Devil's Dance (Trackdown Book 1)

by Michael A. Black

  The black Hummer ahead of them slowed and Cummins’s voice came through his earpiece again. “This is it. They’re hitting it now.” Wolf relayed the message to his guys and they switched their radios to the common frequency.

  The two black Hummers ahead of them slowed down suddenly and one turned and bashed into a front gate to a house. The other pulled to a quick stop behind it. The National Police team piled out and ran through the opening guns at the ready, followed by Eagan, Cummins, and Nasim.

  Martinez slammed the Humvee to a stop, angling the nose toward the ramshackle gate in front of the house to afford them maximum cover. They filed out taking up cover spots along the vehicles. Wolf reminded Jenson to stay in place in the Hummer, ready with the SAW in the turret. Wolf waved them forward and heard the crack as the ram slammed home. He glanced through the broken gate. Inside a small courtyard he could see the Iraqis bunched together like a bunch of amateurs, slamming the ram against the door. It shuddered but held.

  Cummins’s voice crackled over the radio. “Get your squad in here.”

  Wolf motioned his men forward. They could have just as easily slipped over the wall, which was riddled with holes and missing chucks. But they were wary of the remnants of the broken shards from glass bottles that could have been cemented along the top. One of the Iraqis slammed the ram again and the door finally flew open. He dropped the ram instead of stepping back and they looked like a bunch of squirming pigs trying to get into a poke.

  Several rats scurried in front of them as they ran across the courtyard. Heavy rug-like drapes across the windows ... Morgan was first to the door, which hung from a single hinge now. He shoved it hard and it clattered to the floor just inside the jamb. The inside looked dark and foreboding. Wolf slipped through the opening, flipping down his night-vision goggles. The main room was large with a couple of tables and the prayer rugs hanging on the wall. Wolf pointed to cover positions at each hallway juncture and listened for indications as to which way Cummins and Eagan had gone. He heard a commotion to the left and saw Cummins standing in the hallway holding a pistol, his arms flaying awkwardly at his sides in a “what now?” gesture. Wolf motioned for his team to check the adjacent hallway.

  Moving, he thought. Got to keep moving.

  He heard one of his team say, “Clear,” followed by another voice yelling he had three foreign nationals at gunpoint in the south room. With methodical precision, they checked the rest of the rooms, finding no one. Wolf gave the all clear and told Thompson to assist Morgan in searching and guarding the three Iraqis they’d found. Satisfied that none of them was armed, they bound the three men’s hands behind their backs with plastic cuffs. A finely crafted leather briefcase sat on a table near the far corner.

  Wolf keyed his mic and updated Cummins. “Looks like we’ve found your briefcase.”

  “Roger that,” the officer said. “We’re coming. Don’t touch it.”

  Eagan sauntered in first and shone his flashlight around, and Wolf jerked his head away, lest the brightness of the beam make it seem like a bomb going off inside his night-vision goggles. He reached up and shut them off. It was light enough now that Wolf didn’t need them anymore. The wad of tobacco distended the area below Eagan’s lower lip. He spat on one of the hanging prayer rugs. Wolf immediately looked to see Nasim’s reaction, but if the Arab was offended, he didn’t show it. Neither did the contingent of National Police who trundled after them.

  “Where are the prisoners, sergeant?” Cummins asked.

  Wolf pointed down the hallway.

  “We’ll take it from here,” Cummins said. “You and your men deploy outside.”

  “Sir, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Wolf said. “I have―”

  “You heard the man, sonny,” Eagan said. “We got this one.”

  Wolf looked at him. The big man was grinning.

  “I don’t take orders from civilians,” Wolf said.

  The grin got bigger. “Then maybe you’d better start taking them from your betters.”

  Wolf said nothing. The two men locked eyes.

  “Wolf,” Cummins said. “That’s enough. You and your men get your asses out of here. Secure the perimeter.” He pointed to his radio. “Switch back to main mission frequency and I’ll call you when we’re ready to disembark.”

  Eagan pointed to Nasim. “This here is an internal security matter, boy. Like the lieutenant told you, we’ll handle it.”

