The Towers (18 page)

“Is that in software?” someone asked.

Dan looked at him for a second, remembering the smoky stink of burning RJ-4 fuel, the thunder of a chute in a Canadian blizzard. When he'd almost frozen to death, following up why the birds kept crashing. His mind following that back into the guts and innards of the hydraulics, the tail surfaces … “Yeah, but also in the rear elevator dynamic throw response. I have a message in to General Dynamics to see if they can patch some of the code, gain us more maneuverability. I'm just saying, right now we're limited in our penetration of extremely high-attitude, high-relief mountain areas. This makes the Kush a pretty effective barrier.”

Wood didn't look pleased. “We'll need ordnance on these C4I targets. I was depending on the Navy. Like we depended on you, Mr. Lenson, when my guys got ambushed at Kerkerbit. When you called off my strike package.”

Dan took a deep breath. It had been too much to expect that Wood would forget that. “Not my call, General. I was just the guy sitting in the chair at the Sit Room. For the record, I still think we should have supported you.”

Wood looked away. “Okay, go on.”

“We can commit for Kandahar, Dolangi Airfield, and points twenty miles north of a line from Band-E Kojok to Kabul. To some extent we can angle in from the southwest and fly up the valleys. That uses more fuel, but we just can't hop over these washboard ridges the way manned aircraft can. It'll be touch and go. We'll be able to cover most of the south, though.”

One of the officers said, “We have some indicators bin Laden's in Kandahar. That's the Talibs' spiritual capital.”

“Give me actionable targeting, and we'll nail him,” Dan said. “Even if it's a bunker. I can put in a detonation delay.”

“You've already said manned aircraft have the advantage—”

“That's enough,” Wood said quietly, but they all went silent. “We can blame intel for not seeing this coming. Or the Navy for weapons that don't work in the mountains. Or we can give a cunning enemy credit. He picked the one place on this planet we'd have the most difficulty getting forces to, and the hardest place to sustain them once they arrived. The Afghans didn't beat the British. Or the Soviets. The terrain did.

“But we will prevail and we will achieve vengeance. I'll expect more answers, and probably a hell of a lot more questions, twenty-four hours into this.

“Thank you, gentlemen.” Wood shoved back his chair, and everyone rose, at taut attention, the Army guys most of all, until the door closed behind him.

 

7

Coronado, California

ARCHED
space echoed with the muted stutter of suppressed gunfire. The huge new range was custom designed. A vast, smooth concrete floor you could set up with barriers, mazes, all the IPSC stuff the competition guys liked. Teddy stood back, weapon slung, observing. Every SEAL was a safety officer during live-fire practice. Today it was room clearing, taking down a mix of bad guys and innocents. Something they all knew cold, but only unending drill kept the reactions sharp. A tenth of a second could make the difference between taking down a bad guy and getting taken down yourself. Especially if the bad guys had any training, Russian-style Spetsnaz or some homegrown version. So they drilled for hours on end, until no one had to think. They were in work clothes: some in jeans, civilian gear, the rest in BDUs or the black tacticals for night missions. Every day someone new walked in, called back from leave or training or less essential duty somewhere else. They were even pulling some of the already-deployed platoons in off the amphibious ready groups, the ones that wouldn't, presumably, be sent into action.

The Teams were going to war.

He'd tried his best to get back into what he considered his homie unit, but there weren't any open billets. They'd offered him the DEVGRU, where he'd get his hands on the latest tech toys before everybody else. That had been tempting. But he figured experienced bodies would be at a premium. There were only about two thousand SEALs. Eight teams, six platoons each, plus the guys in the head shed. You couldn't just issue any sailor the Budweiser. They had to qualify in diving, parachuting, close-quarters battle, hand-to-hand, demolitions, sub lockouts, HALO ops.

So he'd asked for a day to think it over and called Master Chief “Doctor Dick” Skilley. Skilley had barely survived the train-wreck insertion in Grenada and done countersniper in Desert Storm and Bosnia. He'd taken out fifteen snipers in Mogadishu with the bolt-action M24. Teddy knew him from sniper school at Camp Atterbury. “Hell, Obie,” Skilley had grunted. “Sharp young dude with your trigger skills should be able to write his own ticket. After that great shot you made last year. Why the hell they jerking you around? Oh … heard you lost your—that big guy you were always hanging out with. The Indian.”

