Kingdom Come

by David Rollins

  “Lord!” Dawar stepped into the light, an aura of dust swirling around him and others.

  “Take five men and remain behind to guard the vehicles.”

  The Scorpion could see that Dawar was annoyed and disappointed at being left behind. “This is not a punishment,” he told him in English, the accent thick.

  “I wanna fight, Amir,” Dawar replied.

  “And I wish for our vehicles not to be driven off by thieves and opportunists,” he snapped. “This country is alive with criminals. There is no redemption required by you, Dawar.” He flicked a glance at the BMW. “If not for you, I wouldn't have this car. I thank you for it. Go now.” Dawar bowed and backed away, into the dust.

  The Scorpion turned his attention to the men close by and spoke without raising his voice. “Pass the order. Assemble in your fighting units, protect each other and go forward quietly until you fall upon the rear of the fighters making all the noise. It is possible that a prize awaits in these trees – Russians. Do not kill any of them unless you must. They are worth less than dust if they are dead. Wait for my signal to advance.” He raised a crippled finger to his lips to impress the need for stealth upon them, and said, “Allahu akbar.”

  The men quietly repeated, God is great, before running off to pass along the Scorpion’s orders.

  After many previous battles and skirmishes, the men were ready. Al-Aleaqarab raised a hand and the men rushed the hill silently, the units on either end of the line moving to form a wider encompassing arc to ensure they were not outflanked.

  “Be on your guard,” the commander told Dawar, pulling the Glock from the holster on his hip, checking the magazine and the chamber. Dawar nodded, “Yes, Lord.”

  The Scorpion lowered the pistol by his side and walked up into the trees, feeling almost light-headed with expectation, the sound of gunfire ahead intensifying with every step, the shouts of surprised men being attacked from behind drifting down through the trees. The Scorpion did not have far to climb before he stepped onto the crest of a false peak. Already his men had swarmed into the low depression between the hills and he gazed down on the scene with satisfaction and expectation. Resistance from local opportunists had effectively been wiped out within minutes. The last of the opposition, two men in filthy jeans and shirts and ammunition vests, were dispatched by a single burst of submachine-gun fire. At the base of the depression was a battered Russian Hind, lying on its side at a forty-five degree angle. A large hole had been blown in the fuselage, its tail boom was snapped off and four of its main rotor blades were broken off close to the hub. The cockpit windows were smashed. Flashlights flickered over the fatally wounded machine as his men encircled it. Black and white smoke drifted skywards, and the cowling area over the engines was heavily blanketed in fire retardant foam.

  Several of his men advanced warily on the downed aircraft, shouting at unseen occupants to surrender and throw out their weapons, several of which were tossed toward them, clattering against rocks. Above the edge of the fuselage, a rifle displaying a white shirt was raised and waved - surrender. The fighters around the helicopter held their AKs above their heads and cheered in celebration, shooting into the sky.

  The elation the Scorpion had felt was still upon him. “Secure the area,” he shouted and his men spread out, having learned through hard-won experience that there were always opportunist rats nearby. “Do we have dead and wounded?” he asked a jihadist, a Turk with thick black hair and beard. “None dead, Amir. Two wounded.” the Scorpion nodded. His men had done well.

  The air was heavy with the smell of burning kerosene and scorched tree sap. Al-Aleaqarab strode down the incline toward the Mi-24, pausing to put a bullet in the head of a man who was on the ground, screaming, a pilot from the look of his uniform, his shaking hands attempting to push the white bone of a shattered femur back into a leg pumping blood in thick powerful squirts. A Russian – but he was as good as dead anyway. Fighters dragged survivors from the wreckage and made them kneel on the ground, hands on heads, fingers interlocked.

  The Scorpion took a flashlight from one of his men and approached the bewildered captives. There were four in total. Two deceased occupants of the Hind were laid on the ground, the co-pilot and another man wearing a combat uniform.

