Sniper Elite: One-Way Trip

CHAPTER 30

Shortly before first light, Crosswhite and the SEALs from SEAL Team Six arrived on the southern perimeter of Waigal Village. They were exhausted and out of water, but they were only twenty minutes behind schedule. Crosswhite ordered the corpsman to dole out two time-released Benzedrine capsules to each of the men, then gave orders for Trigg and Alpha to recon the east and west perimeters of the village. The northern periphery of the village was built into the mountain itself, which extended upward another thousand feet.

From their vantage point below the village, Waigal resembled a giant house built from playing cards, each hut looking as though it was built upon the other. Though in reality, each dwelling was built into the steep, rocky slope of the mountain. The village was above the tree line, so tree cover was very sparse. The SEALs would need to move into the village as soon as possible in order to take advantage of their night vision.

Crosswhite crouched behind a boulder, looking up at the village through his NVGs. “That’s an imposing sight,” he said to Forogh.

“It is,” Forogh agreed. “They speak mostly Kalasha here. I don’t speak Kalasha.”

Crosswhite turned to look at him. “You might have mentioned that before we left the fucking house!”

Forogh shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. No one speaks Kalasha except these people.” He patted Crosswhite on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Many of them will speak Pashto as well. I doubt very much the Taliban who are holding your pilot are of the Kalasha tribe. It’s not their way. You should mention that to your men.”

Crosswhite grunted. “We won’t kill anyone we don’t have to.”

He got on the radio: “Bank Heist Two, this is Bank Heist One. Do you read? Over.”

The Night Stalkers were quick to respond: “We read you five-by-five, Bank Heist. Over.”

“Bank Heist, be advised we are in position and preparing to move on the target.”

“Bank Heist Two standing by…”

Crosswhite glanced over at Fischer, who crouched behind another boulder gripping a suppressed MK 23 pistol in his free hand. “Good to go?”

Fischer nodded.

Alpha was the first to call in: “Captain, I can’t see into the village from over here. The mountain’s too steep. All I can see are the fronts of the huts. I’ve got no movement whatsoever.”

“All right,” Crosswhite answered. “Work your way back here. Trigg, what do you got?”

“Still maneuvering,” Trigg replied. “But so far nothing at all.”

“Okay, get back here.”

When the team was reassembled, Crosswhite gave them his assessment. “This shit hole is too big to search it hut by hut. We’re going to have to take over one of those lone huts near the bottom of the village and get somebody inside to talk. Anybody got a better idea? The clock is running.”

Trigg pointed up the mountain. “I vote we take that lone hut just below the village on the ridge. It’s isolated enough from the others that we should be able to interrogate the family without disturbing the other huts.”

The hut was about half the size of a small one-car garage.

Crosswhite took a last look around and gave the order to move out, leading the way toward the lone hut some ninety yards up the slope. They covered the distance with the night wind blowing cold against them, picking their way over the rough and jagged terrain to arrive outside the hut in less than five minutes. Crosswhite signaled that he would enter first, followed by Alpha and then Forogh. The other seven SEALs would cover the village with their suppressed M4s.

The battered wooden door was not locked. Crosswhite lifted the wooden catch and slipped inside quiet as a ghost, followed closely by Alpha and Forogh. In the greenish-black field of vision, it was immediately obvious there was only one room to the hut. A lone inhabitant lay sleeping on a bunk against the wall on the far side, wrapped in multiple blankets. The room smelt faintly of what Crosswhite could only think to describe as old people… and an odor similar to rot.

“Shit, I think this one’s dead,” he muttered.

“I don’t think so,” Forogh said warily.

Alpha prodded the figure, and Forogh said “wake up” in stern Pashto. The person stirred and coughed beneath the blankets.

“Wake up!” Forogh repeated.

The figure stirred again, making a wet, phlegmy hacking sound beneath the blankets as it began to sit up.

Crosswhite reached out with his gloved hand to pull the blanket away from the face, revealing the severely distorted visage of an old woman, a face that seemed to be caving in on itself. She opened her eyes, and they rolled immediately white with no visible retinas or pupils. She mumbled something in sleepy confusion, her words unintelligible even to Forogh, and wiped at her face with a grotesquely deformed hand, nothing but worn stubs where her thumb and fingers had once been.

Crosswhite looked at Forogh and covered his face with his shemagh. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Jesus Christ!” Alpha blurted in panic, jumping away and falling backward over a chair. “Holy fuck — she’s a fucking leper!”

