by Dalton Fury
All this activity meant little to Kolt Raynor, other than the fact that he and his mates would have a little more room around the compound the next day. He planned on heading in early in the morning and sticking around, so he could be there to listen in to the radio chatter between the guys on target and the JOC.
Raynor knew he had been center stage almost constantly for most of the past month, but right now he felt incredibly left out. It was an operational imperative to rotate fresh guys into the fight, because killing is not an innate character trait. It can be in one’s blood — in fact, after 9/11, most Americans would have argued it was in theirs — but it’s not passed down from one generation to the next. Some are into it more than others, but after a while, after ten years of killing, even in the mind of a Delta operator, a switch flips. Everyone has limits.
Everyone needs a break.
He had been off the net for three years, but like Webber implied at Relook, the rules had changed. It didn’t take him long to see it in his former teammates. One of his former assaulters even argued that guys with eight rotations to the box either sat the next one out or succumbed to extensive testing for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. Raynor was moved by the humble admission that even America’s most highly trained killers were not immune to the psychological impact of war. The Unit psych was arguably the busiest and most important member of the command.
Other than the chaplain.
Kolt knew the rules, and he understood he had to stand down for a while. He resolved himself to getting his entire squadron in the best shape, mentally and physically, that he could, before they returned to bat in three months.
THIRTY-ONE
By ten o’clock at the abandoned silver mine in Coahuila, Mexico, most of the al Qaeda operatives and the Zetas gunmen had formed into small groups, either sleeping in, on, or by their vehicles, or on sleeping mats inside the derelict buildings of the mine. A few flashlights scanned the distance and the occasional scratch of a walkie-talkie transmission or the scuff of a boot traveled quickly around the natural bowl next to the mountain that made up the mining site.
The eleven vehicles — four operated by al Qaeda and seven operated by the Zetas — were spread out over the several hundred yards of property. It had been decided that, on the off chance an aircraft flew overhead, stray trucks and cars parked around the facility in a haphazard fashion seemed less likely to be noticed than a big collection that looked suspiciously like a convoy bedding down for the night.
Doyle lay in the passenger seat of the green truck, his tennis shoes up on the dashboard. He struggled to find sleep. Two Iraqi brothers snored in the truck with him. Tim and Andrew would be backup for guard duty in a few hours, so David let them sleep.
He heard a shout in the distance, one of the sentries on the hillside to the south of the mine, and he hoped the noise would not be followed by other men yelling and shouting.
But it was, and David Doyle lifted his head off the headrest of the seat, then quickly rolled down the window next to him.
He reached for the walkie-talkie. He did not know which one of the eleven vehicles in the mining site Henrico was sleeping in, so he did not take time to look for him. Instead he just transmitted. “What’s wrong?”
Henrico’s voice came back over the radio seconds later. “Helicopter. State police. It is small, and not heading directly for us. Make sure all lights are off. Everything will be fine.”
Doyle instructed his men to stay in their positions and to keep their lights off, and he heard Henrico shout orders on the radio to his men.
A minute later the flashing lights of a helicopter appeared over a ridge to the south. It was high in the sky, heading north, but Doyle imagined a police helicopter might well have the means to see through the darkness and the distance and find these odd cars and trucks parked in an abandoned mine.
But the chopper kept going. The lights were visible for three minutes or so, and then they disappeared behind some peaks to the northeast.
Doyle checked again with the leader of the Zetas security detail. “Do you think they saw us?”
Henrico replied, “I don’t know. It is possible that they reported vehicles here at the mine. My spotters in the hills report no more aircraft in the area.”
“Should we leave?”
“No. If we get back on the road we will be more exposed. We will stay right where we are, but I will double the guard force.”
Doyle put the radio back on the dashboard and worried. He had known from the beginning he would be in constant danger of exposure here in Mexico, but there had been no alternative.
He closed his eyes to sleep, trusting in Allah to see him and his men through the night.
* * *
Doyle finally fell asleep with the volume on his walkie-talkie turned low, but not all the way down. Just after four a.m. he awoke to excited calls in Spanish from one of Henrico’s men. He reached over and turned up the volume to try to get a feeling of what was going on.
Doyle then heard the low thumping sound of a helicopter echo off the hillside, identified it for what it was, and leapt straight up in the passenger seat of the truck. He lifted the walkie-talkie, but before he could depress the push-to-talk button, Henrico transmitted in English.
“David! Navy helicopters in attack formation!”
Henrico had screamed the order, and now Doyle shouted at his men. “Move away from the trucks!” His order was not to protect his men, it was to protect his missiles. If his men created some distance between themselves and the vehicles, then maybe the SAMs would be spared if the choppers opened fire on the men.
In the moonlight he saw a pair of helicopters appear over the ridge in the east. He did not recognize their make immediately, but within seconds he could see the pill-shaped fuselage, and he identified them as German-made Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm BO105s. He’d seen these in Iraq, flying for various militaries. The BO105 could be equipped with either rocket pods or machine guns. They were not heavily armored, but they were small, light, and nimble.
