by Mark Greaney
As soon as he was gone, Court crawled across the floor over to the window that faced to the south. He sat with his back to the concrete eastern wall and looked back into the open room. He took one of the CDs from his pocket and held the shiny “down” side out the southern window, half pointing it towards the setting sun to the west. Turning around and looking through the hole in the middle as a sight now, he angled the disc towards the mountains to the south and moved it back and forth.
He was careful to keep his head and body behind the wall next to the window, and also careful to keep his ears tuned to sounds around the apartment. If he was signaling the enemy with his head out in the open, a sniper hiding on the desert floor would have a prime shot at him. And if he was caught signaling the enemy by the KWA men, Van Wyk would shoot him dead right here without question.
For a full minute and a half he flashed the hills, broadcasting his location to any possible enemy there, making it look like the lens of a pair of binoculars or a sniper scope had gotten caught in the setting sun.
He heard footsteps right outside the room, so he dropped the CD and brought his hand back inside the window. The shiny disc fell to the street below.
Court’s elbow was still on the window ledge when Anders reentered.
He looked at Court there in the corner. “You moved.”
“I can see both sectors from here.”
“Yeah, well you are going to get your arm shot off if you keep it there.”
Court brought his arm in, then crawled back over to his side and began looking once again to the east.
His idea had been for enemy fighters to begin harassing the building, with either snipers or mortars, just enough for the decision to be made for the KWA men to withdraw from the area before dark.
He didn’t think his simple action was going to prevent the Desert Hawks Brigade attack of the town to the east outright, but he hoped it would at least get the Hawks to actually engage with soldiers on the other side of the fight, be they FSA or Daesh or al Jabhat or SDF, instead of simply eradicating civilians of the neighboring town.
And he also hoped some sort of an attack might give him the opportunity to slip away, at least long enough to find a working cell phone. It occurred to him this was like yesterday’s bar fight, with stakes raised by a factor of one thousand.
He felt like going AWOL would be the only way he could transmit his intel. He had two days’ rations in his pack, and he could go to ground, make his way west back towards Palmyra, and provide even more intel if the FSA did try to engage Azzam while he was at the Russian base.
Just then Van Wyk leaned into the room. “Just got word from battalion. Shelling of the next town begins in thirty mikes.”
“Roger that,” Court said, and Anders echoed this.
Van Wyk looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes after that and we load up in the BMPs. Keep eyes on that village, get me any intel you can.”
Court and Anders sat in silence for twenty minutes, and by now Court had figured his plan to use the CD as a signal mirror to invite an attack had failed. He had a couple more CDs in a cargo pocket, but the sun was very low now, and he didn’t see any way he could get another chance to—
Saunders shouted from the living room. “Hey! I heard some pops! Keep eyes out for IDF.”
IDF was indirect fire, and Court realized his grand scheme to get himself shot at was going to work out after all.
Seconds later Van Wyk started to call “incoming,” but before the second syllable was out, three explosions ripped the desert floor in quick succession, just eighty yards south of the apartment building where Court sat. A few tiny bits of debris pinged off the building, not far from where Court sat near the southeastern corner.
He knew these first shots would be ranging rounds. A spotter would determine how to adjust the mortars so that the next rounds would hit closer.
Saunders stormed into the bedroom where Court sat. The two men locked eyes, and Court looked away. “What did you do?”
“What?”
“Did you signal somebody?”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“There’s no way we were seen from that distance. Impossible. You signaled them.”
Anders looked at Saunders like he was crazy. “Why would he signal them?”
“You weren’t going into the next town. I saw it in your eyes when boss gave the order. Figured you were gonna throw yourself down some stairs to get out of—”
“Incoming!” Van Wyk shouted now from the next room.
Three more rounds came in; this time they were much closer. The first two hit in the street just to the south of the apartment building, but the third impacted against a lower floor. The resulting shaking knocked Saunders to the floor and sent loose debris and dust flying in all directions.
Anders shouted now. “Why would he signal for an attack?”
Saunders pointed at Court, and he stood up in the cloud of dust, his face red with fury. “This fucker isn’t here to work with us. He came here to—”
“Mortars!” Van Wyk screamed. “And we’ve got multiple technicals inbound from the south. One klick out! All call signs, withdraw to the BMPs!”
Court hadn’t expected them to attack that hard and that accurately.
The three men in the corner room ignored the order from the team leader. Saunders answered Anders’s question. “Wade came to Syria just to snatch that kid in Damascus, and he’s using KWA for cover. He’s stuck with us but he’s trying to find a way out of the country.”
Three more mortar rounds slammed into and around the building, sending everyone flying, and filling the apartment again with dust and smoke.
Anders looked at Court. “You kidnapped that baby they were talking about this morning?”
Court climbed to his feet. “Boss said exfil!”
But Saunders blocked Court’s exit from the room.
Court said, “Not now, Saunders!”
