Black Storm (22 page)

He shook this thought off and glanced to his right. He had to look close, exactly where he'd told him to be, to see Nichols. The sniper inclined his head slowly. Gault nodded back and looked behind him. The others were well concealed too. If he bit into a shit sandwich, they'd be able to get out.

Satisfied, he returned sight and attention to the building. It waited in the wind and the growing light. A black bird fluttered down and disappeared in the wire behind it. He waited, but it didn't fly out again.

The diesel snorting came again, louder, and he pulled back into the brush.

It was the same truck he'd heard heading along the lake. Coming toward them, it was a Toyota eight-wheeler with a noncommittal grille. It had been blue once but now was streaked with rust. The bumper was crushed. Behind the cab was a big cylindrical tank. It looked like a gasoline tanker. It snorted blue smoke, pulling itself up the slight grade, and passed the pink building, going about fifteen miles an hour. He saw the driver's head poke out, craning around.

The truck downshifted, snorted, downshifted, and rumbled slowly to a halt, there in the middle of the deserted road, among the deserted-looking fields. It stood there for a time, chuffing smoke, then backed around slowly and pulled off onto the berm, facing in the direction it had come from, about thirty yards from the building.

Not
at
the building, like it was supposed to be. Where the meet point was. Just
near
it. Meaning it might be their contact, or it might not.

The driver cranked the window down, reached out, and opened the door from outside. Gault heard the hinges screeching fifty yards away. The guy climbed down, put his hands to his back, and stretched, looking up and down the road. Gault watched him intently. Glancing toward Nichols, he saw the sniper gathered into his scope, track
ing the Iraqi as he moved around the truck, checking the tires. Then he was out of sight, behind it.

Nichols could still see him, though. Through the powerful optics the driver looked close enough to hit with a rock. He was young and heavily mustached, in black pants and shoes with high plastic heels and a light blue jacket. Behind the truck he pulled out his cock and stood pissing down into the marsh. He stood there for some time looking around. Then he zipped up and adjusted his balls and went heavily back to the truck and hauled himself up into the cab.

The tail of a green rag came out the window and started flapping around as the driver scrubbed at his windshield with it.

When the guy had come back around the truck playing with his balls Gault had just about concluded he was nothing more than a passerby. Till the rag came out.

That was the signal, a green cloth. This was their boy. He felt his heart speed up. He took a few breaths, making himself chill out as he glassed the road again. He didn't see anyone else coming.

It was always tense when you met a contact for the first time. Usually the other guy was armed, and just as nervous about you. Not a good situation no matter how you looked at it. No sudden motions. No jokes. Jokes could be taken the wrong way by a man who feared for his life. Real slow, real calm. He had to remember not to scratch the back of his neck without meaning it. Same with scratching his ass, of course.

He ducked down in the brush and pulled off his ruck. Checked his weapon again and laid it on top of his pack. Took off his war belt too, and his hat, so he didn't look so much like a soldier from a distance. He pulled out his phrase book and reviewed the opening dialogue he'd penciled inside the cover. Just to make sure.

When he looked at the truck again, the guy was still sitting there, the engine was still running, but he'd put the rag away.

Gault took a deep breath, hoisted himself to his feet, and started jogging toward him.

 

THE GUY
watched him through the windshield as he came up. He didn't move, just watched. Dark mustache, like all the other Iraqi men they'd seen. Saddam's fashion influence. Gault lifted a hand as he approached, but got no response. He jogged up to the cab and stopped a couple yards off. The guy looked down. Up close he looked about twenty to twenty-five, with a heavy growth of dark brown beard under the mustache. Longer hair than on the soldiers, and tinted glasses like Daniel Ortega. Gault said, in his very best Arabic, “
Sabaah al-khair, sidi
.”

The man's mouth went tight, as if he'd said some kind of curse. He didn't answer in Arabic, though. He just said, “Uh.”

