Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (9 page)

Figures, Parson thought. I have millions of dollars' worth of high-tech hardware at my disposal. But I'd settle for a Piper Cub and a pilot with a Kodak if I could put them over those trucks.

Lacking even that, Parson decided he'd ask if the CFACC could send an eval team to the site later on to see what evidence might remain there. But more than likely, he knew, the team would find nothing to indicate where the chemicals had been taken.

Once terrorists took weapons from a central location, they could
hide them so easily. Back during the Iraq War, the bad guys broke into stocks of hundreds of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. Damned things plagued coalition airplanes and helicopters for the entire conflict. Parson could recall spiraling down to landings in Baghdad and Balad, wondering when the next rocket would come burning up from the ground.

Parson decided to give himself a break from all this frustration. He got up, left the ops center, and walked down the hall to the snack room. Took a Dr Pepper from the refrigerator, cracked off the cap. A few sips of the cold soft drink settled his nerves just a bit. His eyes wandered across a poster from Dassault Aviation that someone—probably Chartier—had taped to the wall.

The poster showed a Mirage in flight. The delta-wing jet banked hard to the left with its afterburner lit. Cool.

Parson took the Dr Pepper bottle with him as he returned to the ops center door and punched in the security code. He swung the door open and returned to his desk.

In the short time he'd been gone, a new e-mail had popped up on his computer. He opened the e-mail and saw the attachment was a set of orders. When he read the orders, his mood improved immediately. The text read:

MEMBER IS DIRECTED TO PROCEED AT EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY FOR TEMPORARY DUTY AT MITIGA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, LIBYA. . . . TDY PERIOD NOT LESS THAN 90 DAYS. . . . DUTIES ENTAIL COMMAND OF 401st AIR EXPEDITIONARY GROUP. VARIATIONS IN ITINERARY NOT AUTHORIZED. . . . MEMBER WILL CARRY WEAPON. GOVERNMENT TRAVEL CARD USE MANDATORY.

Parson clicked to print the orders, sat back and smiled. This wouldn't get him back into the cockpit, but at least it would get him out into the field. This day didn't suck so bad after all.

S
ea breezes washed over Blount on the flight deck of the new USS
Tarawa
. The amphibious assault ship foamed through the Med at about twenty knots, steaming toward the Gulf of Sidra, off the Libyan coast. On the vessel's superstructure, a sign painted in three-foot-high yellow lettering warned
BEWARE OF JET BLAST, PROPS, AND ROTORS
. But the
Tarawa
would conduct no flight operations today. Its armada of helicopters and Osprey tilt-rotors sat silently on the eight-hundred-foot deck, so the Marines took advantage of the long steel beach to conduct some training.

A squad stood around Blount and Corporal Fender. The men wore desert combat boots and digital camo trousers, but above the waist they'd stripped to green T-shirts. Fender held a nonfiring handgun made of yellow plastic.

“Y'all might see me use moves a little different from what you've been taught,” Blount said. “Don't get me wrong; I like the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program just fine. But I also studied Krav Maga and some other styles on my own. Bottom line—use what works for you.”

Blount and Fender stepped onto a rubber mat. Fender pointed the pistol at Blount.

“Fender, the gunny is gonna feed you that pistol for lunch,” one of the Marines called out. His buddies laughed.

“Nah, I ain't gon' hurt him,” Blount said.

In fact, he had never injured a fellow Marine in training. That would have harmed a brother devil dog, shown bad form, and
displayed a disregard for government property. Blount went on with his lesson.

“Now, more than likely you'll shoot him before it ever comes to this,” he said. “But suppose you got no weapon of your own, for whatever reason. You'll want to disarm him quick as you can.”

Blount stood about five yards from Fender. He raised both hands to shoulder level.

“This is about the worst place to be,” Blount said. “At this range, I can't reach him and he can't miss. I might say ‘whoa' or something, and with my hands up maybe he'll think I'm surrendering. I just want him to hesitate for half a second. And I want to get off his centerline and close that distance right
now
.”

Blount paused, eyed Fender's hand. With a lowered voice, he addressed the corporal: “Hey, bud. Make sure you got your finger outside that trigger guard. I don't want to break it.”

“Aye, Gunny.”

“All right,” Blount continued. “I'm gon' use my whole body to get control of that weapon and knock him off his feet.”

In two strides, Blount sidestepped, advanced on Fender. Blount's right hand shot upward, grabbed the pistol by the barrel, and pushed it away. His left hand curled around the other side of the weapon and he cupped it over the hammer. Arms outstretched, Blount pushed Fender off balance. He delivered a kick toward Fender's groin, but he pulled his foot back before he made contact. Otherwise, the blow surely would have crumpled Fender to the deck.

