TF-21 ARRIVED AT THE TOC AT THE SAME TIME as DeLuca, racing to a dramatic stop in a pair of black SUVs with tinted windows. They looked more like a rock and roll band than a military unit, six men in all, led by Preacher Johnson, the only clean-shaven one in the group, the others sporting beards ranging in length from Ulysses S. Grant to ZZ Top. A Humvee arrived at the same time from the front gate, disgorging a massive figure dressed head to toe in black sweat pants and sweatshirt. For all the liabilities Goliath posed as an untrained amateur, it had been determined that it was more important to curry favor with Imam Fuaad Sadreddin than it was to worry about what could happen to Goliath—he could take his chances along with the rest of them.
DeLuca introduced Goliath as his translator.
Preacher Johnson stood in front of a six-foot-square plasma screen in the briefing room. The C-130’s flight crew sat to one side, a second flight crew opposite them whom DeLuca took to be the extraction team. DeLuca was surprised, and more than a little pleased, to see Scott there, accompanying his boss from Image Analysis, a captain whom DeLuca knew only as Jefferson.
“I just wanted to tag along,” Scott said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” DeLuca told his son.
Johnson laid out the basics. The mountain stronghold was in a former monastery with walls too thick to breach with explosives at close quarters. Elevation, 3,550 feet, ground temperature due to be somewhere around fifty degrees. In addition to the main building, there was a wing of what looked to be living quarters and some kind of barn or large shed where they presumed vehicles were stored. Close surveillance by satellites and UAVs over the previous twenty-four hours suggested the building was occupied by approximately ten men. There was a garbage dump outside the back door to the main building, suggesting that door led to a kitchen area—a pair of black bears had been observed rummaging in the garbage.
“So anybody sees any black bears, tell Goliath here and he can pick ’em up and throw ’em in the bushes,” Johnson said. “Now, no offense to all present, but for a number of reasons, we don’t use our names when we go on missions. I will introduce my men only as Sergeants Blue, Red, Purple, Yellow, and Pink. Anybody who wants to make a joke about Sergeant Pink, you may make it now.”
No one spoke.
“My men will have chemlights on the backs of their Kevlars until we land, glowing in their designated colors, so you will know who’s who in the air. The rest of you will wear the standard green. Everybody’s got GPS transponders, too.” Johnson went from man to man, handing out two-foot lengths of plastic tubing, chemlights like the kind little kids sported at a Fourth of July fireworks displays. “These light up in the infrared spectrum, visible only to someone wearing night vision goggles. That’s to keep us from shooting each other once we’re on the ground, because the enemy won’t have these. You wear them around your neck. The navigator is the first man in and he’ll paint the LZ with infrared, but remember to disengage your NVGs before you flare because you’re not going to get any depth perception if you try to land with them on. The LZ is a field north of the monastery. As of two weeks ago, they were grazing sheep there.”
“Kept for romantic purposes, I’m guessing,” Sergeant Blue said, interrupting. The others laughed. Somebody made a bleating sound.
“Anyway,” Johnson continued, “they were grazing sheep, so it’s unlikely it’s mined. Chances are much better that some motherfucker is going to be shooting us out of the sky. Pink is navigator. Blue is two in the stack, Yellow is three. You pull at 2,000 feet. Sergeants DeLuca, Sykes, and Mr. . . .”
“Bakub,” Goliath said.
“DeLuca, Sykes, Bakub, and the rest of us pull at three thousand, and because we have some newcomers, I’m going to assign escorts to make sure you get on the ground in one piece. Red is with Sykes, Purple is with Man Mountain Mike, and I’ll take Sergeant DeLuca down. We are your personal saviors, so pay attention to us. We’re going to need separation when we pull, but we’ll help you maintain your intervals. Sergeant DeLuca and I are co-NCOICs on this, by the way. Now there’s a slight complication. We have a new moon, which is in our favor, and we’re going to be jumping into a cloud deck, so we’re going to have all the darkness we could hope for. However, that cloud deck is right about 13,000 feet . . .”
“Question,” DeLuca said. “Is that 13,000 above sea level, or 13,000 above the 3,500 feet we’re landing at?”
