Strike Force Delta (36 page)

So, with all his strength, he started crawling. Over broken glass and burning pieces of metal. Through garbage and muck and whatever other crap could be found lying around in this dirty Muslim city. And somehow the crawling got him to the end of the alley. And it was here that he looked up, into waning night sky—and saw an American flag flying atop the building right next to him. His heart started beating right out of his chest.

But then he collapsed and went facedown again. And this time he was sure he could not move. It had been a joke after all. God had given him the strength not to live but just to see the flag one more time.

But he laughed about it.

At least I can die happy
, he thought.

That's when he heard the sound of someone walking toward him. He could barely open his eyes, but when he did he saw two boots not two inches away from his nose. They were American boots.
Schwarzkopf
boots. That meant American Airborne. Or someone damn close.

Two hands came down and gently rolled him over. Ozzi found himself looking up at the blackest yet sunniest face he'd ever seen.

“Hey, brother,” the member of Delta Thunder said to him. “Looks like you need a friend.”

No one really knew how Saheeb the Syrian survived the battle for Khrash. He wasn't so sure himself.

Being the Patch's bodyguard was supposed to be a 24-7 job, and for Saheeb it had been, until the bombs started falling for real. That's when his contract ended. When the bombardment of the south end of the city began, Saheeb simply deserted the Patch in the TV studio and tried to head back for the center of town. All of Saheeb's personal belongings were there; he had to get them—and then get the hell out of Khrash before it all came crashing down on him.

But getting back to the Holy Towers proved a lot harder than he'd hoped. At first he found himself running at top speed, not easy for such a large man as he, trying to avoid the rain of artillery shells falling all around him. He was wounded several times in this dash for freedom but somehow made it out of the impact zone. Once clear of the south end, he found himself battered and bleeding and wandering through Hasha, the
neighborhood of junkyards and old factories that had also just been leveled by the fierce artillery barrage.

There were many fires still raging here, but among the junk and wreckage Saheeb also saw many bodies. Al Qaeda fighters, who to him appeared to have been in some kind of retreat when the artillery came down on them. Many had packed bags by their sides. Others had died with explosive devices—booby-trap material—still strapped on their persons. Saheeb thought about robbing some of the corpses he saw but decided against it because his hands had been cut up and it would have been too painful for him to steal.

When he finally did reach the city square he found the place crowded with Americans and Zabul fighters. Thinking he was just another bloodied citizen, the Zabul let him through the lines. He walked to his apartment next to the Holy Towers and discovered it was in shambles. All of his possessions had been either looted or destroyed. This was not the work of the Americans. They were too busy to bother with his meager collection of junk. He was sure that members of the religious police had been the actual culprits, leaving him with absolutely nothing at this point in his miserable life.

Suddenly enraged, he wanted revenge—again not on the Americans but on the religious police.
They'd stolen his stuff
. There certainly weren't any hanging around the city square at the moment, so Saheeb headed for the only other place he thought he could find them: the Chief's blockhouse on the edge of the Old Quarter. Saheeb vowed to kill anyone he encountered there.

Saheeb had to hide a few times along the way because
there were still some Americans and Zabul moving about and they might not mistake him this time. Somehow he made it to the blockhouse, but only to get another surprise. This place that everyone had always thought was invulnerable to attack had proved otherwise. Most of it was in ruins, the victim of a direct hit by a five-hundred-pound aerial bomb.

But one attachment had survived the bombing, more or less. This was the building's garage, a place where any bodies leftover from the rape and torture sessions held inside the blockhouse were dumped for pickup later.

It was also one of the places where the religious police sometimes kept their most precious weapon: the huge SA-6 SAM.

Saheeb broke into the garage and indeed found within no bodies but the famous SAM itself, covered with dust and debris. He also discovered that the garage roof had been blown away in the bombing. When he looked up, he saw nothing but the clearing sky above.

