Marked Man (2 page)

…

Corporal Jordan Ross opened his eyes and discovered that he was upside down and in pain. The windshield of the Hum-V had shattered when the IED detonated. A piece of shrapnel that came in through the glass had taken half of Specialist Wilson’s face off. Corporal Ross strained and turned his body so he could get a look into the backseat. Lasko and Giacomini were gone as well.

Ross squinted through the hole in the windshield made by the shrapnel and examined the sky. Overcast, but bright. Judging from the sweat that was pooling beneath his body armor, at least he sincerely hoped it was sweat; it must have been one hundred and twelve degrees.

This was one of Charlie Company’s favorite diversions to pass the time during climate training. Nobody was allowed to look at a thermometer. They all chipped in ten bucks a piece and guessed the temperature going just by the weight of the sweat they carried around. Whoever guessed closest won the prize. Lasko had been the best at the game. Wilson liked to joke that Lasko had an unfair advantage seeing as he had no naturally occurring bodyweight of his own. Now, Ross reflected grimly, he really didn’t have any at all.

The
wide wheel of the Hum-V was scarred and jammed a good sixteen inches lower than it should have been. The impact must have reset the whole frame. Corporal Ross struggled to unshackle his legs from the tight alley between his seat and the wheel. Slowly, they started sliding out. He was almost free when a high whistle blew past his ear.

By the sound of it the bullet was a 7.62. Someone was firing at him, and considering the target, someone had atrocious judgment. It was absurd, going for a headshot when he was pinned inside the cockpit of a
n upside down vehicle. How on earth these people had given them so much trouble for so many years was beyond him.

Corporal Ross reached
over and grabbed the M4 from out of Wilson’s lap. Where his own weapon had gone off too he could not say. The suddenness of an IED explosion had a particularly disorienting effect. As he loaded the M4, Ross bobbed his head from side to side, partially to seek out the shooter and partially to make for a harder target. With any luck the poseur sniper had time for only one more shot…

Another whistle screamed by overhead and rattled around in the undercarriage of the vehicle. Corporal Ross followed the sound to a rooftop at 2:00. A man in a turban and a long brown robe was aiming what looked like an AK-47 at the Hum-V. Ross thumbed the safety, lined up the sights, and squeezed the trigger. A three shot burst
through the windshield and hit the widest part of the robe, sending the man tumbling back from the edge of the roof. Ross did not move the sight and never took his eye off the last place he was standing. Snipers worked in pairs. Thousands of miles, cultural barriers, and religious differences could separate people, but everywhere in the world, snipers worked in pairs. Corporal Ross found it strangely life affirming that the terrorists were no exception. Five seconds later the sniper’s partner appeared with the same gun and another burst dropped him. Just in case Ross waited thirty seconds for a third member of the team, but when none materialized he returned his attention to escaping the vehicle.

Ross clicked the safety on and hammered at the driver’s side window. After a few hits with the butt of the rifle, the glass caved in and Ross crawled outside into the dry Mesopotamian heat.

They called this street Pizza Hut Boulevard. Naturally it had a different, Arabic name, and as a green beret he spoke fluent Arabic and knew it by heart. The problem was that SF still had to communicate with the rest of the knuckleheads who had renamed all of the major avenues after fast food franchises.

Pizza Hut Boulevard was a busy stretch of markets and street vendors that sold good kabob, Persian rugs, hashish and coffee; one of the bigger commercial hubs in town. At least it had been until the detonation, which had turned the intersection of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell into a smoking crater. Everywhere, shards of broken glass reflected the
sunlight. All of the vendors, customers, and pedestrians had disappeared. Sporadic bursts of gunfire echoed from virtually every direction.

Corporal Ross climbed free of the wreckage
and took cover behind a pillar, pockmarked with bullet holes. He flipped through the stations on his walkie-talkie and tried to establish communication with his base.

“Command? This is Ross. Are you receiving this?”

Only a persistent hissing static answered him.

