by Dale Brown
The Russians had hit the south side of Palmyra—an indication of where the Syrians and their allies were planning their assault. They had also bombed the airport—a first. But aside from putting two good-sized craters in the already unusable runway, the Russians had done little damage.
“Air Force says Syrian helicopters taking off from Damascus,” said Krista. “The attack’s coming soon.”
“You have coms with Christian yet?”
“Negative.”
“Keep trying. It’s time to get everyone the hell out of there, and us, too.”
65
Raqqa—about the same time
Ghadab had no patience for waiting, and despite the great respect he owed the Caliph, he could not keep himself from pacing back and forth inside the mosque. An aide had been assigned to him, ostensibly to see to his needs; the young man was more a guard assigned to monitor him. He was too skinny to do much more than that, though the radio he held in his hand would undoubtedly bring a phalanx of guards if Ghadab tried to do something so unworthy as to burst into the consultation chamber at the far end of the prayer hall.
All morning long, different delegations, advisers, commanders, messengers had come and gone. The hall was filled with them, and many others roamed outside, awaiting an audience. The crowd included a few old acquaintances, but to a man they had greeted Ghadab with barely a nod. It seemed word of the council’s displeasure had spread.
Unable to focus, his thoughts flew in different directions: plans for different attacks, the idiocy of the Americans, the coming apocalypse, Shadaa.
She kept intruding.
He remembered the weight of her body against him, the curve of her side, the way she felt beneath him . . .
He forced himself to think of his mission. Nearly everything was in place; the students had been infiltrated two years before and needed only to be activated. All that waited was settling on a target. Rome, Amsterdam, America again . . . Boston . . .
Ghadab walked the length of the hall, then back. His minder stayed at his elbow.
“Ask your radio how much time,” he said to the young man. “Find me when you have an answer. I will be outside.”
The young man’s brow knitted, but Ghadab didn’t wait to hear his protests.
The mosque was constructed on a stone platform; a gentle slope ran to the walls, which separated the holy grounds from the street. Men clustered in groups all across the yard. The only thing they all had in common were the AK-47s dangling haphazardly from their shoulder straps. There were young and old, traditionally dressed, combat clothes, and a few in Western-style suits.
A man in a black military uniform ran up from the street and went straight into the mosque. Ghadab thought nothing of it until another followed a minute later.
“What’s going on?” Ghadab asked his minder.
“You are on the schedule. Soon—”
“No. The messengers?” He gestured toward a third, just running up from the street.
A few feet away, one of the brothers was listening intently to his mobile. Ghadab turned from him and saw that several others were doing the same.
“Something is going on,” he told the minder. “Find out.”
Ghadab walked over to a man in a camo uniform whose phone was pressed to his ear. He was an older man, his beard mostly gray; he bloused his uniform pants at the top of his high, paratrooper-style boots.
“Commander,” said Ghadab, “what is going on?”
The man frowned at him.
“I am Ghadab min Allah.”
“I know who you are. The apostates have launched an attack on Palmyra.”
“Palmyra?”
Without another word, Ghadab started for the main gate. He needed to get back to the city.
“Brother, where are you going?” asked his minder, struggling to keep up as he cut through the crowd.
“Palmyra,” said Ghadab. “They are under attack.”
“You have business here.”
Ghadab halted abruptly. “Is the Caliph ready for me?”
“He has much business at the moment,” said the minder. “Later—”
“Tell the Caliph I will return when I am sure his city has been adequately defended,” said Ghadab, setting off for his jeep.
66
Palmyra—about the same time
Chelsea stared at the blood pooling around Shadaa’s body. She felt no guilt or remorse, nor elation or even relief.
She felt nothing, emotion a null set.
“You all right?” asked Johnny, gripping her biceps.
Johnny?
“Come on. The city’s under attack. We gotta go.”
Across the room, Turk ransacked the dresser.
“Time to go!” repeated Johnny.
Chelsea moved in a gray-tinted daze. It was like Boston, after the attack. She’d gone home and sat in the shower for an hour until her skin felt as it had when she was a child and spent the entire day in salt water.
Someone shouted below. Chelsea dropped to her knee in the middle of the doorway and took the pistol from her calf holster. A Daesh guard rounded the corner from the stairs in the hall. She fired, aiming for the face in case he wore a vest.
Her first bullet went through his mouth, the second above his nose.
Another man came up behind him. Something exploded in her ear.
Johnny was behind her, firing an MP5. The second guard went down.
“We are out of here, now!” shouted Johnny.
“I have coms,” said Turk, touching his ear. “The extract team is outside.”
A second wave of Russian planes approached the city, once more aiming at the southeastern quarters. The Daesh commanders realized this was a prelude to an assault and scrambled men into their positions.
A stream of vehicles passed the building as Chelsea, Johnny, and Turk ran to the hotel’s front entrance. Chelsea, head still foggy, ran between the two men, sure that if she stopped even for a moment she would fall into a hole she could not see.
