Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (34 page)

Loudon changed the slide again. The new image was all text. At the top, it read
BPT
. That meant, be prepared to do the following. The bullet statements read:

• Establish blocking force
  
• Kill/capture enemy personnel who escape target area
  
• Conduct bomb damage assessment
  

Maybe a little tricky in execution, but simple in concept. Take away the bad man's toys. Blount loved it. Ivan and Farmer would have loved it, too, Blount thought.

He remembered his grandfather's words about not letting revenge burn you up. But this wasn't fury-blinded vengeance; this was a Marine Corps mission. Blount wanted in. He waited to speak to Loudon after the briefing ended.

“Sir,” Blount said, “I'd like to go.”

Loudon stared at him.

“Are you serious?” Loudon said. “Your mission now is to get debriefed and to rest up. You know that.”

“Yes, sir, and I'll do all that. But I want to go with you tomorrow.”

“Gunny, I think that shit they slimed you with is messing with your mind.”

Blount didn't appreciate that remark. He didn't expect to get treated like a hero for wanting to go. But he did expect to get taken seriously.

“Sir, due respect. Don't patronize me.”

Loudon turned his gaze down to the floor like he knew he'd said something wrong, then looked up at Blount again.

“I'm sorry, Guns. I didn't mean it that way. Let's talk outside.”

The two men stepped out of the briefing room and sat on a wooden bench outside the ops center. Starlings twittered on a nearby satellite dish. In the distance, a KC-135 glided toward a landing.

“I had to listen to what they did to Farmer,” Blount said. “I didn't see it but I heard it. I had to leave behind a good man in the Legion because he got killed helping us escape, and we couldn't carry him through the desert. And I saw what that poison did in Sigonella to my old platoon commander.”

Loudon watched Blount speak, then looked out across the air base. Dug the toe of his boot into the gravel at their feet.

“I understand you want payback,” Loudon said. “I would, too, in
your boots. And I admire what you want to do. But the Marines are a big brotherhood. You don't have to do everything yourself.”

“I know, sir. But I want to be part of this one.”

“What if something happens to you, after all you've been through? How would we ever tell your wife?”

That made Blount pause. He worried about that, too. Before he could respond, he noticed something moving in the gravel. A camel spider nearly as wide as his palm crawled through the rocks toward the bench.

“I been thinking about that,” Blount said. “But I figured something could happen when I get back to the ship. Something could happen on the flight home. I could have a wreck turning into my driveway. If I wanted to be safe all the time, I'd work in an ice-cream store. And then somebody'd rob the place and shoot me. Ain't no such thing as safe. But taking out Kassam will make the world a little less dangerous.”

Part of Blount's mind knew his words rang a little hollow. Let me go on a mission because it's dangerous everywhere? A thin rationalization, maybe. But he couldn't come right out and say he needed vengeance.

“Gunny, this is a highly unusual request,” Loudon said. “It's not even up to me.”

The camel spider reached the bench and began climbing.

“Sir,” Blount said, “can you at least ask?”

“I don't know. I think if—”

On the seat of the bench now, the camel spider began crawling toward Blount. Blount unsnapped the sheath holding his World War II KA-BAR. He withdrew the knife. Made a quick downward stab.

The blade stuck upright in the wood. Impaled the spider.

I
n the early-morning darkness, four Super Stallion helicopters lifted off from Mitiga. Stars strewn across the North African sky shimmered like a luminescent mist. Blount rode in the lead aircraft, Loudon beside him. The Corps had granted permission for Blount to take part in this op, but only if he remained with Loudon and the command element. Loudon and his staff would observe the attack from a rise several hundred meters from the target, and they'd issue orders and call in air support as needed.

Blount would have preferred to get closer, to join one of the fire teams encircling Kassam's hideout. But higher-ups had decided Blount's direct knowledge of Kassam and his henchmen could provide good input to Loudon and Loudon's ops officer. Perhaps he could identify Kassam—dead or alive—after the air strike. The thought of the terrorist leader in cuffs or a body bag filled him with expectation.

Blount appreciated the chance to see this thing through to the end, even if
seeing
was all he'd get to do. And he had to admit this made a lot more sense than sending him into the middle of what Marines called “the point of friction.” His family had gone through enough already. The Corps had public relations to consider, too. Blount's name would soon appear all over the news—the Marine who escaped his chains to free his buddies and kill the bad guys. Couldn't let him take crazy chances now.

“Thanks for this, sir,” Blount shouted over the noise of rotors and engines. “I reckon you went out on a limb for me.”

“Yeah, I did, Gunny,” Loudon said. “If you get hurt, I'll kill you.”

Blount nodded. He shifted in his seat, checked his gear again. He still carried the M16 he'd brought with him on the first mission, but he wore a brand new MOPP suit. The gas mask rested in a carrier on his side. Night vision goggles, now in the stowed position, added weight to his helmet. The other men wore the same equipment, and they gripped an assortment of weapons—including many for hitting bad guys at a distance: An AT4 rocket. An M40 sniper rifle. An M107—a semiautomatic .50 caliber monster. The M107 gunner had loaded his weapon with Raufoss rounds, incendiary projectiles with a tungsten core, capable of setting cars on fire. And one Marine assigned to Loudon's command element had a laser designator to provide pinpoint guidance for the bombs from the B-2 aircraft.

