The Jungle of-8

by Clive Cussler

  Juan quickly assumed that this was a senior Taliban official and that the boxes contained video gear for the captured soldier’s execution. This was confirmed when one of the guards laid an elongated box on the ground and lifted the lid. The Taliban leader stooped to withdraw a three-foot-long scimitar straight out of One Thousand and One Nights, much to the delighted roars of the others.

  Subtlety was not a virtue among these men.

  Cabrillo described to the rest what he observed, and asked, “Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Linc replied, “That I broke the promise I made to myself after getting out of Tora Bora never to come to this part of the world again?”

  “There’s that, yes,” Juan said with a chuckle, “but I was thinking that taking the bus would be a hell of a lot easier than hoofing it the twenty miles back to our SUV. We planned on carrying the kid out. He can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. The variable is if the soldier can walk that far. Stealing that bus negates the unknowns.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Eddie Seng agreed.

  “Linda?”

  “What about its fuel load? Does it have the range to get us out of here?”

  “There are no Exxon stations around here, so they must be able to get at least as far as Landi Kotal, the town on the Paki side of the Khyber Pass, maybe all the way to Peshawar.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Linc said.

  Linda nodded, then remembered no one could see her. “Okay. We go for the bus.”

  The Muslim call to sundown prayers echoed across the deep valley, and the men in the town square and others from the village made their way toward the tumbledown mosque. The guards remained outside the building where they were keeping the soldier, and no one left the house where Seti was sequestered.

  There was no generator in town, so as the twilight deepened some lamps were lit, emitting feeble light through dirty windows in a few of the houses. Both target houses had such lamps. Fuel was expensive, so the lamps were snuffed out one by one within an hour. Like the lives of so much of the world’s population, these people’s lives were dictated by the earth’s stately rotation.

  Cabrillo and his team continued to watch the sleeping town through their night vision gear. The two guards maintained their vigilance for another hour before they too succumbed to oblivion. Nothing moved, no smoke from a chimney, no roving dogs, nothing.

  They gave it another hour for good measure before emerging from their foxholes.

  Juan felt a few joints pop as he unlimbered himself. So many hours of immobility in the chilly air had stiffened him like a board. Like the others, he took a minute to flex feeling back into his muscles, moving slowly so as not to attract attention. His moves mimicked tai chi.

  The team was traveling light, carrying just enough weapons and gear for the one night on the mountainside. They all carried the Barrett REC7 assault rifle with tactical lights slung under the barrels, but all armed themselves with their preference of pistols. Cabrillo favored the FN Five-seveN on a shoulder rig so he could clear the attached silencer quickly.

  The terrain was rugged, with ankle-twisting boulders and fields of loose stones that could be dislodged into a hissing avalanche with an ill-placed boot, so the team moved cautiously, each covering the next, and always one person watching the village for any sign of movement. Like wraiths, they walked under the thin silver glow of a millimetric slice of moon, their NVGs giving them the advantage over both the landscape and the darkness.

  Cabrillo led them into the village, hugging the walls, but not so close that their black uniforms would scrape against the rough-hewn stone. At a preplanned spot, Cabrillo stopped and dropped into a crouch. He pointed to Linda and Eddie before indicating they would rescue Seti. He and Linc would save the better-defended captive.

  With the big ex-SEAL covering his back, Juan approached the back of the house where the soldier had been taken. He peered in through a window. Despite the grime caking the single pane of glass he could see three cots in the room. Two of them were occupied by the prone forms of sleeping men. The third cot didn’t have bedding, which meant it wasn’t likely there was another guy out roaming around.

  The prisoner had to be in the house’s front room, which if tradition held would be a combination living/dining/kitchen area. Its only window was next to the door, so they would be going in somewhat blind.

  Juan made a motion with his hands like he was parting water.

  Linc nodded and started down along the left side of the house while Cabrillo padded along the right. At the corner both men paused. A minute turned into three, and Juan was starting to get worried. They had to coordinate their assault with the other team. He was waiting for Linda to give him a single click over the tactical radio, telling him she and Eddie were in position.