“That’s sea level,” Preacher Johnson said. “Excellent question. Your altimeters are calibrated to zero out at sea level. The LZ is 3,500 feet so you’re going to pull at 6,500. Don’t wait until your altimeter says 3,000 or you’re going to frap. We don’t have Combat Control on this to give us the local barometrics so we’re not recalibrating. The tricky part tonight is going to be that your altimeters only go up to 13,000 feet, and because of the new Soviet triple-A, we’re going to be jumping from 39,000 feet. With luck, they’ll think we’re just a commercial passenger jet at that altitude. Triple-A can’t shoot down anything higher than 35,000 feet. However, what that means is that your altimeters are going to circle their orbits three times. Three. We’re starting at 39,000 feet, so you’re going to zero out at 26,000 feet, and then the needle keeps going, so you’ll zero out again at 13,000 feet, at which point your altimeter is going to be counting down to zero, and from above, a cloud deck looks just like the earth, so every bone is your body and every cell in your brain is going to be telling you you’re about to frap. If you pull early, there’s no telling where you’re going to end up. You’ll be wearing a full Gore-Tex jumpsuit and a Mister Puffy, but you’re still going to get wet. The temperature at 39,000 is going to be somewhere between fifty and sixty below zero, with the wind chill pushing that closer to eighty below, so be glad you’re staying dry until then. My guys, no funny stuff inside the clouds . . .”
“How thick are the clouds?” Dan asked.
“Hard to say,” Johnson said. “We think somewhere between 500 and 1,000 feet, but if conditions change, they might extend all the way to the ground.”
“What happens if they do?” DeLuca asked.
“You’re going to have to pull at 6,500, whether you’re in the clouds or not,” Johnson said. “The odds are, you’ll be clear by then, but we won’t know until we go. Flying your chutes inside of cloud cover is going to be . . . interesting. We train to land using GPS systems only, but if we lose sight of you in the clouds, you’re on your own, at least until you hit the ground and we hook up again. Watch your altimeters, slow down as much as you can when they hit 3,600, keep your knees bent and look for dirt. You will land eventually. That’s rule number one of parachuting—you must land on the ground the same number of times as you jump out of an airplane. Now I’m going to turn the podium over to Sergeant DeLuca and have him tell you all what it is we’re looking for.”
DeLuca felt slightly weak in the knees, thinking about what Johnson had just said. He drew a deep breath.
“What we want,” he began, “is to take everybody we find in for questioning. The best information we have is that the monastery is where we’re going to find a man named Mohammed Al-Tariq, the former head of Saddam’s secret police. His son will be there as well. Al-Tariq was responsible for using BW and CW during the Anfal campaign that followed the Iran-Iraq War. We believe he may have built his own private laboratory at a place called Al Manal, disguised as something called the Daura Foot and Mouth Disease facility. I could speculate on what we think he produced there, and the intel is good, but nothing’s confirmed yet, so I’m going to hold off. It doesn’t matter—he’s got something nasty, and he’s planning to bring it.”
“Excuse me,” Sergeant Red said, “but it matters a whole fucking lot if we’re jumping into it. We’ve got testing equipment and chem suits if we need ’em, but nobody said we were jumping into BW.”
“What up, dawg—you’ve had your rabies shots,” Sergeant Yellow said.
“We’re not dealing with BW,” DeLuca said. “Not here, anyway. As far as we can tell, it left Iraq on trucks when the bombing started and got into Syria somehow and got put on ships in Lebanon. The shipments are relevant only because of what it means to our mission. If the WMD are deployed and dispersed, then there has to be some sort of central command and control. The organization that’s being put together to deliver the attack is something called Alf Wajeh, or the Thousand Faces of Allah. I doubt they have a thousand agents in the field—we all know how these terrorist organizations inflate their own numbers to make themselves scarier. Our operating theory is that this network is going to be centralized and controlled by Al-Tariq, the same way that Al Qaeda was or is centralized in Bin Laden. The monastery could be the headquarters, so we’re looking for communications equipment, computers, laptops, Palm Pilots, or PDAs, anything that might be used to store the information needed to coordinate a large network or to facilitate communications.”
“First thing we take out are the roof dishes,” Johnson said. “The area is too remote for land lines, but they’ve got all sorts of stuff on the roof, hidden under tarps, so we haven’t seen them until now, but they’re there.”
“What we don’t want,” DeLuca continued, “is for the alarm to sound and for somebody inside to send the go-signal to deploy the WMD. That’s why we can’t fly in a thousand guys and blast the crap out of everything, because that would give them time, and it would also destroy the information we need.”
“We have hunter-killer UAVs in the air, once the shit hits the fan, but the mission is to get in before they throw down,” Johnson said. “And then we shoot the pistols from their hands just like the Cisco Kid. Sergeant DeLuca is right about taking prisoners if possible, but the ROE is shoot to kill. Use your discretion.”
