Into the Storm (2 page)

If they let it disperse into the mountainous countryside, it would come back at the Americans one bullet and mortar at a time.

But calling in an airstrike was a major problem, and not
just
because lately air support had to be reserved days in advance. Jenk stopped Izzy.

“How’re you feeling about the eight against two-sixty odds?” he asked the taller man. The equipment he’d seen in the enemy camp wasn’t limited to weapons and ammo. “They’ve got DF equipment—state of the art.”

Jenk had used similar radio detection-finding equipment in a training op, and the bad news was that it worked. Extremely well. Technology tended to play leapfrog. It wouldn’t be long before the whiz kids in the lab came up with a radio that wouldn’t be detectable by this latest round of equipment, but they hadn’t done it yet.

Bottom line, if Jacquette broke radio silence, it would be like announcing their presence—and location—to the enemy over a loudspeaker.

Combined with that artillery Jenk had glimpsed in the flickering firelight…No, that was not a good idea.

“So we clear out,” Izzy said. “Get out of mortar range, and then call in the airstrike.”

“They’re blocking our route down the mountain,” Jenk pointed out.

“So we go over the mountains and through the fucking woods if we have to. There’s more than one way to get to Grandmother’s house.”

Unlike Izzy, Jenk knew this area well. “That’ll take us over the border.” At Izzy’s expression of exasperation, he added, “Look,
I
don’t have a problem with it. The weapons came from over the border. Fucking Osama’s probably over there, too, being treated like royalty. But I can tell you right now, that as soon as we give him this information, the lieutenant is going to start muttering about not wanting to cause an…”

“…international incident,” Lieutenant Jacquette said grimly, just as Mark Jenkins had predicted. It was hardwired into all officers in the U.S. military. But unlike many of the top brass, Jacquette had studied under the best commanding officer of all time, Lieutenant Commander—now retired, which was a real shame—Tom Paoletti. “Other options?”

Like Tommy Paoletti, Jazz Jacquette believed in brainstorming with his men, in a give-and-take of ideas. He actually thought it was a good idea to make full use of all the thousands of hours of training his enlisted SEALs had had in thinking outside of the box.

Izzy scratched his nose as he tried now to do just that. They had to blow up those weapons and explosives, and not die doing it. This was a real Apollo 13 scenario. The SEALs were restricted extensively by the impassable mountain terrain, and the equipment, weaponry, and supplies they carried were limited.

“We could just walk right through their camp,” Izzy suggested. “Collect a few head scarves, cover our faces, and boot-scoot down the trail. Call in the airstrike when we’re out of range.”

“Like no one would notice us,” Silverman scoffed.

“Maybe they wouldn’t,” Izzy said. But if they did, the SEALs were all dead.

“They’d still pick up our radio signal,” Jenkins pointed out. “They’ll know we’re calling in an airstrike and be out of here in minutes.”

They had to figure out a way to keep the insurgents here until the bombs started falling.
And
not die in the process. Sheesh. It was easy to do one or the other. It was doing both that was going to be a challenge.

“I’ve got enough C4 to blow that cave shut,” Gillman said.

“Yeah, with you in it,” Silverman pointed out. Mr. Doom and Gloom.

“Not necessarily,” Izzy said.

“Are
you
volunteering?” Silverman came back at him, his normally half-closed eyes opening wide. “Because that’s a strong sign that a plan is totally fucked.” He looked to Jacquette for confirmation. “If Psycho here actually wants to—”

“I didn’t say that,” Izzy spoke over him. “I say we call in the airstrike, then run like hell to safety, which just happens to be across the border. With an immediate extraction, who’s going to know?”

Jenkie glanced at his watch, on top of every detail, as usual. “Helo’s not available for extraction for another six hours,” he reported.

“What the fuck?” Izzy said, speaking for all of them, looking to Jacquette for confirmation. Six
hours
? “Sir?”

The lieutenant nodded. “Secretary of Defense is visiting Kabul today.”

