The Red Horseman

24

The cruisers were on the western side of the task force, arranged in a broad semicircle over five miles of ocean. The Tomahawk missiles popped out on cones of flame, rising and accelerating, then nosing over and descending to just a hundred feet above the sea as their turbofan engines took over. Missile followed missile, a total of fifteen in all. Their targets were five radar sites between Samarra and the southern border of Iraq, with each radar being the target of three missiles.

The last missile had just disappeared into the darkness when the carrier to the east of the cruisers turned into the wind and the first two of her aircraft rode the catapults into the night sky, one off the waist, one off the bow. The launch took seven minutes. The planes were still climbing away from the carrier when more Tomahawk missiles rippled from the cruiser’s launchers.

Meanwhile a half-dozen AH-64 Apaches were approaching their targets, two more Iraqi radar sites, at just forty feet above the desert sand. Apaches from the 101st Airborne Division had made a similar attack against radar sites only a few miles from these on the opening night of the Gulf War in 1991. The Iraqis had worked for two years to build these replacement sites, which now met the same fate as their predecessors. They were turned into twisted junk by a blizzard of Hellfire missiles, 2.75-inch rockets, and 30mm cannon shells.

Wild Weasel antimissile aircraft were already orbiting over Baghdad. Under their wings were the radar-killing beam-rider missiles that would take out Iraqi fire-control radars when they began transmitting. Since the Gulf War allied aircraft had routinely patrolled the skies over Iraq and they were there again tonight, waiting.

The two C-141s carrying navy SEALs crossed the border at thirty thousand feet on a direct course for the Iraqi air base at Samarra. Someone had suggested a feint toward Baghdad, but Jake Grafton vetoed that. The most valuable target in Iraq was at Samarra. Feints were merely a waste of fuel and precious time.

The Iraqi command center duty officer in Baghdad noticed on his radar presentations the flight of aircraft crossing the Kuwaiti border and another flight coming in from Arabia, all converging on Samarra. This was unusual, the deviation from the standard allied patrolling tactics that he had been briefed to look for. He was about to pick up his telephone when the first of the navy Tomahawk cruise missiles struck its target and one of his radars went blank. Then a second, and a third. Frantically he jiggled the hook on the telephone. The operator came on the line. Alas, Iraq’s fiber-optic, state-of-the-art military communications system was heavily damaged during the Gulf War and was still under repair. So the duty officer had to use the civilian telephone system.

“The air base at Samarra, quickly.”

What he would have said to the people at Samarra we will never know, for at that moment a Tomahawk missile penetrated the reinforced concrete wall of this command and control center and six-thousandths of a second after the initial impact its thousand-pound warhead detonated. The people inside the structure never felt a thing — they merely ceased to exist.

The battle had begun.

Flights of A-10 Warthogs and A-6 Intruders raced into the area around Baghdad and Samarra and began attacking antiaircraft missile sites. They were protected by electronic warfare jamming planes and a curtain of chaff that a flight of B-52s was dumping from thirty-six thousand feet.

The SEALs in the C-141s were up and in line. Silent, tense, they watched the red jump light high in the rear of the compartment, above the open ramp that led into cold, black nothingness. Jake Grafton, Toad Tarkington and Jack Yocke were in the middle of the line against the starboard side of the aircraft.

Jack Yocke had switched his mind off. He was running now on adrenaline and instinct.

It was like being back on the high school basketball team waiting for a tipoff, all hot and sweaty, ready to go whichever way the ball bounced.

Once his eyes caught a glimpse of the blackness yawning beyond the lead men, but he ignored it. Then the jump light turned yellow. The man behind him crowded him forward, so he took a step, nudging up toward Toad’s back.

He was chanting into the oxygen mask: “Come on, baby, let’s do it! Let’s go, go, go, go,” so when the light turned green his muscles surged and he was charging right behind Toad and shouting “Go, go, go,” and the ramp wasn’t there anymore and he was falling, falling, falling into the infinite eternal darkness.