“This is Charlie Company strike force two. Does anybody copy?”

The same white noise was playing on every channel. With a curse, Corporal Ross stuffed the radio away and crouched into a squatting position. Without a link to base he had no way of knowing if the Hum-V had simply driven over the wrong piece of road at the wrong time or if their cover was entirely blown. If the IED was a coincidence, there was still a chance he could pull off the mission. There was only one man to grab, after all. But if someone knew they were coming Al-Shahari would be surrounded by a dozen bodyguards, all with equally poor aim to be sure but not even the legendary Corporal Ross could pull that off alone.

Ross tongued a grain of sand in the back of his mouth by his molars and spit it out. Somewhere nearby
a woman with a hoarse smoker’s voice was shouting the old Soviet motto “workers of the world unite” in Arabic for heaven only knew what reason. Not for the first time Ross reflected that the heat must have gotten to everyone in this part of the world’s head and he wondered why we couldn’t just get out and stay out once and for all. Speaking of the heat, Ross realized that since escaping the Hum-V the temperature had dropped twenty five degrees. There must have been a fire in the back of the vehicle somewhere. Corporal Ross peaked out from behind the pillar to take a look, but the Hum-V was not burning.

Overhead the sky had turned abruptly from overcast and bright to deep gray, threatening heavy rain. The sun behind the clouds was changing to a sickly green. Nothing here was making any sense, even for Iraq.

Ross was about to abandon the mission when a barrage of small caliber shells rattled the pillar just inches over his head. The plaster crumbled down onto his helmet and fell into his eyes. Blindly, Ross waved the M4 at the opposite end of the street and fired a controlled burst. Wiping at his eyes, Ross pushed himself to his feet and started running north on Pizza Hut, turning occasionally to squeeze off a round.

The compound
Al-Shahari called home was in the same direction, but all of Corporal Ross’s instincts were telling him to run the other way, even though that’s where the fire was coming from. Dozens of small arms and assault rifles were singing together, urging him on to run faster. After sprinting fifty yards Ross took cover again next to a four-door Sedan parked on the east side of the street. Its tires had been shot out. Ross saw a tall shadow creeping up in his peripheral vision. He counted to three, lurched up and around, fired once, and shrank back down into a crouch. The tall shadow dropped its weapon and tumbled into the street, its white robes turning crimson.

“That
was a fucking hall of fame shot,” Corporal Ross bragged to no one in particular. Specialist Wilson was the second best marksman in the unit and could appreciate a shot like that. Only Wilson had no face and he was sleeping upside down in a Hum-V at the bottom of a crater.

A mortar exploded in the center of the street a few dozen yards back. Clumps of hot sand rained down on Corporal Ross and for a few moments he went deaf. When his hearing came back it sounded like every gun in the region was trained on his position. Shots blistered the small Sedan fro
m everywhere, shredding the sky blue metal like a cheese grader. Somehow an entire army of heavily-armed and well-studied Islamist marksmen had materialized out of nowhere.

Corporal Ross felt the Sedan buckling beneath the weight of all that led and he had no choice but to flee for his life. He swung the M4 around in an arc and fired a few bursts aimed at the rooftops, then took off running away from the south part of Pizza Hut where the mortar round had come from.

By some unhappy happenstance Ross found himself out of breath and low on ammo at the entrance to the Al Shahari compound. Corporal Ross paused and considered the options. On the other side of the door there could be a trap just waiting to be sprung, that was a distinct possibility. And yet if he lingered outside for another minute he would be cut down by a hail of .762s guaranteed. The choice was not so difficult after all.

Ross made a Hail Mary motion with his hands, which he was surprised to find trembling. Even in the thick of a battle, his hands never shook like that. This was not fear. It was genuinely cold. Ross blew on his hands to warm them and slung the M4 over his back. He filled his left hand with
his side arm and his right hand with his Yarborough knife and then he kicked the door in.