  Al-Aleaqarab played the flashlight over the line of captives. All were covered in blood, gore and scorched oil. One of the men immediately caught his attention, three stars on his shoulders clearly visible. “Good evening, Colonel General,” he said in fluent Russian, but the general refused even to acknowledge him. “I see you are wounded. This I regret. A foot wound. I will have someone see to it. Now, I count five passengers - the four of you, one dead Spetsnaz, and two dead pilots, as was the will of Allah. But a Hind carries eight passengers. Are we missing some?”

  “You are Georgian,” the general replied.

  “You have an ear for accents. Yes, I am Georgian.”

  “I do not speak to Georgian scum.”

  The Scorpion handed the flashlight to one of his men standing nearby and indicated that he wanted it pointed at the first Russian in line. “You are fortunate this Georgian scum has come to your rescue, General…” he read the man’s name off the tag on his flight suit, “Yegorov.” The name came with excited recognition. “You are Colonel General Nikolai Yegorov, Commander of Russian Forces in Syria.”

  The general glared at him and turned away.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You are a piece-of-shit Georgian. I do not know your name, but soon there are people who will have your name and the names of your family members and that is all I shall say.”

  “I am but a humble jihadist fighting for the glory of Allah and these men around me are my family. You can call me Al-Aleaqarab, the Scorpion, or al Aljurji, the Georgian. Either will be suitable.” He then cracked the general on the back of the head hard enough with the pistol so that the man slumped to the ground, barely conscious.

  Al-Aleaqarab stood back and regarded his prisoners. This was an extraordinary haul. No Russian soldier of any rank has yet been captured in any of our occupied lands, and here is an officer with three stars on each shoulder! One of the most senior officers in the whole Russian military had literally dropped into his lap. The Scorpion moved to the next man in line. He was breathing hard, hyperventilating, obviously terrified and possibly wounded or injured from the crash. He was of middle age, a little overweight with jowly cheeks latticed with broken spider veins. The face of so many Russian men with a thirst for vodka. A big man, and strong once. More interesting than his face was the object chained to one of his wrists. “And what do we have here?” The Scorpion toed the scorched briefcase in the dirt with his boot. He received no answer. “It is burnt. I see that your hand is burnt also. Most unfortunate. You must be in pain,” he said. “What is in the briefcase that you would try to burn it, and injure yourself in the attempt?” The man on his knees, sweating profusely, was silent. “It is okay. There will be plenty of time for us to have its secrets revealed.”

  Next in line was a man in his late twenties or early thirties who wore webbing over his body armor and shooter’s gloves protecting his hands. He looked fit, and was certainly angry. “Spetsnaz?” Al-Aleaqarab enquired of the man presenting him with silent loathing. A man like this has his uses. Shining the light on the fourth man in the lineup caused the ISIS commander to blink. No! It cannot be!? Surely not? Here was a man of supreme power, his face as well known to Al-Aleaqarab as that of a movie star. The man stared up at the Scorpion with hard hateful eyes.

  “Bozis shvilo!” Al-Aleaqarab exclaimed aloud in Georgian. Son of bitch! The men around him drew in their breaths and whispered among themselves when the flashlight beam illuminated the Russian’s face. A shiver of expectation ran up Al-Aleaqarab’s spine. What have I done to deserve such bounty as this?

  He ducked involuntarily as two fighter-bombers roared by almost overhead, obscured by the trees. Russian? Possibly, but they could also be American, French, Aus
tralian, Syrian or indeed any one of a number of the foreign air forces patrolling the skies. The shriek of jet blast reverberating through the hills reminded the Scorpion that time would be short. A massive search and rescue effort would already be under way, and soon it would descend to scour every centimeter of this part of the world, looking for the downed Hind and its priceless cargo.