All that weaponry made him want to use some of it. He felt like a bullet with a hang fire—the cartridge primer popped and sizzling but delayed in igniting the powder. The round had to go off, but when and how?

Blount looked over his equipment one more time, and he saw something he'd not noticed earlier. Some kind of stain marred the receiver of his M16. He looked closer and realized it was a bloody thumbprint. His own, judging from the size. Whose blood? Maybe Ivan's. Maybe Rat Face's. Maybe even Farmer's. In an instinctive reflex to keep his weapon clean, he wiped away the stain. Now he wanted even more to see destruction visited on his tormentors.

By the green glare of a penlight, Loudon studied his objective area diagram. The chart trembled with the vibration of the aircraft as Blount looked on. From the contour markings, he could tell the terrain did not lie as flat as the area where he'd been held captive. This land featured hills and outcroppings, some fairly steep but not high.

Loudon wore a headset, and he pressed a talk switch to speak with the chopper crew. Blount, without a headset on this flight, could not monitor the conversation, but an announcement from Loudon told him the subject matter.

“Five minutes to refuel,” the lieutenant colonel shouted. “Gonna get a little bumpy.”

Blount looked forward toward the cockpit. With the unaided eye, he could see only the soft glow of NVG-compatible lighting on the instrument panels. Nothing visible out the windscreen. But when the helo began to turn a few minutes later, Blount pressed a release lever and clicked his NVGs into place. The black night turned to a glimmering green, with the bulk of an Air Force HC-130 directly in front of the Super Stallion.

Just as Loudon had warned, the helicopter began to bounce in the HC-130's wake turbulence. A pair of hoses extended from the airplane's wings, a funnel-like drogue at the end of each hose. Blount's stomach began to churn just a little, the effect of the irregular motion. Other than that, he felt pretty good. He'd slept well until alert time, and whatever the exposure to toxins had done to his body, the effects seemed to have worn off, at least for now.

Even without a headset, Blount noted the cross talk on the radios and interphone. Some of the fliers had their headphone volumes turned up loud enough for Blount to catch tatters of conversation. He could not make out the words, but he could just barely hear the short syllables, the static-scraped phrasings of technical procedure. Voices devoid of all emotion, conveying nothing except command and response. The sound of long study and training.

A drogue loomed large in the windscreen, and the helicopter's refueling probe eased into it. The gurgle of fuel flowing through lines joined all the other noises of wind, engines, and electronics.

Blount and Loudon both checked their watches. The refuel had come right on time, and this mission depended on precision timing. The blocking force needed to get into position only minutes before the bomber strike, so as not to alert the enemy. The B-2 could not release its weapons without a call that the choppers had cleared the airspace. And the Mirages could offer no support to the men on the ground until the B-2 was gone.

After several minutes on the hose, the Super Stallion broke contact with the tanker. As soon as the helo banked out of the wake turbulence, the ride became smoother. Blount turned off his NVGs to save the batteries. He might need them one more time, at landing, and after landing he'd switch them off for good. The air strike would take place in morning nautical twilight. That first hint of sunrise would wash out night vision goggles.

The other choppers refueled, and the formation made a final turn on course to the objective. The men spoke little as the aircraft neared the target. The gunners manned their weapons, belts of ammunition curving from the breeches like metallic serpents.

For the remainder of the route, Blount tried to let his mind enter a neutral place. He had a lot of strong feelings to keep at bay right now if he wanted to think like a professional, especially after seeing the blood on his rifle. He sought not to go blank or tune out, but rather to leave all his channels open so his training could kick in quickly for any given problem. As a student of the martial arts, he was reminded of drills when he had to close his eyes and wait for a classmate's mock attack. No point in anticipating what was coming; that could lead you to do the wrong thing and get your butt kicked. He forced himself into a kind of silence, but it was the silence of a shark gliding the depths: a lot of potential power that might get set off unpredictably. Just stay loose and alert, he told himself. Breathe deep. Battle Zen.

The sound of wind and rotors shifted into a different key, and the Super Stallion began to descend.

“Three minutes,” Loudon shouted.

The Marines straightened in their seats, prepared to exit the helicopter in the order assigned. Blount turned his NVGs back on.

The three minutes passed quickly. When the aircraft touched down, the crew chief yelled, “Go, go, go!” Blount unbuckled his seat belt. Loudon jumped out of the helicopter, followed by a radio operator, the forward observer with the laser designator, and a fire team of
four Marines. Blount got out last, and the helicopter lifted off to place other fire teams who had remained in the aircraft.

As expected, Blount found himself on top of a rocky rise that overlooked a vale of sand. Through his goggles he saw the helicopters depositing men into positions surrounding the vale. At the center of the sand bowl, four tents—about the size of American twenty-five-man tents—stood pegged beside five mud-brick structures. The buildings looked like they might have served as some sort of base camp for nomads at one time.

