Dead Zero (5 page)

He waited, knowing he was about to send his voice into outer space, where it would bounce off various metal orbs full of circuits and chips and nanotechnologies, until it finally beamed down to a cell phone somewhere in America (he didn’t know where) and a man humorously calling himself “MacGyver” would answer. The best thing was: the call was completely private.

“You’re early,” MacGyver said.

“We’re close. The issue is: should we press on in the dark and overtake or try and get around him and set up an ambush on the other side? I need to know his position and if he’s still moving.”

“Which option do you prefer?”

“I don’t like night action. Too much can go wrong. I’d prefer to set up and whack him tomorrow as he comes into town.”

“Excellent. Of course you’re wrong, so do exactly the opposite.”

“Mr. Mac—”

“He’s gone to earth for the night. I saw him on the big screen just a few minutes ago. I can give you his exact coordinates, to the meter. I can get you close enough to smell the goats. You’ll find him conked out. Get up close, shoot him about a thousand times, and get the hadjis to get you out of there. That’s what you’re being paid way too much for.”

Mick got out his pen and notebook and wrote down the exact mathematics of the sniper’s location.

“Bogier, get this done. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mick, hating the asshole, and then he closed down the transmit.

“Okay,” he said, and drew his two white teamboys close to map it out, figure an approach, and plan the kill.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

ZABUL PROVINCE

SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN

0315 HOURS

At the base of the hill, the guys shed everything, stripping down, hadjis too, to pants and shirts. Even if it dropped to the thirties and froze them solid, Mick didn’t want the heavy caftans or the schemeggahs slopping this way and that, roughing up the dust, scraping rocks, catching on thorns or sprigs. The guys could shiver; he just didn’t want them to make noise.

The map was only so helpful. It identified the major landforms, even to the degree of suggesting approaches, but not the boulders and rock faces that gave those approaches practical meaning. Far better was his own recon through the AN/PV5-7 night vision goggles. As he took each man around to his starting point, he let them on the night vision set to get a good look-see of what lay before, how the rocks fell, how the arroyos trended, where the small trees for leverage were. He reminded them of the rules: no one was to rise above waist level until 0430; if they saw anybody walking upright, blast him. It would have to be the marine, awake, continuing his journey. Other rules: Do not fire at gun flashes, as the odds decreed you would be shooting your own teammate. And watch for goats. The guy wasn’t dumb; he’d tether goats to himself, and run the risk of goat piss against the fragile restiveness of the beasts, who’d bleat and whimper at the approach of a predator. So you didn’t startle a goat. If you moved low, quiet and easy, the goats would not be a problem. Afterward, they could butcher an animal and have a nice breakfast.

Since Mick, with the night vision, was almost certain to be the one to reach the hilltop first and would have the good vision to make the shot, he would signal them with a cowboy yeehaw when he’d scored.
If for any reason that hadn’t happened by 0500, then 0500 became go time. They were to continue to the top, slide in on the sleeping marine, and let him have it. There wasn’t much else to say. It was pretty simple: infiltrate and execute. What could possibly go wrong?

Then he left each guy and slipped back as noiselessly as possible to his own starting point.

He checked his watch. It was now 0330 and the 0430 deadline was predicated on the assumption the distance was about 200 meters; it should take each man about an hour to edge, inch by silent inch, to the summit.

Mick began his crawl. He’d left the Barrett behind as there was no point in dragging it along; it was no close-quarters weapon. He had a Beretta 92 with a wicked Gemtech suppressor sticking from its snout like a can of frozen orange juice. At close range, it would finish up this asshole and get them the hell out of town in time for martini hour at the Kabul Hilton. He slithered, pulling his way along, enjoying the chilled air and the freedom from the ache of the big Barrett he’d been toting for three or four days. This was the cool part, the part he always loved, the special part of special ops work: the silent stalk. He enjoyed his own war craft, his ability to undulate silently, to ignore on will alone all the prods and pricks and pokes of the rough ground and thorny vegetation he crawled over. He moved more quickly than the others because through the night vision goggles, he could see what rocks lay ahead, where the breaks were, where the smaller brush collected, and so his progress was more assured.

