Clean Kill

by Jack Coughlin

  He loped along for another six minutes, following the main road south and keeping to the dark areas as the congested urban center gave way to more open space on the right side of the broad avenue, while the waterfront and the rigs glowed like groups of holiday lanterns to his left. He jumped the drainage ditch and darted into a small alleyway partially blocked by plastic bags filled with trash.

  Settling low, he could see a bright necklace of floodlights that threw white circles along the fence of the army base about two kilometers away. An alert siren was groaning. Kyle slipped his radio headset into place and keyed it. “You guys there?”

  “Yeah,” Boykin replied, his voice already heavy with exertion.

  “How’s it look?”

  “The rebels are streaming in through the main security entrance like a bunch of cockroaches. The guard is sprawled out, apparently dead, alongside a second body. Western civilian. A pack of SUVs, pickup trucks, and cars are parked outside the gate and men are hiding behind them to fire into the compound. The shitty part? A pair of blue and white police cars are out there, too. Uniformed cops are working with those assholes.”

  “Any organized resistance yet?”

  “Bits and pieces. We’re working on it. I sent two guys to round up everybody they can find and Jamal and I have set up a cross-fire from a couple of buildings overlooking the main breach area. That should stop the ground assault. One surprise is that quiet Chinese dude who came in on the plane with you: He knows how to shoot.”

  “Not surprised at all. I’ll let you know if I spot any rescue force rolling your way.”

  “Are you sure about where you’re going?” asked Boykin.

  “I can see the Saudi army base from here. It’s all lit up, and there is a lot of movement. Out.” He made a final check around his hiding place and saw two shadows doing a fast creep toward the military camp. He flipped down the Cyclops night vision goggles for a better look and found they were an ambush team carrying rocket propelled grenades. Swanson darted from his hide and swung in behind them.

  F ATEHI A WWAD, A FORMER Egyptian soldier and drug smuggler, hugged the ditch as he stalked toward the site he had picked for a blocking position. A film of sweat and dirt covered his face. He was nervous. Salid, the young fighter carrying an AK-47, was trailing behind. The boy was supposed to be protecting them but had been caught up by excitement. He was anxious to become a martyr, and Awwad was constantly reminding him that their job was to stay alive and stop any attempt by the Saudi soldiers to rescue the foreigners who were under attack in Khobz. The young Salid disregarded the lectures and was falling far off the pace.

  “Keep up!” Awwad demanded. “Forget the other fight!”

  “I should be back there, helping our brothers slay the infidels.”

  “Be quiet, boy. Carry out your assignment!”

  The 40 mm rocket launcher rested easily on Awwad’s right shoulder as he moved toward the illuminated missile base. He had scouted the area and found a large concrete culvert that ran beneath the road to connect the drainage canals. He dropped into the crossing ditch and slithered into the culvert. “Now we wait,” he said.

  There was no response, no hurrying footsteps. Awwad took a deep breath, listened, then cursed. Salid had given into the craving for action, the lust for blood and glory that could override good sense. Son of a pig!

  Awwad adjusted. Children should not be trusted with important assignments. He would have to carry out the ambush on his own and would fire his RPG when the first vehicle, most likely a Humvee or a small truck, came out of the base camp. That would block the road, idle the rest of the rescue convoy, and force a delay while officers assessed the danger. While they were doing that, Awwad would disappear, for there could be no follow-up shot. Salid had taken the only other RPG round with him.

  S WANSON WATCHED THE MAN in the rear hesitate, then stop instead of following the leader who carried the RPG. For some reason, this one was not advancing, but just standing there with an AK hanging around his shoulders. A wolfish grin spread over Swanson’s face.

  He moved with a quiet grace, soft and low to the ground, invisible to the hesitating fighter who was blind to the darkness. Swanson found a crumpled depression in the side of the ditch, slipped into it, and lay on his belly in the dry sand. The night vision goggles clearly painted the fighter who was only five steps away and standing, undecided.

