Hunt the Fox

Chapter Ten

They lay in tall grass within the base perimeter, all wearing night-vision goggles and holding weapons. A rocket whined overhead as Crocker calmly counted the seconds in his head. “Five, six, seven-” KA-BLAM!

The explosion sucked the oxygen out of the air, creating a wind that pulled at the green stalks. It was followed by a second blast less than a minute later.

They were waiting for Suarez and Akil, who had run ahead to recon the approach to the tunnel. ISIS rebels approximately 1,000 feet behind them had kept up the barrage for fifteen minutes now. Their target: the big rectangular building that housed Abu al-Duhur air base headquarters and the control tower. That structure stood about a quarter mile ahead and to their left. When Crocker raised his head above the three-feet-tall grass he saw black smoke streaming from the top left of the structure.

“They hit it,” he announced.

“What happens now?” Davis whispered back.

“We wait for Suarez and Akil.”

He had no idea how many of Assad’s forces remained there or what their response was likely to be. Nor was he aware how long the ISIS rebels planned to keep firing missiles.

Would they follow up the barrage with a land assault? He hoped not, because that might interfere with Black Cell’s objective-the tunnel that held the sarin canisters, which was about 900 feet to Crocker’s three o’clock, at the opposite end of a long underground bunker, B3, that housed Assad’s aircraft and crews.

The whole setup was odd. Aside from the large main building there was nothing to indicate that there was, or had been, an air base here. Everything else, except the airstrip itself, was disguised under bunkers covered with the same grass that carpeted the pancake-flat plain.

“Deadwood, it’s Romeo,” Crocker heard through his earbuds.

“You guys stop for pizza?”

“We’re almost finished. Be there in three. Over.”

“Time’s a-wasting.”

Mancini, Davis, Crocker, and Hassan had parked the trucks in a drainage culvert fifty feet away and now lay on their stomachs with their backs against an old mud wall that rose about four feet.

Four more rockets sailed overhead and exploded before Crocker saw Akil’s Phoenix IR strobe beacon in the grass ahead. Soon both men were kneeling before them, breathing hard and drinking water from the bladders they carried strapped to the back of their waists.

Suarez removed his NVGs and used an iPad and stylus to sketch the setup in and around B3.

“The tunnel is right where Hassan told us it would be, boss,” he said pointing to the screen.

The men gathered closer.

“Let’s hope the canisters are still inside,” said Davis.

“Better be,” Akil responded.

Suarez pointed over his left shoulder. “One of the four main bunkers starts about two hundred yards over there. It’s huge. Really massive. At the end of it is like a concrete parking area with sandbags and a gate. Part of that gate has been destroyed. We couldn’t tell if it had been hit by rockets or had withstood a more coordinated attack.”

“Where’s the tunnel?” asked Crocker.

“The entrance is right there, past the bunkers. Six to eight concrete stairs that lead down to a locked door. Nothing much.”

“Think you can breach it?”

“Yeah. Easy.”

“What’s in the hangar?” Crocker asked.

“B3 also appears partially damaged,” Akil chimed in. “Maybe from a previous attack. Looks like it’s being used for storage. Trucks, parts, barrels of fuel, random shit.”

“No soldiers inside?” Crocker asked.

“A few guards. The main focus of the base seems to have shifted to bunkers 1, 2, and 4, farther north and closer to the main building.”

“Got it.”

“Access to the tunnel aside from the stairs?” asked Crocker.

“We located an air vent here,” Suarez said, pointing to a location on his sketch just south of B3. “We think we can squeeze in through there.”

“Good. What’s going on behind us?” Crocker asked, pointing to the ISIS missiles behind them.

“The jihadists appear to have gotten their hands on a BM-21 Grad missile launcher system,” Suarez reported.

“It’s a truck-based Soviet system built back in the sixties,” Mancini, the weapons expert, added. “Nothing especially high-tech, but with enough bang to do damage.”

Crocker nodded. “I can see that.”

“I think they’re firing Egyptian-made Sakr-45A missiles,” Suarez said. The Sakr-45A was an eleven-foot missile with a range of about twenty miles.

