THE CAR BOMB HEADING FOR THE U.S. EMBASSY, a fifteen-year-old Isuzu passenger van carrying two sixty-four-gallon drums marked “ammonium nitrate,” enough to sink an aircraft carrier, was driven by a young man wearing a vest that appeared to be packed with C4 explosives. He was joined on his mission by four men in ski masks carrying AK-47s and glancing nervously at the mobs that were throwing stones and looting stores and burning everything that had the taint of “foreigners.” A fifth man rode on the roof, grabbing the roof rack for support whenever the vehicle hit a pothole or crossed one of the open sewers.
Down an alley, they saw a group of men with machetes chasing three boys who slipped through a hole in a fence. At the next corner, they were slowed in their progress when four women with babies strapped to their backs crossed in front of them, carrying portable stereos still in their boxes. The palm-lined avenue called Presidential Way was strewn with debris, the smoking shells of burned and overturned cars, the blackened armor from what used to be a military half-track with two burned bodies falling from the back, one corpse with its head intact and one without. Groups of children dressed in cast-off clothing donated by American charities, wearing T-shirts bearing logos for Georgetown University or faded images of Britney Spears, huddled in doorways, aiming toy rifles and broomsticks at the passing vehicles and laughing. Mixed with smoke and cordite and the pungent aroma of raw sewage flowing in the gutters was the faint smell of tear gas in the air, lingering in the areas where government troops had beaten a retreat in the face of the onslaught. Uncontrollable mobs now surged through the streets of Port Ivory, driven forward by rebel troops in green forest camo uniforms and red berets. Many of the regular rebel forces hadn’t been paid in weeks and now took their compensation in the traditional way of conflict, seizing whatever they could load into their Jeeps and trucks or carry in their arms, and in whatever pleasures could be gained along the way.
The driver of the Isuzu, an Arab man in his early twenties, slowed as they passed the British embassy, where thick black clouds of smoke poured from the former colonial governor’s mansion beyond the cast iron fence, the fire not enough to deter the gangs of looters darting in and out of the building, braving the flames in search of treasure.
The Isuzu slowed again as it approached the American embassy, on the opposite side of Presidential Way from the British embassy. Their target was Ambassador Arthur Ellis, but they feared they were too late, the grounds of the American compound overrun by Ligerians and rebel troops, the top corner of the building blown away where a shell from a seized Ligerian tank had detonated, the windows all broken, pieces of roof tile scattered across the yard. A thick black plume of smoke poured from inside the embassy, the image captured by a film crew with Belgian flags taped to their shirts. There was a large U.S.-made M-113 military transport parked in front of the gates, where six men in green uniforms and red berets fired their rifles in the air in celebration, a response that was returned by the man on the roof of the van, raising his AK-47 in the air in a gesture of victory.
A man whose uniform bore the insignia of a captain approached the van, smiling, his eyes hidden behind his wraparound sunglasses, his machine gun hanging casually from a strap over his shoulder.
“Where is the ambassador?” the driver of the van asked the captain in accented English. “We come for the ambassador.”
“They moved him,” the captain said. “I don’t know when.”
“Where did they move him?” the driver asked, at which point the captain pointed down the road with his gun.
“To the castle,” he said. “They could not defend this place. We were too many. Too strong! They have their Marines, but not so many. We have them up a tree, man.”
“I will see,” the terrorist leader said. He made a brief inspection of the embassy. In the ambassador’s office, he found shredded papers, a wastebasket in which documents had been used to light a fire, and atop the fire, burned and melted CDs and videotapes. All had been destroyed. He returned to the van. The massive Castle of St. James loomed at the far end of Presidential Way, at the opposite end of the esplanade from the presidential palace, which was also under siege.
“Can you take us there?” he asked the captain. “To the castle?” The captain nodded, glancing inside the van at the drums of explosives in the back. He ran to the transport and ordered his men to take their guns and get in. The troops moved slowly, too drunk to move any faster. The leader of the car bombers saw a man dump a half dozen empty beer cans out the rear of the truck in front of them.
