Primary Target

“Packard, Hastings, Morrison, Dobbs, Murphy, Bailey. You are B-Team. B-team, you support and cover us. When we drop, two of you hold the drop spot, two hold the perimeter near the gates of the compound. When we go inside, two move forward and hold the front of the house. You’re also the last men out. Eyes sharp, heads on a swivel. Nobody moves against us. Eliminate all resistance, and any possible resistance. This place is bound to be hotter than hell. Your job is to make it cold.”

He looked at them all.

“Are we clear?”

A chorus of voices followed, each of differing depth and timbre.

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

Luke crouched on a low-slung bench in the personnel hold. He felt that old trickle of fear, of adrenaline, of excitement. He had swallowed a Dexedrine right after takeoff, and it was starting to kick in. Suddenly he felt sharper and more alert than before.

He knew the drug’s effects. His heart rate was up. His pupils were dilating, letting in more light and making his vision better. His hearing was more acute. He had more energy, more stamina, and he could remain awake for a long time.

Luke’s men sat forward on their benches, eyes on him. His thoughts were racing ahead of his ability to speak.

“Children,” he said. “Watch for them. We know there are women and children in the compound, some of them family members of the target. We are not shooting women and children tonight. Copy?”

Resigned voices answered.

“Copy that.”

“Copy.”

It was an inevitability of these assignments. The target always lived among women and children. The missions always happened at night. There was always confusion. Children tended to do unpredictable things. Luke had seen men hesitate to kill children and then pay the price when the children turned out to be soldiers who didn’t hesitate to kill them. To make matters worse, their teammates would then kill the child soldiers, ten seconds too late.

People died in war. They died suddenly and often for the craziest reasons—like not wanting to kill children, who were dead a minute later anyway.

“That said, don’t die out there tonight. And don’t let your brothers die.”

The chopper rolled on, blasting through the spitting, shrieking darkness. Luke’s body swayed and bounced with the helicopter. Outside, there was flying dirt and grit all around them. They were going to be out there a few moments from now.

“If we catch these guys napping, we might have an easy time of this. They’re sure not expecting us tonight. I want to drop in, acquire the target inside ten minutes, and load back up within fifteen minutes.”

The chopper rocked and bucked. It fought to remain in the air.

Luke paused and took a breath.

“Do not hesitate! Seize the initiative and keep it. Push them and push them. Make them afraid. Do what comes naturally.”

This after just telling them to watch for children. He was sending mixed messages, he knew that. He had to get on script, but it was hard. A dark night, an insane dust storm, one chopper down before the mission even started, and a commanding officer who would not turn around.

A thought went through his mind, laser fast, so fast he almost didn’t recognize it.

Abort. Abort this mission.

He looked at the two lines of men. They looked back at him. The normal enthusiasm these guys would show was sorely lacking. A couple of sets of eyes glanced out the windows.

Sand was spraying against the helicopter. It was like the chopper was a submarine under water, except the water was made out of dust.

Luke could abort the mission. He could overrule Heath. These guys would follow him over Heath—they were his guys, not Heath’s. The payback would be hell, of course. Heath would come for him. Don would try to protect Luke.

But Don would be a civilian.

The charges would be insubordination at best, mutiny at worst. A court martial was practically guaranteed. Luke knew the precedents—a lunatic, suicidal order was not necessarily an unlawful order. He would lose any court martial case.

He was still staring at the men. They were still staring at him. He could see it in their eyes, or thought he could:

Call it off.

Luke shook that away.

He looked at Wayne. Wayne raised his eyebrows, gave a slight shrug.

Up to you.

“All right, boys,” Luke said. “Hit hard and fast tonight. No screwing around. We go in, we do our jobs, and we get right back out again. Trust me. This won’t hurt a bit.”

CHAPTER TWO

10:01 p.m. Afghanistan Time (1:01 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

Near the Pakistan Border

Kamdesh District

Nuristan Province, Afghanistan

“Go!” Luke shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”

Two thick ropes descended from the bay door of the chopper. Men dropped down them, then disappeared into the swirling dust. They could be a thousand feet in the air, or ten feet above the playground.

The wind howled. Biting sand and dirt sprayed in. Luke’s face was covered by a ventilator mask. He and Heath were the last ones out the door. Heath wore a similar mask—they looked like two survivors of a nuclear war.

