American Operator, page 13
part #4 of Tier One Series
“We need to get in this fight,” she said, scanning for high ground, somewhere she could set up overwatch.
“Agreed,” he said, glancing back at the Osprey. “But we need to move our wounded first.”
“And protect the Boeing.” She pointed to a second hangar beyond the one on fire behind them. “See that hangar over there?”
“With the C-130 sitting out in front of it?”
“Yeah, I’m heading up top. I’ll be your eyes,” she said, tapping the sniper rifle at her side, “and thin the herd as best I can.”
Munn smiled tightly and turned on the IR strobe on his kit that would mark him as a friendly to NATO forces. “I recommend you do the same.”
“Check,” she said. Then, meeting his gaze, she added, “Good luck, Dan, and be careful.”
“You, too.”
She reached behind, snapped her helmet off her kit, and pulled it on. Then, she swung her night vision goggles into position in front of her eyes and held the power button until the NVGs blinked to life. The night instantly came alive in bright monochrome green. With good eyes, she set off toward the far hangar. As she ran, she reached up and found the black circle on the shoulder of her kit, rotated it a quarter turn, and heard the soft click . . . click . . . click indicating her safety strobe was flashing, invisible to the naked eye but a bright light to any friendlies on night vision. Sporadic gunfire echoed in pockets around the base, but for the moment, nobody was shooting at her. Was Munn right? Had the Boeing and the QRF bird been targeted? How was that possible? Ember was black. Nobody outside a very tight circle knew who or where they were and what they were doing in Turkey.
Two new explosions echoed to the south, away from their position. As she ran, she saw flames and smoke rising from several other buildings across the flight line. Apparently, Ember wasn’t the only target. Munn was being paranoid. The base itself was under attack.
She reached the hangar and slowed. Chest heaving and pulse pounding, she dropped into a low tactical crouch, scanning over her Rattler for threats as she scouted the perimeter of the building looking for the roof access via an external ladder. She found it, all the way on the back of the building. From this vantage point, she could see where the perimeter road turned north, away from the series of single aircraft “ready alert” hangars, two of which had A-10 Thunderbolts parked in front. So far, these aircraft had not been targeted. The gears in her head started churning: Is this a terrorist attack or a military strike? Incirlik was a large joint-operations NATO base with a significant US military presence. For a state actor to attack the base would be a declaration of war against Turkey. Hell, it would be a declaration of war against NATO. This had to be a terrorist attack; no regional actor was that brazen . . . or that stupid. But what was the objective? Her gaze drifted toward the B61 vault—a heavily fortified base within the base where ninety B61 tactical nuclear bombs were kept.
They couldn’t possibly be going after the nukes . . . could they?
I’ve got to get up on this damn roof, she thought, returning her attention to the ladder. Access to the ladder cage was blocked at the bottom by a hinged metal panel padlocked in place. She looked up and saw she could squeeze between the safety cage bars if she climbed above the panel, just six feet. She slung her rifle, jammed the toe of her boot into the gap between the metal rail and the panel, and started to climb—shimmying up the outside of the cage like a monkey climbing the trunk of a coconut palm. A year ago, she might have struggled with this climb, especially with the added weight of her gear, but her upper-body strength was dramatically improved since then. A victorious grin curled her lips as she climbed above the security panel and squeezed between the narrow cage bars. Once inside, she scampered up the thirty-foot ladder to the roof, silently praying that no bad guy would see her climbing and shoot her before she reached the top.
Sirens began to wail, base-wide, just as she was about to climb off the ladder and onto the roof.
About fucking time.
Obviously, base security drilled for this sort of thing, but this attack had caught everyone off guard, including Ember. A direct land-based assault on the base was certainly a contingency in the training manual, but probably one assigned an infinitesimal probability of occurring.
She climbed the last few ladder rungs, slipped silently over the ledge onto the roof, and scanned over her rifle for anyone who might have had the same idea she had. Using her left thumb, she clicked on her IR target designator, and a green laser swept across the roof in her night vision. She moved swiftly left and forward, circling the air handler in a low combat crouch, finger poised on the trigger . . .