“We have an escort,” the man in the front seat said.
“Praise Allah,” a voice from the backseat added. “God is great.”
They heard machine-gun fire from inside the soccer stadium, an open-roofed ring of concentric concrete risers where the banks of lights already blazed white as the twilight approached. There was no telling who was being killed inside the stadium or how many, though the men in the van saw a half dozen orange school buses parked just inside the gates, as well as another dozen military transports. Throngs of barefoot onlookers pressed up against the fence that enclosed the parking lot to see if they could get a glimpse of what was going on inside, with mothers crying out for their sons and wives crying out for their husbands.
The Castle of St. James loomed immense above the town, originally a trading outpost built in 1534 by the Portuguese and later captured by the Dutch and then by the British, both powers adding to its original fortifications, though in each case, the main defenses were focused inland, to protect the occupants of the castle from attack by Africans, and not toward the sea where an attack could come from rival colonial powers. It stood on a natural mount, its outer bastions and casements forming a wall that girded the fortress on three sides, its fourth side backed against the sea atop a natural rock precipice where the wild surf from the Bight of Benin pounded on the foundation and the rocks below. A barbican village had grown up around the castle, where Fasori traders did their business with the Europeans, first in ivory, then in gold, then in human beings, and now it formed the oldest part of the city. Cannons from inside the fortress had destroyed the town of Port Ivory, or parts of it, on three separate occasions over the centuries, but the city was always rebuilt, brown and gray houses of wattle and daub and cinder block with red tile and corrugated tin roofs, open stalls, street vendors, shops, and merchants, the air hazy and stinking of kerosene cook fires and curry, car exhausts and the open sewers that ran down both sides of the streets in shallow gutters, and everywhere, chickens, goats, sheep, donkeys, and mangy short-haired dogs with curly tails. And rats. Several shops near the castle were on fire, filling the air with black smoke and an acrid stench.
The M-113 parted the crowds, the soldiers in it occasionally firing their rifles in the air in warning. Some who saw the Isuzu van behind the transport, filled with men in masks, seemed bewildered, while others cheered and blew kisses. The truck stopped at the base of a long curving stone ramp leading uphill for fifty yards to the castle’s main portcullis. The gatehouse forming an outwork at the base of the ramp had been seized, with loudspeakers set up atop one of the turrets, from which Radio Liger blared, inciting the crowd, a voice saying, “Kill them, kill them all, you have much work to do…”
The captain walked from the transport back to the van. He was smoking a cigar. When he offered one to the man in the van’s passenger seat, the man refused.
“We have machine guns and RPGs on the roofs surrounding the castle,” the captain said, “and many SAM-7s hidden. SAM-9s. We think they will send their helicopters, and when they do, we will shoot them all down.”
“Where are your SAMs?” the Arab in the passenger seat said in Arabic. The captain looked confused, so the man repeated the question in accented English.
“We have one in the church steeple, there,” the captain said, pointing with his cigar, “and one is in the mayor’s office, right there. And we have another in the red truck over there. That one. Yes. I chose the locations myself.”
“And the men firing them, they’ve been trained? They’re not your children warriors—they’re actual soldiers?”
“Oh, yes,” the captain said. “They are my finest. Handpicked.”
“You’ve done well,” the Arab said. “Keep them there. Now move your truck, please.”
“What will you do?” the captain asked.
“We came for the ambassador,” the Arab said. “We have his family. He has said if we release them, he will take their place. Move the truck now.”
The captain gave orders, and the M-113 was moved. The man atop the van attached a large white flag to the barrel of his rifle, and then the Isuzu began to inch forward up the ramp. The curtain wall forming the outer bailey was lower than the bulwark inside, allowing the American soldiers visible at the rampart’s embrasures to shoot over it, if they chose to, but they held their fire. The crowd below watched in anticipation. Many backed away, expecting a massive explosion as word spread that a car bomb had penetrated the American defenses. The Arab in the passenger seat saw a pair of fifty-millimeter guns mounted atop the parapet guarding the main gate and told the driver to slow down. When the gates opened, the van drove slowly through, and then the gates closed behind it.