  It was because he was straining his ears so hard that he heard it—a distant whine, like a mosquito at the far end of a long room. He knew that sound and realized they had to move now.

  This could be a blessing or a curse, he thought just as Linda signaled they were ready. Linc had heard the click too, and he and Juan moved in such perfect accord that they were around the corner of the house at the same instant, striding forward at the same pace and moving their hands into the exact same position.

  Momentum, along with Juan’s hundred and eighty pounds and Linc’s two-forty, came together as both men slammed into the seated and snoozing guards, cracking their heads together with just a fraction less force than needed to crush bone. The two men never knew what hit them and went from comfortable REM sleep to a near-coma state in a fraction of a second. They eased the guards onto the ground, making sure to hide their AKs under a wooden cart stacked with hay.

  They waited a moment to see if the disturbance had been detected. Juan could still hear the faint buzz. He pointed to his ear and pointed up toward the night sky. Linc shot him a quizzical look, not understanding.

  Juan stretched his arms wide and waggled them like an aircraft in flight.

  Linc’s eyes went wide. He knew as well as Juan that there was usually only one kind of aircraft flying in Northern Waziristan—Predator drones.

  There was no reason to think that this village was the unmanned aircraft’s target, but there was no reason to think it wasn’t. Intel on the Taliban leader who’d arrived in the bus might have filtered up the chain of command, and now CENTCOM had an armed drone overhead looking for a target of opportunity.

  He wasn’t worried about them firing a Hellfire missile just yet. The rules of engagement were pretty clear that confirmation of the target’s location had to be verified before the trigger could be pulled. They’d wait until dawn to use the drone’s advanced cameras to pick their man. What bothered him was the chance that a local insomniac would hear the aircraft and raise the alarm.

  More than anything, Juan wanted to call Lang Overholt and ask the old spook to find out if there was an operation in the works for this village, but two things prevented him. One was that he couldn’t risk talking while this close to the target, and the second was that Overholt would freeze him out, or worse, be frozen out himself.

  If the Corporation was going to continue enjoying the successes they had, they needed to mend fences in Washington, and soon.

  He peered through the window, and when he saw nothing but his ghostly reflection, he realized the glass had been blacked out. He pulled his rifle up behind his back and drew his silenced automatic from its holster. Linc did likewise.

  The door had no lock or latch. It was just seven poorly sawn boards held together by a lattice backing.

  Cabrillo pressed a gloved hand against it, testing how easily it would open. It moved slightly, the hinges fortunately greased with animal fat so they did not squeak. For the first time on the mission, he started to feel the icy fingers of apprehension. They were putting their primary duty in jeopardy for this, and if something went wrong, Setiawan Bahar would pay the ultimate price.

  He pressed on the door a little harder and gl
anced through the crack with his NVGs. There wasn’t enough light for the sophisticated electronics to amplify, so he opened the door wider. He felt it tap gently against something on the floor. He pulled off a glove, squatted, and reached a hand around the bottom of the door. His fingers touched something cold and cylindrical. He explored the shape and found two more. They were metal cans stacked in a little pyramid. Had the door opened farther the cans would have fallen. There would be ball bearings or empty shell casings in the cans so they would rattle when they tumbled. A simple, homegrown burglar alarm.

  Juan gently lifted the topmost can, set it outside, and then retrieved the other two. He was able to open the door enough for his goggles to pick up details. A large picture of Osama bin Laden graced the far wall next to the door leading to the bedroom. He saw a stone hearth that was long since cold, a low table without chairs sitting on a threadbare carpet, a few pots and pans, and murky bundles of what he assumed were clothes. Another bed was pushed up to the right-hand side, and reclining with his back to the stone and an AK-47 across his lap was another sleeping guard.

  Opposite him was a second indistinct shape. It took a few seconds for Juan to figure out it was a man lying on the floor. He was facing away from Cabrillo and balled up tightly as if protecting his abdomen from being kicked. Prisoner stomping was de rigueur for the Taliban.

