by Joshua Hood
“We don’t murder people. I would think that you, of all people, should respect that.”
“I’ve got Decklin’s computer. If you can get me out of here, I’ll kill Barnes for you.”
“I’m sure you would, but can I trust you?”
“I guess we just have to find out.”
CHAPTER 22
* * *
Faya-Largeau, Chad
Mr. David walked back into the room. He didn’t appear to mind that Mason was no longer secured or that Renee was sitting in his chair. Closing the door behind him, he placed his hands in his pockets and relaxed against the wall.
“So, who’s in charge here?” Mason asked as he looked from person to person.
“That is an excellent question,” the man began. “Ms. Hart, does General Swift know that you are utilizing fake identification papers to gain access to a secure facility?”
“I doubt it, but I’m sure he has more important matters to deal with.”
“Well, unfortunately for you, we follow protocol here, and unless you have the proper documentation, I’m going to have to escort you off the premises.”
“Try it,” she said, aiming the pistol at him.
“Looks like a Mexican standoff to me,” Mason joked.
“I need to borrow your detainee for a while. I hope that’s not a problem,” Renee said.
“There are some people in my organization who will have a problem with that.”
Renee smiled and got to her feet, still holding the pistol on Mr. David. “Mason, get up, we’re leaving.”
Mason stayed seated, casually finishing his cigarette. “So does General Swift know you’re here?” he asked.
“What?” He could tell she hadn’t expected the question by the look on her face.
“You know, General Swift, your boss. Does he know that you’re about to kidnap an American citizen, or is he taking orders from someone too?”
Renee stared at the American, refusing to back down, even though her brain scrambled to find the logical conclusion of his questions.
“If I may . . .” Mr. David pulled his hand out of his pocket and held up his index finger in a silent bid for caution. “I think you will find it difficult to leave this facility without garnering a great deal of unwanted attention. There is a way in which we can all get what we want if we can just take a moment to clear this up.”
“I don’t have time for that. I need to get in contact with my team.”
“So, he doesn’t know you’re here?” Mason asked.
“Mason, get up, and follow me. You too, Mr. David,” Renee commanded.
The two men shrugged and let themselves be led out of the room.
Once out in the hall Renee pushed the agent into one of the interrogation rooms and made sure the door was locked.
Mason kept walking along the hall, looking into each of the rooms, ignoring Renee’s instruction to follow her. Finally he found the one he was looking for. He opened the final door and was greeted by the sight of Zeus chained to a metal table.
“Hey, man, this place sucks. I figured we should probably leave,” he said with a cocky grin.
“Who is that and why is she pointing a pistol at you?” the Libyan asked calmly in Arabic as Mason and Renee stepped into the room.
“She’s our new friend,” Mason replied, searching for the key to his chains.
“But she’s a woman,” Zeus said as she approached the table.
“You’re very perceptive,” Renee replied in Arabic.
Taking the lock in her hand, she put the pistol back in her holster and pulled a metal pick out of her back pocket. Sticking it into the lock, she ignored Mason, who’d picked up a metal chair and lifted it over his head.
“Watch out, I’m going to smash it,” he said.
The lock popped open in Renee’s hand and she looked at him and rolled her eyes. “You’re going to smash the lock with a chair?”
“I think I like her,” Zeus said as he stood and rubbed his wrists.
Renee set the lock on the table while Mason gently set the chair back on the ground.
“Hey, whose team are you on?” he said.
“She is very pretty,” Zeus whispered.
“Yeah, well, she wanted to leave you here, so don’t forget who your real friends are. Besides, she works for Swift.”
“Will you two shut up and follow me?” she commanded as she slipped out the door.
Mason frowned and followed her out into the large hangar, which was empty except for two black Suburbans.
“Do we have time to get my stuff?” Mason asked as she checked the first vehicle to see if it was unlocked.
“Are you serious?”
“I was just asking.”
Renee found that the second truck was unlocked and hopped into the driver’s seat. She sat looking around for the keys until Mason pulled down the visor and they fell into her lap. Renee shot him a dirty look and started the vehicle.
“Zeus, look in the back, see if they left any weapons,” Mason said as Renee put the car in drive and pulled up to the bay door. She looked at her watch nervously and waited for the door to open. Someone shouted from the office area on the second floor of the hangar and she cursed as the door remained closed.
“Shit.”
“Some rescue,” Mason said as he hopped out of the truck and ran over to the control panel on the wall. He punched the green arrow on the top of the panel and the door motor kicked on with a metallic grunt. Renee pulled forward as the door crept open and Mason extended his middle finger to the man running down the steel stairs.
“Go, go,” he said as he hopped in the truck and slammed the door.
“I found this,” Zeus said, holding up a tire iron in the backseat.
“Great, that’s a lot of help,” Mason said to the shrugging Libyan.
Renee punched the accelerator and pulled out her phone as they sped out into the sunlight. Mason squinted and cast a quick glance around the base as she dialed a number and hit send.
“We’re on our way and need to leave fast,” she said.
