Time to Kill: A Sniper Novel

17

Swanson sprinted across the runway, shifting his gaze from the landing lights of the approaching plane to the faraway terminal that was crowded with assembled troops. He did not really have a plan other than wreak some havoc, and the easiest way to do that was to blow some shit up — set the decrepit fuel tank truck afire, crater the runway, or even attack the tower. The most bang for his buck would come from the fuel truck, for it did not matter whether or not it was full of aviation gasoline. The trapped vapors from the last load would be more than enough to amplify the explosion, which would distract the attention of the pilot, and after that, who knew?

The U.S. armed forces had learned a lot about improvised explosive devices, the lash-up planted charges that the bad guys had popularized to face the mechanized American military during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that hard to make, an IED could pop a Humvee apart like a firecracker under a turtle. He ran to the truck with a brick of C-4 plastic explosive already in his hand. A sharp knock on the round fuel tank resounded with a dull thud, indicating that it still contained a good amount of fuel, which made him smile.

He crawled beneath the truck and secured the C-4 directly below the tank so the explosion would point upward, like an erupting volcano. The ignition sequence would come from a blasting cap triggered by a cheap cell phone, all of which had been part of the Lizard’s kit of supplies. With that done, he punched nine digits of the ten-digit telephone number into his satellite phone, then crawled back from beneath the filthy belly of the truck, glancing over his right shoulder. Another cargo plane coming down fast, with its landing gear already extended and the engines growing to a howl that made his insides shudder. Swanson did not look at his watch as he ran, for the exact time was unimportant. Either he made it back to the ditch in the next few seconds, or he would be cooked alive by his own inferno. The hard concrete of the runway gave way beneath his pounding boots to softer dirt as the noise of the approaching plane screamed even louder.

Five more steps at a dead run and he hurled himself forward and rolled into the depression. The plane engines were close and deafening as the big bird rode toward touchdown. He planted his face in the dirt, held the sat phone up high, and pressed the final digit of the cell phone number that would trigger the booby trap beneath the truck. In the millisecond prior to the connection, he hoped that Sir Isaac Newton was right with his First Law of Motion: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. That meant that the heavy airplane going better than a hundred miles per hour and pointing away from him would normally maintain that momentum and direction until the brakes were applied and the thrusters reversed. Another external force was going to change that orderly line of movement, and Kyle’s bomb sparked just as the aircraft was almost directly beside the tanker truck.

The sudden explosion sheared off part of the left wing, tore away an engine, bounced the plane straight up off the runway again, and started it into an out-of-control forward cartwheel while still moving at about a hundred miles per hour. It slid and skipped in a typhoon of golden sparks and lateral trails of flame; then the entire tail section snapped away under the structural stress. The wreckage finally came to a slow, agonizing stop about halfway down the runway, with the front half plowing into the open field beside the concrete strip. There, it settled for a heartbeat before it went up in a whoosh of flames.

Huddled in the ditch, Swanson had opened his mouth and put his hands over his ears as the concussive wave of the blast shook him, then curled into a protective ball while debris from the dying plane splattered the runway like deadly rain. When things quieted, he looked up and saw the aircraft carcass burning hot. He climbed to his feet and hurried to the patrol car, turned on the engine, and drove away with no lights. Although he heard distant screams, no thought was given to how many people he had just killed. That was the job. Just a little shock and awe to start the day, fellas. Welcome to Egypt.

The safe house was a furnished apartment on an upper floor of a high-rise building about two miles from the west gate of the airport. A cluster of similar office and apartment buildings had grown up in the space as Sharm el-Sheikh had flourished on the tip of the Egyptian peninsula, drawing in tourists, businesses, and new residents who smelled money. Parked cars and small trucks lined the curbs, and Swanson dumped the stolen auto among a clutch of older vehicles parked in a line in a small lot of sand and downtrodden weeds. Numbers had been scrawled on some windshields with whitewash; it was a used car lot just like those that can be found anywhere in the world. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he was confident that it would soon be stolen.

