The Team (3 page)

Chapter 7

Saudi Desert Road

Cascaes and his team had left in the dark, stopping only once at the front gate of Eskan to show papers and head off into the night. An hour outside of Riyadh, they turned off the main highway and headed off onto a narrow two-lane road that stretched through the flat dead earth. A few centuries of baking had turned everything the same shade of brown, although they couldn’t see it in the dark.

Hodges was driving, his cheek full of chewing tobacco, while Cascaes watched their position on a laptop that sat where the name implied. Jones and Perez sat in the back and tried to catch a few Z’s. Their truck, an unmarked, nondescript delivery box truck, rumbled along the dusty road alone in the Arabian night, following a path that had been used for a few centuries, but sometime during
this
one had finally gotten some asphalt. After about an hour on the narrow road, they climbed a small rise between two large rocky cliffs, a
pass
of sorts, and slowed down. As soon as they were over the rise, the truck slowly pulled off the road onto ground that was no softer than the asphalt.

“Wake up, sleeping beauties,” said Cascaes to his rear seat passengers. “It’s almost sunup. Time to start making ready for an armed robbery.”

Jones stretched his legs and groaned, and Perez took a swig from his canteen.

“I wish this was coffee,” he mumbled.

Hodges unpacked his Marine sniper rifle and pointed to the rocks overhead. Cascaes grunted, and Hodges took off to find himself a concealed spot to set up his ambush. Cascaes, Perez, and Jones pulled out their duffle bags, one of which contained dragon’s teeth—metal spikes attached to a chain that could be laid across the road to blow the tires of their target. It could also be quickly yanked off the road if the wrong vehicle approached. Each of them had silenced automatic weapons with laser quick-sights. They took a tire from the back of the truck and leaned it against their vehicle. Anyone that might see them would assume they were simply fixing a flat. They were wearing civilian clothes and were not trying to pass as anything other than Americans traveling through Saudi on business, should the need to speak to anyone arise.

Cascaes and Perez stashed their weapons behind the spare tire and Jones took a position across the roadway, hidden in some rocks. The sun broke over the flat horizon to the east, spreading red and orange fingers through a dark sky. It would be the last sunrise for
somebody
.

Cascaes spoke on his hidden wrist mic to Hodges up in the rocks overhead. “You all set?”

“Roger that, Skipper. I can see y’all clear as a bell. Jones, I can see you picking your nose across the street.”

Jones held up his middle finger. “Can you see what finger I’m holding up?” he asked quietly.

“That’s very impolite,” said Hodges quietly.

Cascaes ignored them and went over it one last time. “The truck hits the teeth and stops. Jonesy, you yank it as soon as they go over it so they don’t see anything. They pull over and see us and assume we had the same problem. If they get antsy and make a move for weapons, Hodges, you whack ‘em right away. Otherwise, we wait for them to pull over and get close enough to see how many there are. We hit them fast, unload the cash to our vehicle and bury the bodies. Jones and Perez, you’ll drive their vehicle back about a mile to that dry creek bed and ditch it out there. No one will find it for another thousand years. Everyone clear?”

Three quick “Rogers” answered him. “Hodges, how far down the road can you see from up there?”

“At least a mile and half, Skipper. Maybe more when the sun gets up higher.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for your heads up. We’ve got a few hours. Until then, you stay sharp. Jonesy, you stay out of sight. Out.”

Chapter 8

The Stadium

Mackey was shaking his head in disbelief. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. The prince had an announcer introduce each player, his position on the field and batting average, in Arabic and English, from an unseen press box, and each team lined up on their appropriate baseline. The Star Spangled Banner was played, followed by the Saudi National Anthem. The Saudi players stood at attention as if they were going to be broadcast on national television, which, it turned out, they were. The Americans, realizing that this was more serious than they anticipated, imitated the Saudis, feeling intimidated for the first time since leaving basic training.

When the anthems were over, the teams went to their dugouts. The American team bombarded Mackey with questions and comments.

“Holy shit, Coach, this is nuts! We’re gonna get killed,” said Moose quietly.

“Bullshit,” said Mackey, obviously irritated at the way things were starting out. “We came here to do a mission, which is what we’re doing. You get to play baseball for a couple of hours. Don’t embarrass us out there. And don’t pitch to the ringer.”

