The Cup (21 page)

CHAPTER 50

Getting into a city surrounded by enemy troops and under siege was bad enough. The surrounding region was equally hostile and that made it worse. If they went overland they would almost certainly be discovered. Nick had no illusions about what would happen then.

They talked it through and decided the only way in to the target was a high-altitude, high opening jump. Nick and Ronnie had each made one during their time in Marine Recon. Lamont and Selena had never done it.

HAHO jumps were dangerous and difficult and were only used when the risk of the aircraft being shot down on approach was extremely high. For Darraya, coming in over the target low or high was not an option. They would be over enemy territory, lighting up enemy radar. Assad's antiaircraft missile batteries wouldn't miss. They were modern and deadly, courtesy of the Iranians.

The advantage of a HAHO jump was that they could leave the plane some distance away from the target and glide in undetected. They could approach the Lebanese coast without being blown out of the air. The distance from the coast to Darraya was at the edge of HAHO capability, but it could be done.

That left the problem of getting out again. Nick called Hood and told him the Grail was in Darraya and that he wanted to take the team in to get it. He didn't tell Hood about Adam.

"I'm beginning to understand how good Director Harker is at this. I never thought much about how she got us the support we needed or where it came from. I just figured it was part of her job."

"You're the acting director now, Nick, and you seem to be doing rather well at it. You're going to have to learn on the run. Stephanie can help you with some of it. But Elizabeth had all the threads in her fingers."

"I need your help," Nick said. "The only way in there without being detected is a HAHO jump."

"That makes sense, given the situation," Hood said. "Give me a day and I can line up what you need."

"Getting in is one thing. I'm wondering how the hell we're going to get out."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Hood said, "Let me call you back in about an hour."

Hood disconnected. An hour and a half later he called.

"I had to get your security clearance upgraded before I could tell you this," he said. "You need it anyway since you're running the Project until Elizabeth recovers. DARPA has developed an experimental stealth helicopter for penetration into enemy territory. It's fast, well armed and damn near invisible. It's also quiet. It's perfect for what you need."

"Will the Pentagon go along with it? They're protective of their toys."

"They'll go along with it," Hood said. "It gives them a chance to put it through its paces and see if everything works in a real life combat situation."

"To see if everything works?"

"I told you it was experimental. It's never been tried in combat."

"You mean we'd be guinea pigs."

"In a way. Unless you have a better idea...?"

He left the question dangling.

"Could we use it to go in?"

"I don't think I can persuade them to do that," Hood said. "They'll risk it for an extraction if I tell them it's important. They won't want to make a double run, it's too much to ask."

"Half a ride is better than none," Nick said.

CHAPTER 51

Darraya was a city pulled from a madman's darkest dreams. The deserted shells of burnt out buildings formed black and menacing shapes against the night sky. There were no lights to be seen. A light would have drawn an instant hail of sniper fire or worse. The only illumination came from smoldering fires and artillery flashes in the distance, or when a shell landed and exploded.

The streets were empty except for an occasional, furtive figure. Occasional shots punctuated the night as one of Assad's snipers fired.

Haddad had encountered little difficulty crossing the government lines. Confident in their ultimate victory, Assad's men were getting careless. Now Haddad was on the street leading to the ruined Syriac church and the library hidden beneath it.

It hadn't taken more than a few hours to discover someone who could tell him where the library was located. His informant had resisted at first but then had been most cooperative. Haddad was a master at inflicting unbearable pain and it always worked. Before he died, the student he'd questioned told him the library was often empty at night. The shelling and bombing were greatest during the day. That was when the people who knew about it sought shelter. If his luck held, there would be no one there to interfere with the search for the cup.

The street had been heavily shelled. Not a single building was intact. In the dark it was difficult to determine which was the one he sought. The student had said there was a door in a side wall that opened onto a path leading through the rubble to a wooden trapdoor. The door concealed steps going down into a basement far below street level, safe from the bombs and shells. The library was as much a place of physical refuge as a place where the mind could find a moment of normalcy in the midst of so much insanity.

Haddad stumbled on a piece of masonry and saw part of the Syriac diamond cross carved into the stone. He had found what was left of the church.

The shell of the church was mostly intact. An alley ran between the church and a burned out apartment building next door. Haddad turned down the alley. A shell screamed overhead and exploded, sending bits of debris raining down on him. In the flare of light from the explosion, Haddad saw the door. He readied his AK and went through, picking his way along a path barely visible in the rubble.

The heavy wooden trap door was there, just as he'd been told. Haddad bent down, grabbed the edge and lifted it up. A faint light shone below, at the foot of a flight of stone steps.

Haddad started down the steps. As he neared bottom he heard voices.

They will help me look,
he thought.

At the bottom was a large room. All four walls were lined from floor to ceiling with shelves filled with books salvaged from the ruins of the city. Anyone would recognize the room as a library. There were even couches and chairs, where one could sit and read at leisure. The room provided surreal contrast to the devastation above, an illusion of safety.

Two men stood talking. They hadn't heard him come in and had their backs to him. Haddad raised his AK.

"I'm looking for something," he said. "Perhaps you can help me find it."

The men turned around. Haddad saw they were young, students no more than twenty or twenty-one years old.

"You don't need your weapon here, brother," one of them said. "Here, we leave the war upstairs."

"I'm not your brother," Haddad said.

Haddad looked at the walls filled with books. There was no obvious door or place where something could be hidden. The floor was stone, covered with tattered rugs.

Where was the cup hidden?

"You." Haddad gestured with his rifle. "Begin pulling those rugs off the floor."

"I won't," one of the two students said. "You can't do that."

Haddad drove the butt of his rifle into the man's stomach. He doubled over in pain. Haddad stepped back and aimed the rifle at him.

"I won't ask again."