“They don’t know we’re coming,” DeLuca concluded, “but they probably know we’re aware of them.”
“That why they put a bounty on your ass?” Sergeant Pink asked.
DeLuca shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “But if anybody here needs a quick fifteen thousand, you’d be much smarter taking out a home equity loan, with the interest rates they’re offering these days.”
“Twenty-five,” Sergeant Blue said. “It’s gone up.”
Sergeant Pink whistled.
“That’s a new bass boat, where I come from.”
“That’s as much as your sister could make in a year, blowing sailors, where you come from,” Sergeant Purple told him.
Scott walked his father to the plane, apologizing and explaining that he had to catch a ride back to his unit with Captain Jefferson. He wanted a moment to speak with his father in private.
“So, Pops,” Scott said, eyeballing the C-130 that waited for them on the tarmac, dark save for a faint glow from the green and blue lights of the cockpit control panels, the only colors that wouldn’t wash out the night vision goggles worn by the pilots. “You remember that time when I was going to Boy Scout camp, when I was twelve, and I was all freaked out about bears, so you gave me Grandpa’s World War II medal for bravery and told me it would give me courage? You said it was magic.”
“I remember that,” DeLuca said.
“Well, I know how much you looked up to Grandpa, even though you didn’t always see eye to eye,” Scott said, taking from his neck a thin gold chain and on it, a hexagonal brass medallion with a war eagle in the middle. “So I thought I’d loan it to you. You can give it back to me the next time I see you.”
DeLuca held the medallion in the palm of his hand and looked at it for a moment, then put his head through the chain and tucked the medal inside his T-shirt, next to his P-38.
“Thanks,” he said.
Suiting up for the mission made him feel like he was preparing for a moon landing. They dressed out of the back of one of the SUVs, changing into what Sergeant Blue told him was an ECW or Extreme Cold Weather system. The first layer was expedition-weight polypropylene long underwear, complete with a fleece balaclava over his head; over that, woodlands green camo pants and black fleece zip-up turtleneck top, and over that, the “Mister Puffy suit,” comprising a down-filled jacket and down-filled overalls. The outer layer was a Gore-Tex jumpsuit, loose-fitting on everyone except Goliath (who could barely squeeze into the largest set of clothing Preacher Johnson could find), completed by insulated Gore-Tex boots, polar-fleece mittens and Gore-Tex mitten shells. Over their faces, they wore MBU-12/P pressure demand oxygen masks, a soft rubber faceplate bonded to a hard plastic shell with a built-in microphone for radio communication, and over that, an insulated jump helmet with built-in speakers. The masks were connected to 106-cubic-inch portable bailout oxygen bottles, carried in a pouch and worn on the left side, the right side reserved for weapons.
As for weapons, DeLuca wasn’t sure he’d ever seen, in all his years in the military, as small a group carrying so much armament. Apparently the men of TF-21 were free to choose whatever weapons they wanted to carry, regardless of nation of origin. Sergeant Blue favored a pair of AK-47s, arguing that if he ever ran out of ammunition, most of the time he’d be able to borrow more from the enemy. Pink bore an Italian Beretta AR-70, a Mac5 machine pistol, and an old-fashioned sawed-off Italian shotgun. Red had an Austrian Steyr AUG and an M-12. Yellow favored a brace of Striker 12 Street Sweepers capable of firing a dozen 12-gauge shotgun shells in as many seconds. Purple wore a set of Tec-9s and an Israeli Galil that had been fitted with a grenade launcher. Preacher Johnson carried a Street Sweeper, a Colt AR-15, an M-10, and a Tec-9, making DeLuca feel positively naked with his Beretta and his Smith and Wesson. He was given his choice and asked to select from an array of weapons, choosing an M-12 for its compact size and because he’d fired one before. Dan chose an army-issue Colt AR-70. Goliath picked up a Kalashnikov and field-stripped it in five seconds, putting it back together again and grabbing a handful of clips like he was grabbing French fries at McDonald’s. In addition to assault rifles, Sergeants Pink, Blue, and Yellow were filling packs with C4 plastic explosives, 80mm backpack mortars, silencers, claymores, and MREs, the packs to be worn between their legs and lowered to the ground on tethers just before landing.
Sergeant Blue handed DeLuca a roll of duct tape and instructed him to tape over the barrel and sights of his weapons. “In case you get dirt in ’em when you land,” he explained. “Or if they get tangled in your lines. Tape the triggers, too, so you don’t accidentally blow your leg off. Makes it much harder to land.”
