Beach Dog hurried to the tail and opened a panel so he could get to the intermediate gear box. Holding a penlight in his mouth, he pulled out the chip detector screen, hoping he wouldn’t find metal slivers. The dipstick looked as if it had been rolled in glitter. Beach Dog smiled as it sparkled at him—sand. Sand had gotten into the system and magnetic particles in it were causing the false readings. The gearbox was fine.
“Iggy,” he called back, “she’s good.”
Iggy spoke into his microphone to bring in the Cobra and hurry up with the fuel transfer so they could get moving. “DRAGON ONE, this is TIN MAN. Cleared to land at our eight o’clock. Caution high-voltage lines.”
Hunter and GENGHIS had canvassed the area near the burning helicopter, then methodically expanded their search grid. Hunter heard the Cobra come in for the fuel transfer and knew he had to get back in the next five minutes to have a chance at persuading Iggy to send him on it. He was ready to break off from the search and return to the Hawk.
“You hear that?” GENGHIS said.
The Cobra’s engines stopped and Hunter could hear a faint moan that seemed to come from the desert, beyond where he could see with the light of the flames. He turned away from the wreckage, put on the goggles and cupped his hands over the sides to block out as much light as he could. As he scanned the desert floor, he was sure he heard someone.
“My ten o’clock, twenty meters out,” GENGHIS said.
Hunter spotted the body and shuffled in that direction. When he was confident that he was far enough away from the power line, he sprinted. He smelled burnt flesh as he approached the man. Shining an infrared beam on him, he could see black crispy flesh and raw meat. The face was a grotesque Halloween mask, unrecognizable. His clothes had burned away along with most of his skin. The legs and arms were twisted and obviously broken from the fall. The moan grew fainter.
Hunter squatted down beside him and started to feel for a pulse in his neck, then decided it was better not to touch him and risk further injury. “Can you talk to me? What’s your name?”
The guy groaned softly, giving no sign he comprehended anything. Hunter looked at GENGHIS and shook his head. “You know even if we get the bird in the air, Iggy’s gonna scrub the mission because of this guy.”
“I heard. You fly. Do you think they can fix it?”
Hunter took a deep breath. “We’ve been through quite a bit of sand and dust. I’d bet on a false read.”
Iggy’s voice came over Hunter’s earpiece. “SABER TOOTH this is TIN MAN. Return to base. Any survivors?”
Hunter didn’t respond, but stared at the charred casualty. If he allowed a dying man to keep him away from Stella, he would never forgive himself. He also knew he couldn’t live with himself if he left a teammate behind.
Iggy’s voice came over their earpieces again. “Repeat, any survivors?”
Hunter stared at the man and knew what he had to do. He squatted down to pick him up. “Give me a hand with him.”
“Sure thing.” GENGHIS pulled out his sidearm and fired.
Hunter and GENGHIS returned to the Pave Hawk to see the flight engineer retracting the hose. The refueling was complete. “She airworthy?” Hunter said to Beach Dog, dreading the confrontation with Iggy if she wasn’t.
“Itching to go back up there and visit her tanker friend for more juice,” Beach Dog said. “She’s a go.”
As GENGHIS climbed into the helicopter, Iggy grabbed his arm. His face was stormy. “You pulled the same thing you did in Libya, didn’t you?”
GENGHIS stared at him for a few moments without saying anything, then twisted his body away from Iggy and climbed into the helicopter. Iggy gripped Hunter’s shoulder as he got in. “The truth, Stone. Any survivors?”
Hunter strapped himself into his seat before speaking. He despised GENGHIS for what he’d done, and at the same time felt enormously grateful to the son of a bitch. He looked straight ahead and said, “There are no survivors.”
“I thought so,” Iggy said with a grunt as he slid the door shut. “Beach Dog, get us the hell out of here. We’ve got to get to that tango camp before Camille kicks all their asses without us.”
