Tier One Wild df-2

by Dalton Fury

  All three stepped into the room with Saleh without any discussion beforehand. They knew they had no time to waist.

  Kolt took the lead, storming across the room and yanking the hood from Saleh’s head. The Libyan tried to scream in terror, and he shut his eyes tight.

  Kolt yanked the scarf from Saleh’s mouth and grabbed the prostrate man by the throat. He put his face so close to Saleh’s that the fabric of his head wrap touched Saleh’s nose. Kolt spoke in a low, angry voice. “Where … are … the … weapons?”

  “I don’t know what you are speaking about.”

  Raynor let go of Saleh’s throat now. “You don’t know?”

  “No. I swear it.”

  Kolt shrugged. “Damn. He doesn’t know. I guess we don’t need him.” He turned toward Cindy. “Hawk?”

  “Sir?”

  “Shoot him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Cindy crossed the wooden floor without hesitation. She raised the barrel of her suppressed rifle to his chest — ”

  “Wait! I tell you!” he screamed.

  Raynor reached out and pushed the barrel of Hawk’s rifle away from Saleh. “Tell me!” he demanded.

  “I … I know many things. We can negotiate. I will tell you — ”

  “The missiles that went to the Iranians. Where are they?”

  Saleh hesitated, but only a moment. Then he said, “They left by barge this evening.”

  “By barge?”

  “Yes, sir! I swear it to be true.”

  Dammit. “Where are they going?”

  “Ras El Bar.”

  Kolt looked up to Cindy and then over to Slapshot. Both of them just shrugged. Looking back to Saleh, he said, “Where is that?”

  “It is where the Nile reaches the Mediterranean Sea,” Saleh answered quickly.

  “Then where are they going?”

  “From there? I … I do not know.”

  “Wrong answer. Hawk?”

  “Sir!” Cindy said, and she brought the rifle to her shoulder again.

  “No!” the man cried. “I–I am sure they must have a freighter waiting there. But those logistics were not part of the transaction.”

  “Slap?”

  “Yo?” he called from his position at the window.

  “Wrap this asshole up good for transport. He’s coming with us.”

  “One pig in a blanket, coming right up.”

  Hawk lowered her weapon with a pronounced sigh. Kolt had known all along it was an act, and she’d done a damn effective job of it, but the last sigh was a bit over the top for his taste. While the last few minutes had been an Academy Award performance, she’d finished up with World Wrestling Federation dramatics.

  Still, there was no question as to whether or not she had pulled it off. Kolt could see where Saleh had wet his pants in terror.

  * * *

  “How are you holding up, Sergeant?” Kolt said as he took his first swig of the icy cold beer five minutes later in the kitchen.

  “I’m good, boss.” She held her hand up in front of her and looked at it. “First combat and all. No shakes.” She paused, then said, “Yet.”

  “However you react in the coming hours or days, know that it is normal. There is no one way that a soldier processes what he or she has to do.”

  “You sound a little like a shrink, but thanks.”

  Kolt laughed. “I am an experienced patient.”

  “For the record, boss, I was not going to shoot Saleh.”

  Kolt nodded. “And for the record, I knew you would not. You fooled him, though, and that’s all that matters. You should have been an actress.”

  “I am an actress. It’s a fucked-up stage I’m performing on, though.”

  Raynor chugged a gulp of beer. “Don’t I know it.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Just after dawn at the village along Wadi Bana in southern Yemen, David Doyle knelt on his prayer rug, having finished his morning Fajr, the predawn prayer.

  His obligation fulfilled, he thought about his day ahead. He would read his Koran for a few minutes for strength, then he would send an e-mail to his cutouts in Europe, who would forward them on again, and then finally they would reach his contacts. The Igla-S missiles should arrive at their destination within five days, and he did not want the container to spend one more second in control of customs inspectors than necessary. He would have his well-paid agents in the destination country retrieve the sealed container, and he would be there within a day to open it and begin his mission. His e-mail would confirm that his agents were ready to act in accordance with their duties.

  After he finished with his message he would work with his men. Eleven of the twelve had passed both their identity legend exam and their aircraft recognition exam and were now working exclusively on fitness, marksmanship, hand-to-hand fighting, and the operation of the Igla-S launcher. The one young man who had not passed was being given another shot later in the day. David decided he would work with this man personally so that he would be ready for travel in three days’ time.

  David and his four subunit operators would spend several more hours practicing their aspect of the operation. They had shaved a few more seconds off of the time it took them to get out of the container and ready five weapons to fire, now averaging about thirty-four seconds for the entire process.

  After a pleading knock on the door, David called out, “Yes?”

  Miguel stepped into Doyle’s room. The American closed his Koran and looked up. “As salaam aleikum,” Miguel said with a slight bow.

  “Wa aleikum as salaam. What is it?”

  “We have a problem. Araf Saleh and his operation were taken down last night in Cairo.”

  “What do you mean, ‘taken down’?”

