The Crisis (52 page)

Four carbines chattered as one, chewing through the corner somebody had taken for cover and knocking the guy sprawling back into the opposite wall. Oberg held the aim point for a second, in case there was someone behind, then hugged the wall as Whacker caromed a grenade around the corner.

But when they rounded it, it was empty, except for blood on one wall. The smear was still hot, glowing in the IR image. Dots across the floor glowed too, cooling and darkening even as he moved past, covering the
looming emptiness of another door down. He hesitated, not knowing why, just that something about the glowing blood didn't seem . . . “Hooley it. Hooley it!” Bitch Dog was grunting behind him, followed by a splintering crack as the pry-bar destroyed the lock.

Sumo's big hand slammed onto his shoulder as the other fire team yelled, “All clear,” from the other room, and “Coming out.” Teddy eyed the stairway, not liking it. He pulled the grenade out of his cargo pocket. Dropped the carbine to hang by its assault sling, pulled the pin, and crammed into the left wall, folding up small as he could. “Frag out!” he screamed, coughing in the dust and smoke. He hated clearing buildings. Still, it pushed buttons he liked having pushed.

The crack dented his eardrums in the narrow space, the blast focused upward by the stairwell. He went down it fast and low and double-tapped a skinny coming out of a hide behind some large console thing. In the weird green looming of night vision he recognized a pachinko machine. Skinnies played pachinko?

A burst flared from the far end. Bullets whacked and whined off concrete and metal. They traded bursts, ducking, and Sumo fired from behind and above him. The Hawaiian yelled, “Frag,” and Teddy went down on his face. When he scrambled up a glowing blur lay in the doorway.

“Lights,” he yelled. Enough of this, he couldn't see shit. He tore the goggles off and stuffed them—you didn't want to leave them behind—and hit his Surefire. The whole room and two doorways illuminated. The body lay in one; the other was closed. He checked behind where the guy had fired from. Pantry. A stir, and he aimed, but it was too small to be human. Probably a rat.

Whacker and Bitch Dog took the door. Looked at each other, leaned to the wall. Oberg frowned, then put his ear against it too. Through the pitch-pipe whalesong of fire tinnitus came the babble of many voices, raised in frenzied shouts of . . . defiance? Disagreement? Insult? He couldn't tell, but that many people meant Mister Big's personal bodyguard. Maybe the Main Man himself.

“Demo,” he said, but Sumo was already on it. The Hawaiian loved making things go bang. He folded the clayey brick and stuck in the detonator. Pasted it to the center of the door panel. Yeah, they were in there waiting for them to crash through, so they could AK them. Great, see how they liked a door coming at them at the velocity of a pistol bullet.

“Fire in the hole,” Sumo grunted, not too loud, in case they spoke English on the other side. The SEALs ducked and covered, Teddy vising his gloves over ringing ears. Much more of this and he wouldn't be able to hear a fucking thing. The door blew in a blast of smoke and splinters. He
and Sumo took the opening, high and low, carbines at high ready, following probing beams of brilliant light.

 

AHEARN stood, turning toward the door of the JOC. So did the others. Dan glanced that way, then rose.

The ambassador was in cream slacks and a sweat-mooned golf shirt with a Whiskey Creek logo. His white hair was rumpled and sweaty, as if he'd just taken off a cranial. He looked smaller, more worn, than at the coordination meeting at the embassy. When they'd beaten off a few looters and considered themselves invulnerable. Sure, they'd feed Ashaara. Stand up a democratic government. Fix a country run into the ground since colonial days, and save seven million people from drought and famine that had plagued them for generations.

Right. Piece of cake.

Jedidiah Dalton wrung Ahearn's hand as if being rescued after many days adrift. “General. The convoy?”

“Being watched. And the raid's going in on our friend.” The marine waved to a seat in front of the main screen. “Colonel Dickinson's got the big picture. Where we go from here, what our options are. Should we let him start?”

Over the next few minutes the J-3 outlined the status of current operations, then blocked out a four-phase campaign plan. He recommended a strategic withdrawal, while maintaining the tactical offensive, to what he called the “country core.” Phase Two was Consolidation and Search for Allies. Phase Three was Stabilization; Phase Four, Withdrawal.