The driver parked in the inner ward, just in front of the castle keep, and then the men got out of the van. They were met by a pair of Marines, who escorted them into the historical museum’s main exhibit room. Ambassador Ellis, wearing a helmet and a flak jacket, accompanied by a half dozen Marine bodyguards, stood in front of a large glass exhibit case, inside which was displayed a long flowing garment called, according to the brass plaque at the top, the Royal Sun Robe, worn, historically, by a succession of Fasori kings. The man who’d been riding in the passenger seat took off his ski mask, saluted, and extended his hand to the ambassador.
“Special Agent David DeLuca, U.S. Army counterintelligence, Team Red,” he said. Some of the soldiers looking on were surprised to notice that one of the “men” in the ski masks was in fact a woman. “Thanks for not shooting us. I wasn’t sure you got our message. My driver is Agent Zoulalian. This is Agent Sykes, Agent Vasquez, and Agent MacKenzie. Sorry we weren’t able to visit you under happier circumstances. Your wife and kids are fine, by the way, but the cover story is that we’re swapping them for you, so they’ve been kept out of sight on the carrier.”
“This is Captain Allen, in charge of my security detail,” Ambassador Ellis said. “Sorry we had to leave the embassy. What’s the plan? They’ve been jamming my goddamn SATphone.”
“Who do you have here for staff?” DeLuca asked, scanning the massive stone walls. It was the kind of place where a few Marines with machine guns could hold off an entire army, for a while, anyway. He could hear the staccato stutter of gunfire beyond the castle walls, the voice from the loudspeakers at the gatehouse muffled, as if coming from a pair of headphones left on a pillow.
“Just my secretary,” Ellis said. “Everybody else got out. What’s the situation at the embassy?”
DeLuca shook his head.
“How about the British embassy?”
Again DeLuca shook his head.
“The British pulled out yesterday and lost seven men trying.”
“I’m blind here, DeLuca—fill me in. Why can’t I use my phone?”
“We believe they’re using U.S. jamming equipment we sold the government,” DeLuca said. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Where’s General Ngwema? What’s Osman doing? Where’s LeClerc?”
“LeClerc can’t move until the Security Council says he can,” DeLuca said. “Osman’s AU forces are waiting to hear from Addis Ababa, but I don’t think they have what they need, even if they get clearance. Most of the city’s Christians have fled. Ngwema’s holding the ground west of town. We think the majority of the refugees are behind him.”
“Why isn’t he moving?” Ambassador Ellis said. “What’s he waiting for?”
DeLuca shrugged.
“He might not be waiting for anything. He might be protecting the oil fields and letting the city fall. We’re not sure just what his mind is.”
“Bo?”
“President Bo is in the presidential compound, which, from the looks of it, is more strongly fortified than this place,” DeLuca said. “We can debrief on the carrier if you want, sir, but I’m not sure I’m the person to do it, and I’m quite sure this isn’t the best time or place.”
“Why did they send you?” the ambassador said. “No offense, but there are only four of you.”
“Five,” DeLuca said. “We couldn’t do anything until we had more intel.” He turned to the Marine captain. “We want to fly in a couple of jollies for you and your men with CAS and AI but we weren’t sure what your ADOCS were,” DeLuca told Captain Allen.
“We lost prepositioning along with our APS grids when the embassy fell,” Captain Allen said. “I have a lieutenant who served with a COLT in Kabul as the ‘lino’ and a sergeant who spent a week with a FIST team, but we could use an artillery intelligence officer for the DISE. We took a G/VLDD (he pronounced it “gee-vlad”) off a Hummer and mounted it at the top of the turret but it’s not going to be much use without the pulse codes.”
