Echo Six: Black Ops 5 - Strikeforce Syria (8 page)

I’m stuck between Dwight Masterson and the Syrians, between a rock and a hard place. We’ve lost most of our gear, and some of the men won’t make it. I’m carrying a semi-conscious Israeli assassin, who’s as prickly as a porcupine and deadly as a scorpion. Assuming she survives the landing. I have to make contact with Brooks and tell him we’re finished.

Syria – The Second Day

Friday 9
^th
May

He guided the 'chute through the night skies, grateful for the warming effect as the ground drew nearer. Halfway down, Rebecca started to regain consciousness.

"What's going on? I thought I was trapped inside the aircraft. How did I get here?"

He explained what happened after the missile hit. "We're on course for the LZ right now. According to the GPS, we should land in a little under ten minutes."

She didn't reply at first. Then her hands tugged at the harness, and she realized she was attached to Talley.

"Is my parachute in place? You can let me go. I don't need you."

No ‘thanks for helping me’. He had an idea of how tough she was, how ruthless and determined, but a little gratitude never hurt.

"Not a good idea. We're steady on course right now, and if you unshackle, it'll make navigation more difficult. Just hang in there. It won't be long."

"And when we land? Where do we stand with the operation?”

She may as well know the worst. "It’s over. We have to start looking for a way to get out. We've lost our equipment, maybe half our men, and worst of all, the element of surprise. They know we're here."

"Is there no way we can pull it off? You know what it means to my country?"

Is she completely blind?

"No. The entire operation was always going to be tough, but now, it would be suicide."

She grunted a reply and hung in front of him in silence as they descended the final thousand meters. He glimpsed the ground rushing toward him and began to prepare. He was lucky. He'd lost his night vision equipment when the aircraft was hit, but the sky was lit by a three-quarter moon and illuminated by thousands of stars.

They touched down, and he allowed himself to roll with the girl in his arms, bleeding off the last of their speed as they tumbled over and over on the hot sand. Immediately they stopped, he leapt up, unshackled the karabiners, and stowed the 'chute. She got to her feet and hurried away, determined not to show weakness. He shrugged, removed the MP7 from his shoulder holster, and cocked it ready to fire. This was enemy territory. Nearby, he could see a six-meter high sand dune, perfect to spy out the terrain. He ran to the top and stopped as someone materialized out of the darkness.

"That was the worst landing I've ever seen."

He smiled at Guy. His number two had climbed the dune for the same reason.

"I was carrying a tandem load," he explained. “Something of a burden.”

"She doesn't look like much of a burden to me. She can't weigh much more than forty kilos."

"It wasn't her bodyweight I had in mind."

Guy winced. "Her tongue?"

He nodded. "Yep. How many of us made it down?"

"Only nine. And there's something you need to see."

The serious note in his voice alerted Talley. "Another problem?"

"Kind of."

Sergeant Welland led him to a shallow depression in the sand on the opposite face of the steep dune. At first, it looked like the Syrians had chosen a remote spot to use as a garbage tip. He looked at Guy as they approached, puzzled.

"What gives?"

He didn't reply, and when they were near, Talley saw why. It wasn't garbage. It was bodies. Scores of bodies, all torn to shreds by what looked like machine gun fire. And yet, when he bent down to look at the nearest bodies, he realized they all had their hands bound behind their backs. So they'd been prisoners, noncombatants, and all were wearing civilian clothes. Then he felt a chill run up his spine as he saw there was worse to come. Underneath some of the corpses were the bodies of young children, infants and babies. It was obvious their parents had tried to shelter them from the gunfire, to no avail. They were all dead, every single one. Talley had seen plenty of action in some of the most brutal theaters of war, and most of them in Islamic countries. This was worse.

"Jesus Christ! It's a massacre."

Guy nodded. "Someone decided to teach the locals a lesson, that's for sure. And it happened recently. I'd say sometime during the afternoon."

For long moments, Talley stood, surveying the heap of bodies, the slaughter of the innocents.

Why do these Islamic countries treat their own people so brutally? It looks to me as if most of them have a single method of dealing with disagreement, death, the vicious slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children. 'Pour encourager les autres'.

He whirled as he heard footsteps on the sand, but it was only Lieutenant Rovere with three survivors from the unit, Roy Reynolds, Drew Jackson, and Julio Garcia. They stared at the bodies, and Garcia had to rush off to vomit into the sands. The Italian glanced over at him, and then looked back at the bodies. The Shakespearean quotation emerged from his lips almost without thinking.

"Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death, and death will have his day.” He shook his head in sadness. “The poor bastards. Children! What kind of people are these?"

Talley had been thinking the same. "For once, my friend, you called it about right."

Rovere had shrugged off his parachute harness and removed his lightweight helmet. He was a handsome man, with Mediterranean looks, recruited from the elite 4th Alpini Parachutist Regiment 'Monte Cervino'. His dark hair, dark eyes, and smooth olive skin made him appear almost ten years younger than his twenty-seven years. He gave Rebecca Dayan a quick once over and then looked away. As well as a joker, he was an inveterate womanizer, but not here. This was a place for chill reflection, not levity, a place for anger and something more. Revenge.