  The fighter looked back toward the RPG man, who hissed, “Keep up! Forget the other fight!”

  The loud whisper of a younger voice responded: “I should be back there, helping our brothers slay the infidels.”

  “Be quiet, Salid. Carry out your assignment!” Then the RPG carrier continued forward.

  The rifleman was concentrating his attention back the way he had come, looking past the prone Swanson, attracted by the sounds and flashes of distant gunfire. He took one more step forward to follow his leader, then decided to go back to the guns. He started running back down the ditch, out of breath, panting with anticipation.

  K YLE ROSE LIKE A specter as the young man passed, and threw an anaconda on him. Swanson’s right forearm wrapped around the front of the neck to crush the windpipe, while his left hand grabbed his right to increase the leverage. Immediately, all air was cut off to the boy’s brain and Swanson snatched him from his feet with the rear naked choke hold. Swanson knelt down, taking his opponent with him, then lay on his back and flattened out, clamping both legs around the victim for a full body lock, steadily squeezing harder the entire time. Salid was out cold within fifteen seconds without having uttered a sound.

  When the body went limp, Kyle rolled out, stood, slung the prisoner across his shoulder and returned to his secluded hide behind the garbage bags.

  In seconds, he had the kid blindfolded and gagged, with his arms tied behind him, but the legs left free. Swanson looped the sling of the AK-47 around the young fighter’s throat, twisted it once and let the weapon dangle down the back. If the prisoner tried to run, Kyle could just yank on the AK and choke him back into submission.

  Swanson roughly awakened the youngster, jerked him to his feet and gave him a push. Sticking to the darker patches, Kyle soon found the service road that looped around the edge of the city to a side gate of the base. He slowed, moving cautiously until he closed to within a kilometer of the mesh steel fence that was topped with concertina wire. Despite being able to hear the gunfire back at the foreign compound and knowing an ambush was waiting at the front gate, Swanson did not hurry, adhering firmly to his own prime rule: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. He shoved the prisoner to the ground, sat on the young man’s back and took time to study the target through the Cyclops. Careful surveillance was seldom time wasted.

  On its surface, the base had the primary purpose of supplying a guard force of several hundred men to protect the oil production, storage and shipment apparatus in the area. As part of that assignment, it supposedly maintained a contingent of antiaircraft missiles that could spread the protective umbrella out beyond the rigs. It was reasonable to assume that it was all part of the same package, but Swanson tried never to assume anything.

  Remembering the map in the Boykin Group basement, he knew the base was sliced into four equal parts. A perimeter road followed all the way around inside the fence line. A north-south road ran from the main gate to the far side of the camp, dead-ending at the fence. It was bisected in the middle by an east-west route which emptied onto the supply road where Swanson waited. The headquarters building was in the middle: a standard military layout, there was genius in its simplicity. Everyone could get anywhere smoothly.

  Soldiers and vehicles were surging toward the front of the compound, with troops running from the living quarters located in the uppermost left hand corner. Several Humvees tore out of the motor pool and equipment area in the lower left quadrant and gunners were already standing in the vehicles behind machine guns. Officers coming from smaller buildings in the upper right hand quarter were marrying up the troops and vehicles, p
utting together a rescue mission for the besieged foreigners. Swanson heard the orders being shouted and the motors revving.

  So if this was an AA base, where were the antiaircraft missile sites? It would have been logical to have them in protected hard stands with open fields of fire all around, probably near the corners to eliminate obstructions. Instead, he found the missiles nestled near a long, narrow building in the area closest to him. A group of three Humvees sat in a line, the lead one decked out with aerials, which denoted the command and operations vehicle. The next two Humvees had bulky pedestals on the rear deck, where gunners would sit between reloadable pods of heat-seeking Stinger missiles. The group presented a genuine threat against any marauding helicopters or low-flying planes. They remained idle tonight because they were not needed in the coming urban fight.