The C-130 took off at about 0100 hours. They sat in metal seats, facing each other along opposite sides of the fuselage, the plane empty and cavernous, except for them, buckled in with five-point harnesses, their faceplates attached to the central oxygen console, from which they’d prebreathed pure oxygen in advance of takeoff. They’d continue to breathe pure oxygen until they reached the target, at which point they’d switch over to their portable systems, which contained about thirty minutes of oxygen, more than enough to get them safely on the ground. Because the cabin wasn’t pressurized, DeLuca felt his ears repeatedly pop and unpop as they flew. The only light was dim and red. Occasionally a man would flip his NVGs down to test the batteries and settings. Sergeant Yellow, who seemed to be the coolest cucumber among the bunch, kicked his head back and slept, while Preacher Johnson next to him used his NVGs to read a book. When DeLuca flipped his goggles down to see what book it was, he saw that it was a Bible.
No one spoke, each man left to his own thoughts.
When they got a signal that they were thirty minutes from target, DeLuca heard Johnson’s voice in his intercom.
“Let us pray,” Johnson said, speaking slowly and calmly. “Dear Lord, we want to start by acknowledging the separation of church and state, and this being a U.S. military mission, please consider this prayer as entirely unofficial and of a personal nature. We are mindful, as well, of your commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but see ourselves as your agents executing the enforcement of that commandment, for we are tasked tonight to stop a bunch of motherfuckers who would certainly kill a whole lot of innocent people if they could, and thus we ask your forgiveness and hope that you might grant us the wisdom and courage to carry out our mission and kill these motherfuckers before they kill us, thy will be done. And lest anybody think this is some bullshit my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God holy crusade sort of nonsense, we recognize that you and Allah probably play handball together every day and that Jesus and Mohammad are like the Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig combo on your heavenly team, and that it’s not our place to decide who’s got you on whose side and who doesn’t, because we know you hate this whole fucking mess as much as we do. If you can, please give Mr. David and myself, we of a slightly advanced age, the fortitude to show these flatbellies how it’s done. Grant our leaders the wisdom and the courage to know what’s right, and lead us safely back home to our loved ones, who clearly don’t deserve the shit they have to take from us or the worries we put them through. And if one of us should fall tonight, please let him into Heaven, where we promise we’ll do a better job than we’ve done here, because these are good men, Lord, they’re good men in a bad place, doing a job that has to be done, so that other people can live their lives in peace, or in service to you, if that’s what they want to do, because we know that the death that comes to us tonight means the end of life to some but the beginnings of better lives to others. So make us quick. Make us strong. Make us smart. Make us brave. Make us tough. Make us cruel, and let us all come home again together. Amen.”
“Amen,” DeLuca said.
Fifteen minutes before they reached their targets, he saw the jumpmaster stand by the jump door and point a finger at the ceiling as the ramp lowered. The sky was full of stars. Preacher Johnson gave him a thorough going over, fastened a green Cyalume chemlight to the back of his helmet and cracked it until it glowed, detached his oxygen mask from the central console and reattached it to his portable system, checked to make sure it was working properly, and then gave him a thumbs-up.
“You’re good,” he told DeLuca. “I guarantee you I’m going to get you down. Okay? I guarantee it.”
“Alive?” DeLuca said.
Johnson just winked at him, strapping an eight-foot length of bungee cord to DeLuca’s right arm, just above the elbow. “This is so I don’t lose you. I’ll cut you free just before it’s time to deploy. Just watch the others and do what they do.”
The jumpmaster pointed all five fingers toward the ceiling, and then he straightened his arm to point out the door.
Sergeant Pink went first, followed by Blue, and then Yellow, the three men stepping backward off the ramp to let the force of the air streaming below hit them on their chests. Purple went next, tethered to Goliath, then Dan and Sergeant Red, and then, before he knew quite what was happening to him, DeLuca backed off the ramp with Preacher Johnson next to him, flying out into the sky.
It took him about ten seconds to reach terminal velocity, at which time he experienced an adrenaline rush unlike anything he’d ever known before.
“Arch, DeLuca,” he heard Johnson’s voice in his headset. “Arms out, legs apart. You’re doing great. Try to relax. Pink, Blue, form up and maintain intervals. Sergeant DeLuca, I’m going to turn you a bit so that we can see each other, all right?”
