Renegade (2013) (31 page)

Yaqub knew there were still Marines in the area, and they would come after him as soon as the attack began, but he felt that not only would the attack be successful, but his chances of getting away were good. After all, this morning had been filled with distractions for his enemies, assorted blows that would render them bloody.

Even now attacks had sprung up again in Kandahar, and Jonathan Sebastian had captured the attention of the world with his plight and that of the CIA agents.

Feeling confident, wanting to see the rest of his mission through, Yaqub boldly headed into the apartment building he had selected days ago.

The four-story building was in one of the hardest-hit areas outside of Kandahar. The city lay eight miles to the northwest from this pocket neighborhood, but this was one of the small areas that serviced nearby businesses. One of those businesses, only two miles away, was the Kandahar International Airport. Over half of the units were uninhabitable, but that hadn’t stopped squatters from moving in.

A few of the residents noticed Yaqub and his people, but they quickly retreated from the purposeful strides made by the group.
Yaqub took the stairs up, following Wali, who had a silenced pistol in hand.

On the third floor, they approached the first unit that faced the Kandahar airport. Wali opened the door and walked inside.

Two men sat at a small table in the center of the floor. Both got up and started to protest. Wali lifted his pistol, put two rounds into each man’s chest, and kept moving into the next room before the corpses hit the floor.

With his own pistol naked in his fist, Yaqub followed Wali through the apartment.

No one else was present.

Crossing the room to the window, Yaqub stood to one side and cautiously shifted the curtain. The Kandahar International Airport lay in the distance two miles to the southeast, well within operational distance for the Russian 9K38 Iglas. Seeing the airport was difficult because a haze of dust constantly hovered over the area.

Yaqub knew it was there, and that was enough.

Wali and Faisal uncrated the missile launcher and readied the weapon. Two other men set up a small laptop computer and portable satellite dish, equipment that had been stolen from American military provisions.

Taking the cell phone from his pocket, Yaqub called a preprogrammed number.

“Hello.”

Yaqub scanned the blue sky over the airport. “Are the planes still en route?”

The man at the other end of the connection answered immediately. “Yes. They are running on time.” The man was one of the liaisons in the Afghan National Police who interfaced most with the American military. After today, his position would be compromised and he would be running for his life. But that was fine because
Yaqub had promised him enough money to keep him living well for years.

Yaqub glanced at the men working on the computer. One of them nodded. “Send the identification of the planes,” Yaqub ordered.

“It is on the way.”

A moment later, the computer screen revealed a sweeping view of the airspace over the Kandahar airfield. When the American planes reached Kandahar airspace, they would show up on the computer. In addition to the American military leaders, the planes also carried more military supplies and equipment.

“Let me know when the aircraft begin their final approach.”

“Of course.”

Yaqub punched the cell phone off and put it back in his pocket. He kept watch over the airport. The United States Joint Chiefs of Staff’s surprise visit was about to turn more surprising than they had planned. Sabah would have been proud to watch the American planes explode.

Sadness touched Yaqub then. Not because he was certain his father was dead or would surely be dead in the next few minutes, but because his father would not live to see the death he would inflict upon their enemies.

Once news of the attack got around Afghanistan, and perhaps even in Pakistan, more true believers would rise to take up the fight against the Americans. The al Qaeda forces would battle with renewed belief and vigor.

And Yaqub would take his place as their leader once they learned what he had accomplished.

THE COLD ATE
into Pike’s chest as he slithered across the snow. He gained the top of the ridge, planting himself behind a hide he’d picked out on his way up the mountain. The shelf of rock blocked view of him from anyone below. He kept the M40 in a protective wrap to keep the sniper rifle from the snow and the cold. Despite the scarf that covered his face, the wintry chill scoured his cheeks and nose.

He left the M40 lying on the ground beside him and fished his binoculars from his chest pack. He scanned the ground, noting the snow-covered fortifications that created a maze across the valley floor.

In addition to the low stone walls that made irregular lines, there were several tangos taking up positions behind the barriers. He counted fifty-three tangos, but he knew there were more inside the caves.

He clicked the MBITR as the wind stirred small snow flurries over his position. It was like sitting in his own personal snow globe. He contacted Heath and spoke just loud enough to be heard over the connection. “I count fifty-plus tangos on-site. There are at least seven caves in the valley, so I’m betting there are more tangos on the premises.”

“Roger that.”

“On top of that, the tangos have constructed a kill box across the
open ground. New fortifications. Walls. They planned on us coming.” Pike gazed at the no-man’s-land, knowing that the Marines were going to get hurt taking the valley. There was no way around that.

“So let the Marines deal with this, bro. This is their thing. Not yours. Me and you, we can get out of here. Get gone while we’ve got the chance.”

