Victor signaled with two fingers: two kilometers to go. After the four crossed a dirt road, young fir trees surrounded them but not so many as to block out the fading sunlight. Thorny broom bushes scratched Chris’s left leg, but the scratches were the least of his worries.
Once Victor gave the one-kilometer signal, Jim Bob motioned for everyone to spread out. They continued for nearly the whole kilometer but found nothing. They backtracked—still nothing. Hannah wandered north then disappeared. Minutes later, she returned and signaled them to follow her. She led the crew through heavy vegetation until she stopped and pointed to a long grey shape at the base of several charred tree trunks. A grey angled line, too straight for Mother Nature and more like the wing of something manmade, broke the uneven lines of foliage.
They neared a wing. Its skin was glassy smooth, and there was no fuselage that they could find, part of the stealth design of the Switchblade Whisper. They’d found it. The starboard side had broken near a sensor pod, and the port side of the main structure and wing had broken into much smaller pieces. Among the wreckage were broken directional cameras that, when working, were used for projecting the surrounding environment onto the skin of the aircraft—making it virtually invisible.
Jim Bob pointed to a meter-long length of wing and gestured for Victor to take it. Then he disconnected the black box and placed it in his backpack. “Okay, Chris, blow it up,” Jim Bob said.
Victor turned to head back, but Hannah grabbed his arm and stopped him. He growled. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m going with the Switchblade Whisper,” she said.
“Your job is to stay here and protect Chris while he rigs the demo.”
“You stay here and protect Chris,” she said calmly.
“How am I supposed to carry this and guard him at the same time?”
Hannah took the length of wing from him. “I’ve got the wing.”
He glared at her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked innocently.
“I just don’t like the sudden change in plans,” Victor said.
“It’s all right, Victor,” Jim Bob said. “Let her carry the wing. You guard Chris.”
Jim Bob headed out, and Hannah followed.
Victor turned to watch Chris, who pulled a satchel charge of the highly classified explosive heptanitrocubane (CL-20) from his backpack. Packing more punch than TNT or HMX, CL-20 was the best non-nuclear explosive that money could buy. Chris attached the satchel to the main body of the Switchblade Whisper. From his left pocket, he removed a rectangular case made of high-impact plastic and opened it to expose a padded interior. He unfolded the pads, revealing a blasting cap. Chris inserted the blasting cap into the CL-20. Then he crimped the blasting cap into two timed fuses—two is one and one is none. Next, he screwed two fuse igniters tightly onto the fuses. With his left hand, he grasped the igniters, and with his right hand, he tugged on the lanyards until he heard them snap. The pungent odor of cordite smoldered a trail up his nostrils. Fifteen minutes till boom-time.
“Fire in the hole,” he said. He turned to see if Victor had heard, but he was gone—they were all gone! Jim Bob and Hannah were probably hurrying to load the wing and the black box into the van, but Victor should’ve stayed and covered Chris’s six.
“Hey, you! Stop!” Fifty meters south, a middle-aged Syrian soldier in a tight-fitting uniform waved at Chris.
Ignoring the soldier, he tried to put some distance between himself and the Switchblade Whisper. If the soldier saw the drone and the explosives planted on it, Chris’s cover would be blown, they would frisk him and discover his pistol, and then his Adventure Tours cover wouldn’t mean squat.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the soldier raise his rifle. Chris kept walking away when a shot rang out, and the round popped the sound barrier as it barely missed his head, causing his sphincter to tighten. He’d experienced different kinds of being shot at, ranging from an ineffective enemy having no idea where he was to an effective enemy zeroing in for the kill, and this was the latter.
His heart beat faster, and he felt like he wasn’t getting blood to his head. His breathing became more rapid, and he craved oxygen. The commotion of birds in the trees became as loud as if they were perched on his head. With his physiology sped up, the soldier and leaves in the breeze seemed to move in slow motion. He’d thought with all the experiences of war, he’d assimilate quickly, but he’d thought wrong—he was shocked to find that he’d regressed to being a virgin SEAL.