Gault cleared his throat. “I understand we're to meet here. I'm Gunnery Sergeant Gault, US Marine Corps.”

“You call me Ted.” He didn't move his head, but his eyes were searching the low bushes, the slope down which Gault had come.

“I was told to meet someone called Samir.”

“No Samir. He alone?”

“No. I have others with me.” Including one who's got his crosshairs on your ass right now, he thought of adding; but didn't. It would not be what you'd call building trust. He might be in somebody's sights himself. He looked at the roof of the building. Up close he could see gaps in the tin, but not what was behind them. Nor could he see into the broken windows. He wished they'd gotten here earlier. He wondered about the Samir/Ted thing. The word he'd got was that the Syrian asset was named Samir. The name might change passed from hand to hand, but it didn't seem likely it would change that much. On the other hand, the identification signal had been right.

“Are he ready go Baghdad?”

He looked steadily up. “Ted”—it obviously wasn't his
name, but in the guy's situation, basically a traitor leading enemy nationals to their target, Gault wouldn't have given his real name either—had a boil on his cheek he fingered from time to time. His eyes were shifty behind the glasses and his face looked wet. I'd be sweating too, Gault thought. In fact, I am. Maybe his name
was
Samir, he just didn't want them to know it in case they got captured.

He didn't like standing out here in the open, in the growing daylight. He threw a glance over his shoulder, toward the lake. No traffic yet, but anyone could turn off the highway and drive up this way. To see a white-eye in camouflage battle dress talking to a guy in a water truck. He said, “How about if I get up in the cab with you?”

“What?”

“Into the truck.” He pointed, and the Iraqi hesitated, then nodded.

Gault trotted around the back, staying alert, inspecting it as he went. A brace of spigots came off a manifold, hanging over the rear bumper. A water truck, it looked like; how they got drinking water to the outlying villages. The passenger-side door banged open with a tinny creak, then slammed behind him with a boom.

The first thing he noticed was the folding-stock AK laid across the seat between them. All Gault had was his .45, cocked and locked and pushed down into his belt with the battle dress jacket pulled down over it. Sitting this high, he could see all the way down to the lake now. The front seat was worn plastic with the springs showing in places. The interior smelled of harsh tobacco, sweat, piss, diesel exhaust and cheap cologne. It felt hot after the freezing air in the open. The Iraqi was lighting a cigarette. He glanced doubtfully at Gault, then held the pack out. He took one and bent forward for a light. The appearance of trust, at least.

“We go Baghdad, yes?” the Iraqi said.

“
Na'am
. Yes. That's what we're here for.”

“You fight Saddam, yes?”

“That's right. And you?”

“Saddam enemy of my people.” He pronounced it
beoble
. “Of all Iraqi people. Soon now all fight him. Then he fall.”

The guy's English wasn't flawless, but aside from his all-purpose pronouns and his habit of replacing every
p
with a
b
he was understandable. Gault smiled encouragingly. “That's right. Saddam will fall. Then Iraqi people build democracy, right?”

“Not
your
democracy,” the Iraqi said. He stared straight at Gault, about as hostile as he could be. “
Islam
democracy.”

Well,
o
-kay, Gault thought. He swallowed and looked out the window, started a reassuring wave, then realized it might look like a motion toward his neck. He'd screwed up. Up here in the cab no one could see him scratch his ass. Next time…to hell with next time; he had to worry about now. He noticed the assault rifle on the seat had the safety off. He sucked in harsh raw smoke, barely stopped a cough. “They say you know where
hijurat ababeel
is.”

“No. I don't know where he—where he
is
.”

Gault went quiet inside. He said carefully, “We were told you worked on it.”

“Work on it? Sure. I work on it. Up until last year. But I don't know to little bit where he is. He never let me there. Brecautions. Security. But I get you close enough you find. Get your man in truck.”

He looked around the cab. The smoke was starting to get to him, and his stomach was pumping out gallons of acid. “I have too many guys.”

