Deployed (28 page)

“Indigo Leader, this is Indigo Three.”

Three had been left behind at the camp. “Go, Three.”

“We have a situation here. Are you coming back?”

“On my way now.” Heath put his foot a little harder on the accelerator, wondering what had happened now, doubting that things could get any worse than they already were.

When he saw Rageh Daud holding a rifle to Private Thomas Ruiz’s head just outside the medical tent while a dozen other Marines held weapons on him, Heath thought maybe he should reevaluate his earlier assessment.

“Are you the commanding officer?” Daud spoke calmly, and Heath figured that was a good sign.

“I am. Lieutenant Heath Bridger.” Heath let his rifle hang at his side, not bothering to point the weapon at the man. If Daud shot Ruiz or moved his rifle in anyone else’s direction, he was a dead man.

“I have a proposition for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“We have a common foe, Lieutenant Bridger. Korfa Haroun. I trust that you know this name.”

“I do.”

“A man acting on Haroun’s behalf has taken a boy I brought here, a boy I do not wish to see come to any harm.”

Heath didn’t say anything.

“This man, Qaim, also took two of your medical personnel as hostages.”

“How do you know this?”

Daud pointed to the wounded man sitting close by. “Because this man is al-Shabaab. He was with the team that came to assassinate me. He told me. And nurses inside the medical facility will confirm that.”

Heath pointed at the destruction that had been done to the camp. “You think all of this was because of you?”

“No. I think Haroun wanted to strike at you as well. Perhaps to get the cargo you brought.” Daud shrugged. “However you choose to look at it, we have both lost something to Haroun. He has more men than you do. He has more men than I do. But together, with the information the man can give us—” he nodded toward the wounded man—“I think perhaps we might have a chance of getting those people back.”

Heath paused for a moment. “I can call for help.”

“Do that and Haroun will be gone before anyone can get here. You are days away from Mogadishu, and even the planes you use will be hours away, if they can muster a rescue effort so quickly.” Daud glanced at the sun. “It is eleven o’clock now.”

Taking a glance at his watch, Heath discovered Daud was only eight minutes off. Impressive.

“Your military command will take time to form a strategy and follow through on an operation to rescue those doctors. And before they do that, they will want someone to investigate Haroun’s hiding place.”

Heath nodded.

“You see how this agreement benefits both of us.”

“Yeah. The problem is, how do I know I can trust you?”

“The same way I know I can trust you. Because in this instance, we must trust each other.”

Before Heath could say anything, Daud removed the rifle from Thomas Ruiz’s head and tossed it away. Immediately two Marines rushed in to take him into custody.

“Stand down, Marines.” Heath surprised himself at how quickly he’d made up his mind about the situation. But everything Daud had said, including the need to recon Haroun’s fortress, was true. “How many men do you have?”

“Twenty-six.”

Heath estimated he had perhaps that many Marines who could take the field. “How many men does Haroun have?”

“According to this man—” Daud nodded toward the wounded al-Shabaab terrorist—“Haroun had a hundred and twenty.”

Heath smiled grimly, thinking of the carnage he and Gunney Towers had left scattered all over the outskirts of the camp. “Well, it’s safe to say that Haroun doesn’t have that many anymore.” He took a breath. “Call your men in. Let’s see what we can put together.”

Daud nodded and looked around, then back at Heath. “Perhaps I could borrow a vehicle.”

34

FOR THE FIRST FEW HOURS
back at the camp, Bekah rotated in and out of patrol. The sight of the destruction in the camp took her breath away. Even though she’d been somewhat prepared by her radio conversations with fellow Marines, she hadn’t realized the actual impact. When she wasn’t patrolling, she split her time between helping out with the wounded and grave duty. There was no time to bury anyone. That would have to be attended to later, but it was important to know where the bodies were and who had died.

Gathering the Marine dog tags of the six dead was the hardest. She couldn’t help feeling that Charlie Company’s Indigo Platoon had to have some of the hardest luck in the Corps.

She also hoped that Matthew Cline was still alive.

While she, along with most of Indigo, stayed occupied, Heath and Gunney Towers remained locked up with Rageh Daud and the al-Shabaab terrorist Daud had captured during the attack.

Then, finally, Heath called them in to the briefing.

Seated in the briefing room, which was one of the surviving tents, Bekah studied the handmade map on the board as Heath covered the fortification where Haroun had holed up.

“From the intel we’ve gathered, Haroun has between a hundred and a hundred twenty armed men inside the fort.” Heath stood in front of the mixed group of Marines and Rageh Daud’s bandits.

