DeLuca spent the time breathing slowly, visualizing what he was going to need to do, resting his eyes and breathing, slowly, quieting his heart.
He sat up.
When he dialed Bonnie’s number on his sat phone, he got a busy signal.
It was time to go.
He dialed one more time.
Busy.
It was time to go.
Chapter Fifteen
TF-21 ARRIVED AT THE TOC AT THE SAME TIME as DeLuca, racing to a dramatic stop in a pair of black SUVs with tinted windows. They looked more like a rock and roll band than a military unit, six men in all, led by Preacher Johnson, the only clean-shaven one in the group, the others sporting beards ranging in length from Ulysses S. Grant to ZZ Top. A Humvee arrived at the same time from the front gate, disgorging a massive figure dressed head to toe in black sweat pants and sweatshirt. For all the liabilities Goliath posed as an untrained amateur, it had been determined that it was more important to curry favor with Imam Fuaad Sadreddin than it was to worry about what could happen to Goliath—he could take his chances along with the rest of them.
DeLuca introduced Goliath as his translator.
Preacher Johnson stood in front of a six-foot-square plasma screen in the briefing room. The C-130’s flight crew sat to one side, a second flight crew opposite them whom DeLuca took to be the extraction team. DeLuca was surprised, and more than a little pleased, to see Scott there, accompanying his boss from Image Analysis, a captain whom DeLuca knew only as Jefferson.
“I just wanted to tag along,” Scott said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” DeLuca told his son.
Johnson laid out the basics. The mountain stronghold was in a former monastery with walls too thick to breach with explosives at close quarters. Elevation, 3,550 feet, ground temperature due to be somewhere around fifty degrees. In addition to the main building, there was a wing of what looked to be living quarters and some kind of barn or large shed where they presumed vehicles were stored. Close surveillance by satellites and UAVs over the previous twenty-four hours suggested the building was occupied by approximately ten men. There was a garbage dump outside the back door to the main building, suggesting that door led to a kitchen area—a pair of black bears had been observed rummaging in the garbage.
“So anybody sees any black bears, tell Goliath here and he can pick ’em up and throw ’em in the bushes,” Johnson said. “Now, no offense to all present, but for a number of reasons, we don’t use our names when we go on missions. I will introduce my men only as Sergeants Blue, Red, Purple, Yellow, and Pink. Anybody who wants to make a joke about Sergeant Pink, you may make it now.”
No one spoke.
“My men will have chemlights on the backs of their Kevlars until we land, glowing in their designated colors, so you will know who’s who in the air. The rest of you will wear the standard green. Everybody’s got GPS transponders, too.” Johnson went from man to man, handing out two-foot lengths of plastic tubing, chemlights like the kind little kids sported at a Fourth of July fireworks displays. “These light up in the infrared spectrum, visible only to someone wearing night vision goggles. That’s to keep us from shooting each other once we’re on the ground, because the enemy won’t have these. You wear them around your neck. The navigator is the first man in and he’ll paint the LZ with infrared, but remember to disengage your NVGs before you flare because you’re not going to get any depth perception if you try to land with them on. The LZ is a field north of the monastery. As of two weeks ago, they were grazing sheep there.”
“Kept for romantic purposes, I’m guessing,” Sergeant Blue said, interrupting. The others laughed. Somebody made a bleating sound.
“Anyway,” Johnson continued, “they were grazing sheep, so it’s unlikely it’s mined. Chances are much better that some motherfucker is going to be shooting us out of the sky. Pink is navigator. Blue is two in the stack, Yellow is three. You pull at 2,000 feet. Sergeants DeLuca, Sykes, and Mr. . . .”
“Bakub,” Goliath said.
“DeLuca, Sykes, Bakub, and the rest of us pull at three thousand, and because we have some newcomers, I’m going to assign escorts to make sure you get on the ground in one piece. Red is with Sykes, Purple is with Man Mountain Mike, and I’ll take Sergeant DeLuca down. We are your personal saviors, so pay attention to us. We’re going to need separation when we pull, but we’ll help you maintain your intervals. Sergeant DeLuca and I are co-NCOICs on this, by the way. Now there’s a slight complication. We have a new moon, which is in our favor, and we’re going to be jumping into a cloud deck, so we’re going to have all the darkness we could hope for. However, that cloud deck is right about 13,000 feet . . .”
