Execution of Justice

by Patrick Dent

  “Well, I can have the firearms and silencers by nightfall today. This place is crawling with Soviet AK-47's. I tell you, the US could learn from those Ruskies. Their general-purpose rifles are among the best sniper weapons in the world. Grenades shouldn't be a problem, as long as we can make do with WWII surplus frags with ten second fuses. The truck will be a piece of cake. For indoor small arms, I'm pretty sure I can scrounge up a couple of M16's with M203 grenade launchers attached.

  “As for the claymores, there are two options – we can raid a US or Royal Moroccan military base, or we can make them. I suggest we make our own. You'd be surprised how easy it is.”

  “You can make claymores?” Drake asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “Sure! It's not much different from making pound cake. But, you don't want to be around if the cake falls, if you know what I mean.” Gip smirked. “With the proper training, anyone can manufacture C-4 from commonly available items. It's a little tricky, but once it's finished, C-4 is surprisingly stable. We'll use a nine-volt current to ignite Potassium Chlorate - easily obtained from match heads. That primer explosion will ignite the picric acid blasting cap. It's the picric acid explosion that actually sets off the C-4.” Gip became animated as he realized he would actually get to use his munitions training.

  “Write this down,” Gip continued, “Go to a hardware store and look at the camping stoves. They're powered by Hexamine tablets. Buy as many tablets as you can. While you're there, buy three gallons of battery acid refills. You'll find them in the automotive section.

  “In the lawn and garden section, load up on saltpeter, at least ten pounds. Also, buy all their steel ball bearings smaller than a half-inch diameter. If you don't get at least fifty pounds, you'll have to shop around.

  “We'll also need about two hundred yards of two-way insulated copper wire and fifty of the simplest switches they have. And we'll need fifty nine-volt batteries and all the matches they have.

  “Stop by as many drug stores as it takes to get a half pound of aspirin and twenty-five pounds of Vaseline. I know liquor stores are hard to find in an Arabic country, but we'll need at least five gallons of grain alcohol.

  “Finally, we'll need fifty one-liter soda bottles. You got all that?”

  “Anything else?” Drake asked sarcastically.

  “Yea, four of the largest glass bottles you can find – with corks- and six feet of plastic or rubber tubing, two shallow buckets and several bags of ice. I guess add a cooler to the list also.”

  “I think it would be easier to raid a military base.”

  “No way, man. Once you get the supplies, we'll have fifty commercial grade claymores with a combined weight of about a hundred fifty pounds within six hours. It'd take a hell of a lot longer than that to plan and carry out a raid on a military base, especially if we have to use non-lethal force. You would use non-lethal force on friendlies, wouldn't you?”

  “No, I wouldn't,” Drake replied.

  “Yea, you're a real softie.” Gip sneered, then added, “While you're shopping for all that stuff, I'll pay a visit to some rough looking mercenaries I saw hanging out downtown. These guys are always preparing for a rebellion, and they need cash. I'll pay them enough to replenish what they sell me with plenty to spare for other supplies. Weapons are necessary for a rebellion, but bullets don't sooth empty stomachs.”

  “Okay. You're the man. I'll meet you back at our room as soon as I can,” Drake said, surreptitiously pulling several bunches of hundred dollar bills out of the satchel before handing the rest to Gip. They made hand copies of the pertinent drawings and returned the books to the curator.

  * * *

  Safi, Morocco

  Gip enjoyed playing with his new chemistry set. Using two glass bottles, some tubing and an ice bucket, Gip had constructed what appeared to be a miniature still. Red fumes from the first bottle distilled into a pink liquid as they passed through a cooling coil. The second bottle was filling at a painstakingly slow rate.

  “How much longer?” Drake asked, the frustration evident in his voice.

  “Look, Man,” Gip said, “You might as well relax. It's not like we're going in as soon as I finish. We're going in after dark, which doesn't hit around here until about ten o'clock,” Gip answered.

  “I know. I know. I just hate waiting.”

