Al Jihad

by Stephen Coonts

  In the courtyard against one wall stood a water tank on legs, with plastic lines leading away to the kitchen area. I opened the fill cap and looked in. I estimated the tank contained fifty gallons of water. Apparently people using this facility brought water with them, poured it into this tank, then used it sparingly.

  I stood in the courtyard looking at the water tank, cursing under my breath. The best way to kill these people would be to poison their water with some kind of delayed-action poison that would take twenty-four hours to work, so everyone would have an opportunity to ingest some. Julie Giraud could have fucked a chemist and got us some poison. I should have thought of the water tank.

  Too late now.

  Damn!

  Before I had a chance to cuss very much, I heard a jet. The engine noise was rapidly getting louder. I dived for cover.

  Seconds later a jet airplane went right over the fort, less than a hundred feet above the radio antenna.

  Staying low, I scurried up the staircase to the top of the ramparts and took a look. A small passenger jet was circling to land at the airport.

  I double-timed down the staircase and hotfooted it out the gate and along the trail leading to the path down to the oasis, keeping my eye on the sky in case another jet should appear.

  It took me about half an hour to get back to the oasis, and another fifteen minutes to reach the place where Julie was waiting in the Hum-vee. Of course I didn't just charge right up to the Humvee. Still well out of sight of the vehicle, I stopped, lay down, and caught my breath.

  When I quit blowing, I circled the area where the Humvee should have been, came at it from the east. At first I didn't see her. I could see the vehicle, but she wasn't in sight.

  I settled down to wait.

  Another jet went over, apparently slowing to land on the other side of the ridge.

  A half hour passed, then another. The temperature was rising quickly, the sun climbing the sky.

  Finally, Julie moved.

  She was lying at the base of a bush a hundred feet from the vehicle and she had an M-16 in her hands.

  Okay.

  Julie Giraud was a competent pilot and acted like she had all her shit in one sock when we were planning this mission, but I wanted to see how she handled herself on the ground. If we made a mistake in Europe, we might wind up in prison. A mistake here would cost us our lives.

  I crawled forward on my stomach, taking my time, just sifting along.

  It took me fifteen minutes to crawl up behind her. Finally I reached out with the barrel of the Model 70, touched her foot. She spun around as if she had been stung.

  I grinned at her.

  "You bastard," Julie Giraud said.

  "Don't you forget it, lady."

  FIVE

  Blowing up the fort was an impractical idea and always had been. When Julie Giraud first mentioned destroying the fort with the bad guys inside, back in Van Nuys, I had let her talk. I didn't think she had any idea how much explosives would be necessary to demolish a large stone structure, and she didn't. When I finally asked her how much C-4 she thought it would take, she looked at me blankly.

  We had brought a hundred pounds of the stuff, all we could transport efficiently.

  I used the binoculars to follow the third plane through the sky until it disappeared behind the ridge. It was some kind of small, twin-engined bizjet.

  "How come these folks are early?" I asked her. "I don't know."

  "Your CIA friend didn't tip you off about the time switch?"

  "No."

  The fact these people were arriving a day early bothered me and I considered it from every angle.

  Life is full of glitches and unexpected twists — who ever has a day that goes as planned? To succeed at anything you must be adaptable and flexible, and smart enough to know when backing off is the right thing to do.

  I wondered just how smart I was. Should we back off?

  I drove the Humvee toward the cliff where we had the Osprey parked. The land rolled, with here and there gulleys cut by the runoff from rare desert storms. These gulleys had steep sides, loose sand bottoms, and were choked with desert plants. Low places had brush and cacti, but mainly the terrain was dirt with occasional rock outcroppings. One got the impression that at some time in the geologic past the dirt had blown in, covering a stark, highly eroded landscape. I tried to keep off the exposed places as much as possible and drove very slowly to keep from raising dust.

