Dead Shot (5 page)

A pretty young woman was seated on the steps of the truck, working on a laptop computer that was balanced on her knees. She looked up with a start when she realized someone was standing in front of her. He wore a technician’s purple and white jumpsuit with a belt of tools hung around his narrow waist. Even in the dark, he looked as if he had a deep tan. “May I help you?” she asked.

The man referred to a scrap of paper. “Are you Miss Drake?”

“Yes.”

“I’m from Edinburgh All-Media. They sent me down to give the vans a last-minute look to be sure you don’t have any problems tomorrow. Is your engineer around?”

“Sure. He’s inside.” She led him into the cargo bay. “Harold? This tech is from the rental service and wants to see if anything is wrong.”

Juba followed her in, shook the hand of the engineer, and turned back to Kim. “Nothing is wrong, Miss Drake. Just a precaution, mind
you. We want everything to go smoothly for you tomorrow. So, have you encountered any problems?” he asked Harold.

“Nope, but glad you came around to check.” The engineer had on a headset and was working a bank of lighted dials. “I’m setting the uplink to go live. Let me know if you need me.”

“Right. Won’t be a minute.” Juba studied the desktop area, dropped to the floor to look at the underneath wiring, and clicked a flashlight to see into small places. He opened the engine and played around in the compartment, climbed to the top and back down, then crawled beneath the truck, where he removed two cans of aerosol spray from his toolbox. Each was labeled as a commercial product that was widely used to blow blasts of clean air onto delicate computer components. Juba twisted the exterior coverings and pulled out the canisters within, then carefully attached them to small clamps above the exhaust pipe from the muffler. Tiny bits of explosive plastique were on the tips of the canisters, and he joined them with a common wire to a small detonator. It would go off when a certain cell phone number was dialed, and the contents of the canisters would be released.

While he worked, Kim Drake continued preparing for her upcoming live shot for the six o’clock evening news back home. She had managed to snare a good report, standing in front of the palace with one of those tall soldiers in the red coat and funny-looking fur hat. When she was done filming, she stepped away from the spot, and a press officer ushered in another reporter to do the same thing. The news director back home loved it and set the report for the evening news.

Juba finished just as Kim was doing her makeup at a mirror in the van. “Pardon, Miss Drake, if you don’t mind. May I snap a few photos of you and Harold and your cameraman? Hate to be such a bother, but the company wants some pictures for its adverts after you lot are gone. Drum up more business for us in the lean times, you know.” The request was so polite that they all agreed, and Juba took out a digital camera.

“Just wait until I finish my hair,” Kim called. “I look horrible.” He shot a series of pictures of Harold at the controls while he waited.

Kim snapped off the light and stepped forward. “Any time you’re ready.”

“Are you famous, Miss Drake?” He clicked two pictures.

“No, not yet. Working on it.” Broad smile, hands on hips, blond hair in helmet hairspray mode. American Idol.

“I find that difficult to believe. Obviously you’re talented, or you would not be here.” Two more pictures. “Very good. My thanks to all of you. The company will be pleased up to get these. You are okay here, so I’ll just be off now to check the other van. Some Italian chaps.”

He repeated the drill with the Italian van, where only a technician was on duty. There was one big difference. Inside the truck, Juba tilted the driver’s seat forward and unscrewed a panel door, and the aroma of fresh coffee filled the interior. “That smells good. Are you brewing a pot of coffee down there?” asked the man at the console.

Juba explained over his shoulder that they packed coffee around some of the more sensitive avionic components to absorb excess moisture because the damp climates of Scotland and England played havoc with the delicate equipment. In reality, the strong coffee smell masked the scent of the large brick of C-4 explosive attached to a small lead-lined box. Sniffing dogs had moved right over it during the final security inspections. Juba fished out his camera and took a few pictures, then reached inside the lead-shielded compartment and clicked a metal switch attached to the explosive, which lay beside a large aerosol canister. The weapon was armed. He set the timer on a backup detonator, poured in some fresh coffee beans to cover it, screwed the panel back in place, and lowered the seat.

“There. That’s it, now. I will be going along. Good luck.” The technician paid no attention as he left.

