Undeclared War (21 page)

In each of his back pockets, Reaper slipped a four-foot length of 7mm black Kernmantle nylon climbing rope. The two ends of the line were tied together with a fisherman's knot—making the rope a single big loop. The two loops would be used to make prussic knots if they needed them.

Prussic knots were a climbing aid that could slip along a rope or pipe. When pressure was put on the loop of rope hanging from a prussic knot, the knot tightened up and wouldn't slip down. Taking the pressure off loosened the knot and it could again be
slipped upward. Using the knots, a climber could hold position easily and free his hands for other work.

Reaper strapped a black Casio G-Shock watch to his left wrist. Finally, he slipped the black Motorola Talkabout radio into his upper-left shirt pocket. The wire for the two-way boom headset went underneath Reaper's Chalker sling strap and was secured to his shirt with a simple safety pin. The EarGel earpiece had been fitted to Reaper's ear only a hour earlier, and it now slipped in snugly. After checking out his rig, jumping, twisting, and turning in it to see if anything shook loose, rattled, or snagged, Reaper signaled the others that he was ready to go. He pulled the earpiece out and let the light headset dangle from its wire.

Bear rigged up essentially the same as Reaper. He wore the same clothes, boots, belt, rig, and sling as his partner did with changes to fit his weapons. For a thigh holster, Bear wore a BlackHawk Omega VI assault holster with the bottom opened up to allow the passage of the Whispertech suppressor attached to the barrel of the Beretta M92-F pistol he carried. Bear carrying the Beretta gave both men a suppressed weapon for quiet shooting. Two straps secured the holster to Bear's thigh and a spare magazine went in the pouch on the front of the holster body.

On his left thigh Bear secured an Omega shot shell pouch. Each of the two pouches on the thigh rig held ten rounds of 12-gauge ammunition secured in place under inch and a half-wide elastic strapping loops. The Chalker sling and standoff adapter did fine for holding Bear's Jackhammer Mark 3-A3. With the adapter mounted just behind the pistol grip
of the Jackhammer, the weapon balanced easily and hung freely in the muzzle-down position.

The same style of Hi-port adapter that Reaper had used held Bear's Jackhammer muzzle-up with the flash hider of the gun secured to his left shoulder. The two spare ammunition cassettes Bear had available fit into Blackhawk shotgun shell pouches. The pouches were intended to hold twenty-five rounds of 12-gauge ammunition, secured under an elastic strap, but each would secure only one of the thick, round ammunition cassettes. Bear secured the pouches to the front of his belt, one on either side of the buckle.

In spite of his different load of ammunition and equipment, Bear could move as well as Reaper in his rig. Now both men stood armed and ready to operate.

Putting on long, black overcoats covered up their gear with only a few bulges suggesting that the two men might not be all they seemed. The ammo pouches and thick action of the Jackhammer made Bear look almost potbellied under his coat. Anyone mistaking the SEAL for a jolly fat guy would have been in for a serious surprise. As Bear looked at Reaper, he broke out with a laugh.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Bear laughed. “All you need are a pair of dark glasses and you would look like a Neo-wannabe from
The Matrix
.”

“The what?” Reaper asked.

“A movie. You don't get out much, do you?”

“Not enough to go see a movie,” Reaper said. “Now let's go down for the brief-back.”

“And more,” Bear said as he grabbed up a paper bag.

Reaper shook his head for a moment about his
friend's antics. Over the last day, Bear could be up or down depending on the moment. Yet he couldn't fault his friend for loyalty, and he felt incredibly grateful for his assistance.

Everyone else was already sitting around the kitchen table when Reaper and Bear came down the stairs, except for Max, who had been relegated to the kitchen counter, as close to downrange as he could be placed in the room. Part of Max's disguise as a street person included the wafty aroma of his dirty and somewhat moldy clothes. Basically, he smelled like a wine-soaked compost heap that someone had slipped something into that shouldn't be there. Simply put—he stank.

“Wow, nice disguise,” Bear said as he exaggerated a swallow and twisted his head around.

Max refused to be goaded by the SEAL and simply sat and waited for Reaper to begin.

“Okay, brief-back time,” Reaper said. “Each man tell his part of the plan. You go first Max.”

