Primary Target

by Jack Mars

  The night was black, and they were flying without lights. He couldn’t even see the second helicopter out there.

  He blinked and saw Rebecca instead. She was something to behold. It wasn’t so much the physical details of her face and body, which were indeed beautiful. It was the essence of her. In the years they’d been together, he had come to see past the physical. But time was passing so fast. The last time he had seen her—when was that, two months ago?—her pregnancy had just been beginning to show.

  I need to get back there.

  Luke glanced down—his MP5 was across his lap. For a split second, it almost seemed alive, like it might suddenly decide to start firing on its own. What was he doing with this thing? He had a child on the way.

  “Gentlemen!” a voice shouted. Luke nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked up, and Heath stood in front of the group. “We are approaching target, ETA approximately ten minutes. I just got a report from base. The high winds have kicked up a bunch of dust. We’re going to hit some weather between here and the target.”

  “Terrific,” Martinez said. He looked at Luke, all the meaning in his eyes.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Martinez?” Heath said.

  “I love weather, sir!” Martinez shouted.

  “Oh yeah?” Heath said. “Why’s that?”

  “It ramps the pucker factor up to twelve. Makes life more exciting.”

  Heath nodded. “Good man. You want excitement? It looks like we might be landing in zero-zero conditions.”

  Luke didn’t like the sound of that. Zero-zero meant zero ceiling, zero visibility. The pilots would be forced to let the chopper’s navigation system do the sighting for them. That was okay. What was worse was the dust. Here in Afghanistan it was so fine that it flowed almost like water. It could come through the tiniest cracks. It could get into gearboxes, and into weapons. Clouds of dust could cause brownouts, completely obscuring any unfriendly obstacles that might be waiting in the landing zone.

  Dust storms stalked the nightmares of every airborne soldier in Afghanistan.

  As if on cue, the chopper shuddered and got hit with a blast of sideways wind. And just like that, they were inside the dust storm. The sound outside the chopper changed—a moment ago the loud whirr of the rotors and the roar of the wind was all you could hear. Now the sound of the spitting dust hitting the outside of the chopper competed with the other two sounds. It sounded almost like rain.

  “Call the dust!” Heath shouted.

  Men were at the windows, peering outside at the boiling cloud.

  “Dust at the tailwheel!” someone shouted.

  “Dust at the cargo door!” Martinez said.

  “Dust at the landing gear!”

  “Dust at the cockpit door!”

  Within seconds, the chopper was engulfed. Heath repeated each call out into his headset. They were flying blind now, the chopper pushing through a thick, dark sky.

  Luke stared out at the sand hitting the windows. It was hard to believe they were still airborne.

  Heath touched a hand to his helmet.

  “Pirate 2, Pirate 2… yes, copy. Go ahead, Pirate 2.”

  Heath had radio contact with all aspects of the mission inside his helmet. Apparently, the second helicopter was calling him about the storm.

  He listened.

  “Negative on return to base, Pirate 2. Continue as planned.”

  Martinez’s eyes met Luke’s again. He shook his head. The chopper bucked and swayed. Luke looked down the line of men. These were hardened fighters, but not one of them looked eager to continue this mission.

  “Negative on set-down, Pirate 2. We need you on this…”

  Heath stopped and listened again.

  “Mayday? Already?”

  He waited. Now he looked at Luke. His eyes were narrow and hard. He didn’t seem frightened. He seemed frustrated.

  “I lost them. That’s our support. Can any of you guys see them out there?”

  Martinez looked out the window. He grunted. It wasn’t even night anymore. There was nothing to see out there but brown dust.

  “Pirate 2, Pirate 2, can you read me?” Heath said.

  He waited a beat.

  “Come in, Pirate 2. Pirate 2, Pirate 2.”

  Heath paused. Now he listened.

  “Pirate 2, status report. Status…”

  He shook his head and looked at Luke again.

  “They crashed.”

