We soared south in a V-formation in the dead of the night, sometimes flying at close to a hundred miles per hour. As the most inexperienced pilot, I was on the outside of the formation, and slightly below the others. There were times when I stalled and lost a hundred feet of altitude with stomach wrenching abruptness, and I fought to control the aircraft with my body. We all wore flight goggles, and used oxygen tanks when we were clearing high peaks and ridges, which lined up in the distance like waves coming to crash against a shore.
“It's like riding a bike,” Hawk had said. “You steer with your body. It's not about strength, it's about balance.”
The wind tore at my gloved hands and buffeted my body, which was wrapped in an insulated nylon pod like a sleeping bag, clipped by a harness to the aluminum keel of the glider. I held onto the control bar with both hands, allowing the bar to absorb most of my weight. The sky was clear and the crescent moon bathed the peaks and valleys in soft hues of blue.
Our packs included winter survival gear, C4 explosives, and suppressed weapons. The insanity of what we were doing did not faze me because it simply needed to be done. “If not now, then when?” my father would have said. “If not you, then who?”
As the eastern horizon behind us began to show the first hints of daybreak, we crossed the Wasatch Mountains and came down into the valley from the west. When we were over the edges of Salt Lake City, flying at several thousand feet, we split into two groups, with Max and Arthur headed toward the airport, and Chilli and I broke south toward Camp Williams, a former National Guard base just south of the city. The city was dark beneath us, with only the downtown area around the Temple lit.
Camp Williams, in a high desert valley huddled against snowy mountains, was visible from miles away because it was brightly lit. We swept north around the perimeter and the rows of tanks, troop carriers, and personnel carriers were impressive. Even before dawn, the base was buzzing with activity.
There were barracks with uniformed men emerging and lining up for a morning inspection, and many neat rows of tents. I was looking at an army that dwarfed ours. I focused on flying and counting, trying to come up with estimates of infantry units and armor. I did not see any evidence of aircraft, but there were hangars large enough to house a sizable force of helicopters. The sky was beginning to grow light, and Chilli and I turned north again to begin the most audacious, and for me at least, the most important part of our mission.
*
I climbed to about four thousand feet, carefully pulled my body from the pod, and double checked the karabiner securing the rucksack to my leg. Then I let go. I remained in free fall and counted the seconds, then pulled the cord on my parachute, slammed hard when the canopy deployed and got wind under it. I checked the canopy, and it had opened properly. Chilli was somewhere above and behind me. I held the toggles for control, and headed for the rooftop of the sky rise. With only a hundred feet to the roof, I turned into the wind, pulling the front risers up to my chest as I prepared to land.
I came in too fast and too high, and would have gone clear over the side of the building had I not gotten the canopy tangled in an air conditioning unit. This arrested my forward momentum, and I fell forward and rolled, finally stopping inches from the edge. With the wind trying to take me airborne again, I removed my harness and began assembling my SCAR-H. The lightweight Special Forces Combat Assault Rifle was my weapon of choice, effective at close range and longer distances. I heard Chilli land neatly behind me.
“That was a little too close,” he whispered, kneeling and screwing the suppressor onto the barrel of his rifle. “We're way behind schedule. It's going to be light out by the time we get to the ground.”
“Do you want to scrub the mission?” I asked.
“Let's just be quick,” Chilli said. “We've come this far. I hope they can receive my transmission back in Jackson, because we're probably not going to make it back to tell them in person.”
Chilli took out his radio. “Ten K, one hundred, zero,” he said, and then repeated the series. “Charlie out.” The numbers represented infantry, armor, and aircraft.
We ran to the stairway, opened the door, and went down the black stairwell. I fully expected to die, and perhaps I had suggested the attack for that reason, unwilling to admit I wanted to give up on life, but running headlong toward death, trying to die with my boots on.
The office building was deserted, and we found an emergency exit door on the parking lot level that was unlocked. Brushstrokes of pink painted the gray dawn sky as we crossed the vacant street and pressed against the wall that surrounded the Temple. A black military Hummer with a fifty caliber machine gun deck mounted on the rear sat facing away from us in the middle of the road near the front gates to the Temple.
I held my position while Chilli moved at a crouch to the rear of the vehicle, and then watched him plant the first plastic explosives under the rear of the vehicle. He checked his watch, then returned to my position. The gunner never moved.
“Synchronize on my mark: nine minutes ten, nine, eight seconds. I'll see you at the LZ. Good luck,” Chilli said. He ran further down the wall and I circled wide and wound my way through the maze of courtyards and alleys, looking for a suitable spot. My rifle was over my shoulder, and I held a nine millimeter pistol in my hand.