“I get dropped off with my cart underneath this railroad bridge here,” Max pointed at the map Reaper had spread out over the table, “at 2015 hours. Sunset is at 2045 hours. I have about an hour of light to get to the bottom of the billboard and nest-up. I'm to be in position on the billboard platform and good to go by 2200 hours. I have freedom to fire in support of the op but only with positive target identification. My time for drive-by extraction is 0445 hours. And I should bring my cart along if I have the opportunity.”

“Okay, Ben,” Reaper continued, “your turn.”

“I drive the truck and maintain radio watch on the
scanners and our own commo throughout the op,” Ben said. “If there's anything coming across the police or emergency net, I notify everyone and head for the emergency rally point. When possible, I maintain communications with Deckert here over a cell phone, keeping the net secure. After off-loading Max and his cart under the bridge, I park over in the industrial area across the highway where you and Bear did for your OP.

“Driving back into the target area, I drop you and Bear here in this neighborhood at 0230 hours. This is as close as I can approach to the target without chancing being seen. It only gives you and Bear a few blocks to walk to get to the target, most of that distance can be covered through the alleys. After dropping you off, sorry, inserting you…”

“You make it sound so kinky,” Bear said.

“Knock it off, Bear,” Reaper said, wondering what had gotten into his friend. Bear had never before wisecracked during the final prep for an op.

“Okay, after I drop you off, I park here.” Ben pointed to a spot on the photo printout they had used during their planning. “If there's any foot traffic or I feel compromised, I move over to here and park.” Ben pointed to another spot. “If I really don't like the area, I head back across the highway to the original lay-up point.

“If the shit hits the fan and we can't make the rolling exfiltrations, I drive around, passing through the emergency rally point at 0500, 0530, and 0600 hours. Extraction at 0600 hours puts us to within twenty minutes of sunrise so things are going to get noticeable after that. If no pickups at 0600, I head back to the shop.”

“That's right,” Reaper said, “and I don't want you hanging around trying to pick us up later. If we get in trouble and miss the last extraction at 0600, each man is to cache his gear and make his way back here as best he can. Everyone will have a hundred bucks cash on him and a calling card Keith bought this afternoon. If you can't make your way back here, call in. Okay, Bear, now you.”

“You and I insert in the neighborhood to the southwest of the target at 0230 hours. We walk into the southwest corner of the structure, avoiding all possible contact. We then go over the fence at the corner of the building and climb up to the roof of this single-story structure.” Bear pointed to what looked like a material-handling dock for taking away finished cars at the southwest corner of the Factory.

“We go across the roof and decide which means—a chimney, corner, or pipe—we'll use to climb up to the top floor of the building. We've planned for it to take fifteen minutes to get to the garage rooftop and across to the chimney area and a half-hour for the climb to the main roof.

“Once on the main roof, we'll make our way into the structure and check out any rooms or secure areas we find on the factory-floor areas. The primary target is the offices at the far eastern end of the building. We move fast and quiet. No contact. This is a sneak-and-peek and we'll pick up the hostages if and when we find them. We extract and climb down by 0430 at the latest. If we find hostages or have prisoners, we come down by the stairs at the southeastern corner or the fire escapes on the north face of the building, depending on the circumstances. We call for emergency ex
traction at point Alfa, Bravo, or Charlie—the stairs, fire escape east, or fire escape west—respectively. Drive-by extraction is at 0440.”

Reaper could find no fault with his friend's rendition of the plan. Still he had a funny feeling about hearing his own family be referred to as hostages. That was exactly why they were called that, to make it a little easier to concentrate on the task at hand and not the people involved.

“The only part left to assign is call signs for everyone to use over the net,” Reaper said. “Any suggestions about something we're not likely to forget?”

“Okay, our leader here has long been known as the Grim Reaper,” Bear said.

“Only by you and a handful of guys in the Teams, Bear,” Reaper said. “I always hated that nickname.”

“Well, you're really going to hate this one then,” Bear said with a wide grin. “Gentlemen, I give you the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Our marine sniper friend is War. This rather diminutive Air Force PJ is Famine. I shall be Pestilence, since I make such a pest of myself anyway. And the Grim Reaper shall of course be Death.”

“That sucks, Bear,” Reaper said.

“Yeah, but it fits,” Bear said, “and there aren't enough of us to be the apostles.”

Reaper sighed, “Okay, if there aren't any other ideas,” he said, “we go with Bear's suggestion.”

No one else made a sound.

