Choke Point

FORTY-FOUR

Kozak imagined the gravestones as pillars carved with hieroglyphics that told stories of how space travelers arrived on Earth millions of years ago to seed the human race. All right, his nerves had, admittedly, allowed his imagination to run wild. Time to buckle down and get to work. He ran his fingers along the headstone behind which he hid, then held his breath and peered out.

About fifteen meters ahead was the line of two-man mortar teams, positioned about twenty or thirty meters apart, standing before cases of ordnance and working like well-oiled machines, rounds dropped and fired, the chaotic explosions so loud that Kozak had shoved a plug in his exposed ear, the other filled with the Cross-Com’s receiver.

The cemetery’s perimeter wall was about two meters high, and the teams all stood within a few meters of it, utilizing the heavy barrier to shield them from any interference — gunfire or otherwise — from the road outside.

‘Kozak, how we looking?’ called Ross, his voice barely discernible above the din.

‘Stand by, boss,’ he answered, then consulted the drone’s remote. He thumbed a button, and his HUD lit with a data box showing the drone’s overhead point of view, a wireframe grid superimposed over the cemetery and marking the positions of each mortar team, along with a ruler overlay showing the length and width of the wall.

‘Okay, Ghost Lead, good to go from here,’ Kozak said. ‘I’ve got positions and the overlay.’

‘Pepper, SITREP?’ ordered Ross.

The chest pains were just indigestion, Pepper thought. Famous last words of all heart attack victims, right?

His love affair with food had to end. He couldn’t ride the roller coaster anymore. He was kicking out that bitch, and no, he didn’t care to know her name. Just leave — and take all your calories and bad health with you.

He swallowed hard and balanced his elbows on the edge of the balcony. He’d traded out the AK for his trusted M24A2 Remington and now clutched the sniper rifle, hoping the wood and smooth metal would help calm him. He’d found the mosque empty, the locks easy to hammer off, the staircase leading up to the minaret and balcony a bit too steep for his liking. Now the damned pizza was waging war with his gut, his breath shortening, his ribs feeling as though they were caving in.

‘Pepper, are you there? SITREP?’

‘Ghost Lead, Pepper here. I’m in position.’

As vantage points/sniper positions went, this little nest was first class, giving him a clean shot of any member of any mortar team. He was overlooking the entire graveyard, and if he blurred his vision, the stones resembled the spirits of infantrymen forming up for battle. If his colleagues did their jobs correctly, Pepper would not need to fire a single shot. He was just the All-State man. The team was in good hands.

A flash from just outside the cemetery caught his attention, and there, at the far end of the road, where Al-Aydarus intersected with another barely pronounceable street to the east, came a BTR-40, a Soviet-made wheeled armored personnel carrier — two operators up front, six troops in the back ready to dismount. The light Pepper had spotted had come from the BTR’s roof-mounted 7.62mm machine gun, winking fire as it had crossed the intersection.

And then, a squad of troops came running up behind the BTR, attacking the vehicle from the rear, one man pausing in the middle of the road to shoulder and fire his rocket-propelled grenade, the back blast filling the intersection with smoke. A second explosion obscured by the buildings flickered like lightning a second before a mushroom cloud lit from below broke above the rooftops.

‘Got some action down the street,’ Pepper said. ‘Better hold up for a minute.’

‘We see it,’ said Ross.

Pepper grimaced and clutched his chest. Now he was just getting paranoid, the chest pains coming on because he was worried about chest pains coming on: stress begetting stress.

He should never have gone for that stupid physical. All that doc had done was make him paranoid.

‘There is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell,’ Johnny Cash had once said. ‘Only a deep, wide gulf, a chasm that is no place for any man —’

Which was why Pepper knew that when their work was finished here, they needed to leave. This place literally was a crater, a chasm where they did not belong, where the loyalty of men waned and the fires of hatred had burned for thousands of years.

‘Pepper, am I clear?’ called 30K.

