CHAPTER 40

lead 160th soar russian mi-17 helicopter

designated stalker one

unnamed valley of the hindu kush

pakistan

2015 local time

Eyes closed, Chunk ran his hand over his gear almost unconsciously, knowing any discrepancy would beg his attention, his fingertips driven by the memory of hundreds of previous missions. It was the quiet time now—a couple minutes after the “five mikes” call from the pilot. He finished the ritual of touching his weapons of war, then opened his eyes and flipped his NVGs into place. The green-gray world that flickered to life was intimately familiar and comforting.

Riker, designated as rope master, was sitting in the front port corner. His booted foot was propped up on the large green bag beside him, his body motionless except for the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders. Behind him, his chin almost on Riker’s shoulder, was Saw, gloved hand up and ready to be first to slide down the thick rope and into the fight. His head was bowed, his left hand wrapped around the silver cross he wore on a thick chain around his neck. Chunk watched as his friend pressed the cross to his lips, then dropped it back inside his shirt. Trip waited beside the sniper, rocking back and forth to the heavy metal music streaming from his iPod Shuffle, which he’d had one of the tech guys hardwire into his Peltors so that any radio call muted it instantly. The young SEAL tapped a gloved hand on his thigh to the music. His own prayer ritual of sorts, Chunk guessed.

He looked at his watch, then over at Spence, who was sitting on a canvas bench at the aft end of the cabin. Spence nodded and gave him a “hang loose” surfer wave.

Chunk glanced at his watch again and keyed his mike.

“Mother, Jackal—two mikes from Mako.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. Riker had insisted that the checkpoints for this op be sharks. He loved that asshole more than he could say.

“Jackal, check. Signal is still transmitting. Stationary at same pos in the truck lot south of Wari. Our drone pass still shows three semitrucks and one oversized king-cab pickup in the lot. No other movement or thermals. Center truck has three thermals in the rear and two in the cab—all the others have single thermals. Pickup has three thermals. No potential QRF detected outside of Wari itself or Timergara farther south.” Yi’s voice was all business as she coordinated from the TOC in J-bad.

“Check. Thanks, Mother.”

“Happy hunting, Jackal,” said the unmistakable baritone of Captain Bowman—a little nod to let them know he was watching.

Chunk was pretty sure Watts and Theobald were looped in from the OGA compound at Kandahar, but they’d been radio silent since the initial comms check.

He glanced out the side of the helo and fixed his gaze on the center truck—the target. But they couldn’t just pop up and hose it down. If they were wrong about this and they killed innocents, it would be international-incident-level shit, especially after their last unsanctioned operation in Pakistan. Flying in a Russian helicopter would only give them so much plausible deniability.

Unless they killed everyone. And that wasn’t who they were.

Though the option occurred to you, didn’t it?

He switched his radio to vox.

“Stalker, Jackal—target is the center truck. Pop up from the rear and put fifties through the engine block, then hover dead center, and we’ll fast rope on either side.”

“Copy. One mike,” the pilot announced, and the doors slid backward on rails inside the fuselage, revealing an opening much smaller than what they were accustomed to in a Blackhawk. The night air whipped inside the cabin, tinged with the smell of kerosene.

Saw and Morales would hit the ground first and move to either side of the target truck’s cab, while the rest of the SEALs headed to the rear. Stalker would hang in a static hover with the starboard side fifty, ready to hose down anything else from the truck and the port side focused on anything approaching from the road.

Between them, they had trained and executed a mission set like this a hundred times.

Chunk felt the helicopter drop almost to the ground, then watched the cloud of dust kick up in billowing, curling waves as the pilot pulled up, the g-force making him heavy on his seat. He held his NVGs in position, clutching his helmet, as the pilot kicked the right rudder and spun the helicopter hard clockwise. There was a loud burp and flash of light as the starboard-side .50-caliber machine gun tore the truck’s engine compartment to trash in a half a second. The pilot kicked the nose forward again and slipped the bird backward, just as Riker and Edwards kicked their heavy bags of rope out the doors. Saw and Morales gripped their respective ropes, locked feet on, and stepped out to begin their slide. Spence and Trip were on the ropes before the first two heads slipped from view, and Chunk moved forward and gripped the rope just as Edwards took the same position across from him.

