by Ward Larsen
Naji, who was standing on the cart, said something to Uncle Achmed.
“We look for cars, Naji,” Achmed replied in English.
“I see a car,” Naji replied.
Achmed smiled the smile of a patronizing elder.
Slaton did nothing of the kind. He followed Naji’s young gaze and saw it fixed on a point to the south. Slaton’s shooter’s eyes battled the gloom, and soon he saw it as well—faint glints in an otherwise vacant night.
“Move, move!” he commanded, gesturing toward a dry riverbed a hundred feet distant.
Everyone complied.
The donkey, unfortunately, did not.
Slaton tugged on the lead, but the creature wouldn’t move. He pulled harder—it was probably the wrong move, but there was no time for patience. A whack on the rump finally did the trick. The cart began rocking toward lower ground.
Slaton took one glance over his shoulder and realized it was too late. The glimmer resolved into headlights—two sets actually, that were headed straight for them. He could tell they were moving fast by the way the lights flickered over the jarring terrain.
Once everyone was in the ravine, Slaton began shouting orders. “This is probably a border unit. When they get here, don’t try to hide or run. Whatever they tell you to do, comply.”
“Should I get into the compartment?” Ludmilla asked.
“It won’t do any good. Just stay in the back of the group and try to keep your face covered. I’ll be nearby.”
Before anyone could ask where he was going, or why, Slaton sprinted toward the cart. He retrieved the MP5, then ran west, keeping low. Twenty seconds later he threw himself behind the biggest rock in sight and readied his weapon.
The situation was going south fast. For the first time since entering Syria, Slaton remembered what Sorensen had put on offer. With perhaps a minute to spare, he pulled out his phone and typed a message for Langley, detailing the situation. After seeing the SENT confirmation, he added a second message: Might need that emergency backup you offered. Launch immediately if possible.
He was scanning the nearby desert when a reply came: Copy all. Wilco on backup.
* * *
Slaton heard the vehicles coming before he got a visual. Something relatively small, engines revving high. This close to Damascus, it could only be a government patrol—Syrian army regulars or Desert Guard. Anywhere else, and he might have considered other suspects: bandits, rebels, a tribal militia. That gave a small degree of predictability, but it was hardly comforting.
He planned as best he could. As with his engagement last night, the suppressed MP5 provided both advantages and disadvantages. It forced him to work close—in this case, a mere forty yards from the clear area next to the wadi where he guessed they would stop. Yet it also offered a measure of stealth, which was good—unlike last night, he wouldn’t be shooting at tires. There was a slim chance Achmed could talk his way out of the predicament. He was an experienced smuggler, and Slaton guessed that at that moment he was practicing his story. There was also the chance of a bribe—he had told Slaton he was prepared for it.
The more likely outcome: the police would take everyone into custody and search the cart. And when they got a good look at Ludmilla, any hope of fast talk or bribes would go out the window. Everyone in southern Syria was looking for her, and the commander of the unit that corralled her had his next promotion guaranteed.
If that was how it all went down, Slaton’s hands would be tied. He guessed he could get off three rounds, maybe four, before the unit realized they were under attack. Unless they were a particularly disciplined unit, everyone’s eyes would be on the four travelers and the cart. That meant the key was to start in back: one by one, take out the rearmost individuals.
The headlights came back into view, flickering closer. When the vehicles were a hundred yards distant, he began to feel them—with his body flat on the earth, vibrations in the hardpan desert. Slaton remained still.
The trucks came in hard and fast, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust and fury—as predicted, centered in the clearing. Also as expected, their headlights were trained on the wadi, cutting the matte-black night like twin sets of knives. The vehicles turned out to be identical, and Slaton recognized a pair of UAZ-469s: Russian-built military utility trucks, four-wheel drive, built for rugged terrain. Their canvas tops had been lowered for night work, which put all the occupants in plain sight. It was a good configuration for Desert Guard soldiers who needed to be able to see in every direction.
And a better one for a sniper.
Slaton was set at a ninety-degree angle to the contingent, roughly forty yards distant. He counted seven men—four in the lead vehicle, three in the second. Every set of eyes was on the wadi. He also saw that one man in the lead vehicle, passenger seat, was wearing night optics—the reason they’d been spotted from such a distance.
The man wearing the optics flipped them up and shouted something in Arabic.
Achmed replied.
Slaton understood none of it. He settled his reticle on the lone man in the back seat of the rear UAZ, thinking, Someday I need to learn the damned language.
The driver of the rear vehicle produced a spotlight and trained it on the cart. Achmed and the others stood frozen in the beam like prisoners caught in a jailbreak. Two men from each vehicle got out, moved forward, and pointed their weapons at the captives. One of these was the man Slaton had been targeting. He shifted his aim to the spotlight holder.
More shouting, increasingly insistent.
Achmed began to reply, but was immediately cut off.
So much for talking his way out of it.
The guard detail edged forward, menace in every step. Their weapons were fixed on the group, and for a moment Slaton feared they would open fire. Achmed was shouting, pleading. The leading soldiers shouted back. The situation was degrading, on the edge of a massacre. Then the commander took charge. He fired a pistol into the sky, three rounds reverberating to shut everyone up. The commander dismounted and began moving forward.