  Unlike in the movies, where a silenced pistol makes no more sound than a blowgun, the reality was that a shot fired here would wake the man in the back room and probably the neighbors as well.

  Moving slowly but deliberately, Cabrillo eased into the hovel. The sleeping guard made a snuffling sound and smacked his lips. Juan froze in midstep. He could hear deep snoring from the other room. The guard shifted into a more comfortable position and fell deeper asleep. Covering those last few feet, Juan came up to the man and swung his hand like an ax against his carotid artery. The shock of the blow temporarily short-circuited the guard’s brain, giving Juan the time to cut off his air long enough to render him unconscious.

  Linc was already in motion. His knife cut through the plastic zip ties securing the prisoner’s ankles and wrists while a big meaty hand went over the man’s mouth to prevent him from calling out.

  The captive went rigid for a moment, then rolled onto his back with Lincoln keeping his hand in place. It was too dark for him to see what was happening so Linc leaned close to his ear and whispered. “Friend.”

  He felt the man nod under his hand, so he took it away and helped the prisoner to his feet. Linc put one shoulder under the man’s arm, and with Juan backing out behind them, his pistol trained on the bedroom door, they made their escape out of the house.

  Even with Linc supporting a lot of his weight, the prisoner was limping heavily. They moved away from the building, keeping to the deepest shadows. Cabrillo switched back to his assault rifle. They emerged in the town square near the mosque and found cover behind a stone wall. Out in the street they could see the brightly painted bus. The moonlight gave its paint scheme an ominous cast.

  “Thank you,” the captive whispered in a deep Southern drawl. “Ah don’t care who you are, but thank you.”

  “Don’t thank us until we’re well and gone from here,” Cabrillo warned.

  Movement farther down the road caught Juan’s attention. He sighted down his weapon, his finger just outside the trigger guard. A single click in his radio headset told him that Linda and Eddie had rescued the boy. He looked closer. That was them at the end of the street. He gave her a double click in response, and the two parties met next to the bus.

  They had used drugs to render Seti unconscious, figuring it would be easier to deal with him as deadweight than to risk the possibility of his crying out in panic. Linc immediately took the boy from the much smaller though deceptively strong Eddie Seng and tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Eddie popped a small penlight into his mouth, slid through the bus’s accordion door, and set about hot-wiring the engine.

  Cabrillo scanned the skies, his head cocked as he listened for the Predator he felt certain was still up there. Were they being watched right now? If so, what did the operators at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base think? Were they a choice target, and at this minute was the drone’s operator moving his finger to the button that would unleash the deadly Hellfire antitank missile?

  To distract himself from something he had no control over he asked Linda, “Any problems?”

  “Piece of cake,” she replied with a cocky grin. “We released the knockout gas, waited for it to take effect, and just waltzed in and grabbed the kid. I left a window open a crack so the gas will dissipate. They’ll wake up with monster headaches and no idea what happened to their young would-be martyr.”

  “How many in the house?”

  “Parents, two of their own children, plus Seti and his cousin.” A troubled look crossed Cabrillo’s face. Linda added, “I thought that was strange too. No guards, right? But the two Indonesians are here because they volunteered. No need to guard them at all.”

  “Yeah,” Juan said slowly, “you’re probably right.”

  “I’m ready,” Eddie announced from under the driver’s seat, an exposed nest of wires in his hand. All he needed to do was twist two leads together and the big diesel would rumble to life.

  The engine noise was certain to attract attention, so once the bus was hot-wired, they had to get out of Dodge as fast as they could.

  Setiawan was strapped into a seat using one of their combat harnesses. The prisoner, whose name they hadn’t bothered to ask, was in a row behind him. Linc and Linda had the first two seats, so Cabrillo took up a position in the back so he could cover their rear.

  It was just then that all hell broke loose.

