The Pressure of Darkness (2 page)

Burke seems satisfied. "So we fuck with him instead."

"Exactly," Top replies. "Now check out the photograph. Memorize it, because you will only have a few minutes to locate the target."

Doc looks, whistles. "Mamma, he ugly. That there is one bad-skinned, limp-dicked, towel-head fuckin' sorry-assed motherfucker."

More laughter. Burke blows him a fish-mouthed kiss. "I love it when you talk dirty."

"The other photographs are of the terrorist compound. Satellite photos show it nearly empty at the moment, with most of the cadre near the border with Somalia, but there are bound to be some top-notch ragtops there to guard Dahoumed. So keep your shit wired tight at all times, ladies. I don't want anybody hurt."

"How big around is this place?"

"Figures are on the back. Be advised that the compound itself is a couple of football fields long, with a shitload of obstacle courses and some empty buildings used as a firing range, but we're only going in at the southern point, where Dahoumed's quarters are located."

"What about the bird?" Jack Burke.

"He stays airborne the whole time," Top answers. "We haul ass and rope down a little over a mile away. The bird will circle to the west to distract the guards."

"Time in the dirt?"

"Fifteen minutes," Top leans down and uses his foot to indicate a rock face featured in one of the photographs. "We scramble up that face and jog up the back way, across that flat plain."

Burke whistles. "Top, if some asshole turns on a floodlight or something, we're sitting ducks."

"If we rope down fast enough, it will seem like we never stopped."

"Yeah, if the bird does its job."

"It will. You just shut up and do as you're told."

Doc moans in mock terror. "If'n you say so, Boss."

"Now hear me carefully on this, in case you ever have to testify as to your orders." Top comically rolls his eyes and holds up crossed fingers. "We are to enter the compound unseen, using stealth, and then make 'every reasonable effort' to take this man alive. We can, however, fire to defend ourselves if attacked. Are we all clear on that point?"

"Clear."

Burke looks up. "What was that, sir?"

"Huh?"

He locks and loads his modified M-249. "Why, I do believe we just got attacked. Top, did somebody fire upon my sorry ass?"

"You may want to wait until our boots hit the dirt," Top says, dryly. "But, yeah. Consider yourselves attacked. Once we enter that compound, we will all notice small arms fire coming from the village. We will then be forced to defend ourselves."

"And, sadly, Mr. Dahoumed will not survive the extraction effort," says Cary Ryan, the spook. "This despite all of your best efforts to capture him alive. Clear?"

"Clear."

Top checks his watch. "Like I said, memorize that layout and the face of our man. Then make sure every thing that rattles or clanks is taped down. When we run, I want this chalk as quiet as a nun farting in church." He yawns theatrically, then releases the hanging strap and drops to his knees on the metal flooring. "Look, we've only got another hour or so before the shit hits the fan. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. I'm going to get some more snoring done."

Top rolls over onto his left side. He closes his eyes. He is showing his men that he is cool, relaxed. In fact his stomach is shaking, his palms are wet. Top has a bad feeling on this one. He does not trust Intel, he does not like working with such a small team. Something doesn't feel right.

To his surprise, he falls asleep anyway.

Thirty minutes, twenty, ten . . .

The men on their feet, lined up perfectly. Doc, Top, Burke, and Bowden all slam their clenched fists together and call out, "Brothers!"

"Brothers!" Cary Ryan flashes a wry grin. He slaps them each on the back as they go by. The observer sends them off with a throaty: "Go! Go!"

The Black Hawk is hovering, the pilot holding the bird as steady as possible; the massive rotor blades start whipping the sand below into dense clouds. Scotty is out onto the rope and snaking down rapidly; he's twirling in the prop wash, then down on the ground. He trots north to the edge of the dry clearing and goes flat, weapon at the ready, night-vision goggles turning the desert an ominous green. Doc follows him, most ricky tic, his light frame taking him straight down the rope to the sand in one smooth motion. He trots south, flattens with a weapon at the ready. Then comes Burke, whose upper body strength carries him down the rope effortlessly. He drops and hits and heads east. Top follows and takes the west. The bird moves on, as ordered, and the clearing becomes quiet.