A siren was wailing urgently at the airport as he shouldered his bag and, sticking to the walls and shadows, walked to the rear of the high-rise and took the service elevator up to the twelfth floor.

The British intelligence service, MI6, had purchased the condominium during an advance sale even before the building was completed because it provided not only a safe haven but also put eyes on the airport, just as there were similar observation posts near the port and the oil transfer stations. The place was leased to a traveling business executive who did not exist, all bills were automatically paid through a local bank, and the pantry and refrigerator were kept stocked. Kyle rapped three times on the door and heard someone come, then pause to check the TV security camera screen. The heavy steel door swung open easily on oiled hinges. “Come in. Quickly,” said Omar. “Something has happened.”

Large windows in the apartment faced the airport, and Tianha Bialy was at the tripod of a long telescope that was focused on the inferno burning beside the runway. Plumes of fire-retardant foam and water were being sprayed onto the wreckage. “A plane has crashed,” she said.

“I see that,” responded Kyle. “What else is happening?” He dropped the bag and went into the kitchen to get a bottle of cold water.

Omar was watching the scene through a pair of binos. “Some of the troops on the ground responded out there along with the usual emergency vehicles. The others are still moving into formations. There is no real sign of panic.”

Kyle joined them at the windows. “Have any other troop carriers landed since the crash?”

“No. The next one in the landing pattern climbed back to altitude and I guess will lead the rest of them in an orbit to await orders. It does not look like the runway has been permanently impaired, so they might have enough fuel to stay up there until things are cleared away. Are you hurt?”

Tianha looked up for the first time and saw that Swanson was filthy dirty, with dark streaks of dried blood painting his tunic. “My God, Kyle, you look awful!” She looked back at the fire, then at him again. “Did you have something to do with that?”

“No, of course not. I was just doing some recon and ran into a couple of guys and we had a disagreement. Anyway, I didn’t have an antiaircraft gun on me. That looks like an accident. Did you report to London?” Deflect. Answer a question with one of your own.

“Yes. They were to pass everything on to Washington. I’m to stay put and continue to feed information.”

“Sounds about right,” Swanson said, chugging the last water from the bottle. He took the sat phone from his pack and headed for the bedroom. “So I had better check in, too. Time for E.T. to call home.”

Well, now. Someone was not playing by the rules, and Colonel Yahya Ali Naqdi of Iran’s Army of the Guardians had an idea who the troublemakers might be.

Major Mansoor Shakuri, his chief of staff, had telephoned from Sharm in a panic to report what appeared to be a deliberate attack that had brought down one of the incoming Iranian transports, with the loss of about two hundred soldiers. Tension and worry laced his voice.

Distance between the action in Sharm and the colonel’s desk in Cairo had the merit of allowing him to stay on the big picture of the overall invasion, while the major was swept up by emotion. The attack on the hotels had been carried out without any real difficulty, and the force from the beach was right on schedule. The number of troops at the airport was gradually increasing and the major said the runway would soon be open again to accept the remaining aircraft. Security was being increased to prevent further attacks.

The deaths of some two hundred soldiers was not a true disaster, for the colonel had estimated that even more might have been lost before the foothold was secured. It was the way they died that grabbed his attention. According to the major, a fuel truck parked by the runway detonated just as the plane was landing beside it, and the disaster resulted. That was no accident. Fuel tanks don’t just conveniently blow up when a military airliner passes over.

Naqdi spent a while settling down the excited major and encouraging him to continue his good work, promising that he would not be held responsible for what had happened. Their daring attempt to bring down the Egyptian government, close the Suez Canal, control the oil flow, and pose a direct threat to Israel was fraught with risk.

All the while, the colonel’s disciplined mind had been thinking about other things, particularly some soft messages that had been vibrating along the Egyptian underground intelligence web; the man known as the Pharaoh should come out of hiding and make his presence known. The contact whom the powers in London and Washington and Cairo wanted the Pharaoh to meet was an agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and the accompanying schedule showed that the fellow actually was in Sharm. That was expanded with later information that an MI6 agent wanted the meeting. CIA and MI6 agents on the loose in Sharm, and a killed airplane; too much to be a coincidence.