  He listened again. “Minor injuries only. Helicopter disabled. Engines dead.”

  Suddenly, Heath punched the wall near his head.

  “Dammit!”

  He glared at Luke. “Son of a bitch. The cowards. They ditched. I know they did. It just so happens their instrumentation failed, they got lost in the storm, and they crashed seven miles from a Tenth Mountain Division bivouac. How convenient. They’re going to walk there.”

  He paused. A breath of air escaped him. “Doesn’t that beat all? I never thought I’d see a Delta Force unit DD a mission.”

  Luke watched him. DD meant done deal. It meant disappearing, laying low, bowing out. Heath suspected that Pirate 2 had pulled the plug on the operation themselves. Maybe they had, maybe they hadn’t. But it might be the right thing to do.

  “Sir, I think we should turn around,” Luke said. “Or maybe we should set this thing down. We have no support unit, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a storm…”

  Heath shook his head. “Negative, Stone. We continue with minor edits. Six-man team raids the house. Six-man team holds the village approaches.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, how is this chopper going to land and take off again?”

  “No landing,” Heath said. “We’ll fast rope down. Then the chopper can go vertical and find the top of this storm, wherever it is. They can come back when we have the target secured.”

  “Morgan…” Luke began, addressing his superior officer by his first name, a convention he could only get away with in a few places, one of them being Delta Force.

  Heath shook his head. “No, Stone. I want al-Jihadi, and I’m going to have him. This storm doubles our element of surprise—they’ll never expect us to come out of the sky on a night like this. Mark my words. We’re going to be legends after this.”

  He paused, staring directly into Stone’s eyes. “ETA five minutes. Make sure you have your men ready, Sergeant.”

  * * *

  “Okay, okay,” Luke shouted over the roar of the engines and the chopper blades and the sand spitting against the windows.

  “Listen up!” The two lines of men stared at him, in jumpsuit and helmets, weapons at the ready. Heath watched him from the far end. These were Luke’s men and Heath knew it. Without Luke’s leadership and cooperation, Heath could quickly have a mutiny on his hands. For a split second, Luke remembered what Don had said:

  We used to call him Captain Ahab.

  “Mission plan has changed. Pirate 2 is one hundred percent SNAFU. We are pressing forward with Plan B. Martinez, Hendricks, Colley, Simmons. You’re with me and Lieutenant Colonel Heath. We are A-Team. We will move into the house, eliminate any opposition, acquire the target, and terminate. We are going to be moving very fast. Go mode. Understood?”

  Martinez, as always: “Stone, how you plan to make this a twelve-man assault? It’s a twenty-four-man—”

  Luke stared at him. “I said understood?”

  Various grunts and growls indicated they understood.

  “No one resists us,” Luke said. “Someone shoots, someone so much as shows a weapon, they’re out of the game. Copy?”

  He glanced through the windows. The chopper fought through a brown shit storm, moving fast, but well below its max airspeed. Visibility out there was zero. Less than zero. The chopper shuddered and lurched as if to confirm that assessment.

  “Copy,” the men around him said. “Copy that.”

  “Packard, Hastings, Morrison, Dobbs, Murphy, Bailey. You are B-Team. B-team, you support and cover us. When we drop,
two of you hold the drop spot, two hold the perimeter near the gates of the compound. When we go inside, two move forward and hold the front of the house. You’re also the last men out. Eyes sharp, heads on a swivel. Nobody moves against us. Eliminate all resistance, and any possible resistance. This place is bound to be hotter than hell. Your job is to make it cold.”

  He looked at them all.

  “Are we clear?”

  A chorus of voices followed, each of differing depth and timbre.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  Luke crouched on a low-slung bench in the personnel hold. He felt that old trickle of fear, of adrenaline, of excitement. He had swallowed a Dexedrine right after takeoff, and it was starting to kick in. Suddenly he felt sharper and more alert than before.