“Agent Zoulalian has the codes,” DeLuca said, turning to his driver. “Run upstairs and program the laser. Number one is the church steeple, two is the mayor’s office, and three is the red truck parked across from the gatehouse.”
Zoulalian took off on the double. Captain Allen looked at DeLuca quizzically.
“We found a rebel captain who was only too eager to brag about where he put his SAMs,” DeLuca explained. “I think the intel is good, but my worry is that he wasn’t telling me everything. That and the RPGs—what’s your sense there?”
“We haven’t seen much, but I’m sure they have ’em,” Allen said. “The question’s what we can suppress.”
“Shock and awe,” DeLuca said. “Works for me.”
“Plain English, gentlemen,” the ambassador said. “I know I’m a civilian, but I’m still in charge here.”
DeLuca’s orders had been to take charge if he had to, but for now he could let Ellis continue under the illusion that he was in control.
“I was asking Captain Allen if he had any deep ops coordination system,” DeLuca said. “He told me he has a man who served as a liaison officer with a combat ops laser team and another man who served with a fire support team. A gee-vlad is a ground/vehicular laser locator designator—that’s the laser we use to paint targets for the smart bombs. He took one off a Humvee and mounted it on a tripod on the tower. The rebels have three Soviet shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, in the steeple, the mayor’s office, and the red truck parked by the gates. The lasers emit a pulsed code to tell the bombs where to go. My sergeant is upstairs programming the codes into the laser. What we’re going to do is blow those three things up and then fly in a couple of helicopters…”
“Jollies?”
“Yes, sir,” DeLuca continued, “under close air support and air interdiction. Noise and smoke. With minimal collateral, if we’re lucky. They’re going to get the Marines out, but what we don’t know about are rocket-propelled grenades, which can still down a helicopter.”
“It sounds risky,” Ambassador Ellis said.
“It is risky,” DeLuca said. “That’s why we’re going to take you out a safer way.”
“Which is?”
“The same way we came in,” DeLuca said. “You look like you’re about a forty-four regular, am I right?”
Deluca pulled the abaya he was wearing over his head. Beneath it, he wore his “second chance” ballistic body armor, but beneath that he wore dress pants and shoes and a white shirt (soaked with sweat) with a red bowtie of the sort that Ambassador Ellis was famous for wearing, his identifiable trademark. Back home, the only time DeLuca ever wore suits was when he had to testify in court in the trial of somebody he’d arrested. He asked the ambassador if he could borrow his sport coat. The ambassador complied. Over the sport coat, DeLuca donned the bomber’s vest that Zoulalian had rigged from a Kevlar flak jacket, a spare set of distributor wires, and six cans of black Play-Doh, but it looked real. DeLuca bade Ambassador Ellis to don the flak jacket, the abaya, and a ski mask and then handed him an AK-47.
“Is it loaded?” the ambassador asked.
“It is,” DeLuca replied patiently to an incredibly stupid question. “But if we do this right, nobody’s going to fire a shot. In fact, they’re going to cheer you as you leave. I’ll bet you weren’t expecting that.”
“We’re done setting up the Mark-10s,” MacKenzie reported, referring to the oil-drum-sized smoke bombs that had been disguised as explosives in the back of the phony car bomb, one in the near corner of the inner bailey and the second in a bartizan upwind from the keep. “Dan’s setting the delays.”
“We’ve got a J-STAR zeroed with a Hellfire on the jamming gear they’re operating, in a building about a block from here,” DeLuca told Allen as he climbed onto the roof of the van. “Once that goes, your coms should work. You’ll hear it when it does. Fire support will call you at that point. It’s going to happen fast.” DeLuca saw Zoulalian returning at a quick jog. “You all done upstairs?”
“Roger that—locked and loaded,” Zoulalian said, turning to Vasquez, who’d resumed his position atop the van. “You wanna drive?”