I rounded a corner, moving too quickly, and almost ran into two men slouched against a wall. They were reaching for their weapons, which they had left propped against the brick building, when I shot them in the chest from five feet away. They died looking surprised.
I checked my watch obsessively as the seconds ticked past. I headed closer to the Temple. The wall around the building had holes in it now, the result of the beating the Cobra had given it, and I slipped through an opening and moved through trees and shrubs which lined the interior wall, crawling forward on knees and elbows with my weapon in front of me. The Temple itself was blackened and crumbling on one side. From the front, looking at the main entrance, I observed the wooden doors had already been replaced by metal ones, and the area was guarded by a complement of twenty armed men. I spotted a missile crew on the flat part of the roof.
I took my rifle from my shoulder and did a quick check. I had less than one minute. I heard a cough and saw to my horror a guard with a German Shepherd making a turn along the perimeter, walking the wall. He was going to walk right into me.
Ten seconds. The dog started barking and pulling on his chain.
I shot the dog first, and as the man cried out in alarm, I put a round through his chest and he fell over backwards as if he had been kicked by a mule. His cry had alerted the others and they began shouting and moving to take cover in the confusion.
Five seconds. I centered my crosshairs on the doorway and focused on my breathing. There was not even a hint of a breeze and the air felt good in my lungs.
The sound of the explosions tore through the air and smoke and fire erupted on the other side of the Temple. Half of the soldiers went running away from the front door, in the direction of the blasts, while the remaining troops went prone, looking for targets. I waited, concealed in my bed of dead roses.
Hatred for a specific person was new to me. I'd been disgusted by people I'd known, but I had never really despised anyone before in the way I hated Gideon, never needed to kill one particular man. It was toxic, a poison in my veins, and it was powerful.
Two more explosions on the far side of the Temple. The doors opened and soldiers poured out, setting up a semi-circular defensive perimeter. Another Hummer pulled up to the front of the building, followed by an open troop carrier bristling with men and machine guns.
I kept my sights on the door and tuned the rest of the world out. Two men in black armed with sub machine guns stepped out on either side of one of the doors, scanning the grounds.
A knot of them came quickly through the door then, moving down the steps. In the center I saw the white robes. I held my breath, steadying my weapon and adjusting. They were moving rapidly, the acolytes or guards shielding Gideon.
The first two 7.62 mm rounds smashed through the flesh and bone of the guards at the fore, and the swarm seemed to falter as the men in the lead tried to retreat while those in the back continued to push forward. For a split second, I had him in my sights. I fired. One shot, aiming at the back of his head. I saw red bloom on his back. I pulled the trigger again as his men threw themselves over his body.
Dirt kicked up in front of my face as they zeroed in on my position. I lobbed a smoke grenade into the grassy area of the courtyard and crawled frantically back to the opening in the wall as bullets smacked into the concrete and whined over my head. A rocket propelled grenade smashed into my sniper blind and the ground shook beneath me when I slipped through the hole.
I thumbed the firing selector on my weapon and switched from semi-fire to full auto on the run. I heard the deep thud of a heavy fifty caliber somewhere behind me as I sprinted toward cover on the opposite side of the street.
I heard shouting and gears grinding, and ran full out toward the office building Chilli and I had landed on. I had successfully evaded my pursuit, but there were so many soldiers swarming I was certain I would be cut down.
I shot out the window on what might have once been a government building and hurled myself through it. My footfalls echoed down the empty, darkened hallways and no one was behind me. I found the rear door chained shut and shot the lock off, the sound of the ricochet louder than the actual gunshot. I peered out and waited while a pickup truck full of troops drove past slowly. I was adjacent to the extraction point; now I had to climb back up. I darted across to the office building and climbed up the seemingly endless stairway. I heard no one behind me.
When I stepped onto the roof, Chilli said “Friendly. Don't fire.” He'd been waiting, crouched in the shadows next to the door.
“Did you take him?” Chilli asked.
“I'm not sure. I wounded him, at least.”
“Good.”
“You probably should have been the one to take the shot.”
“It was something you had to do,” Chilli said. “You're almost as good as I am.”
We stood under the overhang and when the helicopters began circling and buzzing we retreated back into the stairway for the remainder of the day. Finally, the sun sank and night descended upon us, and I prayed Max and Arthur would be successful. Our extraction was scheduled for midnight. The time passed with no sign of our comrades.
“Looks like we're humping it,” Chilli said.