DeLuca felt a gentle tug on his arm. The earth below seemed black and featureless, not a light to be seen, until he remembered that he was looking at the top of a vast cloud cover. He looked at his altimeter. It read five thousand feet. The clouds looked as flat as the desert. He checked his altimeter. It read zero.
“Cloud deck is thirteen thousand more, right?” he asked.
“Correct. Sergeant Pink,” Johnson said calmly, “why don’t you go on ahead and tell us when you’re through, okay?”
“Roger that,” Pink said. DeLuca watched as Sergeant Pink brought his hands in to his side and dove headfirst, accelerating as he reduced his wind resistance.
“Two thousand above deck and falling,” Johnson said. “Maintain awareness. Keep your intervals. Sergeant DeLuca, prepare to get hit in the face with an ice-cold hose.”
The cloud deck approached rapidly. For a second, DeLuca imagined that it was the ground, that he would die, that this was it, his life was over, a good life all in all, no regrets . . .
“Pink in,” he heard.
“Blue in.”
“Yellow in.”
Then he hit.
Nothing had ever felt as bracing. In the darkness, he could see nothing. He felt a gentle tug on his arm. “That’s me, Sarge,” Johnson said in a soothing voice. “I’m right here. I’m not going to let you go.”
DeLuca heard a ringing sound. He heard it again. An alarm? Had something gone wrong?
“Sergeant DeLuca,” Johnson said. “When we get down, would you kindly remember to turn off your cell phone? Thank you.”
DeLuca knew, without having to check, who had called—Bonnie had an absolute God-given knack for always calling at the worst possible moments.
Then he was out of the clouds. It was dark below.
“TLs out,” Johnson reported. “Newbies, watch your wrists. When you see your altimeters flashing, pull your D-rings and check for deployment. Mr. David, you’re going to be on your own but I’ll be right above you, giving you directions. We’ll count down from ten. I’ll pull at five and you pull at zero, please. From . . . ten, nine, eight . . .”
When he got to zero, DeLuca grabbed his D-ring and shot his right arm forward.
He felt his body flip as his chute deployed.
“You’ll want to toggle about three-quarters right and rejoin us,” Johnson instructed him. He found his toggles and pulled down on the right one. “Careful not to spiral. Let up. Okay. Steady. Come on back to me. Good.”
“Pink is good,” DeLuca heard in his headset.
“Blue good.”
“Yellow good.”
“Red good.”
“TLs are good.”
There was a pause.
“Sergeant Purple,” Johnson said. “Sergeant Purple,” he repeated. “Report, please. Has anybody seen Sergeant Purple or Mr. Bakub?”
“Negative, Blue.”
“Negative, Pink—vectoring right.”
“Keep your intervals,” Johnson said. “Stack looks good. Mr. David, toggle right just a tad. There you go.”
“Smoke deployed,” the navigator said. “Wind speed three knots blowing due east. Setting up right.”
DeLuca understood what was going on. Something had gone wrong with Goliath and Sergeant Purple, but no one was talking about it.
Then his headset crackled.
“Purple is good,” a voice said. “Sorry to worry you. Jabba the Hutt had a problem with his main so I had to cut him free. He’s on his reserve . . . somewhere.”
“Somewhere?” Johnson asked.
“Lost him,” Sergeant Purple said. “I was at eight hundred when I pulled.” DeLuca remembered his instructor telling him it would take superhuman strength to brake a chute that opens below one thousand feet.
“Mr. David,” Johnson said, “you’re a bit wide, so let’s spiral at half-toggle right and bring you back into the wind. A little more. A little more. Looking good. Hold it. Do you see the ground? Three-quarters. Okay, slow but steady, a little more . . . now full brakes.”
DeLuca pulled his toggles all the way down, his arms straight and pressed against his sides, his knees bent. He hit the ground softly and ran three or four steps forward before stopping. He cut his chute loose and saw it collapse behind him.
The group gathered where a small clump of scrub oaks formed a small copse at the north end of the field. The night was as dark as they could hope. There was no sign of Goliath.
“Don’t worry, Purple,” Johnson said. “By this time next week, he’ll be back sitting on his mama’s lap. Meanwhile, everybody pay up.”
As the team stripped off its jumpsuits and insulation layers, each TF-21 member approached Johnson and handed him two hundred-dollar bills.
“We like to pay our bets before the mission starts, in case we have next-of-kin issues,” Johnson explained to DeLuca.
“What was the bet?”
“A hundred that I couldn’t get you down in one piece, and then when they met you, we made it double or nothing you’d stick the landing.”
