Echo Six: Black Ops 8 - ISIS Killing Fields (20 page)

She stared at him, and her eyes glittered in the gloom. “What can we do in the morning?”

He felt helpless and shrugged. “Nothing. Watch them die is about all.”

“Can’t we crawl across?”

“They are bound to hear something when we get close. The moment they do, they’ll kill the prisoners. It’s a shut ended situation, the poor bastards. I feel like I’ve let them down.”

“There’s still a way.”

He’d stooped down to play the flashlight around the shaft again, in case he’d been wrong, but he wasn’t. It was just too small, too low, too narrow, and impossible for a grown adult to negotiate. He glanced back at her. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll go through the shaft and get to those men. Provided you can get your men close while it’s dark, I’ll get to the prisoners and hold off any attempt to kill them until you get there.”

Her voice shook with terror, and he knew what it was costing her to make the offer, too much. The end result had to be bad. She’d freeze somewhere along the way, or find the tunnel closed in too much. Then she’d panic and start thrashing around to bring more of the roof down over her head. Within minutes, she’d be dead, and it would be the most agonizing death imaginable.

“It won’t work. I’ll have to try and think of something else. Maybe take the Oshkosh truck loaded with men and charge them head on.”

“They have RPG missiles. You won’t make it halfway before they hit you and kill everyone. Then they’ll turn their guns on the prisoners.”

He climbed to his feet, put out his arms, and she came to him. He pulled her in close. “Geena, I can’t let you do this. You're the most courageous girl I’ve encountered in my life. I know what it’s costing you to even consider going back down that shaft, but I don’t think it’ll work. We’ll figure something else out.”

He felt the warmth of her body, and after a while, her shivering eased as she enjoyed his strength and closeness. But she was shaking her head, and he felt her hair brush his face.

“There's nothing to figure out. I’m doing it. Give me your gun.”

“My gun? You mean the Sig Sauer. Why do you want it?”

“It has a suppressor. My Beretta Storm is small enough to conceal, but it’s too loud. If I need to shoot, I don't want to put them on alert.”

With a numb feeling, he removed the Sig from the holster and handed it to her butt first. Expertly, she slid out the clip, checked the load, and snapped it back into the gun.

He recalled she had no way of communicating after she reached the end of the shaft. He took off his headset and handed it to her. “Put it on. There’s no way the radio will work inside the shaft, but when you get out the other end, we’ll have communications. You won’t be able to speak without them hearing you, but you can use a simple code. Two clicks means you’ve arrived, or to acknowledge receipt of a message.”

“Two clicks, I get it. What if something’s gone wrong?”

A pause. “Three klicks.”

She began removing her clothes, pulling off her pants and shirt. He could see the shape of the Beretta close to her breasts, and it looked huge, black, and ominous against her smooth skin. She was short and slight, almost the image of a child soldier, a young girl going to war, but she wasn’t a young girl. She was a trained operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. She was also a girl for whom he had a growing admiration.

“Do you need to do that? You’ll graze your skin all the way along. By the time you get there, you'll be in agony.”

She opened her mouth to speak, and then seemed to fold in on herself. She swayed and almost fell. “Abe, I’ll be in agony all the way. Believe me, if there was any other way, I’d take it. That shaft is so narrow, if I go through wearing my clothing, it’ll snag, and the chances are I won’t make it. What’s an hour of pain compared to the lives of those men?”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Instead, he lifted her to her feet. “I wish there was something I could do.”

She looked up at his face, and he could see the tears of terror that had run down her cheeks, leaving tracks of wet dust below her eyes. “There are two things you can do for me. First, make sure when I come up shooting; you are near enough to reach me. Otherwise I won’t be able to hold them off, and if ISIS takes me… Well, they won’t take me. I’ll always make sure I have a spare bullet.”

He gave her a grim nod. “We’ll be there, no matter what. You can take that to the bank. What’s the other one?”