Moose was shaking his head. Mackey turned and addressed his team. “Okay, you guys, give the prince a game out there today. You may actually have to do some fielding today for a change so pay attention. We’re up in a minute, so watch their pitcher warm up. Take a few pitches and see what he’s got. He may be throwing some heat out there. Jake, you’re lead off.”

Jake Koches had actually played baseball in college, but as he watched the pitcher hurl the ball at the catcher he cursed under his breath. The guy was a pro, with a fastball and a curve that was not like anything he’d seen other than on TV. He took a few practice cuts as he watched Jose Torrez throw a ninety-seven mile-per-hour fastball. He looked over at Mackey for sympathy, but Mackey was whispering to another player about communication problems. They were still getting static and hadn’t spoken to Cascaes’ team since they arrived at the stadium. As much as Mackey wanted to win the baseball game just to piss off the prince, it was actually irrelevant to the mission as long as they didn’t get humiliated to the point that their team was obviously not an all-star team.

Mackey was concentrating on the radio when he heard the sound of a ball on leather and a loud
“Strike one!”
with an Arab accent. He looked up and watched Koches step out of the batter’s box. The announcer was saying his name, but killing the pronunciation of Koches, making him sound Hebrew with the “ch” sound being a phlegm noise. Mackey cracked up at that.

Koches swung wildly at the next fastball as well.

“Strike two!”

“Jesus Christ!” yelled Mackey. “I told you guys to watch a few pitches first!”

“Strike three!”

Jake fought off the urge to throw his bat and trotted back to the dugout.

“What happened to
watching
a few pitches, Jake?” screamed Mackey.

“Coach, he threw three perfect strikes right down the middle.”

“So why didn’t you hit any of them if they were so perfect?” snapped Mackey.

“Because the motherfucker throws a hundred miles an hour!” he yelled, as he threw his batting helmet across the bench.

Pete McCoy, their shortstop and team speedster, was up second. After watching Jake get smoked, he made up his mind to bunt his way on. He took the first pitch, a called strike fastball, and smiled. He had barely
seen
the ball coming in.

“God
damn
, he throws
hard
,” he said loud enough for the catcher to hear. The catcher smiled under his mask and signaled for his fifth consecutive fastball.

This time, Pete squared around as soon as the pitcher was finishing his motion and managed to get his bat on the ball. It bounced harder than he would have liked towards third, and he sprinted like a mad man. The catcher and third basemen almost collided, but the third basemen called him off and barehanded it, zipping it to first. Pete had managed to beat the ball to first, but he was wheezing, amazed at how hard the third basemen had thrown the ball. Who the Hell
were
these guys?

Lance Woods, the resident surfer, walked out to the plate. Mackey wasn’t really doing any coaching, as he was trying to get the damn radio to work, but he had signaled to McCoy, the fastest guy on the team, to steal. Woods would be swinging at the first pitch.

The guys on the bench were actually watching the game, even though they had no idea what was happening to their comrades out in the desert. They held their breath as Pete took a long lead. Torrez glanced in his direction but didn’t think he would go and threw a slider to Woods, who actually got a piece of the ball by pure luck. The jump McCoy had gotten helped him get around second by the time the right fielder picked up the loping single, and McCoy burned it to third base

Smitty walked out to the plate, rubbing dirt on his hands. He was strong as an ox, and even though he wasn’t particularly tall or broad, he was just
hard
. His forearms and hands were anvils, and he was the best hitter on the team out of pure natural talent, even though he never played serious baseball before joining. When he got a hold of one, it
went
. The announcer called his name and number in a heavy Saudi accent.

“…and now batting for the Navy All-Stars, number seventeen, Joe Smith…”

The guys on the bench laughed. Smitty was CIA, and they figured his name was fake, but to hear “Joe Smith” announced on the stadium speakers made it all the more comical.

Torrez was trying to size him up, knowing he was the cleanup batter. He didn’t like having men on first and third with one out, either. He had been paid a quarter of a million dollars and been given the most luxurious accommodations imaginable to pitch this game—but he had also guaranteed a win. He could feel the prince glaring from behind home plate in his special luxury box seat. McCoy and Woods were taking small leads and screaming at Smitty to hit one out of the park like a bunch of Little Leaguers. Even the guys on the bench were getting into it now, standing up at the dugout fence and yelling at their teammate, while Cory Stewart shushed them as he tried to listen to his earpiece for any communication with their ambush team.

