Kill Zone

by Jack Coughlin

  He turned as she sat down and handed her a brown folder with a red stripe running diagonally across the front. “Here’s a new file on the helo crash. Crazy stuff. Turns out that Gates Global had a couple of operators near the village, looking for the general on their own. They made it to the crash site and brought back these images of the victims.”

  Shari looked at him. “Gates Global? The private security company? What were they doing there?”

  “God knows how they did it. It’s really making us look bad-not only did the rescue mission fail, but a PSC team infiltrated and got these photos. Buchanan received the file from Gates himself. Now the boss wants somebody in this meeting to explain how a private company could do something we could not.”

  “Good question.” Shari hesitated before accepting the folder. If these were the dead Marines, then she surely would see Kyle’s body. But she wanted to do it, for maybe photographic proof would finally erase any lingering hope that somehow the man she loved actually had survived.

  “I’ve got to back up Buchanan during the meeting, so could you take a look at it and let us know if everything is in order? Brace yourself, because it’s awfully graphic, Shari, but you have the best eyes for detail of anyone at this table. We need to match up the Gates Global data with the names of those actually on the mission. The roster is in there.”

  She nodded and put the folder in her lap, then looked around the table. So much power. The Vice-President. The Attorney General, the Secretary of State and several cabinet members, the American representative to the United Nations, and military leaders. Buchanan, quiet and arrogant, sat directly across the table from the President. Many considered him a peculiar hybrid of Henry Kissinger’s showboating, Colin Powell’s confident manner, and John Poindexter’s sneakiness, a man who placed himself above his position and somehow got other powerful people to recognize that self-created authority. Shari was part of his staff, but she wouldn’t trust Gerald Buchanan to paint a fencepost. It was impossible to ever determine what the man really wanted.

  She tuned one ear to the conversation and reluctantly opened the folder, then snapped it closed again, her heart beating hard. The first photo was of a charred corpse, the skin of a blackened skull dried out and pulled back so tight by the heat that it was set into a horrible grin. Shari felt a nudge from Shafer, who whispered, “You okay?”

  She nodded again, and listened for a few minutes to comments of the NSC principals. Buchanan railed about the Gates Global identifications, letting unspoken accusations of Pentagon incompetence hang in the air like invisible vultures. The Syrian government was outraged, but there had been no major troop movements. U.N. and SecState both believed the biggest danger now was a possible Syrian or Hezbollah missile strike against Israel for allowing the Americans to fly through Israeli airspace. The Israelis were saying they would respond to any rocket attack. Shari tuned them out. The eternal Middle East waltz. So what’s new?

  With a deep breath, she turned her attention to the folder again and steeled herself against the ghastly images. The names of the dead Marines were on a separate page that she removed, and found “Swanson, Kyle M., Gunnery Sergeant” listed close to the alphabetical bottom. An asterisk beside the name of “McDowell, Harold H., Lance Corporal,” indicated that he was missing.

  She turned the pages slowly, one by one. Each photo had the matching dog tag image superimposed in the lower left-hand corner. Shari mentally checked off the names against the complete flight manifest. The names were seared into her brain. Three-quarters of the way through, she paused, knowing the next photo in alphabetical order would be that of Kyle. She bit her lower lip and turned to the picture, keeping her mental defenses firm and letting her analyst training guide her eyes and thoughts.

  Her fingers grew white with a tight grip at the sight of the broken and burned body. No facial identification was possible because of the fire, but the size and shape of the torso seemed about right for Kyle’s dimensions. She felt wetness at the edges of her eyes as she studied the picture, read the dog tag, and examined the photo in detail. Something isn’t right. The dog tags were authentic and accurate, but an anomaly she could not pinpoint chewed at her. Instead of looking at the grisly picture as an entirety, she studied it a square inch at a time. Left to right. Top to bottom. Shadows and light. Pixels. Uniform and flesh. A dead Marine. A destroyed human body. There! She stared in disbelief, trying to persuade herself that she was wrong while knowing she was not.