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Shangri-la
Al-Zahrani was taller and thinner than Camille had expected; he had mysterious brown eyes, peaceful eyes which at the same time had glints of mercy and flashes of vengeance. A cleric in a white skullcap read from a Koran while two guards pointed AKs at her. Back home in the Ozarks, they called this a shotgun wedding, except she wasn’t pregnant and the groom wasn’t the one with the guns pointed at him.
Al-Zahrani held her gaze. For a moment she thought he was trying to tell her something.
The young man who had earlier brought her the water and clothes translated the cleric’s words, cheating whenever he could read the same verse from an English translation of the Koran. “And among His signs in this, that He created for you mates, from among yourselves, that ye may dwell…”
She didn’t have much tolerance for religious writings in any language and quit listening while she assessed the tactical situation. Two guards pointed AKs her. It was a poor choice of weapon for the circumstances and she considered baiting them to shoot her just as she maneuvered in front of al-Zahrani so they hit him as well. It wasn’t her best option since she couldn’t guarantee that he’d be killed, but it might be the best she could do.
Her wrists were tied in front of her, but her legs were now free since they intended for her to spread them soon. No one had bothered to search her since they’d thrown her into the shed. The long nail concealed in her sleeve was an awkward weapon, but it was the best she had found. She figured her best chance was to spike it into the soft spot behind his ear just before he tried to enter her. The thought was so disgusting. What a way to die, shot by bodyguards while being raped by the world’s most wanted terrorist. At least Muslims seemed to bathe a lot.
“The Holy Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, made the mut’a marriage halal.” The interpreter stumbled through the translation. She couldn’t figure out why the hell they were bothering, but she guessed it was part of their screwy ethics.
On the way over she had heard a generator, but al-Zahrani’s tent was lit by several oil lamps. They seemed to reserve the power to run their phones and communications and the few lights outside. She hoped al-Zahrani liked to do it in the dark. Like her Night Stalker buddies always said, “Death waits in the dark.”
She hoped the damn thing would get a move on. At least they had fed her before the ceremony and she guessed that was her dowry. They could at least have given her the whole goat. She made a mental note not to serve boiled goat if she survived this and ever married.
After stifling several mini-yawns she managed to get her eyes to tear up, then she caught al-Zahrani’s gaze and made herself smile at him.
He smiled back.
Dumb fuck.
Soon the peace and blessings of Camille Black would be upon him—god help his soul.
Chapter Eighty
41° 59' 40.88 N, 63° 07' 04.49 E (Uzbekistan)
Despite the snafu with the last air-to-air refueling, the next one didn’t make Beach Dog nearly as nervous as Iggy did, whipping out his laptop and revising the mission plan on the fly. He’d seen it happen many times and he had learned long ago that when things started sliding south the next thing he knew he was waking up in an alley in Tijuana with no wallet and no pants, smelling of booze and puke.
Beach Dog descended and began to hug the ground as closely as he could in case the tangos had some kind of radar warning system, even though he guessed it probably consisted of pie tins tied to a clothesline. He was using FLIR the entire mission, but only through the Afghan-Uzbek border region did he fly close enough to the ground to really need the navigational system. Now it was time to show off why Night Stalkers ruled the darkness. He flew five feet above the dunes, too fast to kick up a trail of sand.
“Five minutes
to the LZ. Wax up them boards, dudes,” Beach Dog said as he passed over the south rim of the open pit mine, pointed the nose down and plunged two hundred and fifty feet in seconds. He pushed the speed to one hundred sixty knots and boomed through the man-made canyon, a few feet above the floor. “And hang on. We’re going to be flying the Pipeline.”
For the next several minutes the helicopter lurched sharp to port, then to starboard, up, down, sudden drops and immediate climbs. Man, this is flying.
Beach Dog saw a mound directly in front of them and threw the Hawk hard right, but the canyon wall was dead ahead. Beach Dog spun the Hawk in a Bat-turn, rotating one hundred eighty degrees. He slalomed around the hills, throwing the crew left, then tumbling their stomachs to the right.