“Question,” DeLuca said. “Is that 13,000 above sea level, or 13,000 above the 3,500 feet we’re landing at?”
“That’s sea level,” Preacher Johnson said. “Excellent question. Your altimeters are calibrated to zero out at sea level. The LZ is 3,500 feet so you’re going to pull at 6,500. Don’t wait until your altimeter says 3,000 or you’re going to frap. We don’t have Combat Control on this to give us the local barometrics so we’re not recalibrating. The tricky part tonight is going to be that your altimeters only go up to 13,000 feet, and because of the new Soviet triple-A, we’re going to be jumping from 39,000 feet. With luck, they’ll think we’re just a commercial passenger jet at that altitude. Triple-A can’t shoot down anything higher than 35,000 feet. However, what that means is that your altimeters are going to circle their orbits three times. Three. We’re starting at 39,000 feet, so you’re going to zero out at 26,000 feet, and then the needle keeps going, so you’ll zero out again at 13,000 feet, at which point your altimeter is going to be counting down to zero, and from above, a cloud deck looks just like the earth, so every bone is your body and every cell in your brain is going to be telling you you’re about to frap. If you pull early, there’s no telling where you’re going to end up. You’ll be wearing a full Gore-Tex jumpsuit and a Mister Puffy, but you’re still going to get wet. The temperature at 39,000 is going to be somewhere between fifty and sixty below zero, with the wind chill pushing that closer to eighty below, so be glad you’re staying dry until then. My guys, no funny stuff inside the clouds . . .”
“How thick are the clouds?” Dan asked.
“Hard to say,” Johnson said. “We think somewhere between 500 and 1,000 feet, but if conditions change, they might extend all the way to the ground.”
“What happens if they do?” DeLuca asked.
“You’re going to have to pull at 6,500, whether you’re in the clouds or not,” Johnson said. “The odds are, you’ll be clear by then, but we won’t know until we go. Flying your chutes inside of cloud cover is going to be . . . interesting. We train to land using GPS systems only, but if we lose sight of you in the clouds, you’re on your own, at least until you hit the ground and we hook up again. Watch your altimeters, slow down as much as you can when they hit 3,600, keep your knees bent and look for dirt. You will land eventually. That’s rule number one of parachuting—you must land on the ground the same number of times as you jump out of an airplane. Now I’m going to turn the podium over to Sergeant DeLuca and have him tell you all what it is we’re looking for.”
DeLuca felt slightly weak in the knees, thinking about what Johnson had just said. He drew a deep breath.
“What we want,” he began, “is to take everybody we find in for questioning. The best information we have is that the monastery is where we’re going to find a man named Mohammed Al-Tariq, the former head of Saddam’s secret police. His son will be there as well. Al-Tariq was responsible for using BW and CW during the Anfal campaign that followed the Iran-Iraq War. We believe he may have built his own private laboratory at a place called Al Manal, disguised as something called the Daura Foot and Mouth Disease facility. I could speculate on what we think he produced there, and the intel is good, but nothing’s confirmed yet, so I’m going to hold off. It doesn’t matter—he’s got
something nasty, and he’s planning to bring it.”
“Excuse me,” Sergeant Red said, “but it matters a whole fucking lot if we’re jumping into it. We’ve got testing equipment and chem suits if we need ’em, but nobody said we were jumping into BW.”
“What up, dawg—you’ve had your rabies shots,” Sergeant Yellow said.
“We’re not dealing with BW,” DeLuca said. “Not here, anyway. As far as we can tell, it left Iraq on trucks when the bombing started and got into Syria somehow and got put on ships in Lebanon. The shipments are relevant only because of what it means to our mission. If the WMD are deployed and dispersed, then there has to be some sort of central command and control. The organization that’s being put together to deliver the attack is something called Alf Wajeh, or the Thousand Faces of Allah. I doubt they have a thousand agents in the field—we all know how these terrorist organizations inflate their own numbers to make themselves scarier. Our operating theory is that this network is going to be centralized and controlled by Al-Tariq, the same way that Al Qaeda was or is centralized in Bin Laden. The monastery could be the headquarters, so we’re looking for communications equipment, computers, laptops, Palm Pilots, or PDAs, anything that might be used to store the information needed to coordinate a large network or to facilitate communications.”
