"We have to protect our sources..." Richard began defensively, but the General cut him off.
"I have heard nothing in Mr. Tucker's comments that indicate any reliance on confidential sources. Frankly, he has simply taken information that was available, thought a little more deeply about it and put the pieces together better than you have. He seems to be an excellent resource, on a par with you, in fact, at least as far as this mission is concerned. But since you walked in you have done nothing but marginalize him and try to deny us the benefit of his knowledge. I don't know if you're insecure in your position or just unappreciative of how good he is. However my report on this mission will state that I believe you have allowed personal matters to cloud your judgment to the detriment of the mission and that safety of my men!"
The general had raised his voice only slightly as he spoke but it was enough to communicate a total disdain for Richard. Implying that any harm that came to his men would also be visited upon Richard, surely organizationally, not ruling out physically but guaranteed to be abundantly painful in whatever form it came. Richard showed no emotion, but he and Tucker both knew that General Odier had enough stature within the senior command that a report such as he promised could derail even the most established career. Tucker allowed himself the guilty pleasure of savoring the moment.
The general continued, “Those men are the best out there, and they have eyes on Intel that we don't.” He glanced at Tucker. "They will make the right call.” Glaring at Richard, he said, “Are you sure you did?”
۞۞۞۞
Edge had listened and processed everything. This was an interesting predicament. The person who was supposedly running the op was telling him to go north while the person who seemed more knowledgeable about the situation said go east. It was not the first mission he had been on where the Intel was screwed up. At the same time, what were the odds that an entire CIA analyst team could be wrong? He took a second and then realized it was better not to ponder the latter question. The rest of his team realized that something was off about the conversation but knew better than to ask.
Edge looked at the plans. “Alright, everyone we need to find which of these plans is a red herring. Translate for us, Pitch.”
“Just what exactly are we looking for?” inquired Quake as he scanned the two maps.
“I want you to tell me the second you find it,” Edge said without taking his eyes of the maps.
“I love riddles,” chimed Trident with a smirk.
Pitch was busy writing the English translation on the maps for the team to read. After a few moments of studying the plan of Abu Al Khusib, “Sir, check out the escape route. It takes a very long roundabout path that places him in a trap. This escape plan is pointless,” Hawk said.
Dust looked over the map, “I agree Sir. There is no way anyone in their right mind would want to be in this.”
The team quickly looked, and all agreed. “It's set then," said Edge. "We go to Safwan. Quake and Dust go upstairs and pick us out some toys to bring the party we are about to crash. Hawk and Trident go out and convince the pilot where we are going.” As the men went to complete their tasks Doom and Pitch walked up to Edge.
“Richard is going to have your head on a plate,” commented Doom.
“I'll deal with him after we complete the mission,” responded Edge. “Right now, we need to figure out how to do that.”
While loading necessary supplies the team talked through their options. By the time they were ready to leave, the plan had been developed. As the team boarded the chopper, Edge looked over the map one more time, “Time to walk on water.”
Chapter 5
Like most small cities in the region, Safwan consisted of closely-packed buildings with narrow main streets, narrower side streets, and impossibly narrow alleyways. The southern part of the city had once housed stores and distributor’s warehouses but had been heavily damaged several years before by a bombing raid. Many of the buildings had been damaged beyond repair and were simply abandoned.
Much of the city had gone to sleep, except for a building just north of the center of town. Wafeeq had chosen an abandoned distributor warehouse here his newest base of operations because of its sizeable parking lot and loading area where he could store his large fleet of vehicles. The property extended roughly a city block north and south, and a block and a half east and west. The loading and parking area took up most of the site while the building itself sat on the northern side. Puffing on his cigar, Wafeeq looked across the street to the south at one of the many abandoned strip malls; part of it was still intact though it appeared that it might fall if someone sneezed. He then looked left to the collapsed side of an office building which had littered the street with beams and concrete
Wafeeq thought about how the situation in Iraq had changed drastically over the past few years. Loyalties shifted continually, and Wafeeq was hard-pressed to keep up with the ebb and flow of power. Staying ahead of developments meant not only political agility but physical mobility as well. Gone were the days when one could build a secure compound and remain safely inside. He knew that in recent months the Americans had stepped up their efforts to capture him, but they were half a world away; right next door, betrayals, and informants were a much bigger problem. Wafeeq surveyed his fleet parked below, a combination of trucks, jeeps, and sedans, and felt he was well-equipped to continually change locations while maintaining a low profile.
Wafeeq had just received a report that his last base, which they had left only a few days before, had not made any of its regular radio checkins for over two hours. His paranoia had turned out to be right. Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to kill you, he thought to himself as he re-lit his cigar. His hand started to shake as he lifted the lighter up to the end.
His moment of taking in the scenery was cut short as his radio squawked to life.
“Sir, patrols across the street have not reported in. I’m sending a small unit to check it out,” his head of security reported. Wafeeq’s mind started racing. Could it be the Americans? How did they find me? The disinformation we left behind should have sent them off to Al Khasib, and even if they figured that out, how could they have found me here and mounted an assault this quickly? Or is this one of my supposed allies double crossing me? Why would they do this before we overthrow the regime? They need my military resources!
