Warlord

FORTY-TWO

STAND BY, ZULU, YANKEE GOES GREEN in twenty seconds," Lieutenant Bolt said, silently raising the flat of his hand and motioning his squad to a halt. He and Hawke watched the digital timers on their wrists tick down to…four…three…two…one! Suddenly the muffled but deafening sound of the countless flash-bang grenades hurled inside the Barking Dog's windows could be heard. The blinding light and painfully high decibel level produced would disorient everyone inside and gain the assault teams precious seconds.

Bolt and Hawke ran in a low crouch toward the front entrance of the Barking Dog.

Standing to either side of the peeling and cracked front door, Bolt looked at Hawke as he prepared to kick the door in. Hawke nodded and Bolt saw that the man was more than ready. The icy hardness of the look in his eyes was actually disturbing to the young lieutenant. He'd seen warriors eager for battle before, but this was intensity of an entirely different order of magnitude.

Hawke said through clenched teeth, "Let's do it."

The force of Bolt's big boot split the wooden door and blew it off its hinges. The lieutenant immediately pulled the spoons on two smoke grenades and lobbed them inside the entrance hall. He dashed into the smoke-filled area and made for the center stairs at a full run. Hawke and the rest of Yankee were right behind him.

To Hawke's right and left were two large rooms. In each, Hawke saw large numbers of hooded men rising from the floor, AK-47s already in their hands.

The sound of the flash-bangs throughout the house and the splintered front door had roused the enemy, but by the time they were fully awake, reoriented, and had begun firing their weapons, all of Yankee section had raced up two flights of creaky wooden stairs, and gained the top floor.

"Zulu, go, go, go!" Bolt said.

The men of Zulu squad now started pouring inside, and seconds later a raging firefight began on either side of the stairs. Hawke glanced back down to the ground floor and all he could see in the billowing smoke below were glowing white halos and muzzle flashes. So far, mercifully, there were no fallen angels.

As previously agreed, Bolt went left at the top of the stairs and Hawke went right. Each man had six commandos covering his six. The low-ceilinged hallway had two closed doors and an open window at the far end. As Hawke approached it a smoke grenade came flying through. He reached out, caught it on the fly, and winged it back outside. He'd no need of more smoke in the hall now, just inside the two rooms he had to clear.

He looked back toward the stairs. Half his men were "stacked" outside the first closed door, lined up for dynamic entry into the room. Weapons at the ready, they waited for his signal. The other half was stacked right behind him at the door by the window.

He had just motioned one man forward to breach the door when he heard multiple staccato bursts of enemy automatic fire from the other end of the hall. Bolt's men were already engaged in clearing two of the four top-floor rooms.

The sound of fire, he knew, would make the terrorist combatants on the other side of his door trigger-happy to say the least. His men were going in with weapons suppressed. This bought you precious time while the bad guys were trying to figure out "what the hell was that and where did it come from?" Suppressors also keep muzzle blast to a minimum, assisting the entry team in situation awareness.

Yankee squad had been trained to the point of automatic response. The body automatically brought the weapon up to the ready. Trained endlessly in the fundamentals of sight alignment and trigger control, they now reflexively applied those two muscle-memory skills in the heat of combat. These British Army troops were as lethal a group of men as existed, taught to neutralize the hostile until he is no longer a threat.

"Yankee, go," Hawke said into his lip mike, signaling the other team's entry at the same moment his commando put his shoulder to the door, blowing it inward. He immediately rolled to his right, followed by Hawke and the balance of the team. Rule One was you never enter a room from the center of the doorway; that is called the Death Zone.

You go in from either side, low and fast, acquire targets, and hit them.

Which is what Hawke did to the man firing his AK-47 at him from the floor, the rounds zipping over Hawke's head and raining down plaster, as he began to lower the weapon for the kill. Hawke drew the P9 handgun with blinding speed and shot the man in the forehead in a single motion. There'd been no time for a body shot.

"Commander, behind you!" he heard one of his men shout and he whirled about to face a man three feet away with a gun pointed at his head. Hawke's instincts were operating at a level where he could see the man's finger applying pressure to the trigger. He was looking death right in the face when that face ceased to exist, the man's head literally disintegrating before his eyes. A halo from across the room had taken him out with a head shot.

Hawke estimated about ten armed men remaining in the room, half of them capable of getting off a shot before they were killed. The IRA soldiers, disorganized and disoriented by the intensity of the surprise attack, were firing blindly and missing. Three more of them went down, and it was clear Yankee had achieved dominance in the room.

"The rest of you," Hawke shouted, swinging his M8 back and forth to cover them, "throw down your weapons! Now."

Seeing resistance was useless, they complied instantly, the AKs rattling to the floor.