“Why are they so close? Don’t those babies have range?” Crocker asked.

“Because they’re idiots,” Akil answered, “who like to film what they’re doing and post it on YouTube.”

“You mean they’re filming this shit now?” Davis asked. “At night?”

“Fuck, yeah. You’d think they were having a party. Every time they fire a fucking missile twenty guys jump in the air, dance and shout ‘Allahu akbar!’ And every time they hit something, they go crazy.”

“Zero operational training.”

Akil: “They don’t think they need it. Allah is on their side.”

“Allah or not, they’re about to get their asses kicked,” Suarez added.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the Assad forces are massing a counterattack. They’re moving out armed columns here and here,” he said, pointing to the map he’d drawn. “They’re gonna outflank the rebels and cut off their escape.”

“How many?”

“Maybe two squads with tanks and armored vehicles. They might not be flying because of the low cloud cover and the missiles, but they’re still here and they look plenty strong.”

“Good work,” whispered Crocker. “We’d better move fast.”

“Agreed,” responded Suarez.

“Akil and Davis, you get in the tunnel through the vent. Suarez and I will attack B3. Manny, you back the pickup up to the entrance and get ready to load the sarin.”

“Yes.”

“What about me?” Hassan asked.

“You wait here with the other truck.”

“What about the jihadists? What if they find me?”

Crocker removed the letter he had gotten from al-Kazaz and handed it to Hassan. “Take this. The jihadists are gonna start running away when they’re attacked, and they’re not gonna run toward the base.”

“Okay.”

Crocker also handed him his SIG Sauer 226. “Take this just in case. All you have to do is unlatch the safety, here, then point and shoot.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll be fine. We’ll be back soon.”

Twenty minutes later Crocker lay on his belly to the rear of B3 waiting for Suarez to set the C4. The body of a dead Syrian Army guard lay in the grass to Crocker’s right. He had finished him with a swipe of his SOG knife against his throat. Quick, lethal work.

Several hundred yards behind him a vicious battle raged between Assad military forces and ISIS. Lots of automatic weapons fire and the occasional explosion, like the one now that lifted him six inches off the ground and lit up the low clouds so that for an instant the entire landscape turned white.

Crocker extended his forearms and eased himself down. Based on the sloppy military tactics of the jihadists, he had to believe they were losing and would soon be retreating. When that happened, Assad’s forces would return.

He pushed the button that lit up the dial of his Suunto watch. Already 0243. Things were proceeding too slowly for comfort. If they wanted to get back to the border before sunup, they had to pick up the pace.

“Manny, Deadwood here. What’s happening?”

“The StunRays are in place.” The StunRays were special handheld hardware Mancini had brought along.

“Good.”

“Rojas?” Crocker asked into his head mic.

“I need two more minutes.”

“Time’s fucking precious.”

“I know, boss,” Suarez whispered from two hundred feet inside the hangar, where he had found a pile of propane tanks near some parked vehicles. He was trying to orchestrate the biggest possible diversion.

“Breaker, can you hear me?” Crocker asked.

“Breaker? Report.”

“We’re…” His voice broke up.

“Breaker. Breaker?”

Davis’s voice came through. “I read you.”

“What’s your status?”

“We’re in, boss.”

“The tunnel?”

“Roger.”

“Excellent. Romeo with you?”

“He’s bitching like usual. Scratched his pinky.”

“The canisters there?”

“We count six of ’em.”

“Only six?”

“How many did you expect?”

“Wait. Here comes Rojas. Hold on.”

He saw Suarez hugging the opposite wall, moving as fast as possible while trying not to be seen. Through his NVGs, Crocker eyeballed the clearance in all directions, rose into a crouch, and signaled Suarez to join him on the south side of the bunker.

When Suarez arrived, his chest heaving, he readied the radio-controlled detonator in his hand.

“C4’s set. Time to blow?”

“Hold on. Let’s move alongside the bunker first. Maintain a safe distance.”

