The darkened walls of the compound loomed in the distance.
Maggie set her daypack on the ground, retrieved her rolled-up abaya, unfurled it, slipped the garment over her warm, glistening body. Picking up her pack, she walked toward the structure.
A deep guttural howl on the far side of the compound sent a shiver shooting down her back. A pack of wild dogs. Maggie shook off the jujus, pulled the handheld FLIR camera from her pack as she snaked around the corner of the mud brick wall. The complex was the size of a football field; she had seen that on the Creech video, but it didn’t make an impression until she was actually standing before it. She kept close to the wall, in the shadows.
She spotted the entrance from an angle. The dirt road was rutted with tire tracks. Quietly she approached, pressing the point-to-talk button on her headset.
“Coming up to the Bunny Ranch gate,” she whispered. She realized her voice was shaking with adrenaline. “Entrance is on the southeast side as noted. Can you read my coordinates?”
A moment later, a buzz of static was followed by John Rae saying, “We’re five or so minutes behind you.”
She got closer. The old wooden gates were shut. Open, they’d be big enough for large vehicles to pass. She pressed the PTT button.
“Gates are locked,” she whispered, “but not with a chain. Looks like they’re barred on the inside. An iron pipe or something.”
“So glad I huffed these freakin’ bolt cutters all this way.”
“It builds character, JR,” she said. She eyeballed the wall. Eight feet of old mud brick, patched here and there with whatever came to hand, razor wire running along the top.
“We’ll find a way over,” she whispered. “Maybe we can use your bolt cutters to get through the razor wire along the top of this wall.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“P One to Abraqa Lead,” a voice interrupted.
“Yo,” John Rae said, never one for radio protocol.
“Update from Creech,” P One responded. “You’re not gonna like this.”
“Lay it on me, anyway.”
“Drone coverage is unavailable at this time.”
“Say what?” John Rae said. “No drone coverage?”
“Roger that.”
“But we need that intel.”
“Coverage was pulled for unexplained reasons, we’re told. Probably another mission. There’s an unestimated delay.”
John Rae let loose a few choice expletives. Maggie’s chest went into knock mode, knowing that the eye in the sky wouldn’t be looking down on them and providing them with badly needed guidance.
“Do you want to abort the op, Abraqa Lead?” P One said to John Rae.
There was a pause. Maggie could hear John Rae’s and Bad Allah’s feet thumping while they ran, JR obviously thinking it over, his PTT button down. “Request we stand by where we are, P One, wait one hour for Creech to possibly reengage drone coverage.”
“No can do,” P One said. “We have air refueling scheduled for our return. It’s a tight window we can’t afford to miss. It’s go or blow.”
They might not make it back.
There was another long pause.
“Maggie?” John Rae finally said. “You want to bail?”
They wouldn’t get another chance. How could the most powerful military on the planet be so inadequate?
She thought of Dara, dying in the ambulance.
“No, JR,” she said. “You?”
“Hell, no.”
There were times when JR drove her crazy but right now she was just so glad to have him on her side. “Waiting for you here, then,” Maggie whispered. “At the gate.”
“Let’s get this party started,” John Rae said. “Bad Allah, quit talking so damn much.”
John Rae clicked off.
The wind shifted, carrying the howl of the dogs on it, and along with that a stench of something so rotten, Maggie’s stomach turned. A mouth full of bile rushed up her throat and she had to choke back vomit.
There was only one thing that smelled like that. But she knew she had to confirm, just to make sure there was no one there.
“Going around back to check out some noise,” she whispered. “Probably just some dogs.”
“Whoa, Maggs. Wait up.”
There was a pause before Bad Allah spoke. “Those won’t be dogs, Maggie,” he said quietly. “They’ll be hyenas.”
Jesus, she thought. “But I want to be sure there isn’t a patrol of some sort. I’ll be careful.”
“Ten-four,” John Rae said. “We’re a couple minutes away.”
She walked farther south, her hackles raised, out beyond the wall.
She drew closer.
A long open pit lay ahead. The stench was unbelievable. She could hear the dogs feasting down there.
And although she knew what lay ahead, she kept walking toward it anyway. Like a black magnet the pit drew her.
She got to the edge. All lit up by moonlight.
Oh my God, she said to herself. Oh my God.
There had to be hundreds of bodies. Some decapitated. Yazidi robes and scarves. There, a woman. Twisted. Human wreckage. And a child. A small boy.
An image she would never unsee.
Breathing through her mouth and not her nose, she spun, staggered back to the gate, blinking to settle her nerves.
When she got to the gate, she thought she heard footsteps from within the compound. Her heartrate shot back up. She pressed the talk button and whispered, “Someone coming up to the gate, JR—from inside the compound. Proceed with caution.”
The footsteps got closer. She heard a man muttering, as if to himself, in Baghdadi Arabic. I’ll give that little bitch a thrashing she won’t forget.
Maggie wondered who he was talking about. Someone in the camp by the sound of it. Quietly she unslung her daypack, pulled a lightweight black burqa hood, slid it over her head. Just her eyes showed. From the side mesh pocket of her pack she withdrew a long narrow syringe, half a milliliter of Etorphine mixed with saline. M99. Animal tranquilizer.
She stepped quietly up to the edge of the gate.
The footsteps approached from the other side. She heard a low screech of metal on metal and saw, through the gap between the doors, a length of plumbing slide free. He was unbolting the gates.
One of the doors creaked on its hinges as it swung open.
Recalling the day when she sat with Dara in the ambulance, Maggie put the hypodermic up to her mouth, pulled the plastic cap off with her teeth, gripped the syringe in her hand. Waited.
John Rae and Bad weren’t here yet. She’d deal with it herself.