In the Crosshairs

26

The three snipers all faced northeast, listening to the roar and rattle of the attack at the airfield. “I like that sound,” Thompson said. Bruce Brandt agreed. “Has a certain ring to it,” he conceded. They could see the glow of fire dancing in the distance. Swanson was on one knee, reloading and wondering what to do next. “Ingmar, you said we have a Blackhawk inbound to pick us up?”

Thompson forced his eyes from the attack zone and back into the darkness, looming above Swanson like a big bear. “Yep. At least one of those stealth jobs — probably a backup, too. A couple of snakes will escort them.”

“Can you communicate with them?”

“Yep. It’s kind of scratchy and all, but the closer they get the more the comms will improve.”

Swanson thought about this as he tore open an energy bar, falling silent as he chewed. The situation had changed dramatically in the past hour. He was no longer tied to a chair, listening to Luke Gibson brag. The man had actually left the house believing that he was the best shooter the world had ever seen, and had devised an elaborate scheme to bring down the CIA to prove his point. He also wanted to kill Swanson in some kind of Wild West shoot-out at a thousand meters or so, hunting and stalking. Gibson was nuts. However, at the time, he thought he held all the cards: more than enough firepower, extra men, and his enemy tied up in a little house in the middle of nowhere. Even if Swanson managed to escape, there was nowhere for him to go, nothing to stop Gibson from tracking him down and killing him like a helpless gazelle. Well, that had all changed. Swanson now had the winning hand, but Gibson didn’t know it yet. Although Swanson hadn’t acknowledged it even to himself, Gibson’s crowing about being the best had gotten under his skin, and a small candle of revenge had started burning in his stomach. “And a lot of other stuff is on the way, too, right?” Swanson dragged himself out of his thoughts.

“Like I told you before, Kyle, it’s going to be a full package.”

Blackhawks and AH-1Z attack helicopters were a potent and mobile asset, particularly following the noisy drone hit. “How about calling and getting them to hang back for a while. We’re not in danger now, and if a bigger strike is coming that will give us even more cover.”

“I can’t do that, Kyle. Bruce and I were sent in to extract you, so you’re going to get your ass on that Blackhawk.”

Brandt cut in. “Ignore him, Kyle. He just wants to go home and get a cold beer. What’s on your mind?”

“The orders, as you explained, were to bring back me and Gibson and Nicky Marks. Well, Marks is dead, but Gibson is still out there. He’s the mastermind behind this mess, and calls himself the Prince out here. Let’s go get him, then leave.”

Brandt looked around, then stared down at Kyle, waving his hand at the vast, dark expanse. “We don’t know where he is. There’s a whole galaxy out there.”

“I got an idea,” Kyle said.

“So instead of arresting your skinny butt for treason we disobey orders and work with you?” Thompson scanned the road back toward the ambush site.

“You’re not a SEAL anymore, dumbshit. We specialists are supposed to wing a lot of this to meet changing circumstances. Otherwise some butter-bar lieutenant will be having you fetch his laundry.” Swanson smiled, knowing that Thompson never liked taking a hint, much less a direct order.

“What’s your idea?”

“It’s a good idea,” Swanson said, and told them.

Bruce Brandt said, “That’s a good idea. I’ll see if our truck still runs.”

Thompson got on the radio and in less than two minutes the quartet of inbound choppers settled into holding orbits, making gentle, lazy circles to the left some twenty miles out. While he stood guard, Swanson and Brandt dug the jack-and-tire changing kit out from behind the seats, lowered the spare tire, and put it all in the bed, then slammed the tailgate. Kyle said the tire should remain flat for the time being.

The Toyota pickup had taken quite a bruising. The windows had been shot out and the body and bed were punctured by scatterings of bullet holes. Headlights were gone, paint ruined, and the right rear tire was flat. None of that was fatal for the little warhorse, though, and the engine turned over on the first try. Brandt drove it gently through a circle and pronounced it ready. The two other snipers piled into the back, and Thompson got the .50-caliber machinegun, still warm from the firefight, back in operation and fed in a fresh belt of ammunition. Swanson rested his elbows atop the cab, with his rifle pointed ahead. “Go,” he called down to the driver, and the truck limped away, retracing the way it had originally come.

