Slim To None. Taylor Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ He needs to lie low. Tell him that, for God’s sake.”

      “And if he does? What are the odds of them getting their daughter back safe and sound?”

      Stern shrugged. “One hopes for the best and prepares for the worst. Wars have casualties. You know that. I know that. Amy Fitzgerald should have known that before she blundered into the Sunni Triangle.” Before Myers could protest, Stern added, “Stay on top of the Pentagon and Langley. Meantime, I’ll see if I can find out anything on my end. That’s the best we can do.”

      

      A few minutes later, once Myers had been escorted out of his office and out of the building, Stern wheeled in his chair and reached for a phone on the credenza behind his desk. He punched a series of numbers on the base, then listened while the system bounced the call across several international satellite links. The line picked up quickly at the other end, but the voice sounded groggy. It wasn’t just the scrambler encoding their communication, Stern realized, glancing at his watch. It was after midnight over there.

      He didn’t bother to identify himself. “Kenner, look sharp!”

      “I’m here. What’s up?”

      Stern’s trained ear picked up the faint hint of an almost untraceable accent, although he knew that not one in a million other listeners would hear it. The man he called Kenner had American pronunciation and syntax down perfectly, and he used American colloquialisms with ease. It was only one of the reasons Stern found the man so useful.

      “The Fitzgerald problem is looking to get out of hand,” he said.

      “How so?”

      “Patrick Fitzgerald has posted a million-dollar reward for his daughter’s safe return. He’s also calling in markers to pressure the administration to take action. What were you thinking of, standing by while they kidnapped the American woman?”

      “They needed a doctor and the local clinic had just gone through a personnel shift.”

      “And nobody knew it was an American there? A girl, for chrissake?”

      “What can I say? The intelligence was faulty.”

      “Nonexistent, is more like it. Enough is enough. It’s time to get this situation back under control. Got it?”

      Stern barely waited to hear the assent from the other end before hanging up. He didn’t need to. Orders were meant to be followed. He had no doubt that his would be.

      CHAPTER

       5

      Wednesday, August 27, 2003

       Iraq, the heart of the Sunni Triangle

      The Brandywine team came out of the hills just after 1:00 a.m. There were four commandos with the forward unit that set out from the landing zone. They’d left the pilot and a base guard on backup at the LZ with the understanding that the chopper would pull back to a safer distance if there was any sign of enemy activity in the area. They had no desire to draw undue attention to their effort to extract the two Iraqi civilians from the insurgent-held town of Al Zawra.

      Hannah was the lone woman in the advance group that headed down into the valley. Sean Ladwell, the team leader, was on point. Hannah and Marcus Wilcox were in the two and three positions, while OzNuñez was on rear guard. Nuñez, a former marine sniper, carried an M40A1 rifle, while the others had M-16s. In addition, each team member carried a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol with sixteen rounds, half a dozen spare clips, plus a personalized assortment of backup guns, knives, fragmentation grenades and smoke bombs. Wilcox, a former NFL linebacker who’d quit pro ball on September 12, 2001, also had an M203 grenade launcher slung around his Kevlar’d torso. They were armed for bear but hoped to need none of it, slipping back to the LZ before sunup with their rescue targets in tow.

      Four pairs of tan leather boots negotiated barren, rock-strewn terrain as they crept stealthily toward the target: the small market town of Al Zawra, population eight thousand, some fifty miles north of Baghdad. Four heads took constant, 360-degree readings of the terrain as they crept forward. Four pairs of eyes were fixed on the green-tinted shadows in their night-vision goggles, searching for any movement that would betray opposition forces. Hunting, too, for seemingly innocuous bumps in the terrain that could conceal improvised explosive devices.

      The air, hot and arid, was laden with powder-fine grit. It was all Hannah could do not to sneeze inside the itching balaclava pulled over her head, nose and mouth, but she dared not make a sound that might announce their approach.

      The caution was well warranted. They were coming in from the back side of the town that pressed up against the hills rather than via the main road off the Baghdad-to-Tikrit highway. Advance intel suggested that this flank was the most lightly guarded. The half-mile stretch of open ground between the foothills and their objective had also been aerial-surveyed with ground penetrating radar looking for land mines. Still, it paid to be ready for surprises. It could mean the difference between success and failure, life and death—or worse, capture. The gruesome images of recent hostage beheadings, flashed round the world via the Internet, were graphic reminders of the fate that could await them if they screwed up.

      Hannah held her M-16 rifle clutched close to her body. Upon arrival at the first mission briefing at Brandywine International headquarters in Virginia a week earlier, she’d been greeted by wolf whistles and a few dubious propositions. Even though she’d been careful to show up wearing an old police academy sweatshirt, faded jeans and scuffed boots, her dark hair knotted behind her head and her makeup nonexistent, it had taken only a nanosecond for these clowns to jump to the conclusion that she was there to offer coffee, maps and maybe a hot-blooded romp to brave boys willing to risk their necks for a cause deemed worthy enough for a lucrative payday.

      The kibitzing had faded fast, replaced by raised eyebrows and skeptical muttering when she was introduced and her role in the mission outlined. The grumbling hadn’t altogether died down since. They’d be happy to bed her, the grunts made clear, they just didn’t want to babysit her out here when their lives would be on the line.

      Hannah informed them she didn’t need babysitting from anyone, thanks all the same. In any case, there was nothing they could do about her inclusion. It was a management call, and management had decided: she was in. She liked to think it wasn’t just because she spoke Arabic, but realistically, with even the team leader reluctant to have her along, she knew it probably was the tipping point. This mission—any mission in Iraq, these days—was risky enough. Without someone who spoke the local language, it could be impossible to pull off and maybe suicidal to boot.

      Now, as they crept out of the hills, there was no distinguishing Hannah from the men, rigged out as she was in full paramilitary camouflage gear. She was on the tall side for a woman, five-eight in her bare feet, an inch more in her hiking boots. At least one of the men in the group was shorter, although Oz Nuñez was built like a Humvee, low, wide and solid. Hannah’s Kevlar body armor concealed a slender frame under her dark outerwear, while the balaclava and night-vision goggles obscured her long hair and deceptively delicate features.

      Hannah’s fingerless leather gloves clutched the barrel and stock of her rifle. The gun was set to burst pattern, ready for any threat, but she projected outward calm as they crept toward their target. Only she knew that her heart was pounding against the khaki cotton T-shirt under her body armor, beating out the universal anthem of fatalists everywhere: When you’ve got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.

      That СКАЧАТЬ