  He knew the drug’s effects. His heart rate was up. His pupils were dilating, letting in more light and making his vision better. His hearing was more acute. He had more energy, more stamina, and he could remain awake for a long time.

  Luke’s men sat forward on their benches, eyes on him. His thoughts were racing ahead of his ability to speak.

  “Children,” he said. “Watch for them. We know there are women and children in the compound, some of them family members of the target. We are not shooting women and children tonight. Copy?”

  Resigned voices answered.

  “Copy that.”

  “Copy.”

  It was an inevitability of these assignments. The target always lived among women and children. The missions always happened at night. There was always confusion. Children tended to do unpredictable things. Luke had seen men hesitate to kill children and then pay the price when the children turned out to be soldiers who didn’t hesitate to kill them. To make matters worse, their teammates would then kill the child soldiers, ten seconds too late.

  People died in war. They died suddenly and often for the craziest reasons—like not wanting to kill children, who were dead a minute later anyway.

  “That said, don’t die out there tonight. And don’t let your brothers die.”

  The chopper rolled on, blasting through the spitting, shrieking darkness. Luke’s body swayed and bounced with the helicopter. Outside, there was flying dirt and grit all around them. They were going to be out there a few moments from now.

  “If we catch these guys napping, we might have an easy time of this. They’re sure not expecting us tonight. I want to drop in, acquire the target inside ten minutes, and load back up within fifteen minutes.”

  The chopper rocked and bucked. It fought to remain in the air.

  Luke paused and took a breath.

  “Do not hesitate! Seize the initiative and keep it. Push them and push them. Make them afraid. Do what comes naturally.”

  This after just telling them to watch for children. He was sending mixed messages, he knew that. He had to get on script, but it was hard. A dark night, an insane dust storm, one chopper down before the mission even started, and a commanding officer who would not turn around.

  A thought went through his mind, laser fast, so fast he almost didn’t recognize it.

  Abort. Abort this mission.

  He looked at the two lines of men. They looked back at him. The normal enthusiasm these guys would show was sorely lacking. A couple of sets of eyes glanced out the windows.

  Sand was spraying against the helicopter. It was like the chopper was a submarine under water, except the water was made out of dust.

  Luke could abort the mission. He could overrule Heath. These guys would follow him over Heath—they were his guys, not Heath’s. The payback would be hell, of course. Heath would come for him. Don would try to protect Luke.

  But Don would be a civilian.

  The charges would be insubordination at best, mutiny at worst. A court martial was practically guaranteed. Luke knew the precedents—a lunatic, suicidal order was not necessarily an unlawful order. He would lose any court martial case.

  He was still staring at the men. They were still staring at him. He could see it in their eyes, or thought he could:

  Call it off.

  Luke shook that away.

  He looked at Wayne. Wayne raised his eyebrows, gave a slight shrug.

  Up to you.

  “All right, boys,” Luke said. “Hit hard and fast tonight. No screwing around. We go in, we do our jobs, and we get right back out again. Trust me. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  10:01 p.m. Afghanistan Time (1:01 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

  Near the Pakistan Border

  Kamdesh District

  Nuristan Province, Afghanistan

  “Go!” Luke shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Two thick ropes descended from the bay door of the chopper. Men dropped down them, then disappeared into the swirling dust. They could be a thousand feet in the air, or ten feet above the playground.

  The wind howled. Biting sand and dirt sprayed in. Luke’s face was covered by a ventilator mask. He and Heath were the last ones out the door. Heath wore a similar mask—they looked like two survivors of a nuclear war.

  Heath looked at Luke. His mouth moved beneath his mask.

  “We’re gonna be legends, Stone!”

  Luke hit the green START button on his stopwatch. This had better be quick.

  He glanced below him. He couldn’t see a damn thing down there, or anywhere. It was all on faith. He went over the side and fell through bleak darkness. Two seconds later, maybe three, he touched down hard on the ground. The landing sent a shockwave up his legs.