  Every so often I stopped the vehicle, got out and listened for airplanes. Two more jets went over that I heard. That meant there were at least five jets at that desert strip, maybe more.

  Julie sat silently, saying nothing as we drove along. When I killed the engine and got out to listen, she stayed in her seat.

  I stopped the Humvee in a brushy draw about a mile from the Osprey, reached for the Model 70, then snagged a canteen and hung it over my shoulder.

  "May I come with you?" she asked.

  "Sure."

  We stopped when we got to a low rise where we could see the V-22 and the area around it. I looked everything over with binoculars, then settled down at the base of a green bush that resembled grease-wood, trying to get what shade there was. The temperature must have been ninety by that time.

  "Aren't we going down to the plane?"

  "It's safer here."

  Julie picked another bush and crawled under.

  I was silently complimenting her on her ability to accept direction without question or explanation when she said, "You don't take many chances, do you?"

  "I try not to."

  "So you're just going to kill these people, then get on with the rest of your life?"

  I took a good look at her face. "If you're going to chicken out," I said, "do it now, so I don't have to lie here sweating the program for the whole damned day."

  "I'm not going to chicken out. I just wondered if you were."

  "You said these people were terrorists, had blown up airliners. That still true?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Then I won't lose any sleep over them." I shifted around, got comfortable, kept the rifle just under my hands.

  She met my eyes, and apparently decided this point needed a little more exploring. "I'm killing them because they killed my parents. You're killing them for money."

  I sighed, tossed her the binoculars.

  "Every few minutes, glass the area around the plane, then up on the ridge," I told her. "Take your time, look at everything in your field of view, look for movement. Any kind of movement. And don't let the sun glint off the binoculars."

  "How are we going to do it?" she asked as she stared through the glasses.

  "Blowing the fort was a pipe dream, as you well know."

  She didn't reply, just scanned with the binoculars.

  "The best way to do it is to blow up the planes with the people on them."

  A grin crossed her face, then disappeared.

  I rolled over, arranged the rifle just so, and settled down for a nap. I was so tired.

  The sun had moved a good bit by the time I awakened. The air was stifling, with no detectable breeze. Julie was stretched out asleep, the binoculars in front of her. I used the barrel of the rifle to hook the strap and lift them, bring them over to me without making noise.

  The land was empty, dead. Not a single creature stirred, not even a bird. The magnified images I could see through the binoculars shimmered in the heat.

  Finally I put the thing down, sipped at the water in my canteen.

  South Africa. Soon. Maybe I'd become a diamond prospector. There was a whole lot of interesting real estate in South Africa, or so I'd heard, and I intended to see it. Get a jeep and some camping gear and head out.

  Julie's crack about killing for money rankled, of course. The fact was that these people were terrorists, predators who preyed on the weak and defenseless. They had blown up an airliner. Take money for killing them? Yep. And glad to get it, too.

  Julie had awakened and moved
off into the brush out of sight to relieve herself when I spotted a man on top of the cliff, a few hundred yards to the right of the Osprey. I picked him up as I swept the top of the cliff with the binoculars.

  I turned the focus wheel, tried to sharpen the dancing image. Too much heat.

  It was a man, all right. Standing there with a rifle on a sling over his shoulder, surveying the desert with binoculars. Instinctively I backed up a trifle, ensured the binoculars were in shade so there would be no sun reflections off the glass or frame. And I glanced at the airplane.

  It should be out of sight of the man due to the way the cliff outcropped between his position and the plane. I hoped. In any event he wasn't looking at it.

  I gritted my teeth, studied his image, tried by sheer strength of will to make it steadier in the glass. The distance between us was about six hundred yards, I estimated.

  I put down the binoculars and slowly brought up the Model 70. I had a variable power scope on it which I habitually kept cranked to maximum magnification. The figure of the man leaped at me through the glass.

  I put the crosshairs on his chest, studied him. Even through the shimmering air I could see the cloth he wore on his head and the headband that held it in place. He was wearing light-colored trousers and a shirt. And he was holding binoculars pointed precisely at me.