  Wolf felt like knocking the big man into next week but didn’t.

  “I don’t like to repeat myself, Sergeant,” Cummins said. “Now get your men assembled outside.”

  “You got to learn how to work with the locals, boy,” Eagan said, slapping Nasim on the shoulder as they headed down the hallway.

  Fine, Wolf thought. Let these assholes play it any way they wanted. Not that it matters that we saved their fucking asses.

  He clicked back to the main mission frequency and asked for a sit rep from those on the street.

  “All clear so far, sarge,” Jensen said.

  Wolf motioned for Martinez to go get the others. It wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of reconnoitering anyway, just in case some locals were out about thinking about maybe setting an ambush for the return trip.

  Their scanning and set up took a quick fifteen. Wolf felt the sweat trickling down his sides and back. He began to notice furtive movements in the adjacent buildings. Dark eyes peering down at them from above. He heard the tolling of a bell and knew it was time for morning prayers. That should give them a bit of a respite, but all around him the enemy had the high ground. The longer they stayed in position, the longer he and his squad were sitting ducks. Damn, he wanted to get his guys out of there. How long was Cummins going to devote to this damn farce? They needed to take the prisoners out of there before the shit really hit the fan. He took a quick look around and switched his radio back to secondary frequency.

  Before Wolf could speak, he heard Cummins’s voice. “Both of them. The Lion and the Lioness Attacking the Nubians. Tell him the deal was for both of them.” It sounded like he was in the middle of a conversation, not talking directly into the microphone.

  He must not know he has an open mic, Wolf thought.

  More voices, this time in Arabic.

  “He say he only have one,” another voice said.

  “Tell him we want both of them now,” Cummins said. “Immediately. Or else.”

  In addition to sounding distant, the lieutenant’s voice was strained as well, like a man tiptoeing on the edge of desperation.

  “Take it easy.” Eagan’s slow, Southern drawl. “All we got to do is put a little fear of God into them.”

  “We’re wasting too much time.” Cummins again.

  “Aw, shee-it,” Eagan’s voice said. “Lemme speed things up then.”

  In the background Wolf could hear a bunch of muttering. “Allah akbur, Allah akbur ...” The chant was being repeated over and over. Arabic for “God is great.”

  Suddenly the chanting was overshadowed by a guttural yell. Something foreign and indistinct, followed by a more frantic chants, then a keening moan.

  “Christ, you’re making too much noise,” Cummins said.

  “Who’s gonna care?” Eagan said.

  More groaning.

  Wolf was confused. What the hell is going on in there?

  He tapped Thompson on the shoulder. “I’m going back inside. Make sure everybody maintains surveillance of their quadrants and have Jenson keep the SAW trained on those windows.” He pointed across the street. Thompson nodded, a tense expression on his face.

  Wolf kept the secondary channel on, listening to the intermittent cries and moans. Someone was putting some systematic hurt on somebody. He moved cautiously through the door, not because he feared for his safety, but wanting to catch this little play in progress. But he rotated the selection lever to rock and roll. Full auto. Just in case. But still, Cummins was a lieutenant in the US Army. He slipped it back one to SEMI.

 
; The corrugated soles of Wolf’s boots made little sound as he went down the hallway to the last room on the left, the one where they’d left the three prisoners. If Eagan and company were abusing them, Wolf didn’t want it to be on his watch. Not so much because he held much sympathy for the Iraqis, but the last thing he wanted was to be embroiled in some Iraqi civilian brutality bullshit. One of the Iraqi policemen stood in the hallway smoking a cigarette as he was peering through the open door. He glanced up with a surprised look as he saw Wolf advancing and turned and said something in Arabic to those in the room. As Wolf was about three feet away the Iraqi lifted his rifle and pointed it at him, shaking his head.

  What did this asshole think he was doing? Wolf stopped and raised his own weapon.

  Through the crack in the door Wolf could see movement in front of one of the kneeling men. The guy’s eyes were closed, and Wolf couldn’t tell if it was tears or sweat or a combination of both rolling down his face. Something flashed and he heard Eagan’s partner, Nasim shouting in Arabic.

