by Jack Murphy
“Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “This is your lucky day, kid.”
Twenty Two
Liora turned her cell phone over in her hand, wringing it in her pants pocket.
For the first time, she cursed her high scores on placement exams, the ones that earned her a potentially career making opportunity, working out of the nondescript building just outside Tel Aviv. She had looked forward to conscription, but if she got caught now, well, she knew Shin Bet would make sure she never saw the light of day.
Ignoring inappropriate glances from her male co-worker, she excused herself to use the restroom as she set her headset down and got up from behind her station. She didn't know what he was looking at with all of her buried under her ill-fitting olive drab uniform.
Whatever.
With all the action popping off tonight, she had to hurry before the brass started showing up.
Unit 8200 was the Israeli answer to signals intelligence analysis. They took the information gathered by the Urim signals unit in the Negev Desert and rendered the intercepted data into actionable intelligence before delivering the intel packets to the Israeli Defense Forces and Mossad.
As a girl she had read lots of science fiction, quickly growing bored with school work, but even she was shocked by some of the technology she'd been exposed to since she started working at the unit. They tracked everything going through the air in four continents, not to mention underwater, Mossad units having installed taps on underwater communications cables that linked the Middle East to Europe by way of Sicily.
They monitored Inmarsat, commercial satellite communications, used direction finding stations to track maritime shipping, and listened in to diplomatic traffic between embassies. That wasn't even including mobile SIGINT platforms that flew orbits over the Palestinian territories day and night.
Making sure the coast was clear, she ducked into the female restroom and locked herself in a stall. Officially the building was a Faraday cage that stifled civilian cellular signals. Realistically, a girl with an IQ well into the genius range finds ways to piggyback on existing military systems.
Flipping open her cell phone, she made the call.
The Iridium phone rang again and again amidst the chaos of the field hospital.
A stainless steel bowl filled with bloody medical instruments fell to the ground with a crash while patients wailed in pain.
Nick muttered something under his breath in frustration.
He'd lost two patients.
The filled body bags lining one of the building's walls didn't let him forget that fact.
He didn't know the mercenaries personally, but like a sniper missing a thousand meter shot, it was a blow to his professional ego. The former Special Forces operator turned surgeon wasn't used to losing. Not a life, not a drag race, not a video game, not anything.
The Kazakh on his surgery table had stepped on a landmine, a toe-popper, with just enough sauce in it to take off his foot up to the distal tibia and strip away a good portion of the soft tissue around his lower leg. Thankfully, his teammates had been well trained and immediately applied a tourniquet to their injured buddy's leg, or he would have bled out in under a minute.
Nick treated the casualty for shock, administered antibiotics, and was now putting a nerve block around several key nerve clusters in the limb to ease the pain. In the past, such a procedure would only be conducted in the sterile medical setting of a hospital. Combat had a way of shifting priorities.
Using a large gauge syringe, Nick went into what was left of the amputated limb and injected a combination of lidocaine and epinephrine. The bulbous sack of painkillers would rest against the nerve endings, slowly diffusing across them to relieve the casualty's agony until he was received in a proper facility.
The injured mercenary looked a lot better than when he had arrived at the field hospital but the men waiting in triage didn't sound so hot.
“Let's get this guy moved,” Nick stated gruffly.
The Kazakhs assigned to his detail moved in and transported the casualty off the gurney to make room for the next guy who had been waiting on deck, another kid, this one with a serious looking stomach wound.
Stripping off his surgical gloves, Nick found a towel and wiped the sweat off his brow. If the rest of the battalion got chewed up as bad as Charlie Company he was in for a long night. Bringing over a sterile set of medical tools, Andy was still on assist. Setting them down, he bent over to clean up the tools that had been dropped to the floor.
Nick immediately set to work on the gutshot mercenary as the detailed men brought him over and set him on the table.
Setting the blood and gore-covered tools to the side, Andy thought he could hear something above the racket and went looking for its source. He found the phone sitting on top of a tan colored assault pack. It was the Charlie Company commander's satellite phone.
The new CO and another guy with a sniper rifle slung over his shoulder were talking to each other in hushed tones in the corner of the building.
“Hey,” Andy said, getting their attention. “Someone's trying to call.”
The balding commander walked over and took the phone from him.
“Thanks,” he said, repositioning the phone's antenna.
His green camouflage uniform was splattered with bits of bone and specks of blood. He stank of cordite and death.
“Hello,” Adam said, taking the call.
As the voice on the other end spoke, his eyes grew wider.
Twenty Three
Panghsang became visible as the mercenaries neared the Chinese border, light puncturing through the darkness, providing the only respite from the jungle they had seen in hours. The medium-sized town sat on a fishhook-shaped piece of land that jutted into China, creating a type of unadministered autonomous zone on the Burmese side of the Shweli River. The UWSA used Panghsang as their center of operations. The Chinese took their cut of the profits and allowed the outlaw town to service the vices of visiting Chinese citizens.
Methamphetamine, gambling, and transvestites were all on the menu, alongside a variety of endangered species in a handful of restaurants. Everything was for public consumption, and the public was plenty hungry.