“Strike one!”
yelled the umpire as Smitty watched the first pitch break at the corner of the plate. He had never seen a professional curveball from the batter’s box and found it somewhat amazing. His bat had never moved. He stepped out of the batter’s box and looked around at the huge stadium. For a guy who’d been all over the world doing all kinds of Black Ops, he was a dumbfounded little kid. He stepped back in and took a deep breath, and Torrez threw a fastball that was a hair inside, brushing him back a little. Smitty was pissed, figuring this was no accident, and in his mind was already firing a three round burst into the pitcher’s chest.

Torrez missed another one, and finally loaded up the count on Smitty, who still hadn’t moved his bat yet. Finally. McCoy snapped him out of it.

“Hey, Smitty! You gonna look at that fucking thing all day?
Hit the fucking ball
!” he screamed from third base.

It was unprofessional, uncouth, and just what Smitty needed. The fastball came right down the middle, and Smitty crushed it over the center field wall. His teammates were standing on the bench screaming and hugging each other, and the prince stood up to applaud politely, a very fake smile on his face as he acknowledged Coach Mackey and the batter with a slight bow of his head. He sat and picked up a phone that rang in the Saudi dugout. As soon as the Saudi coach hung up the phone with the prince, he turned back to the field and started screaming at his players in Arabic. The catcher jogged out to speak to Torrez as Smitty was mobbed by his teammates in the dugout.

“I got ‘em on the horn,” whispered Cory Stewart to Mackey in the back of the dugout. “It’s fuzzy, but they’re in position waiting for the delivery.”

Mackey nodded that he had heard and yelled some encouragement to Raul Santos as he jogged out to the plate, then looked up at the prince, delighted to see him so aggravated. “You’re pissed now? Wait till you find out your truck got whacked,” he thought to himself, assuming the prince was somehow connected to the fifty million.

Vinny Colgan, who they called Ripper, was walking up to the warm-up circle. He looked back at Mackey. “Hey, Coach, if we kick their ass, ya think they’ll raise gas prices another buck?”

That got a few high fives from the now overconfident dugout that had yet to take the field.

Chapter 9

Ambush

It was after ten-hundred hours when Cascaes announced that the GPS locator was appearing on his laptop. He was looking at an aerial photograph with a GPS map overlay. A red dot appeared on the fringe of his screen, and every few seconds would move closer to the centered triangle that marked their position.

Hodges checked in from his location up in the rocks using his throat mic. He was in his Ghillie suit and prone on the rocky ledge with his sniper rifle set up on a bi-pod mount. “I have a visual. Truck is inbound, maybe two clicks.”

“Roger that; positions everyone,” said Cascaes quietly. Perez was using high-powered binoculars to scan the road in the opposite direction to make sure they didn’t get any surprises from their rear. After a few minutes, Hodges was back on his throat mic. “Positive ID on the vehicle. It’s a match to our truck.”

“GPS confirms,” said Cascaes.

Hodges chambered a round in his sniper rifle and looked down the road at the approaching vehicle. It was difficult to focus too clearly because the truck was bouncing as it approached in the dusty road with heat roils distorting his view, but he could make out three occupants on the vehicle’s bench seat.

“I have a driver and two additional guys up front. Windshield is filthy. Can’t tell if they’re carrying weapons.”

“Roger that,” said Cascaes quietly. “Jones, when he hits the teeth, you yank ‘em out of the road and get on the SAW. (M249 Squad Automatic Weapon—a heavy machine gun. At one hundred rounds per minute, it is capable of effective suppressing fire.) Weapons hold unless someone starts shooting.”

Hodges whispered back every few seconds with the distance of the truck until they could hear it rumbling down the desert road towards them. It was still on the other side of the small rise, and only Hodges could actually see it. It was traveling at about fifty miles an hour, which probably seemed fast to the three occupants bouncing all over the road inside the ancient truck.

“Coming in now,” said Hodges, a little more excitement in his voice this time. A second later, the truck came over the small rise and hit the dragon’s teeth that lay across the road. The front and rear tires exploded and shredded into a million pieces, and Jones whipped the teeth off of the road to conceal them. The truck squealed and swerved as the driver fought to keep control of his truck. It was old and handled poorly enough with all
four
tires. Now it was on two, and the brakes were screaming as it fishtailed and slid up the road sideways not more than fifty yards from Cascaes and Perez, who knelt by a spare tire pretending to use a jack on their own vehicle.

The target truck finally came to rest in a cloud of dust, and at first no one moved. Hodges could look down at the dirty windshield, but he could hardly see through it.

