The Crisis (51 page)

Still, they couldn't react forever. They had to retake the initiative. Or the mission, and the whole country, was going down the tubes.

 

FIFTY miles to the west, going two hundred knots in the dark a thousand feet off the deck, Teddy sat hunched over his rifle, chewing pineapple-flavored bubblegum Sumo's mother had sent from Hawaii. Trying not to think about where they were going.

It was too noisy to talk, to even think. They were all covered in a thick, buttery film of sweat. You'd think things would cool down at night but if anything it felt hotter. The stripped-down, metal-walled cabin felt like a microwave oven on high. It was pitch dark aside from an orientation strip down by their boots. He was so gear heavy, and they were packed so tight into the rear of the SH-60, his jaw was all he could move. But he had a knobber on; he did have that.

Him and Sumo and Whacker and Bitch Dog, on their third back-to-back mission today. Ever since the hotel bombing, the quick reaction force had been on nearly continuous call. Fly to a camp or distribution station, secure the high ground, stand by in case hostiles tried to obstruct the exfil. Once you set up lookouts you might catch a catnap on a protected roof. The night before he'd even gotten a couple solid hours in half watches in a night defensive position. Nothing like Hell Week at BUD/S, but it made you just that little bit slower, put some glue in your reactions. Eventually you started seeing things that weren't there, or not seeing things that were. He'd have to nitpick the guys tonight. Have to watch himself, too.

Only once in three days had he even taken his safety off, warning away four dudes with honest to God spears who'd objected to his taking away their U.S. government–funded free health care. Most times, the whack of helo blades and the sight of the QRF had been enough to make the insurgents disappear.

This time, though, the head shed guaranteed they'd take fire. The major had given it to them straight at the briefing. Teddy had to admit, no one
talked to that guy and came away confused. “Tonight's payback,” he'd said. “These shitheads killed the Seabees at Hill 153. They're coordinating attacks all over the country. Killing doctors. People who came to help. If they don't surrender, Article 556 'em.”

And the assembled marines and SEALs had given the deep grunting “Hooyah” that meant they'd taken the directive aboard.

The helicopter banked and he leaned into the webbing, eyes closed, chewing for all he was worth as it dropped a thousand feet in sixty seconds. Something broke free aft and rolled forward. He stuck out a boot and trapped the grenade. “Somebody lose something?” he yelled. Nobody answered, so he jammed it into his thigh pocket. A spare might come in handy.

Taking buildings wasn't your typical SEAL mission. Usually a team just spotted the bad guy, then sent in the direct-action dudes. But the major had asked if his guys could do it. There was only one answer.

More sweat broke as he contemplated it. They had the gear, hooleys and hammers and demo, but as far as he was concerned, the best way to clear a building was with a five-hundred-pound bomb. Except this BVIP's hide site was in the middle of Fenteni, the second-biggest city in the country. Guy had his own militia, and Russian-trained personal security with night vision equipment. They'd already gone after him once, in the city, but missed him by minutes.

The major had passed around a photo. Teddy had held it, burning it into his forever memory. Abdullahi Assad. A dark face, long-boned, in a Brit-style uniform blouse. The expression intellectual, calm, but the dark eyes burning. In any group, the major had said, Assad would stand out.

He might not be here, either. No point getting worked up before they knew. His hyperactive brain started to go over his gear again, but he stopped it. He'd checked every round in his mags, he was in full battle rattle from body armor to flex cuffs. He rubbed his crotch, visualizing the Air Force captain in Saudi, the tangled nest between her legs. The reddened, pouting, somehow surly-looking slit, as if it could eat anything and it'd never be enough—

“Minute out, frogs,” said a bored voice in his ear. “Dude on the roof. Lookin' our way.”

Obie made his voice weary too. “Roger dodger. Locked and cocked.”

He pulled his night vision down and turned it on. The black interior became a green-and-white seethe, angles distorted by the short focal length lens on the imaging tube. Across from him Sumo grimaced under his own goggles, snarling like a Maori war god crossed with a cyborg techwarrior. Teddy put his game face on and snarled back. Arkin demonstrated
his trademark pit-bull bark-and-growl. Kowacki was rapping his mag against the seat frame, shoving it back in, hitting it with the heel of his hand. “Concentrate and live!” he shouted at them. “Fuck up and die! Hooyah!”

