Mission Liberty (3 page)

“Is it loaded?” the ambassador asked.

“It is,” DeLuca replied patiently to an incredibly stupid question. “But if we do this right, nobody’s going to fire a shot.
In fact, they’re going to cheer you as you leave. I’ll bet you weren’t expecting that.”

“We’re done setting up the Mark-10s,” MacKenzie reported, referring to the oil-drum-sized smoke bombs that had been disguised
as explosives in the back of the phony car bomb, one in the near corner of the inner bailey and the second in a bartizan upwind
from the keep. “Dan’s setting the delays.”

“We’ve got a J-STAR zeroed with a Hellfire on the jamming gear they’re operating, in a building about a block from here,”
DeLuca told Allen as he climbed onto the roof of the van. “Once that goes, your coms should work. You’ll hear it when it does.
Fire support will call you at that point. It’s going to happen fast.” DeLuca saw Zoulalian returning at a quick jog. “You
all done upstairs?”

“Roger that—locked and loaded,” Zoulalian said, turning to Vasquez, who’d resumed his position atop the van. “You wanna drive?”

“I’m good here,” Hoolie replied, raising his AK-47 and setting the safety, testing the trigger to make sure the safety had
engaged. “How often do I get the chance to take my team leader hostage?”

DeLuca turned his back to Hoolie and placed his hands together. Hoolie used a pair of flex cuffs to bind DeLuca’s hands behind
his back, but with the plastic teeth filed off so that the cuffs were only on tight as long as DeLuca pulled on them. Hoolie
threw a knit ski mask over DeLuca’s head with the eyes in back, though the fabric was of a wide enough mesh that DeLuca could
see through it.

“Make sure the bowtie is visible,” DeLuca said. “Mr. Ambassador, if you’ll take a seat in the back next to Agent MacKenzie,
we’ll be on our way. We have a SEAL team with a fastboat waiting about a mile down the beach and a pair of Predators watching
our every move, but we’re still going to need a bit of deception until we get there, so just keep your mask on and wave your
rifle and look angry and we’ll do the rest. Do you know any Arabic?”

“Allah akbar,”
the ambassador said.

“That’ll do,” DeLuca said. “We armored the sides and the doors but not the windows, obviously, so if somebody starts shooting,
stay low. Dennis, let’s not give anybody too much time to think. Captain Allen, the jollies will be here in ten minutes, so
get your men ready. See you on the
Johnson.
”

Zoulalian started the car, with Sykes now in the passenger seat and MacKenzie and the ambassador in the back. DeLuca knelt
on the roof with a black mask over his head while Hoolie held a gun to his neck, lifting the loose folds of the mask with
his rifle to make sure the red bowtie was visible. The image was going to be a compelling one when it was shown on Al Jazeera
later that night, a U.S. ambassador with bombs strapped to his chest being led from his stronghold at gunpoint by a brave
band of terrorists.

They breached the portcullis and were halfway down the ramp when Zoulalian was forced to step on the brakes. At the base of
the ramp, the M-113 was parked across the drive to block the way. The rebel troops had dismounted and had their guns pointed
at the van. The captain, his cigar still in his hand, shook it in the air and gestured for the van to come forward.

“What the fuck?” Vasquez said under his breath.

“Easy, everybody,” DeLuca said into his transmitter. “Remember Mog. Dennis—commence ranting and gesticulating.”

Zoulalian got out of the car and screamed at the rebel captain, gesturing with both arms to get out of the way and let them
through. When the captain waved him forward, Sykes got out of the car and walked down the ramp to speak with the man in the
red beret and the wraparound sunglasses.

“You have to move your truck,” Zoulalian said in accented English. “We have to get through. Now!”

“Give the prisoner to us and we will take him,” the captain said. “We can provide security for him.”

“We don’t need security,” Zoulalian screamed. “We have more than enough of that. We have to get to the soccer stadium.”

“Inducements, Mr. Dan,” DeLuca transmitted.

“Perhaps you could lead the way,” Sykes said to the captain, reaching into his pocket beneath his
abaya
and pulling out ten hundred-dollar bills, American. DeLuca always found it charming, the way people who hated America still
liked its money. “Of course, we would want to pay you for the overtime. One hundred for each of your men and three hundred
for you. Does that sound fair?”

The captain saw the money and moved his body so that his troops couldn’t see the cash while he considered his options.