He also stumbled upon something that in some ways was more valuable than the big missile: the late Chief's hidden supply of the hallucinogenic qat. Weary, hurt, and at the end of his rope, Saheeb plunked himself down beside the stash and started chewing it by the handful. He was high as a kite five minutes later.

Before he'd signed on to be the Patch's bodyguard, Saheeb had worked in the freak show of a traveling circus. Before that he'd been committed to a home for the insane. But before
that
he'd been in the Syrian military. In fact, he'd been assigned to the rocket defense forces. He'd worked around SA-6 SAMs for four long years
and they all smelled the same. Grease and burned wires, combined with the stink of the rocket fuel.

He stuffed another handful of qat into his mouth and, getting even higher, started examining the controls to the missile's launcher. He was surprised to see it was one of the newer models, a Russian export version that took all the brain work out of launching the damn thing, a must when selling exotic weaponry to Third World countries. With this model, all it took was to snap on the control panel, put the radar on search, and then just wait for a target to fall into the weapon's electronic web. Once the fly was close to the net, with one push of a button the missile was off.

It was that simple.

Any idiot could do it.

Even him. . . .

He sat back and chewed some more qat and contemplated just how penniless he now was. But then he looked back over at the missile and thought of something. It was like a lightbulb turning on in his head.

Is Al Qaeda still paying rewards to anyone who shoots down an American aircraft?
he wondered.

An hour passed.

More flares shot in the air called all of the Americans and their Zabul allies to the Al Sharim berm. The artificial hill next to the old soccer field had become the Ghosts' regrouping point.

The Delta Thunder guys were among the first to arrive, accompanied by the SEALs and carrying Ozzi with them. The Thunder troopers told the others about leaving the
Ocean Voyager
and landing along the Farāh River just in time to prevent the Chief of the religious police from escaping. Eventually teaming up with the SEALs and after rescuing Ozzi, they came upon the one-sided battle in Khrash's city square—and at just the right time. Only they and the SEALs had anything left in the way of ammunition. Still, it was a strange introduction to what had been happening in the formerly terrorist city this very strange night.

Most of Kennedy's 2nd Delta and the rest of Hunn's 1st were also on hand at the berm, as were most of their
Zabul allies. Everyone got a drink of wine. Everyone got a chance to sleep. More than one member hoped they could wake up and find out the whole thing had been one big dream.

And still a few of the team were missing.

About 0930 hours, the morning quiet was broken by the sound of an aircraft approaching.

It came out of the south. A big Navy Chinook. It set down on the field not far from the burning
Psyclops
plane. Johnny Johnson, CO of Delta Thunder, called his men to him. This was their ride out.

Fox, Hunn, and the rest of the Ghost Team walked them down to the LZ. The Chinook crew looked out the aircraft windows, staring at the ragged, bearded, unkempt Ghosts like someone would look at visitors from another planet. The expressions on their faces said it all:
Who the hell are these guys?

Just as this copter was settling down, a second Chinook flew overhead. The Ghosts looked up to see someone in it, looking down at them from the cockpit, giving them a bold salute. Then the aircraft increased speed and headed off in the direction of Mount Zabul.

The guys from Delta Thunder climbed aboard the waiting Chinook, this after shaking hands and embracing the Ghosts, now truly their brothers in arms.

Fox above all shook hands warmly with Johnson. “You know, usually after going through the wringer with us, people tend to join up,” the DSA officer said to him. “I mean—look at this crew. We got all the flavors of the rainbow.”

Johnson replied: “Your reputation is well-founded. And we could all do great things together. But we've got
something else going on that at the moment is as important. We've got to get back to our place. A lot of problems back there. We have to do our part in trying to fix them. You understand, I'm sure?”

Fox did—but he hated to see them go. They all did. The Delta Thunder guys would have been a perfect fit for the Ghost Team.

“I hear you,” Fox told him. “Maybe we'll hook up again then.”

Johnson saluted him. “Count on it,” he said.

Then he climbed aboard the Chinook and closed the door. The big copter rose into the air, turned, and headed southwest.