Heath looked at Luke. His mouth moved beneath his mask.

“We’re gonna be legends, Stone!”

Luke hit the green START button on his stopwatch. This had better be quick.

He glanced below him. He couldn’t see a damn thing down there, or anywhere. It was all on faith. He went over the side and fell through bleak darkness. Two seconds later, maybe three, he touched down hard on the ground. The landing sent a shockwave up his legs.

He released the rope and looked around, trying to get his bearings.

Heath landed a second later.

Men in masks appeared out of the gloom. Martinez, Hendricks. Hendricks gestured behind him.

“There’s the wall!”

Something large loomed back there. Okay, that was the wall to the compound. A couple of dim lights shone on top of it.

Hendricks was saying something, but Luke couldn’t hear it.

“What?”

“They know!”

They know? Who? Knew what?

Above their heads, the sound of the chopper’s engines changed as it began to rise away. Suddenly, a bright light flashed from on top of the wall.

Something zipped by, screaming as it did.

Mortar.

“Incoming!” Luke screamed. “Incoming!”

All around him, vague shadows threw themselves to the ground.

Two more flashes of light launched.

Then another.

Then another.

How did they know?

In the black darkness of the sky, something exploded. It blew up in muted orange and red. In the sandstorm, the explosion sounded like the crackling of distant thunder. The chopper. It was hit.

From his vantage point on the ground, Luke watched it circle in the sky, an orange streak against the black. It looped toward the right, spinning now. Its engines screamed, and Luke thought he could hear the sound of its blades.

Whump. Whump. Whump. Whump.

It seemed to move in slow motion, sideways and down. It lit up the night like a tracer as it passed over the stone wall of the compound.

BOOOM!

It exploded on the other side of the wall, inside the compound. A fireball went up, two or three stories high. For an instant, Luke imagined it was all over. Chopper down, pilots dead. Support chopper inoperable. They were trapped here, and the Taliban seemed to have known they were coming.

But that helicopter just blew apart inside the compound.

Like a bomb.

And that might give them the initiative.

Several men in masks lay nearby.

Martinez, Hendricks, Colley, Simmons. His team.

Heath had to be around here somewhere.

“Up!” Luke shouted. “Up! Let’s go!”

He jumped to his feet, dragging the nearest person with him. In an instant, they were all up and running, a dozen men, moving fast. Night vision was useless. Lights were useless, and would draw fire. They simply ran in total, spinning darkness.

In ten seconds, they reached the wall. Luke guessed left, and moved that way, hugging the stone. Within a few seconds, he came to the opening. There was the chopper, an apocalypse. A few silhouettes ran in the light from the flames, pulling wounded away from it.

Luke didn’t hesitate. He ran through the opening, his MP5 out now. He gave them a burst from the gun, a blat of automatic fire. Now the silhouettes were running away, back toward another looming shadow, lights beckoning in the chaos.

The house.

His men were running with him.

Up ahead, the silhouettes of the retreating men sprinted up the small flight of stairs to the stone house. Luke sprinted up the stairs behind them.

Two men faced the doorway, pulling automatic weapons down from their shoulders. They wore the long beards and headwraps of the Taliban.

POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!

Luke fired without thinking about it. The two men fell.

Suddenly, there was an explosion behind him. He glanced back—it was impossible to see what was going on. He moved into the house. An instant later, four more men appeared next to him—his A-Team. They took up firing positions in the stone foyer, facing in toward the rest of the house.

They removed their ventilator masks simultaneously, almost as if they were one person. Martinez went to the downed Taliban and shot each one in the head. He didn’t touch either one of them.

“Dead!” he said.

It was quieter here.

“B-Team leader,” Luke said into his helmet mic. “Status?”

Heath came running into the house out of the darkness.

“B-Team leader…”

“We’re holding the front gate,” a voice said inside Luke’s helmet. It was Murphy. His Bronx accent was unmistakable. “Stone! This don’t look good. That was an ambush! They were waiting for us!”

“Just hold the gate, Murph. We’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

“You better hurry, man. Somebody knew we were coming. Won’t be long before there’s more of them, and I can’t see ten feet in front of my nose.”

Luke’s team had already moved further into the house. Heat went in right behind them.