Ahearn sat contemplating the final slide. Dalton didn't speak. Finally the general said, “What if I want to go firm earlier than Haramah?”

“We accept more risk,” the J-3 said.

“Have to secure the force first,” Pride pointed out. “Before we make some of these decisions. And really, they're Centcom decisions.”

“I know that, goddamn it, Colonel,” snapped Ahearn. “But we couldn't leave these NGO people out there. And whoever the enemy is, he'll need an operational pause too. At some point.”

“Search for allies,” Dalton muttered, trying to smooth his hair but making it look worse. “That means internal allies, right? We've got all those weapons your people collected. I mean, you've gotta have a shitload of guns there. Mr. Peyster, can you organize that?”

The security officer said carefully, “The question is, who we could give them to, Mr. Ambassador, without in effect turning them over to the insurgents. Without the elders and the ADA, we have few links left to the population.”

“The key to everything's going to be mobility. And frankly, our mobility planning so far has sucked,” the J-3 said. He seemed on a different wavelength, even given the fact he was still wearing his wraparounds. “Not due to any shortcoming on our part, but this whole idea of combining the JTF J-4 with the Centcom transportation people—”

“Let's not revisit that,” Ahearn said. “Concentrate on what we can do, not what we can't. And I don't want to hear that fucking word ‘frankly' again in this discussion. What
about
withdrawing, Ambassador? If it gets to be a bloodbath.”

Peyster argued fiercely that withdrawal wasn't an option. It would leave the whole west bank of the Red Sea ungoverned, threaten energy traffic through the Suez Canal, and irretrievably injure U.S. prestige. “We can't withdraw until the NGOs and camps are secure. At least that. And we can't make them secure unless we can hand over to someone at least sort of representing the will of the people. But if we had someone like that, there'd be no need to withdraw.”

“Or as close as we can come, someplace like this.”

“Right, I don't—I don't think we can be too fucking selective. But the ADA looked good.”

“They were weak sisters,” Pride said. “Talk, talk, talk.”

“So did the tribal elders,” Dan said. “So does Congress, for that matter.”

They looked over as if he was too junior to speak, but didn't object. He mustered his thoughts. “Both the elders and the ADA are gone. At least, radically weakened. We can kill all the insurgents we want, hold any phase line forever, if we get political support. That's not what's at issue. We have to have
somebody
to hand over to.” He gave it a beat. “Who's it going to be?”

Dalton was staring at his name tape. “Blair's husband?”

“Yes sir.”

“I play golf with Childrey.”

Her father. Dan shook his hand, managing not to say anything stupid, such as “Who won.” Dalton's hand was wet and tremulous. Well, it hadn't been a good three days for anyone.

Ahearn got up. “Lenson's right. It's not a military question. Mr. Ambassador, I've got to kick that up to you and Higher, up both our chains of command. Till it gets to somebody who can make a decision and make it stick.”

“Are you recommending it?” Dalton asked, sweat running down his face into his shirt.

“Pulling out? No sir, Mr. Ambassador. Not yet.”

“Fair enough. Long as we don't have to do helicopters at the last minute, like—well, you know.”

A corporal cleared his throat from a console. Dan rolled back, the wheels of his brand-new chair whispering. “Viper Convoy's coming up on the village,” the operator murmured. “And we've got hostiles.”

Pride leaned. “Sounds like you got a job to be doing, Commander,” he muttered. “If you can spare the time from hobnobbin' with the State Department, that is.”

 

THE beam reached into smoke, into whirling dust. All that was left of the door, atomized by the two-ounce charge. A body writhed on the floor, clothes shredded by splinters and the grenades he and Kaulukukui had hurled in. The floor was dirt, hard under their boots.

Past thought into conditioned reflex, Obie Oberg crouched, sights sweeping a deadly arc. A human form filled them and he tapped off two rounds, high chest, the kick of the carbine not even taking the muzzle off the target. The man went down and he swept left, still moving forward. Never stop in the kill zone. The SEALs' guttural shouts clashed with the keens of the Ashaarans. He caught another figure, triggered again, missed. Assad's boys were pulling back into a shadowy warren beneath the house they'd so confidently dropped down into. Fucking intel never got it right.

