I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when Anders kicked me, but it couldn’t have been very long. Startled, I sat up, pulling my hat off my head. Anders had strolled, hunched over, down the cabin and roused all of us. He turned around at the front of the cabin, sat in one of the chairs, and addressed us as a group.
“Listen up!” he said, raising his voice over the dull roar of the engines. “This mission is the highest priority operation we’ve received. You men make up the best teams Dead Six has, and that’s why you were selected for this operation. You need to understand that everything you’re about to hear is need-to-know only. Do not discuss this operation with anyone. Not your friends, not the other chalks, not the admin pogues, no one! Am I making myself clear enough? If there’s an OPSEC breach on this, I’m going to fuck your world up. Understood?”
We all nodded haltingly. None of us liked being threatened by this douche bag.
Anders continued unfazed, holding up the PDA so we could see the screen. We leaned in to try to make out the small picture he was showing us. “Your objective is this. This is the warhead to a Russian RT-2PM Topol ICBM. It has a yield of five-hundred and fifty kilotons.”
Anders pushed a button on his PDA, then held it up again, showing us a new picture. “This is what the physics package of the warhead looks like if it is removed from the reentry vehicle. This part is where the nuclear reaction takes place and is all that is required to produce a yield. As you can see, this part is small enough to fit in the trunk of a small car.” The eight of us looked at each other. “I think you can see where this is going,” Anders said dispassionately. “This particular warhead, so far as we know, was removed from its missile and was to be destroyed in accordance with the START treaty. It disappeared years ago and has never been accounted for. At this moment, the warhead is on a truck, headed for a remote airfield in Yemen. From there, we expect it to be flown covertly to Zubara and delivered to General Al Sabah. For obvious reasons, we’re not going to allow this to happen. We’re flying nap-of-the-Earth right now. We’ll arrive at the target site just before dawn and intercept the warhead before that plane takes off. Our mission is to secure the warhead and eliminate anyone involved in the delivery. We will take no prisoners. Any questions?”
We had none. “Good,” Anders said. “Each chalk will operate as a fire-team. The plane will be waiting on the ground when we get there. Tailor, take your chalk and secure the aircraft. Singer, take your chalk and secure the truck. It’s probably escorted, and there could be heavy resistance. Be aware that the situation can change at any time. If we get there and it’s obvious the plane hasn’t been loaded yet, I want both teams to hit the truck. No matter what, we have to secure that warhead.”
“What will you be doing during all this?” Singer asked.
“Whatever I feel like. I have the RADIAC equipment,” Anders said curtly. “I’m also a trained medic. I’ll be on the ground with you and will direct you over the radio as the situation develops. Do your job.”
I sat back against my seat and looked at the floor. The tension in the air was making me uncomfortable. Nobody liked being around Anders. Why would they only send eight guys, plus Anders, for such an important mission? You’d think they could at least spare a third chalk to stop General Al Sabah from obtaining a nuclear weapon! What the hell is going on?
VALENTINE
Somewhere in Yemen
Tailor had his arm over my shoulder as I helped him along. Blood trickled from a wound on his right calf, and he was limping pretty badly. The wound didn’t look that bad, but even “minor” gunshot wounds hurt.
We hobbled down the ramp of a damaged An-74 transport plane, back out into the early morning sun. The notional airstrip we were at didn’t look like it had been used in decades. There was nothing left but a short, cracked runway, a ramp half covered in desert sand, and one road leading off into the hills. The terrain around us was rugged and mountainous. A cold wind blew steadily across the flat spot the airfield had been built on.
We’d arrived right in the middle of the transfer of the nuclear warhead. It had already been loaded on the plane, but the convoy that transported it hadn’t yet left when we came upon the airfield. We took them by surprise, landing right in the middle of their deal.
It was a bloodbath. More than twenty-five bodies littered the area around the transport plane. A convoy of trucks sat shot-up and burning behind the damaged aircraft. Once we had confirmed that the weapon was on the plane and not in the trucks, the modified Osprey had done a strafing run with a chin-mounted gun turret. Both chalks had struck with the element of surprise and liberal use of 40mm grenades. The Yemenis had been quickly overwhelmed.
