Knife (9780698185623) (9 page)

“Intel's been monitoring likely locations and phones and he's popped hot,” the CO said. “We've traced him to this two-story compound.” He pointed to the satellite images of the compound tacked on the whiteboard behind him. “He makes it back to the compound from town before sunset and has guards stationed outside the two entryways. They carry AKs and are allowed to sit on chairs flanking the doorways. They don't seem too interested and are probably just locals forced to protect him.”

The CO pointed to the target house and the teams flipped over their sheets. The same satellite images posted on the board were shrunk and pasted on the other side of the printouts. The men bowed toward the pocket-sized sheets.

“The compound is two stories and secluded. The nearest building is roughly four hundred meters from any angle of the house. I want one team on each of the two entrances, follow-ons behind them, and the last pulling security. I don't give a shit who goes in first or in what order, so you guys can flip for it as far as I'm concerned. We'll get a 1 as soon as we confirm he's in the compound, so I'd skip the gym until daybreak. Questions?”

Cooke raised his hand. “Known and expected personnel?”

“Should be four known once we've confirmed he's there, and expected could be close to ten,” the CO said. “The guards rotate inside, so we're not sure if the shifts stay in a lower level or not. Keep a lookout for potential bombers. First, they're likely innocents. Held against their will and clueless about what they're there for. Second, we don't know how they'll react. If they're strapped, they're strapped. Headshots like anyone else. But they'll probably be scared shitless with all the noise, so be on it and stay flexible. Don't take them out unless you have to.”

He asked if there were any more questions and Massey raised his hand, a faint smile spreading across his lips.

“Sir, I think Tango1 works at an Italian deli back home. My mom buys pastrami from him every week. I can have her go over there and off him in like two minutes. Just give me a sat phone.”

Hagan nearly swallowed his chew and the printouts trembled on the tables with all the laughter. The CO nodded and smiled until the noise died down.

“That's good, Massey. It's a kill call, so let her know she can finally make some use out of the rolling pins she's been using as fuck toys since you left.”

“Yes!” Hagan yelled, and the room broke up. Guys nearly fell out of their chairs and gasped for breath. Massey smiled with his arms crossed and the CO raised his hands. Clapping and whistles filled the room.

“Good,” the CO said. “Loosen up.”

The laughs trickled to sniffs and giggles, and Hagan rubbed tears from his eyes. When everyone recovered, the air seemed lighter.

“Nobody else?” the CO asked.

No one raised a hand.

“All right. See you on the birds.”

He left and everyone got up from the tables to figure out flow patterns for the assault.

Shaw and his team were taking the house.

•   •   •

O
nce the 1 got beeped through, they would have ten minutes to get to the birds, so the guys stayed close. Guys took last-minute dumps, made last-second phone calls, and gathered in the Tactical Operations Center to watch the kill TVs. Shaw and his team gathered in the war room, making last adjustments to their kits and triple-checking the batteries in their NODs and weapon sights.

“I need batteries,” Dalonna said.

Hagan grabbed a pack of triple-A's and tossed them over.

“I'll take more, too,” Shaw said.

Hagan threw a pack at him.

“Me too,” Cooke said.

“Sweet Jesus in Jerusalem,” Hagan said. “I'm not a battery slut. Get your own shit.”

They all laughed, and Massey came in with his arms full of bandages, wrappings, and compresses. He grabbed an ammo can and dropped everything inside. “Take what you want. You guys see Mike's team yet? They shaved.”

Before anyone could respond, Mike and his team entered the war room. They had carved their beards into prominent mustaches, just like the Civil War colonel who had given them their entering brief. Except for one of the newer guys with red hair, the mustaches were thick and untamed.

“Excellent, guys,” Cooke said.

“Terrible,” Hagan said. “You guys look terrible.” He pointed at the newbie. “Mrs. Rawlins. My first fuck was Mrs. Rawlins a few doors down the street. I was twelve. She had a thin line of strawberry pubes sitting on top of her happy place just like that. It was beautiful. You are not.”

Slausen laughed. He wagged his finger at Hagan.

“Hog, you're just jealous because your blond ass can't handle this kind of lip dressing.”

