Starfire

He stopped the train of angry thought.

Their mission was two-or-more-pronged, as he warned himself to not project into a future he and the others may never see.

Consequences. Blood was going to run, thick, swift and deep before the sun rose. As he felt the gas mask on his hip, it crossed his mind there was the not-so-little matter of what recently happened in Israel, and yet another savage twist of fate that had urged the five of them to trek to this godforsaken place. VX nerve gas wasn’t something any of them tended to gloss over as just a speed bump on the road to Hell. Assuming a cache of weapons of mass destruction was likewise under the roof…

McCarter heard the first voice patch through as T. J. Hawkins told him he was in position.

Showtime.

A hard sweeping scan and McCarter barely spotted the ex-Ranger. With a double take, he caught the top of Hawkins’s black-hooded head rising from his sniper’s roost, a few dozen meters or so above and due east of the tanker armada, his sound-suppressed Dragunov rifle poised to cover their two-man demo team. Down the line, Rafael Encizo, Gary Manning and Calvin James quickly informed him they were also in position.

Good to go.

Or so it seemed.

McCarter passed the order for James and Manning to get busy planting their ordnance.

A big bang, the ex-SAS commando knew, was in the wings, nothing short of scorched earth about to bring down the roof.

With any blessing whatsoever due them from the gods of black ops, and McCarter figured to live long enough to see the fall of the place of evil in this corner of Hell.

COMPLAINING ABOUT THE MOST adverse conditions of a mission never cut it. In the experience of his line of work, Calvin James knew that moaners and complainers weren’t only unreliable under fire, but they were often the first to get cut down in combat. The M and C crowd—of which there were none on his team, and none except for a couple officer types he could recall during his stint as a United States Navy SEAL who were mostly interested in bucking for promotion while the real deal did the fighting and killing for them—floated a mere notch above yellow.

His case in point was made when the two Dag sentries came whining his way.

The black ex-SEAL was through the hole at the base of the fence, liquid nitro spray gun dumped behind on the ground and replaced by the suppressed Beretta 92-F, when they shuffled into view. James didn’t know the language, but he could sure read faces and judge bitter tones for what they were. One of them forgot all about his AKM, the muzzle pointing at the ground, as he began jabbing a gloved mitt at the bottle of vodka his comrade didn’t seem inclined to share. The bickering decibels rose as the guard gestured angrily at the sky, waved at the line of tanker trucks with a dark scowl on his bearded face, his companion stamping his boot and fuming like a waiter stiffed on a big check. Whether the ongoing gripe was over the cold, boredom with sentry duty or who polished off the rest of the vodka, James didn’t know.

But he damn sure cared, since they were in the way of progress.

With a rock-steady, two-fisted grip on his weapon, he ended the argument with two quick taps, as hypersonic 9 mm Parabellum rounds cored their brains.

Two down, and James had a gut feeling it was set to go to Hell. He scanned, left to right, adrenaline practically carrying him to the bodies, despite fifty pounds of plastique added to his combat load. Quickly, he rolled the bodies under the silver beast’s tail, ears and eyes tuned to the no-man’s land between the fence line and the tankers.

He knew more sentries were in the area. In fact, combat senses shouted they were close. Manning was nowhere to be found, but James took that as a good sign the big Canadian was already making swift tracks.

The tankers were parked, nose-to-tail, in two rows with feet to spare, the odd rig out toward his teammate’s advance from the south. Maybe fifty meters needed to be covered before he met Manning in the middle, and both knew there was no set time to plant and prime the charges, but sooner the better.

James hauled the first shaped charge from his open nylon satchel, stuck it under the back wheel well, speared the priming rod in the middle of the package. It struck him next, checking his six before moving on, that McCarter was holding on to the extra radio remote unit. Backup hellbox, sure, just in case…

THE DRAWING BOARD and spit-balling of finer points for attack strategies always looked and sounded good, like it would all actually work according to plan. The reality, T. J. Hawkins knew, equaled the difference between life and death.

