Fortune Favors

PROLOGUE Payable in Blood

For a moment, silence reigned supreme in the desert; an otherworldly stillness that seemed an oddly appropriate punctuation mark for the violence that had occurred only a few seconds before. Sergeant Alexander Higgins, of the 6^th Queen Elisabeth’s Own Gurkha Rifles, listened intently, waiting for the one, insignificant sound that would herald the end of that quasi-peaceful instant of time.

The world did not disappoint.

He spied a hubcap turned on end and spinning wildly like some toy from his childhood, and almost smiled at the reminiscence. The hubcap was one of only a few pieces of recognizable debris left over from the explosion that had ripped a car apart right in front of him, and taken the life of his comrade-in-arms Corporal Sanjay Singh.

Singh’s body lay between Higgins and the American army lieutenant Nick Kismet. Kismet was the nominal leader of the team — what was left of it — that made a covert insertion into southern Iraq. The mission called for them to rendezvous with a high ranking government official who had expressed a desire to flee what many believed was the sinking ship of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Higgins hadn’t understood why they had been saddled with an American officer, or why CENTCOM had utilized his regiment for the assignment; Gurkhas were tough soldiers to be sure, but clandestine operations were not their forte. Nevertheless, orders were orders. They had crossed the desert sands in a CH47 Chinook helicopter, an aerial platform that looked to Higgins like a school bus with rotors at either end, and made a flawless entry, arriving practically on top of their target without raising a single alarm.

Then things had gone south.

The American officer had left with the defector, offering no explanation for his decision. The two men climbed into a battered Mercedes sedan, leaving Higgins and his platoon to trail along behind them on foot. Along with three of his men, the Gurkha sergeant had set a murderous pace, hiking through the sand alongside the paved roadway that connected the river city of Nasiryah to the Bedouin communities of the desert. Higgins had begun to wonder about the wisdom of trying to follow Kismet; what if the defector was taking the lieutenant all the way into the city?

Nevertheless, after an hour of hustling across the austere landscape, they had spied the car, sitting abandoned on the roadside. Footprints led away, down into a narrow ravine, to the partially buried remains of some ancient Sumerian structure. Weapons at the ready, Higgins and his men had followed the trail expecting almost anything but what they discovered in those ruins.

Lieutenant Kismet held audience with the dead.

The defector and a dozen or so others — young men, women and children — had been lined up against the wall and massacred. A scattering of brass cartridges, shell casings for the 5.56-millimeter NATO rounds, lay on the floor a short distance away. Kismet was ministering to some of the mortally wounded victims, offering final comfort rather than assistance — all were beyond saving. Higgins had no idea what had happened, but one thing was glaringly obvious: the shots that had murdered the defector and his family had come from Kismet’s weapon. The American’s CAR15, a smaller version of the M16s Higgins and most of his men carried, stank of recent discharge.

Kismet had denied shooting them, but his protestation of innocence was wasted on Higgins. Civilians or not, the Iraqis were, after all, the enemy. Kismet’s superiors would no doubt demand a more scrupulous accounting, but that was their business, and no concern of the Gurkhas.

They had returned to the car, anticipating a short ride back to their rendezvous site and an end to the mission. However, as Corporal Singh had reached for the door handle Kismet had shouted for him to stop. Too late, the Sikh had worked the lever and triggered the bomb. The blast ripped the car apart, smashing Singh into an almost unrecognizable pulp.

Kismet had known.

Even now, as he stared at the American officer, Higgins wondered what kind of trap he and his men had been sent into.

The burning car sent a towering column of smoke and fire into the sky, a beacon that was almost certainly visible in the nearby city where members of the Nebuchadnezzar Division of the Republican Guard had reportedly been stationed in anticipation of war; a war that had begun that very night in the skies over Baghdad. Those paramilitary soldiers would surely come out in force to investigate the explosion, and would find the shattered remnants of the Gurkha squad hastening across the sands.

And yet, there was something about the American that Higgins found strangely inspiring. He had seen young officers freeze up at the first sight of blood, the first taste of combat. Kismet was different. He could almost see the American reaching down into his deepest reserves of courage, tapping into an inner fire. It might not be enough to get them through the dark night ahead, but Higgins respected what he saw; he would willingly follow such a man into Hell itself.

Still, there remained the matter of the defector’s death, the massacre of his family, and the nagging question of who had set the explosive device in the car.

He would follow this young lieutenant, he decided. But if they survived the night, he would have some tough questions of his own for the American with the strange name.