“First thing we take out are the roof dishes,” Johnson said. “The area is too remote for land lines, but they’ve got all sorts of stuff on the roof, hidden under tarps, so we haven’t seen them until now, but they’re there.”
“What we don’t want,” DeLuca continued, “is for the alarm to sound and for somebody inside to send the go-signal to deploy the WMD. That’s why we can’t fly in a thousand guys and blast the crap out of everything, because that would give them time, and it would also destroy the information we need.”
“We have hunter-killer UAVs in the air, once the shit hits the fan, but the mission is to get in before they throw down,” Johnson said. “And then we shoot the pistols from their hands just like the Cisco Kid. Sergeant DeLuca is right about taking prisoners if possible, but the ROE is shoot to kill. Use your discretion.”
“They don’t know we’re coming,” DeLuca concluded, “but they probably know we’re aware of them.”
“That why they put a bounty on your ass?” Sergeant Pink asked.
DeLuca shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “But if anybody here needs a quick fifteen thousand, you’d be much smarter taking out a home equity loan, with the interest rates they’re offering these days.”
“Twenty-five,” Sergeant Blue said. “It’s gone up.”
Sergeant Pink whistled.
“That’s a new bass boat, where I come from.”
“That’s as much as your sister could make in a year, blowing sailors, where you come from,” Sergeant Purple told him.
Scott walked his father to the plane, apologizing and explaining that he had to catch a ride back to his unit with Captain Jefferson. He wanted a moment to speak with his father in private.
“So, Pops,” Scott said, eyeballing the C-130 that waited for them on the tarmac, dark save for a faint glow from the green and blue lights of the cockpit control panels, the only colors that wouldn’t wash out the night vision goggles worn by the pilots. “You remember that time when I was going to Boy Scout camp, when I was twelve, and I was all freaked out about bears, so you gave me Grandpa’s World War II medal for bravery and told me it would give me courage? You said it was magic.”
“I remember that,” DeLuca said.
“Well, I know how much you looked up to Grandpa, even though you didn’t always see eye to eye,” Scott said, taking from his neck a thin gold chain and on it, a hexagonal brass medallion with a war eagle in the middle. “So I thought I’d loan it to you. You can give it back to me the next time I see you.”
DeLuca held the medallion in the palm of his hand and looked at it for a moment, then put his head through the chain and tucked the medal inside his T-shirt, next to his P-38.
“Thanks,” he said.
Suiting up for the mission made him feel like he was preparing for a moon landing. They dressed out of the back of one of the SUVs, changing into what Sergeant Blue told him was an ECW or Extreme Cold Weather system. The first layer was expedition-weight polypropylene long underwear, complete with a fleece balaclava over his head; over that, woodlands green camo pants and black fleece zip-up turtleneck top, and over that, the “Mister Puffy suit,” comprising a down-filled jacket and down-filled overalls. The outer layer was a Gore-Tex jumpsuit, loose-fitting on everyone except Goliath (who could barely squeeze into the largest set of clothing Preacher Johnson could find), completed by insulated Gore-Tex boots, polar-fleece mittens and Gore-Tex mitten shells. Over their faces, they wore MBU-12/P pressure demand oxygen masks, a soft rubber faceplate bonded to a hard plastic shell with a built-in microphone for radio communication, and over that, an insulated jump helmet with built-in speakers. The masks were connected to 106-cubic-inch portable bailout oxygen bottles, carried in a pouch and worn on the left side, the right side reserved for weapons.