“Skipper, looks like movement inside—one of them has a weapon,” said Hodges calmly, his southern drawl always more hidden when he was totally focused.

Cascaes stood with his hands on his hips, staring at his truck and then theirs, putting on an Academy Award performance as “the man with the busted truck.” He spoke into his concealed throat mic to his team.

“Just cover me. Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

Cascaes walked towards the vehicle. And the driver opened his door and began shouting in Arabic. Cascaes continued walking towards him, speaking back in English about the lousy road and his flat tire. The man was growing more agitated and reached back into the truck, where one of his passengers handed him an AK47.

“
Weapon
!” said Hodges. “I’m taking the shot!”

The rest happened in an instant. A single round traveled from Hodges’ sniper rifle exploding through the windshield, which spider-webbed, blocking Hodges’ view of the inside of the truck, and then through the man’s skull, which exploded. Cascaes hit the deck and yelled, “Cover fire!”

Perez fired a few bursts at the cab with his MP5 as Hodges fired a second .338 Lapua round through the dusty glass. A cloud of blood splattered against the inside of the glass. Jones opened up with the SAW over Chris’ head, putting hundreds of rounds through the cabin of the truck as Chris rolled over and over to the side of the road to find cover.

Hodges called down to cease fire, and everything stopped. It was silent again in the desert, except for the sound of the hissing, dying engine that had a few hundred rounds lodged in it from the SAW. Glass fell with a plink against the hard road. A second later, a body fell out of the cabin. It was the driver, or what was left of him. Perez ran up the road calling Chris on his mic.

“Skipper, you in one piece?”

Chris sat up and looked at the smoking truck. “Yeah, I’m good. Jones? Hodges?”

They both called back that they were fine. Perez and Cascaes ran to the truck and looked inside. They both were shocked to see two young boys lying awkwardly on the bench seat, their heads and bodies blown open. The driver did have an AK47, but that was the only weapon in the truck.

“Fuck!” said Cascaes out loud. He and Perez stood, stunned at the sight of the two kids.

“What is it Skipper?” asked Hodges from overhead.

“They’re fucking
kids
!” said Cascaes loudly. There was no reason to check for pulses, they each had been hit a few dozen times, including headshots that had torn them up pretty badly.

“Oh Jesus,” said Perez, crossing himself. “Is this even the right fuckin’ truck?”

Jones ran to them from his position, carrying the smoking SAW. When he saw the grisly mess inside the cabin, he abruptly turned and vomited. He started crying and knelt down in the middle of the road.

“Oh, God! Oh, my
God
! I just murdered two little
kids
!” He was on all fours, wailing.

Hodges checked in every direction, and when he saw it was clear, he started to scramble down from the rocks. Cascaes saw him move and yelled back to him.

“Stay where you are! Keep your eyes open up there—both directions. Jones, get your shit together and help me search this truck. The GPS tracker was on the vehicle, this
has
to be it!” He was praying to himself that it
was
.

Perez had already started to head around to the back of the truck and opened the doors carefully, his weapon at the ready. There were dozens of boxes of dates, which he started pulling out onto the road. He tore through the first couple of boxes, which contained only fruit.

“Shit!” he screamed as he ripped open box after box as fast as he could, a cold dreadful feeling in the pit of his stomach. Was this the right truck? The sunlight streamed into the back through hundreds of bullet holes, the light hazy in the smoky air. Cascaes hopped up into the truck with Jones following behind, his face still wet with tears.

Chris started throwing boxes to Perez and Jones, who stacked them neatly in the road as they checked each one and found only dates. They had calmed down a bit and realized that they would have to reload the truck, so they were slower and more methodical now. Cascaes threw down the last box.

“That’s it!” he yelled.

“There’s nothing here, Skipper, just fucking prunes!” yelled Jones.

“They’re dates, idiot,” said Perez, his mouth full of them.

“Hodges, how we doing?” asked Chris.

“Clean and green, Skipper.”

Perez ran back to the cab and started looking under the bloody shot-up seat. Cascaes called him back. “Perez, we’re looking for fifty million dollars! It ain’t gonna be in the fucking glove compartment!”

Cascaes stood in the back of the now empty truck, hands on his hips, totally pissed. “I can’t fucking
believe
this,” he screamed at no one in particular.

Hodges called down on his mic. “Hey, Skipper, were they really kids?”

“Shut up,” he answered quietly.