  It was more like a growl.

  “Allah akbur, Allah akbur,” the kneeling Iraqi was chanting.

  “We ain’t asking him again.” English. Eagan’s Texas drawl.

  Then Cummins’s voice, sounding nervous with, “No, wait.”

  The Iraqi in the hallway turned his head toward the room and spoke again in Arabic, his rifle still leveled at Wolf’s chest.

  It was quiet for a few seconds, then Nasim’s voice said, “We got problem in hallway.”

  “Aw, hell,” Eagan said.

  The voices were in stereo, one in his ear mic and the other coming through the open door. The Iraqi in the hallway canted his head toward the room once more and Wolf stepped forward, swiveling his own body out of the line of fire, and reached out with his left hand, grabbing the Arab’s rifle barrel and shoving it to the side. The Iraqi stumbled slightly, and Wolf used the momentum to push him all the way into the room as he pulled the M-16 out of the Arab’s hands.

  Inside the room Nasim’s fingers were twisted into the dark hair of one of the kneeling prisoners, pulling back as the silver gleam of the big knife in Eagan’s hand knife drew across the man’s exposed throat. A red line appeared and then popped open emitting a crimson waterfall down the man’s dirty tan shirt.

  “What the fuck’s going on here?” Wolf said, leveling his rifle at them.

  The three captors’ faces all rotated toward him. Like the three monkeys, except theirs reflected a combination of shock, surprise, and anger.

  Cummins moved forward. “Get the fuck out of here. That’s an order. This is prisoner interrogation.”

  The mic in Wolf’s ear screeched with a sudden and piercing noise. Feedback from Cummins’s radio coming too close to his with the open key as he moved forward. “Get out of here now!”

  The jarring sounds in his ear threw Wolf off for a second. That was all Eagan needed. The big man dropped the knife and reached out, grabbing the barrels of the two rifles Wolf held, directing them toward the floor. Wolf pulled back but Cummins reached out with both hands and grabbed Wolf’s helmet, twisting downward. His head followed, then something exploded against the back of his skull. Wolf felt his grip on the rifle weaken and slip, and a plethora of fists and feet began to smash into his back and sides, forcing most of the air from his lungs. He heard the crunching sound again as he fell forward, and when the dirty tiles of the floor rushed up to smack against his face, the world went black.

  “Sarge, sarge,” a far-off voice said. It held an urgency that made Wolf struggle to clear his head. It still felt fuzzy. Automatic weapon fire echoed nearby. Distinctive. Piercing. AK-47s. M-4s in reply, then the chunking sound of the M-60.

  That thing’ll be good for tearing up some scenery, Wolf thought. But why were they firing? And where the hell were they?

  He blinked and shook his head. He still felt groggy.

  “What’s going on?” he managed to ask.

  Thompson’s face seemed pulled taut by invisible strings. “We gotta get the fuck outta here, sarge. We’re in a shit-storm of a fire fight.”

  Wolf shook his head again, trying to clear it. Thompson was helping him up when the wave of nausea brought part of the early morning MRE churning up from his stomach. He bent over to puke.

  “Where’s Cummins?” Wolf managed to say.

  “Gone,” Thompson said. “We called for support, but it’s real bad out front. We’re taking fire from all sides. Come on, sarge.”

  Wolf felt Thompson’s strong fingers digging into his arm, lifting him to his feet.

  “The prisoners?” Wolf asked. “Where are they?”

  “Cummins and that big fucker said you were guarding them when they took off with those Iraqi police. I came back and found all this.” He gestured toward the right. Wolf turned his head, feeling a shooting pain up and down his neck as he moved. Three bodies lay on the floor, their hands still secured behind their backs with the plastic cuffs. It filtered back to him now. One lay on his back, his head surrounded by a halo of blood, a K-Bar next to him. The second one was slumped over on his side, his face flat against the floor, his glazed eyes staring upward, a small, neat circular hole decorating his left temple. A third man was in a kneeling position, the front of his legs dark with blood that formed a half-circle around his knees. The expelled shell casings lay off to the side.