Jake lay spread-eagle in the sky and waited for his eyes to adjust to the near-total darkness. It would have been great if they could have worn the night-vision goggles, but those bulky headsets would have been torn off by the wind blast. In seconds he was up to terminal velocity, 120 miles per hour.

He was still getting oxygen. Fine. So how many seconds had it been?

He scanned, trying to pick up the men who were falling with him. He saw a few shapes in the darkness, but that was all. He concentrated on staring into the blackness below. Nothing was visible, of course, since there was a thin cloud layer at twenty thousand feet. After they were through that the lights of Samarra should be visible underneath, perhaps the air base lights if they were still on, and to the south, the lights of Baghdad.

So he lay there in the sky feeling the cold wind tear at him, maintaining his balance. That was important, and extremely difficult to do in the darkness without a visual reference. All you could do was pray you didn’t tumble, and if that happened of course you would know it. Even though the wind was cold, he wasn’t freezing. His jumpsuit and clothes seemed to be enough. And as he fell the air would become warmer.

What was down there? Were the Iraqis on full alert, or would the surprise be enough?

Toad Tarkington had a problem. His goggles had somehow come off in the scramble out and now he was squinting against the wind. There was nothing to see, so he scrunched his eyes tightly closed and began counting. “One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three…”

He was falling at the rate of two miles a minute, a mile every thirty seconds. At the end of a minute he should be through the cloud layer. Then he would open his eyes.

This fall was a whole hell of a lot different than the last time he jumped, that time in Nevada when he and Rita had nearly bought the farm.

Actually this wasn’t bad. He could feel the cold but he wasn’t freezing. And nobody was shooting.

They were going to be shooting on the ground. Toad was certain of that. The most dangerous part of this whole jump was the last few hundred feet, when any Iraqi draftee who could lift a rifle would have a free shot.

The thing to do was to get the weapon out when the parachute deployed and be ready. He rehearsed the moves that he would make, how he would get the weapon free and cycle the bolt. Ahmad the Awful might get his shot at the ol’ Horny Toad, but it wouldn’t be free.

Yocke wasn’t counting. He was trying to stabilize himself in the spread-eagle position. He could feel the dizziness of rotation, and try as he might, he couldn’t seem to stop it. Damn!

And he had lost track of the time. Well, two minutes and forty seconds was an entire lifetime. He would still be falling like this in the middle of next week if he didn’t get stabilized.

He forced himself to spread his arms and hands to full extension. According to the chief who had briefed them, that should stop the tumbling.

But he wasn’t spread out. Now he realized that he was almost doubled up at the waist. He was so pumped up he couldn’t even tell what position his body was in!

He forced himself to full extension. The rotating feeling slowed. And stopped.

And he was still chanting. “Go go go…” He stopped and took a deep, ragged breath.

He stared straight ahead, which must be down. The wind was in his face, trying to pull his arms and legs backward, so straight ahead must be down.

Thirty years of life, and all of it led up to this. School, work, family, women, good moments and bad, and all of it was mere prelude for this moment, this free fall into a cold, black eternity.

Jack Yocke began to laugh. He laughed until he choked, then decided he might be getting hysterical, and stopped himself.

How long has it been?

Does it matter?

And the answer came back. No.

He fell on toward the waiting earth.

Jake knew he was through the cloud layer when lights suddenly appeared in the velvet blackness below. There was Samarra, and the base almost directly under him. He twisted his head so he could see Baghdad. The navy and air force were doing their job, he noted. In the blackness he saw the wink and twinkle of explosions, here and there jeweled strings of tracers streaking through the darkness at odd angles. No sounds, just muzzle blasts and flashes of warheads and those twinkling strings of tracers.

He tried to steer toward the center of the air base below, that black spot where the runways must intersect.

Now the two-miles-per-minute rate of fall was quite discernible. The lights below were coming up at sickening speed. Even though he had spent years flying tactical aircraft at night, the visual impact of his rate of descent was disconcerting. Would the parachute open?

This question must run through the mind of every free fall parachutist. Jake Grafton had a pragmatic faith in military equipment — through the years he had occasionally witnessed the spectacular, usually fatal, outcome when vital equipment failed.

