Protect and defend (23 page)

“We’ll see.” Rapp watched Kennedy climb into her armored Suburban. The security guys all hustled back to their vehicles and mounted up. The lead Toyota 4Runner started to move. It was all much slower than Ashani’s motorcade. One by one the other vehicles followed leisurely down the street. The two police cruisers slid into reverse and provided a gap. The lead vehicle entered the intersection and took a hard left. Next came the first armored Suburban. Rapp had seen Kennedy get in the second Suburban. The other three vehicles were all white Toyota 4Runners that looked like they were on loan from a United Nations convoy. As Kennedy’s Suburban started its turn, Rapp noticed something strange. The police on the left side of the street started running in Rapp’s direction. Rapp pushed the sliding glass door open and stepped out onto the balcony. He looked to the sidewalk beneath to find out what was going on. There was nothing. No pedestrians. No vehicles. Nothing. He looked back at the running officers and noted that several were looking back over their shoulders. They weren’t running toward something, they were running
away
from something. Rapp redirected his gaze to the intersection just as the last vehicle was making its turn.

A flurry of motion just beyond the white SUV caught his attention. Rapp watched as the two police officers manning the .50-caliber machine guns swung them around. Other officers began jumping behind vehicles and taking cover behind buildings. Rapp’s body started to tense, his eyes narrowed, and his right hand reached for the safety on his M-4 rifle. Every survival instinct in his body was suddenly screaming that something was wrong. He leaned over the balcony to see if there was some hidden threat that he had yet to identify. As he was doing so, he reached under his shirt and keyed his secure radio so he could hear Kennedy’s security detail.

The thunderous report of one of the .50-caliber machine guns caused Rapp to flinch. In this urban setting of hard asphalt and concrete surfaces the concussion of the weapon boomed like a cannon. Rapp watched in horror as two of the big fifties opened up with sustained bursts. The last white SUV was torn to shreds.

There was a loud explosion and then Rapp heard McDonald’s voice in his ear. “Shit! We’re under attack. Don’t stop! Move, move, move!”

The first explosion was followed by two more. Rapp’s weapon snapped into the firing position and he screamed back into the apartment, “Get that quick reaction force here ASAP!”

Rapp saw the rear driver’s side door of the last SUV open. An obviously wounded security contractor fell out of the vehicle and attempted to seek cover behind the rear wheel. A group of cops hiding behind the trunk of their cruiser opened fire on the man, mercilessly pounding him with dozens of rounds. Rapp took in a deep breath and denied himself the immediate gratification of killing policemen first. They could wait.

The dull, black suppressor on the end of his weapon only added to its accuracy. The L-3 EOTech sight consisted of a squarish viewfinder with a red dot in the middle. It was an amazing advance in battlefield technology that allowed the shooter to keep both eyes open while zeroing in on a target. Rapp centered the red dot on the head of the .50-caliber gunner on the far right, leaned forward ever so slightly, and squeezed the trigger. The light kick of the M-4 rifle threw the muzzle skyward less than an inch. Rapp’s countless hours of training kicked in. He brought the muzzle back on line and swept it to the left in search of the next target. He placed the dot on the open mouth of the gunner who was screaming while he unloaded his heavy-bore weapon on the other vehicles. Rapp squeezed his trigger, the sight jumped and then fell back into place in time to show a cloud of blood silhouetted against the man’s black hood as the .223 round blew out a large chunk of his skull. The masked cop continued to clutch the handles of the .50-caliber machine gun for another second, and then his entire body fell backwards over the side of the truck.

“Grab a gun and get out here,” Rapp yelled to Stilwell. He was tracking his weapon in search of the other .50-caliber gun, when he saw one of the police officers taking aim with an RPG. Rapp brought the red dot back, centered it on the man’s head and fired. The bullet struck the cop in the side of the head just as he was firing his grenade launcher. The force of the bullet sent the grenade off course and into a building where it exploded, taking out three cops. Rapp found the third .50-caliber gun and missed the man on his first shot. He quickly reacquired the target and sent him spiraling out of the truck bed. Rapp began moving from one target to the next in a steady, methodical, unrushed pace, counting each expelled cartridge as he went.