Achmed slowly put his hands on his head. The women did the same. Only Naji was an outlier—he stood at his mother’s side, his body racked by sobs and his face buried in her robe. Slaton was glad for that—it meant he wouldn’t see what was about to happen.
His decision tree had reached an end. No more branches. He took the time to amend his targeting priority, reflecting the tactical situation. He began to pressure the trigger, his initial five shots planned.
The first flew toward the spotlight carrier, who at that moment was the only person in the rearmost UAZ. The man slumped immediately from a headshot. The spotlight fell to the dirt, and that sudden change of illumination immobilized everyone. Everyone except the assassin. Slaton shifted quickly to the four men in front—they had to be next, because they had weapons ready. He first took down the most distant, two rounds, and as he was tumbling toward the wadi Slaton struck the man to his right with another two.
Then the night exploded.
His suppressor, along with the subsonic ammo, had kept the report to a minimum. Even so, the MP5 was hardly silent, and some flash was inevitable. How quickly his adversaries discovered his position depended on two things: their angle of view, and how well trained they were. Unfortunately, at least one knew what he was doing.
The nearest of the soldiers out front sensed Slaton’s position and began returning fire. It wasn’t anything direct, but high-rate semiautomatic suppression. It had the desired effect.
Slaton took cover behind the rock while bullets ripped through the scrub around him, bits of stone and vegetation flying. He then engaged that soldier, sending two rounds center of mass. The man went down spinning, hit but possibly not out of the fight. By that time two others had joined in, high-rate return fire that was beginning to focus.
Slaton again put his head down, waiting for the lull when they hit the end of their magazines. He heard Achmed shouting. An engine roaring to life.
The return fire paused.
Slaton lifted the MP and began seeking out targets. Smoke and haze had taken hold, obscuring the visibility. He distinguished two shadows moving, but he held his fire—he couldn’t confirm they were enemy. Then he recognized the commander—he was running back to the lead truck. The driver was still at the wheel, ducking low. Slaton tracked the second figure and got a better look—the last man standing was helping his wounded partner up. Slaton hit their combined center of mass with four rounds—from the angle he was shooting, the two were virtually one target. He couldn’t tell where his rounds hit, but hit they did. Both went down convincingly.
Five down, two to go.
The commander and driver were the only targets left, both in the lead UAZ. Not surprisingly, they were reacting to the fast-changing odds—the truck shot forward, its wheels chewing dirt and gravel. Slaton fired twice at the driver, but the truck was sliding sideways and bouncing wildly. He doubted he scored any hits.
With a break in the return fire, he instinctively performed a tactical reload. He settled his sight again on the fast retreating truck. He fired four evenly spaced rounds at each of the two seats. Someone—almost certainly the commander—tumbled from the passenger side and went pinwheeling into the desert. The truck kept going. It lurched suddenly downward, into the wadi. Either the driver had lost control, or he was smart enough to break the line of sight to the sniper who was decimating his unit.
Slaton leapt up and began running.
FIFTY-ONE
Slaton never got a follow-up shot on the truck. He caught one glimpse of the retreating UAZ, but the limited range of his MP5 precluded a realistic shot. The sound of the truck’s engine faded quickly in the night. The scene around him was surreal, swirling smoke caught in the headlight beams of the remaining UAZ.
He ran toward the wadi and saw everyone crouched behind the cart. “It’s all clear!” he called out.
Achmed was the first to appear, head and shoulders edging out. The others soon followed in a cluster, arms locked around one another like freshly released hostages. Which, in essence, they were.
“Is everybody okay?” Slaton asked.
Nods all around.
He double-checked the casualties, looking for signs of life. Four were clearly dead. One man, the driver who’d been holding the spotlight, was breathing but unconscious, blood oozing from a neck wound. Spent brass was everywhere, along with two empty magazines. The smell of spent gunpowder was thick. Slaton pulled the Sig from his thigh pocket and addressed Achmed. “Do you know how to use this?”
A nod.
He handed over the weapon and pointed to the survivor. “Watch him.”
Slaton set out to the spot where the wounded commander had fallen out of the truck. Halfway there he heard a moan and leveled the MP5.
As he closed in he heard breathing, wet and rheumatic. He followed the sound and found the man lying in a heap near a clump of sage. The headlights of the remaining UAZ sprayed enough light to give him a decent look. The commander was face down in the dirt and writhing. Reassuringly, Slaton saw both his hands—empty, as was the hip holster on his belt.
Taking no chances, he kept the MP5 on the man until he was a few steps away. “I need light,” he called out.
Achmed took charge, and seconds later the dropped spotlight was trained on them. Slaton saw a wound high on the man’s back. Blood was turning the dirt beneath him dark. The commander was conscious, but in a lot of pain. He made no threatening moves, but then, Slaton doubted he was having threatening thoughts. He slowly half rolled the man and saw a face wrenched in agony. The man was looking straight into the barrel of the MP. Less than two feet away, it must have looked like a train tunnel. His expression fell to that of a man facing his executioner.
