He understood that on no account could he take with him a bodyguard, since the American military still had no business pursuing Ibrahim and Yousaf. The State Police of Maine could make a case, but not the Pentagon, where the generals and admirals could never be seen riding roughshod over the rule of law in the United States of America. Ibrahim and Yousaf were free men until some terrorist act could be proven against them.
Mack’s activities in Northwest Connecticut would remain forever a secret. Now two of his former colleagues brought his gear over to his quarters. He needed his battle harness with extra magazines, and two hand grenades. He would take a trusted M-4 light automatic rifle, a SIG-Sauer 9mm pistol, and a combat knife. He took a couple of MREs—Meals Ready to Eat—consisting of beef jerky, energy bars, and peanuts.
At 2130 a young SEAL from Team 10 arrived to tell him a Black Hawk UH-6O was running about a hundred yards away on the runway. Around his head Mack was now wearing a camouflage bandana, what SEALs call their “drive-on rags,” and his face was blacked out with cammy cream.
He wore combat boots with his rugged woodland pants and top. Thick leather gloves were jammed in his pockets in case the helo could not land and he needed to fast-rope to the ground.
Bagram never sleeps, but it was quiet outside the block where Mack was staying. The young SEAL messenger led the way, and the former commander shouldered his machine gun, and stepped out, in full combat gear, face unrecognizable in the dark. All SEAL teams look like this when they’re “going in.” The difference here was that Mackenzie Bedford was unseen by either his colleagues or his commanders. He was all alone.
He strode across the black-top and boarded the Black Hawk, the U.S. Army’s frontline utility helicopter, with its sixteen laser-guided hellfire missiles, ready at all times. Especially here.
The doors slammed shut and they took off, the rotors screaming as they climbed quickly to five thousand feet, then clattered away to the northeast. Forty minutes later the landing controller called back, “Sir, we’re in the drop zone. But it’s heavy woodland on this side of the mountain, and we can’t land.”
“Fix the rope,” said Mack, “and take it with you.”
The ramp went down. The rope snaked down. The pilot hovered about thirty feet above the ground. Mack pulled on the gloves and grabbed the line, testing it for weight.
“Okay, sir. LET’S GO!”
Grasping the rope, Mack swung out and slid down as fast as he could go, as there is nowhere quite as vulnerable as halfway down a drop-rope, perhaps already in the sights of a Taliban marksman.
He hit the ground, just a tad harder than normal, and crawled silently into the undergrowth, listening as the helo’s engines increased and watching as it rapidly gained height, before rocketing away over the trees.
Mack didn’t move or make a sound for fifteen very long, accurately timed minutes; standard SEAL procedure after a drop behind enemy lines.
He kept his back hard to a tree trunk, not wishing to emulate even one of those dozens of young Russian conscripts whose throats had been cut by the Mujahadeen twenty years ago, right here in these same lawless mountains.
Eventually he stood and shoved the gloves in his pocket. He checked his GPS and compass. He had a long walk ahead of him, a good hour down a straight black-top road, but probably five hours from here, in uncharted woodland, in which he needed to check his every step. His gear weighed thirty pounds and the terrain was rough, hilly, and sometimes slippery on gravel or mud. He was an armed packhorse, trying to walk as delicately as a ballet dancer, through a black forest.
He set the compass to 180 degrees and began walking due south. The terrain was overgrown, and he eased back on each forward step to avoid breaking a twig or crushing a small bush. The mountain men have ears like sonar beams, and the slightest sound would betray his position.
At one point he slipped into a dry ditch, and he heard the shale crunch under his boots. For a second his heart stood still, and again he stayed motionless for two minutes, listening. But again there was no sound or movement in this petrified night forest.
Once more he picked his way forward, stepping softly, holding his hands in front of him and feeling for a branch to grip, trying not to break it. At times the escarpment was almost too steep to retain his footing, but he’d done this many times before. It took all the patience he could muster as he pressed forward, slipping, sliding, and stumbling below a rising moon, toward the sleeping village of Kushram.
He was almost a mile above the houses at 5:30 a.m. when he arrived on the plateau. And he was amused to find that his assumption from the satellite pictures of a flat green pasture turned out to be a field of opium, Kushram’s main crop and source of income.
He knew the way down, and his night glasses would guide him. He also knew that if Ibrahim and Yousaf were in residence there would be guards. But more than anything, he knew the battle creed of the Navy SEALs in such circumstances: speed and surprise, plus, if possible, intimidation. Because that’s how you achieve your objective.
Mack moved forward, staying off the regular track, and watching for a crop of boulders above the houses. He’d used that for cover a half-dozen years ago.
But when he focused the glasses on the rocks, Mack froze. Sitting right there, with an obvious AK-47 in his hands, was a tribesman, obviously a sentry on the last watch of the night. He seemed to be facing the village and talking, gesticulating, to another person. At which point, Mack had the second guy in focus. He was looking through big Russian binoculars, and he too was pointing, up the hill to where Mack was hunkered down in tall grass.
“Fuck,” breathed Mack. “They’ve seen me.” And his mind raced. Right now it was two against one, but if these two raised the alarm, it could be ten against him.