“Mac,” Rapp said as calmly as he could. “Give me a status report.” He continued to shoot, and count, as he waited to hear from Kennedy’s security chief. He squeezed the trigger for the thirtieth time and then dropped to his right knee, ejecting the magazine and reaching for a fresh one. He looked back into the apartment at Stilwell and saw him loading the squad automatic weapon. As Rapp slammed a fresh magazine into his M-4 he tried to visualize the battlefield and what was happening around the corner to the rest of Kennedy’s motorcade. Rapp fought back a sense of doom. There was no time for that now. He needed to stay focused and try his best to hold them off until reinforcements arrived from the base.

He chambered a round, stood, found a new martyr trying to man one of the .50-caliber machine guns, and hit him in the side of his head. Rapp heard moaning over his earpiece.

“Mac, is that you? Are you all right?” Rapp searched for a new target, which wasn’t easy. The cops had started to figure out that a good way to get killed was to try and man one of the .50-caliber guns. “Mac,” Rapp called out again. He watched as two of the cops pointed down the street and then jumped in one of the squads and peeled out. Rapp’s spirits soared for a second. He didn’t think the Stryker column could have gotten here that fast, but it had to be why the cops were running.

As quickly as his spirits had soared, they sank like a rock in a pond when he saw a beat-up sedan race through the intersection toward Kennedy’s motorcade. The vehicle was followed by two more, and then two vans and a truck that stopped in the middle of the intersection. Some of the cops took off while others stayed and began stripping off their uniforms. Rapp stopped shooting for a moment, not sure who he should target.

Stilwell joined Rapp on the balcony, and said, “We got some bad news. The quick reaction force has a problem.”

Before Rapp could ask what the problem was, the Kurds entered the room just then and began shouting at their boss. Rapp noticed that several of them were wearing black balaclava hoods. He looked at all the firepower in the corner of the apartment and then the street that was suddenly crawling with hooded militia types.

Rapp yelled for everyone to be quiet and asked Stilwell, “What kind of problem?”

“I didn’t get an answer out of them. All I was told was the base was under lockdown.”

Rapp let loose with a string of profanity and then looked at one of the hooded Kurds. He stuck out his hand and said, “Give me your balaclava.”

The man didn’t respond quickly enough so Rapp screamed his order like a drill sergeant.

“What are you doing?” Stilwell asked.

“I’m going down there.” Rapp took the black hood from the Kurd.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Open up those crates,” Rapp pointed to the stockpile of weapons, “put half the guys up on the roof and the other half out on the balcony and start pounding the shit out of anything that moves except me.”

Rapp put on the hood and looked at the Kurds. “Don’t shoot me. Black pants, gray shirt, black hood.” He touched each garment. “Everybody except me.”

Imad Mukhtar looked through the dusty storefront window and surveyed the scene on the street. A block and a half away the police had set up their barricade just as they had told him they would. Mukhtar had leaned heavily on Ali Abbas. He’d handpicked Abbas two years earlier to be Hezbollah’s commander in Mosul. During that time Abbas had built up a very effective network. He didn’t have as many successes as his counterparts in other cities like Basra and Baghdad, but his job was much more difficult due to the large Kurdish population. He had been put here to collect intelligence and run limited operations against the Americans. One of the things they had discovered was the near-total corruption that was rampant in the Sunni-dominated police department. Virtually every man on the force had moved to the northern city on Saddam’s orders as part of a plan to lessen the influence of the Kurds and Shiite populations.

Now that Saddam was gone, they were doing whatever it took to survive. In many ways they were more like local organized crime than a police force. If someone wanted protection, they had to pay for it. Even those who wanted to be left alone had to pay money. Getting the police to cooperate had required a lie, and a large portion of the $250,000 that Amatullah had given him. Abbas had told Mukhtar that the police would more than likely not be involved in the plan if they knew the intended target was someone as high-ranking as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. A similar operation that they ran in conjunction with the Iranian Quds force had brought too much heat down on the police in the days that followed. So a convenient lie was constructed.