"Do as he says, Ibrihim," his companion said.

"But…"

"Just do it."

The second man began pushing furniture off a rug.

"A good decision," Haddad said. He turned to the Ibrihim, bent over and holding his stomach. "Help him. Now."

Haddad watched as they moved the furniture and took up the rugs. He followed them around the room, looking for the telltale lines of a crypt set into the floor.

He found nothing.

"Start pulling those books away from the walls."

Ibrihim opened his mouth to protest but one look at Haddad's expression and the way he held the AK silenced him. Books and shelves began to pile up along the walls. On the third wall, Haddad saw the arched outline of a passage bricked up centuries before. It had been hidden behind the shelves

"Take that floor lamp. Break down the wall where you see the arch."

Grumbling, the men picked up a floor lamp with a heavy base.

"You are thinking you can use the lamp to attack me," Haddad said. "Is it worth your life? Use the lamp like a battering ram. Break down the wall."

"Why are you doing this?" the second man said. "We're students. We are not part of this war."

Haddad pointed his rifle at the man.

"All right, all right."

"Don't provoke him, Jalal. Do as he says."

The men swung the heavy base of the lamp into the bricks. The ancient mortar cracked. Dust dribbled down the face of the wall. They swung the lamp again and then again. A few bricks tumbled out of the wall.

"Keep going," Haddad said.

After four more blows the bricked up opening crumbled, revealing a lightless passage behind. An ancient odor of dust and something unpleasant wafted into the room.

"We've done as you asked," Jalal said. "Let us go."

"All right," Haddad said.

He pulled the trigger. The burst took Ibrihim in the chest and knocked him back against the wall. He fell forward onto the floor. Haddad swung the muzzle and shot Jalal. He walked over and fired a single shot to the head of each man, then spat on the bodies.

"Shia dogs," he said.

CHAPTER 52

A Hercules C-130 carrying Nick and the others approached Lebanon at 35,000 feet, the maximum height for a HAHO jump. They'd spent a half hour on pure oxygen to purge most of the nitrogen from their blood before climbing over 10,000 feet. The depths of the ocean were not the only place where humans could come down with a painful and fatal case of the bends.

Selena had made one military jump at high altitude, but a HAHO jump was a different ballgame. The jump over the Himalayas had been high up but the target hadn’t been that far below and she's been down in a matter of minutes. Even with her long history of sky diving and sport jumping, the Tibet mission had taught her that what she'd learned as a civilian paled in comparison to what the military went through on a mission.

As in Tibet, Selena had a fitted mask and plenty of oxygen. Jumping that high and then gliding for many miles meant long exposure to the cold outside the aircraft and increased danger of hypoxia. To combat the cold she wore a high altitude suit and heavy over gloves. Her chute was a high glide ratio variation designed specifically for HAHO jumps. There would be no freefalling on this mission. They would pop chutes as soon as they left the plane. Nick had warned her that the shock when it opened would be unlike anything she'd experienced before. Then they would begin a long, flat glide to the target in Darraya, more than fifty miles away.

Selena was nervous. A jump like this was right up at the top of special forces skills and a lot could go wrong. It was a long way from the life she'd led before the Project.

Unlike Tibet, their gear had been distributed to equalize weight. They would be a long time in the air. Heavy objects fell faster under a chute and she weighed less than Nick and the others. It was enough to alter her rate of descent and make it impossible to keep the team together. The result was that she was burdened with more than usual to make up for the weight differential.

The container with her gear rested at her feet, under the orange strap bench where she sat. In the air she would be a flying pack mule, but she wouldn't have to carry it all on the ground.

Two physiology technicians Nick called PTs kept an eye on the team, looking for any sign of altitude sickness or symptoms of something going wrong. All through the flight they'd been monitoring the team's oxygen levels, watching for signs of distress.

"ETA, twenty minutes."

The voice of the pilot came over their headsets.

"Saddle up," Nick said.

He helped Selena with her gear and her chute, checking that everything was as it was supposed to be. He didn't let her see his concern about her being on this mission. HAHO jumps made the dangers of normal parachuting seen like a ride in an amusement park.

Ronnie came over after helping Lamont and checked Nick's gear. He made a minor adjustment to a strap.

"How you feeling?" he asked Selena.

"Honestly? Nervous as hell."

Ronnie laughed. "You'll be fine. You'll also be the only woman who's ever done this."

"Sure," Selena said. "Too bad no one will ever hear about it."

"Just remember, when that chute opens it's going to be one hell of a jerk. Be ready for it. After that, it's a piece of cake."

One of the PTs came to where they were standing. "We're four minutes out. Get ready to change over to your oxygen bottles."

At two minutes everyone switched over to personal oxygen. The ramp opened, sucking heat from the plane. They moved toward the back. Selena felt her heart pounding. All she could see through the opening was darkness. The sound of the wind blended in harsh chorus with the sound of the engines.

The jump master's voice sounded in her ear piece. "Thirty seconds."

"Remember to stay close," Nick said to Selena.

They lined up for the jump, Nick first, Selena second, Ronnie and Lamont behind. The red light on the jump indicator turned to green.

"Go," Nick said.

He leapt from the plane. Trying not to think about it, Selena jumped into space after him and popped the chute. It felt as though a gigantic, unseen predator had snuck up behind her and tried to tear her arms off her body.

The cold struck like a hammer through the heavy clothing and gloves she wore. Without the mask her face would have frozen within seconds. She kept an eye on her oxygen gauge and maneuvered the chute to keep formation with Nick, gliding in front of her, a dark blur against a deeper darkness.

Below, the coast of Lebanon fell behind. She took one last look. An intermittent string of lights ran down the coast against the blackness of the Atlantic beyond. Ahead lay darkness and the murderous battlefields of Syria.