by Marcus Wynne
“Two in the alley, ten meters to your three o’clock, with longs,” the controller whispered, professionally cool.
Two men with long guns. Sentries protecting the man inside the building, the man the three Americans had come to kill.
Raven turned and looked at Hunter. The grey haired killer pointed at himself, then Hunter, then drew his finger across his neck.
You and me, we’ll take these two.
We’ll use the knives.
The steady stream of adrenaline that had been coursing through Hunter’s veins since they’d inserted, running quickly from the blacked out OH-6 that had set down for the briefest moment to let them out three blocks away, rose in a huge surge in his belly. His knees weakened, his heartbeat raced, his hands went cold, and his already empty bladder turned in an attempt to empty itself even more.
Dispassionate, almost cold, Raven watched the signs of Hunter’s adrenaline dump cross his face.
Hunter felt Alec behind him, the weight of the younger man’s attention and his barely contained disdain.
Hunter took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly, let his mind do what was necessary to be done to calibrate his state, not calm himself down, no, you need the adrenaline for killing, a little bit makes you sharper…he just needed to even it out.
Just like the Raven had taught him.
And it worked, just like everything the man had taught him did.
Hunter nodded when he was ready.
They had a suppressed pistol for sentry removal, but that wasn’t why he was here. He was here to learn, and he knew, when he agreed to come, that there would be a test here. This was the test the Raven had planned for him long ago, when they first started down the warrior’s path together: Raven the brilliant teacher, Hunter the apt pupil, back where it started, beside the river, so long ago.
Raven saw the change come over Hunter, and nodded, and that acknowledgement meant more in that instant to Hunter than all the words ever uttered. The older man looked out slowly, around the wall, down the alley. He readjusted his night vision goggles, then carefully slung his AK-47 to one side. He eased his long knife out. Hunter recognized that knife. It was a custom made Retribution, lovingly crafted by the knife making genius Jerry Hossom as his gift to the warrior brotherhood in the aftermath of 9/11.
Alec prodded Hunter in the back. Hunter turned and saw the handle of another Retribution held out to him. Alec nodded at him.
Go on. Take it.
Hunter hefted the knife, felt its perfect balance poised on the forefinger of his right hand, the amazing lightness of it…when you thought, it moved; when it moved, it cut. That was the brilliance of the knife and its maker. He turned, knife in his hand, and Raven was waiting for him.
They went into the alley.
There’s a method to stalking and killing a man with a knife, a method developed by hard men over many years. The Raven wrote part of that book, and he’d taught Hunter, but there’s a world of difference between the classroom and the street…keep your mind blank, don’t look directly at your target -- it’s not a man, it’s meat to be cut -- keep your mouth open wide, so your breath is silent…all those techniques are necessary so that nothing you do trips the sixth sense of the human you’re inching up on, setting your foot down carefully, toe first, then easing it down flat, feeling for anything under foot that might make the slightest noise, but most of all cloaking your intention, because there’s a deep part of the brain, the ancient reptile brain, that feels hostile intention…
The two sentries chatted together, bored, shifting from foot to foot, while a battle raged not a mile from where they stood, and from time to time they paused, when there was a particularly loud, bright flash from an explosion in the distance.
In the luminous green of the night vision goggles, they looked otherworldly, not really human, and to Hunter they were no longer human, that’s part of the process…turn off the part of you that recoils at hurting humans and bring out the part that moves to eliminate the target…and as he closed on the sentry Hunter calibrated his body position, his shifting stance, and all of that went into the visualization that ran simultaneously with his approach, the little movie in his mind of how it needed to play out, he was both in the moment and visualizing exactly what he needed to do…keep your focus off them, because that’s what the human animal responds to, focused attention means intention and intention means danger.. and now, tonight, it means death.
Raven and Hunter hit the sentries simultaneously, moving like two machines with one mind, one will. To Hunter, it was as though Raven was driving them both; Hunter heard his mentor’s voice in his head, telling him what to do: explode forward, his left hand and forearm wrapping high around the sentry’s head (keep the underside of your arm facing OUT, Hunter, protect your brachial artery from your own knife), yanking back the head to expose the neck while you stomp the sentry’s right knee down and at the instant he buckles you slam your own foot down in a drop step that drives the long knife into the right side of the neck, straight in, twist it and cut out the front (not like the movies, Hunter, where you hold his mouth and saw across, you’ll cut your hand or your face or both if you do it that way, this way your off hand is clear of your blade line, and you cut to the front so you won’t be blinded by arterial spray) and what Hunter would never, ever forget was the sound, the crunch of the razor edged knife slicing through the cartilage of the trachea and then the wet hiss of arterial spray as all the vessels, great and small, in the neck opened…
And just as Raven had told him, the man shivered, his hands dropped as he slipped into unconsciousness as the shock and loss of blood took him, and Hunter counted off the remaining seconds of his life with the slowing beat of the spray from the massive wound.
Hunter dragged his target deeper into the alley, laid him down, then stood back and looked at the man he’d just killed.