He pulled his left wrist in and examined the luminous hands of the wrist altimeter. Three thousand feet still to fall!

How many seconds?

The math was too much. He waited, noting the absence of muzzle flashes. Maybe they had achieved surprise!

Toad’s eyes were slits, staring at the lights rushing up at him. He reached for and grasped the manual ripcord. And waited.

The runways were plainly visible, and the hangar. There was a plane!

How high was he? Still a couple—

The opening of the chute almost tore his boots off.

Toad took off the oxygen mask and threw it away, then began checking his equipment. He still had it. All right! He got the submachine gun unslung and checked the magazine.

Still no muzzle flashes on the airfield directly below. Please God, let them be asleep!

Jack Yocke was chanting again, some mindless sound he repeated over and over as he fell toward the lights on the earth below.

The air was warmer here. In one corner of his mind he took note of that fact, but the flashing, twinkling lights embedded in the velvet, Stygian blackness claimed the rest of his attention. The lights were coming closer, growing larger. He could even hear muffled explosions. They were having a war down there, and he was falling into it at two miles per minute.

He caught himself fumbling for the ripcord. No. No! No!

The lights were rushing toward him now, faster and faster and fast — a tremendous jolt jerked his head up and tore at his crotch.

He yelled. Into the oxygen mask.

And he was hanging by the harness, the fierce wind now a zephyr. He tore at the oxygen mask and succeeded in freeing one side of it.

He was drifting. Where? What was that lighted complex there?

The city! God, he was coming down into the city of Samarra, not the airfield, which was over there to the right. Buildings below, streets…

He pulled on the left side of the parachute risers and felt himself slowly turn in the air. Now he was going toward a street. Good! He looked up, trying to see the parachute. He could just make out its vague, winglike shape. Where are those cords that you use to steer it? He fumbled, trying now to find them. Oh well, he was coming down into that street—

Something tore at his feet and he tumbled forward all in a heap, the wind knocked out of him.

He rolled over on his back, gasping.

Alive! Thank God!

Something tugged at his shoulders. The chute was on the ground, tugging in the gentle breeze. Clumsily he got to his feet and fumbled in the darkness for the Koch fittings that held the parachute on. He got them released. The chute began to move away.

He let it go as he stood there staring all about him at the buildings, the windows, the empty street lit by the occasional streetlight. No one about. No Iraqis, which was wonderful, but no SEALs either.

In the pregnant gloom of an Arab street his euphoria gave way to fear.

He scuttled to the doorway of a building and stood sheltered there, looking and listening as the sounds of battle echoed off the buildings. The swelling, fading, then swelling sound of jet engines set his teeth on edge. His hands were shaking, he realized, and he was biting his lip.

Which way was the airfield?

He had no idea. It had been on his right as he descended but he had hit the street and tumbled and lost all sense of direction, so now he gazed upward at the three- and four-story buildings, trying to decide in which direction the airfield lay as the fear congealed into a lump of ice in his chest.

He found that he had the submachine gun in his hands. The hard coolness of the plastic and metal should have comforted him somewhat, but if it did he didn’t feel the effect.

As he tried to remember what the map had looked like when he studied it several hours ago surrounded by SEALs — in his former life, before he leaped through that extraordinary threshold from the airplane into the void — he drew a total blank. He had absolutely no idea where in the city he was or in which direction the airfield lay.

He stood paralyzed. He was panting and he was desperately afraid, a freezing, numbing fear that left him unable to think, unable to move.

The parachute finally brought him out of it. The white silk had draped itself around a car and fluttered ever so gently in the wind. Anyone looking out a window would see it. Anyone who came along, anyone who—

Jack Yocke stepped from the safety of the doorway and started along the sidewalk. His steps quickened. He ran.

He had gone several blocks and just crossed a fairly wide street at a hell-bent gallop when he heard the truck. The noise of a big engine at full throttle boomed off the buildings and penetrated his fear-soaked brain. He dove into a doorway as a large army truck thundered across the intersection he had just crossed.