"Hands up where I can see them. Everyone against the far wall. Good. Now turn and face it, putting your hands on the wall above your heads."

He now had seven prisoners on his hands. His only thought was that one of them might be Smith. He reached forward and yanked the balaclava off the head of the nearest man. A redheaded kid not much more than twenty stared at him with blinking blue eyes.

"Sergeant, cuff these men. Two of you stay here and cover these prisoners. The rest of you follow me," Hawke said, heading for the door. Once more in the hallway, he heard minimal fire and Lieutenant Bolt's voice screaming, "On the floor! Now, get on the fucking floor or you're fucking dead!"

Situation under control at that end, he thought, peering into the adjacent room. The shooting had ceased, but he saw two halos on the floor alongside the dead IRA men and the prisoners already with their hands cuffed behind them.

"Two of ours down in here, sir."

"How badly are they hurt, Sergeant?"

"It's Onslow, sir. Afraid he's dead. Gut shot. Bled out during the firefight. Afraid I didn't see him in time."

"Don't blame yourself, you were busy. How about the other soldier?"

"That's Briggs, sir. He'll make it, all right. Took a round, he did, blew out his shoulder."

"Prisoners secure?"

"Yes, sir. Five of them in here. And three down."

"Take them next door. Along the wall with the others."

To get to the other end of the hall, Hawke had to step over the body of a young British Army soldier who'd been shot in the back at the top of the stairs. He found Bolt in the farthest room, kneeling beside one of his men, who was badly wounded. He was holding the boy's hand.

Looking up at Hawke, he said, "Casualties?"

"Two dead, one wounded."

"Prisoners?"

"Twelve."

"Have a look in the room right there, Commander," Bolt said, pointing at a closed door. "See what happens to an IRA rat who gets caught."

Hawke kicked it open. The room was empty save for an unrecognizable human being tied to a chair. Obviously dead. There was not a square inch of his naked body that had not been ripped, burned, or beaten. Hawke crossed and looked carefully at the corpse, confirming his suspicions. Although the eyes were swollen shut, the nose smashed, and all the teeth broken or missing, the face was still faintly recognizable.

It was the IRA bomb maker, Thomas McMahon, the man who'd steered them to the Barking Dog for thirty pieces of silver.

"Zulu, Zulu, this is Yankee," Bolt said into his commo as Hawke returned. "What's your situation, Lieutenant Foreman?"

"We've secured the building, sir. All hostiles neutralized. We have four casualties, all wounded, no KIA. We have also recovered two laptops and numerous documents."

"Well done. Medics?"

"Just coming through the door."

"Send one up here, on the double. I've got a boy bleeding to death right here."

"Yes, sir, already on his way up."

"How many prisoners, total, down there? Ground floor and first?"

"Fifteen, sir."

"All right. I want all prisoners assembled in one room. You have a clear room down there?"

"Kitchen, sir. Clean as a whistle."

"Everyone hear that? I want all prisoners in the kitchen. Right now. Try and raise Major Masterman in the command vehicle. Tell him the house is secure."

"He's not in the command vehicle, sir. I just sent Nichols to inform him."

"Where the hell is he?"

"No one's quite sure, sir." At that moment a young medic came racing up the stairs, calling for Bolt. His face was a mask of terror.

"Lieutenant! We've got to evac immediately!"

"What?" Bolt said.

"Sir! I was attending a wounded hostile on the ground floor, desperate to be moved outside. He says the basement is a weapons cache. There is an explosive device down there on a timer. He says he saw another hostile trigger the timer just as he died!"

"Go!" Bolt said, screaming at the top of his lungs. "Everybody evac the premises right now! Take the wounded, leave the dead. There is a bomb in the cellar that could go off any second. I want every last man out of this house in twenty seconds or less!"

It was chaos. Wounded men screaming as they were bodily hauled down the stairs and out the front and rear entrances. Soldiers diving out of second-story windows, taking their chances of suffering a broken leg or worse. Hawke raced down the stairs, found two wounded British Army boys, and somehow managed to get both of them up onto his shoulders. He ran for the front door as fast as he could, leaping over the dead, hearing the cries of the two young men he carried, praying he wasn't injuring them further.

"Get as far away from the house as fast as you can!" Hawke heard Bolt shout in his headphones. "There are possibly tons of explosives down there!"

Hawke made it into the woods with his two casualties. He put them down as gently as he could before turning to look back at the Barking Dog Inn.

A young British soldier, his right arm hanging by a thread, was just coming through the front door when the house erupted in an earthshaking geyser of flame, debris, and thick, acrid smoke that climbed into the sky a hundred feet or more. When the smoke had cleared somewhat, Hawke saw a massive hole in the ground, almost a hundred feet across.

The Barking Dog had been vaporized.