  “Either Egyptian intelligence or maybe the CIA. There was a gun battle in Maadi. Saleh was captured, several were killed. I just heard — ”

  Doyle interrupted his second-in-command. Miguel had switched to Arabic. “In English, please.” Doyle commanded everyone to speak nothing but English in preparation for their journey, and he would not let Miguel get away with a breach in this rule even if he was rushed and stressed.

  He would be plenty rushed and stressed where they were going.

  “Sorry,” Miguel said in English. “I meant to say that I just heard the news from our brothers in Cairo. They did not have much information, but did reveal that Saleh is missing. There was a second news story about American businessmen being killed in another part of southern Cairo. Four Americans.”

  Doyle nodded slowly. “CIA, then.”

  Miguel said, “Saleh knows us, David. He can destroy everything.”

  Doyle took a moment to collect his thoughts. With a confident voice he said, “What does he know? Saleh and his people were fools, but they were necessary to our mission. I insulated us from their foolishness. He only knows he sold Russian shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to men from al Qaeda in Yemen. He ferried them to a trader in Port Said. He might know that the shipper delivered them to Aden. Even if the CIA tortures Saleh and everyone who touched the weapons up until and including our people in Aden, none of them know the path the goods took after that.” David smiled thinly. “I was careful. I was very careful. But still, we will leave immediately. It does not matter how careful I have been. The Americans will still fill the skies over Yemen with their drones. They will concentrate on this province and they will find evidence of this place. Every day we wait is another day when we can be stopped before our plan begins. Not by any error I have made, but only through bad luck.”

  Miguel understood. Helpfully he said, “Our men are ready.”

  “Almost all have passed their tests here, but whether or not they are truly ready to go undercover in America remains to be seen. I would have liked more time.”

  He thought some more before saying, “I will get in contact with leadership and arrange our transportation for today. Gather everyone in the meeting hall, I want to speak with them.”

  Miguel nodded, and s
tarted to turn away, but he stopped. Looking at his leader, he asked, “What about brother Harry? We were going to allow him more time to prepare for the mission.”

  Doyle looked at the floor. With a bit of sadness he said, “I am afraid time has run out for brother Harry.” The man’s name was Hussein, he was a twenty-two-year-old Iraqi, and, Doyle and Miguel surmised after a week of training, a severe concussion he received in battle in Mosul in 2008 had left him with an impairment in his memory.

  Harry could not remember the different types of aircraft, he could not remember the colors of the airlines, and he could not remember specifics of his legend.

  But there was always a chance he would remember this place, the faces he saw here, and the hints inevitably passed on about the tactics, targets, and timing of their mission ahead.

  So Doyle decided he would have to kill him.

  “Would you like me to do it?” Miguel asked.

  “No. I will do it myself.” David stood and hefted a Kalashnikov rifle from the table, and he headed out the door.

  * * *

  Eleven cell members were called into the meeting hall in the barracks, and they sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder in the small room. A space at the end of the back row indicated that one man was missing from the cell, but no one commented on this.

  Miguel entered and faced the men, then told them David would be along shortly to make an announcement. No one spoke while they waited for David to appear.

  The cell all wore American ball caps and blue jeans and tennis shoes. Were it not for their stone-cold serious faces one might take them for a group of exchange students in a student union in any college in America.

  The report of a Kalashnikov firing a single round tore through the air. It was a common sound here in the camp, but some of the men cocked their heads in surprise, as all of the cell members save for two were here in the room together. Yes, it could have been one of the guards, but the firing of a single shot was odd.

  A minute after the crack of the AK, David entered the darkened room from the sun outside. He was dressed in local garb, and his men could see the shine from sweat on his forehead.

  He spoke English, as he had done for the past nine days of training. “There has been an event in Egypt that threatens our security. For this reason we will begin leaving immediately. We will travel to the east, at first we will be together, but we will separate along the way. We will divide into three groups. Some of us will travel to Dubai, some to Doha, and some to Muscat. From these three locations we will then fly to Mexico City, but that is not our ultimate destination.

  “Our destination, my brothers, is the heart of America. We will make our way through Mexico, and cross over the border into the United States on a route that has already been established by our brothers there. Once in the heart of America, we will break into cells, with each traveling in a different direction. One cell will head to the West Coast, one will go to the East Coast, and a third will operate in the interior of the nation.

  “Each of these cells will have in their possession twenty surface-to-air missiles.”

  “Miguel will lead the cell to the west. Thomas will lead the cell into the interior. And I will lead the group to the east. At a predetermined time we will all fire at a departing aircraft. Three large passenger planes, each packed with over two hundred people, will fall burning from the sky.”

  “After this we will all relocate, and then engage targets of opportunity. I suspect we might each have one more chance to fire on an airplane before the Americans do what they did after the Planes Operation of September 11, 2001. They will shut down all air travel in their skies.”

  One of the men, a Pakistani who had lived in Wales, asked, “What will we do when the airplanes stop flying?”

  “We will go underground while America turns itself inside out searching for us. None of the cells will have any idea of the location of the other cells. Not even I will know where the others are. If one team is captured they will not be able to compromise the mission.