“So I guess that's it, we're good to go,” Reaper said as he stood up.

“Not quite,” Bear said as he stood up and walked over to a cabinet. “We still have one more thing to do.”

He pulled out a dark brown bottle of Canadian Club whiskey and five shot glasses. Setting them out in front of everyone, Bear set down the bottle and then picked up his paper bag. He pulled out five slim aluminum tubes, each less than an inch in diameter and about six inches long.

The tubes contained Romeo y Julieta, Romeo No. 1 cigars from Havana, Cuba.

“What can I say,” Bear said. “It was illegal for me to run them across the river so we'd better burn the evidence. Besides, I had to get Max his Cubans.”

“I'll get some of my own after this is over,” Max said with a smile.

“Not bad, Bear,” Reaper said as he lifted the bottle and filled everyone's glass, then he set the bottle down, picked up his glass, and held it out to his friends. A feeling of esprit de corps filled the room.

“A toast,” Reaper said. “I've never had a mission mean more to me, or knew a group of people I would rather have with me on it. So here's to the start of it. Once we go, there's no turning back. So we go—and everyone comes back.”

“Everyone comes back,” they all said, Bear loudest one of all. Each man gathered the last of his gear and left the room. The cigars remained on the table, to be smoked after the mission had been completed and everyone returned home again—including Reaper's family.

Heavy traffic still filled the main highways around Detroit as Reaper and his men headed into the northern downtown area. The next weekend would be the Memorial Day holiday so the streets would be more or less deserted by the same time on the next Friday. Reaper couldn't look that far ahead, in fact he made an effort not to anticipate anything at all.

Reaper, Bear, and Max sat in the back of the pickup truck, riding in the camper along with Max's shopping cart. The only member of the four horsemen who hadn't dressed to draw a second glance was Ben, who sat up front driving the vehicle. In the back, Bear got a chuckle out of the idea that Famine was driving around the streets of Detroit in a 4x4 GM pickup truck.

In spite of the traffic, the men made good time and arrived in the area of the target less than forty-five minutes from leaving the shop. They couldn't cruise the area around the target, the possibility of gathering any new intelligence was greatly out-
weighed by the chance anyone would notice the camper going by several times during the evening. Reaper made the decision to go ahead with the first insertion of the operation.

As Ben passed along the side road leading to the railroad bridge, the top floors of the Factory building rose less than half a mile away. Looking through the back window into the cab and the windshield beyond, Reaper watched the road and the area around them. He suddenly made a decision and told Ben to stop the truck.

“Go past this driveway and back into it,” Reaper said, “back up close to those bushes in the rear there.”

Reaper had seen a small industrial parking lot next to the bridge. The flat, dirt and gravel lot had scraggly grass, bushes, and scrub trees growing thickly along its borders. The squat masonry bridge itself blocked any view of the parking lot from the Factory, and at that time of day no vehicles were present in the area.

With the truck backed up to fair cover, Bear opened up the back door and took up a position behind the camper, where he could watch out for anyone who might be around them. Max and Reaper manhandled the shopping cart out of the back of the camper. Their practice sessions with this maneuver back at the farm now paid off. The cart originally hadn't fit easily though the rear door of the camper. Removing the inside screen door and the liberal application of a heavy hammer had adjusted the cart to more easily pass through the door.

Without a word spoken, Max slipped back up in the bushes as Reaper and Bear climbed back into the
camper body. Reaper simply said “go,” and Ben pulled out, leaving Max behind.

Inserting Max and his cart had taken well under a minute from the time that Ben started to back the truck into the parking lot to when they pulled out onto the road. Max saw no signs that the action had been noticed by anyone around the area, and only a few windows in any of the industrial buildings nearby allowed anyone to look out in the first place. The operation had now begun and there was no turning back.

The truck and the rest of the team had a long wait ahead of them before Reaper and Bear could insert for their penetration of the Factory. Their synchronized watches read twenty-hundred (2000) hours, eight o'clock on a Thursday night. From where the Horsemen watched, the crowd for the Factory club seemed light, but they soon started to build up in spite of the weekday night.

It would be dangerous for the pickup to remain in the area. Somebody could see it and connect it to another appearance later that night. One choice was to drive around—but that could expose them to a chance encounter with the locals or, even worse, a police cruiser. It could also put them out of radio range with Max in case War called for help or an emergency extraction.

