Cold Shot (2 page)

“Roger that,” the pilot radioed back. The AH-6 Little Bird dove toward the town’s edge.

“Contact!” someone called out over the radio. “Vehicle approaching northwest—”

Jon heard the screeching of tires. A pickup roared around the northwest corner. “Down!” he yelled to Marisa. The woman fell prone next to him on the roof and covered her head with her hands.

The Ranger standing in the back of the Humvee swung his M240 and fired, bullets ripping into the approaching bomb. The truck driver was torn apart by the stream of lead, blood and brains flying inside the vehicle, his body slumping forward, but the truck kept coming. It slammed into the Hummer, knocking it sideways, then disappearing into a fireball that rose far above the rooftop where Jon and Marisa sat. The entire building shook under them and Jonathan thought for a moment it might cave in and drop them onto the street.

Sixty seconds, four dead.
Jon was surprised to find his brain tracking the numbers.

More gunfire from below, the Rangers firing down alleyways at targets Jonathan couldn’t see. Dirt was kicking up in columns large and small from mortars and bullets, soldiers moving to shelter, firing back in every direction. Muzzle flashes erupted from the windows of the nearby houses. All of the shooters were inside the buildings, firing out, none exposed on the roofs where Jon or the Little Bird could get open shots.

Kill box. We’re in a kill box.

Marisa emptied her rifle at some window. She pulled another magazine out of Jonathan’s vest, ejected the empty and replaced it, racked the slide, and went back to business. “Jon, nine o’clock, two uglies tossing grenades down on the guys,” Marisa said. “Hunkered down on the roof. I can’t get ’em and I’m wasting your ammo trying.”

Jonathan shifted his weapon, saw no one. A concrete porch jutted out from a second-story door above a butcher’s shop, with a cinder-block wall three feet high for a rail. A hand reached over and tossed a grenade into the street. It went off, hurting no one. It would be another shot less than a hundred yards. Jon watched the spot, waiting for them to stick a head up, but they refused him the courtesy. Another hand reached over, blindly tossing a grenade, this one landing on the other side of the car sheltering a pair of Rangers taking cover from the mortars. The grenade went off, blowing out windows and tires.

One of the Rangers in the street raised up from behind a parked car, raised his rifle to his shoulder to fire at some target Jon didn’t see, then jerked, spun, and fell on his face. One of his fellows reached out, took him by the grab handle on his vest, and pulled him out of the open.

“Man down! Medic! MEDIC!”

Jon cursed, aimed the Barrett at the porch, judged the target by memory, and pulled the trigger. The .50 round covered the distance and smashed through the cinder block. He saw no impact, but blood sprayed against the porch door. The dead man’s partner figured out that the wall was no shield, jumped up, and began firing an AK-47 wildly. Marisa raised up onto one knee, hosed down the porch with her HK, three of her shots hitting the man in the stomach, and he fell over the wall into the street.

Another mortar shell hit the roof, this time eighty feet left, and the shock wave knocked them flat again. “Time to be going,” Jon told her. “They’ve got our number.” He pushed himself up to a crouch. He shouldered his pack, grabbed both the Barrett and Marisa’s hand, and dragged her toward the side stairwell.

•    •    •

Bullets were hitting the parapets now. Someone hadn’t liked his work with the Barrett.

“Get off the roof, Mari,” someone called out on the radio. “We’re bugging out.”

“We have two dead up here—” she answered.

“Not your problem,” the radio told her. “Four Blackhawks inbound, they’ll clean this place out and the Rangers will recover them. We need you to fall back.”

“Roger that,” Marisa said, her response automatic. “See you at the MRAP.”

“If you’re late, you’re humping it out on foot.”

Jon reached the stairwell and stuck his head over. Insurgents were turkey-peeking around the far corner of the alley. He pulled his head back as one of the Iraqis jumped out and opened up, lead smacking off the stone stairs. “Can’t go down that way,” he told Marisa.

“Five stories up,” she noted. “Can’t jump over the side.”

Jon pointed to a mortar hole in the ceiling. They ran over, looked down, and saw no one. Jon drew his sidearm and went down into the hole, his Glock 17 in his gloved hands.