The insertion has taken less than fifteen seconds. Top raises a hand and two fingers. He points to the low cliff. In the same order, the men cross the clearing one by one and scale the rock face. Top takes the rear and delays for a bit. He wants to be certain that no one has observed the landing from a hiding place. Then he whips up the cliff and jogs silently into the night.

The small team of men crosses the one mile area in a few minutes. As the obstacle course comes into view, they slow and fan out, leaving several yards between men. Their passage is so smooth that a low, whining wind covers it completely. Top is pleased. He locates the building believed to be the terrorist headquarters. He waves for Doc, who is wide-eyed from adrenaline, to trot into the lead position. Burke follows Doc. Top motions to Scotty to "leapfrog" and they begin to trade positions as they move closer. Doc drops to one knee and Burke passes him, searching the area. Burke drops and Scotty passes him.

Moments later, they are within a few yards of the darkened building and Top is now on point. He pauses to catch his breath and checks his watch. Four minutes to get in, kill the target, and get out safely. Then a hurried jog back to the waiting bird and a flight home to Mo.

More hand signals. The men fan out silently, raise their weapons. Top takes a long, deep breath and races up the steps. He tries the door handle and yanks once, then again and it springs open. In the greenish glare of the night-vision goggles he sees something that freezes his blood: an altar. Animal parts are all over the place, feathers and chunks of decaying meat mounted on the walls. There is some kind of wooden icon sitting on a prayer rug. He shakes his head and spots six men in their bunks. They are no longer asleep, but now sitting up and scrambling for their weapons. Top fires, feels Burke right behind him also firing and
ratatatatata
one by one the dirt bags splatter blood and sag back down again. Now there's human blood mixed with the hoodoo garbage strewn all over the room.

Top snaps his fingers, whirls around and runs to an open window to see if anyone else heard the muffled shots. Obeying the silent instruction, Burke moves from bunk to bunk, face to face. He shakes his head. No Yousef Dahoumed, not yet. Burke moves back to the door and peers out. Scotty crosses behind him, takes his saw-toothed hunting knife and bends over someone who is still breathing. He slices the man's carotid artery and steps back. A dark fountain pulses out onto the flooring. Scotty flashes a grin and leans forward again. Burke winces as his friend slices off an ear, holds it up as a trophy and whispers, "That makes ten!"

"You're a sick fuck, you know that?"

"Oh, yeah."

Top indicates everything is clear. They back out of the filthy room and close the wooden slatted door behind them. They turn and the new formation puts Doc on point. He jogs to the second, slightly larger building, ducks under a darkened window patched with cardboard. Doc moves up the steps; blows his wind out like a tired horse and tries the door. It is locked.

Doc Washington steps up onto the porch and takes aim at the lock and suddenly someone inside fires
WHAM
and Doc takes a round in the side of the stomach. The Kevlar vest stops it but the impact punches his waist and he spins all the way around.
WHAM
again as another round hits him in the lower back and this one goes through. The young medic rolls down the steps, in shock. He is in agony, but has yet to make a sound.

Emergency flood lights come on. The team has been caught wearing NV gear. They blink rapidly, now vulnerable and virtually blind for around ten seconds. They all rip off the goggles, leaving them to dangle from chin straps, and seek cover wherever they can find it. The entire compound explodes into gunfire. Top tries to make sense of the situation. He finally identifies two gunmen. The one who fired through the door is using what sounds like a Kalishnikov. The other man, at the window, seems terrifyingly efficient with an Uzi. The team is now pinned down, and they are already running out of time.

Doc, sitting flat at the foot of the steps with his legs extended, clutches himself and begins to wheeze/whisper in a high, eerie voice 'oh fuck I'm shot' and 'I can't feel my legs' over and over again. Burke starts toward him but Top waves NO and orders Red to slip around to flank the man at the window. Scotty starts firing at the door and then rolling, firing again, giving the impression of being more than one man. Top ignores the voice in his head that keeps screaming to abort and tries to make the guy in the window nervous.

"Doc, how is it?"

Doc repeats that he can't feel his legs but his belly
hurts
.

Burke jogs around the back of the dirty building, where the sounds suddenly seem farther away. The lights are not on. Burke passes a white kitchen door, locked from the inside. He sneaks a peek through the broken window, head up and then down again. There are two men in the building and they are sitting in the living room, in the dark, firing out into the light.