Kimberly Drake was in a pool of bright light, facing a TV camera on a tripod and smoothing her navy blue jacket over the pink button-down shirt. Her hair and the top half of her outfit were perfect, but since she would only be shown from the waist up, she also wore jeans and white sneakers. She held a microphone in one hand.

She seemed to be talking to herself, muttering as she rehearsed her
report. As Juba passed, she glanced up. “Thanks for coming by,” Kim said. “Keep watching TV and maybe you’ll see me someday, rich and famous.”

Juba returned the smile. “I have no doubt of that at all, Miss Drake. I am sure that after tomorrow, the entire world will know your name.”

“One can always hope,” she said. “’Night.”

T
HE DULL BLACK SPECIAL
ops helicopter sliced high above the border between Iran and Iraq in the cold early morning hours at 175 miles per hour, and wind howled through the open cabin. Three heavily clad men stood attached to safety harnesses behind the 7.62 miniguns mounted at the side door and the port side escape hatch and a .50 caliber machine gun on the lowered rear deck. The U.S. Air Force pilots had engaged the stealth capabilities of the big MH-53J Pave Low III Enhanced helicopter, such as the infrared engine exhaust suppressors, and the sensor package in the craft’s bulbous nose sniffed for danger signals.

The Pave Low had gone across the border at a high altitude but then swooped down like a hawk through the night, the pilots trusting the terrain-following radar as they hurtled the machine forward only a hundred feet off the deck. The biggest helicopter the Air Force had, the versatile Pave Low, a direct descendant of the Vietnam-era Super Jolly Green Giant, was the platform of choice for covert insertions and extractions deep in enemy territory. Two large General Electric engines fed the huge single rotor that allowed extra armor plating, and it could fly in any sort of weather. The eight Marines aboard were an extremely light cargo for the helicopter, for thirty more could have fit into the cavernous cargo space. That absence of weight allowed the Pave Low to perform even more niftily than usual.

Kyle Swanson hunched against the icy blast, protected somewhat by the extra insulation and activated charcoal lining in his bulky hazmat suit. The Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) outfits
were to protect them against chemical, biological, and aerosol agents, but the heavy rubber gloves, masks, and booties made Kyle feel as if he were wading through syrup. On top of the suits, they carried full combat loads, including double water, ammo, and chow for three days.

Swanson breathed steadily, easily. The goal was reconnaissance only, so they would not be going into a hot LZ. It was to be hide-and-seek and not a combat engagement. In fact, Kyle would regard it as a failure if the lightly armed Marine team made any contact at all with Iranian armed forces.

The crew chief’s voice cut through the communications link into Swanson’s black flight helmet, telling them to get ready. Kyle signaled: two minutes out.

The Marines wobbled to their feet and grabbed handholds as the chopper flared into a hover and lowered. Double-Oh was at the head of one stick of Marines, and Captain Newman led the other, and through the open hatch they could begin making out some details of the land below. Kyle was in the rear to make sure everybody got off. At a motion from the crewman, they all scrambled down the rear ramp and had to hop only about a foot to hit the dirt. Swanson watched them all go, gave a signal to the crew chief, and leaped from the lip of the ramp himself as the Pave Low tilted nose down and soared into a two-thousand-feet-per-minute climbing turn for the return to Camp Doha.

The team sprinted into a perimeter position and hit the dirt with weapons covering all 360 degrees. It was dark out there and also very quiet, an almost tangible feeling of solitude after the racket of the helicopter insertion. Swanson unpacked the chemical and biological detection devices and scanned the area. To give themselves plenty of distance from the suspect site and minimize contamination danger, they had landed four kilometers away. There was nothing dangerous on the breeze. He peeled off his hood and the rebreathing mask and motioned for the others to do the same. They had to do a fast march to find an observation point, and the Marines quickly shed the MOPP suits, which prevented anyone from doing anything quickly.

Newman did a map check with Double-Oh through the red lens of a flashlight and a GPS locator and determined they were just where they were supposed to be. Had they come in by parachute, they would have been scattered all over the terrain, but instead they had landed and could move as a cohesive unit. “Rawls,” whispered the captain. “Lead out.” Newman pointed in a specific direction, and Darren Rawls stepped away, flipping down his night vision goggles and going over a rise. One by one, the others followed him, weapons at the ready and moving deeper into hostile Iran with every step.

