The Towers (23 page)

Anyway, “Hey there, Turd Man,” Stroud now said. Wagging a finger.

Teddy just smiled. “Hey, Master Chief.”

“Water and ammo and comms, Chief Oberg. Water and ammo and comms.”

“Right, Master Chief. On it.” Obie held up the load list, but Stroud snatched it out of his hands and started to cross things off, sneering. Teddy wavered—Dollhard had just told him this was final—but didn't protest. Stroud handed it back with slashes through a third of the items. “Snivel gear. Pogey bait! Tell your LPOs, drop the crap and take more ammo. Never have too much ammo.”

Obie considered this bullshit, like a good deal else of what Stroud said, but didn't voice the opinion. Stroud was the last guy in the unit to sport the yellow-and-red Vietnam service ribbon. He'd served with names that were legends in the Teams. His sneering
pronunciamientos
might not be current doctrine, but they were worth considering. In his mind, Teddy restored several of the items the command master chief had deleted, but added four more cases of Mk 262 and 7.62. “Got it, Master Chief.”

“Think this is
amusing,
Oberg?”

“No, Master Chief.”

“You got the attitude. I'll give you that. But let me tell you something. A chief don't need attitude. He needs to
manage
. You don't pay attention to your gear, your logistics, and your chow, attitude don't mean shit. Let the officers display the fucking leadership. You just make goddamned sure everything's there when your troops need it, and it all
works
. Be goddamned sure your LPOs take what you need, and
only
what you need.”

“Okay, Master Chief, and this embark—”

“Oh, yeah. We're goin' back to Fleet Navy for this ride. Complete fucking uniforms, got that? They can keep their beards, but no Willie Nelsons. Keep the cameras out of sight, and tell 'em to leave their flippers in their gear boxes. Now get the fuck about your business.”

Walking through the HQ tent, Teddy saw notebooks being unplugged, desks folding up, files going into boxes, comm gear into form-fitted foam cutouts in hard-shell cases, cables being rapidly zip-tied into bundles ready to unroll again in some other makeshift location, some other sand-gritty tent or bunker or commandeered mud-brick madrassa. SEAL teams went intel heavy. The usual sources took too long in a tactical situation, so the Teams brought theirs along. They got chaffed as “intel pukes,” but no smart SEAL looked down on his intel guys.

Outside a Humvee honked, and men shouted in the distance. Teddy staggered as the heat hit him again. Afghanistan couldn't be any worse. Then he corrected himself. No. It could always get hotter. And it could always get worse.

Or better, the way a SEAL looked at it.

There was much to be done, and Chief Oberg set about it.

*   *   *

2000
hours in the staging area. The lights burned images bright as day. Across the field leaping figures testified wadi ball did not cease with the going down of the sun. Heavily laden SEALs bent beneath packs, duffels, and weapons cases as they scuffed through the still-roasting air. They wore desert BDUs with unbloused trouser cuffs and floppy bush hats and Oakleys and Camel Baks. They carried Steiner binoculars and LST-5B line-of-sight radios and ruggedized Motorola MX-300R bone phones and ear mikes and UHF/sat comms. And short-barreled special ops modded M4s spray-painted in camo patterns and SIG 226 pistols and M240 light machine guns and AT4 antitank rockets. They clanked and creaked as they trudged past. But hardly anyone spoke.

*   *   *

2210.
with a roar and a tilt backward, the COD—Carrier Onboard Delivery—flight left the runway to climb into hazy darkness. The plane was smaller inside than it looked sitting on the strip. The SEALs rode four abreast, belted into backward-facing seats, gear slung into the webbing above them, under their seats, carried on their laps. There might have been more gear in the plane than air. As it climbed, the temperature dropped. Cold air blasted from overhead, bringing a welcome coolness to heavily burdened men.

They could debark from this aircraft, jog across a flight deck, and load into a helicopter for insertion. Teddy, nodding out to the thrum of the propellers, didn't think that'd happen, but it could. He remembered going out on QRF patrols with Sumo and Bitch Dog and what was his name—Whacker. Two, sometimes three, insertions a day. Too noisy in the stripped-down, metal-walled SH-60 cabins to talk, even to think. Everybody covered in a thick, greasy film of sweat. Pitch-dark aside from an orientation strip down by their boots. So gear heavy, their jaws were all they could move. Teddy could almost taste the pineapple gum Sumo's mom used to send him from Hawaii.

