The Humvee lurched and rocked as Weaver followed the faint two-track out of the village called Tallach 3. Karla bounced and swayed in the passenger seat. Behind her, Pud Pounder was standing, his upper body propped in the turret behind “Ma Deuce,” the Browning .50.
Before them, the desert valley remained flat as a lake bottom, the terrain illusory. The late afternoon sun glinted as it slanted toward the craggy and steep mountains in the distance. Up high, Haji was watching dust boil out behind the vehicles as Bravo Platoon sped across the hardpan flats.
Karla and her platoon raced for the series of rocky outcrops that stuck up from the flats just outside the canyon mouth. Her SEAL snipers would own those outcrops long before a Marine convey passed over that road sometime around midday tomorrow—and every insurgent within a hundred kicks knew when and where that convoy would pass.
“We’re on all their scopes now.” Weaver had his right hand atop the steering wheel. He glanced in the driver-side mirror. “Socket’s sniffing right up our ass. That reaming you gave him sure cured his lollygagging attitude, Chief.”
She keyed her mic. “Just a reminder, boys, sloppy means dead.”
Golf’s voice came through her earbud. “You sure they’ll be able to figure out where we’re going, Chief? Or should we have sent them a pajama-gram with a map?”
“They’re not stupid.” Then she smiled. “Mostly.”
She ran it through her mind again, imagining the terrain, which of her snipers would go where, how their fields of fire would overlap as the insurgents came boiling out of the drainage channels.
“Jabac Junction ahead, Chief,” Weaver said.
The irregular collection of mud-and-stone huts seemed to rise from the desert hardpan on which they’d been built. She thought of the few families that still lived there.
Weaver was roaring down on it, the engine whining.
Of course there was a chance of ambush, but the IR drone reconnaissance hadn’t detected any appreciable movement toward the town. The thermal signatures had been correct for the fifteen or so people who lived there.
It lay at the outskirts, just out from the first squat mud hut, a basket, tilted onto its side . . .
Pounding. An insistent knock.
Karla Raven gasped, jerked herself awake. She struggled for breath, clawing hair back from her sweat-dampened face.
A hotel room. Blinds drawn. Nice bed. Too many pillows.
Rap! Rap! Rap!
She climbed out of bed, shrugged on a T-shirt and managed not to fall over as she dragged sweatpants over her hips. Tossing her hair back, she padded across the room to the door.
“The sign says Do Not Disturb. I don’t even need towels!”
“Chief?” a familiar voice asked.
Karla blinked and dared to use the peephole. The Skipper stood there. She made a face and opened the door. Ryan had dressed in a western-style shirt and Levi’s, clumpy boots on his feet.
“Hey, Skipper.” She squinted at him. “You’re here. As in . . . here.”
“Glad to see you’re still observant.” Ryan gave her a conspiratorial wink as he entered.
Through narrowed eyes, she studied the man following Ryan.
“Ah, Major Savage.” She shut the door. “Why am I getting a really bad feeling about this?”
“Sorry to disturb your sleep, Chief.” Ryan acted awkward, his hands having nothing to do but fiddle. Savage was giving her the eye. No wonder. She had to look like shit.
“You’re going in? Tonight?” Savage asked.
She gave him her best I-think-you’re-a-worm look. “We’ve got five days to hand Skientia to your boss on a silver platter. The fact that you’re here, in my room, interrupting my sleep, tells me that our mission success probability just got flushed down the toilet.”
“Easy, Chief.” Ryan raised a calming hand. “Major Savage is here to help.”
She stepped up to Savage, looked into his hard eyes, and then inspected him up and down as if he were a side of maggot-infested meat. “With all due respect, sir, how do I know if he can even find his balls without tweezers and a magnifying glass? The last time the good major and I met, he didn’t exactly score well on the FFIR.” The Friendly Force Information Requirement that identified good and bad guys.
“Do you trust me enough to take my word for it?” Ryan asked, going for her soft spot.
She sighed and throttled the desire to unleash her close quarters combat skills on Savage. “I don’t know, Skipper. You bringing him here? Makes me wonder.”
“How’s Falcon?” Ryan asked, as if to divert her.
“He’s better, sir. Cat’s cooked up that mixture of meds. Last I saw, he was in the suite, discussing the mansion layout with Major Marks and Theresa.”
“And the rest?”
“Cat and Edwin took off to work on some idea of hers. Major Swink should be sacked out. She’s going to be at the airport tonight in case everything goes into the crapper. My extraction-of-last-resort is off the mansion roof after she steals the flight-for-life chopper.”
“You have got to be kidding,” Savage muttered under his breath.
She shot him a dismissive look. “Did you know that Skientia keeps thirty men on payroll just to secure that mansion up there? You ever hear of Talon Group? They hire—”
“Chief, my guys took out more than a dozen Talon mercs in Egypt. Yeah, I know Talon. And the kind of guys they hire.”
“I doubt it will be all thirty of them, and we’re working on ways of evening the odds. But when I go in there, I’m going to have to move fast. We think we’ve located Gray and the two captives, and I have a pretty good chance of getting them out. Those sarcophagus things? That might take another day and another way.”
“You’re going in alone?” Savage asked.
“I could ask Skientia to call in another thirty guys. Even the odds a little.”
Ryan said, “It doesn’t have to be tonight.”
She gave him a hard look. “And you know that how, sir?”
“We can get more people to back you up. Maybe serve a warrant and search the place.”
“Begging the Colonel’s pardon, but just how many people in General Grazier’s organization know you’re here? If we’re right, and his communications are compromised, this whole thing could already be blown.”
Savage said, “As of this moment, Chief, four people know. The three of us in this room and General Grazier. He agreed to it in a very secure location.”
“How secure?”
“My garage, Chief.” Ryan spread his hands. “We’re on our own. Like being in the deep end of the pool with no flotation.”
“SEALs thrive in deep water, sir.”
“And when do you initiate the operation?”
“Nineteen-thirty hours.”
“Brief me in your suite at fifteen hundred, Chief. I’m in. Screwy as this whole thing is.” Major Savage turned to Ryan. “It’s just after eleven and this place must have one hell of a restaurant. Let’s let the chief finish her beauty nap. She needs all the help she can get.”
Savage walked out the door, leaving Ryan with a confused look on his face.
Raven crossed her arms. “Your call, Skipper. Is he here to screw us?”
“I don’t think so, Chief.”
“Good, ’cause I’d hate to have to kill him.”
At the door, Ryan suddenly stopped and felt over his pockets and billfold.
“What did you take, Chief?”
“Sorry, sir. Too asleep to think of it.”
“And you’re infiltrating a mansion later this afternoon?”
“Be frosty by then, sir.”