The fire at the house had settled down quite a bit while they were gone, and although it was outmatched by the carnage erupting at the airstrip, it was easy to find, glowing like a burned stack of hay. Thompson swung the mounted machinegun in various directions, but there was no opposition as Swanson jumped from the back and Brandt cut the sputtering engine and got out. They walked toward the smoldering ruin and found the two young Lions still bound and tied, right where they’d been left in the roadside ditch. Swanson put down his weapon and drew his knife.

Brandt walked back to the truck, cursing the vehicle. He opened the hood and cursed at what he saw. He kicked the bumper, rammed a large shard of glass from the passenger door window, then pulled his pistol, took aim, and shot the rear tire twice. He walked to the front and put two more shots in the engine, still cursing the vehicle as if it were responsible for all the evils in the world. Thompson remained silent.

Bruce went back to the ditch. “That useless sonofabitch is dead, Kyle,” he said in Arabic. To the captives, he added, “Next time get a Dodge Ram. Should I kill these dudes?”

“Nah. They’re just kids.” He sliced through the bonds. “Get out of here, you little assholes, before my partners light you up. Go on home to Mommy.” Swanson slid the knife back into the scabbard and, ignoring the two boys, called to Thompson: “Come on down, big guy. We’re humping out of here.” Brandt had GPS with a bright little screen, and the commandos gathered around it, arguing among themselves about which way to go.

Hamid and Mohammed muttered prayers of thanks to Allah as they skittered away from the soldiers. Hamid was almost naked, so his buddy lent him a heavy vest. He thought about getting into the truck, but the Americans were abandoning it because it was useless. The crazy one had pumped two bullets into the engine, which had already sounded wheezy when it came up, and the numerous bullet holes bespoke other internal damage. It could be reclaimed come morning, but for the moment it was best to escape before the crazy one changed his mind. They ran. Looking back, Mohammed saw only that the Americans had disappeared.

“They’re gone,” said Brandt, who was watching the boys through high night-vision goggles. He began jogging quietly down the road to keep them in sight, his automatic weapon pointing the way.

Thompson jumped out of the ditch and hustled to the truck, flinging out the spare tire and the changing tools. Swanson stomped on the pry bar to loosen the nuts while Thompson got the jack in place and started cranking it up. Swanson pocketed the nuts so they wouldn’t get lost. It was one of those take-your-time moments, because a mistake in such a routine chore could amplify a simple error into a gigantic problem, and that could kill time and them as well. It wasn’t the first time either of them had to change a flat in hostile territory, and they did it as smoothly and swiftly as a dirt-track pit team.

Swanson rolled the flat into the ditch, closed the hood, took the wheel, and got the truck running again. Brandt’s two shots into the engine compartment had been aimed to miss everything and to convince the frightened Lions that the motor was dead. And the shots into the already flat rear tire reinforced that impression. Thompson resumed his position behind the gun, slapped the top of the cab, and Swanson eased forward, slowly and quietly, but steadily gaining a little speed. It had taken no more than five minutes to change the tire, which meant that the boys would have had to be world-class runners to run a mile in that time. More likely, they had tired and were walking fast, slowing down all the time, feeling that safety was straight ahead in the first outlying lights of Girdiwal.

Brandt had been expecting the truck and was waiting a half mile down the road. He waved them down and climbed in. “Game on, guys. They’re straight ahead, no more than five hundred yards. Slow and quiet.”

Gibson found what he had expected: a minimal amount of actual damage to the small airfield but a lot of smoke and fire and borderline chaos. Rockets and bombs can do that to a place. It confirmed his suspicion that the attack was only a dump of munitions from the drone, which had then fled. The sky was empty.

He toured the runway and found that it still serviceable, as long as there were markers identifying the few craters. There were no craters in the middle, because there was no middle line on a landing area made up of a square mile of dirt. Lithe small planes could approach from almost any direction. The control shed was ruined; again, no surprise, as it was the largest building there. One small Cessna was flipped over and wingless. A pen of donkeys had been savaged, and the smell of their seared flesh befouled the air. Over to one side of the airstrip, a jumbo pile of heroin and opium remained unharmed. On the other side, a fuel depot that was under camo shelter had also escaped harm. Gibson counted three other planes dispersed far from one another, all looking ready to fly. Bombing blind at night had negated much of the effect, although the shock and awe factor had been superb.

