Operation Zulu

by Ernest Dempsey

  “Yes, big boom,” Zeke confirmed. “They blew up our truck.”

  “You killed them?” the leader asked.

  Zeke and Phoenix tried to size up whether or not this was a good or bad thing. These men could have been loyal to Ackbar. If they were, it was going to be a problem. Killing their leader, or whatever he was, would result in immediate execution. They didn’t have to be experts on terrorism or foreign relations to know that.

  “Ackbar is…dead?” the gunman asked.

  Zeke considered his answer with care. He and Phoenix exchanged one more question-filled glance before he spoke. “Yeah. Looks that way. Guys, we are really sorry. Okay? If he was a friend of yours, we realize that you will be upset.”

  “Yeah, it was kind of an accident anyway,” Phoenix added, sensing that things were about to turn south.

  For several long seconds, the gunmen didn’t say anything. Their faces wore blank expressions, eyes staring at the Americans without emotion.

  Then the leader of the little band cracked a smile. His teeth were yellow and crooked, looking like they hadn’t been brushed in months, maybe longer. It was a disgusting sight to behold, but Zeke didn’t say anything. The guy looked happy. That meant there would be no cutting off their heads—for now.

  The man turned to the others and started rattling off a bunch of sentences in Arabic. The men all began shouting and raised their guns into the air. They fired several celebratory shots into the sky, an action that roused the sleepy village from whatever they were doing.

  Women came out of the huts, along with a few kids. They looked scared at first until they saw that the gunfire was in jubilation and not in defense.

  The leader stepped closer to Zeke and clapped him on the shoulder. “You have killed a terrible man today. Ackbar was a scourge to us. He came in and took our women, our children, forced people to work for him, to fight for him. We have to keep our weapons hidden most of the time so he won’t find them and take them. Then we heard the commotion up on the mountain and retrieved our guns in case we had to fight. We are only a small number of fighters. If we tried to resist Ackbar, he would have killed us all. Now, though, we are free. Thanks to you two.”

  The other men around the fire began shouting again. They stepped over toward the Americans and patted them on the back, shaking them by the shoulders, and laughing loudly. They sang songs that the two friends didn’t understand, but they didn’t need to. The songs were of happiness and joy.

  “So,” Phoenix said amid the shouting and other noise. He leaned close to Zeke. “Are we like, local heroes now?”

  “Sure looks like it. Let’s just go with it.”

  Zeke smiled broadly and started to dance with some of the men around the fire. The women and children went back inside their huts, confused as to what was going on.

  Phoenix wasn’t entirely convinced, but he started waving his arms around and tipping back and forth like the rest of the men in the group. It was a strange dance, but if they were happy, that meant Zeke and Phoenix were safe, for now anyway.

  14

  Jessica stuffed a rucksack with magazines that would fit her 9mm SIG Sauer. She also added a couple of mags loaded with 5.56 NATO rounds for her AR15. She enjoyed building her weapons, and that particular framework was one of her favorites. Named after the Armalite platform, the AR15 setup was easy to put together and completely customizable, allowing for various kinds of barrel upgrades, attachments, even suppressors. The current silencer attached to the end of the barrel was a short one, forged by Dawn of Defense in Northwest Georgia. Their cans were extremely effective and cut down the sound of a gun’s report to nothing more than a click. She’d used lots of suppressors in her day, but the ones she liked the best were from DOD, which she thought was a funny choice of business name since it corresponded with the Department of Defense. Maybe the founders had done that intentionally.

  She stuffed one more small silencer in her bag to attach to her pistol and then placed two bottles of water in the side pouches.

  Gary stepped back into the room. He’d been gone for fifteen minutes and now was donning his winter gear. He wore a heavy coat, thick pants, and combat boots. The big clothes hung loosely off his wiry frame, making him look a little out of place in the outfit.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica asked.

  He pulled a pistol out of the holster tucked under the flap of his overcoat and pulled the slide. If he didn’t look so goofy, he might have seemed pretty tough, but he did look goofy. Exceedingly so. He nearly dropped the weapon on the hard floor, narrowly catching it by the trigger guard so that it dangled between his fingers. She was more than a little afraid he might accidentally discharge the weapon right there in the base, potentially shooting her in the process.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just, you know, getting ready.”

  “Maybe you should stay here, monitor things from above.”

  “No way,” he shook his head. “Those are my friends out there. I have to help them. And if there are more than…you know, a few bad guys along the way, you might need my help.”

  She appreciated the sentiment, though she didn’t understand exactly what help he was going to lend. He was about as useful in a field mission as a pair of white gloves at a ketchup factory. She didn’t need to know the guy’s life story to come to that conclusion.

  “Look, Gary, I appreciate the offer, but I can move faster if I’m on my own.”

  “And I would feel horrible if anything happened to you. I can’t just sit here staring at a computer screen while you’re out there in the middle-of-nowhere Afghanistan with who knows who coming after you.”

