Knife (9780698185623) (18 page)

The CO leaned against a table.

“He's not with al-Ayeelaa. At least not to our knowledge. But some of his ex-lieutenants that are still alive are rumored to be. Every squadron and coalition force has been looking for this guy for years. Intel figures he's a bad egg worth talking to. A drone tracked the SUV to the compound and hasn't reported any activity since they arrived. This is a live feed.”

He pointed to a black-and-white image on one of the kill TVs. The camera circled slowly with the arc of the drone while the compound sat still in the middle of the shot. The CO looked at Dalonna and Shaw.

“You guys feeling okay?”

They nodded.

“Good. Welcome back.”

They got the 1 at 2242 hours.

They were all sitting in the war room, debating whether they should play blackjack or a game Hagan had made up called tittyspank. Blackjack was winning out, even though Hagan was campaigning pretty hard for tittyspank, and Dalonna wasn't talking a whole lot because of a new set of stitches he had to replace the ones he'd torn out. When the beep came through he folded an ultrasound picture into halves and put it in his top. Then he racked his weapon as the claps of metal mags and bolts slamming home walked the men into the night.

•   •   •

A
fter they clipped into the birds they flew north to the snow. The cold bit at their faces first and then settled heavily into their legs. It hurt to breathe. They flew fast and low, nap-of-the-earth. Shaw could dip down a couple feet and scoop up snow on his boots. The dried, wind-chapped earth gave way to rolling fields of snow and the moon shined bright. The wind blew snow off the tops of the hillsides and the plumes came off the crests as if the land were breathing deep breaths. Their NODs weren't needed, the world lit up instead by the light of the stars caught in the blankets of ice and snow. They saved their batteries and lifted the NODs.

The
Five mikes out
call came over the comms and they continued riding the hills until the land flattened and the birds dropped them off two klicks from the compound, where the hills of snow would strangle the noise of their approach. The goat-herder shacks were set up every couple hundred meters and they stood out from the land like tombstones. Like thumbs on the earth's hand. With NODs down and lasers fired up, the operators painted the world green. The snow was a couple inches thick and crusted over with a thin film of ice. Shooting stars cut the sky and the wind blew snow across the countryside. After they had walked for a half hour, the perimeter teams radioed in
Panther1 and 2 in position
and the operators could see the objective
.
Banks of windblown snow draped the target building. It looked like the compound was driving itself out of the snow or trying to hide in it.

The assault teams moved in and Shaw led them to the front door. There weren't any lights on, the compound set back in the snow and the dark. As they posted up alongside the house Shaw noticed how cold the walls were, how dark everything was. Not a single light escaped from the dwelling, and he wondered if Intel was right and people were sleeping inside. Living inside. He watched Hagan run his hands over the lock, his breath pluming in front of his face, and imagined kicking in the door and finding a bunch of freezing, scared-to-shit goats cuddled up in blankets.

“We're blowing it,” Hagan whispered over the comms.

He set the charge on the door, and as it blew Shaw noticed the windows were simple, whole sheets of thick metal. The door blew in and bright light from inside the compound flooded out into the dark.

The lights were on.

Bangers started popping and Shaw entered the doorway over the scraps of the blown door. He followed the wall left and Dalonna turned right. It was warm and bright inside and smelled of baharat, wood smoke, and old blankets. Two men stood behind a waist-high table, a third in an open doorway behind them. They'd been eating. Their forks were closer than the rifles settled on the tables, but they flinched forward. The man standing had his thumb looped through the sling of a rifle as if he were resting his hand on a pair of suspenders, his nose and eyes scrunched together like he smelled something off. Dalonna's rifle popped and coughed before Cooke and Hagan had fully entered the room, and Shaw heard the shots and continued down the wall. He and Dalonna pushed through to the next room while Cooke and Hagan checked the bodies. There were footsteps overhead as Mike's team cleared the second floor, and then a loud
crack, crack,
and then more shots. They sounded like coughs muffled by a fist. Then Mike's voice calling for another medic to come upstairs came over the comms.

“Two wounded. Two EKIA.”

Massey left the three bodies in the first room and ran up to the second level. Then Mike came over the comms again.