The tension in the room was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Everyone—Marine and bandit—kept their hands close to their weapons, and Bekah couldn’t believe Heath had kept bloodshed from breaking out already.

The bandits had lost friends and loved ones to the al-Shabaab, though. Some of them had lost entire families. So their focus on Haroun as the larger enemy was easy to see. The Marines were bound by a desire to strike back for lost comrades and to carry out their mission to eliminate the al-Shabaab from Somalia.

“There’s no getting around the fact that you’re going to be outnumbered two to one once we’re inside that fort.” Heath didn’t hold anything back, and Bekah believed all the listeners respected him for that. “But that’s where training and desire will make a difference.”

Several of the bandits who knew English translated Heath’s words for their cohorts.

“Our main objective is to get a good assessment of the fortification. If we can’t get our people out, then we’re going to be able to hand solid intel over to the Marines arriving in the morning. Whatever we don’t finish tonight when we attack
will
be finished in the morning.”

One of Daud’s men, a giant with savage scars, grinned coldly. “Perhaps they will only be here in the morning to applaud our success.”

Heath grinned back at the man. “If we manage to pull that off, then we’ll deserve the applause.”

Looking at the bandits, Bekah couldn’t help thinking about the innocent UN and Somali soldiers the men had killed while stealing medicines and cargo from convoys, trying to help the displaced people. In some respects, they weren’t much different from the al-Shabaab.

However, she forced herself to remember that the bandits were displaced as well. In fact, all of the warriors gathered in this room were displaced—the Marines had been called from their homes and thrown into a foreign battlefield to protect the innocent and the weak. Bekah had never really thought about things in that light before. It was a revelation of sorts.

“We’re going in at dark.” Heath spoke flatly, with a calm orator’s voice, and it required hardly any effort for Bekah to imagine him up in front of a jury in a courtroom. “We only get one shot at this, and here is how we’re going to do it.” He turned back to the map. “A skeleton group of Daud’s men under the guidance of one of my corporals will pull the Humvees up to the front of the fort as night falls. They will stay out of mortar range and put on a show of attacking the fort. While the al-Shabaab are engaged on the front, the rest of us will attempt to breach the rear of the structure. With luck, we should be able to get inside before we’re discovered. Once we’re there, we put down every al-Shabaab man we find while we search for the prisoners.”

Bekah swallowed and her ears popped.

Heath faced his troops. “Are there any questions?”

There were none.

“Then let’s move out.”

Two hours later, Bekah lay along a ridgeline on the east side of the fort. As she gazed through the darkness on the other side of the structure, she saw the Humvees arrive. The vehicles’ lights glowed brightly in the black night.

Lights inside the fort immediately shifted as guards raced toward the front of the structure.

“Well, those Humvees have got their attention. Definitely not in stealth mode.” Pike lay to Bekah’s right. His face, like hers, was striped in cosmetic black to reduce the glare and make them part of the shadows. They wore MARPAT digital camouflage, which rendered them harder to see.

Almost immediately, the al-Shabaab launched an attack, and the Humvees returned fire. Most of the mortars and rockets landed well short of either side, but the machine guns definitely had the range.

“All right.” Heath’s voice was calm over the MBITR. “That’s not going to hold their attention forever, and if Haroun decides to send out a tactical team to recon those vehicles, they’re going to discover this is a feint. Let’s move in.”

Bekah rose to her feet and went forward, trotting to keep pace with the wave of Marines she was assigned to. She thought about Travis and Matthew Cline, torn between staying safe for one and rescuing the other. She focused on the job at hand. That was what she’d sworn to do the day she took the oath.

Marine first.

At the wall, still undiscovered, Bekah shook out one of the padded grappling hooks they’d set up for the assault. The first teams whirled their hooks overhead and let fly. The hooks sailed easily over the wall, and Bekah pulled the slack out of her line.

The crack and bang of the al-Shabaab weapons rolled through the hillside around them.

Bracing her boots against the wall, Bekah swarmed up the line while the next Marine behind her grabbed the rope and steadied it. She halted at the top and slid her rifle into her arms while she hung there. After making certain no one was in the passageway between the inner and outer walls, she threw a leg over the wall and dropped to the hard ground between the ramparts. She had the rifle up at once and held her position while her team and the other teams did the same.

When the second wave of Marines clambered over and dropped, Bekah led her group toward the east gate. She flipped down her night-vision goggles and peered into the courtyard.

Several al-Shabaab were in evidence in the open area, but most of them were heading toward the west wall where the action was. Beside her, Pike was calmly chewing gum and even looked like he was bored. “Shooting gallery. Should be fun.”