Clear.
She squatted and craned her neck to sight into the crawl space under the machinery.
Clear.
Satisfied, she slung her Rattler, pulled the .300 WinMag off her left shoulder, and moved to the north side of the roof. She wished like hell Dempsey were at her side to help her find targets and keep her six clear. Hell, right now she’d take any spotter.
What would Dempsey do? she thought. He’d set up in the corner so he could use his peripheral vision to detect any bad guys coming up the ladder.
So that’s what she did. The two-foot ledge surrounding the perimeter of the roof was just high enough to prevent her from lying prone to take her shots. She wished she had a box or table she could pull up to the ledge so she could stretch out, but instead, she spread the legs of the attached bipod and set its feet on the ledge. Then she took a knee in a combat crouch behind her weapon. Next, she powered on the high-tech, oversize gunsight and switched it to infrared mode. Then she tipped her NVGs up on her helmet but kept the goggles powered on in case someone came for her. Through the scope, she ranged to the tail of the Boeing on the tarmac—still not on fire, thankfully. She adjusted her magnification and then ranged again to the far east side of the base’s perimeter road.
Ready.
She tried to relax her muscles and become one with her weapon.
“Boeing One is now overwatch in position. Boeing One is now Zeus. Anyone up? Olympus? Titan One?”
Silence.
Adamo had been Olympus in the Ember HQ TOC, and Munn had been Titan One on the Osprey when they were Dempsey’s QRF in standby. They’d lost comms with Virginia, but line-of-sight comms should still be working.
“Titan One, this is Zeus. Do you copy?” she said, trying Munn again.
No answer.
Shit.
She scanned the tarmac through her scope and spotted Munn and the rest of the Ember QRF moving their wounded from the Osprey toward the Boeing. They were making very slow progress. Two of the crew needed to be carried. She mentally assigned numbers—One for Munn, Two for Martin, Three for Latif, then Four through Six for the two PJs and the wounded Osprey pilot.
Who’s the seventh, hmmm? Copilot from the Boeing, she decided.
She scanned slowly across the eastern edge of the perimeter road, identifying a US military HUMVEE and an APV behind it traveling north on the road. She raised her head above the scope and saw that the south end of the sprawling base was mostly in the dark, except for a building beside the flight line and another farther to the southwest, which she assumed were on independent generators.
Whoever planned this attack knew where to strike because they knocked out the power.
She dropped back on the scope and moved her scan to the burning hangar to the east—the fire was now raging completely out of control, and it washed out her IR. She moved off the blaze and scanned the second building. Movement caught her eye, and she clicked her magnification up two ticks. She exhaled and watched, fixing her aim at chest level above the ground. A head appeared, half-hidden by the corner of the building. She ticked up on the magnification again.
Male, bearded . . .
The face pulled back.
She pursed her lips. A bearded fighter sneaking around Langley Air Force Base in Virginia would be suspicious, but in Turkey, a beard meant nothing. Incirlik was a true international base with soldiers from different countries with different codes of appearance. On top of that, coalition SOF teams frequently operated out of this base. Operators in this part of the world—US operators included—wore beards most of the time. She decided her rule of engagement would need to be predicated on aggression. She would not fire on a target unless the target fired first on her people or on soldiers she’d already identified as coalition personnel.
Gunfire echoed and muzzle flares erupted at the corner of the building she was watching. Return fire came from the direction of the Boeing. She shifted her aim back to the building and spied four bearded men running around the corner from the other side to take up a more defensible position along the wall facing her. More defensible against the Ember shooters huddled on the tarmac but completely vulnerable to her.
Well, hello there . . .