“Not here. The back. In
back
.” He gestured emphatically over his shoulder.

“In back?” Gault twisted, thinking he must have missed something, but the only thing behind them, up close against the little oval window in the rear of the cab, was the peeling painted metal of the tank. Then he under
stood, and said, “You mean, inside the tank? What, it's empty?”

Ted nodded. He pulled the backrest forward and put his hand down behind it, down into a gap that disappeared when he pushed it back again. “They climb in from top. Put guns behind seat. Get in water tank.”

“Okay, but we'll keep our weapons with us.”

“No. No guns inside tank. Make noise. Guns up here.” He patted the seat again. “Give back when we get to shop.”

“Shop? What kind of shop?”

“Guns up here. No guns in tank.” The Iraqi looked down the road. “
Bi sir'a!
Get man in now, fast. No argue.”

Gault rubbed his hands together, not liking this. Separated from their weapons, they were helpless. If this was a trap…not only would the mission be compromised, they'd all be prisoners. On the other hand, this lad was their only lead to the objective, the only way to carry the mission forward. It was a command decision and he stalled for a moment, unwilling to accept it. Instead he said, “We can't give you our weapons.”

Ted didn't even bother to answer him. He just gunned the accelerator and put the truck in first. “All right, okay,” Gault told him quickly, feeling the irrevocability, feeling the wrongness but seeing no other choice. “Okay. I'm going to lean past you and call them in.”

 

THEY CAME
in slowly, then at the double time when he pumped his fist in the hurry-up signal. They were so painfully exposed in the daylight. He kept looking toward the highway, then at the overcast. If the Iraqis had any aircraft up….

They panted up, and from anonymous running targets, rucks jouncing on their backs, became individuals again, became his troops. They huddled on the building side of the truck, and he said down to Vertierra, “Sergeant, hand up the shoulder weapons.”

“Say again, Gunny?”

He saw the doubt in their faces. He repeated the order and added, “We're going in the water tank. That's the only way he'll take us. Hand them up and go up the ladder there, there's a hatch on top.”

“No fucking way I'm giving up my rifle,” said Sarsten.

“Fine with me, Sergeant. See you back in Saudi.”

The SAS hesitated, then handed it up, cursing. Gault checked the safety, then placed it carefully behind the seat. Vertierra's followed, then Lenson's. Maddox was looking up; she touched her side, raised her eyebrows; the pistol? He shook his head silently.

“Is all?” the driver said. Gault said yeah, they were climbing in now. The tank behind them boomed as someone struck the metal.

“They must stay quiet.”

“I'll keep them that way.”

“You in tank too.”

He hesitated on his way down from the cab. The Iraqi was looking at him with a strange expression. Maybe he'd called this wrong. All the son of a bitch had to do now was drive them to the local Republican Guard barracks. On the other hand, they still had grenades and sidearms. Ted hadn't disarmed them completely.

“You're driving us to
hijurat ababeel
?” he asked him.

For answer he got another revving of the engine, another clash of gears. The dark eyebrows, the dark eyes turned on him for a fraction of a second. Then another press of the throttle.

“Get into tank,” Ted said.

Gault swung down, got his boots on the rickety rusting ladder, and boosted himself up over the curve of the water tank. He felt naked. A marine didn't turn his rifle over. This all felt wrong. Very wrong.

But it was the only choice he could see.

Blaze dropped into the tank, quick-drawing his Glock as he let go of the hatch rim. He had it pointed by the time his boots splashed into a foot of water.

He stared blindly at nothing. At the dark. It smelled musty, choking, like stale water underground.

Like a cave. And with that thought, the smell unlocked a door.

