by Joshua Hood
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she turned away from Mason and retreated into the room. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Renee turned to him suddenly, and before he knew it she had grabbed him up in an embrace. He could feel her sobbing against his chest.
Mason was confused. One minute she was mad and the next she was crying. He had no idea what to do, so he reached down and patted her on the head.
“It was all my fault. I let all of this happen,” Renee sobbed.
“It’s not your fault. This is what Barnes does.”
“I— I couldn’t stop it . . . I had to watch them die . . . ,” she stuttered through the tears.
“Renee, there was nothing you could do. You have to know that.”
Mason knew that his words didn’t matter. They were hollow attempts to assuage a wound that only time could heal, but he felt obligated to say something.
“I killed them,” she whispered again before looking up at him.
Mason generally distrusted women, mainly because every woman who was supposed to love him had quit, but somehow Renee was different. He’d known her for only a few days, but he felt he could trust her.
“Look, get some sleep, and in the morning, when you’re rested, it’s up to you to decide if you want to finish this.”
Renee looked like she was about to hug him, and Mason stepped backward, almost tripping over his feet. She smiled and said, “What, are you scared?”
“No, it’s just, look, I . . . ,” he stammered. “Just get some sleep, okay?”
He turned and headed for the door, leaving her standing in the middle of the room. Mason steeled himself for what was ahead as he stepped out into the hall. He was going to get the answers he needed—no matter what the cost.
CHAPTER 30
* * *
Jordan
Colonel Barnes stood in front of the mirror and carefully cut his blond hair with a pair of scissors. The hair fell into a plastic bag, which he’d taped open over the sink, and he shaped his hair until it was as close cropped as he could get it.
The bathroom smelled of cleaning products and fresh soap. A ceiling fan rotated lazily above his head, blowing clumps of his shorn hair across the cool tile floor and onto his bare feet. He noticed a smear of dried blood on his forearm as he pulled a pair of latex gloves from a small box and stretched them over his hands.
The ambush had left him with a feeling of invincibility, which added fuel to his resolve. Still, he knew that his blond hair would only attract attention, now that he was out in the open, and he was going to use dye to remedy that.
He released each glove with a snap before grabbing the plastic bottle of hair dye. Staring at himself in the mirror, he shook the plastic bottle vigorously and noted with pride the rippling muscles in his chest.
This is my destiny, he thought.
Twisting the cap of the dye bottle, he felt it snap free in his hands and then dipped the applicator into the inky liquid. He was careful not to spill it on the stark white sink as he began applying it to his hair.
He worked the dye in from front to back until his hair was dark black, then replaced the lid and tossed it into the bag. The applicator and the brush followed, and when he was done, he ripped the bag free and tied it off.
He let the dye set for the allocated time before stepping into the shower. He turned the water on without waiting for it to warm up. The excess dye swirled around the drain like black rivulets of dark blood. He thought of the men he’d lost to the Hellfire strike, which had knocked him unconscious. Fate hadn’t been finished with him then. In fact, it had another blessing in store. After they left the valley, the World Health Organization had given them seats on a transport from Pakistan to Jordan.
It was all coming together, just like he’d been told.
• • •
Three hours later, the team stood around the van they were taking across the border. They were waiting for the order to load up. Boz had just finished a protein bar and was taking the plastic wrapper off the Listerine he had bought in Jordan.
“Is there some ingredient in that shit that I don’t know about?” Villa asked, watching him swish the blue liquid around in his mouth for the third time that day.
Boz had already gone through one of the travel-sized bottles and had been forced to open this one before the day was even over.
“Who knows, but for the longest time I thought it was vodka or something,” Harden said. “The man should have been a dentist.”
Barnes stood by himself, waiting for Jones, who had crossed the border the day prior with Hoyt, to send in his latest update. He’d considered his options and decided he didn’t want to go north in search of another crossing. Without knowing who was in control of the checkpoint, he could be walking into a trap. When the phone finally rang, Jones didn’t do much to help his decision.
Jones advised that he had a good vantage point on the crossing but that there wasn’t any traffic coming from the Syrian side. Hoyt assumed that someone had cut the road and that al-Qaeda was letting people in but refused to let anyone out.
Barnes hung up the phone and called Harden over to him. Explaining the situation and lack of intel, he decided that they would dismount short of the border crossing before nightfall and conduct a recon before continuing on. Harden nodded and went to brief the team.
The civil war in Syria had brought every major terrorist group in the Mideast to the war-torn country. The violence and lawlessness meant that it was unsafe for most reporters, and therefore he didn’t have to worry about his men showing up on the news.
Barnes sat in the front while Scottie drove, and if traffic stayed light they would arrive at their drop point fifteen minutes after the sun went down. He grabbed a map from the visor and checked his position on his wrist GPS. Once he found his location, he began searching for a good place to stop the van.
“Scottie, in another five kilometers I need you to pull off the road and head into the desert. Harden, you stay with the van and I’ll take Boz and Villa up for the recon. You guys go ahead and kit up.”