The room was empty. “Clear,” he called out. Marisa sat on the hole’s edge and let Jon help her lower herself down from the roof, her khaki boots kicking up dust on the floor as she landed. Jon moved to a nearby doorway, pistol raised. Marisa put her HK to her shoulder, following behind.

He kicked the door open, leaned out far enough to scan the hall, then stepped out of the room. He turned left, the Glock at eye level. Marisa came out behind him, sweeping the hallway behind. A stairwell was visible at the hallway’s far end. Smoke was starting to fill the corridor now, coming from whatever room the first mortar round had taken out.
Gotta get downstairs before we can’t see.

They were almost to the stairs when someone yelled in Arabic behind them. Marisa’s HK went off, a three-round burst, then another. Someone screamed in agony and the yelling turned to constant shouts. Jon pulled Marisa around the corner at the hallway’s end a half second before someone sent their own burst of gunfire toward them from the other end.

“Go!” Jon yelled. He moved to the stairs, covered the hall, Glock up and firing, while Marisa took the stairs down by threes.

No one met her at the bottom. “Clear!” she yelled. Jon followed her down and circled around to the next flight downward, Marisa covering the hallway on that floor. They moved through the hallways and down the staircases, covering each other as they moved for the building lobby that opened halfway down.

The entrance was wrecked, glass in chunks everywhere that their boots crushed into smaller shards as they moved for the door.

“Cover the hall,” he ordered. Marisa took position by the entryway to the corridor, her rifle pointed at the black-and-white-tiled floor. Jon reached the front door. Windows framed the wooden entrance on each side, the glass smashed out. Jon tried to scan their position but the small spaces restricted his vision too much. He turned to the door, stood to the side and opened it, checking the street.

Another mortar shell took out a storefront up the street; the crack of guns was almost constant now, and yells and screams could still be heard from a distance he could judge over the other sounds. He’d fired enough AK-47s in training and knew the sound. There were far more of those going off than the M4s his unit carried.

“MRAP, this is Mills, holding position inside the front door, down five stories under the sniper nest,” Marisa called out on the radio. “Any chance we can get a pickup?”

“Roger that.”

The next minute took a quick eternity to pass before Jon heard an engine roar and the massive armored carrier rumbled around the corner, drawing fire. The turret gunner riding on the back swung his weapon and poured lead into a nearby house. The vehicle stopped in front of Jon’s position, parked on the dirty sidewalk angled against the direction of the hostile fire, and the rear door opened almost into the building.

“Mari!” Jon yelled. “You coming or staying?”

The woman cursed and ran for the door. He covered the rear hallway with his pistol as she raced past him and leaped inside the armored vehicle. Arms reached out to grab her and they pulled her into the dark confines of the truck. Jon followed behind, unslinging his Barrett and handing it to the first set of hands he saw. He holstered his Glock, then pulled himself inside and jumped into the cramped space. Rangers were everywhere, almost no room to breathe. Another Ranger inside slammed the rear door and threw the handle, locking it shut. Bullets snapped against the metal door and the top gunner returned fire round for round.

“Go! Go! Go!”

The driver shifted gears and stomped the pedal. The MRAP moved with a jerk, tossing everyone toward the back. Jon caught Marisa, saving her from cracking her head on the rear door. “Watch the hands, boy,” she muttered.

Jon’s answer was cut off by the sound of the machine gunner above yelling something no one could hear over the sound of the big weapon firing. The driver was cursing Iraqis in ways that suggested he should’ve joined the Navy instead. The MRAP picked up speed, then pitched off axis as something exploded nearby. The driver straightened it out, shifted a gear, and let the monster truck have all the gas it wanted.

“You okay?” Jon asked. Marisa was still pushed up against him. She made no effort to extricate herself.

“Still here,” she replied. “Everything’s attached.”

“That’s something.” Jon slumped back against the rear metal door, his hands trembling hard, and he closed his eyes.

“Jon? Are you okay?” Marisa knelt down beside him. The man was pressing his hands hard against his eyes and his whole body was shaking. “Are you shot?” she asked, panic creeping into her voice.

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

Behind closed eyes, Jon saw an insurgent’s head come apart, Iraqi sunlight shining through the hole in another man’s chest. “I see it . . . I can’t stop seeing it.”

He knew that he would be seeing it for a very long time.