Follow it! Yes. It must be going toward the base.

He waited until the engine noise died away, then willed his legs to move.

He was in the middle of the street when a jet streaked overhead just above the housetops — the thunder of its engines arrived all at once and temporarily deafened Yocke. The glass in several windows broke and fell to the sidewalk. The roar faded almost as fast as it came and left a terrifying silence in its wake.

Someone was looking out a window. He caught a glimpse of a face. He kept going. His pace was slower now, more sure. He wiped the sweat from his face with his right hand, then grasped his weapon again. He held it in front of him, ready.

He had walked for five minutes or so when he heard the first rifle shots. Single shots, then the staccato ripping of an automatic weapon. The reports seemed loud.

When Jake Grafton’s chute opened, he bounced once in the harness and breathed a tremendous sigh of relief.

He quickly took off the oxygen mask and grabbed for the steering cords on the parachute risers. He was directly over a big hangar. He didn’t have a lot of options, so he steered for the dark area behind it. He seemed to be covering ground quickly. Going downwind. There was no help for it.

The breeze carried him well clear of the hangar. He tried to make out the terrain where he would be coming down. Vague shapes — was that a truck? Then his feet struck something and he took a vicious rap on the left shin. He smacked into something else, then was on the ground with a thump.

Opening his eyes, he found he was in a parking lot. He had bounced off two trucks before he got to the ground. His shin felt like it was on fire.

He rolled over and tried to get up. His leg took his weight but the pain brought tears into his eyes. Holy—!

He pulled the chute down with the risers. Only then did he unfasten his Koch fittings.

Aagh, his shin! He sat down heavily and felt his left leg. It was swelling rapidly and maybe bleeding, but it didn’t seem to be broken.

He got the goggles off, the helmet off, then donned the infrared night vision goggles. He found the switch and adjusted the sensitivity. After replacing his helmet, he wiggled out of the parachute harness and the unopened backup chute. Now for the silenced submachine gun. He tilted the goggles up and made sure it was loaded, with the safety on.

Massaging his shin, he sat there trying to recall where the truck parking area was on the field.

Yes, the hangar he wanted was that big one he had floated over, that one over there.

Jake Grafton got to his feet and gingerly hobbled to the gate. It wasn’t locked. He stood there scanning with the goggles.

He could see figures moving out beyond the hangars. These blobs of red stayed low, moving swiftly and surely, then stopped to reconnoiter. SEALs! But closer in…there! A sentry by a guard shack, looking out into the darkness. Even as he watched, the sentry contorted and collapsed onto the concrete. Jake scanned. The shooter who had drilled the sentry with a silenced weapon from almost a hundred feet away began to creep along the side of the hangar toward the door.

Jake opened the gate and hobbled toward the hangar as fast as he could go.

The shooter by the hangar wall watched him come. When he was five feet away, the man said, “Jesus, CAG, what happened to your leg?”

Toad Tarkington!

“Banged it up. You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. Landed on some concrete. But I don’t think this hangar is the one we want. Aren’t we on the wrong side of the airfield?”

“You’re assuming this is the right airfield.”

“Don’t tell me.” Toad Tarkington pulled a compass from his shirt. He consulted it. “This has got to be the right airfield, but the wrong hangar. Ours is over there.” He pointed.

Missiles streaked overhead before they could react. They heard the explosions of the warheads detonating, then the roar of jet engines at full military power.

More jets. One went over with his cannon spitting bursts.

Jake Grafton sat on the ground. He pulled his map and a pencil flash from a leg pocket and studied it while the jets worked over the Iraqi armor beyond the field perimeter. Finally he replaced the map and flash in his pocket. “Help me up.”

“How bad’s your leg?”

“Ain’t broke. Come on. Let’s go.”

With Toad leading and Jake hobbling along behind, the two of them headed into the darkness of the center of the field toward the distant hangars on the other side.

They had gone no more than a hundred feet when they heard the small-arms fire. It seemed to be coming from the perimeter.

“Well, they know we’re here,” Toad muttered.

