PART IV
DEAD RECKONING
CHAPTER 52
In addition to the real possibility of death at any moment, Tahereh was suffering an existential meltdown. After recent events, she had to acknowledge that her body-and-soul investment in jihad was predicated on a false belief. The realization briefly unmanned her though she was a woman.
Born in Tehran, educated at Bryn Mawr, Tahereh had not been aware until now that deep down, her terrorist zeal for mayhem had been fueled by personal hopelessness bordering on clinical depression. It had also been coauthored by a self-consuming rage at the Hobbesian life that stretched out before her. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Neither academia, nor a career, nor having a family held any interest for her. Her soul was nurtured, not on milk, nor on Lucite tombstones of corporate deals closed, but on sheer adrenalin. After turning to her current line, she embraced a life bereft of expectations great or small, of anything other than an angry and fiery death. How could she sustain her sense of mission now if she were no longer furious? A taste of actual happiness and accomplishment from working in league with Chalk could well ruin her as a jihadi warrior.
She had lived her life as a drone hornet, ever ready to sting. And in stinging like a hornet she was also ready to bring about her own death at the same time. She had no problem with this. This was the martyr’s way. On the other hand, in Chalk’s nihilistic scenario, she could be the queen of drones, arbiter of a thousand martyrs’ deaths. Wasn’t it was always the old soldiers, the generals, who were remembered? Never the young, the brash enlisted, or the dead. There! Now Chalk had her thinking of posterity. She’d never cared about this kind of vanity before.
If she survived the night, if in the morning Chalk was truly beside her, and not standing triumphant over her corpse, she sensed her life would be sadly sweetened. If death came for her tonight, she could no longer be certain how she would feel in that final instant. Would she still connect with that ultimate martyr’s ecstasy she had imagined for so long? No way to truly know. If nothing else, death is last-minute.
In a much less philosophical moment aboard the Palestrina, Tahereh was elated to watch Slagget’s face fall when Chalk returned her HS2000 pistol, her seven spare mags and her Glock field knife.
Squirming with irritation, Slagget said, “Sure that’s a good idea, boss?”
Chalk puffed his chest, lowered his chin, and got stern. “All my ideas are good.”
Tahereh drew out the moment by inspecting the pistol’s magazines, sliding open the chamber, confirming that the weapon still had all sixteen rounds within.
Slagget was ill with rage. He asked, “Got a full mag?”
When she smiled and nodded a slow yes, he twitted her. “Keep a good count of how many shots you fire. Situations like this, I like to save a round for myself in case things go horribly wrong.”
Tahereh replied, “Pragmatic to the very end, eh Bill? Please, use all the bullets you want. I promise you won’t need the last one for yourself. Rely upon me.” Tahereh smiled again. She refrained from pointing her finger at him and dropping the thumb hammer. He had got her meaning. For the rest of the journey, unrelieved hate outweighed lust when Slagget looked at her. This was understandable. After two firefights, a sleepless night, and a stormy day on the Chesapeake, Tahereh was not looking her cotillion best. No matter. Chalk didn’t seem to care. Nor did he know she was also saving a bullet for him.
Perhaps she would be anointed the new Queen of Death after all. She recalled the Greek cheer of her alma mater, and for once took strength from it. Anassa kata, kalo kale Ia ia ia Nike Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr! Queen, descend, I invoke you, fair one. Hail, hail, hail, victory …
CHAPTER 53
Chalk delighted in Tahereh’s exchange of barbs with Slagget. She understood Chalk’s leadership tactics. He felt a team united is a team that could mutiny. She had more in common with Chalk than he thought at first. He preferred his squad to be manageably at odds. The only problem was that he might not benefit from the full power of his group’s cohesive force in the breach. At least if he lost tonight’s skirmish, he would survive.
Chalk cross-referenced between a chart of the waters around Tangier Island and the GPS. “We’re getting in close to shore. We’ll beach on the west side of the island. A hop, skip, and a jump to the airstrip from there.”
Minutes later, Chalk drove the bow of the boat straight onto the sand through the surf. The breeze was lighter, and steady. The new moon even showed now and then as squall clouds wraithed by, like a bright sickle slashing through uncarded wool.
Slagget leapt onto the beach, and jogged inland until he found a rock for tying off the line he carried. Chalk and Tahereh toted weapons and three sets of NVGs to the low dunes. They did not put on the goggles, preferring for now to see by the hazy loom of house and street lights on Tangier.
They reached the runway, but held to its edge. It was wrapped in darkness.
Slagget licked his finger, held it up and said, “With this breeze now, they’ll land south to north. We can walk up to meet them at the other end.”
Chalk thought for a moment. He said, “I have a flashlight. We’ll signal them. They can taxi back to us.”
Tahereh asked, “How will they manage in this fog?”
Chalk said, “They have a choice of two non-precision instrument approaches. Farron, our pilot, can bring it in with NVGs. Good as they are, goggles can be kinda tricky to fly with depending on what generation they’ve got. In that clag up there, he might just click the transmit button a few times on the right frequency. Then that runway edge light you’re about to trip over will come on with all the others. He’ll see right where to put her down.”
The evening grew colder. The darkness closed in around them as lights in the distant homes winked out. This left the rare street lights to cast only the faintest glow across the hillocks, rises, and dunes.
After an eternity of no more than fifteen minutes, Slagget softly said, “There. Got to be them.”
Tahereh searched the sky. “I don’t hear anything.”
Chalk hissed, “Shut up! Listen.”
Soon, they all picked the distant whine of a twin turboprop out of the closer rustle of reeds and the swish of waves rolling up the beach.
A few more moments passed. Chalk scanned the sky. “I got them. They’ve got all the lights on.”
He pointed up at a small cluster of winking red, white, and green position lights moving in and out of cloud, as the engine sounds grew.
Chalk said, “Guess there’s no reason for Farron to do a covert insertion. Nobody watching but us chickens.”
They all followed the plane’s path as it passed down the east side of the island.
Chalk muttered to himself, “Good boy. Stay out of that D.C. Special Flight Rules Area.”
Of course, he had his own discrete squawk number he could have given MacDonald for the aircraft’s transponder so he could pass through the SFRA without getting an F-16 on his wing, or a SAM up his rectum. Fine, but why should Chalk show his hand when things were going so well?
He mumbled, “I change my squawk number every week. Like my own personal Fibonacci sequence. A Chalk sequence, I guess. I Gauss. There’s a Restricted Area just to the west of here, too. Navy gunnery range I think.”