“I’m good here,” Hoolie replied, raising his AK-47 and setting the safety, testing the trigger to make sure the safety had engaged. “How often do I get the chance to take my team leader hostage?”
DeLuca turned his back to Hoolie and placed his hands together. Hoolie used a pair of flex cuffs to bind DeLuca’s hands behind his back, but with the plastic teeth filed off so that the cuffs were only on tight as long as DeLuca pulled on them. Hoolie threw a knit ski mask over DeLuca’s head with the eyes in back, though the fabric was of a wide enough mesh that DeLuca could see through it.
“Make sure the bowtie is visible,” DeLuca said. “Mr. Ambassador, if you’ll take a seat in the back next to Agent MacKenzie, we’ll be on our way. We have a SEAL team with a fastboat waiting about a mile down the beach and a pair of Predators watching our every move, but we’re still going to need a bit of deception until we get there, so just keep your mask on and wave your rifle and look angry and we’ll do the rest. Do you know any Arabic?”
“Allah akbar,” the ambassador said.
“That’ll do,” DeLuca said. “We armored the sides and the doors but not the windows, obviously, so if somebody starts shooting, stay low. Dennis, let’s not give anybody too much time to think. Captain Allen, the jollies will be here in ten minutes, so get your men ready. See you on the Johnson.”
Zoulalian started the car, with Sykes now in the passenger seat and MacKenzie and the ambassador in the back. DeLuca knelt on the roof with a black mask over his head while Hoolie held a gun to his neck, lifting the loose folds of the mask with his rifle to make sure the red bowtie was visible. The image was going to be a compelling one when it was shown on Al Jazeera later that night, a U.S. ambassador with bombs strapped to his chest being led from his stronghold at gunpoint by a brave band of terrorists.
They breached the portcullis and were halfway down the ramp when Zoulalian was forced to step on the brakes. At the base of the ramp, the M-113 was parked across the drive to block the way. The rebel troops had dismounted and had their guns pointed at the van. The captain, his cigar still in his hand, shook it in the air and gestured for the van to come forward.
“What the fuck?” Vasquez said under his breath.
“Easy, everybody,” DeLuca said into his transmitter. “Remember Mog. Dennis—commence ranting and gesticulating.”
Zoulalian got out of the car and screamed at the rebel captain, gesturing with both arms to get out of the way and let them through. When the captain waved him forward, Sykes got out of the car and walked down the ramp to speak with the man in the red beret and the wraparound sunglasses.
“You have to move your truck,” Zoulalian said in accented English. “We have to get through. Now!”
“Give the prisoner to us and we will take him,” the captain said. “We can provide security for him.”
“We don’t need security,” Zoulalian screamed. “We have more than enough of that. We have to get to the soccer stadium.”
“Inducements, Mr. Dan,” DeLuca transmitted.
“Perhaps you could lead the way,” Sykes said to the captain, reaching into his pocket beneath his abaya and pulling out ten hundred-dollar bills, American. DeLuca always found it charming, the way people who hated America still liked its money. “Of course, we would want to pay you for the overtime. One hundred for each of your men and three hundred for you. Does that sound fair?”
The captain saw the money and moved his body so that his troops couldn’t see the cash while he considered his options.
“Give the money to me, and I will pay the men,” the captain said. Sykes handed him the cash, which the captain pocketed surreptitiously. “You will follow me, then.”
He turned and ordered his men to get back in the truck.
Zoulalian followed in the van, inching through the crowd. Hoolie did his best to block the things the people in the crowd were throwing at “the ambassador” to express their dislike for U.S. foreign policies, mostly fruit, vegetables, cassavas, one man picking up and flinging a piece of dog shit that struck DeLuca in the arm.
“Tell that guy he’s going to hear from my cleaner,” DeLuca said.
“What do you care? It’s not your suit,” Hoolie said.
“Sorry for the delay, Johnson,” DeLuca told the mission controllers on the aircraft carrier, who he knew were watching them, both from an INMARSAT view and from a UAV-borne camera closer in. “What are you seeing?”