  “You all have training on how to live in the United States under deep cover. Even if the subcells need to split into two-man or even individual units, you will keep going.

  “America will lose more than six aircraft. It will lose billions upon billions of dollars a day, money it must borrow from China or the Saudis. America will be frantic to put its planes in the air again. And when it can’t find us because we have blended in perfectly with its society, it will be forced to fly again. But when aircraft venture again into the skies, we will be there, we will come out of the shadows, and we will shoot them down.”

  All the men were smiling now. David Doyle, Daoud al-Amriki, spoke like a preacher at the pulpit. “The second ground stop will be longer, more costly, destroying the economy completely. The American government will turn on its own people to root us out. This will violate the civil liberties for which the United States holds itself above other nations, and it will reveal to the citizenry that America is nothing but a lie. Armed but weak leaders oppressing the masses. Riots will break out, banks will fail, and institutions will burn to the ground.

  “There are thirteen of us. Inshallah, we will succeed in launching all sixty of our missiles successfully, killing over ten thousand nonbelievers in dozens of fireballs across the United States. But our true success will be the fall of the American government.

  “You see, my brothers, beyond all this beautiful mayhem we will create, there is my mission. It is in addition to your work, and my mission will ensure that Washington is rocked by the war waging in the skies across the nation.”

  The men cheered. Some wondered about Harry, but no one asked what happened to him.

  They knew, and they understood.

  The cell left the base within hours, heading to the east to catch planes that would ferry them to the West.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  As the first hint of dawn softened the black sky over Fort Bragg, Kolt and his team arrived at the Delta Force compound. He, Cindy, Digger, and Slapshot had all slept on the long transoceanic flight from Qatar to Atlanta. There they had linked up with a Unit rep at a nearby mall and executed a discreet doc swap, exchanging their cover IDs for their real IDs. In Delta-speak, this was called turning into pumpkins.

  With the Cairo AFO gig behind them, they had been wide awake for most of the drive back to Fayetteville. After a half hour to stow their gear and do a quick e-mail check on the Unit’s secure local area network, they met up in the chow hall for some coffee and breakfast. They all grabbed a second cup before meeting with Webber in the Beckwith Room for the hot wash of the action in Cairo.

  With Webber was a Unit intel officer named Joe. He brought them up to date on a few critical items. He had spoken with the CIA and had learned Myron Curtis had had surgery on his leg the day before, and he was expected to make a slow but complete recovery.

  Hawk and Digger nodded at the good news. Kolt looked at the floor and sipped his coffee.

  Then came the hot wash. Webber wanted details. Uncharacteristically, he wanted every detail. The team filled him in on each and every action of the past week while he sat quietly.

  When they were finished, the colonel looked at Kolt. “You a doctor, Major Raynor?” Webber said in an obviously serious tone.

  “No, sir!”

  “Then can you tell me why you elected to disregard a CIA officer’s potentially fatal wounds to conduct a hasty assault?”

  “Say again, sir?” Kolt heard him, but was a little stunned by the obvious accusation that his decision-making process in a crisis situation had been flawed.

  “Major Raynor, that CIA officer could have died while you and your team were conducting a hit that wasn’t entirely time-sensitive. Why?”

  Racer hesitated. He knew going on the offensive was a nonstarter, but becoming defensive would be equally damning. But before he could answer, someone else beat him to the punch.

  Hawk said, “Sir, I think Major Raynor made the correct command decision b
ased on the available information we had at the time.”

  Colonel Webber cocked his head slightly and practically looked right through her.

  “Hawk, I got it,” Kolt said, holding his hand up to signal her to shut the hell up. “Sir, for context, four CIA officers had just been killed in cold blood. Myron Curtis was treated, stabilized, and coherent when we moved on the target.”

  Webber cut him off and raised his voice. “And he could have died while you were on target!”

  “Yes, sir, he could have. In my assessment, at that moment, knowing that the alternative might be letting the missiles get away … Curtis was expendable.”

  Webber raised his eyebrows and stared at Kolt for a few seconds before looking into the other three’s eyes to gauge their reaction.

  “Slapshot? Was the CIA officer expendable?” he asked.

  “Racer made the call, sir. I can’t say I disagree with his logic,” Slapshot said.

  “What about you, Digger? You’re the medic.”

  “Sir, I assessed him. Curtis’s vitals were within tolerance. Personally, I would have questioned Major Raynor’s ability to serve the Unit as an officer if he would have aborted the mission, considering Mr. Curtis’s condition and the nature of the opportunity at target location Rhine.”

  Webber could see he was losing the argument. The team was sticking together. He didn’t like it, especially the part about Curtis being expendable, but he understood. A lot of good men had been lost over the years because commanders had to make tough life-and-death decisions in an instant.

  “Okay, before we move on, let me be perfectly clear here. No American is expendable. The Almighty has no problem making those decisions for all of us. Why don’t we leave that up to him?”

  “Yes, sir.” All four said this in unison.

  Webber gave Raynor a few more seconds of stink-eye, then he turned to the Unit intelligence officer.