That summer the river went down, and somebody had discovered the hole. The kids had dared each other to go in. He and another boy had been the only ones brave enough. Inside, past the narrow entrance they'd had to wriggle through, had been a pool of water. It smelled like lime and wet and rottenness, as if animals had hidden here to die and decay. They'd crawled through it, the cold mud dragging at them in the dark, and then lain there, the rock close above their heads. And little by little the light from behind showed them a narrow passage, inward, totally dark, a passage to a cold hell. Looking at it he'd understood suddenly that whoever went in there would never come out. They'd dared each other in whispers, but in the end neither had had the guts to go on.

He pushed through the memory as through cobwebs and sloshed forward a step and looked around again. Behind him someone else dropped and landed softly. Light came in through the circle in the overhead, but not
much, and it was instantly sucked up, absorbed, obliterated by the dark. He felt a premonitory childish horror, a creeping of the skin just like he'd felt years ago in the cave, twelve years old and looking at his own death.

A thud, a splash, a grunt. Vertierra said close to his ear, “Make a hole. Move aft, marine.”

He laughed disbelievingly, as much from being scared as anything else. “‘Aft'? Where the fuck is
aft?
We're in a fucking milk truck, dipshit.”

Vertierra put his little dark big-nosed face close in the dim. “You don't say ‘dipshit' to me, man. You address me like a fucking marine, Corporal, that clear?”

He started to react, had his hand up to punch the fucker, when Parris Island cut in just in time. He wanted to say, fuck you, Mex boy, you're ATL material like I'm President George Fucking Bush. But instead said, “Aye, aye, Sergeant,” and melted back into the darkness, walking crouched over with his hands out until his head caught some kind of internal stiffener and he reeled back with a groan.

 

WHAT THE
fuck is that?” Sarsten muttered beside him. Gault turned his head, still unable to see. After the morning light, the inside of the tank was like night again.

“Blaze. He hit his head.”

“Everybody get down. He's going to start up.”

“Hey—No! No!”

Maddox's near-scream rang in their ears, bent and focused by the curving metal around them. Gault flung his arm up instinctively at the hollow bang just above them, then realized both what it was and why she'd screamed. What the hollow grating was, then the sound of heavy boots above them pacing back toward the ladder.

Ted had just slammed the hatch above them. It was battened down, sealed tight, maybe locked for all they knew. Yeah, the grating sound was probably a dogging bar. He stared into the dark, starting to sweat again, then
groped for his combat flash. By its sudden light, welcome but not all that bright, they looked around the interior.

It wasn't shiny stainless, what you'd expect, but rusty, corroded iron. A discolored pool down the center was dirty water bottomed with sticky mud. It was slippery as hell under their boots. Vertical stiffeners, or maybe baffles to keep the load from sloshing from side to side, came down from the overhead to welded-in bar stock along the floor. It all looked like it had been slapped together in some back-alley garage. Four holes low to the after bulkhead led, he figured, to the manifold and spigots he'd seen on the back. In the flash, he saw something else unsettling: six sets of startled eyes, all looking up at the sealed hatch. It had been the only way out. Which meant that till somebody decided to let them out, they were staying here.

“Everybody okay?” he said, not too loud. “Major, put the pistol away. You too, Blaze.”

“We're fucking locked down here, Gunny. You trust that raghead? What'd he say, anyway?”

“He's taking us into the city, Corporal. Just like in the plan. So cool the fuck out, all right?”

The world lurched and began moving. A grinding roar came from below, a hollow rumble from all around them accompanied by the pop and clink of gravel kicked up from the wheels. The remaining water flooded aft, piling up near the manifold. Gault squatted again, but a jolt put him on his ass in the mud.

A moan. He sent the beam forward again, searching. Maddox's eyes were blasted wide, and sweat gleamed on her face.

“Problem, Doctor?”

“Nothing…well, technically, something…I have these anxiety attacks. In closed-in spaces.”

“Can you secure the pistol, Doc?”

She seemed to realize she was still holding the Beretta. She flinched, and checked the safety and hol
stered it. So far, okay. He duckwalked over to her. “What is it? Claustrophobia?”

