SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops IV (11 page)

She smiled.
 
“Something like that. I also speak Urdu and Pashto, so I’ll be able to listen to what the locals are talking about. And if Kyle here has to torture anyone, I can translate what they say while he’s squeezing their balls off.”

“You what?”

“I was describing the latest interrogation techniques,” Nolan explained.

“Yeah, well that one usually works. How are we going in?”

“HAHO drop.”

Brad nodded. “That makes sense. How many jumps you done, Ma’am?”

She looked flustered. “I, er, well…none.”

There was total silence between them for a few moments. Nolan didn’t even hear the sounds of talk and laughter from the other patrons. It was as if someone had just announced the death of a President or a favorite team losing the series. He stared at her.

“You’re shitting me?”

“No, I haven’t done a single parachute jump, Kyle. But I do plan to begin training.”

“You’re cutting it a bit fine.”

Maybe she’ll break an ankle. That would solve a heap of problems.

“Not at all. My training starts tomorrow night. It’s called learning on the job.”

“I’ll say one thing,” Brad said. “You’ve got guts, Captain. HAHO jumps are not the easiest way to make your first jump, neither is an infil into hostile territory.”

“We’d better make it a tandem jump,” Nolan said abruptly. “No way are you jumping on your own, not the first time.”

“You want me to jump with you?”

“Yeah, we’ll go out together. You just hold on tight and enjoy the ride.”

“I don’t want…”

“I don’t give a shit what you want, Mariko. That’s the way it’s going to be. If you go out on your own and come down in the wrong place, maybe with a broken bone or two, you’ll likely be picked up. They’ll assume you’re a spy, and you know what they do to spies? They behead them.”

She looked at both men, clearly unhappy and wanting to take issue with him, but one look at their implacable expressions told her she was wasting her time.

“Okay, I accept your offer of a ride. But I’ll get the next round in, so what’re you having, Brad? Kyle?”

She called the barman over, a suspicious looking Afghan. Nolan wondered if he’d been thoroughly vetted. He could do without his beer being poisoned. He served up more drinks, and Brad held up his glass.

“We’ll see the enemy in hell.”

Mariko sighed, and Nolan realized she was less than impressed with the gung-ho attitudes of SpecOps operators. He smiled to himself.

Maybe she wants to talk about shopping?

But finally she raised her glass, and they touched them for the toast.

She smiled. “See ‘em in hell.”

But Nolan had a sudden vision, almost a premonition. It wasn’t the enemy that was in hell. It was Mariko Noguchi, screaming in agony, her face contorted with terror as the captors tortured her.

It can’t happen. I’ll do everything in my power to protect her.
Damn, she shouldn’t be coming on the mission at all!

He fought to control the shiver that tore through him. They finished their beers, and he made an excuse and left. He knew that he’d have trouble sleeping, and the nightmares would return. Garish visions of women who were close to him calling out for help, and he couldn’t respond; something always stopped him, got in his way. He also had a real life nightmare to get to grips with, the rape allegation. A statement to the cops made by someone he’d never met, about a time he couldn’t remember because he’d suffered a mental blackout.

Life never gets any easier, that’s for sure.

They walked across the tarmac in the gathering darkness and up the ramp into the waiting C-17. The hold of the giant transport aircraft was lit only with red lights that would not betray them to any watcher. There’d be no sense in advertising what they were about. A Seal Team embarking on a cargo aircraft heavily laden with weapons and ‘chutes only meant one thing, a drop into enemy territory. Alarm bells would ring. They had plenty of room inside the fuselage. Either side of the huge space were jump seats, so they each found their preferred position and sat down. Mariko carried no parachute, just a small pack with her disguise inside, a blue burqa. Nolan sat one side of her and Brad the other. Although Nolan wore the same uniform as the rest of the Platoon, in his pack he carried a change of clothes, robes typical of the Waziristan region. He’d dyed his hair black during the day and used camouflage cream to darken his skin. It was all they could do and had to be enough. At night, he’d pass as a local. Just about. If the mission ran over into the dawn, they’d see through his disguise and shoot him on sight. He turned and watched as the ramp came up, and the four Pratt and Whitney turbofans began to scream as the pilot worked them up to full power. The huge aircraft began to roll, gathered speed, and took off into the night. They were heading almost due east to Pakistan, and their landing ground, Abbottabad. Nolan recalled the briefing earlier. Security had been as tight as a drum. If the Taliban got wind of where they were going, it would be a blood bath. And the blood would be American this time.