“It’s going all to hell between you and the extraction point,” the voice in DeLuca’s earpiece came back. “But we expected that. Make time if you can.”
“I don’t think our escort is going to let us pass him,” DeLuca said. “We’ll do our best. Meet you on the sands of Iwo Jima.”
They were three blocks from the castle when they heard the first explosion behind them, a JDAM-5 destroying the building where the rebels’ communication-jamming equipment was operating. The decision had been made to use laser-guided ordnance first, because of the greater accuracy, but DeLuca understood that the destroyer USS Minneapolis was cruising eight miles offshore, ready to deploy six- and eight-inch guns that were nearly as accurate, should the first round of smart bombs fail to do the job. Within seconds, they heard another explosion as a missile struck the mayor’s office. Hoolie took the hood from DeLuca’s head in time for DeLuca to see the church steeple disintegrate in a ball of flames, and then a fourth missile hit the red truck, flipping it and lifting it thirty feet in the air. The crowd dispersed and chaos quickly followed, men firing their rifles into the air or toward the castle, where a pair of CH-47 Chinook helicopters coming in low over the water climbed the seawall and descended on the courtyard, supported by a half dozen Apaches, swarming over the city like very angry bees. A pair of F14 Tomcats screamed over the area, a mere fifty feet above the rooftops.
“Hit it!” DeLuca shouted to Zoulalian. He lay down atop the van and braced himself against the roof rack. Zoulalian floored the accelerator and turned right down a side street. DeLuca saw, briefly, the look of surprise on the face of the rebel captain from the back of the truck.
“LBJ—can you cut enemy radio traffic?” DeLuca asked, aware that the E-6 Prowler in the air high overhead carried communication-jamming equipment.
“Not without doing yours, too,” the answer came back. “They’re using our stuff. It’s your call.”
“You getting SIGINT?” DeLuca asked.
“Negative,” mission control came back. “Our Ligerian friend here says they’re not speaking Fasori. It’s some northern tribal dialect he doesn’t know.”
“Might as well keep the channels open, then,” DeLuca said, dismayed that the mission had already crept beyond what had been intended, but then, he’d long considered “military planning” something of an oxymoron. “Loose the dogs of war” wasn’t even the right metaphor, because loose dogs at least run in the same direction. “Shit hitting the fan” failed for the same reason—war was Brownian motion, chaos and anarchy, and it changed every five seconds. “We’ll just have to outsmart them.”
“You being ironic?”
“Nothing personal,” DeLuca said.
As the van sped toward the sea, DeLuca turned and saw that the troop transport had backed up and was following them. He opened fire, as did Vasquez beside him, but the Isuzu was veering and careening around or across potholes at a speed that prevented firing with any accuracy.
“Any time, Pred One,” DeLuca said into his radio. “Let’s lose the tail.”
The AGM-114B Hellfire was a laser-guided solid propellant missile, five feet four inches long, seven in diameter, with a weight of about one hundred pounds and a warhead capable of defeating any tank made. The M-113 following the van was no match for it, the subsonic rocket penetrating the front windshield on the passenger side, where the captain in the red beret was sitting, before blasting the vehicle into a million flaming particles.
“I’ll bet that lit his cigar,” Hoolie said.
Zoulalian, taking directions via his headset, turned left when the falcon view from INMARSAT told him the street connecting to the beach road was blocked up ahead by an overturned vehicle that was burning. He was instructed to turn right at the next intersection, but when he did, he stopped when a pair of “technicals” came into view, two Toyota pickup trucks, one green, one white, with .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the back. A rebel in the green truck opened fire as Zoulalian hit the brakes, backing up to speed forward again on the street he’d tried to turn from. The green truck followed while the white truck raced parallel to them, firing at them whenever there was a gap between the houses, doubtless causing serious collateral damage with rounds that didn’t make it through the gaps. DeLuca shot at the truck behind them, though the road was so uneven with potholes, exposed cobblestones, and eroded excavations that it was impossible to steady his aim, and he knew he was firing more for demonstration than effect. The rebel soldier manning the machine gun looked to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, but for all DeLuca knew, he’d been fighting half his life.
