan. “Well, this is just great,” he said. “We’re at the end of the world here—and damn it, now we’ve got to fly back. I’m not looking forward to the ride home, boys. I don’t even know if I still have a job.”