The Socotra Incident (14 page)

“Yeah, just need to bandage it up,” Ritter said.

A red light winked at them in the distance. Wraiths coalesced around the light as the Israelis rallied together.

Ritter recovered his gear and kicked sand over the parachute rigging. What they wouldn’t carry, they would hide. If a local came snooping around and found a punch of parachutes in the middle of the desert, he or she wouldn’t need much of an education to realize something was amiss in his little part of the undeveloped world.

He limped toward the rally point, and the Mossad medic sat him against a boulder and went to work on his leg.

Ritter kept his eyes on the knot of men. The light from a GPS screen illuminated a map in between them.

His calf flared in pain as the medic sprayed it with antiseptic.

“Ow,” Ritter said, a statement instead of an exclamation.

“
Stom ta’pe, koos
,” the medic said. He wrapped gauze around Ritter lower leg and taped what was left of his pants leg over the gauze.

Mike—Ritter identified him in the darkness by the way he flowed as much as moved through the night—approached and looked from Ritter’s damaged leg to Ritter’s face.

“Just a flesh wound,” Ritter said. Mike motioned to the red light with a nod.

Moshe had a map on his thigh, a pencil tapping against it. He whispered to the rest of the Israelis in Hebrew.

“We’re off,” Moshe said to Ritter and Mike.

“How far?” Ritter asked.

“Almost…four kilometers,” Moshe said, “and there’s a canyon between us and the target location.”

“I got a quick look at it,” Ritter said. Five canyons running from north to south split the southeast quarter of the island. Their target was a group of buildings built on a bone-dry wash in the middle of the canyon.

“Which means there’s a detour, which means about eight kilometers, five miles, to move.” Moshe looked to the east, where the first hints of the sun’s arrival were manifest. “If we run, we might get there before sunrise.”

Moshe rose to his feet and started running. For a man wearing a bulletproof vest with Kevlar plates and another thirty pounds’ worth of gear, he could move fast.

Ritter’s lungs burned, and his blood pumped fire as they ran toward a ridgeline. The sun had nearly cleared the horizon, and the team was open and exposed against the bare desert. His injured leg throbbed against the bandages. His boot squished from the blood that had run down his leg and pooled within.

They cleared the ridgeline and stopped in a sparse grove of dragon blood trees. The trees looked like gigantic mushrooms; thin branches spread like veins beneath a canopy of tiny needles. Deep-red sap glistened in the morning light. Ritter took a drag of water from the hose on his CamelBak, less than his parched throat demanded. Who knew when they’d come across clean water again?

“Eric, take this.” Shlomo passed Ritter a dark plastic device, which was the size of his hand. A concave disk was embedded within it. “You run down to the road and set it up once we find a nest. Set the thermal trigger, and nothing will get past. You know how to use it, right?”

The M4 SLAM antitank mine weighed a little more than two pounds and, when detonated, used the power of the explosives within to turn the concave copper plate inside out and fire it off as a gigantic bullet, an explosively formed penetrator. Firing it at the nuclear weapon wouldn’t end well. The Israelis had brought some specialist equipment with them. Goldstein carried an AT4 rocket launcher for use against vehicles and buildings. Another Israeli had an antipersonnel claymore in his gear.

“Let’s hold on to that idea,” Ritter said as he handed the mine back to Shlomo.

“No, you keep it.”

“You’re just sick of carrying it, aren’t you?” Ritter said. Shlomo grinned at him.

The bleat of sheep came from deeper in the dragon blood forest. Ritter aimed his Tavor rifle at the sound as a flock emerged from between the tree trunks. That many sheep meant a shepherd would be with them, someone who could spoil their mission with one shout.

The sheep meandered between the trees, their bleating loud and frequent. There was no shepherd walking among them.

Mike stepped past Ritter, his weapon at the ready. Ritter stood up and followed him. What was Mike planning to do when he found the shepherd? Shoot him?

They stepped around the arched roots of the dragon blood trees and into the flock. Sheep skittered away from them.