He looked at Talley. "What's next, Boss?" He started to reply, but unusually, the Italian cut him off. "Don't give me the usual shit about operational difficulties, the fact we're stuck in this place with half our men, and most of our equipment gone." He looked at the ripped and bloody bodies, and his eyes were moist. "I know how important the target is, but right now I couldn't give a shit. Am I alone in wanting to find the people who did this? To pay them back in kind?"

Talley touched him on the arm. "You're not alone, Domenico. I feel the same, but I don't know how we could pull off what we came here to do, not without men and equipment. As for this…"

The Italian didn't reply, but his accusing stare was eloquent enough. These people massacred by the Syrian Army had nobody on their side, no military skills or weapons, so they paid the price. Who was prepared to stand up for justice?

Guy returned with Rebecca beside him.

"We've searched the area. We found Buchmann, and he got down okay.”

Talley nodded. “He always does. That guy could jump without a parachute and still make it.”

“Yeah, but we've lost at least eight men. Some of the wounded may have headed north into Turkey when they exited the aircraft. They'd know they’d only hold us up if they landed here. Some will have died, if they failed to recover consciousness and landed hard. I’ve sent a couple of men to search for more survivors. You never know."

He nodded. It was more than a nightmare. The unit decimated even before they reached the target.

"What about Beckerman?" Rebecca demanded.

Guy shook his head. "No sign of him, I'm sorry."

She glared at him. "You know what’ll happen to a Jew taken prisoner in this country?"

"I know. I am also Jewish, Miss Dayan, and I’m well aware of what these people are capable of." He looked back over the heap of bodies. "Not that any of us need a reminder after seeing that."

She didn't reply, but Rovere wasn't finished. He stared at Talley.

"You still haven't answered. What's next?"

Talley was wracked with doubts. Military wisdom dictated they should get out of the country by the quickest means possible, but there was more than military wisdom at stake. Scores of bodies, which lay close to where he stood, innocent people murdered by the brutal Syrian regime. And millions more people in a neighboring country that shared its border with Syria. A country the Syrians had vowed to exterminate. Israel. He was quiet, as he watched the searchers trickle in from the desert. There were no more survivors.

He was left with twelve men including him, as well as the Israeli assassin, Rebecca Dayan. It wasn't enough. It hadn’t been enough when Echo Six was intact. He realized they were staring at him, waiting for an answer to Rovere's question. Pullout and head for the border? It was the sensible option, the only option. And then the wind gusted slightly, and he caught the stench of bodies, already decomposing.

If the Syrians succeed in producing CX9, there’ll be many more just like them.

"We proceed as planned. Let's move out."

* * *

The big Ural-4320 6x6 truck bumped at a steady pace along the desert highway. The driver, Mustafa Naseem, felt tired. He'd been driving all through the evening and into the night, so it was long past time when any officer should have called a halt. Except in this unit, Third Corps did everything on the run. Their commanding officer was fanatical about pushing his men forward into action, always striving for more glory, more enemies killed. Allah knew there'd been more than enough bodies this night. They'd shot those people down in droves after they’d rounded them up. He could still hear their cries of agony as they fell, shredded by heavy machine gun fire.

Some of the men had objected, but General Assad, a relation of the President, was reputed to have a simple philosophy. You're either for me or you’re against me. And if you’re against me, you must be killed out of hand. Mustafa was careful to say nothing that may suggest he was anything other than totally committed to General Assad. What had happened wasn't right, but he had no plans to add himself to those bloody and broken corpses. He reached into the top pocket of his tunic and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a Bic lighter. He clicked the lighter, and the flame momentarily caused him to lose concentration. At the last second, he swerved away as he saw the body lying in the road and braked to a halt. He jumped down, but before he could reach it, the commander, Major Hafiz, ran up to him, his face contorted in rage.

"Why have you stopped, Corporal? You know the orders. We stop for nothing! Nothing, you hear?"

Major Hafiz raised his swagger stick to strike him on the face, but Mustafa shouted, pointing to a dark shape lying in the dust. "There's a man in the road, Sir. He looks wounded. He’s wearing a parachute. I think he may be an enemy soldier."

The Major walked slowly to the spot where the Corporal pointed. Sure enough, it was the crumpled figure of a man tangled in the shroud lines of a parachute. He kicked the body with the toe of his highly polished boot and was rewarded with a groan of agony.

Good! The man is alive.

“Who are you?” There was no reply, so he kicked the man again. “Who are you?”

Another groan. He was certain the man was conscious.

How dare he ignore me?

He removed his pistol, a GSh-18, from the holster on his belt. A gift from a friendly Russian arms salesman, the weapon fired the latest 9mm Parabellum rounds. Nothing unusual, but the GSh-18 packed a heavy punch. The regular rounds in the magazine could punch through most ballistic vests, and the pistol could also fire armor piercing rounds, capable of penetrating 6mm of steel plate. But that awesome striking power would not be needed this night. He aimed at the man’s knee.

“I asked you a question. Who are you, and where are you from? I will give you five seconds. Then I will put a bullet through your knee. If you still refuse to speak, I will shoot the other knee, and you will never walk again. It is your choice. One, two, three…”