TWELVE YEARS LATER

MV
Markarid

The Gulf of Aden

Rappelling onto the ship was a terrible risk.

The enemy surely was carrying rocket-propelled grenades that could knock a helicopter from the sky and the entire team would die either in a fireball or in the water. But there is no good way to board a hostile ship on the open sea save to come alongside with grapnels or caving ladders and climb aboard. It was night and a rare squall cut the visibility across the waves, but the enemy might hear an outboard motor and the operation would then become an assault on an elevated, fortified position. The enemy would be crouched behind metal rails, shooting AK-47s down at men trying to climb wet ropes with no cover.

Rappelling was the only option.

The enemy was not completely foolish. Lookouts stood fore and aft, but the man keeping watch on the foredeck was half asleep, smoking cigarettes to stay awake, and couldn’t see more than fifty feet out into the ocean. There was no moon and the
Markarid
’s own deck lights didn’t illuminate far in the rain. The rush of the bow through the water muffled the sound of the Bell 214 helicopter until it was close enough.

A single round from an Austrian Steyr .50 rifle punched through the lookout’s chest and buried itself in the deck, and the pirate went down without a sound.

The first four men dropped their rope bags out the door, pushed out of the cabin, and fast-roped to the deck. There was movement on the deck aft of their landing zone. The enemy had spotted them now and panicked Somalis were rushing around the bridge. A hostile rushed out from the ship’s island carrying a long tube and lifted it to his shoulder. The Bell’s door gunner saw him, swiveled his GAU-16 toward the man and opened fire. Ten .50 rounds hit the target and spun him sideways, spraying blood. The pirate’s dying reflex was to press the RPG-7’s trigger. The warhead fired down at the deck, then ricocheted off at a flat angle. It flew wildly in a crazy arc until it struck a cargo container and exploded, blowing bits of other men into the sea and onto the bulkheads.

The sniper saw it through his Steyr’s scope and cursed. The fireball left a burning hole in the deck with smoke rolling off into the wet air. There were no other ships within visual range in this storm and the rain would quickly snuff the fire, but satellites could see such things and this mission was covert.

The second four-man stick slid down to join their brothers and the sniper followed. He unhooked his harness, pulled the Steyr over his shoulder, then waved. The door gunner released the ropes, then yelled to the pilot, who made the helicopter a moving target again, flying slowly along the starboard side toward the cargo ship’s stern.

The sniper knelt on the roof of a cargo container and extended the bipod under his rifle. The other men raised their carbines and moved aft.

One of the braver pirates stood from behind the rail, shouldered his rifle and fired, hitting nothing, then yelled and waved at other men, trying to direct them forward. The sniper put the crosshairs on the man’s chest. It wasn’t a long shot—the
Markarid
was only 199 meters long. The Steyr’s barrel erupted and the .50 round took out much of the target’s chest when it passed through his center mass.

The pirates were in a panic now. They’d seen men go down in one gory spray after another, which left most of them afraid to stick their heads up. One raised his AK above the metal rail and pulled the trigger, firing blind and waving the gun in the general direction where he thought the soldiers were. The gun kicked high and most of the bullets landed somewhere in the Gulf.

The sniper reached for another bullet tucked into his vest, an armor-piercing round. The Steyr was a single-shot, bolt-action rifle, which forced the sniper to reload each round by hand. He slid the black-tipped slug into the ejection port and pushed the bolt forward. He stared through the Leupold Ultra M3A scope mounted on the Picatinny rail above the Steyr barrel.

The pirate hiding behind the rail raised his AK again and began waving it over the railing as he fired. The Steyr roared, the bullet punched through the metal barrier, and the sniper saw the pirate’s blood paint the bulkhead behind in a red spray.

The assault teams reached the superstructure. Now they would have to shift to urban warfare tactics. The ship was the length of a skyscraper and full of narrow passageways, metal doors, and hatchways—countless places to hide and barricade and ambush. They would control the bridge in a few minutes, but clearing the ship would take much longer.

Time to abandon the Steyr. The sniper had his own MPT-9. He checked the carbine and started to move forward. It took him more than a minute to reach the strike teams waiting for him at the superstructure.

Sargord (Major) Heidar Elham of Iran’s Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution took the lead position, raised his rifle to eye level, nudged open the hatch, and stepped inside.