*
The night and the shadows were our allies and we moved with our backs to walls, crossing streets one at a time. When we had put several miles between us and the Temple, I relaxed somewhat. By the time the sun began to come up, we had traveled five or six miles from downtown and we slept in an abandoned gas station.
It was dark again and we were preparing to move out.
“Hopefully the bad guys are assuming we're already gone by now. “We'll recon the perimeter and see if we can slip inside the airport without being seen.” Chilli pulled out his map and pointed. “We should make the secondary extraction point in about two hours.”
“Let's pray our guys are there.”
“Yeah,” Chilli said. “And that we're not walking into a trap.”
We stayed clear of main roads and picked our way through parking lots and side streets, past empty warehouses, abandoned office parks, and stores with nothing to sell and no one to sell it to.
We climbed a ten foot chain link fence and dropped down onto the dark airfield. A mile distant, a series of squat hangers were lit by portable floodlights. Vehicles came and went from service roads as we marched toward the hangers. Thunder rolled in the distance and the sky flashed with lightning, a storm moving in from the west.
Chilli blew into the dove call softly at first, then a bit louder. We heard no response. “They should be right on top of us,” he said. “Let's crawl another hundred yards.”
We inched closer to the hangars and it began to rain. The ground was cold and the drops froze on contact. A troop carrier slid on the newly formed ice and collided with a smaller vehicle. I peered through the scope on my rifle, and near the entrance to the largest hangar, saw the wings of one of our ultralights on the ground. Laughter floated across the open space.
“They've got at least one of our aircraft,” I whispered.
“I see it,” he said. “Oh, no.”
“What?” I swept the area with my scope. I saw perhaps twenty uniformed men standing around the hangar entrance talking nonchalantly around a fire burning in a metal trashcan.
“Inside.”
“I can't see anything.”
Chilli pulled binoculars from his backpack and handed them to me. In the rear of the dimly lit hangar, Arthur and Max sat slumped forward in chairs with their hands bound behind their backs. While I watched, a man detached himself from the group and walked back, standing between me and my comrades, and appeared to be speaking to them.
“Our boys didn't give us up,” Chilli said. “If they had, we'd all be dead by now.”
“How much C4 do you have left?” I asked.
*
I had one fragmentation grenade left, and Chilli had used all of his explosives. We concocted a quick plan and moved ahead. We left the grass and crawled onto the slick concrete tarmac, staying outside the arc of light cast by the floodlights. I left Chilli and crept past the hangar, then rose to my feet and moved around to the rear of the building. I had to step slowly because the ground had become an ice rink. At the rear of the metal building I found no entrance. I peered around the side, my back flattened against the structure. There was a side door halfway up the length of the hangar, a hundred long feet away. The corridor between the building Arthur and Max were being held in and the next one over was not lit directly, but was still too bright to risk walking boldly up to the door. I had to wait.
Behind me, a fuel truck lumbered down a runway, headed toward a smaller building. Through the thin walls, I heard shouting.
The loud blast rocked the building and the hangar reverberated with the force of the concussion. Men were shouting and screaming at the front of the building. Then the floodlights went dark. I slid and skated up to the door on the side of the building and opened it. To my left, the smoke was still clearing, and men writhed on the ground. The grenade had landed in their midst and shredded them. One man was picking himself up from the ground at the front corner of the building and his head snapped violently as Chilli found his target. The bullet punched through him and rang against the metal wall. I was already moving toward the rear. The man who had been interrogating Arthur and Max was firing at me with a sidearm.
There were less than a hundred feet separating us, and the hard faced soldier was firing one handed while backpedaling. His shots went wild. I fired a burst and the bullets ripped through his neck, almost decapitating him. He was flung backwards onto Max. I raced forward to cut through the knots binding Max and Arthur with my Ka-Bar knife. Max had one eye swollen completely shut and his nose was purple and wider than it should have been. He offered me a bloody smile while I knelt behind Arthur.
“He's out,” Max said thickly.
I noticed a pair of pliers next to several teeth on the ground. Chilli was there then, and he lifted Arthur over his back.
“I can walk,” Max said.
We stepped through the carnage and Chilli put Arthur into the cab of the troop carrier. Max paused to pry a few rifles from dead hands and he and I climbed into the open bed of the truck. Headlights were bouncing toward us in the distance. I pounded on the roof of the cab and Chilli slammed the truck into gear. The tires spun and we fishtailed in reverse and then shot out onto the runway. With the lights off, we left the tarmac and bounced over the open grass. The rain had turned to sleet now.
The truck smashed through the chain link fence and I held tightly to the railing as we careened up an embankment and pulled onto a clear road, the tires fighting for traction in the snow. We drove straight along that road for about a mile, then Chilli maneuvered across a deserted parking lot.