“Hooyah!”

“Forty seconds,” the voice said in his ear. “Gunship engaging.”

Tick tick tick tick tick,
not far distant. The Cobra, taking out that rooftop lookout with IR sights and twenty-millimeter shells.
Tick tick tick.

“Thirty seconds. HLZ hot. Marines going in.”

They were hitting the buildings overlooking the compound, to over-watch and suppress so no one could fire down on the team as it went in. He hoped nobody got confused. They had reflective patches on their backs, but from the front, in a narrow hallway, one shooter looked like any other.

He tripped the seat belt. Stood awkwardly and braced his boots, got his gloves on the door handle. The fast rope at his feet, ready to kick out so they could drop into the dust and murk to whatever awaited. His heart squeezed beat after beat like a sniper squeezing out rounds. He panted, salting away oxygen. No fear. Let them fear him. Fear the Navy SEALs and American vengeance.

“Ten seconds . . . five . . .”

The howl of turbines. The slam of his heart.

“Assault team: Go! Go! Go!”

The door hauled open over a pit of black sparkling with flame. Muzzle flashes. The disorienting pulse of an IR strobe through a seethe of dust.
This
was why he was alive, while he was alive. Not to make deals, or movies. Savage joy filled his heart. He kicked out the rope, positioned it so nothing would hang up on the way down. Then grabbed it and dove through.

 

BACK at the JOC, Dan slid from his chair as Ahearn appeared in the doorway. Peyster was with him, the guy from State security. So was Pride, and the JTF J-3, an Army bird colonel named Dickinson. His shaved head was pebbled like an orange, and he wore wraparound sunglasses even indoors. Ahearn looked tired but recently shaven, in fresh BDUs, cap pulled low. He tossed it on a terminal. His gaze moved past Dan, then back. “What's the status on Viper, Commander?”

Viper was a truck convoy evacuating all World Food personnel and as much equipment as possible from camps and feeding stations in the southwest. The pullback had been rendered more difficult by the sudden vanishing of all the hired Ashaaran security. Dan was trying to protect it, but
aside from a Spectre gunship from the Air Force's Sixteenth Special Operations Squadron, he had no way to defend a convoy of fifty-seven trucks with 270 aid personnel and transport staff. And right now, the Spectre was over Fenteni, backing up the QRT assault on General Assad's hide site.

On the other hand, he
did
have imagery. “Sir, the convoy's ten klicks north of Tarkash.”

“What in fuck's name are they doing there? That's way south of the river.” Ahearn sounded angry but Dan knew now this was his battle persona. His own was detached rather than enraged, but either worked, as long as you kept your brain engaged.

“I rerouted them off the main road.” Dan went to the main screen up front and bent to the keyboard. The scene zoomed, superimposing tactical map and overhead imagery. A road junction, a village, ragged folds of difficult land.

He explained the rerouting, then toggled another video source. This moved jerkily, ten frames a second, with bright streaks that wiped out the picture from time to time. It was in the green-tinted monochrome of night vision. Grid, altitude, and other reference numbers flickered at the edges of the frame. “Real time, sir. Downloading from a Pioneer.”

Pioneer was the Navy's and Marine Corps' go-to unmanned aerial vehicle, a four-hundred-pound drone that looked like a downsized Piper Cub. The Marines used it for over-the-horizon recon, targeting, and damage assessment. The control station was west of Haramah, but the output from onboard electro-opticals went to a satellite via a C-band datalink, then down again to both the control van and the JOC.

“What's he got in mind?” Ahearn muttered.

Meaning Assad. The leader of the Governing Council had vanished after the bombing. No one claimed credit, but the consensus was he was responsible. The QRT had assaulted his compound in Ashaara City. They got aides and a mass of security ministry files, some dating into the rule of the Morgue. But Assad was long gone.

If the raid went right, they might have him in custody tonight.

“It's an ambush,” Dan told him. “The Night Owls picked up these guys in the valley and tracked them into two villages. Our reading is they're still there. But we'd need troops to go in.”

“We're fully committed, sir,” the J-3 said. “As you know. Did Centcom forward our request for follow-on forces?”