•    •    •

Elham stomped up rusting metal stairs that swayed slightly under his feet. The vessel struck a hard wave and the soldier’s stomach twinged a bit. Drugs alone were keeping his dinner down and he wondered why Allah would leave it to the Great Satan to invent something so useful as Dramamine.

Elham loosened the strap on his carbine, which hung vertically in front, his right hand resting on the pistol grip. He pulled his balaclava off his head and stuffed it into one of the pockets on his vest, which was already heavy with his radio and other kit. The humidity in the Gulf of Aden held the heat like a sponge and he thought about pulling his gloves off, but decided against it. It was dark, pitching ships had an infinite number of exposed metal surfaces, corrosion was everywhere on this one, and he had no desire to risk tetanus.

The sound of gunfire ripped the air behind him, echoing up from belowdecks through some open hatch closer to the ship’s bow. Elham didn’t flinch. He knew the sound of his own men’s weapons.

Pirates were vicious people, but they had no training, no coordination, no organized tactics. Like all bullies, the pirates had been terrified to face someone more capable than themselves. It had been the slaughter he’d expected and Elham was fine with that. Now his men were clearing compartments, looking for cowards hiding under some bunk or inside some locker or cargo container. His own team had taken no casualties beyond a sprained ankle when one of his men had lost his footing on a ladder trying to reach cover.

Elham reached the top of the ladder and found three of his men smoking Russian cigarettes. It was a foul habit for a soldier, Elham thought. A man who tried to stay in shape for ten-kilometer forced marches and then smoked to relax was a fool, though he kept such thoughts to himself. He kept his disapproval to a short look and a grunt.

“Is he aboard?” Elham asked.
Maybe he changed his mind,
the soldier thought.
Maybe he won’t come—

“Inside,” one of the men answered. “He arrived ten minutes ago, while you were below.”

Elham gritted his teeth, then pushed open the metal door and stepped through onto the bridge.

Eight Somali pirates were kneeling on the floor in a circle facing inward, hands behind their heads. Most were teenagers, maybe in their early twenties at the oldest. He knew their type, arrogant and cruel as long as they were the only ones with guns. They weren’t arrogant now and they’d had no practice at hiding their fear.

The bridge reeked of blood and
khat,
the foul weed that these Somali pirates chewed. They’d had two days’ control of the ship during which to spit their juice all over the floor. Whether the blood belonged to any of the other pirates or to the missing crew, Elham didn’t know yet. Somali pirate crews had general orders from their warlord patrons not to kill hostages needlessly, but they weren’t always faithful to them and
Markarid
’s captain had been under specific orders not to surrender the ship.

Another burst of gunfire sounded from the deck, then a pair of screams erupted somewhere behind one of the deck cranes. His men fired again and the screaming stopped short. Ammunition was held cheap tonight.

Elham looked to the pirates and studied their reactions as they heard the violent deaths of their comrades. None of them soiled their pants, which surprised him. Several probably had done so earlier, before being brought to the bridge.

He was not here for them. Elham turned to the forward windows, through which he could see the entire forward deck of the ship. A man stood by the helm, midfifties, slim, gray throughout his beard. Hossein Ahmadi clearly was not a soldier. Both his clothing and his physique confirmed that. The man was smoking his own Russian cigarette and Elham knew where his men had gotten their supply.

“Dr. Ahmadi.”

“Are we secure?” Ahmadi took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke through his nose. Only then did he turn to face Elham.

“Secure enough.”

“What was their course?” Ahmadi asked, nodding his head slightly toward the prisoners.

“Bound for Eyl.”

“Of course.” Eyl was the major pirate haven on Somali’s eastern coast. Dozens of seized vessels and a few hundred hostages were held there at any given time. Ahmadi turned and stared out the windows down at the smoldering hole in the middeck just forward of the conning tower. “And that?”

“A thermobaric round fired from an RPG. Several of the TBG-7V warheads were missing from the cargo hold. We recovered all but one.”

Another drag of the cigarette. “How do you find the crew?”

“I find them not well. Eight dead and another six wounded. Fifteen more safe, but suffering from dehydration and contusions. We’ve moved them to the galley for treatment. This scum”—Elham nudged a pirate’s head with the barrel of his rifle—“pitched the dead over the side and locked the survivors in the galley. I’ve ordered a second sweep to be sure, but I think we’ve found all of the crew that we’re going to find.”