  “You don't say?” Gip's joke was wasted on Drake. “Earlier, I told you C-4 was a relatively stable compound, but the intermediate stages are not. If I let the temperature of the nitrator get above 55 Celsius, there's going to be a crater where this hotel previously stood. So, you think you can give me a little space?”

  “I'm going for a walk,” Drake said, taking his partner's advice. He closed the door gently behind him. As he walked the streets of Safi, he struggled with his actions during Falon's interrogation. It wasn't so much his actions that disturbed him, but his feelings about them. In Falon, he had seen all the injustices in the world concentrated into one container of flesh. For each nerve ending Drake activated, a wrong seemed to be righted. But, that damned dove would not leave him alone. Drake knew he was on the wrong path. He could be a professional soldier, even if it meant being a professional killer, but if he began to derive enjoyment and self-satisfaction from torturing, he would despise himself forever. Somehow, he had to come to peace with Tammy's rape, his murder of his friends and his hatred of his father. He knew the answer to that trinity of anguish was right in front of him, but he was blinded to it by the details. He needed a broader perspective.

  When he quit trying so hard, he caught a glimpse of a solution in his mind, but it evaporated as quickly as it appeared. The answer was formless and hidden in shadows, but it did exist – Drake felt that.

  He would find the answer, but first he had an impossible mission to execute. He turned his thoughts to the details of the Kechla Citadel. Every fortress ever built has weaknesses. Every castle had a back door. Drake's mind painstakingly walked through the attack again and again, each time adding a level of detail.

  * * *

  Two hours later, when he had finished the nitration process, Gip collected the pink crystals of Cyclonite and gently kneaded them into a bowl of Vaseline. His brow was prominent with sweat, stinging his eyes, but he didn't dare make any unnecessary movement at this stage. If Drake walks through that door right now, I could flinch and kill us both, he thought. But Drake did not interrupt him. The home recipe C-4 was a viscous, pinkish paste. He made an amalgam of the paste and ball bearings, a viscous mixture he then worked into the soda bottles. Once he was satisfied with the stability of the bottles, he began the dangerous and delicate process of manufacturing the blasting caps. Gip was just collecting the newly created yellowish-orange picric acid crystals when his partner returned.

  “How's it going?” Drake's robes were drenched from exertion. He rubbed a bright pink cheek with his forearm.

  “I'm just about to finish the blasting caps. At this point, if I screw up, it'll just mean a couple of fingers.” Gip did not look away from his task as he spoke.

  “I don't know why anyone would want to do that for a living.”

  “Hey, nobody ever said being a Ranger was easy. In fact, they were pretty emphatic that it wasn't. Besides, munitions are only dangerous if you make a mistake.”

  “That's one big if!” Drake laughed.

  * * *

  The Kechla Citadel

  Drake's face was blacker than the night. Even Gip, whose skin was naturally black, wore face paint to prevent glare. The quarter moon was about thirty degrees above the horizon. The surrounding landscape was rocky, but barren of plants.

  The Kechla Citadel was a massive stone structure, about sixty feet tall and roughly two hundred feet on a side. It had cross shaped windows, eight on each face, providing excellent cover while affording both vertical and horizontal freedom of aim. A four-foot wall encircled the roof. There were two entrances, both heavy steel doors – a large one on the north face and a smaller one to the south.

 
; Drake took position among the rocks lining the ridge just beyond the southern entrance to Kechla. Gip took the north side. The rock formations were populous and large, providing ample cover and concealment. Drake was surprised that a solitary guard patrolled the outer perimeter. But then, when was the last time anyone had been foolish enough to attempt a direct assault on the most powerful man in Morocco, who by the way was housed in a stone citadel?

  The outer guard meandered in a giant circle around the compound. Six guards walked a pattern that hugged the walls of the citadel. All carried AK-47s and hand held radios, but only the outer perimeter guard regularly spoke into his. Drake and Gip watched and waited, each taking copious notes. Dawn was scheduled for 6:13 the following morning. At 5:30, they each began the three kilometer trek back to their hidden vehicle.

  * * *

  Back in their room, Drake and Gip spent two hours comparing observations. “Okay, for the southern face, we've got a six minute window every hour. To the north, we've got the same gap, occurring three minutes after the southern window. Agreed?” Drake said.