The colonel instructed Major Shakuri to launch a manhunt for an American named Kyle Swanson and a British woman by the name of Tianha Baily but did not tell him why.

“Are you staying in trouble, I hope?” The deep voice of Major General Bradley Middleton rumbled firm and decisive over the satellite phone, although he was thousands of miles away in the Pentagon office where he commanded Trident.

“Yes, sir. I think you might say that.”

“Good. Well, Gunny Swanson, I have you on the speaker here, and the rest of the team with me. Give us a sitrep.”

Kyle had been putting his thoughts in order ever since he saw the first boats hit the beach. “A large force of Iranian troops has invaded Egypt and seized control of Sharm el-Sheikh. They did not bring any heavy weapons that I could see, but some small artillery pieces might be arriving by boat or plane. Another force attacked the tourist hotels hard, with unknown casualties. They were dressed like Egyptian army but neither looked nor acted that way. I think they were plants. We now have eyes on the airport, where one of about fifteen troop-carrying planes crashed on approach. The runway was partially blocked. That’s about all I know at this point.”

There was a momentary silence on the other end; then the general spoke again. “You are certain that the soldiers are Iranian.”

“Without a doubt, sir. I met a couple of them up close and personal. Their ID cards said they were with the Revolutionary Guard.”

“How many?”

“I estimate they have about three to four thousand men on the ground right now from both the sea and air. Can you brief me what’s going on elsewhere? I only know what I can see.”

“Hey, Kyle.” A higher-pitched voice — Lieutenant Colonel Sybelle Summers. “Mixed reports are coming in, mostly through the media, and we got an earlier info dump from your partner. The hotel massacre also looks like a stage show to us. The attack was pretty savage, but brief, and Iranian troops chased away the bad guys. The Egyptian military is being blamed, while the Iranians are being hailed as liberators by the Muslim Brotherhood on Al Jazeera. The Brotherhood is cranking up the crowds in Cairo to embrace these actions, so the legitimate government is stumbling for answers, and their denials sound weak. Our allies are extremely nervous, trying to figure out a response. It’s just too early in the game for us to know much more than you.”

The general’s voice resumed. “Gunny, no doubt that an organized plan will be pulled together here soon, but it will take hours to implement anything. The one item that you can consider to be true is that Iran will not be allowed to take a foothold in Egypt, particularly by force. Letting them keep Sharm would be a disaster.”

“So what do you want me to do? Just overwatch and report in every once in a while?” Kyle put an edge of sarcasm into the questions.

“We discussed it before you called, Kyle.” Sybelle again. “You are the only thing we have on the ground right now, so you have to go with your gut. Try to confuse and bother them, because they are operating very close to the edge of their capabilities. At some point, these Iranian visitor units must link up with the big forces of the Muslim Brotherhood for major support, and those are tied down in Cairo and the big cities right now.”

The general said, “That can’t happen, Gunny. Do what you can to delay and destroy. Make them chase shadows and shake them off schedule until the big cheeses around here figure out what to do. Buy me some hours, Gunny. Buy me a whole clock full of hours. Someone will be here 24/7 if you need to talk.”

“Yes, sir.” He terminated the call, already starting to think like a guerrilla.

In Washington, the Trident team members exchanged looks around the table until Commander Benton Freedman spoke. “One man going against thousands? Is it a suicide mission — a Jews at Masada or a King Leonidas at Thermopylae thing?”

“No, Liz. We are just unleashing the mutt.”

“Sir, are you referring to Marc Antony’s call to ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’? Shakespeare?”

“Whatever. Get out of my office. I’m going over to the White House to brief the president. You guys sift everything we have to determine how we can help Kyle and whether we can resupply him down there in the middle of nowhere. We need to feed our war dog. I think he’s going to bite some serious Iranian ass.”