Chris’s hand shook as he managed to draw his Glock and turn to face the man. Only the stippling on the pistol grip and his white-knuckled grasp kept Chris’s sweaty hands from losing the weapon. He tried for a shot to the upper torso, focusing on the soldier’s neck in order to compensate for the distance, but he failed to ensure that he could see the sights of his trembling pistol when he squeezed the trigger.
The first shot struck the soldier in the shoulder. The man dropped his rifle and spun around with a yelp before he retreated. Before Chris could escape the area, a square-shouldered soldier came into view pointing his rifle at Chris.
Slow it down and aim, Chris tried to calm himself. This time, he carefully aligned his sights across the soldier’s neck. He coolly pulled the trigger back until the weapon fired. Pop. In the chest. Pop. Another in the chest. One moment the soldier was full of life, and now he was dead—like a marionette with its strings suddenly severed. It made him nauseous.
There was no time to dwell on his reversion to virgin SEAL or his nauseated stomach. The other soldiers would soon outnumber and outgun him, and he didn’t want to stick around for face time with the grim reaper.
Isn’t someone from my team going to come back and help me?
He ran through the broom bushes that had scratched him before, but now he didn’t feel their thorns. He recognized the dirt road they’d crossed before—a couple more klicks to the vehicles. He hurried across the road, but twenty-five meters to the north, a black-hooded figure walked toward him carrying an AK. So close to government troops, Chris could only guess the Black Hood was with the anti-government forces, possibly al Qaeda. Black Hood noticed Chris and pulled up his rifle to take aim. Chris fired the first shot, rushing it. He missed, but Black Hood lowered his weapon and ran away.
Must’ve scared him off.
Two more Black Hoods reared their heads and blasted in Chris’s direction. Chris reined in his runaway breathing and heartbeat. He took an extra moment to aim at the right hood before squeezing the trigger. Pop. The man twitched once before thudding to the earth. The other Black Hood switched to full auto and sprayed his AK at Chris. Amid the terrifying noise, Chris’s left thigh was hit. Caught off balance, he fell. I’m shot! He shot me in the leg! The enemy was down, too, but he wasn’t dead. Chris would be dead if he didn’t do something soon. Ignoring the excruciating pain in his leg, he brought his pistol up and skipped the easier upper torso shot in favor of a more difficult shot—head. Pop. Black Hood ate dirt. His body went into what looked like an epileptic seizure before becoming still. Pain-filled panic punched through him.
As Chris turned to take a look at his own injury, he spotted an odd assortment of electronics on the ground. He checked his thigh for blood but only discovered electronics spilling out of it. For a moment, he felt like a wounded cyborg until he realized that the AK round had struck the cell phone in his thigh pocket. Some pieces of phone were sticking out of his leg, but the phone had deflected the bullet. Luckiest man in the world—or so he thought, until the woods rustled to the north with more Black Hoods, and the woods to the south chattered with advancing Syrian soldiers.
Chris crawled between the white flowering myrtle bushes. One piece of phone was particularly painful, and he pulled it out so he could move without being stabbed by it. The sounds of angry men intensified. He glanced to the south where six soldiers broke through the forest. Men’s voices chattered from the north—seven more Black Hoods. He had become an ass sandwich.
For the first time in years, he was afraid—an emotion he’d known intimately. It was okay to be afraid, that was human, but it wasn’t okay to let the fear take control of him; he had to control the fear.
Breathe. Respiration was one of the most basic elements to human functioning, and through it, he controlled the fear. He formed his lips into a tight circle to direct the flow of oxygen straight to his lungs and slowly inhaled as much air as his lungs could hold. Then he slowly released it all. He breathed with the rhythm of swimming long distance; it was his rhythm. With each breath, his pulse rate slowed and his body temperature became normal. Although he’d controlled the fear, he was no match for the superior enemy forces still closing in. Then he remembered his training as a minister at Harvard and the mentorship of Reverend Luther. He remembered God. And he prayed.