The quietness was eerie and unsettling. Even in the middle of the night,
something
should be moving about, but there were no birds, no small predators, no night-foraging animals at all. A few empty shacks. There were some sickly-looking trees, and the fields over which they walked were just dirt, with no growing crops, nor evidence of a harvested one. Nothing. An agricultural dead zone near a major waterway.

Kyle kept a close read on the dials of his instruments, but they remained steady and in the neutral zone. “Some wicked shit,” he said to Double-Oh. Whatever had killed everything was no longer around, but its evil sign was everywhere. He spoke to Captain Newman. “Palace of Death should be only a half mile now. Let’s set up a security position here and then patrol out to find an observation point.”

They were exposed on a plain, and daylight was not far away, but they could not hide in a gulley or a low wadi. Chemicals and biologicals were heavier than air and tended to settle into the lowest points around, and the dirt in a hole might still grip some of the deadly material. The team would have to make a home on high ground, but there was little of that available. While everyone else took a break and filled up with water, Joe Tipp and Travis Hughes ventured closer to the designated area and came back within thirty minutes, puzzled.

“There’s nothing much out there,” Hughes reported. “Didn’t see anything but a small bunker complex inside a fenced area. Apparently deserted.”

“No palace?” asked Swanson.

“None,” Hughes said. “I thought we would find something like Cinderella’s castle. This thing looks like a small parking garage on the bad side of Detroit.”

“Huh,” Kyle grunted.

“And get this: The fence is about ten feet high and topped with razor wire, but the gate is hanging unlocked and open.”

Joe Tipp said they had found a decent overwatch site to the south about four hundred meters away, along the single road leading into the site from the nearest population center, Khorramshahr.

“Okay, then, Captain Newman. That’s our OP,” Kyle said.

“Roger that. You, Double-Oh, and Tipp set up there, and the rest of us will establish a good support position here. Let’s go,” Newman said. Tipp took point, and Swanson fell in behind him, reading the dials, while Double-Oh walked at the tail end. The rest of the MARSOC team began building hide sites and gathering bushes for camouflage.

The OP was in an area where a washboard of ridges began and expanded higher and higher into the distance, so it did not stand out like a pimple on the flatlands. Once at the crest, the three Marines had a clear view of both the road and the target site, so they made themselves a hide among low, decaying trees and thin weeds. In a few minutes, a powerful spotter scope, a pair of binos, and the scope of the sniper rifle were examining the structure, inch by inch, parsing it in every way possible. The clouds had parted, and illumination was good. Not so much as a dog barked.

“Ain’t nobody home down there, Shake,” said Double-Oh after watching for a half hour. “Place is run-down and empty.” Wind had covered up most vehicle tracks, which indicated nothing had been driving around recently, and they could see no footprints.

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “I don’t think we’re going to need to watch this for three days. It
feels
empty.”

“Spooky,” said Tipp. “So we stay here all day and go in tonight? Why not go in right now and be done with it?”

Swanson shook his head. “We only have a good hour left before
daybreak. We need to take our time in there. Remember, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

“Too risky right now,” added Double-Oh. “I don’t think anyone is down there, but there may be some activity in the area. We’ll watch it all day, then go in as a four-man team tonight. The other four guys will set up a firing position here while we make a thorough snoop.” He found the keypad on his digital communications terminal and typed a message that flashed up on Captain Newman’s DCT.
Send Rawls.

Darren Rawls, carrying a heavy machine gun, appeared at the OP in a few minutes as the other three wiggled around to make room for him. He smoothly set up the weapon, which gave the OP more firepower. Then they began a rotation of two men on watch while the other two slept for a few hours. It was going to be a long day in Iran.

With the sun up, they had a clearer view of the surrounding area. A main highway led out of the city, heading northeast, and the road the Marines were watching seemed to be an isolated track that led only to the site. It was about ten miles long. Two guard posts, one a mile from the site and the other near the wire, were abandoned. Not a vehicle came up the road all day.

Rick Newman crawled to the OP as the sun started to set and found all four of the men there already wearing their heavy MOPP suits, except for the hoods and masks. He agreed to accelerate the mission by a day and went back to bring forward his other Marines and do a communications update. The helicopter was scheduled for 0400.