  He released the rope and looked around, trying to get his bearings.

  Heath landed a second later.

  Men in masks appeared out of the gloom. Martinez, Hendricks. Hendricks gestured behind him.

  “There’s the wall!”

  Something large loomed back there. Okay, that was the wall to the compound. A couple of dim lights shone on top of it.

  Hendricks was saying something, but Luke couldn’t hear it.

  “What?”

  “They know!”

  They know? Who? Knew what?

  Above their heads, the sound of the chopper’s engines changed as it began to rise away. Suddenly, a bright light flashed from on top of the wall.

  Something zipped by, screaming as it did.

  Mortar.

  “Incoming!” Luke screamed. “Incoming!”

  All around him, vague shadows threw themselves to the ground.

  Two more flashes of light launched.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  How did they know?

  In the black darkness of the sky, something exploded. It blew up in muted orange and red. In the sandstorm, the explosion sounded like the crackling of distant thunder. The chopper. It was hit.

  From his vantage point on the ground, Luke watched it circle in the sky, an orange streak against the black. It looped toward the right, spinning now. Its engines screamed, and Luke thought he could hear the sound of its blades.

  Whump. Whump. Whump. Whump.

  It seemed to move in slow motion, sideways and down. It lit up the night like a tracer as it passed over the stone wall of the compound.

  BOOOM!

  It exploded on the other side of the wall, inside the compound. A fireball went up, two or three stories high. For an instant, Luke imagined it was all over. Chopper down, pilots dead. Support chopper inoperable. They were trapped here, and the Taliban seemed to have known they were coming.

  But that helicopter just blew apart inside the compound.

  Like a bomb.

  And that might give them the initiative.

  Several men in masks lay nearby.

  Martinez, Hendricks, Colley, Simmons. His team.

  Heath had to be around here somewhere.

  “Up!” Luke shouted. “Up! Let’s go!”

  He jumped to his feet, dragging the nearest person with him. In an instant, they were all up and running, a doz
en men, moving fast. Night vision was useless. Lights were useless, and would draw fire. They simply ran in total, spinning darkness.

  In ten seconds, they reached the wall. Luke guessed left, and moved that way, hugging the stone. Within a few seconds, he came to the opening. There was the chopper, an apocalypse. A few silhouettes ran in the light from the flames, pulling wounded away from it.

  Luke didn’t hesitate. He ran through the opening, his MP5 out now. He gave them a burst from the gun, a blat of automatic fire. Now the silhouettes were running away, back toward another looming shadow, lights beckoning in the chaos.

  The house.

  His men were running with him.

  Up ahead, the silhouettes of the retreating men sprinted up the small flight of stairs to the stone house. Luke sprinted up the stairs behind them.

  Two men faced the doorway, pulling automatic weapons down from their shoulders. They wore the long beards and headwraps of the Taliban.

  POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!

  Luke fired without thinking about it. The two men fell.

  Suddenly, there was an explosion behind him. He glanced back—it was impossible to see what was going on. He moved into the house. An instant later, four more men appeared next to him—his A-Team. They took up firing positions in the stone foyer, facing in toward the rest of the house.

  They removed their ventilator masks simultaneously, almost as if they were one person. Martinez went to the downed Taliban and shot each one in the head. He didn’t touch either one of them.

  “Dead!” he said.

  It was quieter here.

  “B-Team leader,” Luke said into his helmet mic. “Status?”

  Heath came running into the house out of the darkness.

  “B-Team leader…”

  “We’re holding the front gate,” a voice said inside Luke’s helmet. It was Murphy. His Bronx accent was unmistakable. “Stone! This don’t look good. That was an ambush! They were waiting for us!”

  “Just hold the gate, Murph. We’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

  “You better hurry, man. Somebody knew we were coming. Won’t be long before there’s more of them, and I can’t see ten feet in front of my nose.”