And there was no question as to whether or not they were just passing by. Their outboard lights were off and their noses were pointed directly at the silver mine.
Doyle called Henrico on the walkie-talkie. “Don’t do anything stupid. They don’t know who we are. Tell your men to hide their guns.”
But the Mexican had other plans. “No. There will be trucks of Marines here behind the helicopters. If we stand here and do nothing, then we just wait for capture. We attack now. Only by getting rid of the choppers will we have time to escape before the troops get here.”
Doyle understood the logic of this, and he knew the Zetas knew the tactics of their adversaries better than he. He resigned himself quickly to the fact that they were not going to stay low-profile here in Mexico for much longer.
The two BO105s raced over the flatland to the east, toward the silver mine. When they were still three hundred meters out, small weapons fire erupted from two dozen positions in the buildings, hills, and rocks around the mine. An RPG raced away from the hillside on David’s right, but it streaked through the air far above the approaching helicopters.
A second RPG, this one fired from behind one of the aluminum buildings, hit the hard earth and exploded in front of the attacking choppers.
David ran toward the relative safety of the pile of iron ore that he’d climbed to help him with his cell phone reception earlier in the evening. As he ran he saw sparks flash across one of the black helicopters. The aircraft pulled out of the formation and turned away from the gunfire, but the second helo continued on. Just when David and two of his men dove down behind the rocks, a pair of outboard cannons on the remaining BO105 opened up, raking the ground in front of it and everything on it with 20mm shells.
David kept his head low, but he saw a Zeta minibus explode in flames and several Mexican gunmen eviscerated by cannon fire.
The helo shot past his position, not more than one hundred feet above the
roof of his truck. It fired at the source of a third RPG launch, up on the hillside, and while it did this, Doyle stood to empty his AK into the tail rotor of the craft. He fired a thirty-round magazine at the helicopter, not caring if his rounds hit Zetas on the hill.
But the chopper banked to the north and began circling around for another pass.
David reloaded his rifle with the single thirty-round magazine he carried in his side pocket, but as he chambered a round, he looked back over his shoulder at the sound of another explosion. The second Bo 105 had retreated several hundred yards back to the east, and from here it fired rockets toward the silver mine. The rockets struck the aluminum outbuildings of the mine, and flames and smoke burst forth from the structures, sending three men near them spinning into the air.
Doyle knew they would not be able to stop this attack without a perfect shot from an RPG into the BO105. His four TerraStars were still alive, parked in a gravel lot to the south of where the Navy was attacking, but the raking rocket fire would hit them as soon as the pilot took out the resistance near the buildings.
“Henrico?” David called into the walkie-talkie from his position behind a rock pile, just ten yards from the nearest TerraStar truck. “Henrico?”
There was no reply.
David dropped the walkie-talkie, looked up at the closest truck to his position, and then he made the decision. He leapt to his feet, leaving his AK on the ground, and he ran to the rear of his green truck.
Doyle did not want to use one of the Iglas. He knew that knocking down a Mexican Navy helicopter with a shoulder-fired missile would alert the United States that Libyan SAMs were in the hemisphere.
But he saw no other options.
He pulled a case out of the rear of the truck, and let it fall to the gravel drive. The wood smashed as he did this, and he dug through the broken crate to retrieve the launcher, the missile, and the power supply from its foam casing.
Around him the chatter of AK fire continued, along with the lower drumbeat of cannon fire from one chopper and the whoosh-boom sound of rockets fired from the other.
The screams of men were all but drowned out in the melee.
As Doyle seated the power supply, Miguel appeared behind him. He helped David finish the assembly, and then he slid the rocket into the firing tube. With Miguel’s assistance, David got the forty-pound device on his shoulder, and he peered through the sights toward the attack chopper firing rockets.
An explosion close by knocked David off balance, but Miguel grabbed the weapon and held it up while his commander regained his composure.
As David’s eye pressed back into the sights, he saw a third helicopter arrive on the scene. This was a huge Mexican Marine Black Hawk, and David knew it could be carrying a dozen troops or more. It hovered over the highway, nearly two kilometers south of his position, well out of range of the Zeta RPGs and rifles.
This chopper was not armed, but it was bigger and slower than the other two and as it crossed into his sights he thought it would make an easier target. He half depressed the trigger on the SAM to initiate the warhead’s lock onto the Black Hawk.
It took only four seconds before he heard the tone that told him the warhead had picked up the heat register.
To his right cannon fire raked the men firing from behind the pile of ore, killing Mexicans and Middle Easterners alike.
David pressed the trigger on the launcher and he felt the same jolt he’d felt in Greece a few weeks before. The weapon sailed out of the launch tube and almost instantly its propellant ignited and it raced skyward. Behind it a wide spray of flame illuminated the night until it turned into a pinprick of moving starlight in the distance.
Doyle later wondered if the Black Hawk pilot two kilometers away had heard a warning from his machine that an infrared missile was inbound. He suspected the warning had come, but David also suspected the pilot would not have been expecting Mexican drug smugglers to be in possession of a surface-to-air missile capable of destroying his modern aircraft.