“Give the money to me, and I will pay the men,” the captain said. Sykes handed him the cash, which the captain pocketed surreptitiously.
“You will follow me, then.”

He turned and ordered his men to get back in the truck.

Zoulalian followed in the van, inching through the crowd. Hoolie did his best to block the things the people in the crowd
were throwing at “the ambassador” to express their dislike for U.S. foreign policies, mostly fruit, vegetables, cassavas,
one man picking up and flinging a piece of dog shit that struck DeLuca in the arm.

“Tell that guy he’s going to hear from my cleaner,” DeLuca said.

“What do you care? It’s not your suit,” Hoolie said.

“Sorry for the delay,
Johnson,
” DeLuca told the mission controllers on the aircraft carrier, who he knew were watching them, both from an INMARSAT view
and from a UAV-borne camera closer in. “What are you seeing?”

“It’s going all to hell between you and the extraction point,” the voice in DeLuca’s earpiece came back. “But we expected
that. Make time if you can.”

“I don’t think our escort is going to let us pass him,” DeLuca said. “We’ll do our best. Meet you on the sands of Iwo Jima.”

They were three blocks from the castle when they heard the first explosion behind them, a JDAM-5 destroying the building where
the rebels’ communication-jamming equipment was operating. The decision had been made to use laser-guided ordnance first,
because of the greater accuracy, but DeLuca understood that the destroyer USS
Minneapolis
was cruising eight miles offshore, ready to deploy six- and eight-inch guns that were nearly as accurate, should the first
round of smart bombs fail to do the job. Within seconds, they heard another explosion as a missile struck the mayor’s office.
Hoolie took the hood from DeLuca’s head in time for DeLuca to see the church steeple disintegrate in a ball of flames, and
then a fourth missile hit the red truck, flipping it and lifting it thirty feet in the air. The crowd dispersed and chaos
quickly followed, men firing their rifles into the air or toward the castle, where a pair of CH-47 Chinook helicopters coming
in low over the water climbed the seawall and descended on the courtyard, supported by a half dozen Apaches, swarming over
the city like very angry bees. A pair of F14 Tomcats screamed over the area, a mere fifty feet above the rooftops.

“Hit it!” DeLuca shouted to Zoulalian. He lay down atop the van and braced himself against the roof rack. Zoulalian floored
the accelerator and turned right down a side street. DeLuca saw, briefly, the look of surprise on the face of the rebel captain
from the back of the truck.

“
LBJ
—can you cut enemy radio traffic?” DeLuca asked, aware that the E-6 Prowler in the air high overhead carried communication-jamming
equipment.

“Not without doing yours, too,” the answer came back. “They’re using our stuff. It’s your call.”

“You getting SIGINT?” DeLuca asked.

“Negative,” mission control came back. “Our Ligerian friend here says they’re not speaking Fasori. It’s some northern tribal
dialect he doesn’t know.”

“Might as well keep the channels open, then,” DeLuca said, dismayed that the mission had already crept beyond what had been
intended, but then, he’d long considered “military planning” something of an oxymoron. “Loose the dogs of war” wasn’t even
the right metaphor, because loose dogs at least run in the same direction. “Shit hitting the fan” failed for the same reason—war
was Brownian motion, chaos and anarchy, and it changed every five seconds. “We’ll just have to outsmart them.”

“You being ironic?”

“Nothing personal,” DeLuca said.

As the van sped toward the sea, DeLuca turned and saw that the troop transport had backed up and was following them. He opened
fire, as did Vasquez beside him, but the Isuzu was veering and careening around or across potholes at a speed that prevented
firing with any accuracy.

“Any time, Pred One,” DeLuca said into his radio. “Let’s lose the tail.”

The AGM-114B Hellfire was a laser-guided solid propellant missile, five feet four inches long, seven in diameter, with a weight
of about one hundred pounds and a warhead capable of defeating any tank made. The M-113 following the van was no match for
it, the subsonic rocket penetrating the front windshield on the passenger side, where the captain in the red beret was sitting,
before blasting the vehicle into a million flaming particles.

“I’ll bet that lit his cigar,” Hoolie said.