  I heard a rustle behind me.

  "Freeze, Julie," I said, loud enough that she would plainly hear me.

  She stopped.

  I kept the scope on him, flicked off the safety. I had automatically assumed a shooting position when I raised the rifle. Now I wiggled my left elbow into the hard earth, settled the rifle in tighter against my shoulder.

  He just stood there, looking right at us.

  I only saw him because he was silhouetted on the skyline. In the shade under this brush we should be invisible to him. Should be.

  Now he was scanning the horizon again. Since I had been watching he had not once looked down at the foot of the cliff upon which he was standing.

  He was probably a city soldier, I decided. Hadn't been trained to look close first, before he scanned terrain farther away.

  After another long moment he turned away, began walking slowly along the top of the cliff to my right, away from the Osprey. I kept the crosshairs of the scope on him until he was completely out of sight. Only then did I put the safety back on and lower the rifle.

  "You can come in now," I said.

  She crawled back under her bush.

  "Did you see him?" I asked.

  "Yes. Did he see the airplane?"

  "I'm certain he didn't."

  "How did he miss it?"

  "It was just a little out of sight, I think. Even if he could have seen it, he never really looked in the right direction."

  "We were lucky," she said.

  I grunted. It was too hot to discuss philosophy. 1 lay there under my bush wondering just how crazy ol' Julie Giraud really was.

  "If he had seen the plane, Charlie Dean, would you have shot him?"

  What a question!

  "You're damned right," I muttered, more than a little disgusted. "If he had seen the plane, I would have shot him and piled you into the cockpit and made you get us the hell out of here before all the Indians in the world showed up to help with the pleasant chore of lifting our hair. These guys are playing for keeps, lady. You and me had better be on the same sheet of music or we will be well and truly fucked."

  Every muscle in her face tensed. "We're not leaving," she snarled, "until those sons of bitches are dead. All of them. Every last one."

  She was over the edge.

  A wave of cold fear swept over me. It was bad enough being on the edge of a shooting situation; now my backup was around the bend. If she went down or freaked out, how in the hell was I going to get off this rock pile?

  "I've been trying to decide," she continued, "if you really have the balls for this, Charlie Dean, or if you're going to turn tail on me when crunch time comes and run like a rabbit. You're old: You look old, you sound old. Maybe you had the balls years ago, maybe you don't anymore."

  From the leg pocket of her flight suit she pulled a small automatic, a.380 from the looks of it. She held it where I could see it, pointed it more or less in my direction. "Grow yourself another set of balls, Charlie Dean. Nobody is running out."

  I tossed her the binoculars. "Call me if they come back," I said. I put the rifle beside me and lay down.

  Sure, I thought about what a dumb ass I was. Three million bucks! — I was going to have to earn every damned dollar.

  Hoo boy.

  Okay, I'll admit it: I knew she was crazy that first day in Van Nuys.

  I made a conscious effort to relax. The earth was warm, the air was hot, and I was exhausted. I was asleep in nothing flat.

  The sun was about to set when I awoke. My binoculars were on the sand beside me and Julie Giraud was nowhere in sight. I used the scope on the rifle to examine the Osprey and the cliff behind it.

  I spotted her in seconds, moving around under the plane. No one else visible.

  While we had a little light, I went back for the Humvee. I crawled up on it, taking my time, ensuring that no one was there waiting for me.

  When we left it that morning we had piled some dead brush on the hood and top of the vehicle, so I pulled that off before I climbed in.

  Taking it slow so I wouldn't raise dust, I drove the mile or so to the Osprey. I got there just as the last rays of the sun vanished.

  I backed up to the trailer and we attached it to the Humvee.

  "Want to tell me your plan, Charlie Dean?" she asked. "Or do you have one?"

  As I repacked the contents of the trailer I told her how I wanted to do it. Amazingly, she agreed readily.