Raven looked at him, grave and expressionless. A fine spray of blood dotted the older man’s face and beard. It seemed strangely black in the luminous green of the night vision. Raven stooped over Hunter’s kill and dipped his first two fingers in the fresh blood. Then he traced a line on Hunter’s forehead, and down each cheek.
“First blood, Hunter,” Raven whispered. “Welcome to the club.”
2
The OH circled Baghdad International Airport, then swooped in low and fast, in total blackout, the pilot with his night vision head gear looking like a strange insect highlighted against the faint gleam of the city in the distance. He settled the helicopter down, and with the rotors still turning, Hunter, Raven and Alex quick stepped away. They walked into the nearby hangar where two low profile vehicles sandwiched a battered Suburban. The vehicle convoy was ringed by contractor clad gunmen, who nodded to Raven as he led the way to the Suburban. Raven sat in front, Hunter and Alex slipped into the rear seats, positioned themselves sideways to give themselves good fields of fire on the ride in. In the back trunk space, a quiet man with massive biceps cradled a SAW and kept his eyes straight to the rear.
The convoy peeled away, paused only for a moment at the Green Gate, and then went roaring out down Route Irish at high speed.
Raven was silent in front.
Alex had the strange combination of relaxation and growing anticipation in him, like a man who’d just had great sex and was looking forward to more.
“I didn’t think it was your first time,” Alex said, without turning around. “Thought you’d been there before. Did good, though. Smooth. Nice technique. You can keep that Retribution…wouldn’t want to rob you of that. You earned it. Me, mine was that Hunter-Killer. Old Jerry H is racking up some kills on his steel. I sent a friend of mine, back in the world, to one of the knife shows, down there in Vegas, sent him by Jerry’s booth to give him a message, send him a present. Sent him the rank epaulets off an Iraqi Republican Guard General…dipped in said General’s blood. Guess he liked it, according to my guy. You ever see Hossom, you send him my regards, okay?”
H
unter kept his eyes on the sector of road whizzing by outside. Part of him, though, still dwelled on what he had done, the feel of the life force slipping out of the man he’d killed, the feel of the knife as it cut through skin and cartilage and tendon and artery, the feel of the life slipping away….
He didn’t want to like it, but there was a part of him that did; he didn’t want to exult in it, but part of him did; he didn’t want to feel guilty…and he didn’t.
And somehow, that bothered him.
“Yeah, you won’t want to talk about it for awhile,” Alex went on. “Want to enjoy it. Just like fucking a hot woman. Or eating a great meal. You want to hang out with it, savor it. Just like popping your cherry. No matter what your count gets to, it will always be your first. You’re a lucky man, dude. Lucky man.”
“Watch the bridges,” the driver said as they sped towards an overpass.
Alex shifted a little, Hunter reset his cheek weld on his weapon.
“It’s what makes us different,” Alex said. “We got the look, we wear the badge…only the other guys in the club can tell. All the vegetarians, they don’t have a clue. But we do…”
“Alex,” Raven said from the front.
The young SEAL shook his head and settled down.
The ride was fast, bumpy, and uneventful. No sniper fire, no IEDs, not much traffic after dark anyway. They entered the checkpoint and rolled up in front of the nondescript small apartment building where the contractor on duty at the front checkpoint waved them through into a garage. The three operators got out and went up the stairs into their quarters; at least, Raven and Alex’s quarters. On a table in the front room, the men set down their long guns. Alex disappeared into his bedroom; Raven put on a pot of coffee. Hunter looked around the room -- sterile, like a sitting room in a cheap motel. He sank into the couch, and let the tension roll off him in waves.
He studied Raven, the small precise movements as the older man measured coffee into the maker, set three mugs in a row, handles carefully aligned, opened the small refrigerator and took out a glass bottle of milk, put a clean spoon next to a dainty and incongruous sugar bowl. Raven looked up, as though he felt Hunter’s gaze, and for a moment, the two of them locked eyes and it was if each could see the other’s soul. Hunter felt, at his core, a change…something had changed in him, and Raven had been the catalyst, the guide through the underworld for him, and for that he would be grateful. But Raven was studying him for something more, and Hunter felt as though he needed to guard himself in this, what felt to be a vulnerable moment, as he assimilated the change he felt deep in his core, the change that had come over him when he’d taken his first life.
“Alex talks too much sometimes,” Raven said.
“Hmm,” Hunter said. “He worships the ground you walk on.”
“He’ll get over it. One of these days. He started with me younger than you did.”
Hunter looked at the closed door that Alex had disappeared behind. “He’s good. Beyond good. Scary. How does he feel about being used?”
Raven handed Hunter a cup of coffee and sat down on the other end of the couch. “Is being a warrior in the service of your country being used?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Were you used tonight?”
“In the right way, yes.”
“That’s right. In the right way. Leave it alone, Hunter. I respected your decision. And I respected your decision tonight. He likes the path he’s on.”
Hunter tasted the coffee, set the cup down. “It’s too dark.”
Raven laughed. “You were pretty dark tonight, yourself, Hunter…”
“The coffee.”
Silence, then appreciative laughter from the older man. “Milk’s on the counter. Get it your self.”