Swanson, Double-Oh, Joe Tipp, and Rawls hurried through the open gate and stacked beside the gaping entrance to the building, then plunged through as a group. They did a hasty search and clear of the small layout, and Kyle read the dials: nothing dangerous. Their flashlights, however, scanned the walls in four bright circles, and the evidence of a recent fire was clearly visible. Kyle reached out a finger and swiped a path through a deep layer of soot.

A freight elevator was in one corner at the edge of an exterior loading
dock, and a broad staircase led down into darkness. The Marines descended in pairs on each side, and Double-Oh kicked the door at the bottom. It burst open to reveal another empty room, which must have been an office before it was destroyed by fire. Through another door at the rear, and down another staircase, they found the tangled debris of what once had been a laboratory.

While the others stood in protective positions, Kyle waved his wands and sensors throughout the room. Whatever the monster that caused so much destruction was, this was where it was born and probably also was where it died. There was no sign of an accident, so the fire was likely deliberate. Apparently the occupants had thrown in some thermite-style grenades after soaking the place in flammable liquids. Fire is the best way to destroy chemical and biological agents, which vanish in the flash of intense heat. The blackness of the soot was even thicker in the ruined laboratory, and the MOPP booties were almost ankle deep in the stuff. The dials remained steady and harmless.

One more door, one more staircase.

They were far underground now, and since fire burns up, not down, the damage was not as great as on the lower level. Kyle found a bilingual sign at the top of the staircase with Arabic script and Korean lettering. Just as in Syria, the underground bunker complex had been built by North Korean engineers.

A central square room was the hub of six separate corridors, and a pair of Marines went down each of them.

“Jesus Christ!” muttered Double-Oh as he and Kyle came to a stop outside a barred cell door. The walls were also scorched back here, but the fire had cooked hotter above, and it would have required some time to reach back along the concrete fingers, where there was a minimum of oxygen. The scorched bones of a human being lay beside the door inside the cell, as if he had been trying to pull the bars apart in his last minutes during the process of suffocation and incineration. Apparently the flammable liquid also had been splashed inside the cages prior to the fire. The poor inmates had been doomed to burn alive.

Every cell held the same gory story. A dead person in each. Swan
son scanned them, and there was some light ticking on one of the meters. He backed away.

“Okay, guys. Rawls, you take a position at the top of the stairs by the entranceway while the rest of us break out our cameras and document all of this for the intelligence people to figure out.” He wanted to take the contaminated body out with them, but there was no way to secure it to prevent whatever infection it carried from spreading. He would have to settle for cutting a few samples from the corpses, sealing them in double plastic ziplock bags, and wrapping those tightly with duct tape.

The three Marines removed their hoods and masks, then put them back on because it was so hard to breathe deep inside the bunker complex. It was like standing inside a giant fireplace. They worked as fast as possible, wanting to clear out of this building, go home, and take a shower. “Palace of Death is right,” said Joe Tipp. “Not much to look at, but the name is sure accurate down here.”

Captain Newman’s voice sounded suddenly in their earpieces. “Get out now! Somebody’s coming fast!”

They were on the bottom floor, documenting the tiny cells and their inhabitants, when the call came in. Racing up three floors on slippery stairs while wearing MOPP booties was pointless. There was no way to make it in time, and when they cleared the final doorway into the upstairs office area, Rawls was motioning for them to take cover. Two vehicles raced through the open gates and braked to hard halts with the headlights shining on the building.

One was an old Range Rover, and in it were a young man who was driving and a woman as a passenger. The second was a military truck with a squad of armed men wearing Iranian Revolutionary Guard uniforms, chasing the people in the Range Rover and not hunting for U.S. Marines.

“Hold fire,” Captain Newman said over the intercom. The Marines on the overwatch and inside the building observed what was happening with their fingers on their triggers. Swanson had left the sniper rifle
behind for the building search. He brought his small M-4 carbine to bear on the group and focused the scope.

The soldiers had surrounded the front vehicle and were yelling for those inside to get out. The doors opened, and the driver exited and was immediately pummeled to the ground and dragged a short distance away, still in the pool of bright light. The woman got out slowly, but she, too, was smashed to the ground and hauled over beside the prone driver. She struggled to her knees, pleading; “I am just looking for my brother!”