They proceeded another hundred feet and stopped. All the action behind them seemed to have shifted farther north and west, which was ideal for their escape.

Crocker, into the head mic: “Manny, report. Ready with the truck?”

“Near the gate, Deadwood. Ready. Over.”

“Breaker and Romeo?”

“In the tunnel. Ready.”

“All right. Signal to launch!”

Suarez lowered the black button and a split second later, the bunker emitted a tremendous roar that shook the ground and sent a huge column of light, flames, and debris shooting out the back. Crocker and Suarez didn’t stick around to watch. They ran the rest of the two hundred yards in a crouch toward the opposite end-the front entrance to B3-hoping to meet Mancini soon after he entered the gate.

Mancini, meanwhile, drove the Ford pickup up to the gate and came out of the cab shouting gibberish at the two guards, who started running toward him. They readied their AK-47s and ordered him to the ground. He stepped behind the cab and pushed a button that activated the six XL-2000 StunRays he had bolted to the forward stabilizer bar of the truck.

To say the light they emitted was intense was a huge understatement. An aircraft landing light put out about one-tenth the light of only one of these little devices. The collimated beams of incoherent optical radiation temporarily blinded both Syrian guards. In fact, the light was so bright they became completely disoriented. One soldier covered his face with his arm and stumbled backward.

Mancini put them both down with suppressed blasts from his M7A1. Then he got back into the Ford, rammed through the fence, swung it around, backed in, and lowered the gate. It was like picking up furniture at Walmart.

“Vehicle in position,” he barked into his head mic. “Let’s do this! Over.”

Cradling the M7A1, he knelt beside the back gate of the truck and got ready to start loading. A Syrian guard to his left opened fire, and he responded.

“Clear?” Davis shouted from the steps to the entrance to the tunnel where he waited with Akil. Both men were drenched with sweat.

“Clear!” Mancini shouted back, now that the guard had run away. “What did you guys find?”

“We’ve got six of these babies.”

“Hand ’em over.”

Mancini set down the M7A1 and took two of the forty-pound canisters at a time, one under each arm, and started to load them into the back of the pickup. Each canister was wrapped in black plastic.

“Where’s Crocker?” Akil asked when Mancini came back for the second round of canisters.

“Dragging ass, per usual.”

Akil smiled.

They worked fast as military sirens sounded in the distance. By the time Crocker and Suarez arrived, everything was loaded.

“That it?” Crocker asked.

“Done. Where the fuck were you?” Akil responded.

Mancini pointed to a Russian S-125 Pechora missile system on a truck parked at the entrance to B3. “Looks like two more there!” he exclaimed.

“Two more what?”

“Warheads. They contain sarin.”

Crocker saw that they matched the size and shape of the canisters in the truck bed.

“I can dislodge them,” Mancini said. “Spare some civilian lives.”

“How long?”

“Give me five to seven.”

Crocker glanced at his watch and nodded. “Five. Davis, you help him.”

The rest of them guarded the pickup as the fierce battle raging in the distance moved north. As Mancini handed down the first warhead, an armored vehicle appeared from the other side of B3, speeding toward them.

“Incoming!” exclaimed Akil. “Three o’clock!”

“Keep your heads down and cover my ass!” Crocker shouted.

The.30 cal on the armored truck opened up, bullets tearing into the concrete around the pickup and ricocheting. Crocker knelt and fired one of the PG-7VR rounds from the RPG-7 he’d been carrying.

Whoosh!

The PG-7VR maintained a straight line four feet off the ground. The first 64mm round detonated against the vehicle’s reactive armor block, and the second 105mm warhead penetrated the gap created to take out the vehicle itself-just as it was designed to do.

Within seconds the truck was a ball of flaming white-hot metal.

“Bingo.”

“What next?”

“How about we get the hell out of here?”

Seven minutes after the “launch” order had been given, they loaded the last sarin warhead into the pickup and packed into the cab, shouting, “Go, professor! Take us back to Turkey!”

Mancini gunned the Ford F-250 through the gate and cut the lights. “Turkey, here we come,” he muttered.

“Piece of cake.”