He made it to the crest in less than half an hour. He found a larger rock and eased around it, hearing at the same time the gentle moaning of a goat or two. In the green world of the goggles the goats glowed incandescently, about 30 yards ahead. Three or four seemed tethered to what had to be the sniper, some kind of less-glowing form concealed in robes on the ground, heaving in and out with movement as the lungs took in air and then spent it, once in a while kicking.

Shoot him,
Mick thought.

But it was a long shot for a pistol, particularly one wearing a suppressor
that might change the point of impact off the sights, which were hard to see even in the ambient light’s amplification. He had him. Wait it out. Be disciplined, wait it out, when 0500 gets here, we’ll all hit him at once and pump his ass on the ground.

Mick sat back and waited, selecting memories to keep him toasty through the long hour. Hmm, the two Japanese girls in Tokyo that night? Or that CBS correspondent in Baghdad, the Brit? Man, she was hot and she’d done half the guys in Delta. Or what about the black gal in Dar es Salaam. Boy, that was a night, even if he’d caught a dose. Or . . .

In this fashion, he passed the time quickly, pausing now and then for a recon through the night vision to make sure the guy was still there, snoozing fitfully on the ground amid his screen of goats. Their bleats and baas came softly through the night but the goats were so intent on keeping warm that no man-scent alarmed them. They drifted and moseyed around the sleeping form and meanwhile Mick explored the brothel of his memory for suitable pornographic energy to keep himself distracted from the slow slippage of time on his Suunto or the numb chill spreading through his lower extremities. He timed it perfectly, jigging to release at roughly 0450, giving himself plenty of time to clean off and settle in.

A last check of the pistol. Shell in chamber, yes, hammer down, yes, safety off, yes, magazine seated, yes, suppressor can cranked tight against the threading, yes. He rose to knees, then to haunches, the gun in one hand, steadying himself on the rock with the other and enough of a sleeve hike to show the face of the watch as the Suunto digits dissolved steadily toward 0500 until they yielded that number exactly.

He took a breath, raised himself full, shouted, “
Go
!” in his loudest sergeant’s voice, acquired the pistol in his support hand, and began moving ahead, examining the world through his goggles. He watched as incandescent goats fled at his approach, except for those tethered to the sleeper, and they bucked and busted against the ropes that secured them, sensing death on the come. The animals began a chorus of anguish, their voices involuntarily rising in pitch and urgency as those
who could flee fled and those who couldn’t tried to, desperately.

Mick got within twenty feet and fired, saw the drama of the operating pistol as it ejected a shell through its slide blowback, fired again against the much shorter cocked trigger pull, and then settled into a rhythm and fired three more times, and for just a second saw the impacts of his bullets as they puffed gas into the sealed fabric around the body and then it was obliterated.

The others were close enough, and on Mick’s shots they fired, AKs blazing hot in the night, the extreme percussion of the small arms in the stillness of the air, the bullet strikes that stitched a beaten zone and ripped and tossed and pummeled the guy on the receiving end, who even as he was being speared multiple times by warheads moving at two thousand feet per second, began to issue copious amounts of blood-soak through his robe.

A goat fled by Mick, knocking his leg. Of the three tethered goats, two were hit by late-burst uncontrollables, and twisted angrily under the impact, knowing they had been killed; the survivor simply pulled desperately against his rope, finally broke it, and sped off.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” Mick yelled.

The guns went quiet except for one Izzie joker who’d evidently just changed magazines and was determined to get his full money’s worth out of the labor of the switch. His last thirty rounds served as the coup de grace, “Taps” and a fare-thee-well to the poor sonovabitch all shot to hamburger in his robes.

Then total silence except in the ringing inner ears of the shooters. Mick sniffed the delicious home-at-last smell of all the burned powder, felt a bit of wind whipping against the boys. One of the Taliban fighters kicked the two dead goats aside, and Mick bent to expose the corpse and was surprised to note that it wasn’t a man but just another goat, its legs tied, its muzzle tied, itself very dead from all the wounds that had pretty much shredded its torso.

Suddenly a flurry of SureFire beams came onto the mess and the blood was as boldly bright as Mick’s fuck-up.