“Maybe.” She shook her head, and he heard her breathing, rapid and shallow, felt the warmth of it on his face. “It doesn't feel real good.”

Wonderful, he thought. If they had to go sewer-crawling…. The tank interior was dark, swaying and rumbling as they gathered speed, but there was enough headroom to stand up. He'd had troops fall out from claustrophobia before, the first time they put on their chem gear. Usually you could talk them through it, or get their attention on something else. He tried for a comforting tone. “It's just getting used to it. Take some deep breaths. Think about the sky.” He looked past her to Lenson. “How's he doing? Commander, how are you doing?”

The navy officer blinked. “Better. I think.”

“Talk to me. Still a little shook, huh?”

“I watched them shoot Zeitner. Burn him alive. Then shoot him.”

“I know. I saw what they left of him. How about you, Commander? Want to talk about it?”

“No,” Lenson said. He rubbed a hand across his mouth, looked down at it as if expecting to see something there. “Not now.”

Gault sat back again and checked his watch. From the map, it would be ninety, ninety-five kilometers into Baghdad. The truck had been pointed north, and he hadn't felt a turn yet. So they should be on this heading for a little while before they got to hard surface.

Ten minutes after they started, the truck heaved upward suddenly, booming and rattling. The rattle of pebbles against iron fell away. He held his breath, waiting for the turn, and there it was; a lean to the right, dragging his upper body toward the far side of the tank. The motion gentled, and the engine roared again, geared up, and from the smoothness now he figured they were on the
hardball. He felt for his compass, then let his hand drop; no point to it, they were enclosed in a cocoon of iron. Same for the GPS. No radio signal could penetrate to them here. Then he caught Nichols's light, probing into a corner.

“Gunny. Over here. Got a hole.” F.C. had found a weak spot in a weld with his KA-BAR. He leaned back and Gault applied his eye.

To see countryside going by. He was looking out the right side, out to the south, if they were traveling east. He couldn't get a fix on the sun through the overcast, though, and there were no shadows. But he couldn't see the lake. If they were going west, he'd be looking right out over it. So they were headed east, as promised.

On the other hand, if Ted boy was driving them to Mukhabarat Central, they'd be heading into Baghdad anyway.

“I make us going east,” Nichols drawled beside him.

“How you figure?”

“The wind. I saw smoke coming off one of those farms. Somebody burning something.”

“I concur, based on not seeing the lake. The wind, that's pretty sharp, Lance Corporal.”

“No problem, Gunny. I had to mike it out, setting up for the shot.”

Sarsten moved up, wriggling over Maddox and Lenson to get up to them. The truck was still gathering speed, the gears changing every once in a while, the tires whining underneath them. He wanted to see out too, and Gault edged back, letting him press his eye to the hole. They were tumbled close together, lying on each other, when Maddox said, sounding strangled, “I really don't think we're going to have enough air in here for long.”

 

BLAZE HAD
his back against the bulkhead, knees up and hands locked around them. He was still pissed about getting his ass chewed by the ATL. Hah, yeah, big fucking
deal. Old Tex-Mex acting like he's fucking God, when all he is is the fucking RTO. Everybody knew the dumbest guy got to mule pack the radio. A ray of light shot across the dark as someone shifted, and he saw the others clustered in a knot, saw for the fraction of a second an upside-down picture on the other side of the tank; an upside-down road, upside-down buildings going by. He blinked, but it was gone, leaving him doubting he'd seen it. Weird. He got his M&M and nut gorp out and chased a handful with a drink from his canteen.

Another flash of light, and in front of it someone moving toward him. Walking like the Incredible Hulk, arms down. It lurched as the truck jostled. He heard a whine and drone, a whoosh on the far side of the iron. Then the shape sank down beside him and he smelled the other guy; they could all smell each other now.

Sarsten said, “What a fucking wank-up. You lads always run your missions in milk trucks?”