Mike clicked his tongue twice. His rifle pointed to a skinny man dressed in rags and a turban lying face down in the dirt. A dark patch of dirt was beneath his head. Ritter approached the man slowly, then nudged him with his foot. No response.

Ritter dug his toe under the man’s ribs and kicked him over. He flipped over, his limbs loose. This was a man—no, just a teenager—with the hints of a beard. A red canal across his throat bespoke a professional touch. Someone had sliced into his throat with a garrote and left him in the dirt. Ritter reached down and touched the dead man’s side. Still warm. With no rigor mortis, he hadn’t been dead long.

Ritter keyed his mike. “Moshe, got a body over here. I think—”

The distant echo of machine gun fire boiled over from their target. Ritter knew the sound of AK-47s when he heard them; the acoustics of the canyon multiplied the sound of shots.

“We aren’t the only ones here,” Ritter finished.

“You and Shlomo cover the road going north,” Moshe said over the radio. “No one gets out. The rest of us attack.”

Mike ran back to Moshe, crossing paths with Shlomo, before following the Israelis down a wash leading to where the nuke was being stored.

Ritter and the black Israeli ran parallel to the ridgeline by a few yards and found an outcropping. Shlomo slid into the crevice and popped open the sight for his sniper rifle. The plain around the ridgeline was bare desert for hundreds of yards. No one would sneak up on them.

“Movement,” Shlomo said.

Ritter lifted his head over the ridgeline. A beat-up Kia Bongo pickup truck, the same kind he’d seen in Iraq, drove away from the target houses at high speed. The truck rode low, a heavy load causing it to slide across the packed dirt as if it were on an icy road.

“Moshe, you get eyes on that truck?” Ritter said into the radio.

No reply.

A different crack of gunfire erupted in the canyon. Moshe and the team were otherwise occupied.

Ritter looked north; the wash led to an improved road and the rest of the island. If the nuke was in that truck…

“Shlomo, can you disable the truck without hitting the cargo bed?” Ritter asked.

“What happens if I hit the cargo?”

“Let’s not find out.”

Shlomo let out a slow breath and squeezed the trigger.

The truck was three hundred yards away, moving over uneven terrain. Shlomo’s rifle fired, and the bullet shattered the Bongo’s front windshield. It kept going.

Shlomo worked the bolt action, and a smoking cartridge ejected into the morning light.

The second shot didn’t have an immediate effect, but a second after the report faded, the truck rumbled into a shallow ravine. There was no movement from the driver.

Gunfire continued from deeper in the ravine, with the sound of a nightlong thunderstorm compacted into minutes. If the nuke wasn’t in that truck, then it was in the crossfire.

“I’m going to check out that truck. See if the package is in there. Cover me,” Ritter said.

He stepped over the ridgeline, not waiting to talk things over with the protesting Shlomo, and half slid, half stepped down the slope. Dirt and rocks broke loose with each footfall, a dusty avalanche following him. He wasn’t sure whether all the dirt would be a better screen or a “shoot me” sign for anyone watching the valley.

Once at the bottom, he ran to the truck with his Tavor rifle aimed at the cab. His injured leg flared with pain every time it hit the ground.

The truck canted off the road, the right wheels dangling inches about the ground. The dusky-skinned driver was hunched over the steering wheel, one arm stuck out over the ruins of the windshield. Ritter opened the driver’s door. The cabin reeked of spilled blood. Blood ran down the driver’s left shoulder. An unseen exit wound on the other side of the driver poured blood over the seat; it ran in rivulets over the front edge and pooled on the passenger’s side.

Ritter ran to the rear of the truck and looked in the bed. A wide green case was tied down with bright nylon cords. Ritter grabbed one of the handles and shook it. It was so heavy that it hardly budged.

He keyed his mike. “Shlomo, I think I’ve got it.”

A bullet snapped in the air over his head. Ritter crouched and took two steps toward the driver’s side. The turn signal burst in a shower of glass as a bullet shattered it.

