THE COLONEL HAD MADE his decision and was not going to change it. The escalating violence in Hargatt had nullified the forty-eight-hour deal he had made with Kyle Swanson. Withrow had to plug this bleeding sore before Hargatt, and perhaps Tikrit, fell back into their old, bad ways and the locals lost confidence that the Americans would respond. Another Fallujah was looming out there.
“We can’t wait any longer, people,” he told the small group in his office. “There is no time for collecting and analyzing information. We are going to hit those houses hard with a full company package on each one: tanks, Bradleys, and Apaches. If that fucking sniper opens up, we will send the Abrams tanks after him and crush the son of a bitch into the rubble. Apache gunships will hose down the escape routes.”
“There will be substantial collateral damage, sir,” reminded the XO.
Colonel Withrow’s face was an angry shade of red, remembering what the women had done in cutting up the snipers. “Right now, I don’t give a shit. As far as I am concerned, anyone still in the area will be considered to be enemy combatants. Those suspect houses are seeping hatred like spreading cancers and
Kyle Swanson stared at the latest map pinned to the wall of the office and let his thoughts jump ahead to the action planned around the two houses that were circled in red. Four massive M1A2 Abrams tanks would lead the charge through the streets just before dawn and advance to within a hundred yards of each corner of a house, blasting away with their 120 mm smoothbore cannons. A dozen Bradley Fighting Vehicles with Bushmaster chain guns buzzing would then swarm forward and disgorge three platoons of infantrymen, or “dismounts” in cavalry talk. Support vehicles would zoom into the area on the ground while the Apaches roamed overhead. Brute force.
“Mr. Swanson? You disagree?” The colonel was almost daring Kyle to challenge him.
“No, sir. It’s your show. If you get him, we will go in afterward and try to find his information. He doesn’t have to be alive for that.” Kyle disagreed a lot, but there was no use butting heads on this one. The sniper deaths and torture had set off a firestorm of reaction. It could not wait any longer.
“Very well. You and your people can go along with us in a support capacity.” Withrow turned to his XO and intelligence staff and planners. “We launch at 0500 hours. Remember, no man left.”
As Kyle and Sybelle walked back to the special ops area, he looked up at the crescent moon, then at his wristwatch. It was thirty minutes past one in the morning. Not much time. “You’re coming with me,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah,” she answered. “Of course.”
Sybelle and Kyle spoke with the rest of the team while saddling up to go into Hargatt and finish the recon job and see what else they might turn up. The rest of the team would cover for their absence in case the Army started asking questions. Then Captain Rick Newman would join one of the strike packages for the predawn raid, and Travis Hughes would ride along with the second one.
A blacked-out Humvee driven by Newman pulled up to the camp’s front gate fifteen minutes later, with Hughes in the shotgun seat with the radios. Crouched unseen in the back were Kyle and Sybelle, dressed in local clothing, and Rawls and Tipp, whose faces were covered with greasepaint and who wore black combat clothing beneath their web gear.
“It’s dangerous out there in the dark, Captain,” warned the corporal who checked them through the gate. “You guys be careful.”
“Thanks, Corporal. We are just going to do a quick recon of the main road up to the intersection. See what we can see. Be back in about fifteen minutes.”
From the depths of the sprawling camp behind them, everyone could hear the rumble of the big tracked vehicles moving about and getting arranged for the morning’s attack. Fuel and ammo were loading.
Newman kept a steady speed up to the intersection, where he made a three-point turn and drove right back the way he had come down the road, at the same speed. During the turn, the four people in the rear tumbled out of the doors and lay still. Joe Tipp and Darren Rawls belly-crawled up to the mud wall that had shielded Juba the previous day and swung into an observation position, ready to go in and support Swanson and Summers if necessary.
Kyle and Sybelle went into the jagged window of Juba’s first hide and waited to see if anyone had reacted to the passing of the Humvee. There was no clatter of running men, no shooting, no bright lights, but the air was thick with tension and there was a steady undercurrent of quiet noise. As their senses adjusted to the night, they could make out the sounds of people moving and some low talking. They flipped down the night vision goggles and slid out the front entrance and into the shadows at the edge of the town. Suddenly, it seemed as if some giant had kicked over an anthill and streams of green ants were moving everywhere. Both recognized the familiar prebattle scene. Everyone in the area knew the Americans would be coming in with deadly force soon, and refugees were getting out of the way. Men, women, and children were shuffling along, carrying a few belongings, looking to get into the perceived safety of Tikrit before the American tsunami arrived.
It made the job of Kyle and Sybelle a bit easier, for with so much movement, no one would notice just a little bit more. Things were being kicked, and people were bumping into objects and each other, talking in low tones, but never stopping in their flight. Making a little noise was not a problem for the two snipers, and they removed the goggles, tucked their weapons and gear beneath their flowing clothing, and stepped into the tail end of the sporadic march, allowing the surge of frightened refugees to carry them straight into the middle of town. Sybelle wore a scarf over her head.
Rounding a corner in the thickest part of the village, the line of refugees bent to the right as it approached a couple of armed guards standing in the street and waving the villagers to the side. Kyle and Sybelle did not break stride or look at the men, but when they were about twenty yards beyond the guards, they swerved into a tight alley and pulled out silenced pistols. They had reached the first suspect house and anticipated that it would be bulging with insurgents, but it wasn’t. Sticking with the shadows, they split up and circled the structure and still saw only the two guards out front.
Sybelle pointed to her eyes and then the building.
Swanson went off in a low trot to the rear wall, and she covered him. He crouched and put his night goggles back on and let his eyes adjust to the strange glow before standing up, pressing his back against the wall, and slowly peering around the edge of the open window. He inhaled deeply then waved to Sybelle, who ran to join him.
“The place is empty, but you get that smell?” he whispered.
She took a breath. “Gasoline fumes. Chemicals.”
Kyle levered himself into the window and balanced on the sill but did not drop inside. There was a nightmare collection of explosives stacked around the walls, ready to blow. Cans of gasoline, boxes of ammunition and grenades, bricks of C-4, and a collection of artillery shells were all ready to obey the spark that would explode it all. Looking at the door, he could see no thin wires stretched taut, awaiting the boot of an American soldier coming in. No wires around the windowsill. The bodies of the three Americans were stacked in the middle of the ground floor.
He dropped back outside. “No insurgent troops in there, but a hell of a lot of explosives and it doesn’t seem to be booby-trapped,” he told Sybelle. “Looks like they want to get a bunch of Americans in the middle of the place before setting it off. Let’s go check the other one.”
This time it took about a half hour to make their way to the target building because the line of refugees was thinning out and it was dangerous to continue to use the streets. The best way to go house-to-house was out one window and into the window of the home next door. With the buildings standing empty, progress was clumsy and tiring but uneventful, and they got there unseen by any rooftop observers.
Two guards were at the front of the second house, too, and another circled the building at random. Swanson and Summers squeezed into a shadowed alcove, and when the sentry disappeared around the corner, Kyle ran to the building and looked inside. He did not expect to find anyone looking back, and he was back with her in fifteen seconds. “Same thing,” he said. “Damn big bomb. Let’s back off and call it in.”
They were both sweating by the time they found a safe zone about halfway between the two houses. It was four o’clock when Sybelle got on the Trident secure radio link back to the observation post, where Joe Tipp relayed the message back to Camp Speicher.
Captain Newman was standing beside a Bradley, drinking lukewarm coffee, when his earpiece buzzed. He