Alex came out, hair damp from a shower, in clean Levis and a ragged Blackwater T-shirt.
“Coffee’s on the counter,” Raven said.
“Thanks, Paul,” Alex said. He picked up his mug and brought a kitchen chair into the front area, turned it round, straddled it. “What’s up?”
Hunter eased back onto the couch.
“You can stay here tonight, if you want,” Raven said. “Or we can get somebody to run you back to your quarters.”
“I’ll go back. When I’m done with my coffee,” Hunter said.
“Marines were tearing some asses up, huh?” Alex said with enthusiasm. “Fucking jihadis are running around in circles since we cut off all the heads in advance…I love this shit. I love this job. Man, if the civvys ever knew…if they only wanted to know, instead of keeping their heads buried in the sand. Sometimes I feel like just doing something crazy to wake their dumb asses up…rub their faces in the reality out here, where the rubber meets the road. Bureaucrats, politicians, whiny liberals, the civilians…it’s nothing till it comes home to them, till it becomes personal. If it was their family members, their people…then they’d change their tune. Things would be different, then. Their kids, their grandkids, their friends and neighbors….they need a wake up call. If Fallujah was unrolling in Washington DC or New York or LA…”
“It’s coming,” Raven said. “It won’t be long before that happens. There’s a whole new generation of jihadis getting their training here…this is the new Afghanistan for the mujahidin. They’ll find a way to bring it home. They have to. That’s how they’ll get the media coverage”
“Doesn’t seem like many of them are making it out alive to do that…” Hunter said.
“They’re like the hydra headed monster,” Raven said. “Every one we kill, five more crop up to take their place. We take out their leadership, new, unknown ones crop up. The mullahs in Iran are sending their best and brightest to get battlefield experience, we got the Syrians doing the same…Wahabi-ists from Saudi, Chechnyans…the toughest ones are the foreign fighters.
“The ones that live through all this shit, the ones who are smart and learn how to avoid getting targeted…those are the ones we’ll hear from. Those are the ones bin Laden is sending in, and the survivors…those will be his hard core in the future. They’ll be the ones we’ll be fighting in a few years.”
“That’s if the politicos and the sheeple would just wake up,” Alex said. “Maybe it will take a little bit of terrorism at home to wake them up. IEDs, suicide bombers, whatever…”
“Maybe,” Raven said. “I don’t want to see Americans get hit what that. That’s what we’re for.”
“But if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes,” Alex said. “What was it that Spock said on that old episode of Star Trek? ‘The good of the many outweighs the good of a few.’ If you got to break some eggs, so be it.”
“Easy to say until it’s your family picking up the pieces,” Raven said.
Hunter nodded in agreement.
“I don’t have any family to worry about,” Alex said. “Only family I got is my brothers in arms. My friends…”
“I got to go,” Hunter said. “Can one of the guards run me back?”
“What’s a matter?” Alex said. “Conversation getting too close to home for you?”
“No. It’s just not part of my world, all this.”
“Yeah it is, dude. Get used to it. One of these days, you’re going to run into some baddies on an airplane…nothing like bodies falling from the sky to get people’s attention. The jihadis are always going to be looking at a way to do planes…maybe bombs, but we haven’t heard the last of hijacking,” Alex said, satisfaction in his voice. “Oh yeah…nothing like a plane full of mommies and babies to get attention.”
He reached under the table and pulled out a book resting face down on the floor beneath. It was a battered copy of The Thirty-Six Stratagems. Hunter felt a pang when he saw the book, and Raven seemed embarrassed for a moment when Alex flipped through the pages with great fanfare.
“You see this book? Greatest book ever written on deception…” Alex caught the look between Hunter and Raven. He closed the book with a snap. “Guess you have, huh? Guess I’m j
ust running my mouth again.”
“It’s a great book,” Hunter said. “And you got the best teacher there is, man. Taught me everything I know. Though he didn’t teach me everything he knows.”
Alex laughed at that. “Nobody ever will. Like the Shadow. Ever read that comic? ‘Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow does..’”
“It was a radio show,” Hunter said. “Long time before it was a comic.”
Alex flinched as though slapped, flushed, then glared at Hunter with a naked and unabashed hatred. “Whatever. James.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Raven said. He stood and led Hunter away. Hunter’s gaze lingered for a moment into the cold blue of Alex’s eyes, then turned to leave the room.
“I was supposed to kill you, you know?” Alex said to Hunter’s back. “Raven let you live. You owe him your life. Your ass has been candy twice now, Air Marshal. Better hope we don’t cross paths again when he ain’t around to save your candy ass…”
“Shut up, Alex,” Raven said, without heat or looking back.
Outside, one of the contractor’s pulled a Suburban up while two other men stood ready to ride security.
“Is that true?” Hunter said.
The gunfighters mounted up, and Hunter paused beside the rear door. “Well?”
“Keep well, Hunter. We probably won’t see each other again. And it’s probably best that way. It’s not likely you’ll see him, but if you do, give Alex a wide berth. He’s troubled, as I think you saw.”