The foyer
of the compound opened into a wide, dome structure. An impressive marble fountain in the middle of the room pumped chlorinated water into a circular pool, its floor dotted with rupees, dinars and quarters. Miraculously, the place seemed deserted. Outside the echo of gunfire had ceased. Corporal Ross swung his side arm over every inch of the room and found nobody hiding. An ancient looking polished stone staircase wound up and around the dome, leading to upper levels. From the briefing Ross knew that Al-Shahari had likely barricaded himself in a bedroom on the second floor.

Corporal Ross
brought his boot up to the first step and was shocked at how little noise it made. Then again, his senses could have been playing tricks on him. He easily could have lost half his hearing in that cacophony, and there was no way the temperature could have dropped so rapidly. Clearly something was amiss with his body, but Ross had neither the time nor the gumption to check for potentially fatal wounds.

The st
airs looped lazily in a spiral, ever upward, ever tighter. After four times hiking up around the fountain, Ross found a landing with a pair of doors. The first was locked. The second doorknob gave in, screwing aside and opening the way into a dark hall. He cracked the opening just far enough so he could see in.

A short man in a white turban and a black robe had his back turned to the doorway. Based on the intelligence, this had to be el-
Balavi, trusted courier and bodyguard for his boss. He wore the same tunic and turban combo in every single surveillance photo they had gathered over the months. Ross knew that el-Balavi would likely be the last line of defense, and if he could get past him the target was virtually his.

Corporal Ross
tucked away his side arm as quietly as he could manage. Before making his move, he whispered the old Special Forces motto and mantra.

“De
oppresso liber.”

Ross slid the door open and caught el-
Balavi before he could turn around, slashing the Yarborough through his throat in one clean stroke and painting a Nike swoosh of red on the taupe wallpaper. The body dropped to the floor with a muffled thud. After checking to make sure there was no pulse, Corporal Ross sheathed the sticky knife and took out the sidearm again. He aimed straight and walked forward through the hallway.

From all the reports the drones indicated that the room was the third on the right. More than once they had photographed Al-
Shahari at the window, clad in nothing but boxers and a long shaggy beard, blowing cigar smoke outside.

Corporal Ross slunk past the first
door, inching along with his back to the wall. In the middle of the hall a window opened out with a view onto Pizza Hut Boulevard. It took a moment for his mind to process what he saw. A torrential downpour had started since he broke into the compound. Only it was not rain, but bullets. Bullets were falling from the sky, of every make and caliber on the planet. They rang when they hit the corrugated tin roof then bounced off or rolled down into the rain gutters, which were sagging. Below the terrace floor was covered in bullets. The fountain was overflowing with them. Slowly the reality of the situation dawned on Corporal Ross.

“I have to be dreaming.”

Dreaming or not, he wanted to complete the assignment. Al-Shahari was not going to escape the green berets, not in his subconscious, not anywhere.

Corporal Ross left the window and strode over to the final doorway at the end of the hall. The door opened of its own accord. Suddenly anxious, Ross stepped inside and su
rveyed the scene. At the end of a long table an enormous white goat was seated in a luxurious looking sofa chair. It was wearing a military uniform, decorated with medals, insignias and honors. The goat’s horns stretched in a crooked spiral four feet over its head and its hoofs were drawn together like they were hands collected in prayer. Outside the torrential rain of bullets echoing off every surface was growing louder, almost deafening. The goat’s eyes were yellow with burning red irises, and they were gazing at Corporal Ross closely, with an alien intensity that made him shiver. The goat raised its left hoof in salute.

Jordan Ross gasped and woke up.

He was still upside down and still in considerable pain, but at least the giant goat and the terrorist snipers were gone. He was back in Brooklyn in an overturned station wagon. Through the spider-web cracked windshield, Jordan eyes were drawn to a glowing headlight across the street. A black sports utility vehicle was idling on the curb. It looked like it might be a Cadillac Escalade but it was impossible to tell with the front grill and the logo crushed in so badly. One of the headlights was busted, and the mirror on the right side was hanging by a cord.