And with it, enough arms and explosives to take down a large city.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER THE BRITISH Army and enemy wounded had received emergency first aid and were being MedEvaced to the HQ hospital in Sligo. The surviving prisoners had been placed under guard in a clearing in the forest beyond the cart path. Army vehicles had their lights aimed at the group of hooded terrorists, and soldiers with flashlights were everywhere.

Hawke and Bolt entered the clearing. Having been driven around the hill to the command vehicle, and found no trace of a CO to report to, they'd no choice but to return to the woods to interrogate the prisoners. Hawke thought that after his conversation with Prince Charles, Masterman had probably jumped off the nearest bridge.

"Commander," Bolt said to Hawke, "I think you and I should take a look first. We'll deal with them individually later back in the interrogation section at HQ. After those laptops have been vetted."

Hawke nodded and walked across the ground to the first prisoner in line. All of them had been cuffed.

He reached out and pulled the black balaclava off the man's head.

The man was dark-skinned and had a full black, unkempt beard. If this was an IRA killer, he surely didn't resemble one. Bolt took one look at the man and came rushing over. He ripped the hood off the second man in line. And found himself staring into another Arabic face.

"What in hell?" Bolt, stunned, said to Hawke. "Bloody al Qaeda in Northern Ireland?"

"Let's find out. Speak English?" Hawke said. For emphasis, he'd removed his assault knife from the sheath on his thigh and placed the tip under the man's chin.

The man murmured yes.

"Name?"

"Yusef Najeeb."

"Ah. One of the celebrated Najeebs of Londonderry, no doubt."

"No. From North Waziristan, Pakistan."

"Why the devil are you here?"

The man smiled. "We come to Northern Ireland to fight the oppressors alongside our brothers."

"Ah, your Catholic brothers. Where is Smith?"

"I don't know any Smith."

Hawke looked at Bolt. The lieutenant was just as amazed as he was.

Instead of further questions, Hawke simply went down the line removing the masks from each prisoner until he came to an IRA soldier. He put the blade of his knife across the man's throat. "I'm looking for a man named Smith. Has he been here?"

In a strangled voice, the terrorist said, "He was here. But he was gone before we came."

"You know him, then."

"I've heard of him, yeah."

"What does he look like?"

"No one ever sees him."

"I said, what does he look like? Someone must have seen him." Hawke pressed his point.

"Those who have seen him will not tell you his identity."

"Why would that be?"

"They are far more afraid of him than you."

When all had been unmasked, twenty-four of the prisoners were IRA, while fifteen were Middle Eastern terrorists. The implications of this one fact were enormous.

Hawke shot out a hand and grabbed the last Pakistani by the neck, pulling him out of his loose-fitting sandals.

"Who comes to Ireland to fight alongside their brothers? Taliban? Al Qaeda?"

"Sword of Allah, praise be to God."

Hawke was still scanning all the faces.

"Smith?" he asked the man again. "Which one of you has seen Smith?" he asked the second, and third, and the fourth.

He gave up after six or seven. Smith had to be in his seventies now. These were all boys and middle-aged men. If Smith had been here at all, he was long gone.

AN HOUR LATER, HAWKE AND SEBASTIAN BOLT were sitting inside the abandoned command vehicle of Major Milo Masterman. The sun had risen fully and with it came black clouds and a fierce rainstorm that beat against the steel roof above their heads. The major had simply disappeared. Troops had fanned out through the dense forest in search of him but so far with no result. Bolt was mystified. Hawke told him they should be searching the local pubs, not the woods.

Ambrose Congreve and Bulldog Drummond had had enough of the Barking Dog and had retired to their quarters at the Swan to get a few hours of sleep before taking up the matter of a thorough interrogation of the captured terrorists. Both had congratulated the two men now sipping hot coffee inside the APC for a job well done before catching a ride back to Sligo in a British Army vehicle.

"Sword of Allah," Bolt said. "I recall the name. Heathrow, no? Terminal Four a year or so ago, wasn't it? That despicable bombing?"

"Yes."

"Behind that monstrous attack in the States, as well. A Miami hospital, if memory serves."

"The same," Hawke replied.

"So my question is the same, Commander Hawke. What the bloody hell are the Taliban doing in Northern Ireland? Fighting alongside the New IRA? It beggars belief."

"I think all these bastards are joining forces. And will go anywhere in the world, Lieutenant. Fight alongside anyone who hates Britain. Or America. Or the West in general. Remember, you had IRA bombers like McMahon training in Libya thirty years ago."

"They have the resources and the manpower to do this on a worldwide scale? Sword of Allah? That in itself is terrifying."

"It appears they do, doesn't it? The world's first transnational Islamic superpower, so to speak."

"You're right in the middle of this one, aren't you, Commander?"

"I am."

"What do you do now?"

"Defend the realm, of course."