“Here we go!” yelled Johnny, swerving into the street.
A pickup truck stopped a few yards away. Another veered close.
“In, in, in!”
Chelsea felt herself being lifted up into the truck bed.
“Mind the gun,” said Turk.
“Out of here, let’s go.” Johnny leaped in behind her. “Keep your head down,” he added, putting his hand on her head.
Her head bounced against the hard metal floor as the vehicle sped down the road. There was gunfire in the distance, the explosions, most muffled, a few loud enough to make her tremble.
She smelled blood, the girl’s blood.
They drove for ten minutes. Someone in the truck fired off a few rounds from an AK, but Chelsea didn’t look to see who it was. Only when they were outside of the city, heading back toward the staging point where they’d originally left the truck, did Johnny tell her it was OK to get up.
“The Syrians are launching an assault,” he told her. “Their artillery will be in range within the hour. They have troops behind that.”
“Ghadab,” said Chelsea. “He wasn’t in the hotel.”
“He has to be at the bunker,” said Johnny. “They’ll get him when they attack. They’re setting up now.”
“We should help them.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” said Johnny. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
67
Northern Iraq—twenty minutes later
From a long-term strategic view, the Syrian assault on Daesh at Palmyra was excellent news. Whether the government took the city or not, the attacks would drain terrorist resources, tax their infrastructure, and damage their ability to conduct operations outside of the area.
Johansen wasn’t particularly interested in the long view at the moment. The attacks were screwing up his operation. He’d lost about half of his surveillance net, and between that and the attacks, operating inside the city was no longer viable.
None
of this would matter if Ghadab was in the bunker. But that seemed unlikely. There were six men there, none of whom bore any resemblance.
Still, they’d hit it for the intel: maybe something inside would tell them where he was.
Then they’d wipe it out with Option B: an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle, or more specifically, the BLU-116 2,000-pound penetration bomb it carried. The so-called “bunker buster” would be guided into the bunker by a laser designator wielded by Johansen’s team. Nothing inside would survive the blast.
He could go to Option B now if he chose.
“Bunker team wants to know if they have the go-ahead to attack,” Krista told him.
“I want them to wait for the teams coming up from Palmyra,” he told her. “The bunker will be on alert.”
“Christian just radioed that they’re ten minutes away.”
“Good.” Johansen studied Krista. She looked extremely tired, worn by pain as well as fatigue.
Their only casualty so far.
He could just go with the bunker buster. Everyone would be safe.
But the mission would be a bust. No one would blame him—the Russians had screwed everything up—but he would know they’d failed.
They might fail yet. And lose people. What would he say at their funerals?
“Tell them they’re clear once the rest of the teams are in place for backup,” Johansen said. “Tell them Godspeed and we’re with them all the way.”
68
North of Palmyra—the same time
Chelsea’s head cleared by the time they joined the team at the bunker. She followed Johnny and the others as they reported to Rosen, who was in charge of the attack.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked him.
“Nothing. You’ve done a lot.” He stared at the side of her dress, covered with blood. “That yours?”
“No, I’m fine. I’ll work the bots.”
“It’s all right. Bobby’s on that. The bomb mechs go in after the TOW missiles.”
“You know they won’t see through the dust, right?”
“It’ll clear.”
“I thought of something quicker.”
Rosen frowned. “When?”
“Just now.”
“You gonna share?”
“I will. But I doubt anybody but me can fix it so it works.”
This time he shook his head. But instead of telling her to get back in the truck, he called over to Bobby.
“Get with Taylor on the second team,” he told him. “Chelsea’s gonna take over for you. No sense giving a genius only half a day’s work.”
They called the man with the TOW missile “Swift,” either as a tribute to his intelligence or a cut on his slow-running times. Whichever it was, he was just as impatient as anyone else.
“We going in today, or tomorrow?” he asked Johnny, who was standing next to him and monitoring the radio.
Johnny shrugged. He’d launched two Hums, and the Nighthawk was now overhead; they had plenty of visual on the bunker, and plenty of firepower, between their own weapons and the Destiny UAV.
“Sixty seconds,” said Johnny, relaying Rosen’s call. He glanced over his shoulder at Chelsea. Cross-legged on the ground between the rocks, she had a laptop on either leg.
She raised her thumb.
Nothing stops that girl.
Two mechs crept out from behind the nearby rocks. They were going in after the TOW missile to detect any booby traps. Peter, their multipurpose bot, sprung up on its legs nearby. He would go in ahead of the assault team, providing real-time video and audio.
“Do it!” said Rosen. “Showtime!”
On Chelsea’s monitor, it looked like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon with the Road Runner bursting through the painted hole on the canyon wall.
The first TOW missile hit the outer door. A second, fired from a position to Chelsea’s right, hit a few seconds later.