Which isn’t to say that things went well for us. Singer was on the ground in front of us, gurgling and gasping for air. Blood poured from a sucking chest wound near his armpit. The bullet that hit him had missed his ceramic plate and plunged deep into his chest, probably tearing through his lungs.
Cromwell had ripped off Singer’s vest and was hastily applying a pressure dressing. It just wasn’t enough. “Christ, I can’t stop the bleeding!” he cried. “Hang in there, boss! Where’s Anders? Anders! I need a medic!”
Anders strode up from behind the wreckage of a 6x6 truck, satellite phone in hand. “What’s the matter?” he asked casually, stuffing the phone into a pouch on his vest.
“I can’t stop the bleeding!” Cromwell repeated. “I need your help!”
Anders, not moving with any particular urgency while Singer suffered, squatted down, smacked Cromwell’s hand aside, and began to inspect the wound. He stuck his face in close.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Anders said emotionlessly. “Tension pneumothorax. He sucked in too much air from the entrance wound. His lungs have collapsed.” He stood up and wiped the blood off on his pant legs. Singer had stopped moving. “He’s dead.” The tall operative then turned on his heel and headed for the ramp of the An-74.
“Hey!” I said, unable to hide the anger in my voice. “Tailor’s hurt, too!” Tailor winced as he put weight on his hurt leg and babbled a short stream of obscenities.
“He’ll be fine. You’ve got combat lifesaver training, right?” Anders said, not looking at me as he walked up the ramp into the aircraft.
“Fuck you, Anders!” Tailor said. Anders ignored him and disappeared into the plane. “Shit . . . Val, I gotta sit down. Help me out here.” I supported Tailor’s weight as he lowered himself onto the edge of the plane’s cargo ramp. He extended his wounded leg. “Take a look at that, will you?”
Slinging my rifle behind my back, I snapped out my automatic knife and cut his pant leg away. He had a nasty gash in his left calf. I pulled out a bandage and applied pressure to the wound. Tailor grunted and swore as I did so.
“Cromwell,” Tailor said, forcing himself to talk through the pain. “You okay, buddy?”
Cromwell and Holbrook were kneeling next to Singer. Holbrook gently pushed Singer’s eyelids down.
“He’s gone,” Cromwell said. Furious, he stood up and stomped away. Holbrook fell onto his butt and sat there, staring at his dead friend.
“Holbrook?” I asked.
“Singer’s dead, man. Singer’s fucking dead.” He put his bloody hands over his face.
Their chalk’s fourth man, Mitchell, had caught a round in the throat on the way out of the Osprey and was dead on the spot. Hudson and our new guy, Byrne, stood back cautiously, scanning the horizon for reinforcements. The Osprey we’d arrived on had landed and was waiting for us.
Anders came out of the plane, stowing the radiation detector. He was talking on the radio. “Tarantula, this is Drago. Package is secure . . . Roger that.” He strode down the ramp and started giving orders. “Valentine, Holbrook, bring that nuke out here. I’ve got a strike team coming to secure it.”
“Strike team?” Tailor snarled. “Where were they while we were getting shot at?”
Anders glared at him, nostrils flaring. “We needed to get here bef
ore this thing moved.” Anders saw Holbrook sitting there, with his head in his hands, and came over and kicked him in the side. “Get off your ass. I gave you an order.”
Suddenly, Holbrook stood, bloody hands clenched into fists. “You let Singer die!”
Anders shrugged. “Shit happens.”
Holbrook lost it. He swung for Anders’s face, but the big man moved shockingly fast. He easily ducked aside, but followed up with an elbow that got Holbrook square in the face. Then Anders hurled him headfirst into the ramp. Tailor and I barely got out of the way. Anders’s heavy boot slammed down on Holbrook’s back. Holbrook cried out in pain.
