hardwired by landlines running through PVC pipes. We can just disable them with our knives.”
“We don’t have time to do them all, Coastie. It’s enough for now that we know where the cameras are so we can dodge. We’ve got bits and pieces of information, but we still don’t know what’s behind it all. I want to get to that bridge. We only have about an hour of darkness left, and weather’s moving in.”
“I can’t figure it out, Gunny. Why all this security to protect a danged bridge?” she asked as he got up. Above them, the sky had filled with troubled clouds, knotting and shifting, blotting out the stars and entirely hiding the moon.
“Nothing out here makes much sense, Coastie. It’s a quacks-like-a-duck thing. There is a reason, but we just haven’t found it yet. My opinion, worst case, since this is Pakistan, they might have stuck a nuke in there. Let’s go. Stay quiet.”
A single raindrop touched Beth’s hand, and a quick wind swirled through the valley to drop the temperature a few degrees. It was followed by a powerful peal of thunder, and lightning sparkled in jagged sharpness overhead, rendering the nightmare landscape even more misshapen. Then the hard rain slashed down, and the first drops changed to torrents. She hunched up her shoulders and moved on.
The mission had never been considered to be a long-duration job, and they had packed no rain gear other than the special blankets in the survival kits, which they would not use as raincoats. Their uniforms were formulated to retain body head and not encumber movement, and the goggles still worked, although they had to wipe them. Rain would have gotten into their exposed eyes just as easily, so wearing the NVGs continued the advantage of being able to see in the dark.
Kyle already felt the dirt beginning to mud up beneath his boots, because the area had been so drenched by the recent floods that it still had not deep-dried, and the water saturated the land and rushed down toward the river. On the plus side, the deluge added concealment and deflected noise. The storm and lightning would help protect them from the nosy cameras and motion detectors, so he considered it an even trade.
Kyle heard them coming. The members of the third Taliban patrol were bitching and complaining loudly over the sound of the falling rain about how that dog of a Pakistani sergeant had forced them out of the dry and comfortable barracks and into the foul weather, and now their clothes were weighed down by water, sticking to their skin, and they were growing colder with each step. They cursed the first patrol that had gotten carelessly ambushed, and the second for failing to do its job and making it necessary to be relieved early. There was nothing tactical about their approach; they were just rambling down the trail with a mob mentality, disinterested, angry, ignoring their leader, and wanting to get to the fallen bridge where they could put up some shelter. Each man had an AK-47 over a shoulder or slung across his chest.
Swanson, with the NVGs, had a couple of seconds to react when he saw the smeared images approach, because they could not yet see him. He went to one knee and softly said to Beth, “Contact, front. Five targets, twenty meters. I take One, you got Two, just like we drilled at Quantico.” She locked into a firing position, ready to shoot over Swanson’s head.
The Taliban came hurrying forward in a ragged line, their eyes on the trail, bodies bent against the slamming rainstorm. Kyle fired when the first man was only twenty feet away, but the target’s forward momentum kept him moving even after he had absorbed a bullet in the chest. As he fell, Beth Ledford’s CAR-15 spat a silenced round into the center mass of the second man. Swanson, a moment later, downed a third one.
The fourth man in line realized something was happening and began to crouch. Ledford’s round smashed into his face and spewed bits of bone and brain onto the fighter behind him.
Because of the melee in front of him, the final fighter had a chance to react and was about to jump from the trail when Swanson shot him; the bullet penetrated under the right arm, and the round bored through the chest cavity, tearing up vital organs as it went. He died as he hit the mud.
“Cease fire,” Swanson said, waiting to be sure Ledford was through pulling the trigger before he stood up. Drawing his pistol, he advanced to administer the necessary final head shots. Then he just said, “Let’s go.”
Beth was breathing heavy, her breath puffing little clouds in the chill and rain. She had felt nothing for these people she had just killed; nothing at all. This time, it was almost like a video game, for the poor visibility and their positions had shielded their faces from her view, so they didn’t even look like real people. She just took the shots. Quick and easy, like clockwork; like Swanson.