  She sighed. There was going to be no getting around this. Gary wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She was going to have to let him tag along. Hopefully, things wouldn’t get too hairy out there, then again, she didn’t get her hopes up. This was dangerous territory and they were in a very sketchy area of that country. Kabul, the largest city in Afghanistan, was only a short distance to the south. It was a massive metropolitan area, and it was fraught with dangers of its own. If that’s how things were in the main city, how much more difficult could it be out here, away from civilization? She knew the answer to that but didn’t want to dwell on it. That wouldn’t help. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting out there to help Zeke and Phoenix.

  “Okay, Gary, but you do as I say. Understood?”

  He nodded eagerly.

  “I’m serious, Gary. I’ve been in these situations before. You can’t screw around. You either do what I say or you end up dead. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Perfectly clear.”

  “Good. Now let’s get moving.”

  She’d secured a vehicle, a Toyota 4Runner, painted in desert tan. Her gun-loving friends back home would call it Flat Dark Earth. The soldiers probably did as well, but she did not intend to ask them. Getting the SUV had taken a little bit of effort, but in the end, one of the other officers had been willing to part with the vehicle so she could do some “recon work” for the DOD. The officer seemed to accept the explanation and granted her the keys, along with the permissions that would allow her in and out of the facility.

  She knew they needed to hurry. The longer they lingered around the base, the more opportunity there would be to run into Major Paige or someone else who would tell her not to do what she was about to do.

  Gary climbed into the passenger seat and she hopped into the driver’s side. She turned on the ignition and was happy to see that the truck had a full tank of gas. That was good. The last thing they needed was to run out of fuel in the middle of the mountains, or on the plains of Afghanistan. They’d be sitting ducks.

  She backed the SUV up, spun the wheel, and steered it toward the gate. She took it slow until they reached the checkpoint, where they were cleared to continue by one of the guards. The gate opened slowly, rolling to one side inch by slow inch. Jessica kept looking in her mirrors to make sure they hadn’t been followed by P
aige or one of his associates.

  There was no one behind them and she allowed herself a moment of brief relief until the gate was fully opened.

  The guard waved her through and she stepped on the gas pedal, accelerating through the opening and out into the civilian world once more. It felt like they were leaving behind some kind of forcefield, something that could protect them from almost any attacker. Now they were exposed and on their own, left to defend themselves if necessary. It was a scary proposition, even to Jessica. Despite her hardened battle training and multiple combat experiences, nothing ever took away the fear. It was always there, always keeping her sharp and alert.

  Those two things were of great necessity out here. They can keep you alive. She hoped that Gary had a similar fear driving him, although she worried that his fear was more in the form of anxiety, which was not always helpful.

  “So,” he asked, doing his best to calm himself down and make things a little more casual, “China. Why are we sending those missiles to Zulu Base again?”

  “We were told that it was for border protection. Seems a tad like overkill doesn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “I was also told that they would help us in the fight against terrorists, except up there in the northeastern corner isn’t where the terrorists are. Sure, there are some in that region, but most of them steer clear of that place because of the proximity to the Chinese border, and probably also because of Zulu Base.”

  “Yeah, but why is that base there to begin with. Seems like it would be a dangerous assignment to be stationed there. I mean, with tensions between the United States and China in recent years. We owe them trillions of dollars that we can’t pay back, probably ever, and recently, the Chinese government started asking about that money.”

  “Yes,” Jessica nodded, “they’ll want it back, sooner rather than later probably. They’ve been good about not worrying about it for a while, but I fear that grace period is over. Americans push so hard for things to be 'made in the USA, but the truth is, we can’t compete with the Chinese on price and there are so many manufacturers over there that they make pricing a very real issue for most American manufacturers.”

  “Right. Except now they want their money. We were one of their best business partners. We order so much from them, buy everything they make. Now that they realize they can sell all that stuff without us, it’s debt collection time and we don’t have the money. So, what does every red-blooded American fear?”

  “Invasion.”

  “Right. Movies, books, television series, even magazines have preyed on the notion that—at some point—the United States was going to get invaded by one of its enemies. Over the years, that enemy has changed depending on our current situation. For a while, it was Russia. Then people were worried about North Korea.”

  Gary chuckled at that one as she turned the SUV onto the main road leading toward the Hindu Kush mountains.

  “North Korea,” he scoffed. “They can’t even feed their own people, run their own cars, or get power to their cities, much less invade someone else halfway across the globe.”

  “All true,” she agreed, “though never underestimate the power of collective idiocy. You don’t have to look far to see how that impacts the American way of life. Our political system is built on collective idiocy, both from the governed and the governing.”

  He nodded. He’d always thought the same thing, but he never expected to hear someone from GIC say that, and he certainly wasn’t going to ever utter those words. He didn’t love his job, but he definitely needed it. There was a quick way to get booted out the door and onto the curb, and that was by badmouthing the very government and system that you were sworn to protect.