Private Mutabe, injured in the blast, was walking unassisted, but he would be useless if they were engaged by the enemy. The blood flowing from the long shrapnel wound in his left arm had been stanched, and although he still had the use of his right arm, the morphine injection administered by Sergeant Armitraj to dull the pain would also deaden his reflexes in the heat of battle. Armitraj had already freed Mutabe of the Minimi machine gun he carried, shouldering the burden of the weapon and its heavy ammunition bandoliers.

Higgins and Kismet shared the effort of bearing the slain Corporal Singh on a hastily assembled litter. The American seemed to understand the psychological importance of not leaving fallen comrades behind. At the same time, both men knew in the event of an encounter with the enemy, they might have to cut and run.

They stayed near the road as long as they dared. Though they were fully exposed to the eyes of anyone who might pass by, they knew that once they retreated to the desert dunes, their progress would slow to a snail’s pace. For fifteen minutes they hastened along the roadside, until Higgins keen ears picked out the sound of a vehicle. Before he could voice a warning, they all heard it, and turned immediately into the open desert, seeking cover.

Higgins peered through his night vision goggles to get a better look at the approaching automobiles. He had no trouble locating them; the headlamps of two Land Cruisers burned brightly in the green monochrome display. He marked their location relative to the column of smoke that continued to hover above the bombed-out Mercedes. The Land Cruisers were on the move, following the distinctive trail of footprints left by the Gurkhas.

“Shit,” he muttered. “That tears it.”

“We’ll dig in here,” declared Kismet, not questioning Higgins’ assessment. “If we can overwhelm them with an ambush, it might buy us a few minutes.”

Higgins hefted his rifle and loaded a grenade into the M203 launcher affixed to the lower receiver. Armitraj laid out the Minimi on a dune crest, and then likewise readied a grenade. Kismet was left with only his CAR15, a weapon for close engagement if the grenades failed to remove the threat.

The two Gurkha grenadiers aimed at a spot roughly two hundred meters out, prepared to send the bullet-shaped grenades in a parabolic arc toward their destination. All that remained was to wait until the targets entered the kill zone. As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait very long.

Higgins’ grenade released with a popping sound followed an instant later by Armitraj’s. Both men hastily ejected the spent shell casings, reloading in the seconds it took for their ordnance to sail into the sky and drop back onto the road. The task was completed before the first 40-millimeter high explosive projectile detonated.

Higgins’ grenade hit directly in front of the lead vehicle, blasting its windshield inward. The driver instinctively swerved, careening toward the edge of the road even as the left front tire blew out. The Land Cruiser abruptly pitched over on its side, sliding gracelessly into the sand, as the other grenade found its mark.

The second Land Cruiser erupted in a pillar of fiery metal.

Armitraj laid his rifle aside, dove for the machine gun, and lit up the first vehicle. Higgins and Kismet also opened fire without hesitation on the wrecked vehicle, even as the dazed occupants tried to get free. Rounds from the Minimi cut through the Land Cruiser like a chain saw, killing anyone remaining inside. A lone figure — a soldier wearing the black beret and triangular insignia of the Republican Guard — struggled through the exposed driver’s side door only to fall in the crossfire of 5.56-millimeter ammunition.

The ambush had been so quick, so decisive, that Higgins found himself doubting the certainty of their victory. He kept waiting for the real battle to begin, but the desert was plunged once more into silence.

“Sergeant!”

Higgins looked up at the American. Kismet was standing near Singh’s litter, motioning for the Gurkhas to resume their flight. Higgins nodded, hastening over to join the lieutenant, passing by the glassy-eyed Mutabe. The engagement truly was over, but how long until the next? He doubted their luck would hold now that the element of surprise was gone.

There were two more Gurkhas waiting for them near the original drop zone with all the supplies they had brought in anticipation of a forty-eight hour long deployment. Those men also guarded the radio equipment. With any luck, they had heard the sound of gunfire and already called for a quick evac. Whether or not the small group now fleeing across the desert could reach the rally point, much less even find it, remained to be seen.

Even before they started walking, a noise reached their ears: a convoy of vehicles was racing toward them. Higgins looked to Kismet. “We won’t get far.”

“And we won’t last long in a firefight. Maybe the sand will slow them down, too.”

They ran. Armitraj took a position behind the wounded Mutabe, pushing the drugged soldier along at a halting pace. If Higgins and Kismet had not been burdened by the task of bearing Corporal Singh’s remains, they would have easily outdistanced the first pair, but as it was, no one made rapid progress. Their pursuers quickly closed the gap.