  Swanson thought for a moment, then spoke in Arabic to his prisoner. “Junior, here’s a free scout-sniper lesson for your future military career: More important than just seeing something is to know what you’re looking at. The only reason for having those missiles on wheels is to move them somewhere. Let’s go look inside that building.”

  29

  N O BULLETS WERE COMING his way, so Fatehi Awwad knew he had not been seen crouching beside the culvert. He sighted his RPG launcher on the main road coming out of the base and patiently waited for his enemies to play their part. The crossbar arm at the guard shack was being raised and four Humvees were ready to move out in column, their big engines rumbling and the huge tires crunching on the road. As the first one came out, Awwad sighted on it and pressed the trigger.

  An igniter exploded a ball of gas inside the RPG launcher and flung the pointed antipersonnel grenade from the front end of the tube while the enormous back-blast from the rear disappeared in the ditch behind him. The rocket covered the first eleven meters of flight in a tenth of a second, then automatically armed itself. Stabilizer fins popped out. A fuse kicked in the propulsion system, and the Russian-made grenade increased to 294 meters per second, with a clockwise spin. Designed to penetrate armor, it easily bored into the Humvee and exploded with full fury inside.

  The explosion tore the lead vehicle apart and killed four soldiers. The wrecked and burning Humvee plugged the gateway, stopping the convoy before it started. Soldiers opened fire, shooting blindly beyond the edge of the lights, but hitting nothing. The Egyptian terrorist threw down the empty launcher tube and ran.

  T HE ARMY BASE HAD not been designed to repel any real attack, so the surprise was total. Years of routine patrol duty had dulled a low sense of military readiness and the soldiers, with no combat discipline, were stressing out, fixated on whatever was in front of them and running toward the burning Humvee. The antiaircraft missiles were left unguarded.

  Swanson knew that if he did not stop the RPG attack, Saudi soldiers would be killed and the relief column would be delayed in reaching the besieged foreign compound to battle the rebels in the city. Still, it was a sound tactical decision, for this was not about who got hurt, but the sacrifice of a few to be measured against the greater good. The presence of a tactical nuclear missile easily trumped the lives of a few individuals. He would take that opportunity first and worry about the decision process some other time. To overthink the situation would only muddle what needed to be done. He went forward, dragging his prisoner along.

  T O MAKE OPERATIONS ON the military base simple, a pattern had matured over the years. Everything from supplies to people alike was funneled through the primary entrance and exit. The secondary gate had fallen into disuse and was secured by nothing more than a big padlock on a chain. Swanson found no fresh tire tracks to indicate recent use.

  He shoved Salid to the ground about six feet from the unused gate, beside some scrub brush next to the fence. Using a set of Homer Boykin’s bolt-cutters, Kyle chose a link about three inches above the ground and snipped it, then did the next link and kept going until he had opened a gap about eighteen inches square, held in place by the links at the top. He pushed Junior through the open flap in the wire, crawled through himself and folded the fence back into place. The opening would not be noticed by a casual observer. Any guard would know that the secondary gate was supposed to be chained and locked, and would see exactly that, since the chain and lock were right where they were supposed to be. The nearby fence would not even be inspected.

  Swanson led the captured man like a puppy on a leash and went to the side of the long, low building, stopping in the deep shadow of the wall. He wrapped some duct tape around his prisoner’s legs to immobilize him. “Stay, Junior,” he said in Arabic, pointing a finger at him. The young man nodded. He had no idea who this man was, but they were in the middle of an enemy military camp, so there was no escape anyway. Any noise would serve only to alert Saudi soldiers who would kill him.

  The front of the building had two large doors in sections that would roll up and out of the way at the touch of a button. A regular door stood between them. The big doors were down but the smaller was open and a long, thin bar of startlingly bright light spilled outside. Kyle hugged the wall as he moved in from the left. When he reached the portal, he leaned forward and listened for any sound that would indicate someone was moving inside. Swanson slid an eye around the edge. No movement. Safe.