Suddenly he spotted movement along the rooftops across the street. As he grabbed his radio to send out a warning he saw a small object the size of a soda can fall near his trucks parked below. As it hit the ground, it detonated, flipping two trucks onto their sides and igniting the gas tanks. Flames and smoke billowed into the air, and Wafeeq’s heart began to pound.
“It can’t be,” he mumbled to himself, on the left of him another explosion rocked the building. With the floor shuddering beneath him, Wafeeq ran down the stairs screaming for his men to repel the attack.
۞۞۞۞
“Wake ’em up, Quake!” Edge ordered over the headset.
“I love my work,” Quake sang as he dropped the mortar round into the launcher; it gave an almost silent whoomph as it went flying towards its target. Wafeeq’s location was a perfect set-up for a mortar attack. The collapsed building across the street provided perfect cover to set up the launchers without being seen and having all Wafeeq’s vehicles and supplies outside and closely packed maximized the damage inflicted by each shell. Accuracy was not as important as causing confusion and chaos.
The first round destroyed two trucks and disabled a few more. Quake swiveled the launcher to the right and Hawk dropped another mortar into the tube. This one landed in the back seat of a jeep, whose gas tank increased the explosion three-fold, killing two guards unlucky enough to be running by. Quake pivoted the tube left again as Hawk dropped in the last round. This round landed on the back of another truck, which was apparently carrying something explosive, causing it to become a very large number of very small pieces.
At t
heir end, Edge and Dust fired off the only two rounds they had. Both hit near a stack of cargo boxes located by the loading docks reducing the boxes to toothpick-like shrapnel and turning a few guards into pincushions. The blasts had launched one of the guards backward through the building’s window, landing him right in front of Wafeeq.
The head of security secured Wafeeq and dragged him into an interior room. “Sir, there’s a military team in the building across the street. We cannot get a fix on their numbers because they keep moving around.”
Wafeeq, somewhat stunned, stammered, “Ca.. can the cars get here?”
“Yes, sir. I recommend we hold a defensive position until we can get to the cars and then the guards here can attack after you have gone and are out of harm’s way.” The head of security responded confidently.
“Do we know who it is? Americans? Others?” Wafeeq asked, his questions returned with a frown and a shrug. “Okay, fine! Get the cars and get me the hell out here!”
۞۞۞۞
Edge and his Delta team had arrived two hours earlier and took positions in the damaged strip mall to the south of Wafeeq’s location.
Quake set up on the west side where there was enough left intact to tell that it had been a meat market or deli. To prevent anyone from sneaking through the door behind him, he placed a couple of motion-sensor equipped claymore mines inside the threshold. When detonated, a C-4 charge inside the mine propelled hundreds of steel balls in a lethal cloud that shredded nearly anything in its path for up to a hundred meters. With his usual sense of humor, Quake’s had taken the time to write, ”Hi!” on the front of each of them, right over the words “FRONT / TOWARDS ENEMY.”
Dust was positioned closer to the center of the mall, in a small shop which appeared to have been a dry cleaners. On the east end, Edge placed himself in another first-floor store of which only the front wall was still standing.
Hawk was on top of the building, acting as the replacement sniper since Doom was assigned elsewhere. With Quake on west, Hawk and Dust at the center and Edge on east, the small Delta team was in a solid defensive position.
After studying the captured documents of Wafeeq’s escape plan, Edge decided that the best strategy for capturing him was to let him leave the building. Intercepting a small convoy would involve a smaller firefight than battling their way into and out of his hideout.
After the barrage of mortar rounds, the team took up their positions, constantly moving to confuse the enemy.
Bullets tore into the walls of the already damaged building. Wafeeq’s guards knew the enemy was there but with the smoke and darkness; they could not make out where or even how many there were. Their initial response was to lay down suppressing fire, shooting at every window and the opening where anyone could be hiding. Their weapons echoed in the night as muzzle flashes turned the loading area into a fireworks show.
Shortly, the pattern changed, and guards began placing themselves in a defensive position around the building. Okay, our priority is getting your leader out; you’ll come after us later, Hawk thought as he watches them maneuver about.
Edge also watched the scene unfold and, after a few seconds, radioed his team to return fire. Edge squeezed the trigger on his M-16 sending a burst into a group of guards trying to get to cover. He hit one, killing him instantly, and his comrades dove in all directions to avoid the same fate. The rest of Edge’s team followed suit firing in a random pattern that redirected the guard’s attention from firing on the team to finding cover for themselves.
Dust saw a pair of men running to a position about forty feet from him. He swung his gun towards them and fired, but the bullets went wide of their targets. Adjusting his aim got off two more shots when his gun went click. He dropped for cover as the guards, now aware of his position, returned fire. As Dust changed clips, he saw a black object fly in through the basketball size hole above his head. It hit the wall behind him and rolled to a stand-still on the floor. Frag grenade!!