  She was certainly hard to figure. One minute I thought she was a real person, complete with a conscience and the intellectual realization that even the enemy were human beings, then the next second she was a female Rambo, ready to gut them all, one by one.

  She helped me make up C-4 bombs, rig the detonators and radio controls. 1 did the first one, she watched intently, then she did one on her own. I checked it, and she got everything right.

  "Don't take any unnecessary chances tonight," I said. "I want you alive and well when this is over so you can fly me out of here."

  She merely nodded. It was impossible to guess what she might have been thinking.

  I wasn't about to tell her that I had flown helicopters in Vietnam. I was never a rated pilot, but I was young and curious, so the pilots often let me practice under their supervision. I had watched her with the Osprey and thought that I could probably fly it if absolutely necessary. The key would be to use the checklist and take plenty of time. If I could get it started, I thought I could fly it out. There were parachutes in the thing, so I would not need to land it.

  I didn't say any of this to her, of course.

  We had a packet of radio receivers and detonators — I counted them — enough for six bombs. If I set them all on the same frequency I could blow up six planes with one push of the button. If I could get the bombs aboard six planes without being discovered.

  What if there were more than six planes? Well, I had some pyrotechnic fuses, which seemed impractical to use on an airplane, and some chemical fuses. In the cargo bay of the Osprey I examined the chemical fuses by flashlight. Eight hours seemed to be the maximum setting. The problem was that I didn't know when the bad guys planned to leave.

  As I was meditating on fuses and bombs, I went outside and walked around the Osprey. There was a turreted three-barreled fifty-caliber machine gun in the nose of the thing. Air Force Ospreys didn't carry stingers like this, but this one belonged to the Marine Corps, or did until twenty-four hours ago.

  I opened the service bay. Gleaming brass in the feed trays reflected the dim evening light.

  Julie was standing right behind me. "I stole this one because it had the gun," she remarked. "Less range than the Air Force birds, bu
t the gun sold me."

  "Maximum firepower is always a good choice."

  "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  We discussed contingencies as we wired up the transfer pump in the bladder fuel tank we had chained down in the cargo bay. We used the aircraft's battery to power the pump, so all we had to do was watch as three thousand pounds of jet fuel was transferred into the aircraft's tanks.

  My plan had bombs, bullets, and a small river of blood — we hoped — just the kind of tale that appealed to Julie Giraud. She even allowed herself a tight smile.

  Me? I had a cold knot in the pit of my stomach and I was sweating.

  SIX

  We finished loading the Humvee and the trailer attached to it before sunset and ate MREs in the twilight. As soon as it was dark, we donned our night-vision goggles and drove toward the oasis. I stopped often to get up on the vehicle's hood, the best vantage point around, and take a squint in all directions.

  I parked the vehicle at the foot of the trail. "If I'm not back in an hour and a half, they've caught me," I told Julie Giraud. I smeared my face with grease to cut the white shine, checked my reflection in the rearview mirror, then did my neck and the back of my hands.

  "If they catch you," she said, "I won't pay you the rest of the money."

  "Women are too maudlin to be good soldiers," I told her. "You've got to stop this cloying sentimentality. Save the tears for the twenty-five-year reunion."

  When I was as invisible as I was going to get, I hoisted a rucksack that I had packed that evening, put the M-16 over my shoulder, and started up the trail.

  Every now and then I switched the goggles from ambient light to infrared and looked for telltale heat sources. I spotted some small mammal, too small to be human. I continued up the ridge, wondering how any critters managed to make a living in this godforsaken desert.

  The temperature had dropped significantly from the high during the afternoon. I estimated the air was still at eighty degrees, but it would soon go below seventy. Even the earth was cooling, although not as quickly as the air.

  I topped the ridge slowly, on the alert for security patrols. Before we committed ourselves to a course of action, we had to know how many security people were prowling around.