Sat images, HUMINT, EM scanners and thermal imaging handhelds and night vision to paint walking infrared radiation of the enemy on the way in was all well and good, and, in truth, solid planning was a must. Those Tomahawk salvos, the F-117 and Spectre strafes were a definite bonus package to soften up the target and shatter the enemy into a senseless slab of jelly, assuming anybody on the other team was still in one piece to cry the blues. All that and a bag of chips, he thought, but at the end of the smoke and the blood of battle, it all boiled down to the soldier. Skill and experience, a lion’s heart in the game all the way, and the capacity for improvising with the mayhem of combat counted far and away the most. All of the above was important, no question, but too often he’d seen that a little smile beamed on the good guys from Lady Luck won the day.

Or, in this instance, the dawn.

The simple fact they were in position and moving in for the kill at that hour was a case in point to tip the hat to Lady Luck, when he considered the agonizing delays on the ground back in Turkey, how bad weather simply wouldn’t allow decent satellite pictures. As it stood, sentries had already endured the long, cold night, bored out of their gourds, he knew, on the verge of nodding off as they were anxious to be relieved of duty. Better, whoever the yet-to-be-determined VIP playboys inside the main compound would be sleeping off a tough night of booze and broads. There would be security goons on hand, some of which would either be tasting the goodies on the sly, or sulking in envy and resentment they had to seethe, idle on the sidelines.

Life was tough like that.

The question now moving into the ex-Ranger’s scope was who exactly life would get tough for.

Hawkins had sensed the guard in the fur hat with pointed crown and knee-length black-leather coat already knew something was amiss, and before he started barking their names.

“Dhzari! Ghombalj!”

Moments ago, Hawkins caught Calvin James skirting the periphery of his vision, the ex-SEAL a blurring ghost with two kills in his wake. The dead men’s comrade was now in search of his buddies, as he stepped out from behind the rear of a tanker, three rigs down from where James had stashed the stiffs. Unless he missed his guess, reading the guard’s tight body language, Hawkins was a few moments away from sending him to join his comrades.

The Klieg lights provided ample illumination, so Hawkins didn’t need to switch the scope to infrared. He hefted 4.4 kilos of killing power, rose up on a knee, extended the sound-suppressed Dragunov, and tracked his mark with the naked eye for another moment. The Russian piece was a gift from the special ops in Kurd-land, and it came complete with a state-of-the-art scope with digital read off the laser sight. The extended detachable box magazine held fifteen 7.62 mm armor-piercing rounds. This time around McCarter had handed him the sniper designation. Hawkins would have preferred a tried-and-proved American high-powered rifle, but he understood McCarter’s reasoning that they carry a mixed assortment of weapons into battle. Russian grenades, German assault rifles, U.S. sidearms, and if they went down to a man no one would be the wiser about their origin of allegiance.

As if it would matter.

A quick search of the tankers provided no sighting of his teammates; all was quiet and holding.

But…

The guard spotted the boots under the rig’s tail.

Hawkins bit down the curse, hit one of three buttons on the side of his scope. In less than one eye blink the fiber optic scan threw up the virtual reality numbers in the upper left corner where they hung like some ghost script scrawled on a UFO above his field of vision. Distance to target, elevation, down to factoring in wind speed—2.5 knots, and at his back—he read the trajectory data as the guard’s expression of shocked anger framed with instant crystal clarity in the crosshairs. The man was reaching for his handheld radio, mouth already opening when Hawkins painted the red laser eye just above his right ear and squeezed the trigger. Muzzling at 830 meters a second, the armor-piercing projectile streaked the eighty-two yard bridge to target in a microsecond, so fast Hawkins had to peer hard before he registered there was, in fact, nothing in his scope but a faint dark mist raining over empty space.

He lowered the rifle, confirmed the decapitated heap of twitching carcass at a glimpse, then began scouring the field. Somewhere to the south—Manning’s way—he heard a voice calling out. Another comrade search.

Silently he urged his teammates to hustle.

The clock was ticking, and there was nothing he could do about his kill left out in the open.

Something jumped into the corner of the ex-Ranger’s vision. Before he looked, Hawkins already knew what he’d find. Adrenaline kicking his senses into overdrive, the Stony Man warrior confirmed two more hardmen on the move and staring right at the mess he’d just dumped on the ground.