* * *

“I’ve arranged the C-17,” Weathers had begun, standing on a raised platform in the briefing room. He looked tired. “I was on to the Pentagon for two hours. The Air Force weren’t too happy about it at first. They had other plans for their precious aircraft. I gather the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had to intervene to persuade them to reroute. He was in the Situation Room with the President at the time, so your insistence on the Globemaster caused quite a stir, Lieutenant.”

Boswell didn’t look in the least concerned. He nodded, “Yes, Colonel.”

“We’ll drop you from thirty-five thousand feet, so you’ll be on oxygen. I gather Chief Nolan has arranged to tandem jump with Captain Noguchi. I’m sure he’ll appreciate her assistance to get him on the ground,” the Colonel deadpanned. The men laughed politely. They went over the rest of the briefing, covering the minute details of infil, exfil, and mission objectives, together with the all-important details of what to do when things went wrong. Toward the end, Nolan had one last question that had been troubling him, and he put it to the Colonel.

“Sir, in the event we eyeball this bin Laden guy, what are our orders?”

“Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s not likely you’ll see him. We know that. Osama never came out into the open, and if this guy exists, I doubt he will either. Your orders are to capture him if you do run into him, and if he offers any kind of a threat, take him out. When I use the word ‘threat’, I mean it in its widest possible sense. Clear?”

They all nodded. If an unexpected encounter occurred, waste him.

“Chief Nolan, you’ll dress in native clothes and accompany Captain Noguchi. Any problems with that?”

“I’m all set, Sir.”

“Okay. Don’t forget, you are to stay clear of that compound. This is an intelligence gathering exercise only. If you spook this guy, he’ll start running, and it could take us another ten years to find him, in the event that he does exist. So stay away, clear?”

They chorused, “Copy that.”

Weathers nodded. “One more piece of information, and this has nothing to do with the mission. Our guys found a body on the base this morning.”

He stared at them, but they weren’t surprised, there had been a furious firefight the day before.

“It would be a surprise if there wasn’t a couple they missed when they cleared up,” Boswell replied absently. “What’s your point, Sir?”

“The point, Lieutenant, is that this guy wasn’t killed in action. He was murdered. Someone slit his throat.”

“One of our guys?” Nolan asked.

“No, an Afghan. He was one of the civilians who worked on the base. So it looks as if we have a killer on the loose. It could be an American. It’s not impossible, so watch your backs, at least until they catch this guy. That’s all,” he finished up.

They saluted, and Weathers stepped down from the platform.

* * *

The C-17 droned through the Afghan night skies. They checked and rechecked their gear, and Nolan had an increased responsibility to concern himself with. Mariko Noguchi. He’d fastened a tandem harness to his body and tried to show her what she was required to do during the drop. To account for the extra weight, he’d also drawn a larger parachute from the stores, which added to his misgivings. He’d used the same ‘chute since he first started in the Seals. So far, it had never let him down. He didn’t like making changes when they were about to launch an operation. He looked across at Mariko.

“You okay?”

Her face was almost white, and it wasn’t just the cold at high altitude. She managed a brief nod. “I’m fine. I’ll be better when we’re on the ground.”

Except you don’t know what we’ll face down there. Not yet.

He nodded. “We’d better start strapping up. I want to make certain we get this right.”

“But, we’re still twenty minutes out.”

“That’s right, so the sooner we go through the drill again, the quicker we’ll be ready when we get the green light. Stand up, let’s go through it all.”

She sighed and stood up. He showed her once more how to fasten and unfasten the harness, and what to do if the worst happened, and the ‘chute failed to open.

“Is the reserve chute bigger to allow for both of us?” she asked.

“Nope, I’m already carrying too much gear. If I have to pull the reserve, we’ll go down fast.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t ask.”

She carried a pistol which she’d wear inside her burqa, a lightweight Glock Model 26 9mm Parabellum, the Baby Glock, to which the armorers had fitted a suppressor. It was a tiny pistol, one that would be easy to conceal. He made her slide out the clip, check the load, and make certain she knew how everything worked on the unfamiliar weapon. She stowed it back in her pack, but Nolan was worried, wearing a burqa would make a fast draw difficult. She had a solution.

“I’ll just carry it in my hand. The arms and hands are hidden beneath a burqa. If anyone looks suspicious, my hand will appear with a gun in it. That should give ‘em pause for thought.”

He nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I guess it’d give any guy pause for thought.”

The sound of the engines was a constant, whining roar through the cabin, but even more uncomfortable was the intense cold of high altitude. Nolan wondered how she was coping with it.

After all, it’s all new to her, and she’s a girl. Does that make a difference? Well, yeah, it usually did with most girls he’d known.

The jumpmaster came into the cabin.

“Skipper says ten minutes to drop point, switch to oxygen, and stand by for depressurization.”