“Nope. Vaginas. Your mouths look like vaginas now,” Hagan said. “Congratulations on the mouth vaginas.”

Ohio stroked the ends of his mustache and raised his eyebrows. “Hog, you'd be arrested for pedophilia if you ever shaved a mustache out of that half-assed pubic mess of a beard on your face. And as the father of a daughter, I'd be the first to call the cops.”

They walked outside laughing and Hagan yelled after them.

“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Rawlins!”

He looked at his team after Mike and the others left and he spoke in a soft voice.

“Guys. I could rock a 'stache, couldn't I?”

Dalonna turned to Hagan and shook his head.

“First, no way any Mrs. Rawlins let you have her when you were twelve, Hog. Second, Ohio's right. Don't chase the 'stache. Your blond ass would look like a two-bit recreational porn star from the eighties. And not the cool eighties. I'm talking like last gasp of disco, early eighties.” He shook his head and looked to the floor. “You with a mustache would easily be the worst thing that could happen to any one of us. Why would you do that to us, Hog?”

He walked outside without waiting for a response, and Hagan stood in the war room, his mouth hanging open as the rest of the team passed by him, laughing.

•   •   •

T
he 1 came through just after 2330 hours and they put their business suits on. Dalonna kissed the picture of his family he had tacked on his locker, and Cooke and Hagan threw in a large chaw. Shaw looked at the picture of his grandma and traced the agate necklace in his breast pocket. The ballistic plate pushed the stone into his chest. No one slapped the top of the door frame walking out of the war room like they do in football locker rooms or beat their chest. They all fingered their kits and weapons, made final adjustments to their helmets and Peltors, checked radio frequencies, and tried to feel as limber as possible. They bent down to the ground to stretch, and operators throughout the war room jumped up and down to make sure nothing bounced or flapped, fixing anything that did.

Outside, the moon shined down bright and the stars were green under their NODs. Gravel crunched beneath their feet. They hitched onto pickups that drove them to their small airfield, and they arrived as another group was taking off. The rotors of the exiting birds pounded the air and kicked up dust from the dirt surrounding the airfield, and the teams offloading from the pickups were hit with a warm slap of air as the birds took off, blended into the night, and disappeared. Then the wind was the only sound for a moment until the birds waiting to hunt Tango1 screeched to life in high screams. There were four Little Birds and a Black Hawk. Another group of birds a few klicks out were getting spun up at the same time and would mirror their movements in case things got bad.

Shaw sat on the bench of one of the Little Birds, a small helicopter with a fuselage slightly larger than a VW Bug, and clipped the D-ring of his safety line onto an anchor bolted into the floor of the cabin. The bench was cool and he swung his boots over the tarmac. Cooke sat next to him and Dalonna and Hagan sat on the other side. Massey linked up with Slausen and grabbed a seat inside the Black Hawk.

The men plugged their comms in and waved to the pilots.

“One okay,” Shaw said.

“Two okay,” Cooke said.

Hagan and Dalonna sounded off
Three
and
Four
.

The pilots ran over final checks and the men waited for them to get the go.

It came and they went.

•   •   •

T
he air was clearer away from the cities, and it would be another couple weeks before the wind started biting with any force, so the draft from the bird's flight felt good. Shaw's tops and bottoms rippled on the wind and the moon lit up the ground like it was daylight under cloud cover. The birds would hug the earth and foliage to hide from view when possible, flying at a hundred knots and keeping at least two klicks away from the objective at all times to minimize the sound of their approach. As they flew on, the earth looked like the chalked bones of pale skeletons. The rotors of the Little Birds sounded like swarms of bees in distant forests. Lasers from the bird's gunners painted the ground in wide, green arcs below them. Cooke and Shaw took turns painting the ground below with their lasers, and Dalonna and Hagan did the same on the other side. There was an empty sedan in a charred field. A full sedan driving down a highway. A herd of goats grazing on harvested crops. A group of kids on top of a roof, some who waved and some who shook their fists. Slums had given way to open fields, and the fields had led to ravines and lush riverfronts. They even flew over palm trees for a few minutes.

It was nice.