Then Blount yanked with his left hand and pushed with his right. The motion put Fender on his knees and forced his wrist at such an angle that he could do nothing but let go of the pistol. If he hadn't, his wrist would have broken. Fender kept his finger away from the trigger as warned. He released the handgun and stood up, rubbing his wrist.

“I didn't use a lot of strength here,” Blount said, holding the yellow pistol. “You little guys can do this, too. Now, in the real
situation, you'll do this so fast you'll break his wrist no matter what he does. And you can expect that gun to go off, whether he means to fire or not. Don't worry about it; you got control of the muzzle. And it'll be the last thing his trigger finger does before it breaks, too.”

More laughter. Blount enjoyed instructing in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program—“semper fu,” as they called it. The program's motto:
One Mind, Any Weapon
. Just an ancillary role to his main job as a special operations team chief. Though he missed Bernadette and the girls already, it felt good to teach and lead Marines again.

Still, something about this mission seemed different from all his previous deployments. The chemical weapons threat had a lot to do with it; anybody who said he wasn't scared of nerve gas was either lying or stupid. But the chem threat alone did not explain why this trip felt . . . otherworldly. Maybe it was because the enemy this time—that new terrorist leader Sadiq Kassam—was such a weirdo. Orange beard, stolen flintlock, and all that. Maybe it was because Blount couldn't get that image of Kelley's last minutes out of his mind. Or maybe things felt strange because Blount had nearly settled into home for good, then made a real conscious decision to venture into danger again. As the
Tarawa
pitched through blue swells, the journey seemed almost mythic, as if he were crossing a threshold into some new realm with hazards and trials he could not imagine.

The very sky seemed to threaten. To the east, off the bow and in the direction of Libya, thunderheads loomed over the sea. The clouds strobed with internal lightning. The effect made Blount think of watching a distant battle at night; you couldn't see the mortars exploding, but you could see the flashes reflected against a mountainside. Godlike threshold guardians seemed to give Blount one last warning to turn back.

Stop thinking nonsense, he told himself. You wanted this.

Blount watched the squad of Marines practice the moves he'd shown them. Then he dismissed them; he'd give another lesson to a
different squad tomorrow. No use trying to teach this stuff to too many guys at one time. If they couldn't see what he demonstrated with his hands and feet, they couldn't learn much. He loved this part of his job. You never knew when you'd give a Marine a tidbit of information that would save a life or win a battle.

He gave the yellow pistol back to Fender to put away. Then Blount buttoned on his uniform blouse and made his way to the TACLOG, the Marines' shipboard nerve center. He found Captain Privett monitoring radio and computer traffic. Coffee mugs and sticky notes littered a room filled with electronic gear. A map of North Africa hung on one wall. The other walls displayed topographical and aeronautical charts of various sections of the Sahara. Shades of brown and gray depicted the terrain; almost no green appeared anywhere. The isogonic lines and contour markings implied an ordered world, a direct contrast to the mayhem that existed on the ground. Above the North Africa map, some Marine with a literary bent had posted a quote from a Roman poet, a line that rang true for the Corps:
What coast knows not our blood?—Horace, 23 B.C.

“Anything new, sir?” Blount asked.

“Yeah, check this out.” Privett turned up the volume on one of the speakers. “An African Union patrol is going into a village somewhere in Algeria. Sounds like the bad guys got there first.”

Blount listened hard, easily imagined the scene as troops entered an urban hostile fire zone. Their weapons at the ready, each man would scan his sector, primed to make instant decisions on whether to fire. Their radio procedures differed slightly from those Blount knew, but the cross talk sounded like squad leaders checking in with a platoon commander. The signals came in weak but readable.

“Simba,” a voice called. “This is Piranha One. I have eight bodies on the western edge of the town. Each one has been shot in the back of the head.” The soldier spoke English with an accent, maybe that of Kenya or Nigeria.

“Roger, Piranha One. Do you see enemy activity?”

“Negative. But these wounds look fresh. The bodies are not cold. Whoever killed these people cannot be far.”

“Acknowledged. Keep me advised.”

Monitoring foot-mobile troops from a warship in the Mediterranean might have felt odd to some folks, Blount realized. But to him it seemed perfectly natural. Fit right in with the role of the Marines: to come in from the sea and project power ashore. Those men on the radio weren't Marines, of course, but he hoped they knew what they were doing and stayed safe.

Several minutes ticked by with no more radio traffic: just the hiss and whine of an open channel, along with occasional crackles caused by the distant lightning. Then the first voice came back, this time speaking much more quickly.

“Simba, Piranha One. We are—” The man held down his talk switch but paused for some reason. Gunfire sputtered around him. “We are under fire. Enemy in a row of houses to our east.” More staccato pops in the background, along with shouted orders too indistinct to make out.