The bushes wouldn’t protect him from bullets, but they might conceal him from enemy eyes. Shots were fired from the south, then the west. Chris’s heart picked up speed again as the firepower increased in volume and intensity. He suddenly realized they weren’t shooting at him. The soldiers and Black Hoods are shooting at each other!
He crawled through the bushes until he reached the long grass and wildflowers. If I can just make it to the SUV, I’ll have mobility. And the HK416’s salvo.
Chris moved forward and winced. One of the pieces of electronics worked its way out of his leg, but another seemed to be digging in deeper. Sweat stung his eyes, and tree roots and rocks bruised his knees. He pulled the last bloody piece of cell phone out of his leg before he finally neared the SUV. His spirits rose—until he realized he wasn’t the only one who’d reached it. He fell flat as three Syrian soldiers approached the vehicle on foot.
His muscles tensed, and he tasted the salt of his sweat. Can I take them? Armed only with a pistol, it would be risky. Maybe I should wait them out. But more soldiers were likely to arrive soon. If they search the area, I’m done for. It would be better to fight them when there were only three than when there was a whole platoon. Now I have surprise on my side—later, I may not. He quietly ejected the partially spent magazine from his Glock and replaced it with a full magazine—fifteen rounds. He aimed at the head of the soldier nearing the SUV. Chris exhaled, waiting for his lungs to expel all the air, waiting for the motionless pause of his upper body before inhaling. As he neared the right moment, his finger slowly drew the slack out of the trigger. In his peripheral vision, he saw the soldier reach for the SUV door handle. Chris’s lungs had deflated. He squeezed the trigger, trying not to anticipate the loud report, trying to let the shot surprise him.
BOOM!
The suddenness of the explosion jolted even Chris. It took out the Syrian soldier and his buddies, and a hunk of metal whizzed by, nicking Chris’s shoulder. The heat burned hot enough to nearly singe his eye-lashes, and the earth shook. What happened? He glanced at the sky for an aircraft that could’ve fired a missile—nothing. Suicide bomber? It was a possibility. But the timing… The soldier had been just about to unlatch the door…
Victor. Chris’s surprise turned to the urge to shoot Victor for trying to kill him. But he wasn’t sure Victor was the culprit, and killing him in anger would be akin to murder—especially for a minister.
Now that the explosion had been heard for miles around, there was no need to be quiet. Chris rose to his feet and quickly limped past the smoking twisted metal and dismembered bodies. Half of a soldier, stinking of burned flesh, hung suspended from a tree. It was disgusting to look at but mesmerizingly morbid at the same time. He forced his head to turn away out of respect for the dead soldier.
The blood rushed to his head, and his nostrils flared as he descended the mountain.
That explosion was meant for Hannah and me.
11
_______
Chris activated the compass of his Pathfinder watch. He briefly pressed the light button while cupping the watch face with his hand to limit the amount of light that escaped. He wanted to bandage his wound, but he wanted to put distance between himself and the enemy forces behind him.
For several hours, he persevered down the mountain. He hoped Hannah and Jim Bob were okay, but he couldn’t muster the same hope for Victor.
A wave of weariness swept over him. As a child prisoner, his body had become weak, and his time in the Teams had torn him down frequently, but he’d forgotten all that. He’d forgotten what it was like to be exhausted in his bones. Since leaving the Navy, he’d kept himself fit, but now he felt physically unprepared for the rigors of combat. Even so, he knew the power of his mind, and he willed himself to press on.
Finally, he made it to the bottom of the mountain. A sting in his thigh reminded him of his wound. He found some cover behind a thick tree, leaned against it, and examined his wound. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but he had a Moby Dick-sized bruise that was swollen and tender, so he bandaged his leg with a simple first aid packet from his pocket.
After bandaging his wound, he resumed walking until he spotted an Iranian-made Tira—Farsi for gazelle. The window was partially opened, so he reached in and unlocked the driver’s door. He climbed inside and re-locked the door, then opened his pocketknife and jammed the blade in the ignition as far as it would go. He angrily pounded the handle with the heel of his hand, driving the blade for the heart. Then, as if it were a key, he turned the handle. The Tira started.
