Black Storm (13 page)

Gault called in a low voice, “I used to have a red bird.”

“What kind, a turkey?”

“Red” and “Turkey” were the challenge and passwords, used in a sentence to confuse anyone who overheard. The weapons swung away. Their leader, a large-chested man in a black watch cap, circled his arm in the air and pointed down. They fanned out into their security, and Gault went to a knee with him.

“Who're you wankers?” were the first words out of his mouth.

“US Marines. You Sarsten?”

“Sarsten, yeah. The head shed said to meet you at the RV but didn't say what for. We're in shit state, you can see that. What's the problem, mate?”

Up close Gault could see him pretty well now that his NVGs were working. The SAS patrol commander had black beard stubble and a heavy mustache and sideburns. Dark curls poked out from under the stocking cap. He looked big and rough and very wired. Gault decided not to start with the bad news. He said, “We're headed east. What have we got in that direction?”

“Hostiles. There's fooking ragheads all over starting at first light. There's an antiair battalion eight klicks east of here. They've got ZSU-23s or M53s and good security. Dogs. Lights. Wire.”

This didn't sound good. Gault said, “I see you've got wounded.”

“We had some drama. I'm the only one not hit.”

Gault rose, started to aim his flash back at the helo. Sarsten's hand closed over it. “What the fuck you doing?”

“Letting the helo go.”

“He's taking my wounded. Then we're getting out of here.”

“Get your wounded into the chopper, Sergeant. The rest of your team too. But you personally are attached with us now.”

Gault put his hand on Sarsten's shoulder, getting ready to explain. But the other man knocked it off instantly with the butt of his weapon and in the same motion pushed the muzzle into Gault's neck. Gault froze. Something about the man's eyes, imperfectly visible though they were, warned him not to move.

“What are you telling me, mate?”

“We're on a hot mission. We've got to know what's between us and our objective point. Especially if there're hostiles. Get your team out of here, but you're staying. We've got extra rations and water for you. Ammo too.”

Sarsten stared at him. His camo paint had smeared in the rain. “The fuck you say. Where you getting this shit?”

“Those are the orders.”

“Orders from who?…Those rear-echelon
fuckers,
don't tell me they…I said, orders from fucking
who?
”

“From whoever your chain of command is. The authenticator is ‘Ripper.'”

The mustached man began cursing. The rain increased, coming down out of the black with stinging force. Engines revved behind them; the copilot, telling them he was about to lift.

Sarsten yelled at the shadows around them to get in the helo, and left him standing there. Gault's goggles started flickering again then, and he had to take them off to reinsert the batteries. As he fumbled in the rain, the world was an immense and impenetrable dark, broken only by the occasional flash from the east. Like lightning, but silent. He didn't know what they were.

When he got back to the helo, the British team was boarding. Two walking wounded stood by, one with a slinged arm and the other a bandage round his head. He leaned into them and yelled, “Sorry we have to keep your team leader.”

“What? Keeping the Devil?”

“Good fucking luck on you,” said the man with the head wound.

Gault hesitated. “Who?”

“The Devil Incarnate. But I didn't tell you, mate.”

The other man muttered something, lost in the clatter of rotor blades and the rain. Gault said, “Say again?”

“Said, you don't want to all get slotted, better ship him back with us. He's right round the bend, that one.”

Sarsten came up and the wounded men fell silent. He asked if they had any ammo or food or water left. They said no. Gault watched the body language. The sergeant's men turned away, edged apart from him. Put distance between them.

For a moment he wondered if he was making the right call. Paulik had left it up to him. But if there were enemy forces between him and the objective, he had to know where they were, how they were armed, how they patrolled…things Sarsten's team had obviously paid in blood to learn.

The last SAS merged with the blurry heat-shadow of the aircraft. The pitch of the blades increased. A blast of dust and grit whipped up to sting the backs of his legs and neck as he jogged away. He was unable to shake the feeling that he'd have been safer, for some reason he couldn't put his finger on, if he'd told Sarsten to leave too, join his wounded and go. But it was too late now. So he just stood silent in the rain, then got the team on their feet and started them moving out.

 

AN HOUR
later Dan came up over a rise and saw a fiery rainbow in the distance.

They'd been moving steadily since the helo lifted, since it turned from a roar to a clatter in the sky to silence. Into that silence gradually filtered the sigh of the wind; the patter of rain; the rustle of the brush; the crunch of boots on wet gravel. No one spoke. Back at ‘Ar‘ar, Gault had made it plain that once inserted there'd be no
coughing, no grunting, no sneezing, no speech. Everything metal was taped to prevent clicks or jingles. In what the marines called Indian Country, the Bush, the Vege, the Zone, silence was life.

They'd humped fast off the LZ for an hour, moving in column formation. Every fifteen or twenty minutes the Gunny lifted his cover and they halted to listen. Dan went to a knee with the rest, resting the MP5 across his thigh as he looked, listened, and sniffed. To sense only a dog barking far away, and once a droning that might have been a vehicle on a distant road. Gault had angled away from it. They had to avoid roads, villages, anybody who might report their presence. The distant flickering he'd noticed had died away too, leaving them in a void. Dark and the rain.

Now sound came to him, a distant hollow popping, and he suddenly understood it and the fiery rainbow were one; antiaircraft fire arching upward. Directly ahead.

The gunny lifted his cover and Dan took a knee again. His bladder ached. He laid his weapon carefully across his boot the way you were supposed to, and fumbled his dick out. Maddox must have had the same need; she moved a few yards off into the dark.