Singer’s chalk was tight, and Cromwell saw his buddy go down. He came running. Anders saw him coming and calmly readied himself. Cromwell threw a punch that Anders easily blocked. Anders then slugged Cromwell in the teeth. Cromwell swung wildly, but Anders let it sail past before surging forward and grabbing Cromwell by the armor and then wrapping his big left arm around his throat. Somehow Anders had pulled his combat knife and it was pressed against Cromwell’s jugular.
Instinctively, I jumped up, pulling my rifle around from where it had been slung behind my back, but Anders was too quick. A pistol appeared in his other hand, and, faster than I could blink, I was staring down the barrel of a .45. I froze. Anders’s pistol was a big H&K Mk23. He spoke very slowly. “Got a problem, Valentine?”
I was Calm. I didn’t say anything, but Tailor did. “Fuck you, Anders!” Of course, he wasn’t the one with a gun stuck in his face. Now Tailor had his .45 out and leveled at Anders. “Let Cromwell go!”
“Safety that sidearm and place it on the deck, Tailor, or I shoot your girlfriend in the face.”
“Easy, Tailor,” I suggested. Holbrook was moaning, trying to rise. Cromwell was turning red; his eyes were focused on the blade pressed against his neck. Hudson had come running and was now covering Anders with his SAW.
The hulking operative took it all in calmly. He showed no fear at all. “Shoot me and you walk home.” There was nothing but barren rocky desert as far as the eye could see. We’d have better odds of surviving a walk across Mars. Anders glanced around. “I hear Yemen is nice this time of year.”
Tailor slowly lowered his weapon. “Stand down, Hudson,” he ordered. Anders waited, keeping his gun on me for longer than he needed to, just because he was a douche. Finally he put his arm to his side, but he didn’t holster. Anders let go of Cromwell, and he fell, gasping, to the ground.
“That’s better. Now quit your crying and secure that package before I get angry.” Anders turned and walked away. He casually stepped over Cromwell. “Get this piece of shit onto the bird.”
We watched as the second Osprey dusted off. Anders’s mysterious strike force had arrived a few minutes before and secured the package, all while keeping a suspicious eye on us. Thankfully, Anders went with them. Holbrook and Cromwell were both still dazed. Hudson and Byrne were helping them onto the aircraft ahead of us. I was supporting the still-limping Tailor. In the distance we could see dust from approaching Yemeni reinforcements. They were still a ways off.
“Hey, Val. Remember back in Vegas when I said you were a killer?”
“What about it?” I grunted as I helped him along.
“Well, you ain’t in the same league as Anders. That fucker scares me.”
“Tailor, can you see where this thing is going?”
“Yeah, I can,” he replied. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Tailor’s hands were shaking.
“The money isn’t looking so good anymore.”
He had talked me into this, and he knew it, but it wasn’t in Tailor’s nature to admit making a mistake. “Not really.”
“We need to make a Plan B, bro.”
“You think so?”
“I think so. I think we might need to disappear in a hurry. They obviously think we’re expendable. Have you checked your bank account?”
“No, why?”
“I can’t access mine from the computers at the fort.”
“You think they’re not paying us?”
“I’ve heard the others talking. Nobody can check their accounts. Hunter said he’d ask Gordon about it. Remember what Hawk said?”
“If we’re dead they don’t have to pay us. Son of a bitch,” Tailor said tiredly. “I think you’re right. I think we might need to ditch these guys. This is Mexico all over again.”
“Got any ideas?” I asked as I helped him up the ramp.
“Not really.”
“I might.”
VALENTINE
Al Khor District
April 22
2100
It was a typically warm and dry night as Tailor and I made our way down the sidewalk, trying not to draw attention to ourselves. Al Khor had the most Westerners of any of the Zoob’s three urban districts. A few weeks prior, it wouldn’t have been unusual to see quite a few Brits and Europeans out and about.
Things had gone downhill since then, and now Westerners were abandoning the city. A string of car bombings and other attacks kept most Westerners indoors at night. The streets of the city were still jam-packed with traffic, and the sidewalks were only a little less crowded, but you could feel the tension in the air as the tiny little nation held its breath.
