Seal team six extra size.., p.38
SEAL Team Six Extra-Sized Holiday Bundle, page 38
Manny had the soldier in a chokehold that cut off his wind and his voice. The man gripped Manny's arm to try and pull it away. His fingernails scratched at his attacker's skin but the thickly muscled arm would not release his throat. The soldier ran in place feebly, heels squeaking on the floor, as he was dragged further into the darkness. After a few seconds, the soldier's brain, starved of oxygen, stopped functioning and he went limp.
He came around with a great weight on his chest. His eyes adjusted to the light to try and see what was making it so difficult to take in a full breath of air. What he saw almost made him empty his bowels into his pants. A man with glowing green eyes straddled his chest with knees painfully pinning the soldier's elbows to the floor. The man had dark hair that hung in ringlets. The soldier noticed the man's teeth aglow as he grinned. Mostly the soldier noticed the needle point of a thin-bladed dagger held less than an inch from his wide open eye.
"Do not even blink," the green eyed stranger whispered in perfect but unaccented Arabic.
The soldier felt the tip of the blade come to rest on his lower eyelid and he stiffened his body. He was still in the garage. He could hear the voices of the rest of the brigade, the engines of the trucks rumbling. This stranger with the glowing eyes was daring enough to pluck him away unseen and hold him here, so close to his comrades. This frightened the soldier even more than the knife at his eye.
"The slightest pressure," the stranger said and pursed his lips to make a soft clucking sound.
The soldier said nothing; fearful even of speaking.
"I have a friend," the stranger said. "A big man. He has blue eyes. Have you seen him?"
The soldier almost forgot his predicament and nodded. He stopped himself and swallowed drily.
"Yes."
"He is a prisoner of your brigade now?"
"He is with the major," the soldier said, barely moving his lips. His vision wavered wildly now with the effort of not blinking. The blade of the dagger swam in and out of focus before his eye.
"And where is the major?" the stranger said almost kindly.
"He has left for Bani Walid," the soldier said and pressed his lips tight and willed his sphincter tight as well. He had already betrayed his oath as a soldier of the Ahhamid Brigade by speaking to an enemy. He retained just enough honor not to soil himself.
"In which vehicle?" the stranger said.
"The big truck. The big armored truck. I do not know what it is called."
"Is it the only one?"
"The only one! Yes! The only military transport! The major is in it with his family!"
"Let's be quiet now."
"Yes," the soldier said in a small voice and felt the point of the dagger lift from the soft flesh of his eyelid.
"Who are you?" the soldier asked as the weight eased off his chest and he could fill his lungs again.
"Mossad," the voice said.
The soldier lost control of his bowels at that. But he knew no shame. Only the living can feel shame.
Manny slid his dagger back into its scabbard after wiping it clean over the tunic of the stinking corpse. It had taken twenty seconds to find out where Flame had gone and that was twenty seconds too long.nbsp;
"He's in an armored vehicle that left here in a convoy," Manny said to the other two. "Westbound through Sirte for Bani Walid."
"Jesus," Chili hissed.
"We need one of those trucks," Heath said and handed back Manny's AK.
"I say we cut ourselves a little slack and wait for the last truck," Manny said.
"Fuck no!" Chili said, "We have to get after Flame now!"
"Slow down, Panhandle," Heath said. "We try and take a truck now and we're up to our ass in hadjis. We wait for the last one and the odds are better. I don't know about you but I'm getting bone ass tired and there's a still lot more to do today."
Chili spat.
They crept to positions around the stacks of crates and watched as each truck was loaded with as much as it could carry and then driven up the ramp. They prepared to move when there were only two trucks, a Mitsubishi Raider and a big Ford stake bed, left to load.
Chili watched the men rushing to climb aboard the vehicles and prayed the Ford would be the last one. It was brawnier and sat higher off the ground. The Mitsu was already sagging under the load of too many men climbing into its bed.
