Against All Enemies

chambers had already been greased up to get the ultimate sound attenuation. He also grabbed a couple of smoke grenades and a couple of flash bangs, in case the group was not as “cooperative” as they could be. He slipped on an earpiece with attached boom mike, and took off running across the parking lot, with Towers’s voice in his ear: “Next left and the ditch will be straight ahead. Good cover along the south-side wall. Once you get in past the big grating, your two buddies will be just inside.”

An automotive junkyard’s chain-link fence lined the left side of the street, with a row of ramshackle buildings collapsing to the right, all of them unoccupied — abandoned machine and tool shops, judging from the faded placards above their doors. Even the graffiti that slashed across some of the crumbling walls looked washed out. It was difficult to see much more detail, since the streetlights that towered overhead were all dark, their bulbs either shot out or burned out. Flickering light came from the block next door, and Moore wasn’t sure of its source.

He reached the meter-high concrete wall along the south side of the ditch and kept tight, shifting hunched over until he found the two main grating plates lying on the opposite side of the ditch, about ten meters away: the main entrance to the storm drains and smaller tunnel inside. It’d been a considerably dry season, with only a few shallow puddles dotting the ground and a carpet of weeds spreading up to the grating. He grimaced over a faint sewage smell that he hoped would not get stronger once he crossed the ditch.

“ETA on the truck: five minutes,” said Towers.

That wasn’t much time. Moore tugged from his hip pocket a portable night-vision monocular. He raised the device to his right eye and zoomed in on the grating. Through the cross-hatched pattern he spotted one of the two guards sitting beside a circular hole burrowed in the side wall, the shadows beyond it fluctuating like pale green heat waves. The guard was about five feet tall, no mask — just a shaved head with tattoos forming a talon across his neck. Moore imagined a perfectly placed sniper’s round sailing through one of the grating holes and taking out the man where he sat. Moore was a good shot, but hell he wasn’t that good …

After a deep, calming breath, he pocketed the monocular and took off running across the ditch. He reached the grating and knew that lifting the door would cause a commotion. There just wasn’t a way to sneak up on these guys. A section of the grating had been cut out to form a one-meter-by-one-meter hatch. Moore gave it a tug. Locked. Shit. He told Towers, who said, “Well, fuck it, dude, get them to open it.”

“Hey,” shouted one of the guards from inside. “You’re here already? You’re early.”

“Hurry up!” Moore answered in Spanish. “We have a big shipment here!”

Moore raised one of his Glocks and waited for the man to unlock the grating. Despite the suppressor, his shot would hardly be silent. Even though his bullet would exit the barrel at subsonic speeds — which would help in the suppression of the sound — the Glock’s slide would still make a loud enough click to alert anyone within the immediate area, most notably the other guard. The word silencer implied a blowgun-like thump, but that was a misnomer. Moreover, when you saw guys “limp-wristing,” or one-handing a suppressed pistol and firing it, the kinetic energy from the slide would transfer to their wrists and not only make the shot go wide but possibly injure them, so you always held the pistol tightly with both hands, as Moore did.

Some might argue that the more silent way to kill the guard would be with a knife, but again, killing someone with a single knife blow was exceedingly difficult. After the first blow, you more often than not still had a struggle on your hands and several more blows to deliver while you tried to gag the guy. The whole affair was sloppy and much more dangerous — and Moore knew this firsthand from his SEAL training and from taking out several pirates in Somalia who’d each needed a half-dozen blows from his knife before they properly died. Moore preferred to take his chances with the clack of the slide and the assurance that one round would finish the job without him having to lay a hand on the man.

A lock clicked from inside, followed by the rattle of a chain. The grating squeaked upward, and the man thrust out his head and faced Moore.

His eyes widened first on Moore and then on the suppressor attached to Moore’s Glock. He opened his mouth to scream.

Moore fired, the round hitting the guard just above his left eye and booting him back past the grating.

Before the brass casing from Moore’s round could hit the dirt, he was on the move, lowering himself past the grating and down into the wider storm-drain conduit, a rectangular shaft of concrete about seven feet high by nearly fifteen feet across. He had to climb over the first guard’s body and peer into the darkness, searching for the second guard.

Where was the son of a bitch? Surely he’d heard that round — and damn, there wasn’t time to waste looking for him.

“I had to kill one of the mules!” Moore shouted, his voice echoing off into the conduit as he lifted the night- vision monocular to his eye. “He tried to steal from us.”

Movement ahead.

Moore threw himself forward into a puddle spanning the floor. A shot rang out, striking the water at his elbow. He rolled away, onto his back, realizing that if he didn’t sit up and return fire in the next two heartbeats, he was dead.

21 BULLETPROOF

Al Basrah Oil Terminal

Persian Gulf, Iraq

March 19, 2003

For just a second, while he was lying in that puddle of water, staring straight up into the darkness, Moore took himself back to 2003 when he was also lying on his back but submerged to twenty feet and observing the silhouettes of two immense concrete pilings that grew thicker, like the muscular legs of a giant standing in knee- deep water. The oil platform’s security lights transformed the surface into a rippling mirror of yellow-edged flashes that faded to a deep blue on the periphery. Within those dark expanses hovered four more shadows, like a pod of whales bobbing slowly on the current. An eerie calm settled over him as he floated there, his LAR V Drager closed- circuit gear emitting not a single bubble, his breathing controlled and rhythmic and allowing his thoughts to clear so he could focus on the task at hand. The digital camera worked effortlessly, capturing images so they could mark the positions of the platform’s own underwater security cameras which he and the rest of his team had carefully evaded.

Moore, Carmichael, and the other SEALs organized into two four-man teams had used several Mark 8 mod 1 SEAL Delivery Vehicles — small manned submersibles — to arrive at the oil terminal’s southern platform. The whole affair resembled a trampoline suspended high above the water by dozens of crab-like legs. Sweeping antennae and broad satellite dishes had been mounted atop the superstructure, along with a geodesic dome and perches for lookouts. Guards patrolled the railings on all four sides of the tower.

“No glory in this one. We go in and take pictures of an Iraqi oil platform. Whoop-dee- do.”

Indeed, this was a by-the-numbers picture-taking recon operation that within a few minutes would be over and they’d be cracking open some beers for breakfast. While Moore got the underwater shots, the other three men in his charge were photographing what they could near and on the surface, marking the positions and courses of Iraqi patrol boats and gun emplacements on the platform.

At the moment, four tanker ships were simultaneously docked at the platform and having oil pumped into their holds. During the briefing Moore had learned that eighty percent of Iraq’s gross domestic product passed through the terminal, about 1.5 million barrels per day, which of course made Al Basrah a vital part of the country’s economy and had warranted an unusual presence there, as noted by Carmichael over the radio: “Team Two, this is Mako Two, listen up. The regular garrison is gone. They’ve got Revolutionary Guard up there manning the lookouts. They’ve brought in the big guns, and they’re armed for bear now.”

“Roger that,” answered Moore. “Everyone look for signs.”

“We’re on it, Mako One,” answered Carmichael.

Moore had just ordered Carmichael’s team and his own to search for signs of underwater demolitions and evidence of charges set up top, along the exterior of the platform. The Iraqis would rather destroy their oil terminal than have it fall into enemy hands, and knowing them, Moore figured they’d use C-4 but probably weren’t clever