Ritter ran to the front of the truck and stepped into the ravine—the truck and the nuke between him and the firefight in the village.

“Were those stray rounds, or was someone shooting at me?” Ritter asked.

“Not sure…Wait,” Shlomo said over the radio. “Moshe needs me to relocate. Don’t move.”

Ritter saw a flash of light from Shlomo’s scope as the sniper left his over watch.

“Shlomo, give me an update. What the hell’s going on over there?”

No response.

“Shlomo?” Ritter cursed as his battlefield became a much lonelier place. He looked back at the truck and saw a hook dangling from a winch on the front of the Bongo truck. The winch looked as if it had been welded on as an aftermarket improvement. Given the crap nature of the island’s infrastructure, being able to haul a truck out of a rut made decent sense.

A pile of thigh-high boulders ten feet up the road gave Ritter an idea. Better to do something constructive right away than to think of a perfect course of action a few minutes too late.

He reached over the shattered glass and unlocked the winch. The shots from the village had slowed; most sounded like the Tavor he and the Israelis carried. He drew the winch line out and looped the metal cord around a boulder before locking the hook onto the cord.

Two tugs on the line convinced him that it would hold.

A bullet struck up a geyser of dirt on the road and skipped away.

“Friendly to your north,” he said into the mike and got no response. The sound of his voice over the radio was nothing compared to the gunshots from those fighting in the village. “Friendly fire” was always a misnomer for those on the receiving end, but maybe someone had heard him.

He grabbed the dead driver by his shirt and hauled him from the cab. Dead eyes behind half-closed lids made the man look like he was about to drift asleep. Ritter let him fall onto the road like a sack of potatoes. The dead didn’t need gentle hands. Dirt clung to the spilled blood down his right flank as Ritter dragged him a few yards away from the truck.

He looked up and saw a trio of dirt clouds streaking down the east side of the valley wall, not the side he or the Israelis had come from.

“Shlomo, who the hell is that?”

No response.

“Mike, any friendly on this net? We’ve got potential hostiles coming down the east slope,” Ritter said and received only static in return.

Ritter ran to the front of the truck and knelt next to the wheel embedded in the dirt.

If it was the North Koreans, then they knew what was in the truck and might not risk a shot.

He took a snap glance around the side of the truck, and a burst of gunfire split the air next to his head.

Or they’d shoot at him anyway.

Ritter threw himself to the ground and aimed his weapon under the truck. He saw a pair of feet through the gap between the ground and the truck, and fired a single shot. Bullets tore through the lead man’s ankle, and he tumbled into the dirt with a scream.

The man behind him was either too well trained or too indifferent to care and leaped over the downed man. Ritter stood up and found the second man carrying an AK-47 and wearing loose sand-colored robes of a Bedouin. The man tried to swing his rifle around to bear on Ritter, but Ritter had him dead bang.

Ritter fired a burst into his chest and snapped his head around to find the third man. His last assailant had run around the other side of the truck and was six feet away and closing fast.

Ritter lifted his rifle and swung the hard plastic butt around and down on the barrel of the fighter’s rifle. The strike deflected the AK a half second before he fired and sent a blast into the engine block.

Ritter swung the rifle at the fighter’s face and struck nothing but air as the fighter swayed back. The fighter thrust his weapon up at Ritter’s face, and Ritter brought his Tavor back to block the blow. The collision smashed Ritter’s rifle against his face, and pain flared against a cheek as he stumbled back.

The fighter lurched after Ritter and grabbed him by his vest. He pushed Ritter off his feet and landed on top of Ritter. The impact of the man’s two hundred-plus pounds sent the air from Ritter’s lungs. Rough hands wrapped around Ritter’s neck and bored into his throat.

Ritter’s right hand fumbled for the Applegate-Fairbairn on his gear, while his other hand felt to gouge his enemy’s eyes. The big man kept his head turned away. He didn’t need to see Ritter to strangle the life from him.