“This isn’t going to end well,” Mason warned her as he glanced over his shoulder.
The base appeared brand-new, but had no distinguishing features that would tell him where they were. All of the buildings were corrugated metal and had been painted an earthy brown. The heat shimmered off the roofs as they reflected the sun’s rays, and Mason wished he had his sunglasses. Up ahead, he could see the dark asphalt of the runway and a row of Pave Low helicopters parked neatly in a row.
“There is a truck coming this way,” Zeus said from the backseat, and Renee glanced to her left to see another black Suburban racing toward them.
“Doesn’t look like they are going to stop,” Mason said as she gunned the engine and clenched the wheel.
A man leaned out of the window and waved his arm at their vehicle as the driver tried to close the distance.
“Put your seat belts on,” she said, ignoring Mason.
They were a hundred meters from the gate that led to the flight line when their pursuers fired a warning shot over the front of the truck. Mason couldn’t hear the rifle go off, but he saw the flame spitting from the muzzle.
“Uhhh, they’re shooting at us.”
“Relax, it’s just a warning shot.”
Mason opened the glove box, hoping to find a pistol, but there was nothing inside but an owner’s manual and an air gauge.
“I hope you have a plan,” he said, slamming the glove box shut.
“Just enjoy the ride,” she replied as a burst hit the hood of the truck and bounced off with a spark.
A white Gulfstream sat on the tarmac barely two hundred meters away. Renee shot through the open gate, knocking the side mirror off the truck as she did, and Mason turned to look at the truck trying to catch them.
Three men with rifles ran out of a metal shed near the small control tower and fired at them as Renee cut the wheel and ducked behind a row of cargo trucks. The en
gine roared as she mashed hard on the gas and barely missed a ground crew loading a small prop plane.
“Holy shit, you’re going to kill someone,” Mason said, grabbing the dashboard.
“Will you shut up and let me drive?”
Slamming her foot on the brakes, she skidded the truck to a halt beside the waiting plane and jammed it into park. Hopping out, she made her way toward the stairs and waited for Zeus and Mason.
“Can you two hurry the fuck up?” she asked, pulling her pistol from her waistband and aiming it at the rapidly approaching SUV. Mason and Zeus sprinted, and she followed, her pistol at the ready. She stuck her head into the cockpit and was about to tell the pilot to go when she felt a barrel push against her neck.
CHAPTER 23
* * *
Swat Valley, Pakistan
It had been almost eight hours since Harden had used the unsecure phone to place a call, and according to their sources on base, an operation was in the works to take the bait.
It was a waiting game now. Jones had just called their final grid up to the colonel, and the rest of the team was resting in the shade of their security position, double-checking their weapons.
The valley was more of a long depression than anything else and lacked the well-defined attributes of similar terrain in Afghanistan. A river had once flowed out of the mountains to the north, and its course had cut a shallow trough through the rich landscape. Dark green grass and multicolored wildflowers flourished in the rich sediment deposited by its waters, and the majestic pines dotting the high ground provided much-appreciated shade.
Interspersed among the lush vegetation were sporadic patches of smooth stones and stoic gray boulders, carried down from the mountain peaks. At first glance, the granite rocks appeared to offer ideal cover and concealment, and that was exactly what Harden wanted them to think.
The only usable landing zone was to the southeast of his position, where the wide, grassy plain could accommodate the heavy helicopters. Harden had studied the same satellite imagery that they would be using, and he knew that the valley was invisible until you were actually on the ground. Whoever was coming would naturally be funneled into his kill zone, with nowhere to run.
• • •
Kevin stood in the center of the unoccupied tent, holding a black laser pointer. Studying the terrain model on the floor, he waited patiently for the pilots to finish up their briefing. His stomach twisted in knots, but he did his best to hide the nerves.
The model was basically a large rectangular sandbox that he’d set up to replicate the topographical features of the team’s objective. The primary infiltration route was a length of red string that snaked from the helicopter landing zone, or HLZ, all the way up to the target location. Every alternate landing zone, rally point, and phase line was represented with its own symbol so that every member of the team had a visual understanding of the mission.
He had done his best to be as thorough as possible, but he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he had missed something.
Five hours earlier, an NSA signal-intercept bird had “pinged” a satellite phone in northeast Pakistan. The sophisticated aircraft had recorded a conversation in English and, after running it through voice-recognition software, the analysts felt sure that the phone belonged to Anvil 7. An hour after the intercept, there was a satellite photo of a small house nestled in the shadows of the wooded mountain peaks.
Finally, they had actionable intel, but Kevin wasn’t buying it. It looked staged, but with General Swift in Bagram, his executive officer told Kevin to get his team ready. All available assets were tasked to the operation, including a joint CIA/Special Operations strike team, which had just arrived in country.
Major Toms, the XO, listened in silence as the pilots finished up their brief. He had no real idea as to what was going on and that was why he wanted Kevin to brief the infiltration and assault plan.