“What do we have?” he called to support. “Taking fire.”
“Stay your course,” command and control came back. “Minneapolis has it.”
He estimated their speed to be fifty or sixty miles an hour. As the next intersection loomed, he turned toward the sea. With the green truck bearing down on them from behind, slowing down was not an option. At the intersection, beyond the corner house, he looked down the street, his weapon ready. He saw the sea, and then he saw the white truck appear, and then he saw it launched into the sky when a shell from one of the destroyer’s six-inch guns struck it. The van was through the intersection before DeLuca had a chance to see the truck land.
“Nice shot, Minneapolis,” he said.
“We’ll give the computer an assist on that one,” a voice in his headset said. “Apache Three at your back door.” He turned in time to see the AH-64D Longbow attack helicopter descending on the green truck, closing the distance rapidly. A burst from the Apache’s M230 chain gun, mounted beneath the fuselage, sent a stream of 30mm rounds down the center of the green Toyota, which veered suddenly into a wall before flipping and barrel-rolling on its side a half dozen rotations before coming to rest on its collapsed roof.
The Apache climbed quickly, at low altitudes an easy target for shoulder-fireds and RPGs.
“You’re three blocks beyond the take-out point,” DeLuca heard in his headset. “Come back, come back three!”
Zoulalian turned right, then right again onto the street that paralleled the beach, racing past a row of fish vendors and an open-air bar, speeding another block before turning left at a marine repair shop when the way ahead was barricaded by a pair of overturned cars. He threaded his way between overturned brightly colored fishing boats and turned right again once he hit the beach, the van fishtailing and slowing as the sand grabbed at the tires. The way ahead was clear, until DeLuca saw a man rise from the sand and wave his arms at them to stop.
“Navy SEAL, Navy SEAL!” he heard in his earpiece as Zoulalian hit the brakes. “Claymores directly in front of you—do not proceed!”
Team Red spilled from the van, MacKenzie staying by the ambassador’s side, while DeLuca gazed seaward, where he saw the destroyer USS Minneapolis, and closer in, the LST from which the helicopters had launched. The USS Lyndon Johnson, the aircraft carrier that was their final destination, cruised beyond the horizon.
The SEAL stood in the sand, pointing to a spot at his feet and gesturing with his arm for the team to approach.
DeLuca turned the binoculars up the beach, in the direction of the soccer stadium and presidential palace. He saw, perhaps a thousand yards off, several hundred rebel troops running as fast as they could in his direction. When he turned 180 degrees and looked toward the castle, he saw another group of rebel soldiers, larger than the first, headed their way.
“Det cord, right here,” the SEAL said, clearing away the sand to show DeLuca and the others where he’d buried a line of explosive detonating cord, capable of killing anyone who stepped on it or tripped over it. The drab green cord, about the thickness of a cotton clothesline, was rigged to a half dozen Claymore mines, stuck into the sand on tripods with the curved side facing the approaching rebels, capable, when detonated, of killing anybody within one hundred feet in a ninety-degree arc. DeLuca assumed the SEAL team that had prepared the take-out point had mined the beach in the opposite direction as well.
“Lieutenant John Riley,” the SEAL said. “Step over the cord and follow me. Do you have wounded?”
“We’re good,” DeLuca said, as a rocket-propelled grenade fired by one of the rebel soldiers destroyed the Isuzu behind them. Pieces of shrapnel rained down around them, a rear wheel rolling down the beach and curving into the sea. Then a machine gun opened fire from the rooftop of a four-story beachfront apartment building. DeLuca fired on the machine-gun position, joined by the SEAL with his M-5, chromed against corrosion from seawater and vented to drain.