  “Oh my God!” she whispered loud enough for Shafer to hear. The folder spilled from her lap and onto the carpeted floor of the Situation Room as she grabbed the single picture with both hands and stared at it. Buchanan spun in his chair and gave her an angry stare as the most powerful people in the United States government turned to watch her gather the papers.

  “Sorry,” she said, shuffling the papers and photos back into the folder. Using every ounce of her considerable willpower, she sat motionless through the rest of the meeting, letting her mind work the problem. A slight smile played over her lips and a new brightness shone in her eyes.

  CHAPTER 33

  KYLE SNAPPED BACK INTO consciousness, flat on his back. He took a deep breath, surprised that he wasn’t dead. The air he pulled into his lungs was fresh and cool and reviving, and he lay still as his brain stitched together wisps of memories about what the hell had just happened. Being right-handed saved his life.

  The brief, deadly confrontation was nothing but a quick-draw contest. The guard had been holding the stock of the AK-47, but not with his finger on the trigger, and hesitated for a heartbeat before trying to bring it to bear on Swanson. Professionals do not hesitate, and Kyle put the barrel of his pistol right against the man’s eye and double-tapped him. Two big bullets at point-blank range totally destroyed the head.

  Swanson roamed his hands across his own body and felt no pain, no wounds. The gore covering his face and chest was the blood, brains, and bone fragments of the other man, whose skull had exploded, and the unexpected concussion had scrambled Kyle’s senses for a few seconds. He pushed onto his elbows and wiped his face. The guard lay dead at his feet.

  Where are the others? The whole village had to be awakened by those explosions! He grabbed the pistol that had fallen by his side while his befuddled mind realized the guard had not shouted, had not fired his rifle, and Kyle’s own silenced pistol had spoken with only two burps, quick and quiet except for the weapon recycling. There had been no detonations at all, and the great sounds he imagined that had been heard by everyone were only his gun firing almost next to his ear. He and the guard had both fallen where they stood, but everyone else slept on. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and poured water from a canteen over his face for a quick cleaning while he caught his breath.

  Enough of this recovering shit! Get back to work! The inner voice, immune from physical hurt, was pissed, and the minutes were slipping by like desert sand.

  The shadow of the house loomed like a big castle, and Swanson dropped the pack and stuffed eight blocks of C-4 into his pockets. He had guessed right back at the helicopter crash by topping off with C-4. Before the night was over, he would need a lot of explosives to help him survive.

  He found a handful of pencil-thin detonators that had small timers like a digital watch and spent a moment activating them all to blow at exactly the same time. He needed at least an hour, with extra time for unforeseen circumstances, but he wanted to keep as much darkness as possible to help his escape. He set all of the timers to go off at exactly 0300.

  He attached the first of the six-inch-long blocks of gummy explosive to the corner of the house where he had had the shootout, pushing the clay tight, like a kid playing with Silly Putty, and sticking in two of the detonators, just to be sure. The second block was placed just below the single window on the left side of the house, and he repeated the pattern all the way around until C-4 was in place on each corner and in the middle of each wall, all molded to force the explosions inward. The detonators bli
nked silently, and Kyle was sweating hard by the time he was finished, drops of water falling into his eyes. He struggled back into his pack, gathered his weapons, and stole enough laundry from the clothesline to outfit himself and the general.

  This was going to be overkill. The simultaneous explosions would destroy the supports of the house and collapse it on the sleeping men, then the surrounding outer wall would bounce the concussion wave right back toward the house instead of letting the blast effect roll away. It was time-consuming, but the house was the roost of his biggest source of potential opposition, the jihadists, and to wipe them out in a single attack was worth the risk of time.

  It would also be a hell of a diversion, and Swanson had to be gone before the place lit up like a space shuttle launch.

  It had taken him another eight minutes to plant the C-4, and he was at the wall at 0153. That left only another hour and seven minutes to do what he had to do and get the hell out of Dodge, including the ten minutes he had built into the timetable for the inevitable visit by that black cloud asshole Mr. Murphy. He ran through a mental checklist: The guard. The Zeus. The groceries. The fighters. Time to go.