  At the front gate, soldiers were reorganizing and pushing the wrecked Humvee out of the way to resume their mission into Khobz to save the embattled foreign workers. Kyle cut the tape from Junior’s legs, grabbed him and shoved him through the doorway. They stood exposed in the bright lights of the large building.

  Two boxy, flat-tracked vehicles squatted in the middle of the building, side by side, each pointed toward one of the rollup doors. Swanson recognized them as variants of the familiar old M-113 armored personnel carriers that the U.S. Army had introduced a half-century earlier, during the Vietnam era. The basic design had been steadily modified and updated to meet different needs and the versatile APC became a standard armored vehicle for many jobs in many armies.

  He climbed aboard the nearest one and peeled away a sand-colored tarpaulin that stretched the length of the vehicle. Below it, a pudgy missile was nested in the cargo bay above a web of pipes that made up the hydraulic launch system. Kyle grunted in satisfaction. From his days of hunting mobile SCUD missile launchers in the deserts, he was familiar with this system.

  When ready for action, the rear deck of the APC would be lowered to create extra space, then the missile would be raised into position and it could be fired by remote control from the second APC, the command vehicle. This pair matched up with the modern Humvees parked outside. The entire operation was not for air defense at all. It was a shoot-and-scoot missile launching system. They could drive it almost anywhere and target almost anything.

  The missile was blunt on its nose, which told Swanson what was in the cargo hold of the other APC. He climbed down from the first, tied Junior to a protruding metal strut, then jumped aboard the second one. A large weatherproof container was secured in the cargo hold and it was stamped with yellow and black circular radiation warnings: a tactical nuclear warhead.

  In his mind’s eye, he could envision the little convoy rushing to a mapped firing position, the removal of the warhead from its box, and how it could be married to the missile body and launched in a matter of minutes. Whether the target was an invading Iraqi army or an Israeli city or an American naval battle group, this was a dangerous puppy. Kyle estimated it was relatively low yield, since it was for battlefield use, but still more powerful by itself than the bombs that were dropped on Japan.

  Time was sliding away. Once the military relief column from the base reached the foreign compound, the fighting would end quickly and guards would resume their standard duties, including checking the base. The warehouse building would not stay empty forever. He called Homer on his sat phone and told the CIA agent what he needed.

  T HE ROUND ARMORED HATCH cover above the driver’s position was folded back and Kyle dropped easily into the compartment o
n the front left of the M-113 that contained the nuke. Again, he was on familiar ground because he had driven these boxes before. To break the monotony of long hours of down time in Afghanistan, he had occasionally joined some other guys in taking a few old APCs into the empty desert for some totally unauthorized off-road racing.

  He adjusted the seat on its post so that he could see through the viewport and also use the infrared periscope. Swanson was not planning to shoot anybody, but did not want to have his head sticking out of the hatch as an easy target. His right foot rested on the large accelerator pedal. He checked the hand brake and the hydraulic service brake pedal. The only major change he could see was that a sort of steering wheel on a yoke had replaced the twin tiller handles to make driving easier. It had an automatic transmission. Sweet.

  There was no key, just a switch to turn it on. Kyle clicked it and the big 350-horsepower diesel coughed and grumbled to life. The dials flickered and showed a full tank of diesel, which would give him a range of more than a hundred miles.

  Swanson hoisted himself back through the hatch and went over to his prisoner, stripped away the AK-47, and tossed the weapon into the other APC. The young terrorist’s eyes grew wide in fear. “Relax, Junior. You’re free to go,” Kyle said. He removed all of the tape and stuffed it in his pocket so as to leave no sign that the man might be there against his will. “Good luck.”

  The prisoner stood perfectly still for a moment, rubbing his wrists as his captor disappeared back inside the big armored vehicle. The hatch slammed and locked. When the engine roared, Junior broke from his trance and ran to retrieve his rifle. He had been left behind as bait.