To the west, DeLuca saw palm tree after palm tree splinter and fall, mowed down like blades of grass by the incoming rounds as the Minneapolis opened up with all its guns, six-inch and eight-inch shells raining down with incredible precision. A pair of F14 Tomcats crisscrossed in the sky above them, strafing the beach in either direction as the Apache they’d seen before returned to send a fire-and-forget wave-seeking Hellfire at the automatic weapon on the apartment building roof, taking it out with the first shot.
Down the beach, a pair of SEALs rose from the surf, gesturing for DeLuca and his party to join them.
“It’s too dangerous to land a craft but once you’re in the water, your target profile is minimal,” Riley explained. “Mr. Ambassador, are you a strong swimmer?”
The ambassador shook his head.
Riley handed him a float vest from his pack and told him to put it on, while the others jettisoned their gear, dropping it in the surf that crashed all around them. DeLuca was happy to lose the tie.
“SEAL four, five, six, and seven, need your help,” Riley barked into his radio, and in an instant, four other SEALs in scuba gear rose from the water where they’d hidden, submerged.
“Sorry we’re late,” DeLuca said as the Apache circled back to strafe the beach in the direction of the presidential palace. “Traffic was bad.”
“That’s all right,” Riley said. “Any chance I get to work on my tan is always appreciated. We’re not used to doing this in daylight.” The second and third SEALs held remote detonators, one looking west, the other east. Riley regarded the screen on his handheld, which showed infrared satellite images of the approaching rebels.
“We should go,” he said, extending his arm and pointing into the sea.
The water was warm, rising in broad swells beyond the breakers. Each member of the team had a Navy swimmer as a partner, Lieutenant Riley taking the ambassador by the back of his vest and pulling him forward. DeLuca turned briefly when he heard an explosion on the beach where a rebel soldier had tried to cross the hinter line, which the SEALs had also mined. Three rebels streaked in through the beach, firing on them with AK-47s.
“Don’t worry about it,” his SEAL swim partner said. “Hitting a person this far out is like shooting at a coconut.”
Then the Minneapolis put a round on the beach, directly in front of the shooting rebels, and when the smoke cleared, DeLuca saw only body parts.
One hundred fifty yards from shore, the SEALs directed them to form a line and hold their right arms in the air. A PBR fastboat appeared, its .60-caliber deck gun blazing toward shore. A SEAL in a Zodiac tethered to the starboard side dropped rings attached to lines over their arms, at which point they closed their arms over the rings, and then the PBR yanked them out of the water one by one, never slowing to less than five knots. Two SEALs with arms the size of buffalo haunches hauled them into the Zodiac and helped them roll into the fastboat. When the last man was out of the water, the PBR throttled up, hydroplaning at fifty knots as it sped toward the waiting LST, bouncing across the waves.
DeLuca gazed astern. He saw plumes of black smoke rising above the city, several buildings on fire in the neighborhood beyond where the Castle of St. James sat atop its mount. A single CH-47 Chinook flew toward the carrier.
Over the radio, DeLuca learned that the Marines holding the castle had lost a “jolly” on liftoff to a rocket-propelled grenade, taking three casualties in the process before the flight crew and passengers could be transferred to the remaining helicopter. He passed the news on to the ambassador, who’d said very little since leaving the castle.
“Believe it or not,” DeLuca said, “it looks like we took the easy way out.”
“Agent DeLuca, I’m recommending you for the Congressional Medal of Honor,” the ambassador said. “I believe your conduct today has been absolutely outstanding.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” DeLuca said. Evidently the ambassador had no idea what the Medal of Honor was for. “I’m not being humble. The more attention I get, the harder it is for me to do my job.”
“Then I’ll buy you a beer,” the ambassador said.
“Thanks, but I don’t drink,” DeLuca said. The fact was, DeLuca drank as much as the next guy, but if the next guy was going to be Ambassador Ellis, he’d pass. They were paying him to rescue the guy, but they couldn’t pay him enough to like him.