After what seemed like only a few minutes of running, Higgins began to see strange patterns on the dunes; shifting figures of shadow that made the sand seem almost alive. He knew immediately what it was: the headlights of the approaching enemy convoy.

Armitraj turned and dropped to one knee, firing another grenade. Then, spread-eagled on the sand, he extended the bipod legs of the machine gun and gripped the trigger before the explosive round finished its journey, detonating harmlessly forty meters from the foremost troop carrier.

Kismet, at the front of the litter, stopped abruptly.

“Sir, we should keep moving. Armitraj will buy us some time.”

“So they can hunt us down one at a time?” He lowered his end of the makeshift stretcher to the sand. “I don’t think so. We’ll make our stand here.”

Neither man noticed Mutabe, still meandering forward in the grip of a narcotic fugue, but it would have changed nothing; Kismet and the Gurkhas knew that their lives were now measured in minutes, perhaps only seconds.

Sergeant Armitraj opened fire with the machine gun, sweeping across the approaching headlights. It was impossible to judge the strength of the advancing force, but there were two armored troop carriers, side by side, leading the charge. Higgins suspected they were only the tip of the spear.

The machine gun rounds seemed to have no effect, prompting the two Gurkhas to fire another volley of grenades. Armitraj selected a white phosphorus round, and both men fired together, point blank at the vehicles. This time there was no delay.

Higgins’ round detonated on the hood of the APC on the left, decapitating the vehicle and lighting up the night. The WP grenade from Armitraj’s launcher hit directly behind the other vehicle, and erupted in a blaze of solar intensity. The surviving personnel carrier continued to advance, now only fifty meters away, but the wreckage caused by the grenades hampered the rest of the column, forcing the other vehicles to swing wide out into the desert. Higgins now caught a glimpse of the size of the attack force: there were seven vehicles altogether. Two of that number were out of commission thanks to the grenades. Higgins had killed one of the armored personnel carriers, but there remained three more, at least a full platoon sized element. The white phosphorus grenade had showered an old military Jeep with flaming metal, forcing the surviving officers to abandon it to the flames, but there were two additional Land Cruisers, each stuffed full of combatants in black berets, charging nimbly around the wreckage toward their flanks.

Higgins quickly loaded another grenade, but the leading vehicle was already too close. Kismet meanwhile, opened fire with his CAR15, showering the driver of the APC with armor piercing rounds. The hardened tungsten and steel bullets ripped through the armor, and began ricocheting crazily inside the metal interior. The vehicle swerved and stalled.

Armitraj once more unleashed a stream of lead from the machine gun. Every tenth round was a tracer, zipping through the night like a red laser beam to mark the path of destruction as he homed in on one of the flanking APC’s. A second line of tracer fire appeared from the opposite direction however, as the gunner in turret of the armored vehicle targeted his DShK 12.7-millimeter machine gun on the Gurkha sergeant’s location. Armitraj knew what was coming but his only reaction as the incoming tracers walked across the sand toward him, was to close his eyes.

A bullet struck the Minimi gun, shattering its mechanism and exploding the unfired rounds in the feed tray. An instant later, Sergeant Taranjeet Armitraj erupted in a spray of red, his body shredded by an unrelenting torrent of enemy fire and fragments of his own weapon.

Higgins knew without looking that Armitraj had fallen; he had marked the cessation of heavy automatic fire from his fellow soldier’s location. He did not mourn for his brother, not even to the extent he had felt grief at the earlier loss of Corporal Singh. The immediacy of the current battle, and the certainty that at any moment, he too would feel the icy hand of death on his shoulder, made such grief irrelevant. He emptied his magazine at a Land Cruiser, shattering its windshield, and then rapidly loaded another HE grenade into the launcher.

Not far away, Kismet was reloading his weapon, burning through magazines rapidly, but making every shot count. The enemy convoy had ceased advancing, their vehicles now a liability. The troops inside hastened from the impossible-to-miss targets, spreading out and seeking cover. More than a dozen had fallen, picked off by Kismet as they filed through the narrow doorways of the APCs; God alone knew how many more would never leave those vehicles, yet their numbers seemed undiminished.

Higgins dropped a grenade close enough to blast the nearest Land Cruiser over on its side. The fuel tank ignited in a secondary explosion that jetted sideways away from the exposed undercarriage. The shock wave momentarily stunned the Gurkha. His vision doubled, leading him to wonder if he had taken some shrapnel to the skull, but he ignored the side-effect of the concussion and slammed another magazine into his rifle. It was his last.