Her voice was hoarse, deep, and almost inaudible. “Pray for me, Abe. If I come out of this, well, you know…”

“You’ll come out of it. And when you do, I’ll be there. That’s something else you can take to the bank.”

She looked him in the eye. “That’s a promise I plan to collect on.”

Then she dived headfirst into the shaft and began wriggling through. He watched the shaft where she'd vanished for a minute, but he knew he had a lot to do to be ready for when she emerged. He swung around and raced back along the passage. Buchmann was sitting on the floor, obviously thinking about that door. “Heinrich, come with me. I’m gonna need you, and I’ll send some of the Iraqis down to guard the door.”

The big German followed him without a word, and they ran out into the desolate fort. They were all up on the wall, guarding against any sudden attack by ISIS. He waved to Guy, and he came down to join them. Roy and Domenico were right behind.

“What gives, Boss?” Guy squinted at him, and it was obvious he was worried about what he saw, “You look to me like you saw a ghost in that tunnel. What is it, Saddam Hussein come back from the dead?”

“It’s Geena. She’s in the shaft.” He explained what had happened and how it had to be someone very slender to have any chance. Maybe.

The three operators stared back at him. “Geena!” Rovere murmured, “She was terrified. She barely made it through before, and that was when the tunnel was bigger.”

“I know. How long until nightfall?”

He shrugged and glanced up at the sky. The sun was already sliding down behind the distant hills. “Maybe an hour.”

“Get the men ready. As soon as it’s dark, we’ll crawl toward the cairn. We halt a few hundred meters away where they won’t see us, and wait for her signal. When she pops up behind them, we go in and get those men out.”

Guy raised an eyebrow. “That could be interesting. How many men do you plan to take along?”

“All of us. We’ll leave the Iraqis to guard the fort, and make sure no one goes in or out of that steel door. We’ll need every operator. There must be upward of twenty ISIS up on those rocks. It’ll take all of us to deal with them.”

He nodded. “That sounds good to me. The idea of putting the boot into those bastards is mighty appealing.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel. I just hope to Christ Geena makes it.”

“It’ll be a hard crawl,” Rovere murmured, “I’m not just talking the physical difficulty of making it along a crumbling, underground shaft. It’s the mental strain. She’s gonna have nightmares for a long time to come, a long, long time. She’ll need a lot of help to get over it, and she may never recover. You saw what she was like the last time.”

“I’ll help her. Get everyone ready. The moment it’s dark, we’re leaving.”

He left them to find Lieutenant Bino. He was on the wall, staring into the distance. Not east, toward the enemy, but west. He glanced at the NATO commander. “I thought I saw something, smoke, dust cloud, I’m not sure.”

Talley followed his gaze and stared in the same direction, but he couldn’t make anything out. “It could be a sandstorm.”

“Maybe.” Bino looked uncertain, but whatever it was, there was little time left to consider what could be out there. They had their hands full dealing with the problems facing them a few klicks across the sands.

“We’re going across to the cairn as soon as it’s dark. I want your men to stay here and guard the fort. There’s always a chance ISIS could try coming at us from another direction. Detail a couple of your men to guard the steel door. We know there're at least two men inside. The last thing we need is to have them pop up and start shooting from behind.”

“I will do that.” He looked at the NATO man in surprise, “You’re going to rescue Captain Salim?”

“Salim and his men, yeah. There’s no way we can sit here and do nothing while they cut off their heads the minute it’s light enough for us to stand here and watch. It’ll be a night attack, and with any luck, we’ll take them by surprise.”

The Iraqi officer spoke to his sergeant, who signaled to two of his soldiers to guard the door. Bino looked back to Talley. “I’m not sure you’ll be able to take them by surprise. It’s a long way to get there without them seeing you. And if they do, you will be trapped out in the open with no cover.”