They came to a drainage ditch and were wading through the mud in the bottom when they heard the first chopper. It swept across the field only a few feet above the ground without a single light showing. Somewhere off to the left it slowed, almost a hover, then kept going toward the airfield perimeter.

Jack Yocke heard the background hum of the chopper engines, and he heard several more of the machines coming across the city. These were the Apaches, he assumed, the gunships that were to act as heavy artillery under the direction of the SEALs on the ground.

But he was on the wrong side of the fight. He was supposed to be inside the airfield perimeter, under cover.

Goddamnit!

Nothing in war ever goes the way you planned it. Wasn’t that what Jake Grafton told him as they waited to board the plane?

Explosions ahead. Flashes, and after a few seconds, the noise, which swept down the night streets in waves that could almost be felt. And the roar of automatic gunfire. Burst after burst.

A man opened a second-story window and stuck his head out. He saw Yocke and ducked his head back in.

That lump in the pit of Yocke’s stomach turned cold. He was sweating profusely now. Unable to do anything else, he kept going, toward the gunfire.

He came to a corner and approached it carefully. The firing was loud now, no more than a block away. Close against the side of a building and sheltered in darkness, he waited until a helicopter swept over and eased his head around. And found himself staring straight into the face of a man just a few feet away.

Yocke swung the weapon and pulled the trigger. Nothing. Mother of God! The safety! He tried to find it.

There was no time. The Iraqi came for him in a rush.

Yocke swung the gun barrel, still trying to find the safety, and literally pushed the man away with the barrel. But he kept coming.

Galvanized, Yocke pushed him again, this time using his left hand.

He felt the bite of the knife on his arm. It stung.

The knife gleamed in the man’s right hand as he crouched, then flung himself at the reporter.

Yocke was at least six inches taller than the Iraqi and twenty pounds heavier and his terror gave him tremendous strength, which probably saved his life. Somehow he got hold of the Iraqi’s right wrist and began to twist. As the two men fell to the ground the knife came loose.

Yocke got it.

And rammed it into the Iraqi’s body. Twice, three times, jabbing with all his strength.

The Iraqi groaned once, almost a scream, then the strength drained from him.

Yocke stabbed him three or four more times, then rolled away.

He lay beside the dead man, trying to get his breath.

Sticky. His hands were sticky and wet.

His arm was burning.

Horrified, he looked at the blood. On his hands, his arm, his clothes, the gear he wore. On the Iraqi. Smeared on the sidewalk.

Jack Yocke managed to get to his feet and stood swaying as the sounds of battle came echoing down the empty street. Amazingly, he discovered he still had the knife in his hand. He opened his fingers. The knife made a hollow sound when it bounced on the sidewalk.

Sobbing, Yocke examined the submachine gun still slung around his shoulders and found the safety. He flicked it off.

The Apache helicopters were pouring fire into an area by the main gate, about two hundred yards away, as Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington lay in the darkness on the edge of the concrete parking mat and studied the hangar looming ahead of them. Lights mounted above the center of the main door and by a sentry box at the left corner were still illuminated.

What the lights revealed were bodies. Jake counted. Eight. Even as he watched, one of the men lying near the hangar moved, and drew immediate fire from out of the darkness on Jake’s right. With the goggles on, Jake could see the prone figure who had just fired.

“The SEALs are here,” Toad whispered. “Isn’t this Saddam’s safety-deposit box, the Treasure Chest?”

“I think so.”

“There’s a personnel door over behind that sentry box. We might be able to get in there.”

“Let’s check in first. Keep an eye peeled.”

Jake extracted his radio and fumbled with the switches. Then he held it to his ear and keyed the mike. “Snake One, this is the Doctor.” Snake One was the commanding officer of the SEAL team, Commander Lester Slick. Slick was a hell of a name for a naval officer but if anyone snickered they did it well away from Lester, who had the body of a professional wrestler and the scarred face of a man who liked to fight and had done far too much of it.

“Snake One, aye. Say your posit.”

“By the target hangar, west side.”

“Wait one.”

They waited in the darkness, listening to the battle. Jake removed his night vision goggles and let his eyes adjust.