  “Yea. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.”

  “As long as we know what we're dealing with, we can plan around the gaps, no matter how small they are. How long will it take to plant the claymores?” Drake asked.

  “At least a half hour total per side, maybe more.”

  “All right, that's five cycles total, maybe six. If we work independently, we should have plenty of time.”

  “Oh yea, plenty!” Gip said, rolling his eyes. “All we have to do is penetrate the guard cycle about a dozen times, completely undetected. All for the privilege of going up against as many as thirty heavily armed men holed up in a castle. What could go wrong?”

  “We'll just have to avoid making mistakes.”

  “You know, your talent for fighting is exceeded only by your talent for understatement.” Gip chuckled.

  Drake and Gip devoted the rest of the day to sleep. To perform at their optimum, they needed their biological cycles to be nocturnal.

  * * *

  The Kechla Citadel

  The following night, Gip parked in the blind spot three kilometers away from Kechla. A huge sand dune blocked the truck from the citadel's view. Both men were grateful for their training as they hoisted two seventy-five pound satchels of claymores across the desert night. That bivouac they had hated so much was actually paying off. So were the thousands of push ups and hundreds of miles humped in full gear. The loose sand made it difficult to walk and more difficult to maintain balance. It took forty-five minutes to reach Kechla. This time, they easily avoided the outer guard, knowing his cycle precisely.

  “Okay, we both know the time table. Let's make the best of it,” Drake said. “You take the south. I'll take the north.”

  “You got it boss,” Gip replied.

  “Let's move out.”

  As Drake circled to the east, Gip began his descent toward the citadel. According to Falon, there were six guards who patrolled the immediate perimeter, the one guard on outer perimeter, and an additional twenty or more inside. So far, Falon appeared to have told them the truth. Gip moved slowly, especially mindful of his footing. One loose rock could bring this mission to a catastrophic halt.

  Properly positioned, claymore mines are extremely effective. Packed with steel ball bearings, each charge has a death zone in the shape of a hemisphere fifteen meters in radius. The most useful property of explosives is that in the first few milliseconds of the explosion, they are quite easy to direct. A well-placed couple of rocks or steel plate could focus the explosive blast extremely effectively.

  The ground cover ended approximately ten meters from the citadel, making Gip's job tougher. Aside from his brilliant white eyes, starkly contrasting the blackness of night, he was invisible. He waited through the cycle of the guards, frequently checking his watch. Seconds after the inner guard rounded the southeast corner, he moved in. Even in the cool night air, sweat broke on his brow. No wind, that was good, but that also meant no air conditioning.

  Gip crept down and planted the first claymore. The door was in the kill zone, but was at the edge of its range. He would have to do better. His objective was to cover the entire south side with overlapping kill zones. He crept. Each step brought the danger of slippery sand or an unexpected rock, either of which could trip him and bring six armed Arabs running.

  As he was planting the third mine, a guard appeared right on schedule. Gip knew he was coming, but thought he could get one more planted before it was too late. He was wrong. He froze in a crouching position. The guard looked directly at him. Gip narrowed his eyes to a slit, hoping to be invisible. As dark as the night was, his eyes were completely adjusted and he saw clearly. He knew the situation was the same for the guard. The guard's weapon hung from his shoulder. By chance or purpose, the gun was pointed directly at Gip.

  Gip ran through his options. They were pretty slim. He could wait, hoping not to be shot, or he could draw his weapon and shoot the guard, most likely blowing the entire mission, even though the shot would be silenced. He decided to wait. Ice water exuded from his pores, covering his bald head with beads Gip hoped would not reflect the dim moonlight. The guard reached into his breast pocket and removed an object. Gip could not tell what it was in the darkness, but he had a pretty good idea it was a radio. His finger tightened imperceptibly on the trigger of his Glock .45. He moved the barrel slowly toward the guard. Seconds later the knotted cords in his stomach loosened when the man lit a cigarette. The guard resumed his rounds. A chilly wave of relief washed over Gip's body. He allowed himself a silent sigh. He noticed his hands were shaking. That was too close. No more cutting corners. By the end of the sixth guard cycle, Gip had buried the final mine.