  He pulled himself onto the wall, rolled over, and almost landed on a goat. It jumped back, then stood facing him, shaggy and white, big ears, the lower jaw chewing something and the dark eyes staring without curiosity or fright. Two stubby horns had been cut off. Behind it was another goat that looked exactly the same. If they panicked, they might awaken somebody, and he couldn’t shoot both of them at the same time. Swanson stood stone still and let the animals take a good look at him. They walked away.

  Kyle headed the other way, down the street, sticking close to the walls. Time to parlez-vous with a Frenchman.

  CHAPTER 34

  DOUBLE-OH WAS EMOTIONALLY exhausted after working the Sergeants’ Network most of the night and stood at a rail of the USS Blue Ridge, letting the sea wind revive him with its chill. His Air Force and Marine contacts in Washington were unable to rustle up another spare C-20 for him, and even the Army guys down at CENTCOM couldn’t find anything appropriate that they could spring loose. So as far as he knew, Colonel Sims would be landing on a bare runway at Andrews, but he was confident that the sergeants would turn up at least some sort of rust bucket with wings so Sims could continue chasing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  “Since this is about those boys who died out yonder in the desert, we’ll come up with somethin’,” promised a flyboy master sergeant who had a thick Southern drawl. “Just won’t be no C-20. But I got me an idea. Lemme make a couple of calls.” It was, Double-Oh thought, a hell of a way to run an airline.

  Weariness and tension had crept into his bones, and he was ready to go below to his quarters, one of the six racks in a small squad bay reserved for chief petty officer ranks. Privacy was not a high priority on a ship, and the bunks were arranged in two stacks of three each. With the combined farts, snoring, and belching of six middle-aged men at night, sometimes the flight deck was more quiet, and never mind the smell.

  Once he entered that steel-walled room, there would be no cell phone reception, so he made one last check of his messages before putting the phone away until morning. He would be able to catch an hour or so of sleep before Sims changed planes at Andrews, if the air force types came through. He pressed a button on his Nokia and the screen showed that two calls had come in while he was busy, both from the same number in Washington, both from Shari Towne. Each flashed a red exclamation point icon that meant “urgent.” He hit the automatic dial and heard the beeps and squawks of an international commercial call, then the phone was answered after the first ring.

  “Shari? What’s happening?”

  “Thank God you called back, Orville. Something is going on here that I don’t understand… about the mission.” Her voice was agitated, unusual for Shari. “Have you heard anymore about Kyle?”

  Double-Oh’s thoughts begin to race. She worked for Buchanan at the NSC. Had she found out about the letter? “No, we haven’t. It’s tough to accept, Shari, but he probably died in the crash. I know you’re hurting, girl. Me, too.”

  “No, no, no. Listen,” she said rapidly. “I apologize for bringing you into this, but just listen. I’ve got what may sound like a silly question, but it’s very important.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Did Kyle get a tattoo before he left the boat?”

  “What?” Double-Oh was rocked by the question. “Hell, no. First, there is no place to get a tattoo around here because we are at sea. Anyway, you know how he feels about that stuff. No markings for a sniper. Ever. No way would he put any distinguishing marks on his body.” If a sniper was captured, he did not want the enemy to know his job.

  Shari exhaled, and Double-Oh heard the breath from thousands of miles away. “Well, then. He’s alive.”

  There was silence for a moment. “What makes you think that?” Double-Oh was suddenly wide awake again.

  “They gave me the official file on the crash to examine, and it contained horrible photographs of each of the Marines who were killed.”

  “Photographs? How the hell did you get individual pictures?”

  “That’s just one of several weird things. They came to Buchanan through Gordon Gates. Seems a couple of his PSC guys were near the village and able to get into the crash site. We have no idea how. Anyway, each photo included a close-up of the dog tags for identification. Double-Oh, the picture that was supposed to be of Kyle was of someone burned beyond recognition about the face, but the dog tags were clearly readable. They had not even been charred and the rubber ring was still intact. How can a torso and face be destroyed by fire, but the dog tags around the neck remain untouched by heat? The tag laced into his boot was identical. No doubt that those were Kyle’s tags.”