For the moment it was peaceful. The sounds of insects could be heard above the low rumble of the convoy's engines.
The Iveco trucks rolled through the darkness until the dirt road leveled out. It was the only road that serviced the town from the Burmese side. Passing between jungle foliage and the muddy river, the mercenaries drove into the town, encountering no resistance. The road forked at the first main intersection.
“Phase line red, phase line red,” Deckard announced over the radio.
The final phase line was a control measure established during mission planning, a signal that launched the three platoons to their individual targets.
Third Platoon broke off from the rest of the convoy, heading towards the narrow bridge that connected Burma and China, while the other two platoons split up and continued to their objectives deeper inside Panghsang.
With the trucks reducing speed to a slow roll, two snipers jumped off the back of one of Second Platoon's assault vehicles and disappeared into the night. Driving down darkened streets, Alpha Company continued to weave its way through the confusingly chaotic town.
Deckard rode up front with First Platoon. According to the target packet Samruk had received, Peng divided his time between the casino and the local whorehouse. He was hoping to catch the UWSA leader unaware, but had Third Platoon sealing off the bridge just to make sure he didn't escape. Besides that, bridges worked both ways, and he wasn't looking to square off with The People's Army anytime soon.
“Left turn, left turn onto objective road,” he transmitted over the net.
The driver turned at the corner, taking them onto the target street. A few blocks down, they could see the flourescent lights and a crowd gathered outside one of the buildings.
“That's the casino,” Deckard to
ld the driver. “Hit it!”
The driver stepped on the gas, gunning it down the street. The other four assault trucks accelerated to keep up with the lead vehicle as they rolled right up to the front door. As rehearsed, his vehicle pulled to the far corner of the building and stopped, each vehicle taking a different corner and isolating the building.
No one came on or off the objective without their say-so.
Mercenaries hopped off the trucks, forming up into assault teams as they rushed the door.
That was when the first gunshot echoed through Panghsang.
Nikita panted, trying to catch his breath while looking back and forth for a way up. Having run several blocks down the street after getting dropped off, they needed to find a good vantage point. Time was running out.
“This way,” the sniper said, slinging his rifle diagonally over his back, barrel up to prevent damage to the crown.
With Askar watching the streets, Nikita climbed up the cross members of a rectangular wrought iron telephone pole, quickly making his way up. There was always the chance of electrocution with the rat's nest of wires that served as the town's power grid, but the thought barely brushed across the surface of his mind. Reaching the top, he stepped off onto the adjacent rooftop, two stories high.
Taking a knee, Nikita provided security, watching down the road until Askar scrambled up the telephone pole and joined him. Helping his teammate over the lip of the roof, they jogged together to the opposite side.
Their primary target was impossible to miss. The cellular phone tower, or base station transceiver, as Piet had lectured, was the tallest freestanding structure in Panghsang. Extending the bipod legs on their SIG Blaser Tactical Two rifles, they gained target acquisition, sighting in on the transceivers mounted along the outside of the tower.
The earbud connection to his radio crackled in Nikita's ear.
“-urn left, this is the objective road.”
The Kazakh exhaled, letting it out and taking calm, deliberate breaths. Long hours behind a precision weapon had taught him that a bolt action rifle nearly shot itself. All he needed to do was not screw up.
“Seven hundred meters,” he whispered, as not to disturb the rifle while his cheek rested on the stock.
“Roger,” Askar confirmed.
He was already dialed in to five hundred meters on his scope, so that if he had to make a quick shot, he could improvise some hasty range estimation and offset his sights, aiming high or low. Now he came up seven clicks on the scope's bullet drop compensator for a more precise adjustment.
“Is that the right building?” It was Second Platoon coming over the radio on the other side of town.
“No, it's the next block down,” someone responded with a halting German accent.
“Half value winds-” Nikita observed the leaves on the trees downrange moving ever so slightly.
The wind would have very little effect on the .300 Winchester Magnum round as it flew on a nearly flat trajectory to its target. The bullet was so powerful that it was advertised as having the same amount of kinetic force when it hit a target a thousand meters away as a .357 magnum did if you stuck it in a bad guy's chest and pulled the trigger.
“That's the casino,” their commander said over the net. “Hit it.”
“Let's do this,” Nikita announced, pulling the butt stock deeper into the pocket of his shoulder. There were two rows of long rectangular transceivers on the top of the cell tower. Nikita aimed for the one on the upper left while Askar shot for the lower right.
Both fired simultaneously, working the rifle bolts straight to the rear after the first shot. The SIG's innovative design did not require the shooter to rotate the bolt in any fashion but merely pull and then push it back forward to chamber the next round, making for much faster combat reloads.
With his eye never leaving the scope, he observed the .300 winmag round blast the transceiver into several pieces, Askar's shot having the same effect. Rapidly firing, the two man team worked across the cell tower until each transceiver had been disabled.
With the primary task completed, the snipers moved to opposite corners of the building.