Although impressed with the accuracy of the throw, Dust was more impressed with the need to get out. He scrambled to his feet and dove out of the shop, landing on the sidewalk in the open. He quickly scrambled behind a small pile of wooden crates. A second later the grenade exploded sending bits of gravel and stones raining down. That was close!
Under fire, the wooden stands that were now his cover started to disintegrate. This is closer!
Sprinting for a window about thirty feet away, Dust moved so quickly that the guards couldn’t adjust their aim fast enough, keeping him only a few inches ahead of the bullets that were chasing his ass All he had to do was cover a few more steps, steps that he wasn’t sure he had.
Two more steps, that’s all I need, Dust coached himself along. The bullets got closer and closer and at the last second, he launched himself into the air. Time froze as he made a long dive into the opening. Slam! He hit the ground hard and rolled into some nearby chairs, knocking them on top of him.
Laying on his back motionless and covered in debris, Dust found himself laughing; in disbelief that he had made it. After pulling himself closer to the wall, he patted himself down, looking for holes. Satisfied that he had not been perforated, he checked his gear and joined back in the fight. Maybe next time, assholes.
On the west end, Hawk and Quake were holding their own. With the flaming wreckage from the exploded trucks scattered around them, the enemy found it hard to push forward; whatever paths were available left them exposed to fire. During one exchange, a stray round from Quake hit the gas tank of an over-turned truck which a pair of guards was using for cover. Unnoticed, gas slowly seeped out, a small rivulet making its way towards the flaming crates. Everyone’s attention was elsewhere until the truck exploded in a huge fireball. The blast had hurled the guards’ bodies ten feet through the air before they landed dead on the cluttered streets.
At the explosion, Quake reflexively dropped back behind cover as a dinner plate sized fragment flew through the window nearly severing his head. For a few seconds, he stared at where the still steaming fragment had lodged into in the wall.
“Quake, yah alive?” Hawk yelled over the noise.
“YEAH,” he responded.
“You hurt?”
“NO!”
“…You do that?”
“…Maybe?” Quake shrugged.
Hawk chuckled to himself and crawled to some new cover. Peeking from his cover, he noticed that the guards were forming on his side. Getting thick out there, time to thin them out.
Through his scope, Hawk aimed at a guard making his way across the loading bays. Adjusting his lead on the target for the distance and the speed of the guard’s movement, Hawk exhaled and pulled the trigger twice. The first round hit the guard in the left shoulder spinning him; the second round destroyed his face, dropping him. Hawk panned his view through the scope to the right and locked onto another guard. He fired three times, all hitting center mass, the impact throwing the guard against the wall. As Hawk looked at the dead man’s face through the scope, it was clear that the man never saw the shot coming.
Movement in his peripheral caught Hawk’s attention.
Snap…..Snap…..Snap! Three rounds embedded in themselves in the wall above Hawk, causing a heavy block of concrete to drop on his shoulder, the weight causing him to fall forward.
“Son of a bitch,” he said through gritted teeth as he clenched his right shoulder with his left hand. The slab felt like it weighed sixty pounds when it hit, causing him excruciating pain. However, Hawk had to push the pain aside when he realized that his cover had been compromised, and he was out in the open, fully exposed to the barrage of bullets heading his way.
۞۞۞۞
CRACK! A huge chunk of wall disappeared by Edge’s head. “SNIPER!” Dust shouted over the radio, as the shot continued to resonate through the air.
What a good time for Doom not to be around, Edge thought “Dust, can you see him?”
“No, I just know he’s on the third floor.”
“We need to take him out, now!” Edge ordered as another piece of wall disappeared near his head.
“Hold on, Sarge. I got an idea,” Dust said.
Edge waited to hear the rest of Dust’s idea, but it never came. He then heard the sound of gunfire, but it was at least directed at someone else. Taking the opportunity, he peeked around his cover and saw Dust running the length of the sidewalk in his direction. Dust figured that the best bait was live bait and wasn’t above taking that role himself. With every step that Dust took, the walls behind him became even more pock-marked as the sniper missed round after round, becoming so target-focused that he didn’t realize he was giving away his position It was an awfully high-risk tactic, but it worked.
Edge, waiting for the next shot, saw a flash from the second floor of Wafeeq’s building. Sighting through his scope, Edge fired a one-second burst and felt the tremble of the recoil. The sniper’s rifle scope exploded from Edge’s shot knocking the sniper backward and out of sight. Edge continued to watch the window. Several moments passed with no movement.
After what felt like the longest ten seconds in the world, Dust slid behind cover beside him, slightly winded. “Felt like I might be losing a step or two. I thought he had me for a second,” Dust panted.
“He got some of you,” Edge observed, looking at Dust’s bonnie hat that had fallen around the back of his neck during the sprint. Pulling the hat around in front of him, Dust held it up and looked through the bullet hole to see Edge’s face framed by the blackened edges.
“One day those bullets will catch you,” Edge warned, reloading.
“When that day comes, you get to carry my ass home,” Dust replied. Edge allowed himself the chuckle. Taking a quick glance at the street, Edge spotted the guards shifting to the far side of the compound. It’s about time.
Rise of the Phoenix Page 9