Too many men. The two trucks were nearly fully loaded and there were still twenty men crowded around trying to find a place. There was clearly no room for them. The math quickly became apparent to all and some of the soldiers began pulling their brigade brothers out of the trucks and onto the garage floor.
The driver of the Mitsubishi panicked and peeled out for the ramp. His brothers in arms weren't having that and opened up on the fleeing truck.
The SEALs dropped prone behind their cover. The garage lit up with multiple muzzle flashes. Men fell riddled with bullets from the bed of the Japanese pick-up as it slewed side to side. The body was peppered with rounds and a tire burst.
The truck skidded sideways, sparks flying from the bare rim of a front wheel. It slammed into a support post just shy of the ramp. Men in the back went flying over the cab. All the glass came away in a spray. The rear wheels kept spinning but the truck was totaled, wedged against the column.
The men around the Ford began shoving and shouting in the dim light source provided only by the Ford's headlights. It was a matter of time before they turned guns on one another to decide who was riding, who was walking and who was staying behind at room temperature.
"Shit," Chili said in a hoarse whisper, "that's our ride!"
"Then we'd better make sure we're on it," Heath said and got to his feet in rush.
The men were pushing, pulling and spitting at one another in the gloom of the garage. They called one another's mothers whores and dogs and swine. They questioned one another's manhood and suggested that they had sexual congress with little boys, animals and one another. They'd all turned coward yellow and wanted nothing more than a seat on the last ride out of this shithole but nobody was ready to kill for it. Scratch that. Nobody was willing to die for it.
But the shouting, shoving mob was a hot second away from flashpoint. The AKs would be raised and it would be bloody hell until they were whittled down to the ten men who could fit in the Ford truck's bed and cab. Or maybe it wouldn't be over until they were all dead.
Heath wasn't waiting.
He shoulder checked his way through the clutch of struggling soldiers unnoticed by any of them. They were all fighting around the cab doors and tailgate. Nobody was in front of the grill. Heath reached the front of the truck and kicked out the headlights with his steel-toed boots. The garage went dark but for the dim red glow of the rear lamps. Unable to see who they were insulting, the soldiers went quiet and still.
Through his night vision gear, the remaining loyalists looked to Heath like lost children, turning this way and that as if in search of Mommy and Daddy. He drove three rapid punches into the face of a soldier who'd sat his ass in the driver's seat. Manny appeared at the passenger door and yanked two confused soldiers out of the cab from that side.
Chili vaulted up into the bed and forced his way through the packed soldiers to the rear of the cab and slammed his palm down on the roof three times hard. The truck lurched forward and the men all around began shouting and wailing; some in anger and some in fear. The soldiers in the bed with Chili opened up with AKs on their former comrades trying to clamber over the tailgate.
Heath threw the big stake bed truck into reverse and punched the gas hard. The truck slammed back into the crowd mobbed all around. Blind as bats, most didn't know to get out of the way and were crushed under the tires or struck by the heavy rear bumper. He slammed it into drive and stood on the accelerator and the truck screamed for the ramp in a cloud of burnt rubber stink.
Behind the truck the survivors opened up on the tail lights of the fleeing Ford. Chili dropped down low and two of the soldiers in the bed were hit and sprayed blood over the rest. Their buddies, bound together in flight, returned fire toward the blooms of light erupting behind the truck. Chili could see that most of their shots went into the ceiling of the garage.
The truck tore up a ramp with soldiers chasing after it, firing snapshots and shouting dire threats. The ramp reached the next level, and Heath fought the wheel to make the tight turn onto another steep ramp that would bring them up to street level. They left the men pursuing on foot far behind. The gloom was lifting as they got closer to daylight.
The men in the truck bed laughed and expressed their good fortune to one another. They were unaware they shared their escape with a Navy SEAL so close they could reach out and touch him. Chili planted his back against the cab and fired the AK in a tight arc through the massed men only a few feet away.