Don't think about that. He touched the hilt of his thin-bladed Glock knife. It'd been with him for so many missions it was almost like a good-luck piece, though he didn't like the idea of good-luck pieces. Solid planning, extra ammo—those were his good luck charms.

The familiar tension of the hours before action. Alone, unspeaking, Teddy thought: This is what I missed, back in LA. This amped-up sense of absolute reality. He searched downturned, inward faces, remembering histories and nicknames. Vaseline. Harley. Steff. Two Scoops. Oz. A story behind each name. Some read. Others slept, heads vibrating to the engine drone. Some just stared into space, maybe rehearsing how to blow a steel door or defuse the antihandling device on the electronic version of the Chinese Model 1989 antipersonnel mine.

But this time there was a difference. He frowned, groping for it.

Before, he had one guy to worry about: himself. No, two: him and Sumo. Now he had thirteen enlisted and two officers to take care of. It was a heavier load than he'd expected.

He smiled sardonically in the roaring dimness, imagining what Master Chief “Poochin'” Stroud would have to say about that.

*   *   *

0200, aboard USS
Kitty Hawk,
CV-63. A cavernous, dimly lit compartment deep within the carrier. The deck was scuffed charcoal nonskid with red and white stripes, lights glaring high above, the air hot with paint and lubricant fumes. The whole enormous carrier had been turned into a floating special forces base. With her fighter and attack wings off-loaded, the hangar bay was packed with black-painted insectile forms, antenna-spiked and heavily armed. Teddy recognized Blackhawks, Chinooks, Pave Lows. Clunks and the rattle of chains bled through the overhead. He found it comforting to be wrapped in eighty-six thousand tons of American steel, American fuel, American explosives. And six thousand Americans, at least half of whom had given the heavily burdened SEALs fist-bumps, high fives, and V-for-victories in the passageways on the way down from the flight deck.

“Take a knee,” Dollhard said. The men shifted, heads up, blinking off lack of sleep. Teddy stood behind his platoon, arms folded. Beside him stood the assistant OIC, Verstegen. His battle dress uniform was already rumpled, starting to smell. “All present? Chief?” Teddy raised a hand, nodded to confirm the muster. “Everybody ready to double your racks?”

“Hoo-yah!”

“Afghanistan,”
Dollhard said, putting the first PowerPoint slide on the bulkhead-turned-screen. Five sets of black arrows showed various forces' movement to contact. Rebel yells echoed. Suddenly everyone was noisy, pumped up. Sailors clumping past in turtlenecks and denims and heavy black flight-deck boots glanced at them.

“We're doing something that's never been done before. Instead of a conventional force-heavy operation, Infinite Justice will be a spec-ops show. They gave it to us. They expect us to deliver.”

“Hooyah,” shouted several men again. The others followed, half a beat behind.

The OIC grinned. “As such, we'll be linking up with and lending support to indigenous forces that have been opposing the Taliban for years. Now, with our help, they will prevail.”

Slide two. Hard to see in the overhead glare, so Teddy tapped a petty officer's shoulder and sent him to get them dimmed. “Areas currently held by the Northern Alliance, as of October fifteenth,” Dollhard said. They were unimpressive; an oval dead centering the country; a dent from the northwest; another patch of crosshatch to the northeast. Most of the slide was pure green, apparently meaning enemy. “Next slide.” It came up as the lights dimmed.

“Overall concept of operations. Following up on the suppression of air defenses, Special Forces ODAs comprising Task Force Dagger were inserted in the north on nineteen and twenty October. They linked up with a warlord called Fahim Khan to assist his Northern Alliance forces in an attack toward Mazar-e Sharif, the regional capital and key city in the north.

“A second team linked up in the Daria-el-Souf with ethnic militia led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum commands the Uzbeks, the largest faction of the Northern Alliance. He's slippery. Fought for the Soviets, when they were the occupying power. But right now he's on our side.

“The intent in the north is to assist local forces to take Mazar-e Sharif, the Dariá-el-Souf valley, the old Soviet airfield at Bagram, north of Kabul, then Kabul itself. Other operations may take place at the Shahi Kot”—a laser-scarlet dot speared and wandered—“and closer to the Pakistani border.