As for weapons, DeLuca wasn’t sure he’d ever seen, in all his years in the military, as small a group carrying so much armament. Apparently the men of TF-21 were free to choose whatever weapons they wanted to carry, regardless of nation of origin. Sergeant Blue favored a pair of AK-47s, arguing that if he ever ran out of ammunition, most of the time he’d be able to borrow more from the enemy. Pink bore an Italian Beretta AR-70, a Mac5 machine pistol, and an old-fashioned sawed-off Italian shotgun. Red had an Austrian Steyr AUG and an M-12. Yellow favored a brace of Striker 12 Street Sweepers capable of firing a dozen 12-gauge shotgun shells in as many seconds. Purple wore a set of Tec-9s and an Israeli Galil that had been fitted with a grenade launcher. Preacher Johnson carried a Street Sweeper, a Colt AR-15, an M-10, and a Tec-9, making DeLuca feel positively naked with his Beretta and his Smith and Wesson. He was given his choice and asked to select from an array of weapons, choosing an M-12 for its compact size and because he’d fired one before. Dan chose an army-issue Colt AR-70. Goliath picked up a Kalashnikov and field-stripped it in five seconds, putting it back together again and grabbing a handful of clips like he was grabbing French fries at McDonald’s. In addition to assault rifles, Sergeants Pink, Blue, and Yellow were filling packs with C4 plastic explosives, 80mm backpack mortars, silencers, claymores, and MREs, the packs to be worn between their legs and lowered to the ground on tethers just before landing.
Sergeant Blue handed DeLuca a roll of duct tape and instructed him to tape over the barrel and sights of his weapons. “In case you get dirt in ’em when you land,” he explained. “Or if they get tangled in your lines. Tape the triggers, too, so you don’t accidentally blow your leg off. Makes it much harder to land.”
The C-130 took off at about 0100 hours. They sat in metal seats, facing each other along opposite sides of the fuselage, the plane empty and cavernous, except for them, buckled in with five-point harnesses, their faceplates attached to the central oxygen console, from which they’d prebreathed pure oxygen in advance of takeoff. They’d continue to breathe pure oxygen until they reached the target, at which point they’d switch over to their portable systems, which contained about thirty minutes of oxygen, more than enough to get them safely on the ground. Because the cabin wasn’t pressurized, DeLuca felt his ears repeatedly pop and unpop as they flew. The only light was dim and red. Occasionally a man would flip his NVGs down to test the batteries and settings. Sergeant Yellow, who seemed to be the coolest cucumber among the bunch, kicked his head back and slept, while Preacher Johnson next to him used his NVGs to read a book. When DeLuca flipped his goggles down to see what book it was, he saw that it was a Bible.
No one spoke, each man left to his own thoughts.
When they got a signal that they were thirty minutes from target, DeLuca heard Johnson’s voice in his intercom.
“Let us pray,” Johnson said, speaking slowly an
d calmly. “Dear Lord, we want to start by acknowledging the separation of church and state, and this being a U.S. military mission, please consider this prayer as entirely unofficial and of a personal nature. We are mindful, as well, of your commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but see ourselves as your agents executing the enforcement of that commandment, for we are tasked tonight to stop a bunch of motherfuckers who would certainly kill a whole lot of innocent people if they could, and thus we ask your forgiveness and hope that you might grant us the wisdom and courage to carry out our mission and kill these motherfuckers before they kill us, thy will be done. And lest anybody think this is some bullshit my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God holy crusade sort of nonsense, we recognize that you and Allah probably play handball together every day and that Jesus and Mohammad are like the Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig combo on your heavenly team, and that it’s not our place to decide who’s got you on whose side and who doesn’t, because we know you hate this whole fucking mess as much as we do. If you can, please give Mr. David and myself, we of a slightly advanced age, the fortitude to show these flatbellies how it’s done. Grant our leaders the wisdom and the courage to know what’s right, and lead us safely back home to our loved ones, who clearly don’t deserve the shit they have to take from us or the worries we put them through. And if one of us should fall tonight, please let him into Heaven, where we promise we’ll do a better job than we’ve done here, because these are good men, Lord, they’re good men in a bad place, doing a job that has to be done, so that other people can live their lives in peace, or in service to you, if that’s what they want to do, because we know that the death that comes to us tonight means the end of life to some but the beginnings of better lives to others. So make us quick. Make us strong. Make us smart. Make us brave. Make us tough. Make us cruel, and let us all come home again together. Amen.”
“Amen,” DeLuca said.
Team Red Page 24