“You know what Night Stalkers say,” Beach Dog yelled to anyone listening.
“‘Night Stalkers don’t quit,’” several men said in unison.
A vertical cliff popped up out of nowhere. Beach Dog yanked back on the cyclic and shot straight up and onward at warp speed. “NSDQ is so true, but I was thinking, ‘Death waits in the dark.’”
Chapter Eighty-One
Shangri-la
The cleric, interpreter and one of the two guards left the tent, extinguishing all the lights except a single candle. Al-Zahrani put his arm around Camille’s waist and pulled her close. His breath smelled, even from a few feet away. She met his lips and kissed him violently, channeling her anger into passion, seducing him into lowering his defenses. His mouth tasted like an old tennis shoe and his beard and moustache were steel wool, scratching her face. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she leaned her head back, inviting him to kiss her neck. She giggled, visualizing the soft sounds of bubbles rising to the surface in her witch’s cauldron.
Keeping her bound hands pressed together so he couldn’t see the nail, she touched his face with the sides of her little fingers and rippled her hands down his body as if she were a belly dancer. She stopped short of his hard-on.
Gross.
Al-Zahrani shouted something to the guard as he shoved her down onto his sleeping mat and tore off the 5.11s she had left on underneath the jilbab. The guard blew out the candle.
His vigilance was waning.
Good.
Just before the guard left the tent, al-Zahrani pinned her down. He groped at her breasts, shoving the jilbab up around her neck. Camille’s hate was acid burning in her belly. She wanted to fight back, but she knew she had to force herself to play it out until the opportune moment. As soon as he got bored with her breasts, she would work her hands up into position. She prayed he wasn’t a breast man who would linger forever. There was an artery in the stomach, but she doubted she could find it.
Playing with his chest hairs totally disgusted her, so she gave herself a break and worked her hands up to his beard, but when she got there it still had food in it and she didn’t want to touch it. Just as she started to doubt if she could pull it off, he let her slip her arms over the top of his head and move her wrists right where she wanted them—behind his occipital bone at the lower back of his skull. She would’ve preferred to snap his neck, but it was impossible from that angle.
His cock pressed against her, trying to enter her. She wasn’t in position yet and she had to get this right because she couldn’t stomach this again. Wiggling her hips away, she evaded it while she put her right leg on his hipbone. Her foot there kept him stabilized so she could scoot slightly to the left and maneuver her arms into position.
Her forearms rubbed against his neck, underneath his ears and he laughed. She bent her right arm, bringing it down to her chest and pulling his head closer. As hard as she could, she thrust the nail at the sweet spot behind his left ear.
Al-Zahrani moved his head. She missed and the nail flew from her sweaty hands. He didn’t notice. He shoved her foot off his hip bone and pushed hard into her. She was as dry as the Kyzyl Kum and it hurt like hell. The fucker had her pinned down like a pro wrestler.
She turned her head to the side and waited.
In less than two minutes, he pulled out and called for the guards and the interpreter. They were inside his tent within seconds. Al-Zahrani said something to her as he stroked her hair. She jerked her head away from him and turned her back to him and she pushed down the jilbab. The interpreter said it meant that she pleased him and they would stay married for the next three days.
At least they weren’t going to kill her tonight, though the way she felt, it would’ve been welcome. She would have at least two more chances to take him out and thoroughly disgust herself in the process.
She could do just about anything, but not this again. She had to find a way to take out the fucker tonight.
Two of the guards escorted her from al-Zahrani’s quarters. She forced herself to focus on situational awareness and not how utterly miserable she was feeling because she had to remain in control of her emotions if she was going to succeed.
They passed two huge tents with men sleeping on the ground inside. Nearly as many bedded down on mats outside to get away from the heat. She had seen another barracks on the other side of al-Zahrani’s tent and estimated that the camp held three to four hundred tangos.
The last tent before the dark void between her shack and the compound was more of a canopy like the ones used in big weddings back home. Weddings—she couldn’t let herself think about weddings. And they were not married.