Clearer than ever, Pike heard Petey’s sibilant voice in his head, just as conspiratorial as he’d ever been, but Pike wasn’t certain that vanishing in the mountains was ideal at the moment. The hike into Parachinar would take days. He didn’t have the supplies on him to get that far. But the pull to step away was upon him. He didn’t want to watch those Marines die.

That thought surprised him. In the past, on different missions, he’d accepted death as a constant companion. Warriors fell. It was a basic truth in any battle, and that hadn’t changed in thousands of years. The Marine Corps trained their personnel that the deaths of comrades in arms happened. No one ever got used to the idea, but they dealt with it.

For the first time, Pike thought he didn’t have the stomach to watch those younger Marines die. They were only a handful of years younger than him, but they were kids in his view.

Pike made himself breathe out. Losing fellow Marines had always hurt in the past, but he’d been able to keep himself distanced from it. Memory of the street battle that had taken place days ago played through his mind, making him realize how close he’d come to losing Bekah Shaw, Zeke, and Cho. None of them deserved to die today.

And Bekah had a kid, not much younger than Hector.

Thinking about Hector reminded Pike of all the things that could happen to the boy on any given day. A drive-by shooting, a predator in the neighborhood.
Anything
could happen, and it was all out of Pike’s control.

Panic welled up inside him, and he had to force it away. He’d never
felt anything like it before, not even when he was in the worst of the foster homes. Back then, he’d learned to be in control of himself and, gradually, his life around him. When he and Petey had escaped the system, they’d controlled their lives through violence and crime and whatever else was necessary to get by. They hadn’t drawn any lines, hadn’t backed away from whatever it took.

No matter what he did, Pike realized he couldn’t protect the boy from everything that was out there. In fact, he
was
one of the things out there that Pike wouldn’t have wanted Hector to cross paths with.

Last night he’d dreamed of the fight inside the diner, and he remembered the shocked expression on Hector’s face when he’d thought Pike was going to kill that man. The trouble was, Pike knew he’d have killed that man and done it without hesitation. That was the kind of man he was. Kill the threat and it was never a threat again. And that was what Pike had intended to do.

Except that Hector had been there. As long as Pike stayed around Hector, as long as he stayed around the Marines, Pike knew he was going to deal with worrying about other people. He didn’t want to do that. He wanted his life to be simple. He didn’t belong in either place. He needed to get back to being on his own. If any of them knew what he’d truly done in his life, they wouldn’t want him with them either. He was as big a threat to them as anything else. Hector’s view of the world had already been altered because he’d been there with Pike that night in the diner. He’d already changed that boy’s life, and it hadn’t been a change for the better. He wasn’t good for Hector.

That was a fact. It was time to move on.

Just as soon as he finished up here. Afterward, if he was alive, in the confusion he could choose his own exit strategy.

“Okay.” Heath’s voice was soft when he spoke, but it sounded brittle at the same time. “Hold your position and provide sniping cover as long as you can. We’re going to soften them up with grenade launchers
and suppressive fire, then pop smoke and go at them. We locate and secure the hostages, put down everybody who gets in our way.”

“Roger that.” Pike picked up the M40. He unwrapped the rifle, uncapped both ends of the sniper scope, and settled in behind the weapon, selecting his targets in order of preference. Things would have to happen fast if they were going to rescue the CIA agents.

Pike Morgan was also going to happen fast.

Jonathan Sebastian looked at the paper in his hands in disbelief. He’d reached the end of Zalmai Yaqub’s demands and accusations before he’d known it. Now he stood there, holding on to the paper with shaking hands. His time onstage was almost at an end.

He stared at the camera, for the first time in years not knowing what he was supposed to say next.

Then the hard-faced man in front of him raised his pistol and took deliberate aim.

“No!” Sebastian’s voice was hoarse and filled with panic. His heart thudded against his ribs and he felt a scream rising in his throat. He wanted to move but couldn’t, frozen right where he stood.

The gun flashed, very bright, and something hard and unforgiving slammed into his face.

Grenades arced into the valley, fired from the M203 launchers equipped on some of the Marines’ M4A1s. The resulting explosions caught the tangos by surprise.

Craters opened up in the snow and the defensive walls sagged in places, turning the barriers into stone shrapnel that took out more tangos. The thunder of the rounds detonating filled the valley with shock and awe.

Pike stayed with the M40, calmly and systematically sighting targets and working the bolt as he emptied the magazine. He picked out one of the men stationed at a machine-gun nest as the weapon opened up in full-throated roar. When the crosshairs dropped over the man’s face, Pike took up trigger slack and squeezed off the round. Trusting his marksmanship, Pike worked the bolt to eject the spent cartridge and used his left eye to select his next target, never moving his head from where it rested against the rifle stock.