  “Allah has presented us with a great gift,” the Scorpion announced to the hillside. “Search the Russians, ensure they have nothing secreted within their clothing or elsewhere. Search the helicopter for weapons, phones, computers, maps and other intelligence material, and bring it to my vehicle. Photograph the crash scene, the helicopter and the dead. Do it fast. We must leave immediately. All of Russia will soon arrive on this hill.”

  He stepped past a man with a shotgun pointed carelessly at the ground. “Do you mind?” He held out his hand.

  The jihadist snapped, “Amir!” and presented the weapon to the Scorpion who took it and examined it quickly, ensuring that there was a shell in the chamber. There wasn’t, so he pumped one in.

  “You found this in the Hind?”

  “Yes, Lord,” the jihadist replied somewhat nervously.

  Al-Aleaqarab strolled back along the line of captives whose hands were on top of their heads, the general now struggling back onto his knees with the assistance of a jihadist. No, these are more than captives. Much, much more… “I am familiar with this,” he said. “It is a Russian KS-23. A fine weapon utilizing, so they say, cut-down anti-aircraft barrels. Issued to Spetsnaz.” He pointed it at the elbow joint of the man with the briefcase and pulled the trigger. The weapon jumped with tremendous recoil and a mighty boom rolled up the hill. The Russian lifted his hands off his head in shock, his fingers interlocked, and found that one of his arms - the blackened and burnt one still chained to the briefcase - was amputated. “Yes, a fine weapon,” the Scorpion said, using the muzzle to prize the man’s interlocked fingers loose from one another. “I no longer have any questions about what your briefcase contains.” He chambered another round as the one-armed man began to shriek. The shotgun boomed once more, ripping a hole through the man’s back and chest, silencing him. The Scorpion kicked him down onto his face as the blast echoed around the hill. “A warning to you all,” he said softly in Russian. “You will remain among the living only as long as keeping you alive serves Allah, for as unbelievers you have no right to live, only to spend all eternity in hell for denying His greatness.” Al-Aleaqarab tossed the shotgun back to the fighter who had found it.

  “S kazhdym biyeniyem ya obeshchayu, chto ya budu vam,” a voice familiar to him said. With every heartbeat, I promise I will kill you.

  The Scorpion shone the flashlight beam directly into the face of the man who had spoken and saw the cold eyes harden around black needlepoints. “It is true what they say,” the Scorpion said in Russian. “You wear blue contact lenses.” A corner of his mouth flickered with amusement at this vanity. “You want to kill me.” He bent down, picked up the severed limb and the briefcase and tucked them both under his arm. “In another time and place,” the Scorpion told the Russian, “you and I could have been comrades.” He patted the man on the shoulder and told him, “I bid you welcome to your worst nightmare, Mr President.”

  Eight

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  ISIS is on its knees. Time for us to move on to more important things. Like GOLF.

  The firefight was close, though how close it was difficult to say as the hard cracks and larger explosions rolled around the hills and valleys. It was either an assault or an ambush, though probably the latter as the hills seemed pretty much devoid of infrastructure. As long as it wasn’t at our alternate, I thought. The rattle and crash of small arms fire petered out and silence filled the void.

  As for traffic, there wasn’t any to speak of on the dirt trail snaking up through the trees. According to the map, this was a lesser track that led to an arm of the lake. I was keen to stay away from roads, but decided this one was worth the risk as the only other route involved slogging it out through a sea of stinging nettles between groves of unkempt almond trees clinging to the steep grade. A significant boom echoed through the trees. A twelve-gauge? No. Something bigger.

  “So, here we are in Syria,” I said between breaths, in case anyone thought I was getting us lost. We had reached yet another four-way intersection; there was a tangle of trails all through these hills.

  “The secondary has gotta be close,” Bo huffed.