The radio squawked. “Snake One, this is Snake Four. There’s four of us out here in the middle of a whole goddamn raghead platoon.”

“Fight your way in, Snake Four. You’re behind schedule.”

That was Lester Slick. If you wanted sympathy, write home to mama.

“Roger.”

Jake looked at his watch. In six minutes the first of the Blackhawks was scheduled to arrive.

“Okay, gang, this is Snake One. Let’s start moving in on the Treasure Chest.”

Jake and Toad rose from the ground and scuttled toward the hangar. As they came into the light he saw five other men, SEALs, coming at a trot. “Let’s get inside,” Jake told Toad, and went for the personnel door by the sentry box.

Jake opened the door and stepped into a foyer, a dead space to keep out blowing sand. Toad was right behind him. They paused and listened, then Toad opened the inner door several inches while Jake peeked through the opening. He stepped back and motioned for Toad to close the door.

“Over a dozen men. Some armed,” Jake whispered.

“The nukes?”

“A lot of them.”

“Whoo boy!”

“There’s a door in the east side, by the aircraft door,” Jake said. “It’s open. I’m gonna step out and look around the corner. Open the door for me.” His heart was hammering, he was perspiring freely, and he was breathing hard, as if he had run ten miles, but when Toad opened the door he slipped back outside.

The light over the doorway outside had to go. Jake reached up and broke it with the silencer on the end of the submachine gun. Then he inched his head around the corner of the hangar. Just bodies visible. He ran the length of the building as fast as his sore leg would allow and paused at the next corner by the sentry box, then cautiously inched his head out.

There was a trailer or something, a dozen or so armed Iraqis, some of them looking this way. He jerked his head back.

The fat was in the fire. They must have seen him. A grenade!

He got one from his web belt, pulled the pin, then threw it as hard as he could around the corner. When it blew he leaned out a few inches and let go with the silenced weapon.

Three men were down. The nearest man was picking himself up off the concrete, just twenty feet away. Jake’s slugs smacked him and he went over backward, his weapon flying. Jake sprayed another burst at the men by the trailer, then ducked back into shelter.

Bullets splattered into the metal of the hangar just above his head as the ripping of a weapon echoed off the clustered buildings. Jake crouched, looking for the muzzle blasts. There! He squeezed off a burst as he scuttled sideways for the dubious safety of the sentry box.

More bullets spanged in.

Now he took his time, sighting carefully: this was what the Iraqi hadn’t done. He squeezed the trigger and held the muzzle down. And saw the Iraqi fall from behind a barrel where he had taken cover.

Quickly he took the empty magazine from his weapon and inserted another. Now back to the corner. Another burst at figures now trying to get behind the trailer.

There was a car there. A car? A limo, it looked like.

Shots from inside the hangar. Toad must have gone in.

Jake heaved another grenade.

After it exploded, he looked again. The car was right beside the trailer, the passenger door open. Two men were hosing lead in this direction. The car was also facing this way.

Jake got down on his belly and aimed his weapon at the front tires of the car. The two men who were upright now went down, dropping their weapons. Jake gave the tires a whole clip.

New magazine inserted.

Even though its front tires were flat, the limo started to move. Grafton pumped a burst into the engine compartment and watched as a cloud of steam came out. The limo stopped.

The gunfire on the western side of the base was building into a sustained racket. Grafton looked around. A SEAL was running toward him, his weapon at the ready.

The SEAL flopped down behind Jake. “Go into the hangar and help out,” Jake said. “One of our guys is in there. Be careful where you shoot.”

Without a word the other man got up and went into the hangar.

Jake lay where he was, watching the limo and the trailer by the hangar wall. No one moved.

A helicopter swept over. Then another. Running without lights. Rockets rippled from a third machine and streaked away to the west. Now Jake heard the roar of a 30mm cannon. This machine was barely moving, pouring fire at several tanks just outside the perimeter fence. The wash from the rotors of this machine fanned Jake.

Two figures rose from a low place out on the airfield and came slowly this way, bent at the waist. They stopped and crouched occasionally. They approached the car.