They were crouched low, removing the duct tape from their weapons and rechecking their equipment while Johnson downloaded the latest falcon view to his PDA. Imagery indicated two guards on the roof and one in the courtyard, where the generator was located. DeLuca and Johnson studied the photograph.
“There’s no backup generator?” DeLuca asked.
“Not one that’s running,” Johnson said. “They might have backup.”
The plan they’d discussed during the briefing looked solid. Sergeants Blue and Pink were to scale the roof, take out the guards and the communications equipment. From the roof, they’d have command of the courtyard below. Sergeants Red and Yellow would enter through the kitchen and clear the living quarters before proceeding to the main sanctuary. Purple and Sykes would secure the barn, entering from the north side and working through to the courtyard doors opposite, where they would take out the guard in the courtyard and the generator next to him. DeLuca and Johnson had the main gate, guarded by decorative barbicans and spanned by a pair of thick wooden doors that were currently open. The monastery had been built on a promontory, with two of the main building’s outer baileys flush to the cliff walls, an overhang to the east, and a steep, nearly vertical two-hundred-foot drop to the south—no wonder Saladin hadn’t had much luck assailing the fortifications.
“Crack your necklaces, boys,” Johnson said. “Stay tight.”
They moved stealthily down the tree line where the woods dropped off along the mountain’s eastern slope. They came to a barbed-wire gate, and beyond it a lower field. A wide lane opened up at the southwest corner of the lower field, leading to the barn.
They stayed off the road, picking their way through dwarf pine and scrub oak until they reached the crest of a small rise, affording them a view of the buildings about a hundred yards below. Sighting through the NVG-assisted scope on his Steyr, Sergeant Red offered to pick off the guards on the roof, an idea that had some merit but one DeLuca had to veto—it would give the others too much warning. Sergeant Blue proposed a complete stealth attack, taking out the guards in silence and then whoever was asleep downstairs, but there was too much risk involved. Instead, a little more “shock and awe” was called for, an attack that created chaos and confusion and one that DeLuca hoped would be over quickly. Johnson sent Blue, Pink, Red, and Yellow off to circle left, while the rest of the team crossed the road one at a time on DeLuca’s signal.
“Let me know when you’re in position,” Johnson said.
“How many Hellfires have we got again?” DeLuca asked him.
“Six,” Johnson said. “And a couple Warthogs that can be here in ten minutes. All you gotta do is ask.”
“You guys willing to cue this to the Hellfires? I’m thinking one on the generator and two on the roof. It means we’re going to have to be sitting pretty close.”
“We can paint the generator with infrared, but I don’t know about the roof,” Johnson said. “That’s the problem with lasers. They tend to go in a straight line.” He surveyed the surrounding hillsides. “I could send someone up the mountain, but that’s going to take time and he might be too far away. Aw, what the fuck—they gotta have the damn coordinates zeroed in by now.”
He instructed his men to advance to their positions and wait for the rocket attack before beginning the assault, then called the flight office in Kirkuk controlling the Predators and told them what he wanted.
DeLuca and Johnson crouched along a ravine, moving west to approach the front gates, stopping in a wooded gully, and crawling on their stomachs to the crest of a rise, from where the gates lay directly in front of them, about sixty yards off, the last forty open ground. The fact that the gates were open suggested they certainly weren’t expecting company.
“Blue Team in position,” he heard on his headset.
“Red team, too,” a second voice said.
Then a dog started barking.
“Aw shit,” Johnson said. “Why didn’t we figure that? They got sheep, they got sheepdogs. Any time you’re ready, Kirkuk.”
DeLuca hoped that the dog barking in the night was a commonplace occurrence, but he feared the opposite, and that inside the monastery, men were waking up and reaching in the darkness for their weapons.
Then there was no more darkness, the air split by a spectacular blast as a Hellfire missile screamed down from above and detonated in the courtyard. A moment later, two more blasts shook the ground, missiles striking the communication equipment on the roof and sending fragments over DeLuca’s head.
“Go go go!” Johnson radioed to his men.
DeLuca and Johnson ran to the gates, where a large fire burned in the courtyard, flames rising above the casements, smoke filling the air.
Dan and Sergeant Purple rushed the shed, firing as they went to clear the way, the building smelling of straw and sheep shit and chemicals. They raced past a pair of vehicles, then took cover as someone fired on them from the courtyard door. They fired back and the figure fell.