CHAPTER SIX

Azmit Zhuktul always found himself amazed and disgusted by the arrogance of men who willingly sold their souls for money then sought reassurances they had made the correct choice. Yes, he understood how greed knew no limits, how it was never satisfied, how there was never “enough.” The men standing in front of him, who had purchased the world they desired, needed to accept the fact they had already charted a one-way course, and that perdition wasn’t far off. There were no safety nets, no guarantees. Certainly no going back. There was only the fight to stave off the inevitable—death—and consume and conquer while there was still time. Or be consumed.

One of the three Iraqis, Faisal al-Harqazhdi, began the squawking yet again. “You have been delivered more than a fair price to make arrangements for our safe passage to the Far East. And yet, here we all stand, while you send one of your soldiers to tell us there have been certain sudden changes in plans. Granted, we may well be safe in your country and free of the American CIA, my good Lezgi friend, but there are still many Russians in your country, as I am sure you are aware. Russians who may well be in the wrong places at the wrong time, and beyond the reach of even those who are paid to protect you. Granted, we understand how you have the director general and key staff of the Dagneft oil company at your disposal and that it appears the shipments to our Western European friends will continue as arranged. However, it is our experience that when it all looks too easy, well, quite the opposite could not be far from becoming a most frightening reality.” A pause, then, “Are you listening to me?”

Zhuktul made them wait for his reply. They were tiresome creatures. Impatient, weak men who were too unwilling to endure a few days’ inconvenience.

Cowards.

He lit a hand-rolled cigarette, then swept aside the bearskin blanket to expose stark nakedness. The VIPs began clearing throats, shuffling from one Italian-loafered foot to the other, frowning away from what he knew they perceived an insult to Islamic tenets regarding modesty. Hypocrites. They paid lip service in public and to unsuspecting peers about the virtues of holiness, yet they were the first in line to get drunk, bed his whores, even snort his heroin. How could a man dare regard himself as a man, Zhuktul wondered, if he didn’t live what was truly in his heart? At least he knew he was the very definition of evil, and could willingly accept as much. If there was such a thing as Paradise, then why wait? If God, he believed, wanted man to live as a pillar of virtue, then he would have been created without lust, greed, anger and so forth in the first place. Zhuktul would concern himself with God whenever he met Him in the future. This day, there were many worlds to conquer, too much pleasure to be indulged.

Exhaling the harsh smoke toward the mirrored ceiling, glimpsing ten-thousand-dollar suits and gold jewelry that could have rebuilt any number of cities in their war-torn country, he fished around in the rolling pool of silk pillows and furs until he found a full bottle of vodka. A quick check of the label to make sure it wasn’t the brand of paint thinner he served the troops, he uncapped the bottle and took a deep swig. One of the Ukrainian women, sleeping off the night’s orgy, suddenly reached out an arm. She was purring for something, most likely heroin to powder her nose with so she could go back to sleep, when Zhuktul slapped her arm away and stood. It was all he could manage to restrain laughter at the sight of their swarthy faces turning red. Where they were soft and flabby from their embassy parties and glad-handing various corrupt UN officials and their aides in midnight meetings, nothing short of war had chiseled his flesh into taut muscle that looked more armor than human skin. He saw them fidget and nervously glance at the sight of old bullet scars, the patches of badly healed and mottled flesh from the razor’s end of flying shrapnel. Souvenirs of the lion in the face of jackals.

Slowly, Zhuktul tugged on his trousers, puffing away. “If you profess so much confidence in me,” he finally said, slipping into his BDU shirt then strapping himself into the shoulder-holstered 9 mm Tokarev pistol, “then why do you insist on speaking to me out of both sides of your mouth?”

“Excuse me?”

Zhuktul scanned their aghast expressions. He watched their shoulders tighten, one of them glancing back at the soldiers posted around the living room. Evidence of the night’s festivities was strewed, he found, end to end. Black and blond hair spilled from beneath wolf or sheepskin blankets, their women stretched out. Ashtrays overflowed with cigarette and cigar butts, empty bottles and trays of powder scattered across massive coffee tables.

Abed Osman cleared his throat, lost his scowl first. “We did not mean to sound…disrespectful. I think at this time we would also wish to thank you for your generous hospitality these past several days.”