“Hawaiian. Sumo. Yeah.”

“If I was you—”

“Go on.”

“I was you, I'd stay on the West Coast. If you want in on this here War on Terror they're talking about.”

The Doctor had called a warrant officer he knew at SPECWARGRU, and somehow some guy who wanted to go East went East, and suddenly there was an open billet and Teddy had thrown his duffel into the Camaro and locked the house and not looked back.

Echo Platoon. A new team, new guys. But the Teams were a small force; you ran into the same faces again and again, at HALO school, at the ranges, lockout training, SDS, demolitions, the breaching course at Quantico, language training. If you didn't know a guy, you usually found you had at least one friend in common. He scratched a bristly chin. Most everyone had beards, goatees, mustaches. Going shaggy, they called it. Getting ready for booger-eating country. Gear packed, four-hour standby. They didn't know when. Or where. But it'd be soon, the CO said. Any day.

Teddy had walked the tiled hallways feeling like he was back where he belonged. The other guys were taking the piss out of him, as the Brits said. Ribbing him about Hollywood. About not being able to make it on the outside. He gave as good as he got. Familiar territory. The competition, every minute, whether you were doing rope drills or turning over spareribs on the grill at the Friday-afternoon cookout. Guys who were loud, guys who were soft-spoken, but everybody in it together and all of you knowing you could count on each other.

He pulled his weapon off his shoulder. The stubby black SOPMOD M4 was an M16 chopped and customized for room clearance and urban combat. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, Indiana, had taken the design a step further, with a flattop receiver mounted with a reflex sight, flip-down iron sights, a thirty-decibel sound suppressor that looked like a perforated cigar container, and a rail interface that let you bolt on various handgrips, lasers, lights, and IR illuminators.

One of the junior guys, Swager, came over and said, “Yeah, we got to get something better.”

“Better than this?” Teddy patted the weapon.

“Five-five-six is too much of a mouse gun for me.
Guns and Ammo,
last month—”

“I read that article too,” Teddy said. “What those civilian writers don't understand is, this isn't a one-round weapon. ‘A 5.56 doesn't punch as hard as a .308'—true. But you put this thing on auto, it's a different animal. No recoil, so you stay on target. No pistons, so there's no off-centerline thrust. Hose that lead out and blow the whole room away.”

He and Swager traded jabs in an argument they'd had going all day. On most missions, SEALs could carry what they wanted. You could go with a SIG or a Glock as your sidearm, or some supermodified .45 like a Kimber or a Les Baer. Teddy never carried the GI-issue Beretta; one had blown up in his hand, firing Italian steel back into his face. For a submachine gun, he liked the MP5, from his days spidering up containers on board-and-searches, taking down oil rigs in the Gulf. They always worked, to the extent he'd started to leave his sidearm behind and just take extra mags—until one day on the deck of a qat-smuggler his main weapon had stopped a bullet and he'd had to go to his knife to eviscerate a raghead trying to bayonet him. By unanimous acclamation, he'd gotten the Bonehead Award that day. Since then he'd carried a SIG. Some guys liked a 249. Even a shotgun; he'd seen good work done with scatterguns, though he didn't care for the slow reloading—that could put you in a world of hurt. When you were going in covert, they used foreign weapons. AK-47s were a popular choice with the more badass guys, though Teddy considered the things inaccurate and avoided them when he could.

But after ten years of it, on floats in the Med and Red Sea, antiterror missions out of Stuttgart, snatching insurgents in Ashaara, taking down Iranian submarines and Saudi dhows and Chinese merchant ships, he knew it wasn't the weapon that made the warrior. It was what was inside. Sand. Guts. The Right Stuff.

The kind of stuff Sumo Kaulukukui had had.

Never leave your buddy. Dead, wounded, or alive. He had that to fight the regret: He'd never left Sumo. Been with him to the end, facing the family in dress whites as the honor squad had fired the traditional three blanks into the air. They'd flown Teddy back for the funeral. All the way to Hawaii, with a twenty-four-hour turnaround. The SEALs took care of their own.