As the Ford rolled toward the street, Chili looted the bodies of any full magazines. He then pulled the heavy tailgate up and threw the bolts to keep it in place. He didn't look at the faces. Never look at the faces. They were ghostly white in the glare of the light gathering lenses. He rolled the corpses of six men against the inside of the tailgate in an untidy heap where they would serve as a kind of organic up-armor. He switched out the mag on the AK for a fully charged one and crouched low behind the sandbags strapped against the stake sides running down each flank of the truck. He made sure two more looted rifles were loaded and laid them by him. He took off the night vision gear and tossed it aside. Dead weight now. They'd either be out of Sirte by the time it got dark again or they'd be dead.
They were used to mission creep; where the original parameters of a planned mission expanded in response to new factors on the ground. You had to be ready for a clusterfuck every time you went out. You had to bend, warp, adapt and succeed. But this time mission creep was moving at a gallop. Conditions were changing faster than they could keep up. Chili wondered what else could go wrong.
The team would know soon enough. They were out in the desert sun going God only knew where in a town where every gun would be turned against them.
"Goddamn it!" Manny growled.
"Bad News?" Heath said and veered around a scorched black Mercedes sedan lying on its side in the middle of the street.
"The sat phone is fucked," Manny said. "Deader than shit." He held up the phone. The casing was cracked down its length and the insides were dripping with water that had gotten in the shoulder bag. It had to have happened when he was fighting those pricks in the shower room. Their lifeline to Langley was cut.
"My prick's still operational," Heath said, referring to the PRC-178D handheld two-way receiver in a sleeve on his vest.
"Good to know. But we're not in range of anyone who can help us. The only tech gear still working is the GPS."
"So, what do we know?" Heath asked. "We know our boy is in an armored vehicle. We know he's heading west. We just need the fastest route there."
"Then take on a Saladin with a hay truck," Manny said and snorted.
"Let's dive into that shit when we get there, okay?"
"Hook a right up here and head for the coastal highway."
"You think they went that way?" Heath said and swung the wheel to bring the truck right onto a broad boulevard.
"It's the way I'd go," Manny said. "Flat, wide and no bridges or tunnels."
"Yeah, I've had it up to my ass with tunnels."
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
A NARROW PLACE
The rebel vehicles raced from where they'd left them in a long loop toward the region to the west of the Ahhamid compound. They were searching for the escape route the brigade would use by taking a crooked path along the streets that remained clear. The Wolf believed the loyalist brigade would be heading for the western desert and the fortress at Bani Walid. If his gamble was wrong, they would never find the Ahhamids and their guest; the Chinese agent, the wizard of secrets. This side trip would have been for nothing and they would have lost many of their number for no reason and no gain.
Taahid brought the Land Rover to a juddering halt, throwing Ilse against the dash and striking his chest on the steering wheel with a bleat. The truck in front of him slammed on the brakes with no warning. He had to swerve to a stop up on a curb just inches from the rear bumper of the Volvo truck he'd been following. The Lions in the back seat were thrown to the floor and rose complaining.
The vehicles came to a stop in a narrow lane that crossed Mutassim Avenue; a four lane boulevard running north and south. It was named for one of Gaddafi's sons; the head of Libya's intelligence agency and a monster like his father. It was lined on each side by densely packed buildings three and four stories in height fronted by broad walkways and business fronts. The blocks were long and the intersection was an inescapable chokepoint for north/south traffic.
The Wolf stood on the roof of a van at the head of the lane. He held a grenade launcher over his head and waved the rebels forward. The men piled out of their trucks and vans and rushed to join him. He was shouting but Taahid could not hear the words. The Wolf's face was flushed red and he was speaking with force, his neck muscles corded.