  Then again, as a guy in the IT department, he didn’t see how he was really protecting anything except for emails against prank viruses. Every now and then, he imagined that he was keeping away more harmful digital threats, but it was a stretch to allow those thoughts into his mind. More than anything, his responsibilities were protecting his fellow agents and workers from themselves, setting up software and firewalls that wouldn’t allow them to watch silly videos or spend time on websites that had nothing to do with their jobs or their roles in the agency.

  He was a virtual cop, and very few people liked or appreciated cops, even when they were doing everything in their power to help those people and keep them safe. It was never seen that way. Some viewed Gary as a lackey to the higher-ups, nothing more than a guy with a badge but no real power, like a campus safety officer at a local college. The second a computer went down or something crashed, though, he was a hero—for a time. That always went away, though, and before he knew it, he was cast back into social exile.

  “So that’s what this is about?” Gary asked, tossing away thoughts of his former life. “Defending against a Chinese threat?”

  “Maybe,” Jessica admitted. “It’s possible that we are trying to get as many high-powered weapons as possible into key places. That’s usually step number one when it comes to national defense.”

  “Sounds more like an offensive move than defensive,” he offered.

  “It does, indeed. That’s another part of good national defense planning. Always be ready to be the first to throw a punch and the last.”

  He didn’t really like the cryptic way she said that. He understood what she meant, though. You didn’t have to be the one to start a fight, but it was always imperative to be the one to finish it.

  “Those missiles the guys were supposed to deliver, or…the actual team, they weren’t nukes were they?”

  “No,” she said quickly. Although, she’d been lied to already this week by her superiors. It was entirely possible that she’d been lied to again regarding the contents of the package. If Zulu Base was actually an underground nuclear launch facility, she wouldn’t know it. And there was no way for her to find out without actually being there. No one was going to offer up that kind of information to her, at least not at Bagram, and certainly not back in Washington. The higher-ups would deem that as information she didn’t need to know. It was the second time she’d had that thought in the last hour or two, the thought about need-to-know basis kinds of intel.

  “No,” she repeated. “The package doesn’t have nukes.” She tried to sound more confident than the first time. Jessica walked him through the reasons why she believed there weren’t nuclear weapons aboard the transport truck, the one being driven by the two real GIC agents. She explained that nukes were easier to track by both foreign entities and by their government and that getting these particular weapons moved in secret was of the utmost importance. Then, she informed him about the actual weapons that were on board, at least what she had been told. She had looked through the briefings, the files on the missiles. They were fascinating and a powerful piece of tech that could help the United States military gain a massive advantage over potential enemies.

  She never really considered that one of those enemies might be China, although it was always at the back of her mind. Many Americans feared China, even though that wasn’t something they should be worried about. Both countries depended on each other for business. It was, in many ways, a symbiotic relationship where one helped the other, even though the United States was in debt to China. China, on the other hand, didn’t dare cut off the hand it was feeding because, even with all the money not being paid, they were still getting rich hand over fist.

  The last thing any business owners wanted, on either side, was a war. But they weren’t the only ones pulling the strings. Drugs were, of course, also a huge moneymaker, but even they paled in comparison to the exorbitant prices arms makers and dealers could command.

  Taking her mind down that rabbit hole only deepened her concern. Nuclear weapons weren’t simply banned because they posed a threat to the environment and to humanity in general, they were removed from most countries because nuclear war wasn’t a profitable war. Once enough warheads were discharged, there would be nothing left. Sure, the elite r
uling class might be safe in a bunker somewhere for a few hundred years, but their real lives would be a distant memory.

  Wars without nukes, however, were very profitable indeed.

  Jessica considered that in conjunction with the payload on the cargo truck that Alpha Team was driving. She wondered what company had made those missiles, but that answer would have to wait.

  “Something is going on here, Gary,” Jessica said. “Something way deeper than we realize. And whatever it is, your friends Zeke and Phoenix are right in the crosshairs.”

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “First, we locate those two idiots.” She fired him a sidelong glance, though he wasn’t sure if it meant she was kidding about the idiot's comment, or if it was just her way of telling him not to try to defend the insult.

  “Second?”

  “Let’s focus on that one first,” she said. “We can worry about the second thing later.”

  15

  The men sat around the fire, soaking up the warmth it offered. Some of the women brought flatbreads out for them to eat, and little clay cups of broth in which to dip their bread. There was goat meat, too, in a huge metal pan that looked like a shallow wok. The meat was in a brown, savory sauce, with a hint of spice to it. To wash it all down, they drank tea from steaming pots.

  At first, the Americans weren’t sure about sharing a meal with the strangers, but they realized it would be rude to turn down such hospitality. It might also have been a huge cultural mistake.

  Phoenix was the braver of the two, diving into the goat meat and bread without even pausing. Zeke was timider, but he eventually relented and took a small bite of the meat. Once he tasted it, he was hooked.

  “This is incredible,” he said to the woman who brought out the food. She refilled his tea and gave a grateful nod, though she didn’t respond, instead turning away shyly and returning to her modest home.