He was about to mention Geena's part in the plan. That she was crawling the entire length of a half collapsed tunnel to get behind the ISIS unit on the cairn, to divert them from behind while they made their attack, but for some reason he kept quiet. He trusted Lieutenant Bino. He’d shown himself to be a brave and resourceful officer. Maybe even one day, he’d become a Special Forces operator in fact as well as in name. The problem was, he didn’t know how much his men could be trusted. If he started shooting off his mouth, it could cause Geena problems. What kind of a problem he didn’t know. Just that it was better to keep quiet for the moment.

“We’ll take that chance. It’s either that or let the men die.”

“I appreciate it, Commander, even if I doubt you can succeed.”

“We’ll succeed.”

* * *

Major Rostov cursed at them yet again. Although he was well aware his vicious language would do little to speed things up. They were merely twenty kilometers from their destination, the ISIS fort known as Al-Amoh. They’d suffered the first breakdown of the new GAZ Tigers eight kilometers after they left Damascus. He’d sweated and fumed as men race to make repairs. In the end, he’d had to dispatch another GAZ back to the barracks workshop to collect a spare part, a simple fan belt, which they should have carried. Moreover, hadn't bothered to include in their toolkit.

He knew they’d be laughing at him, only a fool would embark on an operation so ill equipped. They would sneer when they heard his much-vaunted GAZ Tigers didn’t even carry the most basic spare parts.

Sonsofbitches.

He could bear that, provided he returned with a victory. Not just any victory. He disliked the snotty pilot, Captain Semyonov. He was certain the man looked down on him, despite his superior rank. Rostov was quite well aware of the nickname they’d given him. The Pig.

Very well, he could live with the stupid, childish insults. He was a man of action, for whom the sole language worth using was the language of the bullet. Besides, what did he care about some glorious airplane driver? He doubted Semyonov could seek out and destroy a target if it was the size of a city.

He was also dubious about the effectiveness of the bombing raid. When he reached Al-Amoh, things were going to be different, very different. He’d already decided on his plan of attack. The column would swing around to the northeast of the target and come in with the new sun behind them. The defenders would be blinded, caught unawares. Spearheaded by the BTR-90, they’d punch through the surviving defenders after Semyonov’s raid had killed most of them. Then dismount to search every nook and cranny of the fort to make sure no ISIS fighter remained alive.

In order to make his intended schedule, his column would have to drive through the night. The light was already fading when the second Tiger gave up the ghost and rolled to a stop. He barked an order to his own driver to stop, jumped out of his vehicle, and ran across to the stationary GAZ.

“What is it?”

The Corporal who was the senior NCO in the vehicle looked up shamefaced. “Sir, we heard a knocking noise in the engine about ten kilometers back. It got progressively worse, and then the engine just died. I think something’s broken inside.”

He couldn’t help it, and in a blind a fury he raised his arm and slapped the man across the face. “You damn fool, why the hell didn’t you call me on the radio? We could have sorted it out. Did you check the oil before we started out this morning?”

The Corporal was shamefaced, rubbing his head to ease the shock of the blow. “Sir, you ordered us to leave right away.”

“Yes, yes, I know what I said. But the oil, standing orders call for it to be checked every day before operations commence.”

“I, er, left it to Ilya.” He glanced across at the driver, “I thought he’d make sure it was done.”

“You fucking idiot,” he snarled, “Who’s in command of this vehicle, you or the barracks cat? It may as well be the cat, for all the fucking difference it makes. Get your men out, and unload the equipment. You can ride the rest of the way on the hull of the BTR.”

The man looked at him aghast. “On the hull? Sir, we have a long way to go, and it’s…”

Rostov’s glare was enough to silence him. “Do it.”

He forced himself to count to fifty in an effort to calm down.

Why do they saddle me with such fools? All of them are conscripts, of course, young men with no concept of
duty to the motherland, or even to their commanding officer. They call me The Pig. Fair enough, I’ll show them how a pig can behave. I’ll shit all over them, and then make them clear it up. Stupid bastards!