‘Hang tight … and … yes, you are! Go now!’

The plastic explosives procured for the team’s load out bags had come from the UK, so instead of being supplied with C-4, they were given bricks of PE4, an off-white colored solid whose explosive characteristics were nearly identical to C-4, although PE4 had a slightly greater velocity of detonation: 8,210 meters per second.

These technical attributes were largely unimportant to men like 30K, men with an affinity for blowing shit up. They didn’t do the math because they always overestimated the amount of explosives required for the job.

‘Kozak, you got me?’ he asked as he skulked along the wall outside the cemetery, his active camouflage on, the pack strapped to his shoulders feeling as though it’d been stuffed with bowling balls.

‘Roger, you’re marked. Two meters.’

30K dragged his elbow across the wall, keeping tight to the shadows –

‘Okay, okay, position one. Mark,’ said Kozak.

Panting now, 30K reached into his pack and produced the first of ten blocks of PE4 fitted inside a shaped charge casing and rigged with a remote detonator. The casings were cone-shaped, and 30K carefully placed the first one at the foot of the wall, then he jogged off, listening for Kozak’s next set of instructions:

‘Five meters … three … one … position two. Mark.’

30K continued placing each of the ten blocks where Kozak indicated so that when he was finished, the explosives all rested directly opposite the mortars, with only the wall standing between them.

Good old Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, would’ve been proud. He’d said that subduing the enemy without fighting was the acme of skill. Sure, they could’ve gone into the cemetery as 30K had suggested, letting him do his Rambo/Conan/Gladiator thing, running and gunning like a fire-breathing serial killer inhabited by the spirits of ancient warriors and movie stars, but the chances were high that once he took out the second crew, the others would cease fire and turn their small arms on him, drawing the rest of the team into a firefight that would waste valuable time and even more valuable ammunition.

And oh, yeah, he could die.

Besides, the Ghosts were much more cunning than that. Consequently, they’d gone back to the drawing board, or more accurately, gone back to their packs, where they always carried explosives. They relied upon shaped charges for taking out armor or structures like bridges, and they were always looking for any excuse to lighten their packs and satisfy their inner pyros.

Of course, there were some men like 30K who just wanted to see the world explode …

Ross had come up with the plan after analysing the positions of the mortars, and while it was half as glamorous as 30K’s run and governator maneuver, they needed to trade demigod status for deception.

However, if 30K was the designated pack mule, then he’d argued that he and only he got to push the button. Ross had been fine with that.

‘Ghost Lead, 30K here. I’m at the end of the wall. Charges set.’ The image displayed in 30K’s HUD showed each of his charges as flashing red triangles nestled tightly against the wall. Just on the other side were the mortar teams, and 30K literally shivered with anticipation. ‘On your mark,’ he told Ross.

‘Roger, on my mark. Pepper? What do you think?’

Silence.

‘Pepper, this is Ghost Lead. SITREP!’

‘Here, boss, sorry. We’re clear. Ready to blow.’

‘Okay, 30K. Mark.’

The remote detonators had all been set to the same frequency and would trigger the charges simultaneously. If for whatever reason a charge failed to go off, Pepper, 30K and Ross would take up the slack, moving in to finish off those crews.

30K had transferred detonation control to his Cross-Com, through which he could now issue a voice command. He took a long breath, braced himself, then opened his mouth to speak tersely into his boom mike.

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ cried Pepper. ‘We got dismounts coming up the street, heading right toward you, 30K.’

He couldn’t see them at first, but a squint and second look quickened his pulse. They were shifting between the parked cars — at least two squads in desert camouflage fatigues, either Harak or Yemeni Army, he just couldn’t tell, and there were no IDs appearing in his Cross-Com.

‘Pepper, I got ’em now. Ten, maybe twelve guys. Are they friendlies?’ 30K asked.

‘Dunno.’

‘I’m checking,’ said Kozak.

‘We got no choice,’ hollered Ross. ‘30K? Blow that wall right now!’