“Shit,” said Mick. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“How the fuck—”

“What the—”

“The satellite said he was here,” said Mick, uncomprehending. “He was here, the eye in the sky, it said he was here.”

It was Tony Z whose SureFire found the gizmo. It lay under the dead goat, soaked in blood, clotted with dirt, but enough metal showed for Tony’s beam to catch. He bent, plucked them out, a small cylinder of metal the size of one joint of a man’s finger and a little, almost featureless plastic box.

“That’s the GPS chip and transmitter,” said Mick. “Fucker either knew or figured out how we were tracking him, and suckered us with it. Smart guy. Didn’t just toss it and clear the area but set us up to waste the night while he moved on. Goddamn his ass.”

It was then that the two Taliban guys started to chatter between themselves excitedly.

“What’re they saying?” Mick asked Tony.

“‘Where’s Mahoud?’ That’s what they’re saying. ‘Where’s Mahoud?’”

Where
was
Mahoud?

It only took half an hour to find him, by backtracking over the hill along the axis that had been assigned to Mahoud in the ascent. The peep of sun over horizon bringing rapid pink illumination to the vast sky was a big help as well.

He hadn’t made it very far.

Tony leaned over the still figure, facedown on the dust of Afghanistan, and pulled his head up for examination. There wasn’t much to see. His throat had been deeply and expertly cut from earlobe to earlobe. Not many of the anatomical structures remained unsundered, as if the cutter had truly enjoyed sending this one to Allah.

“I would say,” said Tony, “we are dealing with a very angry individual.”

QALAT

CAPITAL CITY OF ZABUL PROVINCE

HOURI DISTRICT

SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN

0130 HOURS

He sat in the shadows, drinking tea. Under his robes, the SVD with its unyielding structure and all its knobs, prongs, jutting edges, and lengthy barrel had to be wedged to the side, its sling loosened and the beast itself carefully adjusted so that it nestled against the length of his body, braced against the stiffness of his very bad leg. The leg itself, stressed beyond stress, now announced loudly that it had no further interest in completing the mission.

Ray sat far back in the crowded marketplace, at some kind of outdoor rude wooden cafe that looked rustic and slatternly, and he’d just finished some kind of meal, a mystery meat that had to be goat (except, wasn’t meat supposed to be brown or red and not naval gunboat gray?), a thin gravy, lots of surprisingly good rice, and those patties of baked dough the Afghans ate, the ones that looked like Pop-Tarts but had no jam inside. But all in all, it could have been the best meal of his life, if for no other reason than that he was alive to enjoy it.

Tea: good, sweet, loaded with energy.

Rest: good, after the ordeal of the past few days.

Crowds: very good. People swirled everywhere in this city of thousands, most of them nut brown men in strange headgear or head- and face-obscuring turbans, dishdashas in blazing colors or patterns obscuring bodies, the necks draped in long scarves—graceful, scrawny, furtive, loud, animated, with faces that looked like the beaten hide of an African shield. Many were Pashtun tribals, openly carrying daggers or AKs that nobody was going to take from them; many were city folk, in suits with shirts but no ties. Many were women, some in tribal outfits, some in the Afghan version of the latest hot look from a New York they
saw only on CNN satellite pickup, some young, some old. But so many of them. They traveled by every conveyance known to man, from bike to motorbike to motorcycle to tri-wheel covered motorcycles to pickups to full-blown lorries to the odd sedan, all of them competing for space with other life-forms, dogs, goats, even the occasional cow and some humped, hairy beasts that looked like
Star Wars
creatures. The place baked in the odors of combustion and methane and probably piss and keefe too, and a kind of blue haze of dust and exhaust hung low over everything.

Nobody seemed to have noticed Ray. It helped that he was dark, that his eyes were deep and brown to a degree that could have concealed an Islamist’s serpentine way of thinking even if it only concealed a rigorous Catholic boyhood, and that he was thin, wiry, ropey, graceful, and with his thick dressing of robes, almost anonymous. The exoticism of his face could easily have been Mongolian, Chinese, Tartar, Uzbek, anything; it surprised nobody.