“Second floor secured.”

The whole house was cleared in minutes.

Shaw and Dalonna stood in a dark storeroom, scanning the shelves and dusty corners with their tac lights. It smelled of rotten grains and burlap musk. There were half-empty hemp bags of wheat and oats and jarred vegetables covered in dust, the labels nearly faded off. In the corner of the shed were two long wooden rifles that looked like they could hardly fire a shot, and on a nail by the backdoor, a set of car keys.

The black SUV was parked right outside the storeroom. The paint had been chipped and faded, beaten by the countryside for years. It looked like it was shedding its skin. A man could cut himself simply running his hand along the doors. Shaw opened the trunk and found it full of black duffel bags. Inside the bags were false passports, a couple thousand American dollars in crumpled wads, and extra clothes. A loaded Glock 9mm and a Makarov with three loaded clips. The clothes were mostly male tops and bottoms with a few colorful items and silk hijabs sprinkled in. The clothes were not folded. The front seats housed a full bag of almonds and a nearly empty pack of Marlboros. There were two plastic lighters. One yellow and one orange. Shaw radioed in
Objective secured
and then they left the car and searched the layout and the bodies inside.

The place was tidy, ordered and neat. Shoes were lined up at the front door and low moans and short, strained language came through the ceiling. It sounded like furniture was getting shifted around upstairs. Carpets blanketed every inch of the floor and there were prayer rugs rolled into tight cylinders and stacked against a wall flecked with drops of blood. Elaborate floor lamps with beaded tassels on the covers stood in a corner of every room on the first floor and there were books on shelves and old
Time
and
National Geographic
magazines on a small table. A fireplace with ashes in its hearth occupied most of one of the walls, and a large black pot of rice was set on the table between the dead men who had fallen off the chairs and were lying on the floor. Cracked yellow plates of unfinished food were on the table, rice and animal bones with greasy gristle and fat still on the bone. It looked like goat. Partially opened bags of fertilizer lined the walls.

Shaw walked over to the men who had been shot at the table. They lay crumpled on the floor next to their overturned chairs. Their fingers were oily and they had black and green spices stuck in their fingernails. They wore dark jeans with light stitching on the hems and had ashy skin and dark beards. Their blood was settling in the carpet. Dalonna had gone for the face. The two men had holes in their cheeks and foreheads.

“Donna,” Shaw said. “Headshots?”

Dalonna shrugged and leafed through their pockets, set what he found on the table. “Nuchal folds on my mind.”

Shaw looked back at the bodies. Their faces were sunken and cracked where the rounds had entered. The flaps of skin were jagged and the flesh and bones broken. The features—eyes, noses, and mouths—contorted into shattered glass doll masks by the lead. Blood had settled behind the heads and made mops of their hair, and their skin seemed to be taking on the same yellow, sickly glow as the lamps. One of them wore a white kameez with a dark vest and the other wore the same but had a khaki coat with cargo pockets instead of a vest. Shaw went through the cargo pockets of the khaki coat. There was nothing but crumpled tissues in two of the four pockets. The other two were empty. Neither man wore shoes. Shaw smelled something harsh while he was kneeling and noticed a dark bloom on one of the guy's pants. His bowels had relaxed after he was shot.

“Dude was packing heat,” Dalonna said.

He threw two lighters on the table and three packs of cigarettes. The packs were all opened.

“Were those all in his jacket?” Shaw asked.

“No. He had one in his pants.” Dalonna shrugged. “Dude needed his fucking smokes. Beat cancer at least.”

The man who had stood with his thumb in the sling of his rifle lay on the floor between the first room and the storeroom. He had a white dress shirt buttoned to the collar and black pants with no belt. He wore a ratty old green jacket that was frayed at the collar and waistline, and he had a bushy black mustache that reminded Shaw of the one his father wore in pictures he'd seen as a kid. Two red flowers bloomed at the man's breastbone where the rounds had entered before splintering the wall behind him. Dalonna had spared the man's face and made his way across the floor and was checking the body.

“Phone,” Dalonna said.

He held it up for Shaw to see and threw it on the table. They bagged it. Then they took pictures of the bodies and fingerprints.