  We’d been double-timing for around forty-five minutes and had to be closing in on the hill’s summit, the black-orange sky visible through the tops of the trees further up the trail, unless this was yet another false peak. “Yeah,” I replied. “Half a klick or less. We can cut left off the road any time from now.“

  The designated Plan B for the TACAN was not a commanding rock like the one we’d vacated, but ours was not to reason why. And I’ve never liked the second half of that catch phrase. I was about to suggest we leave the road when the engine noises of multiple approaching vehicles forced my hand. No one needed me to say take cover, and moments later a motley convoy of speeding trucks, utilities and sedans arrived at the intersection. They were either in a hurry to get somewhere or get away from something.

  “Gotta be our pals from the warehouse,” observed Alvin, noting the blue Toyota technical with the quad-barrel ZPU option tailed by a white Beemer, black ISIS flags flapping from many of the vehicles.

  Yeah. There couldn't be many ZPU-BMW pairings running around.

  “Odds on they’re out here looking for Russians,” Jimmy said. “That Hind came down somewhere in these hills for sure.”

  “Could be that’s what all the noise was about,” I supposed. Mr Scorpion had sped away from the warehouse in the direction taken by the stricken Hind. Most likely he would be hoping to recover useful hostages. Maybe he’d gotten lucky.

  At the intersection, the convoy split up, two thirds of the cars and trucks – around twenty of them – kept going straight ahead while a third split from the main convoy to take the fork down the hill, toward the main road. As we watched, more of that grouping diverged, taking other roads. Maybe what they wanted to get away from was each other, but I could care less. More important to me was the requirement to take a leak, which I did. With my own personal emergency settled, we moved on.

  “This is the place,” Bo announced not long after as we arrived on the crest of a hill covered with the ubiquitous stinging nettles. The weeds seemed to have taken over, the farmers either fighting or fleeing.

  Jimmy, Alvin and I swung our packs off our backs and liberated the various parts of the TACAN. They then went into overwatch mode along with Bo, which left me to assemble the flat-packed gizmo and run it through the various sat-nav positioning and self-diagnosis programs to ensure all was working properly. The lights all came up green, my favorite color when it comes to electronics, and I stood back to inspect my handiwork. The entire unit was painted a drab green, a color scheme that blended in well enough with the surroundings, but its shape was utterly man-made and therefore easy to spot. So I draped a little netting off the saucer, tossed some light twigs and nettle leaves over it and stood back to gauge the effectiveness of my camouflaging handiwork. “Yeah,” I said to myself - better.

  I sucked some water from the Camelbak. Elsewhere in this country, other teams of Special Ops were planting similar beacons, thus setting up a triangle of radio sigs. Assuming those teams had also switched on their TACANs, this part of Latakia would now be wired up better than O’Hare for approaching aircraft, and our F15s could now go ahead and deliver hell through a mail slot. Turning on the TACAN also triggered our extraction from the nearest LZ, so the lack of unit comms was no great handicap providing things stayed nice and simple. I took another slurp from the Camelbak hose and gave my balls a scratch, there being not much else to do at this point. A shower would be nice, and maybe a glass of single malt. Make that two, and make ‘em doubles. I
licked my lips.

  A branch cracking unexpectedly gave me a start from this pleasant daydream, and caused my hands to reach for the M4 on my chest webbing. But the barrel of a pistol in the back of the head has a certain feel about it that tends to make you stop what you’re about to do.

  “Podnimite ruki. Ne shevelites'.”

  A woman’s voice.

  “Podnimite ruki.”

  Same words, but this time harsher and more insistent.

  I raised my hands slowly. The words weren’t familiar, but the attitude was.

  And then another voice joined in. “Drop the gun, lady.”

  Jimmy.

  “You’re good, boss,” he said, so I turned. Jimmy was standing behind the woman, the point of his ka-bar in the side of her neck a convincing argument for her to go with the flow. And on either side of Jimmy, Alvin and Bo had their carbines trained on her. None of them had made a sound that wasn’t supposed to be heard. Jimmy peeled the pistol from her grasp, handed it to me, and then patted her down. Nothing else came to light. A nine millimeter Yarygin – no spare mags - was the sum total of her baggage.