Zoulalian, taking directions via his headset, turned left when the falcon view from INMARSAT told him the street connecting
to the beach road was blocked up ahead by an overturned vehicle that was burning. He was instructed to turn right at the next
intersection, but when he did, he stopped when a pair of “technicals” came into view, two Toyota pickup trucks, one green,
one white, with .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the back. A rebel in the green truck opened fire as Zoulalian hit the
brakes, backing up to speed forward again on the street he’d tried to turn from. The green truck followed while the white
truck raced parallel to them, firing at them whenever there was a gap between the houses, doubtless causing serious collateral
damage with rounds that didn’t make it through the gaps. DeLuca shot at the truck behind them, though the road was so uneven
with potholes, exposed cobblestones, and eroded excavations that it was impossible to steady his aim, and he knew he was firing
more for demonstration than effect. The rebel soldier manning the machine gun looked to be no more than fifteen or sixteen
years old, but for all DeLuca knew, he’d been fighting half his life.

“What do we have?” he called to support. “Taking fire.”

“Stay your course,” command and control came back. “
Minneapolis
has it.”

He estimated their speed to be fifty or sixty miles an hour. As the next intersection loomed, he turned toward the sea. With
the green truck bearing down on them from behind, slowing down was not an option. At the intersection, beyond the corner house,
he looked down the street, his weapon ready. He saw the sea, and then he saw the white truck appear, and then he saw it launched
into the sky when a shell from one of the destroyer’s six-inch guns struck it. The van was through the intersection before
DeLuca had a chance to see the truck land.

“Nice shot,
Minneapolis,
” he said.

“We’ll give the computer an assist on that one,” a voice in his headset said. “Apache Three at your back door.” He turned
in time to see the AH-64D Longbow attack helicopter descending on the green truck, closing the distance rapidly. A burst from
the Apache’s M230 chain gun, mounted beneath the fuselage, sent a stream of 30mm rounds down the center of the green Toyota,
which veered suddenly into a wall before flipping and barrel-rolling on its side a half dozen rotations before coming to rest
on its collapsed roof.

The Apache climbed quickly, at low altitudes an easy target for shoulder-fireds and RPGs.

“You’re three blocks beyond the take-out point,” DeLuca heard in his headset. “Come back, come back three!”

Zoulalian turned right, then right again onto the street that paralleled the beach, racing past a row of fish vendors and
an open-air bar, speeding another block before turning left at a marine repair shop when the way ahead was barricaded by a
pair of overturned cars. He threaded his way between overturned brightly colored fishing boats and turned right again once
he hit the beach, the van fishtailing and slowing as the sand grabbed at the tires. The way ahead was clear, until DeLuca
saw a man rise from the sand and wave his arms at them to stop.

“Navy SEAL, Navy SEAL!” he heard in his earpiece as Zoulalian hit the brakes. “Claymores directly in front of you—do not proceed!”

Team Red spilled from the van, MacKenzie staying by the ambassador’s side, while DeLuca gazed seaward, where he saw the destroyer
USS
Minneapolis,
and closer in, the LST from which the helicopters had launched. The USS
Lyndon Johnson,
the aircraft carrier that was their final destination, cruised beyond the horizon.

The SEAL stood in the sand, pointing to a spot at his feet and gesturing with his arm for the team to approach.

DeLuca turned the binoculars up the beach, in the direction of the soccer stadium and presidential palace. He saw, perhaps
a thousand yards off, several hundred rebel troops running as fast as they could in his direction. When he turned 180 degrees
and looked toward the castle, he saw another group of rebel soldiers, larger than the first, headed their way.

“Det cord, right here,” the SEAL said, clearing away the sand to show DeLuca and the others where he’d buried a line of explosive
detonating cord, capable of killing anyone who stepped on it or tripped over it. The drab green cord, about the thickness
of a cotton clothesline, was rigged to a half dozen Claymore mines, stuck into the sand on tripods with the curved side facing
the approaching rebels, capable, when detonated, of killing anybody within one hundred feet in a ninety-degree arc. DeLuca
assumed the SEAL team that had prepared the take-out point had mined the beach in the opposite direction as well.

“Lieutenant John Riley,” the SEAL said. “Step over the cord and follow me. Do you have wounded?”

“We’re good,” DeLuca said, as a rocket-propelled grenade fired by one of the rebel soldiers destroyed the Isuzu behind them.
Pieces of shrapnel rained down around them, a rear wheel rolling down the beach and curving into the sea. Then a machine gun
opened fire from the rooftop of a four-story beachfront apartment building. DeLuca fired on the machine-gun position, joined
by the SEAL with his M-5, chromed against corrosion from seawater and vented to drain.