“The southern portion of the country has de facto been assigned to us. The Navy and Marine Corps.”

Another hooyah, muttered this time. The men shifted, focusing in.

“Kandahar. Second-largest city in Afghanistan. Population, half a million. Regional capital. Founded by Alexander the Great. Elevation, one thousand meters, thirty-three hundred feet above sea level. Bounded on the west by the Arghandab River. Surrounded by fruit orchards, cotton fields, and sheep-grazing lands. Kandahar Airport has two runways capable of taking C-130s and C-17s. The city links by road to Farah and Herat to the west, to the northeast Ghazni and Kabul, to the north Tarin Kowt, to the south Quetta, in Pakistan.”

Dollhard took a breath. “Kandahar's the Taliban's home turf, where the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were planned. Mullah Omar made it the capital of the Islamic Emirate five years ago, and there are strong indicators both OBL and Omar are still there. Forces loyal to them will naturally concentrate either in Kandahar or the mountainous regions to the east of the city. So, who do they give the toughest job to?”

“To us,” the men roared.

“Correct. We started hitting targets in the city with cruise missiles fired from the Gulf. Initial targets were the airport, command and control, and air defense. Navy air will begin flying strikes tonight. Bomb damage assessment's available on the intel side, and I strongly recommend you leaders check that against your maps before insertion.

“Here's what we have on our plate to start. Echo Platoon's assigned to a mixed SBS/SEAL task unit to be known as Task Force Cutlass. Our taskings are still under discussion, but may include one or more reconnaissance insertions before establishment of a Marine forward operating base. Right now we're on four-hour standby. I recommend you find your racks, get a shower, and get your heads down, because we could launch anytime.” Dollhard glanced at his watch. “All right, everybody, let's—”

“Attention on deck!”

The call came from the hatchway. A middle-aged officer in flight-deck coveralls and a khaki combination cap stepped over the knee-knocker. Silver eagles glittered at his collar. Teddy came to attention as his men jumped to their feet.

“Carry on,” the captain said. Teddy assumed he was the carrier's skipper, but he could've been the air boss. He didn't say, but maybe it didn't matter.

“Just a brief welcome to the Battle Cat. USS
Kitty Hawk
. Your quarters may be cramped, but we'll have hot food and showers whenever you want them. Right now, you folks are our main battery.

“We have Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Army aboard. Total, over a thousand spec-ops folks. The dust hasn't settled on the Trade Center and the Pentagon. We're going to bring some of what they visited on us back to the Taliban and to Osama bin Laden. Before we're done, they'll regret they ever took on the United States of America.”

This time when he finished, no one cheered, no one spoke. Only a grim silence rested on their thoughtfully bent heads.

 

11

Sana'a, Yemen

SHE
sat in the SUV, sweating. The engine was off, and that meant air-conditioning too. It wasn't that hot outside, under an arch of stars. But she'd always perspired on a raid; in Bahrain, in Ashaara, even back in the States. General Gamish had promised a roll-up of the leaders. Maybe the mother cache of Saggers, like the one that had almost gotten her and had killed so many innocent Yemenis. Including Hiyat's eldest. Her friend hadn't called back, though Aisha had paid careful attention to her cell and tried to reach her several times. No answer; leaving her to wonder what had gone wrong.

A double rap; Colonel Al-Safani's elongated visage at her window. She pressed the unlock button. He wasn't in his usual thobe and keffiyeh and jambiya but in full Russian-style battle dress, even a helmet in place of the red-and-white-checked shemagh he wore in the office. His flak jacket was hung with perfectly spherical green grenades, like unripe pomegranates. Instead of the holstered Makarov, a brightly polished AK that looked as if it belonged to the Yemeni equivalent of the guards at Arlington Cemetery was slung over his chest. “We're ready to go in,” he muttered.

Doanelson had already gotten out, was pissing against a wall; he shook off, zipped, and turned. Caraño had been on the guest list, but hadn't seemed interested. Behind her Benefiel jerked out of a doze. She put a hand on her junior agent's wrist; then a finger against her lips.

They got out on a cobbled street so steep she had to grab the car door to stop herself from sliding. Half the sky was eclipsed by one of the cliffs that walled the city. The lights from the apartment building towering behind them illuminated ropes, truss work, some sort of structure leading up the cliff. She had no idea what it was for.