Slaton weighed the merits of an interrogation, but decided against it. He doubted he would get anything truthful, and time was becoming critical. He leaned down and the man recoiled. Slaton searched him with his free hand, but found no weapons. Satisfied, he rolled the man until he was facing away, then pulled the back of his uniform coat up over his head. He screamed in pain, the contortion putting pressure on shattered bone and torn nerves. Slaton got a better look at the wound and decided it might be survivable. There was clearly internal damage, but the bleeding was minimal. The only other injuries he saw were scrapes and contusions—what you got from falling out of a moving truck. The maneuver with the jacket had secondary benefits. It covered the commander’s eyes like a hood, and trussed him, given his injury, to the point of immobility.
Satisfied the area was secure, Slaton went back to the cart and called a meeting.
* * *
Those who resided near the airport—and there were notably few—were rarely awakened in the middle of the night. The neighboring townships were small to begin with, and the airfield had been set back a sensible distance into the desert. There was a small university two miles from one end of the runway, a camel and livestock research facility near the other. The only permanent residents within three miles of the place were a handful of farmers—and as a rule, desert ranchers were not the sort to complain.
Cradled centrally on the craggy western plateau of Saudi Arabia, Al Jouf Airport serves as the province’s principal commercial field. There are but a handful of flights each day connecting to hubs around the region, a sparseness that reflects well the surrounding community. Yet as is the case with all airfields in Saudi Arabia, Al Jouf carries the designation of a dual-use facility—military operations are also conducted.
There had never been any continuous presence. The First Gulf War had been the highwater mark when the United States Air Force took the place by storm, forward deploying fighter squadrons for round-the-clock operations. Things had settled considerably since. There were a few exercises each year, mostly involving the Saudi Air Force, which ran during civilized hours. The occasional survey or air diversion stirred the dust now and again, these too keeping to daylight.
Yet there was one outlier.
Every few months, on no particular schedule, a handful of unmarked trucks would appear at Al Jouf. They arrived without fail in the middle of the night, and set up shop on a remote taxiway on the airfield’s north side. The contingent pitched a small city of tents, unloaded equipment and spotlights, all of which was centered around a modest portable hangar. There were never more than a dozen men and women involved, all of whom wore an eclectic mix of civilian clothing and store-bought camouflage.
The questions of who they were and what they were doing were largely left unasked. When anyone did make a query, no answers came. The air traffic controllers claimed to know nothing, and the airport administrator professed to be equally in the dark. In truth, this might have been the case, a contract of mutual indifference. The commercial side of the airfield, which included the air traffic control tower, closed each day between midnight and six in the morning. And it was then, during this recurring window of darkness, that the little compound came alive.
On that night, just after one in the morning, the silence around the airfield ended abruptly, although shattered would have been too harsh a word. A dark gray shape accelerated down the runway, the slightest hum emanating from its single turboprop engine. The low acoustic signature was by design. With long straight wings, not unlike those of a glider, the aircraft was built less for speed than endurance. An aerial loiterer. After an unusually short takeoff roll, the craft levitated into the sky like a second-rate magic trick. What little sound there was soon faded into the blackness. Though the operators could not know it, not a single farmer awoke. Nor did any of the students in the nearby university dorms. The camels and cattle at the research center never stirred inside their pens.
Yet for all that stealth and remoteness, the departure of the MQ-9 Reaper drone got a great deal of attention in a command center half a world away.
FIFTY-TWO
Slaton had killed the truck’s headlights, along with the spotlight, as a matter of security. He used the
red-light app on his phone to illuminate the topo map, and invited everyone closer. They huddled together like campers around a fire. He tapped his finger on their present position, and addressed Achmed.
“We have to assume the guy who escaped will call for backup. How long will that take?”
“It is difficult to say. The spacing between units varies, but most are the same size. I would say twenty minutes minimum, perhaps as long as an hour. Expect one or two units like the one that found us.” He looked obviously at the dead soldiers in the distance. “By daybreak, I promise you, there will be an army searching for us.”
“Okay, so we need to move fast.” He again referenced the map. “I’m going to take the truck, make for this road.” He pointed to a highway, roughly two miles north, that ran parallel to the wadi. “If anyone shows up, the first thing they’ll see is me making a run for the border. I’ll draw anyone who takes the bait north, away from you. Achmed, I want you to lead the others.” He drew a line with his finger. “Stay in the wadi until here. At that point it’s only a few hundred yards to the gap between the hills and the border. Make a straight shot for the rendezvous point. You remember where it is?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“All right,” Slaton said, “let’s move.”
“But you will be alone in the truck,” Achmed said. “If they follow you and get close, won’t they wonder where the rest of us are?”
Slaton folded the map and gave it to Achmed. “Leave that to me.”
* * *
There was only time for brief goodbyes. Ludmilla, whose escape from the Four Seasons had started everything, looked at Slaton gratefully. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
“We’re not across the finish line yet. I’ve still got the memory card. If it looks like I’m going to get captured, I’ll ditch it in the desert. If that happens, you’ll be the sole source for what was said at the meeting.”