“Hang in there. We’re inside.”

“Make it quick,” Murphy’s voice said. “I don’t know if we’re still going to be here.”

“Murphy! Hold that gate! We’ll be right out.”

“Aye, aye,” Murphy said.

Luke turned toward the darkened corridor.

Another man appeared—a big man in a white robe. He managed to reach his trigger, but he fired wildly. Luke kneeled, drew a bead on the man.

POP! A dark red circle appeared on his chest.

He seemed surprised, but then slid bonelessly to the floor.

Now Luke moved through the dark hallways, listening for sounds up ahead. He didn’t have to listen long.

BANG!

A flashbang went off, then another.

BANG!

There was shouting and gunfire up ahead. Luke moved slowly toward it, snaking along the wall. Now there were sounds behind him, out on the grounds—automatic fire and explosions.

Luke checked his stopwatch. They’d been on the ground for less than four minutes, and the whole mission was already FUBAR.

“Stone!”

Murphy’s voice again. “Trouble. Barbarians at the gates. I repeat: front gates under attack. Unfriendlies converging. Men down. Hastings down. Bailey down. We are falling back to the house.”

“Uh, negative, B-Team. Hold those gates!”

“There’s nothing to hold,” Murphy said. “They’re ripping it up! They got an anti-tank gun out there.”

“Hold it anyway. It’s our only way out of here.”

“Dammit, Stone!”

“Murphy! Hold those gates!”

Luke ran further into the house.

There was screaming just ahead of him. He ran through a doorway, crossed the threshold…

And came upon a scene of total chaos.

There were at least fifteen people in a large back room. The floors were covered in thick, overlapping carpets. The walls were hung with carpets—ornate, richly colored carpets depicting vast landscapes—deserts, mountains, jungles, waterfalls.

Simmons was dead. He lay on his back, his body splayed, his eyes open and staring. His helmet was off and a chunk of his head above the eyes was gone. Two women were also dead. A small child, a boy, was dead. Three men in robes and turbans were dead. It was a massacre in here. There were guns, and blood, all over the floor.

At the very back, near a closed door, a mass of people stood. A crowd of men in robes and turbans held children in front of them, and pointed rifles outward. Behind the men, another man lurked—he was hidden enough that Luke could barely see him.

He must be the target.

All around the chamber, Luke’s team crouched or kneeled, still as statues, their guns trained on the group, looking for a shot. Lieutenant Colonel Heath stood in the center of the room, his MP5 machine gun pointed into the crowd.

“Okay,” Luke said. “It’s okay. Nobody do any—”

“Drop those weapons!” Heath shouted in English. His eyes were wild. He was focused on one thing—getting that whale.

“Heath!” Luke said. “Relax. There’s children. We can—”

“I see the children, Stone.”

“So let’s just—”

Heath fired, a burst of full auto.

Instantly Luke hit the ground as gunfire broke out in all directions. He covered his head, curled into a ball, and turned his back to the action.

The shooting lasted several seconds. Even after it stopped, a few shots continued, one every few seconds, like the last of the popcorn popping. When it was finally over, Luke picked his head up. The knot of people by the closed door lay in a writhing pile.

Heath was down. Luke didn’t care about that. Heath was the cause of this nightmare.

Another of Luke’s men was down, over in the corner. God, what a mess. Three men down. An unknown number of civilians dead.

Luke climbed to his feet. Two other men stood at the same time. One was Martinez. The other was Colley. Martinez and Colley converged on the pile of people near the back, moving slowly, guns still drawn.

Luke glanced around the room. There were corpses everywhere. Simmons was dead. Heath… a large hole had been punched through his head where his face had been. The man had no face. Luke felt nothing about that. This was Heath’s mission. It had gone as wrong as possible. Now Heath was dead.

And one more man was down.

It seemed like a complicated math problem, but really, it was simple subtraction that anyone could do. Luke’s mind was not working correctly. He recognized that. Six men had come in here. Heath and Simmons were dead. Martinez, Colley, and Stone were still in the game. That meant the last man down could only be…

Luke ran to the man. Yes, it was. It was Hendricks. Wayne.

WAYNE.

He was still moving.

Luke kneeled by him and pulled off his helmet.

Wayne’s arms and legs were moving slowly, almost like he was treading water.