“See if you can open one of those bay doors!” Chilli shouted.
We had come to a stop in front of a long, squat structure with a line of windowless garage doors facing us. I jumped to the ground and twisted the lever on the first door; it was locked. Rather than try the whole line, I went to the metal door on the side of the building, shot the lock off, and went inside. The darkness was complete within and I used my pen light to navigate through the maze of old metal and twisted parts. I unlocked the first door and lifted it. Chilli and Max joined me moving airplane props, engine components, and part of a wing to the side to make a space large enough to accommodate our getaway truck. Finally we made enough headway that Chilli was able to park the truck and close the door behind us.
Max shrugged off the morphine I offered him while Chilli checked Arthur.
“They pistol whipped him,” Max said.
“Looks like you got the worst of it,” I said.
“I've been through worse.” I did not ask how that was possible.
Max had torn off a piece of his sleeve and stuffed it into his mouth to staunch the bleeding.
“What happened?” Chilli asked over his shoulder.
“We did our surveillance and landed near the concourse, which was bombed out. Stowed the gliders. Then we looked around for a chopper to steal. Had our eye on an old news helicopter, but then it took off, I'm guessing after you guys kicked the hornet's nest. There was only one other bird, and that one was full of troops. It left even before the other one did.”
“I guess that's good news. It means that our fly boys did a number on them,” Chilli said. The three of us leaned against the hood of the truck. We put our lights on the floor and left them on.
“Yeah, but of course now we're stuck,” Max said.
“So anyway, we knew we missed the extraction. We figured if maybe we could locate a single engine plane, we could bug out in that when you showed up. So we looked around and found a Cessna in a hangar. No fuel.”
“So you had to find a fuel truck,” Chilli said.
“Yep. It was either wait for you to make the secondary extraction point and then go after the plane, or try to have it all set up when you got here. We went for the truck tonight just after dark. It wasn't guarded; it was the dogs that got us in the end. Gave us away. Then they had us outnumbered and dead to rights out in the open. We had no chance.”
“You did good,” Chilli said. “It's lucky they didn't find you sooner.”
“Yeah. They hadn't quite figured out what to do with us yet. That guy you shot, William, he was pretty high up. Said he was a Marine,” Max spat. “He looked like he was having fun while he was yanking my teeth out.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“We can stay here till tomorrow night,” Chilli said. “Hopefully they won't find us. Although I get the feeling we're running out of luck. I don't think they saw where we went though. There are a whole lot of places we could be hiding in this area.”
“Then it's back to the plane? Or should we try to walk out?”
“I don't know,” Chilli said. “Let's see what Arthur thinks when he comes around. If he's able, trying for the plane might still be our best bet.” He put his hand on Max's shoulder. “What did you tell them?”
“To go fuck themselves,” Max said. “I might have started talking at some point, but I wasn't quite there yet. The jarhead said he was going to go to work on some of my more sensitive areas. That might have torn it.”
“What about Arthur?”
“Not a peep. They clobbered him right away, before they could even really start in on him.”
“That's lucky. So they don't know how many of us there are, and they don't know how we're planning on getting away. For all they know, we're already halfway to Jackson in a Black Hawk by now.”
“There's something else,” Max said. “While that asshole was cutting on me, he said Gideon had a surprise for us. The 'Sword of Gideon,' he said. But maybe I imagined it. I was blacking out.”
“What exactly did he say?” Chilli said. “Try to remember.”
Max sighed. “He was telling me that eventually I'd talk. That if I had any family, I should tell him what he wanted to know, because, yeah, that's right, the 'Sword of Gideon' was going to cut them all down. Said he'd been to the dugout and seen it.”
“The dugout?” I asked.
“I think so. I started thinking about playing catch with my dad right about then. Tried real hard to think about that.”
“Dugway, maybe? Chilli asked.”
“Maybe. He might have said that. I'm sorry, brother, I can't be sure.”
“Don't apologize, soldier,” Chilli said softly. “You got us some potentially crucial intel.”
“What does dugway mean to you?” I asked.
“Back before my first deployment to Afghanistan, my SEAL team trained at Dugway Proving Ground. It's actually the largest base in the U.S. Well, it was, anyway. Not in terms of the number of troops but in geographic area. The base itself was small. What matters is that Dugway is where the United States conducted biological and chemical weapons testing. Nasty stuff. All top secret and off limits to civilians.”
“Where is it?”
“It's about eighty-five miles southwest of Salt Lake City,” Chilli said. “We need that plane.”