in the darkness. Aref checked his wristwatch. Almost one o’clock in the morning. He decided to break up the soldiers around the fire and get them out on perimeter patrol. There was no reason for worry. Tonight seemed no different than any other in the past two weeks. Still, nervousness itched at him just like the rough blanket.
THE ATTACK BEGAN TWO hours later when an old cargo truck pulled into the checkpoint, groaning on its springs beneath the weight of boxes of scrap metal covered by a ratty tarpaulin. The driver stared straight ahead, as if lost in thought, then pushed a button to detonate his bomb, a pair of artillery shells that were tamped down beside cans of gasoline. A stolen case of M-84 flash-bang grenades also was in the cargo bed, four containers in the case, and three grenades in each container. The explosion had nothing to contain it, and curtains of sharp and heavy steel fragments whipped across the area, while the instant mixture of the ammonium and magnesium in the grenades temporarily created a world of instant light a thousand times brighter than a welder’s torch. The driver was vaporized.
Javon Anthony had been looking the other way through his NVGs but was still knocked silly by the blast. His goggles, which amplified light, were lit up by the flash and temporarily blinded him. He was deafened by the roar, and the ground shook. Fighting the pain in his eyes, he ripped off the goggles and screamed, “Everybody up! Jones and Stewart: Get on those guns. Everybody get sharp. Now!” He shook his head to try to clear his vision, but it was no use. He saw only dancing panels of red and yellow, and felt the wetness of blood coming from his ears.
As soon as the explosion rocked the checkpoint, a rocket-propelled grenade whistled in from behind the Americans and smashed into one of the stationary Humvees, turning it into a flaming pyre. Shadowy men rose from the tangle of irrigation ditches and stormed in firing automatic rifles and more RPGs. The surprised Americans were barely able to react, much less fight.
Down below, the checkpoint had been utterly destroyed, replaced by a smoking crater. Abdul Aref and his entire team were dead, as were the occupants of every vehicle within a hundred-meter radius. Cars and people alike were on fire, strange torches in the night, and a flank of the attacking force veered away from the Americans and ran to the remaining vehicles to inflict even more damage. They fired as they ran, riddling cars and trucks with bullets. Several drivers had managed to get off the road and were killed when they hit a ditch or stopped to turn around. Vehicle after vehicle was destroyed by the rampaging Taliban guerrillas.
More men with an entirely different mission overran the American position.
At first Anthony was shooting blind and couldn’t hear any of the rounds being fired. His vision and hearing slowly returned, and then he picked up the hard hammering of the machine gun of the remaining Humvee. Johnson screamed curses, then disappeared in the blast of an RPG.
Javon Anthony tried to gather his wits. From all around and below, the sergeant could hear the groaning of wounded men, some of them screaming in agony. First things first. “I need a head count!” he yelled, still hugging the dirt. Only three voices called out. Then another RPG zipped overhead, exploding some distance away, and shadows became men with guns, right on top of him. He shot one.
Anthony crawled over to where Jake Henderson was still moving and shooting. Together, their combined fire made the attack temporarily falter around their fighting hole.
“You hit?”
“Naw. I was asleep in the bottom of the hole.”
“Who else is still alive?”
“I heard Eddie Wilson over there to the right,” said Henderson, rapidly changing to a fresh magazine.
“Wilson!” Anthony called out. “Wilson! Where the fuck are you?”
Eddie Wilson did not answer. Then an RPG round blew up on the edge of the fighting hole, and Jake Henderson and Javon Anthony were both knocked unconscious. The attackers checked to see if the two Americans were still alive, and when their pulses were found to be strong, both were dragged away to become prisoners.
PART OF THE TALIBAN unit that hit the Americans was a snatch-and-grab team with a unique mission. While the others carried out the actual fighting, they used the chaos to cover their advance to the edge of the main group. One young American soldier was sprawled helplessly on his back. Looking directly at the checkpoint at the moment of the explosion, he had been thrown over by the concussion and was clawing at his eyes and screaming in pain. His partner had barely seen the Taliban soldiers before the raiders shot him in the head.
Strong hands grabbed Eddie Wilson, and a fist punched him hard in the stomach to make him lose his wind. Then he was hauled from the fighting hole and pulled into the muck of the big irrigation ditch.
They threw him down face-first into the slime and bound his wrists with plastic flex-ties, then used more strong plastic loops to secure his ankles. Eddie Wilson tried to kick one of the men but was punched hard in the kidneys. The commandos bent him painfully backward and tied his ankles to his wrists. He could hear the firing of small arms and some distant explosions, but he was helpless.
His captors rolled him over so his face came out of the mud, and he sucked in a deep breath. A pinpoint of light flashed on in the ditch. He recognized it as a cell phone.
Wilson was bowed backward with his neck fully exposed. He shouted again and cursed with impotent fury when a strong hand grabbed his forehead and held it steady. Two muscular legs locked around his waist.
He heard the two men speaking calmly to each other. Then a bright flashlight was clicked on and the beam shone directly into his eyes. He yelled, “Sarge! Anybody! Help me! Javon, where are y’all?”
The kidnapper behind him reached out, and in his hand the American saw the shining blade of a huge knife. “No!
The Taliban fighter spun the thick blade and yanked it hard against the lower neck of the screaming, struggling soldier. A bloody crimson gap followed the edge of the knife, the wound yawning wider as the blade moved relentlessly onward. A thick fountain of blood spewed out as the terrorist slowly worked on the tendons, the veins, and finally the spinal cord. Eddie’s terrorized screams had been reduced to pitiful whimpers and then only gurgles as his head was sawed off. When the body fell away, the still-beating heart continued pushing out quarts of thick blood, and the Taliban fighter lifted up the American’s head and bleeding neck, turning the face toward the cell phone camera being held rock steady by his partner. Eddie Wilson’s final expression was a grotesque contortion of agony, shock, disbelief, and surprise. Then the flashlight clicked off, and the two men ran for safety, leaving the American soldier in pieces behind them.
Javon Anthony’s entire squad had been wiped out. Seven were killed in the fighting, Wilson tortured and murdered on the spot, while Anthony and Henderson were heading into a brutal captivity.
Two days later, the gruesome little movie was available on the Internet. Terrorists no longer had to rely on Al Jazeera or any specific journalist for publicity. They could post whatever they wanted directly to the entire world, and the horrible images of the death of the young American soldier spread like a pandemic virus throughout the electronic universe, impossible to stop.
2
THE ARABIAN SEA
OFF SOMALIA
GHEDI SAYID ROLLED THE trackball up to the menu, clicked, and opened a new screen on the LCD color monitor of the radar mounted in the bridge of the