Things seemed to move in slow motion as he studied the two tribesmen, watched them move apart, and then begin walking up the hill toward him, coming in from two wide angles, working as a team. In western terms, this was a regular pincer movement. Zulu warriors used to call it “the horns of the buffalo.” There was nothing new about it, and the antidote was universal—one of these guys had to go, and fast. Mack understood this would mean betraying his position, but he liked the odds better.
He could still see the first one, the sentry Ahmed Azzan, but the other one was moving flat along the ground. It was still dark, but Mack had night sights, and he slammed a bullet straight between Ahmed’s eyes, killing him instantly.
Now, where the hell’s this other bastard? Ahmed fell without a sound, and Mack guessed the sniper on the ground did not know what had happened. For two minutes, which seemed like an hour, Mack lay there, not moving but scanning the terrain as best he could.
And suddenly Gholan Azzan launched his attack. He had worked his way around silently, coming up on higher ground behind the former SEAL, right on his six o’clock. He was unaware whether Mack was alone, or part of a team, and he wielded a curved, razor-sharp herdsman’s knife.
Down the hill he came, racing over the ground, baggy clothes flapping. His soft sandals made no sound on the grass. The dagger jutted from his right hand. There was murder in his heart.
Ten yards out, Mack still had neither seen nor heard him. But there was a thump on the ground as the Pathan tribesman launched himself through the air, his right arm raised. Mack caught the blur of the attack in the corner of his eye, and he rolled left with all of his strength, holding both hands in front of him in the classic SEAL unarmed combat defensive position.
Gholan Azzan tried to twist in the air, to zoom in on his quarry, and he slashed downward with his dagger, trying to stab Mack in the throat. But he was a few inches wide, and the blade just nicked Mack’s upper left arm.
Now Mack had a two-handed grip on his assailant, and he clamped his fist on the man’s beard, holding the head still while he whipped back the right arm, snapping it at the shoulder.
Azzan screamed. Mack could not stop him. But he sprang to his feet and launched a steam-hammer kick, wh
ich landed right below Azzan’s open mouth. The force rammed back his head and broke his neck. It was like being hit by a freight train.
The body was still twitching in its death throes when Mack elected to press home his attack. Gathering up his rifle he ran out to his left and on down toward the houses. He came in across rough ground, sliding and scrambling down the mountain to the base of the village and the main street.
There were a lot of people asleep right here. But he’d never have a better chance. He could hide, and select his position here, and attack when the time was right. Also, he knew where Ibrahim lived, and in the soft dawn light, he stared across the street to the house where he had once forced the terrorist to show him the cache of TNT.
He tried to get his bearings, to remember precisely where he’d been before. It seemed familiar, but unfamiliar. For a start, he could not see the rain-butt. Neither did he see the crooked smile of Captain Musa Amin, stationed on the flat roof of the house with a Vladimirov KPV-14.5 heavy machine gun, hijacked years ago by the Mujahadeen from an abandoned Russian tank.
Captain Amin had the American in his sights. And he had one disintegrating steel belt of ammunition. Somehow he knew his comrades up the hill had been hurt in a battle with this monster American, and without hesitation the captain opened fire. He had the minor problem, however, of never having used one of these hard-kicking ex-Soviet tank-busters before.
He thought he’d taken aim, but it ripped at his grip and he let go too fast. The gun lurched left and then right, and the huge bullets blew out in every direction, tearing a pattern in the wall ten feet from where Mack was standing. He had no time to run because this lunatic with the HMG was about to knock down the fucking town the way he was going.
Every door Mack could see was shut. But there was a big window right behind him and he shoulder-charged the glass, diving up and through it, rifle first, more reflex than design. He crashed into an empty room smothered in thick glass, and followed by a hail of machine-gun fire that spit, smacked, and cracked into the walls, cushions, and furniture.
By some miracle he was not hit, and he was safe on the floor, out of the downward angle with which Captain Amin was wrestling. But if he gets control of that fucking thing, I’m history, was Mack’s only thought. He could hold back a goddamned Platoon with that thing.
The captain had seen Mack’s entry into the house and decided to finish him right there and then, without spraying another two hundred rounds all over the village. He hauled up an RPG, a weapon with which he was an expert, shoved it into a firing tube, and fired it straight at Mack’s window. Missed. By three inches. It hit the wall and knocked down half the front of the house in a massive cloud of sand and brown dust.
Mack saw it coming, the tell-tale white plume of smoke, and he dived though the back door, out onto an almost sheer escarpment, down which he fell with all his gear for almost forty feet. “Fuck me,” said Mack. “I’d better kill this bastard before he kills both of us.”
With the street now immersed in an enormous cloud of brown dust, Mack made his way back up the cliff, and used the dust-cover to reach the far side of the street unseen by the populace. He made it to another hill-side at the back of Ibrahim’s house, where he could still see the back of Captain Amin on the roof, adjusting the angle of the HMG.
For the moment, Mack was done with bullets. He hooked the pin out of his first grenade and hurled it straight onto the roof, where it detonated with a stupendous blast, killing Amin, blasting him into the street, caving in half the roof, and obliterating the KPV-14.5 and its wheeled base.