He looked at Swager. Did this kid have it, that to-the-end courage? That tall, that pale, he'd be hard to disguise on a FAR mission. Most SEALs were from the heavier trades, machinist's mate or boiler tech or hull technician. A lot of boatswain's mates, just because the test was easier—you only needed like a 52 raw score. But Swager was a knob turner, some kind of electronics tech. Inevitably, given the Teams, that had become his nickname, Knobby. And Teddy had never heard of a SEAL from Rhode Island. The kid tried to talk like some kind of gun aficionado, but just came off sounding like a gear queer.

The stutter of suppressed full-auto fire echoed again. Men ran bent over, firing on the move. A hostage-rescue scenario. Which could be adapted into a target snatch, taking down bodyguards, sparing the HVT—the High Value Target.

Or not. The head shed was still developing the mission. The scuttlebutt was they were assigned to roll up OBL himself. Teddy doubted that. Something that big, they'd assign to Delta, or the CIA's supersecret Activity. The SEALs wouldn't politick to get a mission, like some segments of the community. But at least they were going, and about time. Late September, and the country was starting to ask: What are we doing about 9/11?

“Second relay, to the line. Chamber empty, bolt forward, magazine inserted.”

He checked his weapon and joined the huddle to the side of the door. Number Two this time. A silent tap on the shoulder of the guy ahead; a clap on his own, from his backup.

The breaching round went off with a dull slam, the breacher stepped back, and Teddy followed Number One in tight on his ass and sidestepped and swept his corner. SEALs didn't go in yelling at each other, the way SWAT teams did. With a suppressed weapon, you wanted to keep surprise from room to room. The clearance team had to trust each other. If Teddy glimpsed a bad guy in a corner that wasn't his, he had to leave him to somebody else. Not too fast, not too slow.
Pop pop pop
. Two to the chest, one to the head, and he swept the rest of the room, then they took a half wall set up out of plywood and the second room and the third, rounds clattering. There was the hostage, don't shoot. More bad-guy dummies trolleyed out from a side alcove on rails, and he fired till he ran dry and reloaded, mind empty, a craftsman absorbed in his work. Noting only with a corner of consciousness that the lanky form next to him was just a little slow. As if Swager were taking that last extra tenth of a second to make sure he wasn't shooting the wrong dummy.

*   *   *

BUT
then something happened Teddy didn't expect. “CO wants you,” one of the staff element petty officers said, and pulled him off the drill. Still in his gear, sweating, he jogged down the passageway to the head shed.

“Obie,” Commander Vann said, “close the door.”

Teddy closed it.

“I'll make this short. You got a lot of experience. More than the rest of my incomers, reserves, retreads. Doctor Dick vouched for you, I understand. And I just learned I have a problem. A big problem.”

When an officer had a problem, it was usually you. But Teddy couldn't think of anything he'd done, or not done. Actually, he'd only been back a couple weeks. “What's that, sir?”

“One of my chiefs just failed his pre-dep physical.”

Teddy didn't like where this was going.

“I tried for a waiver, but the medical side's not cutting us any slack. They waivered him before; they won't release him overseas again. I know you're new to this team, but based on your record, you should be carrying some command responsibility. I want you to take over Echo. I can fleet you up to E-7, with the GRU's concurrence.”

Teddy wanted to say, “I'm not sure I'm up to that, sir,” but he didn't. He'd been a squad leader, after all. “Give it my best shot, sir. Uh, are we really gonna get in on this? Some of the guys are saying they're going to hold us in reserve, let Delta and the Rangers—”

“You'll get all the action you want, Obie.”

“That's good, sir. Where you figure we're headed? Just so I can make sure we have the right gear?”

“Need to know, Obie.”

“Yes, sir. Just figured I'd try.”

“The chief will introduce you tomorrow at quarters. I'll be there. And he'll keep handling all the predeployment paperwork and evals and so on rather than putting it all on you. But once we deploy, you'll be the man. Don't let us down.”

*   *   *

“WHAT'D
he want?” Knobby wanted to know.

“Nothing,” Teddy said, still trying to wrap his head around it. Maybe he should've told Vann no. Maybe it wasn't too late. They couldn't
make
him take it. He could refuse, like Montgomery Clift in
From Here to Eternity
. Anyway, a lot of shit was involved in sewing on a chief's crow. Carrying the book around, the initiation. He just didn't want to. Maybe he'd tell him that.