He slid fast and felt the friction build to scorching levels under the double gloves and in the arch of his top foot, as it always did. As he neared the ground, he watched Saw and Morales moving forward on the cab. Chunk landed in a crouch, pulled his rifle up, and immediately moved to the rear of the truck, shadowing Trip. Then, he felt the double tap of Riker’s hand on his shoulder and heard the soft belch of suppressed 5.56 gunfire behind him, as his two teammates engaged a threat from the cab—a confirmation in his mind that they had the right truck. He heard the thump of the heavy ropes hitting the ground behind him as Stalker released them, pulled up, and moved off to his left.

He tapped Trip’s shoulder, then followed him around the rear of the truck with the CONEX box strapped to the bed. Trip and Spence moved in on the double doors of the modified shipping container, while he and Edwards stepped three paces back and offset by forty-five degrees. Riker positioned himself dead center between them and a few feet behind, crouched over his rifle, the muscles in his heavily tattooed forearms bands of tension.

Four rifles targeted the container’s double access doors while Trip pressed a charge into the center seam.

Chunk held his green dot on the door, projecting in his mind where that would place his round once the doors were open.

“Preserve the tech but don’t get blown up,” he said, reminding his guys to kill anyone who might be wearing a vest.

Riker was the only one who answered, having just played this very game less than twelve hours ago. “Riiiight.”

Trip and Spence pulled back to the corners and averted their eyes.

Chunk closed his eyes just as the whump shook the truck and smoke filled his nostrils. When he opened them, Spence and Trip were pulling the CONEX doors open.

They surged forward, Chunk narrowing their wedge-shaped formation. Riker fired twice from his left, and a fighter fell forward out of the container, a puff of dust rising around him as he belly flopped beside Chunk’s boot.

Two left.

A figure moved in a crouch from deep within the container, and he fired twice. The shadow dropped.

“Jackal, the pickup truck is coming around now.”

“Stalker has him.”

A burst of .50 caliber exploded from the hovering helicopter and a tongue of fire licked out of the sky in his peripheral vision. A fireball belched skyward as the incendiary rounds ignited the fuel in the pickup, and what was left of it evaporated with the fighters inside.

Trip crouched by the rear door of the flatbed, right behind Spence. Small arms fire lit up the smoky interior of the CONEX box, and both SEALs returned fire.

“All tangos are down, but pull back. The container could be booby trapped like the last one,” Spence called, and he and Trip jumped off the flatbed, putting distance between themselves and the CONEX box.

“Two tangos down in the cab,” Saw said. “No vests or explosives up here.”

“One of the other trucks in the lot just started its engine and is heading for the exit.”

“Stop him?” the Stalker pilot asked.

Chunk considered. Most likely just some poor dude in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Let him go, Stalker. Mother, track that truck for us. Five and Six, secure the other truck while we sweep here.”

It took only minutes to confirm the CONEX was not rigged to explode. While the rest of the team held security, Chunk and Spence pulled hard drives and photographed everything inside. The cargo box looked more like a Tactical Operations Center than the slapped-together flight controls they’d found in Mingora. It looked almost identical to, though somewhat smaller than, the drone flight control center he had seen once in Kandahar.

“Mother, Jackal—Jackal is Bull Shark and secure,” Chunk reported.

“Roger, Jackal,” Watts came back. “What did you find?”

“The CONEX on the flatbed appears to have drone controls inside, but not like the one in Mingora. This is super sophisticated shit we have here. Sending you video now,” Chunk said using his tablet to stream live imagery inside the container to her via satellite. “This is what you had us hunting for, right?”

“That looks like it,” Watts said in his ear. “Photograph everything and pull whatever hardware you can.”

“But quickly, Jackal One,” Yi chimed in. “We’re seeing truck movement in Timergara headed your way. Looks like Pakistani National Police. You need to be out of there in less than three mikes.”

Chunk grimaced as he pulled hard drives and computer components from the two workstations, while Spence collected mobile phones from the dead, photographed faces, and scanned fingerprints.

“Trip, get in here and rig this thing to blow up. We need to destroy everything we leave behind.”

“You got it boss,” the SEAL replied.

“Stalker, Jackal One—low hover for pickup in ninety seconds.”

“Roger, Jackal,” the helo pilot came back.

As Trip rigged the charges, Chunk took one last look around the ingenious mobile drone control center camouflaged as a shipping container and shook his head.

What the hell will these assholes come up with next?