  * * *

  On the north side, Drake watched patiently as the guards carried out their cycle. There was a small and obviously little used door that would have to be dealt with. Drake carefully worked his way down to the edge of the rock line and planted the claymores, covering each with copious amounts of sand. Only once did a guard almost catch him unaware. The man rounded the corner thirty seconds ahead of schedule. Drake quietly and slowly lay on his stomach in front of a rock formation that he hoped would break his silhouette. It did.

  Drake was particularly interested in the aqueduct. Seventy-five meters north of the citadel was a grating that, according to the drawings in the library, led into the main waterway. There was an underground stream that for five centuries had supplied water to Kechla. The drawings showed water wheels in the catacombs that worked a complicated series of gears, rendering it as self-sufficient today as it was during medieval times. Tartus had chosen his home wisely.

  When the guard had passed, he moved north to examine the aqueduct grating. The grating was made of heavy, rusted iron. The metalwork was crude, with the look of medieval craftsmanship. If this grating were five hundred years old, it would be impossible for Drake to pry open. Nonetheless, he knew exactly what he would need for tomorrow night's mission. He began to feel that the two of them just might make it.

  * * *

  Gip lay in bed restless. Trying to sleep in the middle of the day had never been easy for him. Drake had dozed off in seconds. The deuce-and-a-quarter truck was parked outside their hotel room, complements of the local mercenaries. Gip suspected he had paid slightly more than sticker price for the truck, but that didn't matter to Uncle Sam. For night sniping, he wasn't able to get the AK-47's but got a great deal on two Heckler and Koch MSG-90's, each with special baffling to reduce noise and muzzle flash. For close quarter fighting, they had two American M-16s with M-203 attachments to augment their Glocks. Surprisingly, the most difficult item to find was the blowtorch Drake needed to cut through the grating to the aqueduct. Gip found it ironic that their entire plan could have been foiled because the local hardware store had run out of blowtorches. Luckily, a downtown construction site was quite happy to donate to the cause at a five-finger discount.

 
; Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Kechla Citadel

  Drake and Gip arrived at Kechla at just past twenty three hundred hours that night. They had parked the truck in the pre-arranged spot and walked from there. The citadel looked just as it had the previous night. Apparently, their claymores had not been discovered. Gip waited until the first gap in the guard rotation, and then he scrambled down and cut the phone line. Gip took position off the southwest corner.

  * * *

  Drake chose a spot just east of the southeast corner, giving him a clear line of fire into the southern and eastern sides of the compound.

  When the outer perimeter guard rounded the corner, Drake jumped from behind a rock and thrust a bayonet at an upward angle just below the guard's right shoulder blade. This technique punctured the diaphragm, rendering the victim instantly mute. The actual cause of death was internal hemorrhaging of the liver and spleen, taking five to seven minutes, so he was taught. Drake had no idea whether the death was painful or not, and didn't particularly care. The objective was instant silence. The guard was not human, just a mission parameter.

  * * *

  Gip established his position. When the first inner perimeter guard rounded the southwest corner, Gip placed one shot in the center of the man's forehead. He went down with a gentle thump. So far, so good, Gip thought, One down, twenty some odd to go. Six excruciating minutes passed before the second guard found the body. As he lifted his radio to sound the alarm, his head exploded into a fine mist with the impact of the 7.62 mm jacketed round. Gip had an uncomfortable feeling that this was too easy. He would get confirmation soon enough – one way or the other.

  There were still four guards patrolling the inner perimeter. They all appeared at once. Shit, Gip thought, it's begun. He popped the one on the far right in the solar plexus. Rich organ blood spurted from the wound as he was thrown back against the stone wall. The remaining three took cover and began pelting the rock formations to the south with their AK-47's. Gip lay on his back, surprised at how accurate they were. As planned, he rolled ten meters east and waited for Drake to fire. The idea was to spread the enemy out, making them believe they were surrounded.