Choke Point

FORTY-TWO

Ross had deployed the second drone himself, taking the UAV to one thousand feet in a broad sweep of Crater’s south side. Superimposed over the streaming video was a city map identifying the roads and landmarks so that when the drone reached Al-Aydarus Street along which ran the mosque of Abu Bakr al-Aydarus and adjoining cemetery, he quickly designated the potential targets near the chipped stone wall below.

Men were rushing from a line of pickup trucks, carrying launch tubes, bipod support assemblies with heavy, round base plates, and optics and elevation/traverse controls through a pair of wrought iron gates and on to the cemetery grounds. The grave markers extended in somewhat haphazard rows for five hundred meters eastward, but these men kept close to the entrance, taking up positions along the perimeter wall, where there were no trees or tall buildings to get in their way.

‘Oh, are these clowns serious?’ Ross muttered as he zoomed in with the drone’s camera.

One group had already assembled their weapon, and a data box opened in Ross’s Cross-Com to display an ID and specifications:

L16 81mm mortar, standard used by British armed forces. US version known as the M252. Capable of firing smoke, High Explosive (HE), and illuminating rounds.

A good crew could launch fifteen rounds per minute, and it appeared these men were setting up as many as ten mortars within the confines of the cemetery. A second group was already transferring metal ammo cases the size of foot lockers across the cemetery, each one containing four to six rounds, Ross assumed. The cases were being piled up beside each firing position. Some teams had thrown open latches and were removing the projectiles, arranging them on the ground, their small fins and broad nose cones making them resemble atomic bombs from the 1950s.

‘Naseem! Get in here!’ Ross shouted.

The man rushed into the small kitchen, where Ross had been sitting with the drone’s remote. ‘I’ve got ten mortar teams out near the mosque and cemetery.’

Naseem glanced away, as though he needed a minute for his brain to catch up with this news. He drew his pistol and chambered a round. ‘I didn’t think it would happen this soon. I thought you’d be gone before this.’

‘Before what?’

‘The Harak are launching a major offensive.’

Ross got to his feet. ‘That’s it, then. We’re going to the safe house by the port — and you’re taking us.’

‘Captain, you don’t understand —’

30K’s voice broke over the team net:

‘Ghost Lead, I got a SITREP you ain’t gonna like. The guards at the checkpoint on Queen Arwa Road are dead. Those Harak guys have brought in some Panhards with ninety-millimeter guns. Count four blocking the whole road with two, maybe three, squads taking up defensive positions, over.’

The Panhard AMLs were light armored four-by-fours that resembled SUVs with tank-like main guns mounted on their roofs and pairs of 7.62mm machine guns as secondary weapons.

Ross began to reply when those 81mm rockets began to rain down over the city, popping and booming, reverberating and echoing, as secondary explosions rumbled through the first ones, the cacophony growing near, the building shaking once more, a few rounds sledgehammering into a building just down the street.

The Port of Aden was under siege.

‘Ghost Team! Meet me out back. We’re out of here!’ Ross grabbed his load out bag and started for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Naseem. ‘We can’t get to the port. Not now anyway.’

‘The hell we can’t. What’s the address of the safe house?’

Naseem looked confused. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Fine, but give it to me anyway, in case something happens.’

Naseem tore free a page from a tablet lying near a landline phone and scribbled down the information. He proffered it to Ross, saying, ‘Not sure this will matter. There may not be a safe place here. Not tonight.’

Ross took the paper, stole a look, then shoved it into his breast pocket.

Kozak had gone out on to the apartment’s balcony, where he was now marking the positions of several more roadblocks manned by Harak troops, who were, at first glance, indistinguishable from Yemen’s regular army. The three major highways running through Crater and intersecting with Queen Arwa Road were being cut off by more Panhards, while six M113 Armored Personnel Carriers had pulled up outside the Bank of Aden’s modern office building, with ten troops dismounting from each. These men, Kozak believed, were the regular Army, moving up in timed intervals to confront the rebels.

‘Kozak, where the hell are you?’ shouted Ross.

‘On my way,’ he answered, then bolted off the balcony, through the apartment, and went slamming out the back door, where he found 30K holding open the side door of a van similar to the one driven by their airport driver.

He threw in his load out bag, then collapsed into one of the backseats beside 30K, who’d already rolled down the window and had his AK-47 in hand.

Meanwhile, Pepper smashed open the rear window with the butt of his own AK and was now covering their six o’clock. Naseem was at the wheel, and Ross was up front with him, still working the controls of the second drone, his gaze widening.

With both drones out, they were getting good intel of the oncoming battle, working with the analysts back home to identify both rebel and government forces on their maps. The GST was monitoring communications between Army forces and the Republican Guard, and Naseem had provided Mitchell with intel sent to him by his commanders.

Kozak began to designate the blue forces (friendlies) and began observing how those troops were being engaged by Harak forces operating in squads on hit-and-run missions. The rebels seemed to appear from nowhere.

Not nowhere, actually. They’d been in the city all along, cleaning their weapons, eating a big dinner, kissing their children good night, and waiting for the balloon to go up, which in this case had been represented by that series of car bombs. Those acts had signaled the rebels to move up into their attack positions, and the mortars were the final signal to strike.

‘If I can get you to the safe house, I will. But then I’ll need to return to my troops,’ said Naseem. ‘I don’t want them to believe I’m a deserter.’

‘I find that ironic,’ Ross said. ‘But okay.’

Just as they reached the end of the alley behind the row of apartment buildings, a mortar round struck with a blinding flash, as though Thor himself had come down and decided that this building had to go.

The explosion shaved off the whole side of the structure, with jagged chunks of stone the size of washing machines tumbling end over end to shatter on to the road just meters ahead while, above, laundry ripped from the lines began floating down like tiny, surreal parachutes swinging on a blast wave backlit by tongues of fire.

A portable air conditioner slammed into the windshield on the passenger’s side, shattering the glass and dropping away with a metallic thud. More muffled thumps came from the rear, and Kozak craned his head and grimaced as shredded bodies struck in mangled, twisted heaps.

Naseem shouted something lost in the booming, but it was enough to draw Kozak’s attention back to the front.

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ hollered 30K.

‘You gotta turn, dude!’ added Pepper.

‘Don’t go in there!’ Kozak cried.

Before Naseem could shift the wheel to navigate around the growing debris field, a dust cloud swept over them, the van’s headlights unable to penetrate the blinding wave, the tires crunching across newly laid carpets of glass.

‘Brake!’ screamed Ross in Arabic. ‘Brake!’

Kozak gasped as a boulder shaped like a jagged tooth materialized ahead and came cartwheeling toward them.

Naseem slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and Kozak felt his neck snap as the van’s tires locked up — even as Naseem cut the wheel, banking hard around the boulder, which collapsed on to its side just behind them.

Without missing a beat, Naseem hit the gas again, tossing Kozak back into his seat as dust poured in through the open windows, choking the air and sending him into a fit of coughing.

And just as quickly, the dust cleared and Pepper shouted, ‘Hey, I think I got something back here!’