Holy Jesus. Was that really a mission with priority over this one?

So in other words, they didn’t just have to run, they also had to hide. For six freaking hours. And yes, there were caves aplenty out there in the mountains, but the enemy had the advantage. They knew this terrain inside and out. Plus,
they
didn’t give a flying fuck about any alleged borders.

“We can take photos, get faces for intel to identify,” Silverman suggested.

“But if we don’t stop them…” The new guy, Orlikowski, started to protest as if it were an actual possibility that all they’d do was take snapshots.

Doing that—the equivalent of nothing—wouldn’t sit well with any of them. Izzy knew that each time some boots-on-the-ground grunt was killed by a sniper or an IED, they’d all get a bad taste in their mouths and a twisting in their gut, thinking about all those weapons and ammo that got away.

“We’re not walking away from this,” the lieutenant intoned in his best voice-of-God imitation.

Jenk spoke up. “I got an idea,” he said, in that barely-old-enough-to-vote, gee-whiz-sounding voice that made Izzy think his next words were going to be
We can hold the pep rally in my dad’s barn!
“Permission to liberate one of the insurgents, sir.”

Lieutenant Jacquette was African American. He had a broad face, with dark skin and a nose similar to the one Jacko had traded in, back when he was handsome. Jacquette was a very good-looking man—Izzy knew because he’d dated plenty of women who’d made a point to tell him so. But the lieutenant’s default expression was of having just stepped in shit. It could have won him a fortune playing Texas Hold ’Em, because it never changed.

Never.

Well, okay, maybe it changed a little, depending on whether the shit he’d stepped in came from a dog or a bull. But you had to know him really well to be able to tell that difference.

The man was also about twice the size of Jenkins. But Jacquette clearly knew Jenk well enough not to be fooled by his about-to-turn-nineteen, grade-A student, baby-faced Boy Scout appearance.

“Anyone in particular?” he asked Jenk dryly. “Or just any old insurgent?”

“His name’s Yusaf Ghulam-Khan,” Jenk said, because no matter where they went and what they were doing, he automatically knew everything and everyone. And the best way to manipulate them. Izzy knew right then that the SEALs were not going to leave this mountainside dissatisfied. Or in body bags.

Jenk continued. “Let me tell you, sir, exactly how he can help us….”

“Yusaf! Thank God!” Jenk dug deep, using all of his experience and talent as the team’s best liar to give the man a sincere-sounding greeting. It took everything he had in him to look into the bastard’s eyes without fear of betraying his true desire, which involved use of his KA-BAR knife.

The man was terrified. Who wouldn’t be after getting grabbed by Izzy and Danny Gillman and dragged into the night? He was also more than a little confused that he was still alive. He was making random not-my-fault, please-don’t-kill-me noises from beneath Danny’s hand, which was securely covering his mouth.

“Relax, dude,” Jenk said, playing the role of the stupid American soldier. “We were out on a sneak and peek—just a standard op, you know, a small squad? Then we ran into this mess.” He gestured toward the insurgents’ camp. “I saw that you were with them, working undercover”—yeah, right, but Yusaf stopped weeping—“and realized that, together, we can bring these fuckers down.”

Yusaf was nodding now—loyal to whoever held the gun to his head. At least for as long as the weapon was locked and loaded.

Jenk nodded at Danny, who took his hand from Yusaf’s mouth.

“Thank God you are here,” Yusaf threw his arms around Jenk. “I didn’t know what to do. They killed Mrs. Naaz—”

Jenk may have been good at lying his ass off, but there was no way he was going to stand here and discuss Suhayla with this scumbag.

He pushed free from the embrace. “We don’t have much time before someone notices you’re missing. Here’s what we need you to do.”

Jenk went into detail, outlining a seriously flawed plan to “fool” the insurgents into thinking they were surrounded by coalition forces. The SEALs in his squad would move into place around the perimeter of the camp, to send up flares that would mark the “position” of each of two “battalions.”

Jenk, meanwhile, would man the radio—ready to contact the insurgent leader, to “negotiate” their surrender.