DeLuca saw flashes in the cloister windows opposite the gates, where he and Johnson took cover at opposing gatehouses. The power was out. So far so good. He flipped his NVGs down as three more explosions shook the roof, probably grenades from Sergeants Blue and Pink.
Two men ran into the courtyard from the main building and were cut down in a hail of fire as Purple opened up with his Tec-9 and Johnson engaged with his Street Sweeper, catching the enemy in a withering crossfire. When DeLuca saw a man running from the colonnade to the main portal, he pointed his machine pistol at him, the weapon roared in his grip, and the running man fell.
“Red—are you good?” Johnson called out when he saw a particularly large fireball roll from the far windows of the cloister.
“Good good good,” Red shouted back. “We’re clear here.”
“Move on the main. The main!” Johnson told them. “Blue, Pink—where are you?”
Someone fired from one of the windows of the main building, a staccato roar from what DeLuca guessed was a large-caliber machine gun.
“On the roof—clear here.”
“Can you get down?”
“Repeat?”
“Can you get in? Trap door, staircase, something.”
“Staircase. Taking fire.”
DeLuca crossed into the courtyard and took cover behind what appeared to be an old well. He saw the double lancet windows flash twice, Sergeant Blue dropping grenades down the staircase, and ducked as the glass blew out. They’d tried to get intel on the Monastery of Saint George (a set of thousand-year-old blueprints would have been nice) but could collect only general information, that similar abbeys of the era featured simple living quarters or cells, a building for the animals and the equipment they used, a place where food could be prepared or stored or consumed, and a larger sanctuary for group worship, with perhaps an office attached and a place for the abbot to reside—that was where DeLuca expected to find Al-Tariq.
Someone fired out the window again.
He ducked his head and ran for the central portal, slamming into the wall with his back and pausing to catch his breath.
Johnson slammed into the wall next to him.
“You’re faster than you look,” Johnson said.
“Only when I’m getting shot at,” DeLuca said.
“Blue, ready?” Johnson said.
“Blue ready,” Blue replied. “I left Pink on the roof.”
“I’ve got the can-opener,” Purple said, raising his grenade launcher.
“We’re in the foyer,” Red called in. “The sacristy. Whatever it’s called.”
“Eyes, boys. Don’t shoot anybody with a necklace on,” Johnson reminded everyone. DeLuca ducked reflexively as something in the barn exploded, probably some kind of gasoline storage tank. “On three. One, two . . .”
Purple blew the doors in with his grenade launcher.
They rushed the main building, firing into it as they went. DeLuca saw Dan take a window. He dove and rolled through the door as someone fired from the chancel rail. Yellow fired back, and the man was dead. A second man fired from the transept. Preacher Johnson returned fire with his Tec-9, shattering tile and glass, a chandelier dropping to the floor as the man died.
When someone scrambled for the door, DeLuca turned with his machine gun, squeezing the trigger, only to find his clip was empty. He drew his .38 and followed the figure out the door. The man shot twice as DeLuca ducked back, then kept running, firing his AK-47 a third time behind him before being clotheslined fiercely by a giant figure in the courtyard. It was Goliath. The giant wrapped his right arm around the man’s neck and dropped to the ground, snapping the man’s spine. DeLuca helped Goliath to his feet, whereupon he noticed the big man was limping.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I flew into the mountain,” Goliath said, dusting himself off. “I lost my rifle.”
“Poor mountain,” DeLuca said. “Take his.”
He returned to the sanctuary, where he saw, in his NVGs, six men with glowing rings around their necks, but nothing more, no one moving, and three bodies on the floor, none of them large enough to be Al-Tariq, unless he’d lost a lot of weight since the war began. Johnson shone a flashlight on their faces.
“He’s not here,” DeLuca said.
“We got two in the cloisters,” Red said. “Two on the roof and two in the courtyard. That’s nine. Isn’t that everybody?”
“That was approximate,” Johnson said. “Is there a basement? Anything down below?”
“It’s clear,” Yellow said. “Just a wine cellar. Completely empty.”
“The roof is clear,” Pink said, descending a corner staircase. “What have we got?”
“We got nine,” Johnson said. “You see anything?”
“Just King Kong Bundy,” Pink said, referring to Goliath, who stood in the doorway.
DeLuca felt his heart pounding. He heard sheep bleating, a dog still barking, a fire burning in the courtyard where the generator had been, and then the quiet was shattered as a white Toyota pickup truck sped from the barn, a .50-caliber machine gun mounted in the back spitting fire at them as the vehicle made for the front gate. DeLuca dove out the door and hit the floor, firing from between the balustrades of the arcade railing. Johnson and Blue managed to get off a few bursts as well, but then the truck was gone, bouncing down the hill and toward the woods below.