Anders climbed to his feet and made a run for the door. Saunders let him pass, but he pointed a finger at Court.
“You’re fucking mad! Calling in the enemy? You’re gonna get us killed!”
“Not if we get out of here before we get—”
Court stopped talking when he saw Saunders move his hand to the long knife he wore on his vest.
A mortar shell crashed squarely on the roof, directly above the room. The ceiling collapsed in different portions of the apartment, and a dust cloud filled the room so thick that Court could no longer see Saunders.
He slung his rifle over his shoulder, threw his backpack on his back, and charged forward like a linebacker.
Saunders had drawn the long knife from the chest of his load-bearing vest, but he hadn’t expected the man hitting him so hard with his head low. Both men tumbled onto the ground in the debris, and Court threw knees into Saunders’s body and punches to his face.
The knife came up in an arc that Court couldn’t see, but he felt the arm swinging freely and he fell back and away quickly. The blade cut deeply into the magazine rack on Court’s vest. Realizing he was now in a life-and-death struggle with the British mercenary, Court continued rolling backwards, kicking his feet over his head and flipping over onto his knees.
He reached down to the SIG pistol in his drop leg holster and pulled it free as heavy machine-gun fire began raking the building. The entire scene was still clouded over with dust and building materials. Court fell onto his back, worrying that the man with the knife could be inches away, and then he kicked himself backwards along the floor, gear and pack and all, until he hit the far wall.
He couldn’t see Saunders, but he knew where he’d been, and he aimed and fired eight rounds as fast as he could press the trigger.
His ears rang, and another mortar hit just outside the building, sending shrapnel into the room over Court’s head. He stared fo
rward in the thick dust and raised his weapon again to fire more rounds, but then Saunders appeared just two feet away and coming fast.
Court fired once into Saunders’s chest plate before the British mercenary fell onto Court, knocking him onto his back.
The man was already dead, a bullet wound in his left temple and another in his throat.
Court pushed the gear-laden body off him, fought his way up to his feet, and ran out the door to the bedroom.
One flight down in the stairwell he turned to go down to the first floor, and then he stopped abruptly. Anders lay facedown on the landing, blood pooling under him. There was a ragged hole in the wall where a high-explosive mortar round had entered the stairwell, sending shrapnel out in all directions that eviscerated the Dutch KWA employee.
Court continued his descent.
He got to the front door of the building, and in the low light of dusk he saw the two BMPs in the street, their engines running, their lights on. The rear hatches of both vehicles were closed, but a top hatch on the second BMP was open, obviously waiting for the three contractors still in the building.
Court considered making a run for the vehicle and climbing in, but he saw this as an opportunity. If he could lay low in the apartment building while the KWA men egressed, they would assume he’d been killed in the mortar attack.
KWA wasn’t a “no man left behind” type of outfit.
Of course, Court realized staying behind would still leave the nonsignificant issue of dealing with whoever was heading this way on the technicals Van Wyk had reported, but he figured he could try to find a basement and wait out the attack, then search for a phone to report his intel to Vincent Voland.
It was a good plan, but the plan ended when Van Wyk rose up out of the hatch and saw Court standing there in the front door of the building. “Move your ass!” he shouted, and he brought his Galil assault rifle up through the hatch and aimed it down the road, as if to cover Court.
Court stood there, decided he would be better off exfilling with the contractors and then searching for another opportunity, and then he started running towards the armored vehicles.
He made it fewer than five steps before he heard the unmistakable whiz of an incoming rocket-propelled grenade round. He ran on another two steps, and then his body was tossed into the air. The sound and fire came simultaneously, and after the incredible assault to his senses, he was blind and deaf. He did feel his body slam back into the street, pounding his right shoulder and right leg.
He lifted his head and shook it a moment until he could just barely see a foggy distorted image. It was the darkened road by the apartment building, and on it the two infantry fighting vehicles raced off to the west.
Court dropped his head back down into the street, and his helmet clanged. He felt a trickle of wet on his lips, and he licked it, tasted blood and concrete and dirt. He brought a hand to his face, rubbed his eyes a moment, and then focused more clearly.
Three pickup trucks raced past him in the street, coming from the southeast, and then they slammed on their brakes, skidding in the rubble all around.
Armed men with beards and dark clothing leapt from the beds of the trucks, not twenty-five meters from where he lay.
Court raised one hand to the men in surrender, but only for a moment, because his hand dropped back down as he lost consciousness.
* * *
• • •
Court woke with a bag on his head and his hands tied behind his back. He was lying on his left side, bouncing up and down against the hard surface, and this told him he was likely in the bed of one of the technicals he saw just before passing out. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but he felt cool night air blowing on his arms that he’d not felt before, so he imagined some time had passed.
His body armor had been removed, as had his boots, utility belt, and drop leg holster. His watch was gone, as was his helmet. He realized he must have been stripped down to the dirty white T-shirt and the green, black, and brown camo battle dress uniform trousers he’d gotten from the KWA loadout room down in Babbila, and the two pairs of boot socks he’d put on that morning.