Ahearn had requested another MEU and a light infantry battalion, an armor task force and a battery of self-propelled artillery. Also a corps engineer battalion and a lot more aviation. And a special operations task
force to take some of the strain off the SEALs, who were getting worn down with back-to-back missions getting the civilians out of the field.

Ahearn chewed the inside of his mouth, blinking.

“They don't pony up, we need to start thinking about a withdrawal timetable,” Pride said. “I know you don't want to. That's why you need to start your planners on it.”

“I'd rather have them thinking about how to hold,” Ahearn said, not angrily now, but as if he'd lost the energy to invest emotionally. He squinted at Dan. “How far from contact's our lead vehicle? What do you have on tap?”

“About half an hour,” Dan told him. “I've got two Humvees with the force itself. Fifties. That's about it.”

“Ma Deuce. Always nice to have her, but where's the Spectre?”

“Over Fenteni, sir. Supporting the raid.”

“Cobras? Same-same?”

“Yessir.”

“Can they do without one, Jim?” Ahearn asked the J-3, who looked dismayed. “Never mind. Forget I asked. There are times when you really wish for fast movers.”

“Yes sir, General,” Dan agreed. Fast movers were fighters, attack aircraft.

This was one of those times.

 

THE fast rope was fast. It burned Teddy's hands despite the gloves as the pop-pop-pop of blades and howl of the turbines scrambled his ears. Every second you were on the line you were a target.

And he was in somebody's sights, despite the marines overwatching this rooftop. Not close enough, because bullets were zowing past him, punching through the helo above. He hoped the team was out of the box, because the box was getting shot up pretty bad.

Whoever put out the burst only nine-ringed him all around, but the second his boots hit rooftop somebody
else
started firing too, the tracers floating by just overhead.
Over
his head, even though they should've hit him, because he'd gone right through the roof.

“Holy fuck,” he muttered, slapping at something crackly corseting his waist. He was so heavy with gear and water and ammo that, despite scorching his hands on the fast line, his boots had punched right through what felt like layers of tar paper. Or maybe, leaves glued together with what stunk like dried dung. He was kicking his feet in the air while the rest of him stuck out of the roof like a heavily armed mushroom.

His whole body convulsed at an image of his legs sticking out of the
ceiling below, balls wide open. He rolled, jackknifed his knees, and kept rolling, over hard things that didn't move. He came up with the sights to his face and triggered two quick bursts full auto toward where he figured the shooter was. Whoever the Cobra had seen on the rooftop, either they hadn't gotten him, or somebody else was up here too.

Then Sumo charged past, bounding and covering. Teddy got to his knees, then his feet, and cut left to cover the Hawaiian with another burst as he bounded again. Until the flash and crack of a grenade stilled whoever was firing.

When he spun, his IR beam lit up reflectors like bright billboards jerking against the still-triggering strobe the marines had put down. A lot of light, too much for the AN/PVS's tube. He pushed it up but still couldn't see anything, dazzled from the lightning flashes of the screen. You were supposed to keep your left eye closed to retain night vision but that didn't work when some asshole was shooting tracer at you.

“Fireinahole!” yelled Bitch Dog. He and Whacker crouched on either side of a rooftop doorway. Another grenade crack, and both SEALs went down the black gap of the stairway.

When Obie caught up they were in a downstairs hallway, stacked against the first doorway on the left. Standard clearing procedure—they'd done it ad nauseam back at the Kill House. Drilled it again and again waiting to assault
Tahia.
A flash of Suleyman's contemptuous grin. Just let him come face-to-face with that asshole here. . . .

He took low position, left of the door. Bitch Dog crimped his shoulder. He grunted, “Go,” and Sumo jerked it open.

Teddy went through with carbine at low ready, sticking to the left wall, sweeping right as Kaulukukui went right and swept left. Still dark as shit, and the fucking night viz had zero peripheral vision. Anybody with a flashlight taped to an AK could mow them down. But he saw only empty bunks. Shouts from the hallway: “Clear left.”

“Clear right.”

“Coming out!” he yelled, but overlaid with his shout was the flash and stutter of a burst from down the hallway, a turn in the corridor.