Of course, Yusaf would return to the insurgents’ camp and tell the leader exactly how many—or in this case how few—SEALs were out there in the night.

They’d send up those flares, and the insurgents would charge up into the mountains, leaving the downward-heading trail clear for the SEALs to make their escape. After calling in that airstrike, of course.

And this was where Jenk’s plan got a little sketchy. With that dog and pony show going on in Kabul, an immediate airstrike might not be possible.

So Jenk embellished, filling his story with the usual diplocrapic debris: They were virtually certain that they’d identified one of the men in the cave as a high-ranking official of an allegedly neutral country, which would help provide proof that that country had terrorist ties.

“Which is why we can’t just call in an airstrike and blow them to shit,” Jenk lied. “We need the weapons and ammo as proof of this man’s criminal activity, do you follow?”

Yusaf nodded.

Jenk dropped his final disinformation bomb. “We just need to stall them,” he told the man. “For a solid twenty-four hours, until the real coalition forces arrive.” He paused, giving his words added weight. “Will you help? Will you go in there and tell them that these mountains are filled with American soldiers? Will you tell them we’ll be contacting them via radio to negotiate their surrender?”

Yusaf just kept on nodding. “Of course,” he said.

Of course.

Jenk clasped the older man’s hand and poured on the sincerity. “We’re counting on you.”

“I understand,” Yusaf said.

Jenk nodded at Izzy and Danny, who’d volunteered to set up those flares. “Move into position. Let’s do this.”

Lieutenant Jacquette was brilliant—letting Marky-Mark have free rein with this sitch.

The lieutenant and the rest of the team in place, ready to boogie down the mountain, no border crossing necessary, as they destroyed the insurgents’ ammunition and didn’t die in the process.

Izzy positioned his flare, rigging it with extra det cord. After he lit this puppy, he didn’t want to be anywhere in the neighborhood, and having a superlong fuse would allow him to get out of Dodge.

Mark Jenkins had known just how to put a similar slow-burning fuse on Yusaf and his insurgent cronies.

He’d even given them a reason to stick around—SEALs in them thar hills. If these insurgents could not just kill but capture a team of SEALs, they could parade them on al-Jazeera television and be real heroes.

Little did they realize, thanks to the simple wonder of a slow-burning fuse, that the SEALs would be nowhere near the flares. The bad guys would charge the mountain and find nothing. No one.

Well, except for Marky-Mark Jenkins. But he was small and fast and good at hiding.

The coolest part of Jenk’s little subterfuge was that he had told Yusaf that he would be sending a radio message to the insurgents—an attempt to negotiate, aka stall for time, before the additional fictional American troops arrived.

Hence, it was a given that the insurgents would pick up the SEALs’ radio signal on their DF equipment.

Izzy knew that Jenk was banking on the fact that the insurgents wouldn’t know how to use that equipment as skillfully as he himself apparently did. An important but as of yet still unknown part of the plan depended on the insurgents failing to recognize that, while sending his “Prepare to surrender” message, Jenk would also be simultaneously calling for the aforementioned airstrike.

Which brought them to goatfuck factor one. Jenk had to convince the numbnuts at command to send an airstrike now, rather than three days from now. That was important.

Once Jenk made radio contact, much depended on his ability to connect with someone back at HQ who would forgo the red tape and paperwork and actually send the help they needed.

Nah, on second thought, the goatfuck factor was handled. Jenk knew everyone. And he knew how to charm, trick or mind-control them into getting exactly what he wanted. No human on earth was immune to Jenk’s talent.

From his vantage point overlooking the enemy camp, Izzy scanned the area, searching for Yusaf. He was still back in the cave, no doubt deep in conference with the insurgent leaders, like a good little turncoat, helping to work out the details of their counterplan.

But the level of activity around the radio, the DF equipment, and an entire array of rocket launchers had increased. And, yes, slowly but surely the insurgents were moving—away from the trail down the mountain and into attack position.