The machine gunner’s partner reached for the weapon and became Pike’s next target. Shifting his vision back to his right eye, Pike placed the crosshairs over the second tango and squeezed the trigger again, laying him out next to his companion. An instant later, a 40mm grenade wobbled through the air and took out the machine gun, scattering smoldering-hot parts across the snow.

Smoke grenades followed the high-explosive grenades, and red smoke carpeted the valley floor. The color looked stark and menacing against the snow. Not only would it serve to blind the tangos on the valley floor, but it would clearly mark the area for the drones that Pike knew were flying overhead.

Pike slammed a fresh magazine into the M40, then slung it and took up the 870 as Heath gave the order for his squad to move in. He rose from the ground at the same time Cho did only a few feet to one side. The younger Marine was focused and tense, but he didn’t falter. He’d come a long way the last few days, and Pike took some pride in that. Cho was going to be a good Marine.

Charging downhill, Pike slammed through the snow. He tripped over rocks masked by the white powder, put out a hand to get his balance, and skidded briefly. Then he was on his feet again, racing toward the valley floor.

Ten feet up, the smoke thinned a little, but at ground level it was thick as soup. Tangos staggered inside the red mist and fired
blindly up into the mountains. Without breaking stride, Pike pulled the shotgun to his shoulder and took aim at a shadowy figure. He squeezed the trigger, staggered briefly as the butt slammed almost painfully into his shoulder, then recovered as the double-aught buckshot hammered the tango backward.

Pike pumped the shotgun, and the smoking cartridge spun from the ejector port. The fresh shell barely had time to seat properly before he pulled the trigger again. The second burst sent another tango spinning away.

Gunfire echoed all around Pike, caught in the valley and made alien by the thin mountain air. He struggled to breathe, more winded from his exertions than he normally would have been, but he knew it was because the altitude was making him struggle.

He reached the valley floor with Cho at his heels. Ahead and to the left, a tango popped up with an AK-47 blazing. The large-caliber rounds buzzed through the air like a swarm of angry bees.

Pike threw himself down beside the stone wall the tango was using for cover and yelled to Cho. “Down!”

Cho went to ground immediately, and Pike was at first worried that the man had gotten shot. Then Cho rolled back against the stone wall, taking cover and swapping out magazines. “I’m okay.”

Switching his attention to the tango, Pike crawled on his elbows and knees, getting to the end of the short wall. The tango was holding his position, taking cover behind the wall.

When he reached the end of the wall, Pike curled around the barrier and pulled the shotgun into his shoulder while he rolled over onto his side. The tango spotted him at the last minute and tried to bring his weapon to bear. Pike fired once, aiming at the man’s legs and taking them out from under him, then pumping the shotgun and firing once more.

“Clear!” Pike got to his feet and fed four more shells into the
shotgun to replace the ones he’d fired. The 870’s capacity was eight, but he’d been trained to reload every chance he had.

Cho stood and looked around, his rifle to his shoulder. “I’m good.”

Taking the lead, Pike saw Bekah and Zeke off to the left, working along the barriers in tandem. Bekah spotted Pike and nodded. Pike matched her speed as they moved toward the caves.

The tangos tried to hold their positions, but they died quickly. They were dedicated, but they weren’t skilled. That bothered Pike. Al Qaeda used cannon fodder on attacks, but it would have figured that something like this would demand a better-trained group.

Ahead, a tango burst out from behind one of the walls. He screamed defiance and called on God in his language. His cloak flapped around him and revealed the explosives strapped to his body.

“Bomb!” Pike shifted the shotgun to cover the man and squeezed the trigger, aiming at the head, hoping to take him out before he could trigger the explosives, thinking that maybe shooting him in the chest would trigger the blast anyway.

The double-aught buckshot caught the man in the face. His knees folded and he went down, unconscious or dead—Pike wasn’t sure. Before the man hit the ground, though, the explosives detonated.

The concussive force slammed into Pike, picking him up and knocking him backward like he’d been hit by a bus. He flew through the air, barely hanging on to consciousness. If the air hadn’t already been knocked out of him, his lungs would have emptied when he smashed against one of the stone walls.

The combat helmet kept his skull from fragmenting on impact, body armor kept him from taking any serious damage, and he was loose enough to keep from breaking anything. His head bounced off the barrier and his vision blurred as his lungs refused to work. He flailed weakly, struggling against his own body like it no longer
belonged to him. His vision had gone gray, and all noise had dulled to almost mute. Then everything reconnected in a heartbeat. His vision returned in a rush of bright colors, and the noise around him was suddenly a deafening din.