UNDERSECRETARY WILLIAM LLOYD CURTIS was still working through the shock of having his request turned down by the ISI. Such a simple thing! The secret police apparatus of one of the world’s most paranoid nations had refused to let him borrow one of their men for a special mission of mutual benefit at a critical time. A favor, refused. He needed a drink, but not at one of the usual Washington watering holes.
Instead, his BMW M3 seemed to find its own way out of the metropolis, away from the government, as the flush of embarrassment turned to anger. Fuck ’em. Requests for favors were seldom refused in his world, and he would remember this insult. For now, he just wanted to blow off some steam. He could do that during his next appointment. Just outside of Williamsburg sat a tired building that had obviously been a working man’s tavern for many years, and a big American flag hung listlessly in the August heat. His kind of secret place, where he could revert to his old self, the rough construction boss, Big Bill Curtis, and have a conversation that he could never have in some fancy Georgetown watering hole. He parked in the broad lot, where several pickups and Jap cars sizzled in the afternoon sun.
He rolled up his sleeves two laps to display the faded tattoo of a rather pitiful-looking dragon that he had picked up one long ago evening in Singapore, then walked into the bar and straight to a stool. “Gimme a cold American draft, pal,” he told the bartender, who brought him a Budweiser in a chilled mug.
“Ya know why them Muslim fucks don’t drink?” he asked out loud, turning heads. “They don’t know shit about making real beer. How long they been sucking up air on this planet? A couple of million years, or something, and they still haven’t figured out how to make beer?”
That drew a few laughs and started the conversation. Bill Curtis joined in as he let the back part of his brain deal with the problem. The Diplomatic Security Service had told him to go screw himself. Then the paramilitary tough guys chickened out after two of their punks got popped by Kyle Swanson. Now the damned, camel-screwing ISI decided not to get involved in a job on U.S. dirt, although he was about to pull the trigger on a big operation of which General Gul was intimately aware. Gul was creating some distance between them because of the investigation that was sure to follow.
“Can’t depend on the muzzies,” he told his new group of friends after ordering a pitcher of beer and joining them at their table. “You understand, don’t you? They have money out the wazoo, they have the oil, but they can’t buy respect. Ever see one of those Saudi princes’ homes, where they paint the statues around the swimming pool with big red nipples or gold cocks?”
A fellow in a checkered shirt, with dirt under his nails, added, “Rodney Dangerfield had it right. Can’t get no respect.”
“They don’t deserve any,” Curtis declared, emptying another glass of Bud. Damn, it felt good to be in an out- of-the-way bar with a bunch of strangers, just to be able to bitch and moan without consequence. Everyone in there had a story about their wives, their trucks, their bosses, or politicians. His was different, and he could not share it.
“Want something done right, you got to do it yourself,” he said. It was that thought he would take back to Washington. Curtis called for another pitcher.
“You got that right,” agreed another man.
Curtis laughed. Now to business. He turned from the bar and walked toward a corner table where a man sat alone, sipping a Corona beer. He wore clean jeans and boots, a sweat-stained golf shirt, and dark aviator-style sunglasses. His brown hair was short and neat. “Buck?” he asked.
Astronaut Buck Gardener acknowledged him, and Curtis slid into the other chair at the dim corner table. “Where’s the money?” the astronaut asked.
“In the trunk of my car outside. Is the gizmo finished?”
“Ready. At a hundred thousand feet, it will automatically pop a spark to jump between two wires in the propellant feed system, and the whole flammable vehicle will blow up.”
“And you’re sure you can get it aboard? Absolutely?”
“Yep. I’m on the support crew and will make the final safety inspection before the bird is ready to fly.”
Curtis stared at Gardener, who did not blink. He was not backing out. A hundred thousand dollars was