  A shouted cry rose over the sleeping town from the direction of where they’d kept the captured soldier. One of the guards they’d knocked out had come to.

  “Eddie, go!” Juan yelled. They had a minute, or less, before the tribesmen got organized.

  Seng touched the two wires, creating a tiny arc of electricity, and then twisted them to keep the starter engaged. The engine shuddered but wouldn’t fire. It sounded like a washing machine with an unbalanced load. He feathered the gas pedal, trying to finesse the engine, but it still wouldn’t start. Before he flooded it, Eddie separated the wires, gave it a couple of heartbeats, and tried again.

  The motor snarled and sputtered but refused to catch.

  “Come on,” Eddie cajoled.

  Cabrillo wasn’t paying the drama at the front of the bus any heed. His eyes were glued out the rear window, searching for signs of pursuit. A figure burst from a narrow alley between two houses. Juan had the REC7 to his shoulder and triggered a three-round burst. Glass cascaded to the floor of the bus in a shower of fine chips while the bullets chewed up the ground at the man’s feet. Three eruptions of dust stopped the man in his tracks, and he lost his balance and fell to the ground.

  Juan noticed in passing that the man hadn’t taken the time to arm himself before rushing to investigate the engine noise. He could have shot him dead but instead let him scramble back undercover.

  “Eddie?” Cabrillo shouted over his shoulder, certain that the echo of gunfire had awoken every jihadist in a half-mile radius.

  “Just a sec,” Seng called back, though there was no sense of tension in his voice. That was Eddie—cool under any circumstances.

  Cabrillo scanned the streets as best he could. He saw lamps being lit behind a few windows. The entire village was going to be coming after them in moments. Though the bus would make a pretty good defensive position, the team didn’t have the ammo for a protracted gun battle. If they didn’t get out in the next few seconds, they never would.

  The engine fired, and Eddie didn’t give it time to warm up before wrestling it into gear and hitting the gas. The old bus lurched like a startled rhinoceros, kicking gravel from under its bald tires.

  A pair of guards emerged from the same alley as the first man and cut loose wit
h their assault rifles, firing wildly from the hip in continuous bursts of unaimed fury. Not a single round hit the bus, but the fusillade kept Juan pinned to the floor, and the men had vanished around the corner by the time he was up and had a sight picture. He put three rounds downrange to keep them back.

  The bus had the acceleration of an anemic snail, so as they slowly pulled from the square they were open to more gunfire from hidden alleys and behind stone walls. One burst raked across the row of windows, blowing out the glass and raining shards on the people inside. That particular assault inexplicably cut off, but more bullets pinged against the roof and sparked off the engine cover.

  And then they were free, pulling past the mosque where the gray-bearded imam regarded them stoically as they roared by. Juan continued to watch out the rear window to see if anyone was chasing them. Several fighters were out on the main street, their rifles raised over their heads as if they’d won a great victory.

  Let ’em think what they want, Juan thought as he slumped onto one of the hard bench seats. The padding had long since vanished, and he could feel a metal support beam digging into his flesh. That little bit of discomfort reminded him of the greater problem they might still be facing. The bus belonged to a senior Taliban officer, someone Cabrillo was now certain he recognized but couldn’t name. The odds were good that he was under observation by the U.S. military. While the powers that be might not understand what had just happened back in the village, if they wanted this guy dead, now was the time to unleash the drone’s missile.

  He scooted back to the shattered rear window and watched the sky. Eddie saw him in the cracked mirror over the driver’s seat and called out, “Anything back there?”

  “Not on the ground, but I thought I heard a Predator when we were waiting to go in, and, if my hunch is right, this bus has a big old target on its roof.”

  For the first couple miles out of the town, the road followed the valley floor, with wide, open crop fields on either side. But from studying topographical maps before the mission, Juan knew it would enter a steeper grade and snake through about a dozen hairpin turns. To the left of the road was the canyon wall while to the right the landscape fell away in a frighteningly steep grade. Once on that section of dirt tract, they would have no maneuverability whatsoever.