Under the canopy, three dozen men sat on oriental carpets in four different groups. Each of them had an AK within arm’s length and several wore belts with short daggers hanging off them. Some had Korans open in front of them, though she couldn’t imagine that they could see to read from the few kerosene lamps scattered about. They stopped their debates long enough to watch her march by. She could feel their hate.
It was mutual.
One guard walked ahead of her, the other behind. Even after she had passed the last tent, she found no openings to escape.
They arrived at the shed and shoved her inside without tying her feet back up—her first lucky break of the day, she consoled herself, even though all she wanted to do was collapse on the ground and cry.
The shed was pitch black, but gradually she sensed someone else in with her.
Chapter Eighty-Two
42° 09' 25.95 N, 62° 56' 52.31 E (Uzbekistan)
Hunter was feeling queasy when the Pave Hawk deposited him, GENGHIS and Ashland at the release point on the other side of the rock ridge from the tango camp. Expecting to feel amped since he was only a three and a half kilometer hike from Stella, instead he fought away a nagging concern for her. He had done scores of extractions and he always went into them convinced that they could handle whatever came at them, but this one worried him. These stakes were too personal. As he humped the three kilometers around the ridge to the camp, he fought to get Stella off his mind and think of her only as their mission objective, codename GRACKLE. It didn’t do much good. However he reframed it, he was still on his way to rescue the woman he loved.
The passage between the two open pits was a mound of soft sand that slowed them down. As they rounded the base of the ridge, Hunter could see the compound in the distance through the night vision device. It was a new moon and Hunter was happy he didn’t have too much ambient light messing with the night vision goggles. The PVS-14 helmet-mounted monocle was far superior to the old PVS-7 head-mounted goggles that Rubicon had supplied him with. Camille didn’t cut corners with her equipment. Tonight he hoped her investment would pay off.
Hunter carried a rucksack with a half-dozen Claymores. Despite his injuries, GENGHIS wore a pack with the blasting cap assemblies. The spools were light, but the hundreds of feet of wire made them bulky. Ashland was traveling light, looking like a tango with a knock-off Adidas duffle bag. They were two kilometers from the far edge of the camp and Ashland had fallen behind. At least it was easy running. The ground was hard and level, packed down by tons of earthmoving equipment.
“How you doing?”
Hunter ran alongside GENGHIS. He didn’t show any signs that his earlier injuries were affecting him, but he was the type who would never show it until he keeled over.
“Better than Ashland,” GENGHIS said. “You trust him?”
Hunter laughed. “He’s the fucker who started this mess. Burned me bad. Was afraid I’d blow his cover because I recognized him.”
“You think there’s a chance he’s working with the tangos?”
“Even with what you did back at the crash site, you’re still the one I want watching my back.” Hunter jogged past him.
The Pave Hawk flew out of the crater and dropped Iggy off on the desert floor, upwind and a kilometer from the start of the ridge above the compound. He was relieved that the desert floor there was hard like in Iraq and he supposed that had to do with the way the winds whipped up from the crater, sweeping the rim clean. Whatever the reason, he was grateful. The M240G medium machine gun weighed enough on its own and the ammo cans were like carrying car batteries: dense, concentrated weight that didn’t help the blisters on his stump. But Iggy knew it wasn’t really the heavy, awkward gear that was irritating him as he jogged to his position. He had lost seven men in a stupid accident that had cut his team in half. The team was smaller than he knew he should be working with, but for Camille, he was willing to take the risk. He hoped to god those bastards hadn’t messed her up too much yet, but he knew what they did to women—and to men.
Several minutes later, Iggy set down his gear and looked over the ridge at the terrorist camp. Through his night vision monocle, he found the reflection of the square inch of glint tape attached to the top of Hunter and GENGHIS’ helmets. It would be invisible to the tangos without night vision equipment, which he hoped they wouldn’t be using. He could see they were approaching the training grounds on the edge of the camp.
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