Staying in the area while under some cover or blending in somewhere seemed the safest bet. The quiet area they had parked in before seemed good, and Reaper told Ben to drive over to where they had put the van during their observation-post vigil. The big open area still had a lot of industrial machinery parked about, as well as a number of vehicles. If the
place had a guard that did the rounds, neither Bear nor Reaper had seen him. Among the other vehicles, the pickup camper rig didn't stand out at all. With the truck parked and hidden, and Ben remaining up on radio watch, Reaper and Bear did the only practical thing they had open to them—they settled in for some sleep.

Neither of the two SEALs would insert for six hours yet. Not only had Reaper and Bear been running on little sleep for the past several days, they had another reason to get some rest. Nerves can build up while waiting to launch an op, no matter how well trained an operative is.

That same nervous energy that can help keep you sharp and alert also saps your body's reserves. It can wear you down just as much as if you had been running a marathon, even though you were just sitting still. It was far better to try to relax and follow the soldier's rule—sleep wherever and whenever you could because it might be a long stretch before the chance for some sleep came around again.

So Reaper and Bear crashed. Ben remained in the front cab where he settled in comfortably and expected to make a night of it. With his police scanners running softly, Ben set his Motorola Talkabout on the dashboard, just behind the steering wheel. He could hear everything he had to and could function well enough as the sunset started to color the sky.

The bed pads still left in the camper didn't smell as springtime fresh as they could have been. Reaper and Bear considered them a hell of a lot more comfortable than some of the places they had slept during ops in the Teams. From where he
lay in the bunk over the cab, of all things, Bear started singing softly.

“So we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces,” the rough baritone voice growled out, “singing—whiskey for my men…”

“…And beer for my horses,” a surprisingly deep bass voice finished from up front in the cab.

“Great,” Reaper sighed quietly, “two fruitcakes.”

“Let me guess, Death, old friend,” Bear said using Reaper's call sign, “you don't listen to the radio much either, do you? Country-western, Toby Keith, the
Unleashed
CD, any of those things sound familiar to you? Famine, old boy, our grim friend here simply has no culture.”

Ben simply remained silent in the front and listened to his radios. They ran on power from the spare battery in the camper body, so he didn't worry about running the truck's battery down.

The noise from the scanners wasn't much to listen to, mostly static. But Ben made up plot lines to go along with the fragments of stories he heard over the scanners, something he had learned to do years ago. Soon, only deep, slow breathing came from the camper.

The evening went on and turned into the early morning hours without incident. Ben had occasionally called up Max to get a situation report, sitrep, on what was going on at the Factory. Outside of the ebb and flow of customers, the Marine sniper had seen nothing out of the ordinary. War was now well settled into a sniper's hide up on the billboard. He could look around the edge of the smaller billboard and see the entire front of the Factory building.

Using a Bushnell Yardage Pro Scout laser range finder he had accepted from Deckert before leaving on the op, Max had confirmed his ranges to the Factory—122 meters to the near corner, 164 meters to the far corner. He lay almost level with the fifth floor and still could have a good shot into the top floor if the blinds opened.

Then, at 0200 hours the time came to get ready to move out. As Ben prepared to wake Reaper, he turned and looked back into the camper. He could barely make out two eyes staring back at him. Either Reaper had been awake, or his internal alarm clock kept very good time. Reaper rose and moved to where Bear slept over the truck's cab. Bear remained sound asleep, but he came silently awake at Reaper's touch.

“Time to earn your whiskey and meet those evil forces,” Reaper said quietly to Bear. Then he leaned forward and said through the window into the cab, “Move on out, Ben.”

The night had turned chill, yet not too cold at about fifty degrees. So Reaper wouldn't have to worry about Max stiffening up. The sky had remained only partly cloudy, and a bright first-quarter moon still shone down on the area intermittently. The light could be a blessing to the climbers once they started on their way up the side of the building. But it would quickly become a curse if it revealed them to someone before they even got to the target.

The Factory had its last call at 0200, so the customers had mostly left by the time the camper truck eased its nose into the nearby neighborhood. A short radio call from War in his hide told the rest of
the team that the coast was about as clear as it was going to get.

Patting themselves down one more time, Reaper and Bear made certain of the location of every piece of gear by touch. The balaclavas went over their heads and they pulled them down to bunch around their necks like a collar. Walking the streets wearing a ski mask was not the way to keep from drawing attention.