“There’s another car in the barn,” Dan called out.
The keys were in it, a soft-topped Humvee DeLuca suspected had been stolen or otherwise appropriated from coalition forces.
Sergeant Blue drove. DeLuca rode shotgun, literally, for the first time in his life, borrowing the 12-gauge Striker from Sergeant Yellow. Johnson was in the back. Dan was in the gunner’s sling, though without a gun mounted for him to use. DeLuca handed him his M-12 and two fresh clips.
The road dropped precipitously, a winding gravel lane that was rutted and grooved where the runoff had eroded deep cuts in the surface. Humvees were built for neither speed nor comfort, but they were built for stability, and Blue drove like he’d been running moonshine on West Virginia back roads since he was twelve, running without headlights and using his NVGs to see. The taillights of the pickup truck appeared and disappeared up ahead as the road hugged the curves of the mountain, the truck perhaps a quarter mile off, but it soon became apparent that the Hummer was gaining.
“TF-21,” DeLuca heard in his headset. “This is Kirkuk. Do you need assistance?”
“Negative, negative,” Johnson shouted. “Lead vehicle is hostile. Trail vehicle is friendly.”
“We know,” the voice said. “We’ve got your GPS. Would you like us to take out the lead?”
“Negative,” DeLuca said. “We need it intact. Can you slow ’em down a bit?”
“We can try,” the voice came back.
The pickup was no more than a quarter mile ahead when a Hellfire missile struck the mountainside in front of it. DeLuca saw the brakes of the truck light up, but then the vehicle sped forward. He saw as well an explosion on a distant peak, telling him the A10 “Warthogs” were engaged, now that the Iraqi antiaircraft batteries had turned on their radars.
“Get me closer,” Dan shouted.
“He’s got a fifty-cal,” Blue shouted back. “We don’t want to get too close.”
The road was rough enough that it was pointless for either side to try to fire off rounds on the fly. DeLuca was more afraid of the lead vehicle dropping off a passenger, some guy behind a rock with an RPG leveled and steadily aimed at them. At the same time, he felt the adrenaline rush of battle, the head-to-toe electric charge that made him believe he could drive through anything, the feeling that had always pushed men in armed conflict to do very brave or very stupid things, often in the same day. “It’s a good thing war is so terrible,” Robert E. Lee once said, “elsewise we should grow too fond of it.”
A bump sent the Humvee flying, and then a large pothole rattled his teeth, centrifugal force flinging him against the door. Sergeant Blue hit the gas, gravel flying up behind them in a rooster tail. They caught a glimpse of the pickup truck again, ahead and below, curving around a rock face, and then another Hellfire struck, throwing a ball of flame in the air and scattering rocks, but the truck pressed on, disappearing around the stone face of the mountain.
“That’s it for us,” the voice from Kirkuk said. “We’ve got one more in the chamber but we thought we’d save it in case you need a kill on the other side.”
“Other side of what?” Johnson asked, but then the answer to his question became evident as the Toyota disappeared into the mouth of a large tunnel, its lights dipping out of sight. Sergeant Blue slowed.
“What do we do?” he asked excitedly. “We got ’em, right? Let’s just sit on it. Pin ’em down on both ends and wait for support. They can’t go anywhere, right?”
“Negative,” DeLuca said. “We don’t know the interior topography. If it’s a cave system, there could be other exits. Go go!”
Sergeant Blue sped up again, barreling into the tunnel barely under control. Once inside, the rock walls closed in, and it felt like they were going much faster than they were as the air turned colder. DeLuca flipped down his NVGs and looked at the speedometer. They were going thirty miles an hour, then thirty-five, forty . . . The tunnel bent to the left, then appeared to straighten a ways, the Toyota nowhere in sight ahead of them. Forty-five miles an hour . . .
DeLuca noticed that the bulletproof windshield of the Humvee was cracked, the fissure emanating from a pock mark the size of a half-dollar where a fifty-caliber shell had evidently ricocheted off the glass directly in front of him. A bit too close for comfort, he thought.
Then the Humvee took a hard left and slammed full speed into the back of the white Toyota truck, which had been left there to block the way.
DeLuca, as was his habit, wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, better to be able to make a quick exit, he’d always felt. And so he did, flying headfirst through the windshield.
And then everything went black.