He peeled out on the loose gravel, heading back toward the city. The original plan was that the four of them would take the Switchblade Whisper directly to the yacht. Because that was also the most logical choice for Victor’s escape, Chris headed for the marina. Fury replaced his exhaustion, and he stomped the pedal and drove like a madman. Realizing he might draw unwanted attention, he eased off the gas.
Stay in control. You don’t know for sure this is Victor’s fault, and even if it is, you can’t kill him in anger.
When he arrived, he parked at the Syrian Yacht Club and stepped out into the dark silence. There was no sign of the van Jim Bob and Victor had used. The restaurant had closed, and there was only one light on in the office building. He’d have to sneak past the guard to reach the yacht.
He crept up to the office and peered inside. The guard’s body lay face down in an inky puddle on the floor with a black spray of stains on the wall behind him. It was ghastly to look at, but the sight pulled at his eyes for attention. He turned away rather than treat the deceased as some kind of freak show.
It had to be Victor.
Then his heart sank. Part of him acknowledged that Hannah could’ve conspired with the bastard, but Chris didn’t want to believe that. She was his friend, and he cared about her—enough to leave his congregation to risk his life on this mission. Then again, maybe Hannah, Victor, and Jim Bob were all in on this together. Toxic fumes rose from his being, but he still wasn’t sure who to direct them at.
When he reached the pier, he wasn’t shocked to find the yacht missing; what was a shock was the body floating on the dark bay under the moonlight. The ocean licked the sides of the pier as Chris proceeded to get a closer look. He was reluctant to identify the body, hoping it wasn’t hers, but he had to know for sure. He stepped forward close enough to recognize the corpse: Wolf. Chris wanted to puke, cry, and kill someone at the same time—the mix of emotions acidic on his tongue. He exhaled forcefully, trying to expel some of the poison.
Who did this? Why?
Chris needed answers. Wolf’s killer, or killers, could be anywhere. Whoever it was had to have a reason for killing Wolf and taking the Agency yacht. Chris went over what he knew in his head. The focus of their mission had been to recover the Switchblade Whisper, particularly the black box, and destroy what they couldn’t take with them. Mordet was also after the drone, and other enemies of America would probably be interested in acquiring it, too, if they knew about it. Then he remembered overhearing Victor’s cell phone conversation in what sounded like Chinese.
Maybe Victor is working for them. If so, he could’ve already han
ded it off to the Chinese and escaped via the Agency yacht, but during Victor’s phone conversation, he’d said what sounded like the city of Ras al-Basit, which had a marina large enough to park a yacht. That was fifty klicks north. Realizing there was little more he could learn in Latakia, he decided to sail to Ras al-Basit.
Chris’s eyes skimmed the docks, looking for an easy boat to break into.
There. Just down the pier.
He quietly made his way onto the yacht then checked to see if it had fuel. The tank was three-quarters full. That would work. He hotwired it quickly and sailed north with his lights off, following the coast.
The night air and rocking of the sea calmed him. But after ten klicks, another boat came in his direction from the north. He changed course to head farther out to sea, but the boat shifted direction toward him. He had a better view of it now, and it was roughly the same size as Chris’s. As it got closer, he identified it as one of the Zhuk-class patrol boats that Syria had acquired from Russia. It moved closer. His first inclination was to try and outrun it, but even if his boat was faster, he couldn’t outrun their bullets. “Stop!” a voice called out on a megaphone.
Chris slowed the yacht to a stop and touched his right hip, feeling his shirt covering the concealed pistol, but he also remembered his role as a minister.
I can shoot it out now, or I can try to talk my way out of this. I’ve already shed a lot of blood. God, help me, please. He raised his arms in surrender, hoping to talk his way out. The patrol boat pulled up beside the yacht. A uniformed machine gunner on the bow aimed his weapon at Chris, as did another man carrying an AK-47. The stern machine gun was unmanned, and in the pilothouse, dim lights illuminated the pilot.
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