Hidden Threat (51 page)

“
I’ve got something on the east side, looks like it’s aiming at the switchback we’ll have to go down,” Van Dreeves whispered. He was looking through his thermal scope.

“
Hang on,” Hobart said. After a pause. “Yeah. I’ve got him. The pussy is all wrapped up in a blanket, but he’s got a DSHK machinegun. Looks functional.”

“
Any comms on him?” Matt asked.

“
Looks like a small personal mobile radio.”

“
Okay, when I say we’re moving, shoot him between the eyes, then focus on the far side guy. We’ll take his PMR as we pass by. All set?”

“
Roger,” Hobart said.

“
Roger,” Van Dreeves agreed.

“
Moving,” Matt reported. He stepped through the snow onto the trail, his boots gaining purchase in the thick packed snowfall. He heard the audible click of Hobart’s weapon firing and continued moving, not waiting for the report. Hobart was good and odds were he killed the guy on the first shot.

“
He’s dead,” Hobart reported. “No further movement.”

Matt and Van Dreeves moved quickly nearly a quarter mile, switching back through the mountain defile, lowering and slipping into the valley until they found the ledge upon which the doomed machinegun position was perched.

“
Good spot,” Van Dreeves said.

“
For us,” Matt said. “Search him quickly.” Matt had his flashlight out and they scanned the machinegun, then the body, quickly determining that the personal mobile radio was the only thing of value. “Leave the machine-gun alone. We may need it getting out of here.”

“
We’re moving,” Matt reported to Hobart, who came back quickly.

“
Our friend near number two is up and looking. He’s onto something,” Hobart said.

“
Kill him,” Matt replied.

“
Roger.”

A few seconds passed when Hobart said, “He’s dead.”

“
Okay, the two guys near number three?”

“
Still there. Not moving other than kicking goat shit.”

“
We’re going to hold up at number one and then make our move on number three.”

“
Roger. I have clear shots on both guards on number three,” Hobart said.

“
Once I give the word, take those shots and then come down to number one, we’ll consolidate there.”

“
Roger.”

Matt and Van Dreeves dove into a small ditch and waded through thigh-deep snow toward a remote house separated by a couple hundred meters from the rest of the village. They exited the ditch, stumbling on the rocks and snow as they crossed to the high walled compound.

“
You getting any activity on one?” Matt asked Hobart.

“
Nothing. No sign of life.”

“
Okay, we’re going in and if we find anyone, we’ll bind and gag. Then we’ll gather here and move to three as a team.”

Something at the back of Matt’s mind was telling him that this was too easy, but he pressed on. He had set a few baited ambushes himself where he had lured his prey into an untenable situation, but now he was at least semi-confident that the massive raid with the 101
^st
Airborne had put the inner security ring for Mullah Rahman on the move. How good they were was anyone’s guess, but he suspected they were not bad.

He led Van Dreeves through the gate of the walled compound and turned right, calling, “Clear right,” as Van Dreeves called, “Clear left.” Matt sighted down his weapon using his night-vision monocle and saw a couple of goats wandering aimlessly. He looked at the window of the house for movement and saw none. He covered the twenty meters to the house with Van Dreeves to his left rear. They stacked along the wall opposite the doorknob. With Van Dreeves looking to the rear, Matt ducked, tugged slightly on the knob. Too stiff. Maybe rigged. He backed off, moving his hand across his throat to indicate to Van Dreeves that he didn’t like the front entrance.

They moved as a team to the north side of the home and found a low window, maybe five feet high. It was big enough for a man to climb through. Matt stuck his head around the corner and turned on his infrared flashlight, which illuminated the room in invisible light that only his night-vision technology could see. It was an empty room with a door that opened toward the front of the house.

“
I’m in first, then you follow,” Matt whispered.

“
Roger. Hobart just made it to the front gate.”

“
Hobart, cover the front door in case anyone comes out. We’re entering from the north window.”

“
Roger,” Hobart replied, his breathing heavy from the run through the snow.

The wind picked up and howled across the barren terrain, reminding them of their vulnerability to the elements.

Matt climbed in and quickly went to one knee, his goggles scanning left and right, looking for the trap. Van Dreeves was surprisingly quick, landing like a cat to his left.

“
Let’s move,” Matt said.

They stacked against the open doorway then Matt spun inward toward the back of the house while Van Dreeves turned toward the front door.

“
IED,” Van Dreeves said quietly. “Don’t move.”

Matt froze. He had read about the “House-borne Improvised Explosive Devices.” Essentially the house could be remotely detonated to implode.

“
What is it?” Matt asked.

“
Wait, looks like it’s triggered by the front door,” Van Dreeves said.

“
Any kind of remote device?”

“
Still looking.”

Van Dreeves was on one knee bravely using his flashlight around the device. Matt stole a look and saw a cooking pot with wires sticking out of it, one of which led to the front door. He saw the telltale playing card clamped between to drawing pins pressed into the inward edges of a wooden clothes pin. If the door were to open, the wire would undoubtedly remove the playing card from the clothespin and the two metal contacts would close a circuit powered by the battery next to the cooking pot, which Matt was sure was filled with ammonia nitrate, the most lethal nonmilitary explosive in country.

“
Can you cut the wire?” Matt asked.

“
Rather not mess with it, you know. Not sure about anti-handling. Right now we’re okay. Let’s see what they’re protecting and get the hell out of here.”

“
Agree,” Matt said. “Let’s move to the back. Hobart, you monitor all? Do not go near the front door?”

“
Roger all.”