A higher ridgeline rose to the east. Beyond it, as viewed through NVGs, skyglow beamed as if an electrified city of crystal lay just out of view: the first hint of sunrise, and the end of usefulness for night vision goggles.

“Time to go MOPP Four, gentlemen,” Loudon said.

Blount switched off his NVGs, removed his helmet. Pulled his gas mask out of its carrier and donned the mask, checked its seals. Placed his helmet back on over the mask and pulled on his butyl gloves. The other men suited up the same way.

He inhaled long and slow through the gas mask filter.

Now he wanted to kill.

The scent of the mask's rubber sparked anger within Blount quick as steel and flint might ignite a load in that old pistol. He knew smells could trigger memories with a power denied all the other senses, and this particular odor wiped away his battle Zen. The last time he'd suited up like this, he'd lost friends, found himself delivered into the hands of people who wanted to saw his head off. Kassam was still out there, probably in that compound below. The rational part of Blount's mind registered surprise that rage had flared in him so hotly. His grandfather had warned about vengeance burning you up, but he hadn't expected it to feel like actual flames.

With all the fire teams in place, the four helicopters clattered away to the north. Blount wanted to check his watch again to note the B-2's time over target, but now the watch lay buried under his
glove and MOPP suit sleeve, and he could not expose any skin. As far as he was concerned, the bomber couldn't get here soon enough. Every second gave those terrorists another moment of life they did not deserve.

He did not have to wait long. As the terrain below filled with the milky light of dawn, Blount thought he heard the whisper of jet engines way up high. He could not be sure; it might have been only the breeze or perhaps the sound of men breathing through gas masks. Behind the cover of a boulder, Loudon kept his eyes on the target. The forward observer manned the laser designator, which looked vaguely like a spotting scope on a tripod. The observer aimed his infrared beam, invisible to the naked eye, at the target.

Loudon conferred with the observer and one of the radio operators. Spoke into the handset of a PRC-119, holding it close to the voicemitter of his gas mask.

“Spirit Five-Four, this is Thor Six,” he said. “You are cleared hot.”

“Thor Six,” came the answer, “Spirit Five-Four copies we are cleared hot.”

A light came on in one of the tents down below. Faint voices shouted in Arabic. Perhaps the enemy had heard something. For a moment, nothing else happened. Seconds ticked into minutes. Blount wondered if the bomber had aborted. He looked up. If the B-2 was there, it flew so high Blount could not see it.

Then a staccato fluttering filled the air. The noise reminded Blount of the wing beats of a field lark startled from a pasture, amplified by a factor of hundreds. At first the sound made no sense. But then he realized what he heard: heavy metal ripping through the atmosphere at terminal velocity.

Blount had seen plenty of ordnance blasts, but nothing like this hail of anvils. When the weapons struck, the ground leaped and rolled. The tents flattened. A geyser of debris and dust lifted into the air as the buildings began to disintegrate. Even at a distance of
hundreds of meters, Blount felt the impacts resonate inside his chest cavity. Solid projectiles jackhammered the desert floor. The noise made Blount think of standing under a trestle while a train crossed it just as clouds thundered. He had never witnessed an earthquake, but he imagined the rending of tectonic plates might sound something like this.

Despite the absence of high explosives, sparks and fire leaped amid the raging of a miniature sandstorm. Blount figured the source of ignition could have come from anything—perhaps the fuses of chemical weapons or even flame spewed from an oil lamp as the lamp got crushed. No telling what weird effects might result from that much steel hitting with that much force. He wanted it to go on forever.

“Beautiful,” Loudon said.

Blount simply nodded and kept his eyes on the target area.

The desert grew still again, save for a drifting cloud of dust and smoke. Blount wondered what poisons that smoke might contain. The sun crested a notch in the eastern ridgeline, and light spilled into the sand bowl as if a levee had broken. Blount felt almost . . . disappointed. Was it over so soon? Loudon spoke into his radio, this time on a ground channel.

“Hold your positions,” he said.

As the smoke cleared and the sun rose, the effect of the CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapons became more apparent. The tents had disappeared altogether. Whatever they had covered lay in sand-covered ruin, lumps of rubble no more than three feet high. The PAWs had also flattened most of the mud-brick structures, though part of one of them remained standing. That structure appeared to have been made up of three rooms. Two of the rooms remained nearly whole, shattered walls leaning inward.

“Nothing passive about that, was there?” Loudon said.

Blount shook his head.

Though Blount found the air strike impressive, it left him feeling hollow. He'd wanted to kill Kassam with his own hands, see the dirtbag's eyes fill with fear, hear the rasp of his last breath.

More jet noise came from above, this time low, and loud enough to be unmistakable. Blount tilted his head—he had to crane his neck farther than usual because of the gas mask—and he saw two Mirage fighters streak by in close formation. The aircraft grew smaller with distance, banked into a turn.

Nothing moved in the target area, though Blount spotted two vehicles he'd not seen earlier: an SUV and a pickup truck like the one that had carried him to the hell house. They had been parked on the other side of the compound, screened by structures that no longer stood. The vehicles looked dirty but otherwise untouched. The CBU-107s had struck with such accuracy that they'd hammered the target and nothing else—not even trucks only yards away.