She ignored the temptation to look up from the screen. The mechs, held back to escape the blast, scurried toward the bunker entrance.
“Did we make it?” asked Johnny.
“Stand by.” Chelsea moved her finger on the control board, clicking the button that allowed her to speak directly to Peter. “Move into position.”
Chelsea had reprogrammed the sensor array Peter ordinarily used to check the depth of ravines or other depressions before trying to cross, turning it into a kind of forward radar.
It wasn’t perfect, but it told her what she needed to know.
“The inside barrier is still intact,” said Chelsea. “We need another hit.”
The missile took off a fraction of a second later, bursting from the launcher with the sound of a very large can of shaken soda being opened. This was followed by a noise resembling the ignition of a thousand bottle rockets. The winglets extended and the rocket’s main engines flared.
Then there was the explosion, barely muffled by the surrounding rock.
“We’re through!” said Chelsea as Peter’s distance marker jumped.
“People?” asked Rosen.
“Not that I see.”
“Gas the place,” said the commander, ordering the launch of CS grenades.
Chelsea switched her command line to the mechs, sending them in to check for explosives. Neither of them could see through the smoke, so she had them crawl against the walls. The sniffer didn’t need to see to detect intact explosives.
They had expected the soldiers to come out of the entrance and put up a fight, but so far that hadn’t happened. Nor had they discovered a back door—the Nightbird had a clear view of the ground for several miles, and the computer would alert her if it detected a human heat signature suddenly popping up.
“OK, Peter, it’s all you,” said Chelsea, tapping the button on the bot’s control screen. “Go find out what’s happening inside.”
The little bot walked into the billowing smoke. One of its arms had been replaced with a stun gun; two of the others had CS gas canisters. Two more bomb-disposal mechs followed. These had been modified to carry CS gas in large, tool-case-sized boxes; if Peter encountered any resistance, they would move forward and detonate the gas.
Peter was the one making the decision because they couldn’t count on communicating with it once it went inside the bunker; a pair of L turns formed a baffle that could hinder full communication. To get around this, Chelsea had prepared their last bomb mech to act as a relay station. She sent it off now, aiming to park itself at the end of the first turn.
Peter’s video feed was all smoke. Something loomed in the middle.
A man. He quickly fell to the ground; Peter had downed him with a zap of his Taser.
“One down. Not Ghadab,” said Chelsea, studying a freeze-frame of the terrorist.
“Just for your information we have a new flight of Russian jets inbound,” said Krista over the radio. “It’s flying a more northern vector than the others.”
“Is it targeting the bunker?” asked Chelsea.
“No way of knowing. But it is flying in your general direction.”
“We’re going in,” said Rosen.
“Give the bot a chance,” replied Chelsea. “The gas still has to clear through their ventilation system.”
“No time. Set off whatever CS you’ve got left.”
Chelsea picked up the control unit for Peter and hit the preset to take over manual control.
The unit didn’t acknowledge. Instead, a message popped up on the screen:
Out of control range
“Shit.” Chelsea hit the key again. “If I’m close enough for video I should be close enough—”
The video screen blanked. The unit was out of range for all communications, its transmissions blocked by the zigzag of the bunker layout and the thick walls. It was completely on its own.
Johnny pulled the helmet down over his ears, then snapped the collar in place so that he would be hermetically sealed from the gas-filled interior of the Daesh bunker. His breathing was loud in his ears, nearly dr
owning out the radio.
“I’m out of communication with Peter,” said Chelsea, broadcasting to the entire team. “We won’t have a link until I can get the com mech inside. It’ll take another minute at least.”
Johnny switched on the display in the lower-right corner, which he’d preset to get the feed from Peter. It was blank.
“Be careful,” she added.
Her voice wobbled, her worry exposed.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good,” said Johnny, rushing to join the others.
Shorty, their best door buster, was in the lead, followed by Spider. Turk, now the senior man on the team, had been slotted in as the third man in the assault team. Johnny was right behind him. Christian was tail gunner on Team One, designated to stay at the entrance. They had another team in reserve, not only to back them up but also to run down “squirters” if there turned out to be a rear entrance they hadn’t detected.
They ran from the hill toward the entrance, passing the small bomb mech that was to enter as a com link.
“Do it, Shorty,” said Turk as they reached the entrance.
Johnny took a deep breath and held it as he plunged inside. There was a flash of light, then an explosive glow in the fog accompanied by a boom—Shorty had passed through the double L and tossed a flash-bang grenade down the long corridor that ran through the main part of the enemy bunker.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Everyone was yelling; everyone was saying the same thing:
Go! Go! Go!
Johnny moved to cover the hall as the assaulter in front of him entered the room nearest the entrance. Even with the enhanced optics embedded in the helmet, it was difficult to see because of the gas and dust in the hallway. He switched to infrared, which was little better.
Someone started firing a gun.