They told the police commander that the intended target was a Jewish banker from Switzerland. Mukhtar knew that both sides had agreed the local police would be hired for traffic and perimeter control only. It was agreed that they would not be told who was at the meeting. Mukhtar offered the commander more money; the man took the offer and then intimated that he would also like a cut of the ransom. Mukhtar acquiesced after another ten minutes of negotiating. The commander tried to negotiate further, but Mukhtar had had enough. He told the man his exposure was minimal. Mukhtar already had the men and the police vehicles. All the commander needed to do was keep his own men away until the dust had settled and the American military showed up. Then he could come in and act as if he knew nothing.

Mukhtar kept his eyes on Abbas. He was wearing a police uniform and standing at the next corner waiting to signal Mukhtar that the motorcade was about to move. Mukhtar had already called him and told him to tell the imbeciles in the pickup trucks to point their guns in the other direction until he gave the order to attack. The Americans were stupid but not that stupid.

Abdullah had made it clear that it was crucial that Minister Ashani make it back alive. For their plan to work they did not need the public embarrassment of such a high-ranking official caught meeting with the director of the CIA. In most cases Mukhtar thought people expendable, but not this time. He owed Ashani for saving his life. If it weren’t for the minister he would have followed that idiot Ali Farahani down into that pit of radioactive waste. The thought of such a death caused his hands to tremble momentarily. Several years earlier during one of their brief wars with the Zionists, an Israeli bomb had found the building where he was staying and had almost killed him. Mukhtar had been trapped in an almost entirely collapsed basement for two days. He’d lost three fellow warriors on that one attack. Their dusty and mangled bodies were emblazoned on his memory. That and his near death at Isfahan had brought him to the conclusion that he would never again set foot in a bunker. He would take his chances aboveground.

Abbas moved closer to them and pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket. He began waiving it wildly, and then held up both fists, telling Mukhtar Kennedy was in the second Suburban. It was the signal they had been waiting for. Mukhtar turned to the fourteen men standing at the back of the shop.

“They are coming. Put on your hoods.” The Lebanese terrorist grabbed his cell phone and hit the send button. Three rings later an eager voice answered. Mukhtar said, “It is time.” He did not wait for a response. He dropped the phone to the floor and drew his Markov pistol. The one he had told each man he would use to kill them if they did not use proper restraint.

The orange-and-white taxi had been cruising the southern edge of the old city for the better part of an hour. One man sat in back and the other drove. They stopped for coffee once and at a newsstand a second time. Fifty minutes into their patrol they headed further south. They had selected their spots the evening before. The locations were some of their best. Both were within two miles of the base’s main gate, which was crucial. Sahar and Ziba were Iranian revolutionary guardsmen who were now attached to the Quds Force. They were part of a small cell whose specialty was mortar attacks. They’d been in Iraq for only five months, but they knew their way around well.

When they received the final call they were only three blocks from their first launch point. The small car sped down the garbage-ridden street and stopped next to a dilapidated warehouse. Both men jumped out. The car was left running and the trunk was opened. Sahar, the larger of the two, grabbed an M224 60mm mortar. Fully assembled, it weighed close to fifty pounds. He set the base plate down exactly in the middle of a chalk-drawn circle that he had put there the night before. He then moved the feet of the bipod so they were positioned directly on top of two marks. The elevation and traversing screws were already dialed and locked in. Sahar stepped away from the mortar and on his way back to the trunk passed Ziba, who was headed toward the tube with a round in each hand.

Sahar put on a pair of heavy leather gloves and grabbed two rounds for himself. They had done this dozens of times, but they had attacked the main base only once, and that had been months ago. They had found out the hard way that the Americans had very advanced, fire-finding artillery radar. One of their first missions had been to fire on the main runway as a cargo plane was coming in for a landing. They set up their mortar, got a shell, and then dropped it in the tube. With a thud and whoosh it was gone. They stood there waiting to hear the explosion. It came a few seconds later and they clapped and laughed with elation. Sahar was about to drop a second round in the tube when they heard the whistle of an inbound artillery shell. The only thing that saved them was a nearby sewage ditch that they reached as the first of six shells pounded their position. The car was completely destroyed. Sahar had lived and learned.