That's when Hunn came up beside Fox. “They have things ‘as important' to do?” he asked the DSA officer. “Like what?”

Fox watched the copter disappear over the horizon. “Like trying to save an entire continent,” he finally said.

The huge helicopter circled Mount Zabul once before setting down in a maelstrom of dust and snow.

A squad of armed Zabul fighters met the big aircraft. It was painted gray, had two huge rotors and the words USS
Ronald Reagan
painted on the side of its fuselage. That name was well-known, even up here at the top of the world.

Tarik Aboo appeared from his round stone hut and walked to the landing site. The door to the helicopter slid open and two armed crewmen stepped out. They took a look around, eyed the armed Zabul, but lowered their weapons, as did the mountain fighters.

Then the Navy crewmen helped out the copter's only passenger. He was wearing a borrowed flight deck winter
suit, complete with hood and huge rubber boots. The outfit appeared to weigh more than the man did.

It was Bobby Murphy, here to thank an old friend for his help.

Tarik greeted him warmly, with much hugging and cheek kissing. Murphy took it all in good humor, then followed Tarik back to his hut.

They sat inside next to the small stove and Murphy accepted Tarik's offer of one of the huge black cigarettes, not quite realizing it was stuffed with both tobacco and hashish.

“We owe you more than before, my friend,” Tarik told Murphy. “Your men have removed the blight of Warlord Sharif and have put an end to the sinful enterprises in Khrash.”

Murphy just took a long drag of the Afghani blunt. “We had our own reasons, our own motives. But I'm glad you will benefit from it all.”

“Our fighters will remain in the city for as long as they are needed,” Tarik reported. “We will try to rebuild it. Try to make it a place where the innocent and the uninvolved can live in peace.”

Murphy nodded solemnly. “That's how it should be,” he said. “And you'll have a lot of ex-Iranian equipment at your disposal should anyone seek to disagree with you.”

Tarik shook his head slowly, then waved the smoke out of the air. It was clear he did not want to talk about what had happened in Khrash's center square just after the Iranian brigade showed up. It was just too spooky for him.

“As for whatever is down in those warehouses,” Murphy went on, “we'll have to leave that to the brains in Washington. If what I suspect about some of the stuff is
true, I'm sure they'll be dying to announce they'd finally found what they've been looking for all these years. On the other hand, there's a good chance they'll want to keep the whole thing secret because they don't want to admit that anything went on in Khrash and with Iran and Al Qaeda because they'll never know what happened exactly. Could get confusing.”

Tarik smiled. “Sometimes I'm happy I live high up in the mountains,” he said. “And other times I'm not sure if I live high enough.”

“But whatever happens, you must remember,” Murphy went on, “the promise you made to me a long time ago. Peace and freedom for everyone in that city, in the entire Qimruz. If people want to sing or dance or fly a kite, they have to be able to. If they want to read a book, see a movie, praise Allah, or Jesus, or Yahweh—they have to have the freedom to do so.”

Tarik was nodding in agreement. “The old times must pass,” he replied. “I'm smart enough to know that.”

Murphy took another drag and then raised his finger to make one more point. “And no beating of women,” he told Tarik soberly. “Or children. Those things are the most important of all.”

Tarik nodded again. “I understand and promise that to you, my friend.”

“That's good,” Murphy said. “Because I'll be watching. And if things go wrong, or if they start to go backward. . .” He nodded in the direction of Khrash. “Well . . . you know now what we can do.”

Tarik smiled again, but maybe a bit nervously. “Of all your points you've made today,” he told Murphy, “that one is the most clear.”

They shook hands and then embraced.

“And spend all that money wisely,” Murphy added. “You earned it.”

Tarik looked back at him queerly. “What money?” he asked. “We didn't do this for money. We did this for the spoils of Khrash and to rid this part of our world from that
jihad
filth.”

Murphy was stumped. “You mean you weren't paid, my friend?” he asked. “Two million dollars in American cash?”