Men spoke Arabic above him. From the positioning of the voices he suspected they sat on the sides of the bed and back at the tailgate, and he lay between them at their feet, but his ears rang still and his head hurt too bad to even try to concentrate on what the men said. It didn’t matter really, he figured, because he knew all he needed to know about what was going on.
He’d seen the dark clothing and the beards, both common with ISIS fighters, and he knew he was fucked.
They’d only taken him alive so they could execute him more dramatically than a bullet to the head as he lay unconscious in the street. Whatever they did to him would be for show now, and he’d seen all the various manners by which they put someone to death on video. The beheadings, the burnings in cages, the drownings, tying men to landmines and IEDs. He’d seen children ordered to kill prisoners with guns and knives, and he’d seen mass executions where dozens of men would be taken, one by one, and put to death, as a crowd looked on.
The only thing ISIS had generated in its five years of existence, as far as Court could tell, was a lot of inventive ways to instill terror via torture and death.
And now he could do nothing but await his own miserable fate.
* * *
• • •
The drive lasted a long time, but Court had no ability to determine how long. He figured it must have been eight or nine p.m. when the vehicle began ascending into hills, and for another hour or more it climbed and descended, turned on hairpin curves, and even stopped a couple of times.
He’d nodded off but came to when the tailgate slammed down behind him, then hands grabbed his ankles and pulled him roughly out of the pickup. He braced as his torso was dragged on the tailgate, hoping whoever was pulling him had the decency to help him to the ground so he didn’t fall four feet, although he knew there was no reason to expect such decency.
As he feared, he fell straight down and crashed hard onto his back on dirt and rock.
Multiple arms pulled him up to his feet now, then half walked, half dragged him down a gravel path and into an enclosed space—some sort of a building. He was shoved against a wall and then pushed down on his butt; even through the bag he could tell it was pitch-black in the room, and then the hands guiding him let him go.
The door slammed shut.
He thought about his predicament, and he held out no hope. His bindings were well tied, and he’d heard the trucks of a dozen vehicles at one time or another during his ascent into the hills, so whoever owned this territory seemed to own it outright.
The door to the room opened and Court felt other men being shoved against him, pushed down onto the floor. These would be more prisoners, and this made him think that ISIS was storing prisoners so they could execute them en masse as soon as the sun came up tomorrow.
CHAPTER 64
At some point Court fell asleep, and he dreamed of his own death. He was with dozens of other men, all wearing the orange suits that ISIS loved to dress its prisoners up in as a way to dehumanize them. They were each taken, one by one, on a short walk, then pushed to their knees and shot in the back of the head.
The dream was horrific, but more so as Court had watched his fellow prisoners receive the shot that blew their brains out. When Court’s time came, in contrast, he found himself oddly at peace.
He thought about Jamal Medina and Yasmin Samara, and Dr. Saddiqi, and he lamented that he could not fulfill his promises to help them, and he thought about Tarek and Rima Halaby and their two children, and about Bianca Medina, who, while certainly not innocent, was nonetheless still a mother who loved her child, and wholly undeserving of all that had happened to her.
It was sad he wouldn’t fulfill his mission here in Syria, but there was nothing he could do about it, so as he
walked to his death in the dream, he told himself it was finally time to let go, as if he knew a long-awaited and much-earned rest was coming for him.
He welcomed the rest as he bowed his head and waited for the gunshot.
* * *
• • •
Court woke suddenly to the sound of a man calling out in shock and fear next to him. He recognized the man’s voice. It was Broz, the Croatian mercenary. He’d obviously kept his own mouth shut all night long to hide the fact that he was a European, a non-Muslim, and thereby would suffer more at the hands of these monsters.
There was a small amount of light coming through his bag, and he thought it must be morning now.
Court could hear Broz being dragged away, out of the room, and as soon as he was pulled away, Court felt hands grabbing him. He was yanked roughly to his feet, frogmarched out of the room, and shuffled ahead.
He heard a wooden door open and he was turned, walked along a moment, then pushed down on a chair. Seconds later the door he’d entered through slammed shut. His bag had been left on his head, but even through it he felt the presence of someone standing in front of him.
This would be an interrogation, of this Court was sure. He wasn’t going to reveal to anyone here that he was an American. If these assholes were going to execute him, they weren’t going to do it with the special fanfare reserved for high-profile Islamic State prisoners. No, he’d rather get his head chopped off for a small crowd and his body dumped in a sandy ditch and be forgotten than show up on YouTube in some insane music video–style execution.
A man spoke to him now. It was in Arabic, of course, but Court understood the words. “What is your unit?”
Court did not reply. If he said anything in Arabic, that would be just the same as indicating he was a foreigner, because he couldn’t fake the accent, dialect, or language skills of a native Arabic speaker.
He felt a blow on the side of his head. “Hey! What is your unit?”