“Don’t shoot him,” Jake shouted during a momentary lull in the gunship barrage going on just behind him. “Take him into the hangar.”

With that he got up and opened the hangar door.

Inside the foyer he wiped the perspiration from his eyes, got a good grip on the submachine gun, then jerked open the interior door and dived through.

He slid right into the body of an Iraqi soldier. His throat had been cut. More bodies lay near the eastern door, the one that led to where the trailer was parked. Jake inched forward and looked carefully around. A group of Iraqis was standing near the west wall of the hangar with their hands up. Three missiles on trailers sat against the north wall, and here and there, several compact, cylindrical devices — warheads. Piles of wooden crates sat in one corner. A Scud on its launcher sat against the west wall.

“Toad?” Jake made it loud, because the noise from outside was reverberating inside this large metal building.

“Over here, CAG.”

“Everything under control?”

“Seems to be.”

“Are you behind something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stay there. I’m gonna take a look out this east door.”

Jake walked across the hangar warily. He didn’t take time to count the warheads, but there were a lot of them.

Approaching the door he stepped to one side. The door was ajar. He eased it open and inched his head around the jamb for a look. This was, of course, an excellent way to get his brains blown out, but right now didn’t seem to be the time to play it safe.

Three bodies were lying near the door. Four more were visible to the right, toward the south. And fifty feet away the limo still sat, the two SEALs kneeling behind it. Jake stepped out and walked toward them.

“There were about a dozen men here when I first saw them. Did you guys see where the others went?”

“They went hoofing it toward the north. There’s a network of trenches over there, I think. You’ll find their bodies about fifty yards up that way.”

As helicopters crossed above and the whuff of Hellfire missiles and rockets being launched washed over them, one of the SEALs seized the front door of the car and jerked it open. The driver sat with his hands on the steering wheel, offering no resistance. “This guy’s been watching too many American cop movies. Okay, Ahmad, outta there.”

The rear door on Jake’s side of the car opened. He stood ready, the submachine gun leveled, his finger on the trigger. First a leg came out, a leg clad in uniform trousers. Then an arm and head, then the man was standing there. He was bareheaded, wore a long-sleeved uniform shirt without a tie or jacket, and had a thin brush mustache on his upper lip.

Jake gestured with his gun. “Raise ’em.”

The man obeyed.

“Okay, Saddam,” Jake said, stepping aside and jerking his left thumb at the door, “let’s join the others at the party.”

Jake stopped outside the door and got out his radio. He selected the proper channel and checked in. “The weapons are here. The dance is on.”

He waited for an acknowledgment, then turned down the volume of the radio to save the battery. He kept it in his hand though.

Right now the SEALs were establishing a perimeter around this building and locating the remainder of the Iraqi Republican Guard troops. The Apaches were working over the Republican Guard camp and the nearby barracks. Yet this was makeshift, a temporary expedient until the helicopters with the 101st Airborne Air Assault troops and their heavy weapons arrived. Outside the base fighter-bombers would attack the Republican Guard without mercy and hopefully prevent Iraqi troops from amassing sufficient combat power to retake the base or hinder the American buildup. As usual in modern war, timing, mobility, and firepower were the key.

Commander Lester Slick came striding in. His radio was also squawking in his hand. “Admiral, we have four dead that I know of and about twenty men unaccounted for. One of them is the reporter.”

Jake merely nodded.

“We’ve scouted out most of the base and neutralized some of the opposition, but the bulk of my men are setting up lights for helo landing zones. The choppers should be here in about a minute, sir.”

“Runways intact?”

“Appear to be, sir.”

“So how are we doing?”

“We’re right on schedule. Less resistance than we anticipated from the Republican Guard, which is a blessing.”

“Let’s stay on schedule. When you can, send me a couple more men to guard these prisoners. And if you come across the reporter, send him in here.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The buildings of the town ended abruptly. Beyond was a sandy area, then the fence that encircled the airfield. And the fence had a hole in it, a fairly big hole that was just visible in the muted light from the town. The edge of the wire was curled and one post was awry. Beyond the hole was nothing, just darkness.