The Universal Night Sight attached in front of the scope illuminated the town in a creepy green color. It could have been designed to show black and white, but the human eye could detect more detail with the green tint. Nikita scanned the rooftops, identifying the casino three hundred meters away. Askar was on the other side, watching Second Platoon's objective.
Suddenly, shadows appeared on the roof, running towards the edge to ambush the convoy on the streets below.
It was time to deny the enemy the high ground.
Deckard pointed to the front door, his other hand gripping his rifle, directing his men into the casino.
“Go!”
The assault squads pushed through screaming civilians and made entry through the double doors, the sounds of slot machines emanating from within.
A gunshot cracked in the darkness.
Deckard looked up just in time to lunge out of the way.
The would-be trigger man went face first into the pavement, his teeth skipping across the street and bouncing off Deckard's booted foot. Edging backwards he looked up, the neon lights on the building preventing him from seeing into the darkness above.
Spraying the lip of the roof with a hasty burst of fire, he continued backing towards the protection of one of the assault trucks, his shots taking out segments of the neon bulbs. Another shot sounded, another body collapsed forward, this one down with arms hanging limply over the edge of the roof. His H&K G3 rifle smashed through another neon sign on its way down before landing on the sidewalk amid a shower of orange sparks.
The SIGs were a good choice after all, Deckard reflected.
Running back across the street, he pushed through the door and into another gunfight.
The casino floor opened up into rows of electronic gambling machines and craps tables, civilians hugging the floor while bullets were exchanged back and forth. The Kazakh mercenaries strong walled the huge interior space, lining up on the nearest wall and firing deeper into the room. With the gamblers wisely removing themselves from the line of fire, the casino's bouncers went down in a fusillade of fire.
Scanning his sector alongside his men, Deckard shifted his rifle barrel as a side door was thrown open and the security team came pouring out. One mercenary brought down the last man through the door by a snapshot, the others taking cover wherever they could.
First Platoon did the same, ducking behind chirping pachinko machines. Bullets cut in every direction, shattering glass mirrors, slot machines, and tearing apart the card tables. One of the Kazakhs dropped, taken down by a spray of autofire. The man next to him moved in front to provide cover fire for his comrade, when he was hit as well.
Deckard spotted one of the UWSA men peering from behind the roulette table, his AK barrel sweeping towards another of his mercenaries. Placing the red dot in his reflex sight on the shooter's forehead, Deckard squeezed the AK-103's trigger, putting a bullet between his eyes.
Finally, a squad leader hurled a flash-bang across the room. Thankfully, he was situationally aware enough to realize that using a fragmentation grenade would have killed the casino's patrons in the process. The stun grenade went off, temporarily blinding the nearby security guards. Another two shooters jumped out from behind slot machines, having avoided the stun effect, when the flash-bang suddenly detonated a second time, then a third and fourth, wrecking both hearing and sight.
The nine-banger continued to do its job, the Kazakhs gaining the upper hand for precious few seconds. A few of the gunmen staggered to their feet, shocked into incoherence. One ran, another began firing wildly.
The Kazakhs had distance from the flash-bang and forewarning on their side, leaving them able to take a more measured response. Long hours of training settled nerves, muscle memory executing the rest, just like hundreds of drills out on the range. The mercenaries carefully aimed and fired, and
the nearest two gunmen fell, sprawled on the floor with lifeless eyes. Another stood next to the banger as it continued go off again and again, completely dazed until someone shot him in the chest.
The panicked shooter held down the trigger on his AK-47, sweeping the entire parlor with gunfire. A line of auto fire crept across the wall, tearing through one of the Kazakhs before the crazed man's magazine went dry. Deckard leveled his own rifle on target, double-tapping him in the face.
Shaking like a French soldier, the last security man bailed out the backdoor, 7.62 rounds chasing him on the way out but failing to land on target. As the door swung shut on its springs, they heard the rattle of machine gun fire out on the street. One of the assault trucks isolating the casino had taken care of the retreating gunman.
“Stairs, right!” Deckard said, attempting to get things moving again.
First and Second Squad moved towards the staircase that led up to the offices while Third Squad secured the casino floor, ushering civilians out both exits. The platoon medic moved in to treat casualties.
Jumping in the stack, Deckard followed the assaulters up to the second floor. First Squad was just reaching the top when a grenade flew through the air and bounced off the wall next to him.
Kurt Jager stepped over a body, triggering a burst into a stocky guard brandishing a pistol.
Disco strobes flashed everywhere, Canto-pop blasting over a stereo system, the whorehouse rapidly being taken down by the numbers as it was flooded with assaulters.
The scant intelligence Samruk had received with the Operations Order had placed Peng in one of two locations within Panghsang's exotic nightlife. The casino or the whorehouse; it was a toss-up, so they crashed both parties at the same time.
Killing Peng was instrumental to the dismantling of the UWSA. Of Chinese origin, not a whole lot was known about the elusive figurehead of Burma's largest narco-militia. No known family, didn't carry a cellular phone, paranoid, and with a large entourage of bodyguards, but no one seemed to know much more about the Golden Triangle's most prolific narcotics producer.