Kismet was attempting to fix enemy positions by the angle of incoming fire and rising from cover only long enough to snap off one round at a time before ducking down again. Higgins switched the selector on his own weapon to single shot as well, but knew it would merely delay the inevitable — that moment when he squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. He raised the M16 above a dune crest, firing at what he thought might be a sniper position, then ducked down again.

It would be over soon, he realized, and for some reason decided that he didn’t want to die alone. He had always known death in combat was a possibility — for a Gurkha it was almost inevitable — but he had never imagined that he would be the last man standing. Kismet was only twenty meters away, but reaching his position would mean running a gauntlet of enemy fire.

Kismet wasn’t a Gurkha. He was by his own admission barely a soldier; he was a reserve officer, engaging in military drills in order to pay for a college education, with no combat experience. Higgins would have willingly died for any man in his regiment, even the much-loathed officers, but for this American?

You’re going to die anyway, mate.

He almost laughed aloud at the admonishment of his inner voice. “So I am.”

He triggered a three-round burst over the dune crest, then launched into motion. He had gone three steps when a 7.62-millimeter slug from an enemy AK-47 ripped across the back of his right thigh. He winced at the unexpected burning sensation, but his leg did not fail and he did not stop running. After a dozen more strides, with blood streaming down his leg and into his boot, he made a desperate dive for Kismet’s position.

“I’m out,” shouted Kismet.

Higgins indicated his own weapon. “My last.”

Kismet nodded gravely and laid his carbine aside. Then he did something that left Higgins stunned. He drew his blade, the kukri Higgins had given him earlier.

The large knife was the signature weapon of all Gurkha fighters, and this one had belonged to the fallen Corporal Singh. Higgins had offered it as a token of his respect for Kismet, in that now barely remembered moment when he had glimpsed a bit of steel in the young officer, but had never expected to see it used by the American.

You’re one of us now, he had said. And at the time he had meant it, even though so much about what had happened that night remained beyond his comprehension.

How did I forget that? he wondered.

The lull in firing from their position gave a clear signal to the enemy. Higgins could hear the orders, barked in Arabic, for the soldiers to advance cautiously on their position. Not much longer now.

He had no idea how many rounds remained in the magazine of his M16—he figured he could probably count them on one hand. He set his gun beside Kismet’s and drew his own kukri.

The first man to crest the dune led with his rifle, flagging his approach with the barrel of his AK-47. Kismet heaved the boomerang shaped blade against the gun, smashing it aside in a spray of sparks then reversed the edge, hacking across the soldier’s torso. Higgins sprang at the next man, pivoting on his good leg and putting his full weight behind the cut.

A headless enemy soldier fell back into the arms of his comrades.

As if linked by a common mind, Higgins and Kismet dove into the heart of the approach. The stunned Iraqi riflemen had no idea how to repulse the crazed attack; they could not shoot for fear of hitting each other. They parried the assault with their rifles, swinging the wooden stocks like cudgels when they saw an opportunity, but several of their number prudently fell back.

As retreating soldiers formed a ring around the knife-wielding pair, Kismet and Higgins repositioned, back to back, to meet whatever attack was to follow. Both men were bruised from numerous blunt traumas and Higgins’ right trouser leg was soaked in his own blood, yet the fire in their eyes was undimmed.

There was fire in the eyes of their enemy as well. The soldiers of the Republican Guard orbited their position warily, their visages twisted with a mixture of rage and trepidation. Some of them drew bayonets which they affixed to their AK-47s while others drew long fixed-blade combat knives.

One strident but nevertheless commanding voice was audible above the rest. Higgins didn’t know enough Arabic to translate, but he had been a soldier long enough to know when an order to attack was given. The ranks began moving in, more cautiously this time, determined not to be taken off guard.

Higgins gripped the haft of his kukri fiercely and waved it back and forth in front of the advance. He assumed Kismet was doing the same. The American officer’s back was pressed reassuringly against his own. At least he wouldn’t die alone. “A pleasure serving with you, sir.”

“The pleasure was all yours.”

Kismet’s voice sounded strange when he said it, and it took Higgins a moment to realize that the American was laughing; a harsh, sarcastic chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless.

My God, thought Higgins. He’s actually laughing in the face of death.

“Hey, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir?” Higgins was in awe, wondering what the American would say or do next, but Kismet’s voice was now only solemn.

“See you in the next life.”