Taahid was as weary as he had ever been in his life but he made himself leave the Rover to follow Ilse. She was trotting between the vehicles to get closer to hear the Wolf's words. She held her phone out before her as if it were a lantern to light a benighted world. That was probably how she thought of it, Taahid said to himself. He wondered where she found the energy. Her broken nose had to be painful and they had all been awake for more than twenty-four hours with no rest and little to eat. Taahid felt like his eighty-year-old grandfather must feel. He ached in every joint and his head was pounding from exhaustion, hunger or dehydration. Probably all three. And the explosion in the tunnel. He could have internal bleeding. A concussion at the very least. Yet the German girl sprinted like a child to the gathered Lions and mujahideen at the Wolf's feet.
"This is the place!" the Wolf was shouting. "It is the way they must come! Seek cover and train your weapons. When they come it will be this way!"
He gave orders and directed them to positions along the eastern side of the street, placing them to set up an inescapable crossfire but situated so their lines of fire would not place them in danger of shooting one another. The series of commands came rapidly and Taahid noted that the Wolf had learned the names of many of the Lions and called them by name. As he directed, they hunkered down behind the hulks of cars and heaps of debris. The Wolf sent one of his lieutenants to the second floor above a row of storefronts. Men with armloads of RPGs followed to set up firing spots with an unobstructed trajectory of the southern approach to the intersection.
There were children on the avenue and they goggled at the armed men rushing to find cover all around them. The boys and girls, some as young as six, had been digging through the shattered storefronts for whatever loot was left. They were carrying what they found to carts already overloaded with clothing, food, appliances and shoes. These young ones had been living on the streets long enough to know there would be violence here soon. They quickly wheeled their carts away down side streets far from the firefight to come. But not too far away as the possibility that there would soon be bodies to loot was very strong.
Ilse went with the big man who operated the AKM light machine gun. She was weighted down with long loops of ammo for the belt fed weapon. The brass shells tinkled like a wind chime as she ran. Taahid joined her and the Balochi gunner to set up inside a storefront with the gun trained to sweep the avenue. The Balochi smiled with blackened teeth at the girl and accepted the ammo belt. He secured the end of it in the action of the AKM and snapped it closed. Ilse sat cross-legged by him and arranged the loops of the belt across her thighs so the gun could feed easily. She ran her hand along the oiled surface of the ammo as though petting a snake.
She is living some kind of revolutionary romance, Taahid thought with disgust. We give our blood for a chance at a better life and this little Euro bitch is playacting. She'll go home to Berlin or Bonn or Munich and tell her friends at the disco about her brave struggle to help free Libya from the grip of the cruel Gaddafi regime. Taahid and others like him would remain here to do the hard work of trying to find a way of surviving in the Libya that comes next. More and more Taahid came to believe that it would be a dark place for a long time into the future.
A shout interrupted his bitter musings. A vehicle, or vehicles were coming from the south. Both lanes were occupied by trucks coming their way several blocks distant. They moved fast. An armored vehicle could be seen over the roofs of the lead trucks. They moved heavy, packed with men and goods and throwing up dust as they hurtled forward heedless of anything or anyone who got in their way.
It was the sort of arrogant display of power that was so commonplace in Libya. Even now, in retreat, and their world of corruption and strength coming to a close, the Gaddafi clan and their soldiers believed themselves invincible.
The waiting rebels watched, tense. They listened for the order to fire from the Wolf. He stood in the center of the avenue watching the swiftly approaching convoy as if he were waiting for a bus, watching to see if it was the one he wished to board.
He called orders. Sharp and quick and without hesitations or second guesses.
"Luqmaan!" he called to his lieutenant on the second floor over the pharmacy. "You will take the lead trucks before the Saladin and the ones behind!"
Luqmaan shouted a reply from his place at a broad window with the glass and framing smashed from it. The bulbous snouts of RPGs protruded from windows all along the face of the building.
"Everyone!" the Wolf shouted. "Lay down fire on anyone who exits the vehicles. Prepare to fall back if the fire becomes too great! We will sting them again in another place if we must."
He was a true general, Taahid realized. Whatever his feelings were about this stranger, Taahid understood that the man knew war. His assured command of the situation let everyone know he had been here before in other lands and other times. The Wolf had overseen many an ambush and caused the death of many an enemy.