“I think this is sugar,” Hagan said. He had his hands in one of the bags of fertilizer running the length of the walls.

“Taste it,” Cooke said.

“After you, sweetheart.” Then Hagan shrugged and licked his fingers. “Yeah. It's sugar.”

Shaw and Dalonna walked over to the bags, and Hagan tasted the other bags along the wall.

“All sugar,” Hagan said.

“What if it had been fertilizer, Hog?” Cooke asked.

Hagan shrugged again. “I don't know. Wouldn't have tasted as good, I guess.”

Then a sharp inhale came from behind them. There was a whimper, like a puppy stepped on in the dark. Massey was struggling down the stairs, carrying a short, wide woman over his shoulder. She was wearing a long, dark chador, and the back of her head was exposed. She cried out every time Massey took a step. Her long black hair was braided and wrapped in a bun. It shined in the lamplight. One of the braids trailed behind her and bounced off Massey's back with each step. She had a large mass of white bandages wrapped around her middle, and Slausen walked down the stairs behind them. He was growing his beard back in and the mustache was overpowering the new hair. He carried Ohio over his shoulder, wraps and compresses snaking thick around one of his legs. His face bounced against Slausen's shoulder with each step and his eyes were open but glassy. He didn't say anything. Massey walked out of the door with the wife, and Slausen gave them a thumbs-up and followed with Ohio.

“He'll be fine,” Mike said. He made his way outside, following behind the medics. “Took one in the leg. In and out.”

“And the wife?” Shaw asked.

“Took a few in the gut.” His voice started strong, booming through the warm house. “She probably won't make it.”

Then the wind swallowed his voice and there was quiet and Shaw looked at his hands. Small tracks of blood had made their way into the creases and wrinkles of his gloves. He didn't know which dead man it'd come from. Then Hagan came over beside him and tossed him a red apple. He held another, half eaten, in his hand. Shaw caught the apple and looked at him. Hagan was nodding to himself, eyeing the books on the shelf, a hand on his hip.

“This place is like my grandma's cottage.”

Shaw held up the apple.

“Where'd you get this?”

“On the table next to the goat plates,” Hagan said. “I found a phone right next to it.” He held up the phone in his hand.

“And you're eating it?”

“Yes to the apple, no to the phone. This isn't fucking
Snow White
.”

He laughed and Shaw threw the apple back at his chest.

“Man, it's hot in here,” Hagan said. “My nuts are swimming. What's with all the sugar?”

Shaw brought his hands to his nose. “No idea.”

He could still smell the apple on his gloves on the flight back to base.

They took the duffel bags from the trunk. After destroying the weapons and ammunition while waiting for the exfil, they left the rest of the compound relatively intact and stacked the bodies outside neatly. They got all four of the Pups. One was killed on the second floor along with Lion1, and the others were the ones Dalonna tapped with headshots and the man with the blooming breastbone. Lion1 was upstairs in bed with his wife, an AK loaded and lying between them. He got two shots off on Ohio before Mike killed him, and then the wife picked up the rifle and Mike had to put two through her middle. It happened fast. In the air Massey pounded her chest, but got back on the tarmac with blood all over his hands and arms.

“She bled out,” he said.

He opened his hands and let them fall to his sides.

•   •   •

I
ntel found numerous SIM cards sown into the inside flaps of the duffels taken from the black SUV. The techs analyzed the cards and phones immediately and pored over the data. Spiderwebs formed in major cities and mountain complexes from the networks spun by the plastic chips no larger than a child's thumbnail. There was also a zip drive wrapped in a teal hijab, balled and tucked inside another black one inside one of the duffels. They found documents and drafts, copies of e-mails saved from various accounts. Those could be tapped and traced.

They were.

Massey and Shaw were sitting outside the tents days after the Lion1 raid. They rolled a baseball across the dirt in the daylight. The heat had left for the year and the clouds hung low and wide, heavy and sinking with snow. Dalonna heard Daniel was okay after advanced testing and they were all happy about that, relieved. He passed out sugar cookies with light blue frosting that Mirna had sent over, and they were good. The men demolished them in a single sitting.