In any event, the pilot did not alter his flight at all, even as the missile raced down from above. No evasive maneuvers, no deployment of antimissile chaff or flares.
It was like he never saw it coming.
The pilot just held his hover while Mexican Marines in the cabin dropped ropes that they planned on using to rappel to the road, where they could set up a hasty blocking position by the highway to prevent the drug smugglers’ escape.
But the missile slammed into the Black Hawk from above before even the first Marines could slide down the ropes. The black craft spun on its center axis and then jacked hard to the side. Its rotor disintegrated in sparks and electric flashes just a fraction of a second before the aircraft pounded the hard earth next to the highway, instantly killing all on board.
The Igla-S also ruptured the fuel lines of the craft, and a fire broke out that would glow until dawn.
Two kilometers to the north in the derelict silver mine, a moment of quiet enveloped the scene. The Zetas had all seen what had happened. None of them, not even Henrico, had any idea they were helping al Qaeda transport antiaircraft missiles into the United States. All of the fifteen or so surviving members of the cartel’s security force had combat experience, but not one of them, not even those who came from the military, had ever seen anything like a missile launch against a helicopter full of men.
David and Miguel did not stop to admire their work; they were already back on their knees behind the truck, pulling a second weapon out of its crate. There were still two helicopters in the attack and, as far as Doyle was concerned, there would be no more damage to the security of his operation by using a second missile.
His first launch had destroyed any chance that they would remain undetected to the U.S.
Doyle rose with the weapon, Miguel helped him up, and he searched for a target. He found an attack helicopter, centered his sights, and prepared to depress the trigger.
But the chopper was clearly in full retreat. It shot to the east at high speed, pulling to the left and right, in a clear attempt to avoid any missiles on its tail.
Miguel then turned Doyle around to the second helicopter, but it, too, was getting the hell away from the site of the SAM launch.
After making certain the BO105s were not just circling around for another try, Doyle lowered the weapon from his shoulder and put it back in the truck.
Zeta fighters and al Qaeda operators cheered, the natural exaltation of surviving a deadly battle, but Doyle was all business. He turned from the truck, and then ran past the burning wreckage of the buildings and vehicles. Some one hundred yards away he found Henrico, shoving his men toward their cars. Blood from a cut above the Mexican’s left eyebrow stained his entire face.
Doyle grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. “Who set us up?”
“I don’t know!” he screamed back. “Maybe the helicopter that passed by earlier had thermal. Maybe they saw men and trucks here, maybe the — ”
“Maybe your people sold us out to the government!” David answered back.
Henrico shook his head. “I … I don’t think so. Even if they did, you know I was not involved. I lost eight men, and I almost got blown to shit myself!”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ve told my men to collect our dead. You should do the same. We will go to a ranch I know about twenty kilometers away. We can hide out for a few hours. There we can get more support before continuing on.”
“Will there be cops on the road?”
Henrico barked orders in Spanish in his radio. While he did so he nodded to the American al Qaeda man. He switched back to English to say, “Yes. Federal police, state police, municipal police. Marines, too. I will contact the regional commander of my organization and try to clear a path for us ahead. Maybe we will take a different route. I don’t know.” The Mexican shouted another order in Spanish, then turned back to Doyle. “Hombre, that missile you fired will put us all in danger.”
“I had t
o fucking fire it because your secret hide location was discovered by the fucking Navy!”
Henrico turned away and climbed into the back of one of his cars. David ran back to his men and their trucks, desperate to get out of here before more choppers arrived.
When he returned to his men he discovered that Arthur and Roger, two of his three Turks, were dead. Miguel had ordered them both loaded into the back of the yellow truck. Benjamin, from Saudi Arabia, was wounded in the arm and face, but he was still on his feet and seemed to be stable.
David would assess the man’s wounds when they made it to the next safe house. For now he ordered everyone into their trucks, and within moments they were racing back down the drive to the highway.
* * *
Kolt arrived at the compound just after six a.m. He went to the gym for an hour, got a light upper-body workout with the vertical ropes and caving ladders, and worked his grip strength on the climbing wall mockups. Nothing that would put too much stress on his weeks-old thigh injury. Then he showered, slipped into his OD green flight suit, and walked back into the squadron lounge for some coffee. He caught the last half of a news-flash story on the squadron flat-screen as he entered the bay. A gun battle between Mexican forces and narcos in the country’s interior had led to the deaths of thirteen Mexican Marines.
There was no mention of a missile shooting down a helicopter, and violence in Mexico had long been so commonplace that Raynor did not give it another moment’s thought.
Kolt went to his office, checked his e-mail quickly, then headed down to the SCIF to see if there was any news from either Yemen or Libya.
* * *
Kenny Farmer had worked straight on through the night, helping to prepare the target folder for the impending hit in Yemen. Webber and the Delta alert squadron, led by Major Rick “Gangster” Mahoney, had landed at their secure staging base in Eritrea just an hour earlier at 1700 local time, and Kenny and others here in the SCIF had just updated them with the latest in real-time information pulled from a Global Hawk UAV flying fifty-nine thousand feet above the AQAP training facility.