“Wayne! Wayne! Where are you hit?”

Wayne’s eyes rolled. They found Luke. He shook his head. He began to cry. He was breathing heavily, almost gasping for air.

“Oh, buddy…” Wayne said.

“Wayne! Talk to me.”

Feverishly, Luke began to unfasten Wayne’s ballistic vest.

“Medic!” he screamed. “Medic!”

An instant later, Colley was there, kneeling behind him. “Simpson was the medic. I’m the backup.”

Wayne was hit in the chest. Somehow shrapnel had gotten under his vest. Luke’s hands searched him. He was also shot high in the leg. That was worse than the chest, by a lot. His pants were saturated with blood. His femoral artery must be hit. Luke’s hand came away dripping red. There was blood everywhere. There was a lake of it under Wayne’s body. It was a miracle he was still alive.

“Tell Katie,” Wayne said.

“Shut up!” Luke said. “You’re going to tell her yourself.”

Wayne’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Tell her…”

Wayne seemed to be looking at something far away. He gazed, and then did a double take, as if confused by what he was seeing. An instant later, his eyes became still.

He stared at Luke. His mouth was slack. Nobody was home.

“Oh God, Wayne. No.”

Luke looked at Colley. It was as if he were seeing Colley for the first time. Colley looked young—like barely old enough to shave. That couldn’t be, of course. The man was in Delta Force. He was a trained killer. He was a consummate pro. But his neck looked about as thick as Luke’s forearm. He seemed to be swimming in his clothes.

“Check him,” Luke said, though he already knew what Colley would say. He fell back into a cross-legged position, and sat that way for a long moment. They had a day off during Ranger School one time. A bunch of guys held a pick-up game of football. It was a hot day, and the game was shirts versus skins. Luke spent the game throwing laser strikes to this big, thick, foul-mouthed redneck with a front tooth missing.

“Wayne.”

“He’s gone,” Colley said.

Just like that, Wayne was dead. Luke’s blood brother. The godfather of Luke’s unborn son. A long, helpless breath went out of Luke.

In war, Luke knew, that’s how it went. One second, your friend—or your sister, or your wife, or your child—was alive. The next second, they were gone. There was no way to turn back that clock, not even one second.

Wayne was dead. They were a long way from home. And this night was just getting started.

“Stone!” Martinez said.

Luke pulled himself to his feet once again. Martinez stood by the pile of corpses that had once protected the target. All of them appeared to be dead, all but one, the man who had stood at the back. He was tall, still youthful, with a long black beard speckled with a little gray. He lay among the fallen—shot full of holes, but alive.

Martinez pointed a pistol down at him.

“What’s the guy’s name? The one we’re looking for?”

“Abu Mustafa Faraj al-Jihadi?” Luke said. It wasn’t really a question. It wasn’t anything, just a string of syllables.

The man nodded. He didn’t say anything. He looked like he was in some pain.

Luke took a small digital camera from inside his vest. The camera was encased in hard rubber. You could bounce it off the floor and it wouldn’t break. He fidgeted with it for a second, and then took a few snaps of the man. He checked the images before he turned the camera off. They were fine—not exactly professional quality, but Luke didn’t work for National Geographic. All he needed was evidence. He looked down at the terrorist leader.

“Gotcha,” Luke said. “Thanks for playing.”

BANG!

Martinez fired once, and the man’s head came apart.

“Mission accomplished,” Martinez said. He shook his head and walked away.

Luke’s radio crackled.

“Stone! Where are you?”

“Murphy. What’s the status?”

Murphy’s voice cut in and out. “It’s a bloodbath out here. I lost three men. But we commandeered one of their big guns, and we cut an opening. If we want to get out of here, we need to go RIGHT NOW.”

“We’ll be out in a minute.”

“I wouldn’t take that long,” Murphy said. “Not if you want to live.”

* * *

Six men ran through the village.

After all that fighting, the place was like a ghost town. At any second, Luke was expecting gunshots or rockets to come screaming out of the tiny homes. But nothing happened. There didn’t even seem to be any people left here.

Back the way they had come, smoke rose. The walls of the compound were destroyed. The helicopter still burned, the flames crackling in the eerie quiet.

Luke could hear the heavy breathing of the other men, running uphill with gear and weapons. In ten minutes, they made it to the old forward operating base on the rocky hillside outside the village.