“And the captain?” Ahmadi asked.

“Dead.”

Ahmadi said nothing for almost a minute as he sucked the cigarette down to the nub. “He was the son of a dear friend,” his voice almost flat. “And the pirates?”

“Besides this rabble there were twelve belowdecks. We executed eleven. Their remains are lined up on the deck for your inspection.”

Ahmade frowned. “Only eleven?”

“The twelfth was the leader.” Elham turned and shouted an order. Two members of his team maneuvered their way through the entry onto the bridge carrying another Somali by his armpits. They dropped him in a shivering heap onto the deck, where he groaned for a second, then started whimpering.

Ahmadi knelt by the man. “He found the cargo?” he asked.

Elham turned his head and looked out the forward windows. He’d known that question was coming and wished he could lie about the answer, but doing that would stop nothing in the long run. Perhaps it would have bought him time to get away from this mission but he’d never been one to avoid his duty. “One container breached in the forward hold,” Elham said.

Ahmadi hissed through his teeth. “This one went through it.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. One squad discovered the damage while searching the hold for pirates.”

“How did he breach the casings?” Ahmadi asked, furious.

“It seems that he used some of the other equipment we had stored below.” Elham shifted his rifle in his hands and stared down at the captives kneeling on the deck. “Your orders?”

Ahmadi stood and looked around at his men. “Clear the bridge of this garbage and seal the hold. Change course, heading one-eight-five until further notice.”

“We’re not going home?” Elham asked. His surprise was an act. “We should return for a proper crew—”

“You know what this vessel carries?”

“Not precisely,” Elham admitted. “But I know who you are, so I can guess.”

“Then you know that there is too much invested here,” Ahmadi answered. “Sargord, take charge of the ship and proceed on course to the destination port, best possible speed.”

You mean
you
have too much invested,
Elham thought.
You were stupid to send this ship and crew out so lightly armed.
This entire operation was a gamble not worth taking in his view, but he kept the thought to himself. Ahmadi was a connected man—connected at Tehran’s highest levels—and crossing him would be unwise.

Ahmadi turned to the windows and stared out over the massive vessel. “Can you repair that?” he asked, pointing at the smoking hole in the deck.

“No,” Elham told him. “Even if we had the engineers, we don’t have the equipment or materials needed to fix something of that size.”

“Hide it, then,” Ahmadi ordered. “Cover it with something.”

“Someone might see it before we can finish the job. Their satellites might have already spotted it,” Elham protested. “We should—”

“Don’t presume to tell me what we should do,” Ahmadi said, cutting the major off.

Elham paused and thought carefully about his answer. “Very well. And them?” He nodded toward the Somalis.

Ahmadi stared at the captives for a few seconds, then shrugged. “We are fortunate that the security of the operation and justice demand the same thing, so let justice be done.” Then he nodded at the pirate curled up on the floor. “Except that one. A commanding officer is responsible for the actions of his men, is he not?”

“Always,” Elham agreed.

“Then we will leave that one to Allah.”

Foolishness,
Elham thought. Rumors were that Ahmadi was not a religious man. Elham had no problem believing that. He had seen Ahmadi’s kind before. No matter. Elham wasn’t an overly religious man himself, but in this case he was perfectly ready to accept God’s judgment. These pirates had killed his countrymen. Mercy was for the merciful. Christians had that much right at least.

USS
Vicksburg
(CG-69)

Combined Task Force 150

The Gulf of Aden

Red sky at morning . . .

Captain “Dutch” Riley had always paid attention to that old adage. It wasn’t true for every sea in the world, but old wisdom survived for a reason and technology didn’t change a sailor’s job as much as junior officers liked to think. A few hundred generations of sailors had lacked any better way to forecast storms than staring at the sky and Riley wondered which captain had finally cracked the weather code. Whoever that man was, he’d stood on the deck of his wooden vessel morning after morning, maybe for years, staring at the horizon until something clicked in his head. That was the key. Man had spent enough time connecting with the sea and sky around him to finally understand how his world worked. The sea was always trying to talk, but too many sailors weren’t listening anymore.