He laughed, had to; the guy just had such a deadpan delivery. “I don't know. I'm low man on this one.”

“First time we got to talk. I'm Vic Sarsten.”

“Uh—hi, Sergeant.”

“We don't use ranks in the SAS. Not on ops. Just call me Vic, or Vickers. You're Nichols?”

“No. Denny Blaisell. I'm the scout.”

They shook hands and started to talk, kind of easy. Sarsten had such a dry sense of humor that the first couple of times he said something outrageous Blaze wasn't sure if he heard him right. Then he started to laugh.

 

GAULT WAS
looking out the peep, the truck was slowing, when he saw an Iraqi trooper by the side of the road, mouth O'd in a yell to someone out of the field of view; then another soldier; then a litter of wire and shattered concrete with uniformed men standing around it. He pulled back and groped along through the mud, then jammed his glove over the hole. All they needed was to
have somebody spot an eyeball looking out of the side of a truck. He told Nichols to find a piece of rust-scale and hold it over the hole; they were coming up to a roadblock.

The brakes came on, screeching and complaining, brake shoes rubbing metal. He put his flash on his face and mimed
silence
to the others. They waited, unmoving, barely breathing. Gault suddenly remembered that German sub movie, what was it, yeah,
Das Boot
. All the guys sweating it out while the destroyer rumbled overhead. Waiting for the depth charges to go off.

A sudden blow against the metal next to his ear made him start back and nearly drop the light. A few seconds, then another blow, farther down the tank. Someone was walking down the truck, hammering on it. They waited, motionless in the dark, barely breathing.

Then he heard boots at ear level, moving up. Someone was climbing the ladder. He reached out and his hand found a shoulder. He pulled it toward him and murmured into Maddox's ear, “Cover the hatch. If it opens, start shooting.”

He heard safeties click off in the dark, and pulled out his own .45. And waited grimly, holding it.

The boots were off the ladder now. Footsteps paced over their heads. He stared where the hatch was. Whoever opened it would get two or three pistol rounds in the face. After that they'd have to take out the checkpoint with grenades. Then retrieve their weapons from the cab, if they were still there, and try to scatter and escape individually.

He didn't expect very good odds in the daylight. But he couldn't think of anything else to do.

A hollow thud as a boot contacted the hatch coaming. But then, instead of the grating noise as it undogged, the steps went on, to the back of the truck. Then forward again, faster now, and a series of thuds as someone went down the ladder and jumped off onto the roadway. A distant shout, then the renewed roar of diesels.

When they got moving again, groaning back into
motion, only not as fast as before, the pavement was rougher. They jolted over what sounded like steel plates, then went through a series of hairpin turns. The truck body lurched over, as if they were negotiating the side of a hill. Then they speeded up for a time, followed by another tortuous passage. When the ride turned rough for the third time, Gault couldn't stand it any longer. He motioned the lance corporal aside and applied his eye to the hole again.

They were passing what looked at first glance like a junkyard on fire. Then he saw it had been a neighborhood, buildings, shopfronts. It had been battered apart by a gigantic hammer. Rows of bodies lay by the roadside, crudely wrapped in bloodstained cloth. Around them others lifted arms and faces, wailing to the sky. Women in shapeless black clothing wandered here and there. One was close enough for him to see her face. It looked stunned and dead. As she bent he saw her arm was gone from the elbow down. The stump was covered by brightly colored cloth, what looked like part of a child's pajamas. Wavering veils of gray smoke blew over the scene, giving it the sense of dream, of nightmare.

 

NICHOLS HAD
a cleaning patch in his cheek. It seemed to help calm things down to have something to chew on, even if it was just a square of cotton. He missed having his rifle in his arms, but he didn't worry about it. You just had to take it as it came.

A flash of light drew his eye. For a moment he saw Gault's face, sharp, intent, outlined by daylight. Then it eclipsed the source, and he couldn't see it anymore. He sat back again, trying to relax into the curved iron.