She lifted her head and felt no wind at all. She ranged in, consulted the handwritten numbers on the Velcro wristband on her left forearm, and made two fine adjustments on her sight. The lead shooter on the ground took a knee and sighted around the corner, raising his rifle to shoot at Munn’s team. Grimes placed the tip of the green targeting arrow in her scope just above the shooter’s left ear. Time slowed . . . She became aware of her cheek pressed against the butt of the WinMag, her index finger resting against the trigger, her heart calling the cadence slow and steady in her chest, and her breath synchronizing for the moment.
Exhale . . . stillness . . . squeeze . . .
The rifle burped. Her right shoulder, primed and ready, absorbed the recoil, and she felt a dull, mechanical kiss on her right cheek. Through the scope, the shooter’s head spit green-gray onto the wall behind him, and his body crumpled to the ground. The three remaining shooters immediately pulled back. She jerked back the slide to eject the spent cartridge and then pushed it forward again, chambering the next deadly projectile. Two of the three remaining shooters were now looking in her direction, but neither was looking up. She centered the next headshot and slowly exhaled . . .
Good night, bitch.
Trigger squeeze, another head exploded, another body crumpled.
She picked up her cadence. Two more shots in as many seconds and all four terrorists on the near side of the building were dead on the ground.
Then three loud, successive explosions rocked the night. At the same time, the lights in the intact building on the main flight line flickered and went dark as power to the rest of the base went down. Gunfire erupted in multiple locations. She pulled back from her scope and looked in the direction of the Boeing in time to see Munn and his crew all hit the deck. Bouncing headlights to the north caught her attention; she lowered her night vision goggles, looked toward the B61 vault, and saw multiple vehicles racing in that direction.
Oh my God, they really are going for the nukes! she realized.
The base was under attack; the Boeing was disabled; their QRF bird, the CV-22 Osprey, was out of commission; Dempsey was stuck in Syria without comms and backup; and Munn was pinned down on the tarmac. All hell was breaking loose, and she was right in the middle of it with no comms and no spotter. She couldn’t imagine the situation getting any worse, and that’s when she heard a metallic tink . . . tink . . . tink behind her.
Her heart rate spiked and she looked left—staring at the ladder she’d used to climb onto the roof. She waited and watched, keeping her body perfectly still and her ears attuned, listening for the sound of feet on ladder rungs. Several agonizing seconds passed, but she didn’t see or hear anything. Maybe it was just my imagination, she thought and turned back to check the scene below. No sooner was her eye on the scope than she heard it again.
Tink . . . tink . . . tink . . .
The noise was back, but louder this time.
No, it wasn’t her imagination. They were coming for her.
CHAPTER 14
Compound North of al-Bab, Syria
2215 Local Time
Dempsey tapped his earbud.
One minute Grimes and Adamo had been jabbering like jaybirds about whether to launch the QRF Osprey, and the next they had gone quiet. On the one hand, it saved him the trouble of telling them to shut the fuck up, but on the other hand, losing comms was shit.
“Two, One, you copy?” he whispered.
“Check,” came the DIA man’s reply.
“I think we lost OTH comms.”
“Roger. Concur,” Theobold said, seemingly unfazed—a reaction Dempsey would have expected only from a fellow operator. Hopefully that meant Theobold was good in a firefight. Dempsey had a sneaking suspicion it might come to that.
“We’re on our own for now. Assume no QRF en route,” Dempsey said, just making sure they were on the same page in case everything went to hell before Baldwin unfucked whatever had happened with their comms.
“Check,” Theobold said, still unfazed.
The corner of Dempsey’s mouth curled up. I’m starting to like this dude. He crept around the low perimeter wall until he got to a point where the putrid stench of garbage was wafting over. Looks like I found the trash heap. It was as good a spot as any to take a peek at the compound, provided he didn’t gag from the odor. The half-moon hanging in the clear sky overhead gave him plenty of visible light; he didn’t need the night vision for this. The downside, of course, was that if he didn’t need NVGs to see, then neither did the bad guys. He popped his head up for a two-second look about and thankfully did not get his brains blown out. Lights in the main building were on, but the other two smaller buildings were dark. Two sentries were standing watch at the front gate, twenty yards away, beside a weighted arm that served as a gate in a span of wrought iron fence at the front of the property.