A large red clay brick three-story home had once been someone's pride. Now the abandoned building stood mute, almost all of its windows and doors covered with plywood. The attic windows of the old house looked down on the dirty silver and white camper truck as it stopped in front of the alley the house bordered. The mute eyes of the blank windows were the only witnesses to the two black-garbed men who quickly exited the back of the camper and darted into the alley.

The alley they ran through did not lead directly to the Factory, or the approach angle they wanted to make to the building itself. The alley did lead across the street and continue down the block. Only half a block from the street, the narrow passage crossed over a second alley that ran east and west. This second passageway ended directly across from the corner of the Factory where Reaper and Bear wanted to start their penetration.

The old Teammates recognized the danger in following the alleys. Some of the few occupied homes could have dogs standing watch in their backyards. That danger had to be weighed against the risks of two men walking the streets so early in the morning. Reaper had decided that he would rather take a
chance on barking dogs that they could run away from than of being possibly caught in the open, away from cover, by someone in the street. In spite of his love of animals, Reaper would not have hesitated to use his suppressed weapon against someone's aggressive animal—he had far too much at stake to worry about the niceties of the situation.

Luckily, neither Reaper nor Bear ran into any dogs along their approach to the target. When they reached the passage leading to the Factory itself, their cover ran out. To their south sat a line of decaying homes. Directly in front of them stood the Factory, not much more than a hundred meters away. But to the north they had the open area of the abandoned parking lot.

No vehicles remained in the lot, nothing but the grass and broken blacktop they had noted earlier when the two SEALs did their original drive-by. Only now, they had to walk down the alley with no cover to their left, just the open spaces of the chain-link fence that surrounded the parking lot. But when an obstacle finally appeared, it didn't come from their open side, or even the Factory.

Jerome Slaneal had been given the brush-off by his girlfriend Lateasha. The fifteen-year-old now looked at a long summer ahead without a lady to help comfort him. Of course, if any of his friends suggested such a thing, Jerome would have had to introduce them to his blade. The young man considered himself an expert in knife fighting and close-quarter combat—even if he had never heard that particular term.

So Jerome had a mad on, and the two strangers he saw walking down the alley were just what he needed to take out his frustrations. There were two
of them, but he had his favorite blade with him. Besides, the two strangers were white—he reasoned that they had to be lost or had parked in the wrong place. They might be headed toward the club, and Jerome knew well enough not to bother anyone who was a customer there.

The information on the streets was that anyone who caused trouble for the guys in the club soon turned up missing. But Jerome was high on the arrogance of youth, and the forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor he had finished just an hour earlier had given him the false bravery of alcohol. He could tell the two men walking by so silently weren't headed toward the club anyway, they weren't taking a direct route there. That made them fair game according to his rules.

The blade Jerome took so much pride in was a wicked-looking hook-nosed folding knife made of stainless steel, with a four-inch serrated blade. The young man had no idea that what he held was only a cheap knock-off of a Spyderco Civilian. He just knew that he could slice the clothes, or the skin, right off of somebody with that blade. And he could snap the knife open with a practiced flip of his wrist.

If the two outsiders gave up and surrendered to Jerome what he believed was his due, he would probably let them go with just a good scare—probably.

Both Reaper and Bear realized that someone lurked behind them at almost the same instant. Years of training and experience caused them to automatically spread farther apart so as to not get in each other's way. Both men had pulled up the bottom part of their balaclavas to cover the lower halves of their faces. It would have taken both hands to pull the
back of the hoods over the tops of their heads. They wanted to keep their hands free, but not to have any trouble. Maybe they could just outwalk whoever was behind them. If he had intended to shoot, he would have done so already.

Then Jerome commanded, “Freeze, mufa.”

Damn, this is not what we need right now, Reaper thought as he recognized the youthful crack in the voice behind them. Both he and Bear looked at each other as they just kept walking. They remained out in the open and needed to get across the street and to the wall of the building only a few dozen meters away.

Then Jerome almost shouted, “I said freeze, motherfuckers!”

The sharp click they both heard behind them sounded like a knife locking open. They had no way around it now. This gate crasher was probably armed. Reaper stopped and looked at Bear, gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Then the two SEALs turned away from each other, rotating around smoothly until they faced their young opponent.