Crosswhite whipped around. “Calm the fuck down!”

“We gotta get the fuck outta here!” Alpha kicked the chair and scrambled away on his hands and knees.

“Relax!” Forogh said, holding his own shemagh over his face. “Ninety-five percent of people are naturally immune.”

“The fuck you say!” Alpha leapt to his feet and dashed for the door. He stood just outside the hut looking in. “Shit, we’ve already breathed her fucking air — motherfucker! Look at her fucking face!”

Crosswhite went to the door, hissing under his breath: “You’d better shut the fuck up, boy.”

“She’s a fucking leper, and we breathed her fucking air!”

Trigg grabbed Alpha from behind, clamping him in a rear naked choke, shutting off the blood to his brain and hauling him off around the other side of the hut into the shadow of an overhanging boulder. Alpha blacked out a few seconds later, and Trigg laid him down on the ground, assigning a SEAL named Speed to keep an eye on him.

Back inside the hut, Forogh began to question the blind woman in Pashto, telling her exactly who they were and not to be afraid. The old woman’s responses came in a mixture of Pashto and Kalasha. Her words were slurred and difficult for Forogh to understand.

“I can’t tell exactly what she means,” Forogh finally said to Crosswhite. “Her verb tenses are confusing. She’s either saying the American woman is being held in the hut overlooking the rest of the village or she was being held there.”

“Get her to clarify it,” Crosswhite ordered, still rattled by Alpha’s unexpected loss of cool.

Forogh shook his head in frustration. “I’ve tried to five or six times already. She doesn’t know the correct word in Pashto, so she keeps telling me in Kalasha.”

“Christ Almighty,” Crosswhite said. “Are the languages really that different? Fuck, it all sounds exactly the same to me.”

Forogh shrugged. “We can move on the building overlooking the rest of the village, or we can take over another hut.”

“Shit,” Crosswhite said. “Is she going to cause trouble after we leave?”

“I doubt it,” Forogh said. “She keeps saying how tired she is. I think all she wants to do is go back to sleep. She probably thinks this is a dream.”

Crosswhite looked out the door to see the sky was growing light in the east. The villagers would be waking up soon. “We don’t have time. We’re moving on the hut overlooking the village. You’re sure about that part, right?”

“She seems very clear about what building, yes.”

“I guess that’s something,” Crosswhite said. “Let’s go.”

When they stepped from the hut, Alpha was back on his feet and looking at the ground. He was very obviously agitated and embarrassed over what had taken place. He stood between Trigg and Speed, each of whom had a hand resting on one of his shoulders.

Crosswhite stepped directly into Alpha’s face, their noses almost touching, talking in a low growl. “Do you think you can carry out the rest of this mission, sailor?”

“Aye, sir.”

“You jeopardize these men or this mission again, and I’ll drop you where you stand. Is that understood?”

Alpha met his gaze. “Aye, sir.”

Crosswhite turned to Speed. “This man is your baggage.”

Speed nodded. “He’ll be fine, Captain. I guarantee it.”

“He better be!”

Forogh then briefed them on their objective. The hut overlooking the rest of the village was perched another one hundred fifty yards up the mountain, and they would have to move through the center of the village to reach it, climbing a 9 percent grade and weaving in and out of the conjoined buildings most of the way.

“Forget any flanking maneuvers or splitting up,” Crosswhite said. “We don’t have the time or the necessary intel for that shit. We’re going in strong through the front door, hitting the vault, and fighting our way back out any way we can — just like a fucking bank heist. You see anyone with a weapon, you drop their ass. Now let’s move, people. Sandra’s up there waiting for us.”

They worked their way past the first few huts without seeing anyone, moving upward through a narrow alley toward the second tier of buildings. It was growing light now, and they no longer needed their night vision to see where they were going. A door opened and a man froze in the doorway, eyes wide with fear. Forogh ordered him back inside and the man obeyed without hesitation, gently closing the door and bolting it.

There seemed to be five tiers of huts, more or less, but the mountain’s surface was uneven, so it was difficult to discern exactly where they were within the village. All they could do was keep climbing and shifting course toward the northwest. They mounted the third tier and rounded a corner to see a pair of teenage boys standing outside of a hut with AK-47s over their shoulders. Crosswhite sprayed them with automatic fire from his suppressed M4, and they flew backward off of their feet to land with their heads thudding against the wall of the hut.