Project Heartbreaker was at the same time wildly successful and a miserable failure. We did indeed have the terrorists on the run here. Several of our chalks were sitting at safe houses, idle, because there wasn’t much to do. We were literally running out of targets. To that end we’d begun casting the net wider, expanding operations into neighboring Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
According to our intelligence contacts, including those ostensibly working for the Emir, the terrorists were scared shitless. Horror stories about the men who leave the Ace of Spades had spread as far as Afghanistan and Indonesia. The local press had picked up on it here and there, too, but the Zubaran government had, for the most part, quashed that before it became an issue. Dead Six had become the Bogeyman that terrorists looked under their filthy beds for.
At the same time, the Confederated Gulf Emirate of Zubara was slowly tearing itself apart. The fear and chaos we’d caused was intended to be inflicted only upon the terrorists, but it had quickly spread to the wider community. General Al Sabah was now positioning himself to be the new Iron Man of the Arabian Gulf, and had half the Zubaran Army on his side. The emir was on shakier ground than ever. It seemed very likely that the emir’s regime would fall, not to Islamic Fundamentalist fanatics as originally feared but to a militant opportunist who wanted to become a world power broker overnight.
The entire situation was a confusing mess that threatened to send the region spiraling into chaos. On top of it, we’d paid a steep price for our questionable success. Almost one-third of our personnel had been killed in action at this point.
I was terrified of what would happen to Sarah if we stayed in the Zoob. So Tailor and I had talked it over for a long time. I then talked to Sarah, while Tailor talked to Hudson, and that was as far as the talking went. There were others I liked, others I’d have liked to bring in, but I couldn’t trust anyone else. We were getting out.
That was easier said than done, of course. I could, I suppose, have just gone to the airport, whipped out my passport, and tried to buy a plane ticket, but that would’ve created questions. In any case, I was sure Gordon’s people had mechanisms in place to catch us if we tried to run. So we’d have to be clever.
I’m not really that clever. I’m not the guy that comes up with cool tricks or brilliant plans. Neither is Tailor, regardless of what he might tell you. But you don’t have to be clever if you have clever friends.
Tailor stood watch while I entered a phone booth outside an Internet café. Zubara still had pay phones aplenty, unlike the United States. Foreign workers fresh from South Asia didn’t have cell phones that worked in the country, so they often made use of the pay phones until they got situated. I had a cell phone myself, of course, but it w
as issued by Dead Six, and I wasn’t about to use it for this.
I pulled from my pocket a wrinkled piece of paper. Scrawled on the paper, in my own handwriting, was a long telephone number. Using a prepaid international calling card that I’d bought with cash, I dialed and waited. It took several seconds to connect, then began to ring.
Ling answered the phone on the second ring, sounding a little sleepy. I had no idea what time it was where she was. For that matter, I had no idea where she was.
“Um, hello?” I said awkwardly, hoping like hell she wasn’t pissed that I’d ignored her e-mails.
“Who is this?” Ling asked firmly.
“It’s Valentine. Remember Mexico?”
Ling was quiet for a second. “Michael Valentine? This is a surprise.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“It’s three o’ clock in the bloody morning here,” Ling said, not actually sounding irritated. “Of course you woke me. Are you calling to take me up on my offer?”
“Actually . . . I need your help.”
“Is that so? What sort of help?”
“I’m in kind of a bad spot here, and I need to get out of it.”
“Where are you?”
“The Middle East.”
“It would help if you were more specific, Mr. Valentine.”
“I’m in the Confederated Gulf Emirate of Zubara.”
Ling paused for a moment. “Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, I can see where you might be in some trouble then. How did you come to be there?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Can I safely assume that you’ve been getting into trouble there, or perhaps causing trouble yourself?”
“That’d be a safe assumption,” I said, nervously looking around. Tailor gave me a thumbs up through the glass.
“Very well,” Ling said. “What sort of help do you need, then?”
“I need to get out of here,” I said flatly. “As soon as possible. Normal methods of transportation aren’t workable. I need to just disappear.”
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