To Luke’s surprise, the place was okay. There were no supplies cached there, of course—but the sandbags were still in place, and the location gave a commanding view of the surrounding area. Luke could see lights on in the homes, and the chopper on fire.

“Martinez, see if you can raise Bagram on the radio. We need an extraction. Hide and seek is over. Tell them to send overwhelming force. We need to get back inside that compound and bring our men out.”

Martinez nodded. “I told you, man. Luck runs out for everybody.”

“Don’t tell me, Martinez. Just get us out of here, okay?”

“All right, Stone.”

It was a dark night. The sandstorm had passed. They still had weapons. Along the sandbagged rampart, his men were loading up ammo and checking gear.

It wasn’t out of the question that….

“Murphy, send a flare up,” he said. “I want to get a look at what we’re dealing with.”

“And give away our position?” Murphy said.

“I think they probably know where we are,” Luke said.

Murphy shrugged and popped one into the night.

The flare moved slowly across the sky, casting eerie shadows on the rocky terrain below. The ground almost appeared to be boiling. Luke stared and stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. There was so much activity down there, it was like an ant farm, or a swarm of rats.

It was men. Hundreds of men were methodically moving themselves, their gear, and their weapons into position.

“I guess you’re right,” Murphy said. “They know we’re here.”

Luke looked at Martinez.

“Martinez, what’s the status on that extraction?”

Martinez shook his head. “They say it’s a no go. Nothing but wicked sandstorms between base and here. Zero visibility. They can’t even put the choppers in the air. They say hold out till morning. The wind’s supposed to die down after sunrise.”

Luke stared at him. “They have to do better than that.”

Martinez shrugged. “They can’t. If the choppers won’t fly, the choppers won’t fly. I wish those storms had come in before we left.”

Luke stared out at the seething mass of Taliban on the hillsides below them. He turned back to Martinez.

Martinez opened his mouth as if to speak.

Luke pointed at him. “Don’t say it. Just get ready to fight.”

“I’m always ready to fight,” Martinez said.

The shooting started moments later.

* * *

Martinez was screaming.

“They’re coming through on all sides!”

His eyes were wide. His guns were gone. He had taken an AK-47 from a Taliban, and was bayoneting everyone who came over the wall. Luke watched him in horror. Martinez was an island, a small boat in a sea of Taliban fighters.

And he was going under. Then he was gone, under a pile.

They were just trying to live until daybreak, but the sun refused to rise. The ammunition had run out. It was cold, and Luke’s shirt was off. He had ripped it off in the heat of combat.

Turbaned, bearded Taliban fighters poured over the walls of the outpost. Men screamed all around him.

A man came over the wall with a metal hatchet.

Luke shot him in the face. The man lay dead against the sandbags. Now Luke had the hatchet. He waded into the fighters surrounding Martinez, swinging wildly. Blood spattered. He chopped at them, sliced them.

Martinez reappeared, back on his feet, stabbing with the bayonet.

Luke buried the hatchet in a man’s skull. It was deep. He couldn’t pull it out. Even with the adrenaline raging through his system, he didn’t have the strength left. He looked at Martinez.

“You okay?”

Martinez shrugged. He gestured at the bodies all around them. “I been better than this before. I’ll tell you that.”

There was an AK-47 at Luke’s feet. He picked it up and checked the magazine. Empty. Luke tossed it away and pulled his handgun. He fired down the trench—it was overrun with enemies. A line of them were running this way. More came sliding, falling, jumping over the wall.

Where were his guys? Was anyone else still alive?

He killed the closest man with a shot to the face. The head exploded like a cherry tomato. He grabbed the man by his tunic and held him up as a shield. The headless man was light—it was if the corpse was an empty suit of clothes.

He killed four men with four shots. He kept firing.

Then he was out of bullets. Again.

A Taliban charged with an AK-47, bayonet attached. Luke pushed the corpse at him, then threw his gun like a tomahawk. It bounced off the man’s head, distracting him for a second. Luke used that time. He stepped into the attack, sliding along the edge of the bayonet. He plunged two fingers deep into the man’s eyes, and pulled.

The man screamed. His hands went to his face. Now Luke had the AK. He bayoneted his enemy in the chest, two, three, four times. He pushed it in deep.