Men were already on the field putting out the fires, and Gibson figured the pilots were on their way to get the planes out of the danger zone. In other words, it was under control and, without further disruption, should be back in operation soon and they could clear out the product. He wasn’t needed at the field, so he swung to a side road that led uphill for more than a mile to a cavern set back from a broad, flat apron. One of the Lions stepped from the gloom with his AK-47 and the truck flashed its lights.

Gibson identified himself and walked to the cavern. Barrels of aviation fuel were stacked to one side of the entrance. It was cooler inside, and dim light cast weak shadows. “Is he here?” he asked the boy.

“Yes.” The youngster was jittery from the fury of the attack, and his finger lingered near the trigger of his gun.

Gibson told him to stay calm, that everything was fine. The Americans had just sent in a drone, that was all, and he had come up to make sure nothing had been damaged. The Prince’s calm and reasonable tone cast a balm over the boy. Gibson patted him on the shoulder.

“Tell the pilot to get ready, but to keep the bird in the cave until I come back,” Gibson said. He looked over at the vintage UH-1E helicopter that his dad had stolen back and stashed here after the Vietnam era. It wore the olive-drab paint job of the U.S. Army, complete with black numerals, and it was kept in flying condition with constant maintenance and a full-time throttle jockey on hand. The big rotor tilted down, idle. “This is the way out, Luke, if there is ever a true need for that sort of thing,” his father had explained. “Always plan at least one escape route when you move into a place.”

Wise counsel from the old man. Gibson stroked the smooth skin of the old Huey helicopter and walked back to his truck. It was time to go hunting.

“Fast movers ninety seconds out,” Brandt called out from his position in the bed of the truck, hands pressed to his helmet to better hear the radio transmissions from an EA-6B Prowler electronic surveillance plane high up and far away, but assigned to control the battlefield traffic. “Pair of jarheads.”

Swanson, on the machine gun, gave a thumbs-up. The truck was at the edge of the town, and his bet was that the boys were headed straight for Luke Gibson’s overnight lodging to report what had happened. Still wearing Hamid’s clothing to better blend in with the locals, he bounced out of the pickup to follow on foot in case they dodged down some alleyway.

Thompson let his speed fall off even more and followed. Bruce moved up to the big gun. They both still wore the black jumpsuits, and in the poor light could easily be mistaken for Taliban troops, but it was best for them to stay out of sight before someone became too curious. Swanson was off the vehicle, trotting ahead, and saw the boys moving toward a multistory building with bright lights aglow on the lower floor, where a few people had gathered to discuss what all the explosions had been about. A hotel.

The camera drone had arrived on station and fed an overhead view of the scene live and in color all the way back to Germany, and also to Washington. The signal was clear, but the visibility sucked.

A pair of F/A-18 Hornets swirled into the opening at the lowland front of the Wakham Corridor, flying only five hundred feet off the deck and guided by the Prowler upstairs and the all-weather-terrain systems aboard each jet. The land rose higher on each side, but marine aviators train to fly low just for missions like this, in support of their guys on the ground. The lead pilot noticed a pair of headlights on the road as he rushed through the corridor, but ignored the vehicle. The planes were loaded for bear, having been off tending to business elsewhere in Afghanistan before they were recharted to compete the work on the airfield. There was no incoming anti-aircraft fire, no golden braids of tracers carving the obsidian darkness, and, as always, no enemy aircraft, so they lowered their altitude even more and received permission to go weapons-free. They would be in and out twice before any joker down there woke up and found a Stinger missile to shoot at them. The weapons-systems operator activated the bombs, missiles, and guns and looked for specific targets. In a few more seconds, it was going to be party time around Girdiwal.

Luke Gibson saw the wingtip lights suddenly appear out in front of the truck, coming fast from nowhere, then two jets thundered overhead. He couldn’t really see them, but the force of their exhausts shook the little Toyota like a puppy with a chew toy. He ordered the driver to park and turn off the lights, and when the Toyota halted he stepped out and looked back to watch the light show. No drones this time. Those were big boys. Well, that ain’t fair, he thought.