“Tunnel back there someplace,” he grunted.

“Tunnel?”

“Gotta be why they're pulling back. Some back-alley way out.”

“Shooter, left,” Kaulukukui grunted. Teddy swung to glimpse a retreating back, occluded by a low wall. He tried for a head shot, missed again. He switched to burst and hosed the dark. Sparks exploded, red and fading, but he couldn't swear he'd hit anything. He crouched, sucking dusty air as he reloaded.

The clatter of something heavier than a Kalashnikov. An RPD or an RPK, something that could let off burst after burst without overheating. What was a light machine gun doing down here?

“Door! Left!” his partner shouted. Without thought he swung and fired again, through it, till the bolt gave a hollow-sounding
pock
as it locked open on the empty magazine. His right hand had the fresh mag ready. He dropped and swapped, considered for a fraction of a second—grenade? Only one left.

They had to go through that door, but he didn't want to. Trading glances with Sumo, across it, he saw the Hawaiian felt the same. That was the advantage of training together, fighting together, so long. They didn't need
to speak. Just the flick of an eye, the lift of an eyebrow. The angle at which a muscled arm tilted a smoking barrel.

He squinted and winked. Kaulukukui nodded. Together, they went through.

He was in the doorway when the machine gun chattered again, close, half hidden in a recess his retinas registered for a millisecond in the crucifixed flare of its muzzle flashes. He was down and rolling, head over heels, then up again and slamming off the wall on the far side. Pushing his weapon light left to right now, registering scattered pistol fire in a space much larger than expected. The ground floor must push out into one of the attached buildings. It smelled dank, cellarish. A face,
fire
, a chest,
fire
, the glint of a rifle turning his way,
fire fire
. Faster than conscious thought, like a Wimbledon player moving in for the kill. Kaulukukui's huge bulk beside him in the balletic dance they'd perfected over so many missions.

Another doorway, and their last grenades. Kaulukukui swept left to right, Teddy right to left. Then he stopped, chest heaving, air sawing in and out through a throat dry as hot iron. Looking around. Not understanding.

The room was empty. But bullets were still slamming down around them. “What the fuck?” he howled. A burst cracked into the ground, spewing up dirt and stones.

He spun, looking up.

They were above, on a balcony or catwalk. All he could see was shifting shapes, then muzzle flashes in the dim. Down here, no cover. Nowhere to go. No way out except back through the doorway, where the machine gunner waited, between them and the other team.

They'd suckered the SEALs in, and pinned them in the kill zone. At least four shooters, pushing muzzles over the catwalk and firing down without exposing themselves. Not aiming, but sooner or later one of those bullets would hit. He snap-shot back, but with nothing to aim at. Beside him Kaulukukui was hugging the left wall, returning fire too, but the shooters had a clear shot down at him. Bullets ripped across rock walls, spewing chips. Hot brass spun through the air. Dirt flew, and something hard spattered his goggles.

“Obie! Y'in there?” Bitch Dog, yelling past the machine gunner.

“They got us stone, babe,” Oberg shouted back. “Set us up righteous. Some fucking assistance here.”

“Can't get to you, man. Guy's got us cold.”

He groped for a grenade, the only way he could think of to take the shooters out, then remembered: not even a flash-bang.

A shooter stuck his Kalash over the railing and emptied it wildly, spraying in their general direction like a garden hose. A bullet clipped his boot, another his harness. He couldn't believe they hadn't been hit yet, but it was only a matter of seconds. “Shit,” he muttered, backing toward a corner as he kept the sight on the balcony, waiting for the next weasel to pop up. “You bastards. Pop the fuck up, fuckers.” But they didn't expose themselves, just kept sticking rifles up and spraying the room. Sooner or later—

Head lowered, he was slamming in another mag when something flew down from the darkness. It struck the ground and took a lopsided bounce. A small green spheroid. His peripheral vision identified it as a grenade at the same moment it struck the wall beside him and glanced off.

It rolled between them, spinning, and rocked to a halt midway between them. The drill was to duck or roll, but there was nowhere to duck or roll to. Kick it away. But there was nowhere to kick it. This whole end of the room was empty. A turkey shoot, with two SEALs as the prize gobblers.