“Roger, Piranha. Shark will link up with you.”

Another stretch of silence followed. Blount looked at Captain Privett, who tapped a pen across his palm. Nervous energy caused by frustration, Blount figured. Tough to listen to friendlies in contact and have no way to help them.

“Do they have air cover?” Blount asked.

“None that I've heard about.”

Too bad. A gunship or attack jet might have helped those guys a lot. But American, French, and British aircraft were still moving into the region. Without all the pieces in place, troops who got into a scrape just might have to fight by themselves.

The radio squelch broke again. The shooting sounded louder this time. “Simba—” The soldier let go of his transmit switch. Privett
shook his head, glanced up at Blount. The soldier on the radio called once more: “Simba, where is Shark?” The boom of a grenade or mortar round rattled through the tinny speaker.

More seconds of silence passed. The next time the squelch broke, Blount heard more shooting, a scream, and shouts in Arabic.

“They're getting overrun,” Blount said.

Privett nodded, pressed his lips together, looked at the radio.

“Piranha, what is your status?” a voice called.

No answer.

“Piranha, what is your status?”

The static streamed unbroken for a moment, until a click brought back the sounds of battle. No words, but more shooting.

Then some voices off mike. They sounded close, and they spoke in Arabic. Someone responded in English.

“Please.”

A burst of automatic fire sounded over the air.

Click.

Silence.

Privett stared at the map in front of him. “Damn it,” he whispered.

Every time Blount lost one of his brothers in arms, a little piece of him died, too. He didn't know this AU troop just executed by terrorists. But he'd followed the losing battle, listened in on the man's final moments. Just hearing the voice speak that last word formed enough of a bond for Blount to connect with this unknown soldier. Whatever the guy's training or skill, he'd used what he had to try to fight the madness in his world. And if he had a family, they would soon know their worst fears had been realized.

Blount left the TACLOG and went outside to the rail. The thunderclouds to the east glowered closer now. Their darkness blocked the sun and turned midafternoon to dusk. Needles of rain spat from the sky, flung sideways by rising wind. In his marksman's mind, Blount made an instinctive calculation: that wind felt like
twenty-five to thirty miles per hour. The ship's forward progress complicated the math a little. But with the wind quartering off the bow, you'd correct for half-value wind speed if your target lay straight ahead. Dial in the setting. Spotter ready. Shooter ready. Fire.

Sailors scurried around on the flight deck. Blount didn't know their duties; perhaps they were preparing the
Tarawa
to face the storm. The ship heaved through rising waves; Blount felt that first little gut-turn of seasickness. The crests of the swells frothed white. Ahead, the clouds roiled and rose in what looked like a conscious display of menace.

Lightning speared the surface of the ocean. Blount happened to be looking right where it struck; he thought he actually saw steam rise where fire hit the water. The bolt burned his eyes. When he closed them he could still see the lightning's jagged imprint on his retinas.

As he waited for his eyes to recover, he heard a shout from somewhere behind him.

“Man overboard! Port side, man overboard!”

The word passed quickly. A few seconds later an order came over the loudspeakers of the 1 Main Circuit, the shipwide public address.

“Man overboard, port side. Launch the alert helo.”

A flight crew ran to a waiting Seahawk: two pilots, a crew chief, a pair of rescue swimmers. Farther down the deck, a sailor grabbed a smoke float, yanked the pull ring, and tossed the float over the side. Orange smoke churned from the float and streamed downwind.

Despite the crew's quick action, Blount supposed the float marked only the general area to search. The
Tarawa
might have traveled several hundred yards between the moment the man fell overboard and when the smoke float hit the water.

Six blasts sounded from the ship's whistle. Overhead, someone ran up the Oscar flag, a square signal panel divided diagonally into triangles of red and yellow. The Oscar snapped and fluttered against a sky as slate-gray as the
Tarawa
itself. Sailors mustered in groups so
their chiefs could determine who was missing. Blount reported to the TACLOG; all Marines were accounted for.

When he went back outside, the Seahawk's rotors were turning. In the gusting wind, the helicopter rose unsteadily. Its wheels left the deck, touched down again. The rotor blades slapped a louder rhythm, and then the Seahawk climbed away and lowered its nose.

Blount wanted to help, but he had no role in the procedure. Rescuing a man overboard was one of the most basic naval skills; he knew the sailors would have trained until this drill became second nature. Still, he scanned the water. Spotting the dot of a man's head would prove difficult in these conditions. Sailors working on the flight deck wore a vest with an emergency light, but even that could be hard to spot on a day like today. Spiderwebs of foam sizzled across the ocean's troughs and peaks. Rain fell steady and dimpled the surface of the water. Gusts blew harder and kept shifting direction—now off the bow, now quartering, now off the beam.