“Roger that, boss.” They had bought the van from a smuggler who had built compartments into the seats that were virtually impossible to find. Villa and Boz moved off the bench seat and depressed the hidden lever that opened one of the compartments. The two men began pulling kit bags out of the hiding spot and laying them on the floor.
“I got your kit, sir.” Boz handed the colonel’s kit bag to Harden, who stood up and switched seats with him.
Barnes squeezed his large frame into the back of the van and slipped into his plate carrier. Instead of the HKs they were going to use AK-47s that had been modified to take a suppressor. He didn’t want to leave NATO brass around the objective—not that it mattered. The 7.62 magazines that they were carrying were bigger and heavier due to the size of the round, and Barnes had made sure that everyone had a rig that would carry the magazines.
The colonel checked his optic to make sure it was working. He had never liked the EOTech, so he used an Aimpoint M68, which did the same job but had a dot instead of a reticle. They had modified the rifles because unlike the M4s, the Russian rifles didn’t have rails to mount hardware. Boz had solved the problem by welding a small rail forward of the bolt, which allowed the team to mount optics onto the rifles.
The van came to a halt at the predetermined spot and the team conducted a quick radio check. From his position on the other side of the border, Jones was monitoring the same channel while Hoyt used thermals to scan the area.
“Anvil 6 is stepping off time now. How copy?” Barnes asked as he led the team away from the road.
It was common for Muslims to stop on the side of the road to pray, so the van wouldn’t draw any attention. What would draw attention was three armed men running across the desert, so they made sure to push far enough out of sight that they wouldn’t be detected by any passing motorists.
“Yes, sir, I read you. Our position is about one kilometer northeast of the checkpoint. We couldn’t get any closer without being compromised, and there has been no traffic from this end for the last two hours.”
“Roger that.”
Barnes used the GPS to navigate away from the target before swinging wide and coming in from the south. He could see the road in the distance as it snaked east of him. According to the map the road would open up into a Y, and there would be a metal guard tower on a hill next to the intersection.
The terrain was flat and the sandy ground had been packed hard, making it easy to walk. Barnes could see low-lying shrubs and tufts of grass through his NODs as his feet gently scuffed the ground. He wasn’t even breathing hard when he saw the guard tower rising over a low set of hills.
As they quietly slipped across the border, Barnes realized that he could have easily driven across without anyone seeing anything. However, in the back of his mind he knew that a plume of dust coming out of the desert might have drawn attention. The terrain was beginning to rise beneath their feet as they moved into the hills, and when they were five hundred meters out he called a halt.
“Be advised, we are five hundred meters from the objective.”
“Check, boss,” Harden replied.
“You must be in the low ground, sir—we can’t see you from here.”
“Roger that, we’re moving out.”
Barnes pivoted and touched Boz on the shoulder before he moved off in the darkness. He kept to the low side of the hill for as long as he could before he began working his way up at an angle. They made their approach carefully and avoided silhouetting themselves on the crest of the hill. The moon was beginning to peek out over the horizon, and they were close enough to the target to hear voices and smell the guard’s cheap tobacco.
“Sir, we have you now. We aren’t observing any movement.”
Barnes keyed his mike but didn’t say anything. In Vietnam, long-range reconnaissance teams referred to this as “breaking squelch.” The technique allowed them to communicate nonverbally when talking could compromise them.
He pointed at Boz and motioned for him to set up on the hilltop. Boz nodded and began low-crawling toward the crest of the high ground. Once he reached a good vantage point, he keyed the radio, signaling that he was set. Barnes and Villa moved silently from their position and approached the target.
The colonel crawled as close as he could to the edge of the hill, and since no one had bothered to cut the grass he had plenty of concealment to work with. He was able to move all the way to the edge without any effort. He took a moment to relax as he looked around. Five feet below him was a metal shack made out of corrugated tin. He could see light filtering out of the west side of the shack, and he assumed there was a window over there.
“Boz, give me a sit rep?” he whispered.
“I’ve got one military-age male. He doesn’t appear to be wearing a uniform.”
“Roger that. Stand by for my count.” Barnes motioned for Villa to follow him as he slid back down the hill. Reaching flat ground, he used the dead space between the hill and the shack to mask his approach. The sound of laughter emanated from inside the small building, and he was positive that they hadn’t been compromised.
It was almost too easy.
He signaled to Villa that he was going to flank the building. Villa responded that he would hold on the east wall and breach on his signal. The silent conversation took only a second due to the countless missions they had run together. Keeping low, Barnes moved to the rear of the shack and out of sight.
A telephone line fed into the shack from a pole to his left, and he assumed they had access to a phone and maybe an alarm. He’d have liked to cut the phone line but didn’t have the time. Carefully, he peeked into the window and got a partial layout of the room. Barnes saw four rebels inside, sitting around a table they had made from ammo boxes and an old pallet. The concrete floor had seen better days and was covered in dust and trash.
He could tell from their mismatched clothing that the men were definitely not Syrian regulars.
“Villa, we have four crows that I can see. Wait until I engage before you breach.”
“Roger.”