“Two, do you have eyes on building two on the east side?”
“Check,” Theobold said. “No line of sight inside. The windows of this one are blacked out. No movement in or out. Matches what we expected from imagery.” The genial scientist persona of the last twelve hours was nowhere to be found. Kadir—Theobold’s managed asset—was still an unknown in Dempsey’s mind. They’d left him in the ditch near the vehicle. Hopefully the man wouldn’t opt to save his own skin and abandon them if it came to a firefight . . . There was just no telling how a person would respond when their life was on the line.
“Okay, come back. Let’s discuss,” Dempsey whispered.
Dempsey skirted the compound in a low tactical crouch, keeping his head below the top of the stone and mortar perimeter wall. He moved swiftly, his feet all but silent on the dirt as he swept north. At the corner, he met up with the DIA agent, who gave a nod as they crouched beside each other to caucus.
“So whadaya think happened to our comms?” Theobold asked.
Dempsey shrugged. “We still have local comms, so it ain’t us. Our mobile TOC was acting as the comms hub from Incirlik, so they must be down.”
“So you’re thinking no cavalry?”
Dempsey nodded. “Can’t count on it.”
“So try to confirm the package and we wait?”
“They brought three vehicles. I think that’s all the confirmation we need,” Dempsey said.
Theobold cocked an eyebrow at him. “How ya figure?”
“The only reason to bring three vehicles is because they’re planning to move her, which means she’s here. This wasn’t some entourage of VIPs for a meet; it was just drivers. I’ve seen this game before. They know we’ve got eyes in the sky watching the compound, so they’re going to make things difficult. Mark my words, two of those vehicles will be decoys. They’ll simulate loading three hostages, and all three vehicles will depart simultaneously and go in different directions. We’ve got to act now, or we’ll lose her.”
“Even with comms down, your guys are still watching on satellite, right? They can track them to the next safe house, or if comms come up, we can even hit them on the road somewhere. That’s safer than me and you hitting these assholes alone. We’re seriously outnumbered, bro.”
Dempsey took a long breath. Since Kennedy had formed the Teams in the early sixties, not one SEAL, living or dead, had been left behind on the battlefield. He might not be a SEAL anymore, but that didn’t mean he was willing to abandon the ethos. A flash of memory—Elinor Jordan writhing on the ground in a pool of blood—hijacked his mind’s eye as he spoke his next words. “Right now, one of our own is being held hostage in that fucking shack fifty meters away. I am not leaving without her.”
Theobold pursed his lips and scanned the compound.
“Look, man,” he said, appearing to choose his words carefully. “I’m inclined to agree with you. My gut says she’s in there, but my gut also says that you’re rushing this. If your guys saw what we saw, then they’ll likely come to the same conclusion we did and dedicate more resources. And if for some reason they actually did lose the satellite, wouldn’t they launch a QRF on the assumption we needed them? I mean, that’s what I would do.”
Dempsey flushed with irritation. “I get what you’re saying, bro. But we’re not part of some Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan. My team is small and elite, but we are also deep, deep dark. Only a handful of people know about this mission, and if the TOC at Incirlik is in the blind, then we have to assume that we’re on our own. That QRF bird is our only backup. There’s no calling the Rangers or Marines in.”
“Let’s give it another five minutes,” Theobold said firmly. “If comms come back up, then we can validate the aerial resources at our disposal. And if the decision is to move on the compound, then we can get your QRF bird in the air and inbound. That would be safer for everyone, including the package.”
Dempsey took a deep breath, then said, “Are you a father?”
The DIA man nodded.
“Then I guess the question we should be asking ourselves is this,” he said, taking a different tack. “If you were stuck in CONUS right now and that was your daughter being held inside that hellhole—what would you want the two operators on the X to do? Would you want us to wait and watch while they move her to another compound and risk, with very high probability, that a second opportunity to rescue her never comes, or would you want us to man up and get her out while we still can?”