Burke slips the night-vision goggles back over his eyes and moves rapidly up the steps to the back door. It is also locked. He moves to one side, carefully fires at the lock. He waits until the man inside whirls and reflexively puts two through the door, just like he did when he nailed Doc. Burke wants to catch the ragtop trying to reload.

"Aw, shit!" someone screaming, out in the yard. One of the terrorists has scored a second hit. Angry, the Burke kicks in the door and goes for the one at the window first, a thin Arab in a long white sleeping shirt. Burke walks a line of fire along the floor and stitches the bastard from nuts to nose. The guy at the door has nearly reloaded when Burke turns the gun his way and hesitates. It is their target, Dahoumed. He surprises Burke by dropping the gun and ammunition and fleeing. The leader escapes through the kitchen door and out into the back.

Cursing, Burke follows recklessly, an invisible clock ticking away in his mind. Time is running out. He sees Dahoumed dart back into the guard's quarters, probably hoping to find some protection. From inside, Burke hears an insane giggle start up. The sound makes the hair on his arms rise. He charges into the room.

A figure sits on the now stinking pile of bloody human and animal corpses, holding some long feathers and a primitive wooden icon from the altar. He is rocking and laughing and hugging himself like a child seeing a circus for the very first time. Some of the human and animal skulls beneath him seem to be grinning, their wide, piano-key teeth stained and yellow. Severed limbs pulse while hands and fingers clench at thin air and point, mockingly, at the young soldier in the doorway. This is senseless, appalling, a charnel house; nothing but mindless butchery.

Jack "Red" Burke feels real fear in that moment, a terror more atavistic and overwhelming than any he has known before. This is bloodlust gone berserk. Dahoumed seems like a force of nature, evil personified. The room reeks of gore and the stench of entrails and raw meat. This camp has become the last stop at the edge of the world, where madness begins. The fugitive has smeared himself with the blood of the sacrificed, both animals and his own dead followers. He stops laughing and stands up. In person, Yousef Dahoumed is a squat, fat, unattractive man in a ragged wife-beater tee shirt and stained boxer shorts. He drops his empty rifle and surrenders. Burke steps closer and peers right into his face. He needs to be certain.

The maniac smiles warmly at him, says, "You take me to America?"

Burke smiles back, articulates carefully. "No, I send you to hell."

The man's smile fades, fear dilates his pupils. Burke opens up on Dahoumed, firing right into that chubby stomach. The burst flings the man against the wall and sunflowers his guts down over his bare feet. Now he fits right in with the rest of the décor.

"Clear inside!" Red Burke calls. "Target eliminated."

After a few seconds, he hears Scotty respond with a note of panic in his voice. "Clear outside! They got Top too, man. I can hear more bad guys on the way. We'd best get the fuck out of here."

Burke rattles down the steps, legs rubbery from adrenaline. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Scotty giving Doc an injection, but most of his attention is focused on Top, who now lies on his back in the dirt with his knees up and spread, like a woman giving bloody birth. Somehow he's been shot in the lower groin, despite the body armor. Burke approaches, noting the smell of excrement; already reaching to the medical kit at his belt but even before he kneels he knows it is too late. Top begins gagging and clutching at his throat, where he has also taken a round. His larynx has been shattered and he can barely breathe. Burke considers an emergency tracheotomy, but Doc is grievously wounded and in pain and he doesn't trust himself to pull it off.

"Go," Top grunts hoarsely, "just go."

"Don't you fucking die." Burke begins to weep. He is instantly ashamed of his weakness, but the sight before him is ignoble, ugly and unredeemable, so devoid of dignity that it breaks his heart. He looks at his weapon. "Top, should I . . . ?"

Top's chest begins to heave. He strangles and something in his neck tears wide open. One long, thin gout of blood shoots straight up and arcs away to splatter like urine in the dirt. Top gurgles. His eyes go flat and empty and it is over.

Burke forces himself to move. He pats Top down, triple checks that there are no dog tags and all pockets are empty. He opens a waxed package of C4, pulls the pins from two grenades, and carefully places the explosives beside Top's body. He closes his friend's eyes, rolls him over onto the booby trap.