  The big sergeant was holding tight control of his voice. He was not going to jump to conclusions. A couple of mercs were at the scene? “Maybe they made a mistake, screwed up with the wrong dog tags.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Orville. It was the left forearm that really caught my attention. It was visible and in pretty good shape, with DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR lettering around a good-size USMC tattoo of the eagle, globe, and anchor. I think Kyle was betting that you or I would see the report, and would pick up on it.”

  Double-Oh rubbed his face. Good God! “ I don’t know, Shari. Maybe he got a tattoo somehow that I just didn’t notice because I wasn’t looking for one. Anyway, he was sleeves-down when he left the boat. We can’t get into wishful thinking.”

  Shari paused, then said, “Okay. Try this. They report one Marine is missing and presumed alive; a young radioman with no combat experience. So far, this kid is out there on his own and has not only managed to escape the crash site without being spotted, but has evaded the Syrian army, dodged all of the civilians and any Bedouins in the area, and has not even been spotted by our own satellites. You tell me, Double-Oh. How many men on the mission could do that? Not some dial-spinner, that’s for sure. So who would it be?”

  “Jesus.” There was a moment of silence, then Double-Oh agreed softly. “Gotta be Kyle. He’s alive.”

  “Yes. He is. I just needed to confirm my conclusions with you before I did anything. We have to go get him. I’m going to talk to my boss and get things moving from this end right away.”

  “No!” Double-Oh’s voice changed from wavering uncertainty to parade-ground intensity. “You can’t do that, Shari.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you calling from your office?”

  “Unh-uh. I’m on my cell outside of Starbucks. I took a walk after the meeting to clear my mind and call you to confirm my thoughts about the tattoo.”

  “Okay. Listen up. I’ve got to bring you up to speed on something that’s going on. My boss, Colonel Sims of the Thirty-Third MEU, is heading your way.” He outlined the letter Kyle had received from Gerald Buchanan’s courier, how Kyle had refused the assassination order, and that Sims was flying under covert conditions to deliver
the copy of the letter to someone higher up. “It seems like Buchanan is involved in some borderline treason, Shari,” he said. “If Kyle brings General Middleton out safe, there is going to be some big trouble when this thing blows up in public.”

  “Tell me about the courier.” She dropped the cardboard cup of coffee in a trash can. Down the street she could see the White House, the black fence in front of it, and the broad open plaza. Protesters, cops, and tourists mingled. Buchanan secretly sending a Marine sniper in to kill the general instead of rescuing him was illegal. No wonder there had been no memo about it, not even Top Secret. “The man who came out there to meet with Kyle. What did he look like?”

  “Civilian dude, playing at being a spook. He admitted later being from the White House. He was slim and tall, with a big mop of black hair that was slicked back like he was a singer for some doo-wop quartet. I never caught his real name, but he was a real cocky asshole.”

  Shari sighed. “That’s Sam Shafer. He’s Buchanan’s right-hand man.”

  Double-Oh said, “Look, Shari. This is spinning off the deep end fast. Did you tell Buchanan and Shafer what you were thinking about Kyle?”

  “Not yet. Like I said, I wanted to call you first and make sure.”

  “You can’t trust those two. If they are suspicious about why you acted strangely at the meeting, they are going to force you to give up the information.”

  “What do you want me to do, Double-Oh? I can’t just sit here while Kyle is in big trouble!”

  “Don’t worry about Kyle right now. He can take care of himself. I’m more worried about you calling me on an open circuit. Shari, my special ops nerves are shaking like leaves on this. Those two guys will do anything they have to in order to keep that letter secret, because if they don’t, it will mean prison for them.” His voice went softer. “That includes getting rid of everybody who may know about it. That means Kyle. It means me. Now it means you, too.”