Jones was fighting back tears again looking at the wooden planks of the truck that Chris was standing on. One of them was sticking up a little bit, the end chewed up from bullets.

He pulled himself up into the truck and gently pushed Chris a drop to his left, then started pulling up the floorboard. There was something under it. As soon as Chris realized what Jones was doing, he dropped to his knees and pulled out his K-Bar knife. The two of them worked together, prying up the splintered board.

“Ernie,” yelled Chris to Perez, “get me that crowbar!”

Perez took off in a flash, while Chris and Jones continued ripping up the floor. The board snapped off, exposing a square brick wrapped in newspaper. They pulled it out and tore off a corner of the paper. American hundred dollar bills were neatly stacked in a little brick of money.

“Sonofabitch,” said Cascaes softly.

“Leave it to the brutha’ to find the quan, man,” said Jones quietly. He was trying to be cool, but he couldn’t get the image of the two young boys blown to pieces all over the front seat out of his head. He must have personally put a hundred rounds through them. His blank expression echoed the empty feeling in his chest.

Perez returned with the crowbar and whistled as he saw the brick of money in Cascaes’ hand. “
Damn
, man. They had it stashed in the floor,” he said out loud but to himself.

“Jones found it. Get up here and let’s get this stuff loaded into our truck. We gotta hustle.”

It took fifteen solid minutes of grunting and groaning to rip up the entire floor. When they were finished, they had over a hundred of the heavy paper bricks stacked on the ground next to the dates. Cascaes ran down the road and hopped into their truck, letting the spare roll off the road, and raced back to the rear of the other truck. Jones, now with his shirt off and his dark muscled body dripping wet, was quick to start throwing bricks into the back of their truck. They loaded up quickly, and Chris hopped out to help reload the dates into the back of the other truck.

Perez hopped up onto the running board of the truck, trying not to touch the mangled bodies that were still leaking blood. He tried the engine, but it was totally dead, with more bullet holes in it than the two dead bodies inside the cab. He cursed and hopped down, grabbing the driver and hoisting him up into the cab with the two young kids. He ran back to Chris, wiping his bloody hands on his pants.

“Skipper! The truck is totally dead. Now what?”

Cascaes wiped his sweaty forehead. “Shit. This wasn’t part of the simple plan. I’ll try and push it with our truck, but it’s only on two wheels. I dunno if this is going to work or not. Let’s get it off the road into those rocks if we can. Maybe it will go unnoticed at least till we’re out of Saudi. Get behind the wheel and try and aim it towards that depression off the road.”

“What about them?” asked Perez.

“Leave them in the cab. There must be a million rounds in this truck and all over the road—hiding the bodies isn’t going to fool anybody.”

Perez jogged back to the cab and looked in. Flies had already materialized out of thin air. Blood and hunks of flesh and brain were splattered everywhere. There was no way he was sitting in the driver’s seat, so he stood on the running board with the door open while Cascaes drove his truck slowly into position behind the dead vehicle.

The two trucks groaned with the sound of metal on metal as Cascaes slowly eased into the rear of the fifty million dollar fruit truck. Perez cranked the wheel with the gears in neutral as Cascaes used first gear to push. Sparks flew off the bare metal rim of the front wheel, and the last pieces of rubber fell off the back tire as the truck slowly inched forward. Perez fought the wheel as the truck turned off the road and picked up some momentum.

The truck slid into a small depression off the road and stopped moving. Cascaes gave it more gas, but it was no good and the tires on his truck began to spin and smoke. He could smell burning rubber. He gave up and backed away from the truck, yelling for Perez to get back to their own vehicle. Jones ran to their truck and Cascaes called to Hodges to rejoin the group. As Hodges made his way down, Chris went to his duffle bag and pulled out a white phosphorous grenade. When Hodges arrived, Cascaes told everyone to get into their truck, which he had turned in the direction of Eskan Village. He walked down to the cab of the other truck and tossed the live grenade into it, then sprinted back to his own vehicle down the road. The cab exploded in a huge fireball and burned wildly. By the time anyone found it, there wouldn’t be much of anything except some burnt metal.

He hopped into his own truck and gunned the engine. As they peeled off for Eskan, he told Hodges to try and call Mackey. Hodges did as he was told but, as happened earlier in the day, there was no signal. Jones craned his neck and watched the burning truck getting smaller in the distance. He fought the wave of nausea in the pit of his stomach as it exploded again, giving him one final stab into his heart.