“Boz, give me a ten count on my mark. Ready, mark.” Barnes began counting in his head, and when he reached five he stood up and moved across the window. One of the men inside caught the movement and got to his feet. He looked to be in his midtwenties, and as he turned his head back to the table, Barnes slipped his finger into the trigger guard and flipped off the safety with his thumb.
The M68 optic had an infrared setting, which allowed him to aim while wearing NODs. However, the light coming from inside the shack washed out the aiming dot and flared his night vision. Due to the offset between the barrel and the optic, Barnes had to center his point of aim above the rebel’s forehead, so the round would impact where he wanted.
When he reached ten, he pulled the last bit of slack out of the trigger and sent a round through the man’s frontal lobe. The colonel was already on his next target before the round blew the man’s brains out the back of his skull. Working from left to right so he wasn’t in danger of hitting Villa, he settled his dot on the next target and fired. The bullet impacted as the door crashed open and Villa engaged the other two men from the doorway.
Barnes watched his soldier step into the room, arcing his rifle toward the window as he moved. Villa’s muzzle began sweeping down at an angle, and the colonel moved around to the front side of the building in case he fired. As soon as he cleared the corner, he heard two more shots from inside. Pushing through the open door, he stepped in behind Villa, who was holding on a man sitting on the floor.
Villa had fired two rounds low into the sitting man’s abdomen, to avoid hitting his boss as he moved. Keeping the rounds at a downward trajectory avoided a possible friendly-fire incident. As soon as Barnes came through the door, he raised his rifle and fired a shot to the dying man’s head.
“Nice shooting, I didn’t see that guy.”
“No problem, boss, I didn’t want to splash you.”
Barnes slapped his soldier on the shoulder and keyed his radio. “Boz, we are secured. We have five crows down.”
“Roger, Anvil 6. My guy is down and we have no movement.”
“Jones, are we good?”
“Roger that. We didn’t even hear the shots, but it sounds like you owe someone a beer.”
“As soon as I receive your allotment I will be sure to pay up.”
“Hey, boss, sounds good to me.”
“Harden, you can bring the van up.”
Barnes moved Villa out to set up a blocking position in the east, and he headed across the road to block the northern approach. He found a spot that offered cover and a good vantage point, and he took a knee.
Jones came over the radio. “Sir, I have movement coming your way. It looks like twelve military-aged men and they are all armed.”
“Villa, do you have eyes on them?”
“Yes, sir, they’re about two hundred meters away. It looks like they came out of a ditch or something.”
“Harden, we have company. I need you to black out your lights and conduct linkup.”
“Anvil 7 moving.”
Barnes left his position but stayed on the far side of the road. Moving in a crouch, he dropped into the low ground and began hand railing the road. He couldn’t see the enemy, but he needed to flank them.
“Boss, you want me to roll ’em up?”
“Stand by. Harden, what’s your location?”
“We are back on the road about five hundred meters out.”
Barnes clawed his way up the steep embankment to make sure he had moved far enough past the rebels before he clicked his radio. “Villa, it’s on you.”
Villa waited until they were within fifteen yards of his position so that Boz would be able to cover him if he had to break contact. He had no idea where the colonel was but was sure that he was lurking somewh
ere. The sound of the van’s engine was faint but growing as it sped up the road.
He wanted to let them get closer, but they would hear the van soon and he didn’t want to spook them. The first shot broke clean and impacted center mass on the lead rebel. The second round followed a microsecond behind the first and caught the man in the throat as he stumbled forward. Rolling his shoulder into the stock, Villa applied positive pressure to the butt plate for better recoil management.
Villa snapped off two more shots and waited a split second for the optic to settle. The colonel popped up and he saw him prone out on the road and begin engaging targets. Barnes fired so fast that the suppressed rifle sounded like it was on full auto as he tore into the ranks.
Villa deliberately aimed low as he fired, which allowed him to stay on target despite the muzzle rise. Movies depicted operators only shooting at the head, but Villa liked shooting at the pelvis. It was a great target because there were a lot of good organs and veins in the area, and guys tended to bleed out faster if hit low. It also provided a natural transition from one target to the next because it accounted for the increased muzzle rise created by the 7.62 round.
Barnes wished he had a frag, but since he didn’t he clicked his hand mike and said, “Moving.” He came up to a crouch, moved about five meters closer to the rebels, and fired off a burst before he ducked back off the road.
Boz snapped two shots from the hill, but he was close to the effective range of the rifle and the rounds landed short and ricocheted off the ground. “Keep them down. I’m moving,” he said across the radio.
Villa opened up with a burst as the rebels finally reacted to the ambush and began returning fire. Without night vision they couldn’t see who was shooting at them, so they just started spraying lead everywhere.
Barnes had wanted to avoid a firefight because he didn’t know who else was in the area. He saw the van fly through the checkpoint and pull off near the tower. Scottie jumped out of the driver’s seat with his long gun and sprinted toward the metal steps of the tower. Harden had his rifle out but wasn’t sure where his team was, so he didn’t engage.