They rendezvoused with the Mercedes Sprinter hidden in the concrete culvert where Hassan was waiting nervously, distributed the canisters between the two vehicles, and headed back toward the highway. Almost immediately they ran into problems. The combat between the Assad forces and the jihadists had resulted in impassable roads, which they bypassed by going off-road and driving across the flat plain-more difficult for the Sprinter than for the F-250.

Crocker told Akil, now at the wheel of the Ford, to slow down and maintain a speed of thirty-five.

Assad’s guys were pissed off, so they’d shot up some flares, which took away the SEALs’ cover. Now, to make things worse, attack helicopters were up in the air patrolling-at least one SA 342 Gazelle and a couple of Russian-manufactured Mil Mi-24s.

“So much for what Katie said about there being no helicopters at the air base,” Crocker commented.

“Who’s Katie?” Akil asked.

“Katie, the analyst at Ankara Station. The Asian chick.”

“She cute?”

“Just keep your eyes on where you’re going.”

One of the 24s bore down on them. Before its.50 cal guns opened up, Akil hung a sharp right on a little dirt path with homes strung along it. In the process he nearly flipped the truck.

“Easy, cowboy!”

“I’m trying to keep us from getting lit up.”

Crocker turned to see whether the Sprinter was still behind them. Couldn’t see it through the swirling dust.

“Slow down!”

He heard the.50 cal on the helo open fire.

“Breaker. Breaker, Deadwood here. You okay?”

A few tense seconds passed before Davis answered. “We’re in the high grass about sixty feet to your right.”

Another pass from the helo and more fire. The Sprinter found a parallel road.

“You clear, Breaker? Report. Report!”

“All good. Over.”

Based on the light issuing from their windows, the modest homes they whipped past were occupied. A sniper in one of the houses fired a shot that whizzed past Hassan’s shoulder and ripped into the dash.

Crocker picked up the 416 and returned fire. He was so focused on the windows of the houses, searching for other snipers, that he forgot the Mi-24, which had veered off in search of other targets.

“Pedal to the metal,” Crocker shouted.

“Make up your friggin’ mind,” Akil growled back.

“Stay on this road,” Hassan shouted. “It will take us straight into Idlib.”

They entered through streets piled with trash and rubble. It seemed unlikely that people still lived here, but lights shone from some of the damaged structures and they heard the occasional crack of small-arms fire in the distance.

Crocker stuck his head out the window and saw the Sprinter. “Nice work, Manny,” Crocker said into his head mic. “See the bird? You good?”

Mancini, who was driving the Sprinter, responded, “Yeah, Deadwood, high and tight. The bird has flown west. What’s the thinking at this point? You looking for real estate?”

“You see something you like, you let me know. I got cash.”

“I like the collapsed-roof thing with the jihadist graffiti sprayed all over it.”

A very pregnant dog wandered in front of the truck and stopped. Akil had to honk repeatedly to get it to move.

“You guys trying to wake the dead?” Mancini asked through the earbuds.

“No, we’re trying to get your mother to move,” Akil responded.

“Up yours with a rhino horn, douchebag.”

“The good news is that we have the sarin, and aside from a couple of cuts and bruises, everyone’s intact,” Crocker reported.

“I question, boss, whether Romeo is completely intact,” Davis said.

“More together than you’ll ever be, surfer dude pothead,” Akil shot back.

“Focus, guys,” Crocker said. “We’re still in Syria. Looks like we’ve lost our escort and probably have little chance of finding him. We’ve also got about an hour before the sun starts to rise.”

“Rising sun means Syrian helicopters, and helos mean rockets,” Mancini said.

“Thanks, grasshopper.”

“So what’s the thinking, boss man?”

Crocker turned to a shell-shocked Hassan in the front seat and asked him a series of questions about the streets ahead. Then he got back on his headset and said, “Hassan knows a completely bombed-out, deserted part of the city where we can hide till nightfall.”

“Sounds like our kind of joint,” said Akil.

“No electricity, no toilets, no running water,” Mancini responded. “The Idlib Hilton. Lead the way.”