  “Shit,” said Wolf.

  “Un huh. We came under fire right after Lieutenant Cummins and the other ones booked up.” Thompson frowned. “He told me they were coming back and we were to guard the scene. When I didn’t hear from you on the radio, I came in to check, and—”

  The sounds of more rounds smacking into the buildings and Humvee sounded from outside.

  “Sarge, I called for support, but we got to get out of here now. Otherwise we’ll get cut to ribbons.”

  Don’t start a fight you can’t finish, Wolf thought. Sage advice from Mac. “Let’s go.”

  Wolf managed to move his feet as the two of them half-staggered forward.

  Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door ... The refrain played in Wolf’s mind as he moved, Thompson guiding him through the aperture, their shoulders banging against the door jamb.

  “My weapon,” Wolf said, suddenly cognizant that it wasn’t slung on his shoulder. He felt for his pistol. It was in its holster, but the strap had been undone.

  “My weapon,” he said again.

  “I got your rifle,” Thompson said. His voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel. “We gotta go now, sarge. Jenson’s laying down suppression fire.”

  “Grab those shell casings.” Wolf pointed to the brass on the floor.

  “We ain’t got time, sarge,” Thompson said as he forced him out the door. “Come on.”

  “Grab them, dammit. They’re evidence of a war crime.”

  Thompson swore and leaned Wolf against the wall, then went back into the room and retrieved the two casings. He held his hand out toward Wolf. “Okay?”

  Wolf nodded. He watched as Thompson pocketed the casings.

  Another burst from the SAW ripped through the air, and somehow Wolf felt his legs propelling him mechanically down the hallway, toward the dangling front door, zigzagging across the courtyard, and then to the open door of their Humvee. A burst of rounds dotted the ground a few feet away and Thompson forced him down, his M-4 sending a stream of hot rounds out the ejection port that bounced off Wolf’s arm.

  “Motherfuckers!” Thompson yelled. He aimed his rifle in an upward trajectory at the taller building across the street.

  “Give me my rifle,” Wolf said, but his ears had lapsed into a sudden deafness and he couldn’t hear how his words sounded. After a few seconds his hearing partially returned, accompanied by a constant ringing that made everything sound like it was being filtered through a pair of tin cans connected by a string. Rounds peppered the dirt around them. Or was it brass from the M-60?

  Keep moving, keep moving, he thought. It sounded like a chant. Sor
t of like the one he remembered hearing before everything went black.

  Allah akbur, Allah akbur.

  “We’re almost there, sarge,” Thompson said.

  Suddenly the front end of the Hummer lifted up as a puff of yellow and red ripped up the hood and a concussive wave rolled over them just before the inky blackness returned once more.

  Chapter Two

  Four Years Later

  U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

  Wolf woke up before the morning buzzer sounded, knowing he had a good twenty minutes before the mandatory 0600 hours wake-up. He had no watch, nor did he need one. Just his internal clock. In the past forty-two months he’d become very conscious of time.

  Wolf started this morning the same way he’d started each of the previous one thousand five-hundred-twelve days, counting his stockade time, since he’d been incarcerated: with push-ups. After knocking off a fifty, he stood over and jumped upward, grabbing the edge of the I-beam He let himself settle into a dead-hang then started his pull-ups.

  As with all the other mornings, he heard the voices inside his head: the C.I.D. interrogator: Sergeant Wolf, is it the best of your recollection that you still don’t recall what transpired the morning in question? The mellow tones of his JAG defense attorney talking, just prior to the commencement of his court martial. Consider the offered deal, sergeant. It’s pretty lenient and we’ve got no real defense. Not with you claiming you can’t remember anything in your own defense.

  In your own defense ...

  What could you say when the truth was that you couldn’t remember jack shit, and you were told that the ballistic information on the recovered rounds and shell casings confirmed that they’d come from your military-issued sidearm? But there was nothing he could offer. Why was it so hard for them to accept that he actually couldn’t fucking remember?

  CRS, as my grandfather used to say, he thought. Can’t remember shit.