By Matt’s estimation there were two more rooms to inspect. They entered the first and it was a sparsely furnished room with a sleeping roll, prayer mat, and table.

“
No joy.”

They moved to the second room and Matt switched on his flashlight, bringing his Sig Sauer up quickly against a figure chained to the wall, his head hanging limply. Then he caught Van Dreeves’s flashlight out of the corner of his eye on a body on the floor covered in a blue sheet of some type.

“
Help,” came a low moan from the man on the wall.

Matt moved his flashlight to the man’s face, badly beaten and bleeding.

“
Help me.”

Van Dreeves was on one knee, his hand on the neck of the woman on the floor.

“
She’s dead. Probably earlier in the day, at least.”

Matt recognized now it was a burqa covering the woman.

They quickly removed the man from the wall and Matt found a tin cup on the floor, opened his Camelbak, filled it and let the man drink.

“
Hobart. One dead woman and one severely beaten man inside. We’ll need to cuff him and take him with us when it’s time.”

“
Roger.”

Once the man was on the floor Matt gave him a few minutes, precious time he didn’t have, but if the man was a local he might be able to provide precise intelligence. So he thought it was worth the tradeoff in time.

“
Name?” Matt asked in Pashtu.

The man lifted his head, but turned away from the light, holding up a scarred hand.

“
Please, no light. Eyes.”

Matt shut the light and flipped on his infrared light, switching to his goggle.

“
Name?”

“
Mansur. I am a messenger.”

“
For who?”

“
For the man you are looking for.”

“
Who am I looking for?”

“
Rahman. Mullah Rahman.”

“
Why am I looking for him?” Matt pressed feeling the need to move.

“
Must stop him,” Mansur said. “Trying to escape.”

“
Where to?”

“
Dubai. Maybe Yemen.”

It all made sense now. Rahman was communicating with operatives in Dubai and Yemen and needed one last payday.

“
He’s got the plan. This plan,” Mansur said.

“
Where is he now?”

“
Fighting. Not sure.”

“
Where is his house?”

“
He has many. But here, two houses up the road.”

Number three. They were on target.

“
Why do we need to stop him?”

Mansur’s head lolled back and forth, as if he were on acid swaying to a rhythmic Beatles song.

“
Killed so many. So many to come.”

“
Matt, we need to bolt. I’ve got movement up on the ridge,” Hobart reported.

“
Okay, we’ll come back for Mansur after we hit Rahman’s house.”

“
I think we might have a fight on our hands,” Hobart said.

The night opened into a brilliant display of fireworks as soon as Matt and Van Dreeves stepped to the window.

Hobart angled his sniper rifle out of the opening as a deluge of machine-gun fire rained down upon them.

CHAPTER 71

Spartanburg, South Carolina

Sunday Evening (Eastern Time)

Melanie Garrett paced nervously in her kitchen, spiked heels echoing like gunshots off the parquet floor.

“
Got your attention yet?” Nina Hastings leaned against the center island’s gray marble top.

“
Well, Mama, she’s got something going on, that’s for sure.”

“
I’ll tell you exactly what she has going on. She’s been commiserating with a journalist, an attorney, and that shrink, who is out of the hospital. Doesn’t sound like a good combination. Still think you got it all under control?”

“
Who? What—who has she been talking to? I mean an attorney? What’s that all about? How do you know this?”

“
Calm down, Melanie. I know this because I’ve been doing something besides being a greedy bitch. Like I always tell you, you get in this life what you take, and I’ve never gotten anything by standing around. Amanda is playing you for a fool. She got you to sign that big house contract, and you let yourself get pressured into doing it.”

“
Well, you agreed.”

“
My name isn’t on that document anywhere is it?”

Melanie Garrett stopped her pacing and looked at her mother in stunned silence. In the seedy back lots of her Deep South youth, Nina Hastings had learned to play for keeps. She was, in fact, no different than the run of the mill terrorist, plotting the destruction and sending others to do her bidding. At the very core of her existence was a narcissistic drive fueled by a fear of unworthiness, but which manifested itself in the form of vitriolic subterfuge. She had to destroy everything around her to make herself feel worthy.

“
What are you saying? We’re in this together.”

Nina stared at her daughter. Her emotions were not clashing. Rather, she viewed everything through a lens that reflected back onto herself. Her prism was indeed a mirror. Nina chuckled a patronizing tune.

“
Of course, dear.” She would just have to see how everything developed. Nina Hastings always kept her options open.

“
Is Dagus still with us? He’s not going to blow the cover, is he?” She was beginning to feel paranoid.

“
What you don’t know is that he got all moral and everything about this stupid media hunt group he’s in. He started to back out. He said it was more important to expose the truth. The people have a right to know and all that happy horseshit.”

“
But the pedophile thing. We’ve got him on that.”

“
He called your bluff, Melanie. Only you weren’t here. I took the call, and we met after school last week. Dagus knows the file is sealed, and it would take an act of Congress to open it.”

“
But still, just the implication—”

“
And he sues your ass for a million dollars.”

“
So what did you do?”

“
Let’s just say I gave him some incentive.”

Melanie looked at her mother warily. “Incentive?”

“
I made a deal with him. He lives up to his end of the bargain, and I give him $10,000.”

“
You did what?”

“
Don’t you think I know what’s going on around here? I knew the man was a pervert from the first day I met him. He
wanted
Amanda. I diverted his attention to that little slut Brianna instead.” Nina waved her hand as if to swat a fly and turned away. She walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Melanie followed her mother into Amanda’s room.