“Make sure you keep it tight.” Bekah threw a glance at Tyler and Trudy as well.

All of them nodded.

Heath came up between them. “All right. We’re all here. Let’s roll.” He led the way, with Gunney Towers at his heels.

Bekah followed after Heath with her team dogging her. They didn’t know what the two outbuildings were for. Several jeeps and pickups were parked in the courtyard. Two of the fire teams, backed by some of Daud’s bandits, were assigned to investigate those buildings. Everyone else concentrated on the main building.

Guards along the front of the building had maintained their posts. Heath crept up alongside the building and slipped the knife from his combat harness while sliding his rifle over one shoulder. Bekah turned off the horror screaming inside her mind as she saw Heath move silently forward behind one of the guards.

She had been trained in hand-to-hand combat, had been taught to kill an opponent with a knife, but she’d never done it. The idea appalled her because it seemed so much more personal than shooting someone. The thought was idiocy, of course. Dead was dead, but she hoped she never had to do something like that.

Heath was on the terrorist before he knew it. Placing the knife at his throat, Heath bent the man’s head forward. In the movies, the hero always yanked an opponent’s head backward to expose the throat, but that only flexed the neck muscles and made the cut harder to perform. Pushing the head forward relaxed those muscles. Heath drew the knife across in one smooth motion.

The man grabbed for his throat and dropped the AK-47 that he’d been holding. The noise alerted the al-Shabaab terrorist standing only a few feet away, in spite of the noise along the west wall. Startled, the terrorist turned and brought his rifle up.

Gunney Towers shot the man in the face twice, and the body dropped to the stones.

The half-dozen guards standing in front of the building’s entrance spun quickly and began firing. Heath waved the Marines back behind the corner, held on to the dead man, and withdrew a grenade. He flipped the explosive into the center of the group, swung back around the corner himself, and pushed the dead man from him. He had his rifle in his hands before the grenade went off.

Partially deafened from the close-proximity blast, Bekah surged forward after Heath and Gunney Towers. The two men advanced at a deliberate pace, rifles held to shoulders and knees bent to make them smaller targets. Bekah flanked Heath on the left, and Pike flanked Gunney Towers on the right.

Most of the al-Shabaab terrorists had been killed by the shrapnel from the grenade, but a couple lived and opened fire. Others came from the courtyard, drawn by the explosion.

Bekah found targets in all directions and fired in rapid three-round bursts. Men went down and she stepped in their blood, feeling it slick beneath her boots. A few rounds thudded into her body armor and another round ricocheted from the top of her helmet or caught her NVGs—she wasn’t sure.

The Marines stayed in a group and ducked in through the entrance.

The interior of the fort hadn’t been improved much in the last five hundred years. Evidently when whatever occupying force had left, no one had taken much interest in the place. The big room was lit by large electric lights powered by generators somewhere on the premises.

More al-Shabaab stood guard within, scattered around the room along the second floor. The first floor had no windows, making it easier to defend in case invaders breached the outer walls. But the battle to take the second floor would be hard. The second floor had a lot of vantage points that allowed for snipers. Back in the sixteenth century, those snipers had probably been archers, but the sniper posts were a lot more dangerous with men armed with rifles.

Bullets cracked against the stone walls and the paved floor. Beside Bekah, Trudy went down. Bekah spun at once to check her teammate and saw that she’d been hit in the calf. Bekah glanced up at Tyler. “Get her out of here. Stop the bleeding.”

Tyler nodded and shouldered his weapon. He grabbed Trudy under the arms and dragged her out of the building as bullets cracked the stone around them.

Pike pulled a grenade from his combat harness and yanked the pin. “Fire in the hole!” He threw the grenade onto the stairway landing, where a group of al-Shabaab had collected.

Ducking her head, Bekah ran along the wall, following Heath to the bottom of the stairs and hunkering down. The grenade went off, and bodies slid down the stairs. By that time, Heath was already in motion, sprinting over the fallen bodies and spraying bullets into those men who had survived the initial blast.

“Bekah, take your group and track the generators. Find them and take them out.”

Bekah knew that Heath must not have seen Trudy go down, or that she had assigned Tyler to drag her to safety. Pike instantly joined her, his dark gaze following the electrical lines tacked to the walls. All of the wiring led to a doorway under the curved stairwell.

“On it.” Bekah turned and made for the door.

Heath was at the top of the stairs, firing again and again while Gunney Towers guarded his back. “Indigo Four, you’re with Eight.”

“On it.” The three surviving members of Fire Team Indigo Four peeled off from the group and sprinted after Bekah and Pike.