He couldn't get over how cold it was. The rain came and went, but the freezing wind went on. Any depression in the ground cupped water at its heart. He wondered how long they stayed filled and how deep the aquifer was. This could be a fertile land, given wells and pumps. He buttoned after completing his contribution, shouldered his weapon, and scanned the horizon again. The AAA fire died away, and the night grew still again.

 

GAULT WAS
huddled with the British patrol leader, Sarsten, both men down on one knee and speaking lover-soft into each other's ears.

He'd rehearsed the order of movement back at ‘Ar‘ar. Blaze at point, then Nichols, then him. Vertierra behind
as RTO. Then came the two attachments, followed up by the assistant team leader. About five yards between each man. But now he had Sarsten too. Finally he'd put the SAS man ahead of him. Now he whispered, so low he barely heard himself, “That's your triple-A battalion?”

“Correct.” Sarsten was breathing hard, but then, he'd already been out here for days, had been in a firefight; he had to be exhausted. Again Gault wondered whether bringing him along had been a good idea.

“Which way around them, Sergeant? Got a recommendation?”

“Might have. Let's see your map, mate.”

Zeitner threw a poncho over them, hiding their light while they laid the chart out on the ground. Gault set the GPS out and took a first position with it. It was about the size of a brick with a little squared-off antenna pivoted from the side. They'd issued it to him back at ‘Ar‘ar and he was wary of it. Easy things let you down in the field. But the glowing green screen gave him a lat and long, and when he had that plotted, Sarsten pointed out the Iraqi position ahead and a wadi, on the map, that led south around it.

Gault didn't like going down into wadis, but he liked enemy antiair battalions even less. What worried him was that it'd take time to square his way around it. Maybe four hours. It'd be dawn before they could go to a hide site.

He decided to put that choice off, try the wadi and see what progress they made. He put the gear and map away and got the team on their feet again.

He caught the back-turned blur of Blaisell's face. A stab of doubt. Had
he
ever looked that young? The kid had been to UAT, but not on his watch. Still, he was a marine. He'd do all right. Maybe it'd be a good idea to swap him out with Nichols occasionally, give him a break on point. He'd think about that later too.

He caught the kid's eye and gave him the signal to move out.

MAUREEN HEARD
the dogs, not that far away. She was getting tired. Seemed like they'd been marching for hours through the dark. She didn't have goggles, like the marines. There weren't enough to go around. So she couldn't see where she was putting her feet, and often stumbled on rocks or uneven footing. She couldn't believe how heavy her ruck was. She tugged at her deuce gear, bowing to give her back a moment's rest. She was sweating despite the cold, and her calves were cramping. So far she'd kept up. She hoped they stopped soon, though. Surely they had to rest once in a while.

Her mind moved ahead, to what they were going to find. If this wasn't just another bullshit exercise, another of Saddam's empty threats. The Mother of all Bullshitters. She hoped it was gas. Tabun or sarin in a Scud warhead. Nothing to laugh about, but the Israelis had masks and safe rooms; they might get through without too many dead.

But if he was talking about a biological, ten to one it'd be the big A. Onset in one to six days, dose-dependent. High mortality. A tough bug, one you could pack into a warhead and expect to do some damage. She wasn't afraid of it. The team should never get in range of infectious
B. anthracis
. Even if they were exposed, the inoculations should protect them, unless Fayzah had bred some sort of variant, and even then she was carrying enough oral ciprofloxacin to bring the team back. Max-dose them till they shit their guts out. Cipro would screw up the intestinal flora, but they wouldn't die.

No, she wasn't afraid of anthrax. What she feared was the dark around them, the distant popping and the floating light. She touched her pistol. Back at ‘Ar‘ar she'd wondered if she could actually shoot somebody. Out here she felt more confident of it. But the thought made her guts move inside her belly.

Someone trod on her heel, Zeitner, and she sucked air at the pain. She turned her face and whispered, “When are we going to take a goddamn break?”

For answer she felt his hand slide across her throat…the signal for silence. That pissed her off, but she said nothing more. Just set her unseeing gaze forward again, bent under the weight, and grimly pressed on.

 

BEHIND HER,
Zeitner was worried. They had to preserve noise discipline. If she was going to talk…he adjusted his goggles, watching her ass move under the butt pack…he remembered the pilot and how she'd stitched him up. Reaching in, finding the artery somehow, and sewing it up so fast and deft he couldn't believe his eyes. While all he was going to do was put a pressure bandage on, so the poor shit would have probably just bled to death, that artery pumping away there inside his chest.

Jake Zeitner had actually resigned from the Marine Corps last June. But two weeks before he was due to get out, go to Cuba, New York, and start setting up the franchise with Joel, Daro's cousin who was going to be his partner—Joel handling the shop and him the office and the relationship with Firestone—the Marine Corps had issued what it called a stop loss. Everybody who was due to get out, retire, resign; they were on hold for the duration.

This had put him in a jam. They'd already paid Firestone the franchise fee and signed the lease on the land, the curve going out of town on 305 North between Moon-winks and the North Star Grill. Joel had put in all his savings. It was up to him to keep up the lease payments. Meaning Daro had to move back in with her folks in Salamanca. She'd disliked the Corps even before that, had pushed him to get out, make something of himself; the stop loss had made her wild.

Running a business wouldn't be easy. The package
Firestone sent made that clear. The lines, the margins, financing, you had to know what was going on in your shop and in your office, had to understand compound interest and labor relations and contract law.

He was going over the numbers again when he remembered where he was and pulled his mind back, astonished at himself. He was rear security, for Christ's sake! He half turned, checking their rear, first the left, then the right. Looking for anyone tracking or trailing them, someone cutting in behind. But the black hills, the faint green-sparkling sky, were empty and void.