She pulled on her goggles, and Nolan helped her adjust the oxygen mask that was essential to stay alive at almost eight miles up in the sky. Then he fixed his own mask. He could hear her breathing, shallow, short pants.

“Are you okay? Any problems?”

“I’m fine.” The reply was short and firm.

He smiled.
Mariko’s her feisty self. Good.

He felt the pressure changing in his ears as the cabin equalized with the sky outside. And then the red light winked on.

“Ramp is lowering, stand by.”

The ramp wound down, and the chill night winds howled inside the fuselage. He grabbed Mariko, who was about to be tossed backward against the straps of the harness. She looked at him and nodded her thanks. Despite their heavy equipment and armor, her teeth were chattering. The temperature had plummeted as the interior of the aircraft met the icy exterior of the night sky. The jumpmaster held up five fingers.

“Five minutes to drop, move to the ramp.”

It was difficult, shuffling along with Mariko strapped to the front of him in the tandem harness, but they made it and joined the crowd of Seals clustered close to the edge of the ramp. Below, they could make out lights on the ground. It was a cloudless night with little moon, and ideal drop conditions. He saw her shivering and briefly wondered.

Is it the intense cold, or is it fear?

“Two minutes, we’re on course, thirty kilometers from Abbottabad. Height is twelve thousand meters. External air temperature is minus one hundred degrees centigrade, winds north-easterly, speed one hundred and thirty kilometers per hour, wind speed on the ground is estimated at eight kilometers per hour. You’re good to go, gentlemen.”

They waited in that relaxed posture that Special Forces adopt before going on a mission. It was what they trained for, sacrificed for, and lived and died for. Except for Mariko. The jumpmaster held up one finger.

“One minute, stand by, watch the green light. Skipper reports aircraft on course.”

He could feel the tension in her body. She was rigid, and inside the lenses of her goggles, he could see her eyes were dilated. She’d have to cope. The open ramp of a C-17 at twelve thousand meters above the ground, seconds before the drop, was the wrong place to harbor second thoughts. He held her body close to his, knowing that she’d want the reassurance of human contact. The green light winked on.

“Green light, go, go.”

He shuffled forward with the men, feeling a slight resistance from her, but then they were in the opening, and he fell forward into space, pushing her before him.

She hung almost like a sack of grain at first, but the chute opened, and he made the adjustments for the long glide using his wrist GPS. He altered course slightly and used the lines to swing onto a heading that would take them directly to the target.

“This is fantastic!” she shouted suddenly. “It’s truly amazing. I feel like I’m a bird floating free in the sky.”

“It’s a good feeling. You have a few minutes to reflect before we hit the ground.”

“I could get used to his, you know. Having my very own parachutist to carry me down.”

He was about to make a flippant reply, but he realized he had so many complications in his life to deal with, he didn’t want to act like a guy on a first date, not dangling from a tandem rig, high in the night sky over Pakistan. He kept quiet and concentrated on steering a precise course. From time to time, he made adjustments, and soon he could see the faint lights of Abbottabad in the distance about eight kilometers ahead.

“Is that it?”

“Sure, we’ll land just outside of the main area. It’s a patch of grass they use as a cricket pitch. Makes for a soft landing.”

“I’m pleased about that. So they play cricket in this hellhole, do they?”

“They have one of the best teams in the world, Pakistan. It’s their national pride.”

“Not baseball?”

He laughed. “Too American.”

They glided in for a picture perfect landing, and he managed to keep her upright as they touched the ground. Two other Seals were already down. His night vision goggles were switched on, and as he unstrapped the parachute, he could see other Seals coming in to land around him.

“I need to change into my burqa. Is there somewhere private?”

He laughed out loud. “I’d guess here would be about right. You wander off somewhere, and you might trip over some sleeping goatherd, or something like that. At least here you have a Seal platoon to guard your modesty.”

She gave him a look, then unstrapped her pack, and pulled out the long, flowing blue burqa. It took only a few moments to unbutton her uniform, slip out of it, insert her earpiece, and pull on the burqa. The effect was uncanny. One moment, she was an American officer, the next, a servile Muslim woman; as were common throughout Afghanistan and Waziristan. When she was ready, Nolan stripped off his vest and camouflage gear and slipped into his own costume, baggy trousers, ragged sneakers, and a long white shirt that came to his knees with a black waistcoat over it. He adjusted a traditional Pakul hat on his head and tucked his Sig-Sauer with spare mags, his combat knife, and radio into his robes. He inserted the earpiece and tucked the wire out of sight behind his hair.

“Radio check, this is Bravo Two.”