Jack Yocke lay against the side of a building facing the fence. From where he lay he could see the body of a man lying facedown, half-buried in the sand. Yocke could see the entire length of the body, which lay about twenty feet away. The U.S. style helmet was quite plain, the parachute pack on the back, the weapon, the desert camouflage trousers, the desert boots.

From the angle of the head against the shoulders, it was obvious that the man’s neck was broken. And probably half the other bones in his body.

Yocke shifted his gaze. He watched the muzzle blasts of the helicopters making runs on the Iraqi troops outside the base and the streaks the Hellfire missiles made.

To the east pulsing fingers of antiaircraft fire were rising into the night sky. The strings of tracers seemed to be probing randomly, without purpose. Even as he watched he saw the flashes of bombs exploding on the horizon, where the guns must be. The guns fell silent.

He picked up a handful of sand and idly let it run through his fingers. Then he studied the hole in the fence some more.

Well, there it was — a way into the air base. All he had to do was run for it.

It was too good to be true, really. And that was why he was lying here looking.

He concentrated on the problem, tried to think objectively about the hole in the fence. Why was it there? Perhaps the Iraqis were just sloppy. Well, that made sense. The streets and buildings he had come through were certainly Third World ratty.

He looked left. No one in sight.

Right. The same.

But…it didn’t feel right. Something was wrong.

His contemplation of the problem was interrupted by a chopper that came from over the city behind him and swept across the fence, merely a black, fast-moving shape, then laid into a right turn. He was watching as the streak came in from the right and intersected the chopper. Then it exploded. A white flash registered on his brain, then a red-yellow fireball, then the wreckage was angling downward. It hit the ground and fire splashed forward in the direction the machine had been traveling.

Even from this distance, Yocke could faintly feel the heat against his cheeks.

The fire burned fiercely for several minutes, then subsided. Finally it winked out, leaving the darkness beyond the fence even blacker than before.

Yocke looked right and left again, then began to crawl. Across the street onto the sand, toward the dead American sailor. Murphy. That was the name on his clothes.

After one more look around, Yocke got to his feet. Hunched over to present the smallest silhouette possible, he made for the fence.

He was twenty feet from the hole in the wire when he saw the helmet. He took two more steps before he saw that the helmet still had a head in it. And there on the wire, a piece of cloth. No, an arm, with a hand attached.

Jack Yocke froze.

Now he saw the hole in the ground under the tear in the fence.

Mines!

He was standing in a minefield.

He looked wildly around, trying to see the triggers. All he could make out in the gloom was sand and trash.

Off to the right — there, something moving. Only Yocke’s eyes moved. A soldier, coming this way. An Iraqi!

In front of him was the hole that led into the beckoning darkness. More pieces of the American sailor who must have tripped the mine. Fifteen feet. No more. Tracks.

Tracks! He could see where the doomed man had stepped.

Yocke moved. One step. Two. Three.

A bullet sang over his head. And another.

He ran. Straight through the hole in the wire and on for fifty or sixty feet as bullets cut the air near him and one tugged at the equipment on his back.

Finally he threw himself down and spun around facing back the way he had come. The land was so flat that through the fence he could still see the Iraqi who had been shooting at him. The helmeted man was bent over, working with the action of his rifle. A bolt action rifle!

Jack Yocke’s weapon was in his hands. He sighted it carefully, as carefully as he could as he struggled to control his breathing. Now he pulled the trigger. He held the trigger down as the weapon vibrated in his hands.

The last shell flew out and he wrestled the empty magazine out of the gun and slammed in a new one.

Now he saw that the Iraqi was down. Lying on the sidewalk, barely visible in the half-light.

Yocke sighted carefully at the prone figure. Again he pulled the trigger and held it down. He fired the whole magazine, then lay still in the darkness listening to his heart thudding. Only then did it come to him that the man he had just killed had probably been even more scared than he was. A bolt-action rifle — missing bang, bang, bang…at that range! Probably a recent draftee, maybe militia. Yocke began sobbing again.