After nearly an hour of flight the pilot keyed in.

“Five mikes out.”

Cooke and Shaw each held a single hand up with their fingers extended and Dalonna and Hagan did the same on their side. The teams dangling their legs from the other four birds followed suit at different points in the sky. It looked like the men were waving to one another with their feet. After the five-mikes call, chatter on the comms picked up and Shaw's hands started tingling. He felt hot. His pulse rose. They received updates from the pilots and the surveillance teams monitoring the satellite footage every few seconds.

No movement outside the compound.

Two guards stationed in front of doorways.

Two mikes out.

Guard entered building.

Guard exited building.

One mike.

They flew over a small lakebed between trees flanking both shores. Then the bird decelerated and banked for its approach. Shaw unplugged his comms, keyed into the team frequency, and grabbed the D-ring anchored to the bird. He and Cooke gave each other a thumbs-up, and the bird touched down and they unclipped their D-rings, got off the benches, and ran off the bird. Shaw scanned the sector to his front and right while Cooke, Dalonna, and Hagan mirrored his movements on their own sectors. It was loud and blasts of air beat down off the rotors. Dust swarmed Shaw's face. He tasted dry earth and dead crops. Grains of dirt got stuck in his teeth. Hagan had spit out his chaw as soon as he touched the ground and got a mouthful of dirt and animal shit instead. The four took a knee and the birds lifted off and left them. Then the other birds climbed away from their loads and it was quiet and the twenty of them moved east.

Their footsteps seemed loud.

The compound sat just over two klicks to the east on the western outskirts of a relatively sparse village, and Intel had ten or twelve dwellings strewn east from the objective across another klick. The target house itself was isolated, and at a slow, deliberate pace, not even a half-hour walk away. They walked over the dried earth and over the shorn crops in the fields, their lasers lighting up the countryside. Shaw painted a depression in the ground to make sure it wasn't hiding anyone or anything that would blow. There was a small tangle of weeds but nothing else. He kicked aside large rocks and hard clumps of earth at his feet and they crumbled apart—either goat shit or baked mud—and Hagan and Cooke scanned their flanks, Dalonna the rear. Snipers were attached to each of the assault teams and Barnes, their sniper, joined them on the move south while Bear moved with Mike's team. Barnes was a redheaded woodsman from Appalachia, tall and thick. He had thighs like the base of an oak tree and he held his long-scoper at the ready, muzzle down, while the others scanned their sectors. The three-foot-long rifle looked like a crowbar in his big arms. Massey linked up with them on the movement and he and Barnes settled in the middle of the other four. After a short walk over the dirt farmland, the lead element came over the comms in a whisper. It was Mike.

“Lights ahead, six hundred meters.”

Four lampposts marking the perimeter of the target house cast a hazy bulb of light against the darkness in the distance. The cloud of light seemed fuzzy and jumpy, like it was moving. A soft wind blew. If there was tall grass it would've bowed at their feet. The teams kept moving toward the compound until Mike whispered again.

“Three hundred meters from the light posts. Synch watches on me.”

Shaw took a knee and fingered the buttons on his watch.

“Three. Two. One. Mark.”

Shaw started his watch and nineteen others lit and beeped the same.

“Jump-off at fifteen flat,” Mike said. “Radio silence until positions confirmed.”

Shaw led his team south while the others broke off on their respective approaches to the objective. The halo of light surrounding the compound spread as they neared, and Shaw could make out a guard seated in a chair. Shaw brought his hand up and made a circle around his head. He took a knee and the rest of his team hugged the ground. The guard had a weapon cradled over his lap and wore a dark baseball cap turned backward on his head. A baggy white T-shirt and brown pants. He had his legs crossed and his foot was bouncing, like he was bored or anxious. Shaw couldn't quite tell if he was wearing sandals or shoes, but it looked like they were black low-tops.

Barnes crawled up beside Shaw at the head of the element. He laid a couple mags down on a towel he had grabbed from his kit and placed them in front of the trigger guard of his rifle. “Jittery fucker,” he mumbled. He brought the rifle against his shoulder and checked his sights. “Go ahead and move that foot. But don't move out of that fucking seat.”