Kevin had never worked with the major before. He’d always been more than happy to let Renee deal with the brass, but she had fallen off the grid, and her phone kept going straight to voice mail. When he and Bones had suggested pushing the operation twenty-four hours, they were ignored, and all they could do now was pray for a miracle.
The lead pilot finished up his part and turned the floor over to the major.
“Kevin, it’s on you,” he said.
Aiming the red dot on the terrain model, he took a deep breath and dove in.
“Teams one and two will infil via CH-47 to HLZ Barney, and as soon as we are secure we will be moving out along the primary infil route until we reach phase line one.” The red dot traced the route along the edge of the valley until it came to the phase line, which was marked with black string and a Post-it note with the number 1 written in black ink.
“At phase line one the strike team, call sign Striker 6, will break off and move to the high ground, while my blocking team will continue to the rally point, which is about a kilometer from the target. We will hold here until Striker 6 has set up overwatch at phase line two.”
“What happens if we take contact before making it to our overwatch site?” a bearded operator on the Striker team asked, looking up from his notepad.
“The birds will need to clear the airspace to refuel, but we will have an AC-130 loitering across the border if we need it. Flight time will be ten minutes, and the major will establish comms with the pilot prior to departing phase line one. We’re going to have a Predator on station with Hellfires if we need it, but intelligence is pointing to a clean infil.”
“So if we get hit, we’re on our own for ten minutes?”
“Look, I know it sounds like we’re going in naked, but the mission dictates a high degree of stealth. These guys have shown a very sophisticated ability to use our air against us. To mitigate this we are keeping all aircraft outside the operations box until we need them. Trust me when I tell you that if we need the air, it will be there.”
“What if they’ve already left when we get there?” Bones asked.
“We’re using satellite and a high-altitude Global Hawk to keep an eye on the situation. If anything changes we’ll know. If there aren’t any more questions, I’ll continue with the brief.”
The briefing lasted for another hour, and Kevin felt like he’d been put through the wringer when it was over. He had covered as many variables as he could think of, but there was no way to conceal that this plan had been hastily constructed.
The mission was simple. The two teams were going to fly in under the cover of darkness and move into position before the sun came up. At first light they would attack the target house, grab any intel, and have the birds pick them up at the objective.
Everyone wanted more air assets, but the brass was wary of another incident. If things got real bad, Kevin would use a satellite radio to vector a flight of F-15s into the area. He thought it was a shit plan, but it wasn’t his call.
The briefing broke up and everyone began to filter out so they could conduct final preparations. The major gave Kevin a pat on the back and told him, “Good job,” before leaving the tent. Bones and Kevin were left alone to see if they’d missed anything.
“Where in the fuck is Renee?” Bones asked.
“Dude, I’ve been blowing up her phone, but she’s not answering. Fuck it, let’s get our gear and be done with it,” Kevin said, feeling less confident by the minute.
Back at their building, Tyler and Rico were going over the map they’d laid out on the card table. As Kevin joined the two men, Bones grabbed an open box of MREs and began stripping them from their bulky packages.
“Any changes?” Tyler asked.
“No, we’re still on.”
“You heard from Renee?” Rico asked.
Kevin shook his head and stared down at the map.
“We have a few hours until we have to be at the flight line. Is there anything I missed?”
“The whole thing seems simple enough, but I’ve been in the valley before and it’s not a plac
e you want to go without a shitload of support. The terrain looks pretty straightforward on the graphics, but I guarantee you it’s going to be rough. I just hope those CIA dudes can keep up.”
“That’s the least of our problems,” Bones said from the corner, where he was stuffing ammo into his assault pack. “They won’t let the gunship clear Afghanistan until we call for it.”
Rico shook his head with a dismayed smile, but they were all professionals and would do their jobs without question.
Kevin walked away from the table and went to check his gear one last time. He pulled the phone out and hit the send key, automatically redialing the last number. After a brief delay, the phone rang once and then went straight to voice mail.
Fuck, Renee, where are you? he thought.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Faya-Largeau, Chad
Renee looked around the shiny conference room, taking in the faux hardwood flooring and the muted gray walls, before returning her accusing stare to Mason. He was sitting at the dull gray conference table, seemingly unconcerned that a moment ago she’d had a pistol jammed in the back of her head.
Obviously, the rescue attempt hadn’t gone according to plan. She was so exhausted that at the time it had seemed like a good idea, but Renee was rapidly realizing she’d overstepped her bounds. They had taken her phone, which pissed her off almost as much as Mason’s nonchalant attitude.
Renee turned her gaze back to the window and saw the white Gulfstream sitting just outside the hangar, where they’d been forced to leave it.
Mason leaned forward and whispered across the table, “Don’t be upset, it was a good plan.”
“What do you mean?” Zeus asked him. “It was a terrible plan and never would have worked.”
“You’re not helping. Can’t you see that she’s upset?”
“Well, lying to her isn’t going to make it better,” he whispered back.
“If one of you bothered telling me that Mr. David was hiding with a gun, we would be on our way by now,” Renee spat, unable to keep her calm any longer.