The column of ten SEALs shuffled past the bodies with the wounded Fischer covering their ass.

A man opened the door to the hut to see what the commotion was about, and Fischer quickly clouted him over the head with his MK 23, knocking him cold and stepping into the hut to see who else might be inside. A woman stood near a table with two small children clinging to her. She looked as though she was about to scream when Fischer aimed the pistol at her face and held a finger to his lips. When he was sure she wasn’t going to scream, he dragged her husband inside by the arm and hurried back outside to catch up with the column.

When they finally came to a dead end, they grabbed a man stepping out for water, and Forogh told him where they needed him to take them. The man immediately told them that Sandra was already gone, that she had been taken away during the night. This of course did not go over well with Crosswhite, who all but jammed the suppressor of his pistol down the man’s throat, demanding the truth.

The man began to cry, swearing that he was telling the truth.

“Make him take us to the fucking hut!” Crosswhite ordered.

Forogh called the man down, saying, “The Americans need to see for themselves. Take us to the hut so they can do their jobs and leave.”

The man led them through an empty hut and out the back door, which opened onto a kind of terrace. Across the terrace was a lone hut with two sleeping teens sitting on the stoop, their heads tilted back against the door, AK-47s propped between their knees.

“Take ’em out,” Crosswhite said to Alpha, wanting to find out if the SEAL was back in the game.

Alpha stood in the doorway and shouldered his M4, preparing to fire.

The village guide began to protest.

Crosswhite whipped around and coldcocked him. “Fucking liar! Who posts guards on an empty building?”

Alpha fired a round through each of the teen’s foreheads, and they toppled off the stoop with their brains splattered on the door.

The team poured out of the hut and onto the terrace, taking up positions to cover every possible avenue of approach. Crosswhite and Trigg approached the hut and stood listening through the door. The only sound was that of a heavily snoring man. Trigg opened the latch and pushed the door inward, stepping inside with Crosswhite following.

There was a table and chairs in the main room and a curtain that hung down in the doorway to an adjoining room. The SEALs drew their pistols and advanced on the curtain. They pulled it aside and saw a bearded man sleeping in a bed.

Crosswhite was sure he’d seen that room before. He stalked across the room and aimed the suppressor of the MK 23 down into the sleeping man’s face. “Wake up, cocksucker!”

Naeem’s eyes opened and grew instantly wide with shock.

“Get the photo,” Crosswhite said to Trigg, ready to put a round between Naeem’s eyes if he so much as twitched.

Trigg produced a blown-up photo made from the rape video. The scar near his left eye was unmistakable. “Well, what the fuck do you know!” he said, flipping his pistol around to grip it by the barrel and using the butt to bash Naeem in the testicles.

Naeem let out with a deep groan and doubled up on the bed.

“Get Forogh in here,” Crosswhite ordered.

Trigg left the hut and sent Forogh inside.

“Ask him where they took Sandra.”

Forogh looked at Naeem and instantly recognized him from the video. “Where did they take the American woman?” he demanded in Pashto.

“Fuck you!” Naeem snarled in passable English.

Crosswhite bashed in his front teeth with the butt of his M4, and Naeem grabbed his face, howling in pain. “Ask him again!”

“Where’s the American woman!”

Naeem shouted something that sounded like, “Pfuck you!”

Trigg came back inside. “Captain, we gotta make a decision. It looks like we got about thirty gunmen working their way up through the village. We lost sight of them as soon as they mounted the second terrace, but they were moving fast. Are we calling for air support?”

“Flex cuff this cocksucker!” Crosswhite ordered. “He’s coming with us.”

He got immediately on the radio to the Night Stalkers: “Bank Heist Two, this is Bank Heist One. Do you read? Over?”

“Roger that, Bank Heist. Reading you five-by-five. Over.”

“Bank Heist, be advised we are in the vault, but the money has been transferred. Repeat. The money is no longer here! However, be advised that we have taken Romeo into custody. Repeat. Romeo is in custody! Over.”

“Roger that, Bank Heist. Rotors are turning. We’ll be wheels up and headed toward your location in sixty seconds. ETA fifteen minutes. Over.”

“Be sure to hold at the outer marker, Bank Heist. We’re going to have to shoot our way out of here, and we don’t need you taking RPG fire. Will advise when it’s safe to enter Waigal airspace. Over.”

“Roger. Wilco — will hold at the outer marker until you advise.”