At this point the still clean-shaven Yousaf, terrified, came running out of the back door, waving his Kalashnikov, but choking with dust, unable to see. He’d never see again either. Mack recognized him instantly, and gunned him down with a short, deadly-accurate burst from the M-4. Speed and surprise, baby. Never fails.
That left only one. But Mack Bedford was not about to hang around waiting for the village to recover its composure, and its courage, and come after him. Nor was he waiting for Ibrahim. He guessed the al-Qaeda fanatic was badly disoriented, maybe even injured in the rubble where the roof had caved in.
Mack had no idea what awaited him through that back door, what eyes were watching him. But if he delayed his attack, there was a good chance he’d die. There were probably fifty Afghan men in Kushram, all armed, and every one an enemy.
If he went now, the odds were with him. And the former Lt. Commander of SEAL Team 10, husband of Anne, father of Tommy, stepped through the back door of Ibrahim Sharif’s house.
He found himself in the main room, face to face with Sharif Senior, who was covered in dust, watching him, with his dagger drawn. Ibrahim was dragging himself out from under the debris, holding his rifle.
His father raised his dagger and came straight for Mack’s face, but the former SEAL swiveled and landed a crashing upward blow under his chin with the butt of his rifle. As his father flew across the room, Ibrahim by now was on his feet, but dazed, concussed, and uncoordinated. He stared at the American’s face, ignoring the M-4, and there was a leer on his face as he said slowly, “So, it’s you again, Satan. This time you die.”
He raised his AK-47, just a little, before Mack studded four bullets in a dead straight line right across his forehead. And Ibrahim Sharif, terrorist, murderer, fanatic, and Islamist, fell dead at his feet.
Mack Bedford turned on his heel and walked out, into the dust-bowl of the street, which was still quiet, its populace still cowering in their dwellings, away from the machine-gun, hand-grenade, and rocket battle that had taken place over the past fifteen minutes. Two houses had been essentially destroyed, and no one was moving.
Mack jogged onto the mountainside and made his way to the high ground. And even as he did so, he heard that familiar bom-bom-bom-bom of the Black Hawk’s fifty-four-foot main rotor clattering over the high-peak above the village, coming in to get him, to haul him out of the opium field and to take him back to rejoin the U.S. Navy SEALs, Team 10, Foxtrot Platoon.
Epilogue
MACK BEDFORD ARRIVED home in Maine to find a short, impersonal, life-changing holy grail of a letter awaiting him:Dear Commander Bedford,
It gives me great pleasure to confirm your promotion, and your new command of SEAL Team 10, active upon your arrival in Coronado. In my congratulations to you, Admiral Mark Bradfield has asked to be included.
It was signed Rear Admiral Andrew M. Carlow, Commander SPECWARCOM.
The letter was expected, and yet somehow out of the blue. Anne and Tommy both knew they were going back to California and would follow Mack west as soon as the school term ended.
For now it was business as usual in the Bedford household, preparing Dad for a long tour of duty. It took about three days and was made infinitely easier when the local shipyard chairman, Harry Remson, said he would rent their house indefinitely, using it for his visiting children and their families.
What also made it easier was the complete lack of paperwork required from Mack’s previous mission. No de-briefing, no reports, no lessons learned, no recommendations. Nothing. Not even a phone call.
The highest-ranking security chiefs in the United States, both military and civilian, wanted to know only that the four most dangerous killers freed from Guantanamo Bay were dead, and would trouble them no more.
And they definitely knew that. Because the news came through, encrypted, about twenty-five minutes after Mack had almost blown off the head of Ibrahim Mohammed.
For a few brief, glorious moments, peace reigned at the National Security Agency, the Pentagon, and the CIA. And no one wanted more. Jimmy Ramshawe, Andy Carlow, Bob Birmingham, and Mark Bradfield all wore the secret smiles of unknown, unseen warriors.
Mack flew out of Brunswick, touching down six hours later on the southwest runway, U.S. Naval Air Station, North Island, Coronado, mid-afternoon. He stepped out of the aircraft wearing his Trident for the first time since they’d cruelly hit him with the friggin’ GOMOR (
General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand), the one that had ended his career. Almost.
His former combat driver, Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class, Jack Thomas, out of Nashville, Tennessee, wore a grin as wide as San Diego Bay, as he stood on the runway and greeted his old boss. Then Jack drove him back from the same airport where he’d said good-bye a year previously, after the court martial.
“Everyone’s just real pleased y’all comin’ back,” he said. “We missed you, sir.”
“Thanks, Jack,” replied the new commander. “I missed all you guys, too. Wasn’t one day I didn’t think of every last one of you.”
“Even me, sir?”
“’Specially you, kid. How many times did you save my life in the old armored vehicle?”
“Twice, sir. Both times in Baghdad.”
“And here we go again. Any word where 10’s going next?”
“We hear Afghanistan. Nothing definite. But you’re a bit of an expert on that place, right, sir?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there.”
Copyright © 2010 by Patrick Robinson
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