1
Lieutenant Christopher Wolfe dropped behind the illusory shelter of a boulder outcropping, scanning the ridge crest above and behind them, his H&K MP5SD at his shoulder. Through his night vision goggles the sky appeared as a pale, luminous green backdrop, the hillside as a black and rugged silhouette. No sign yet of—
Movement! A figure, dark green against the sky, emerged from behind the ridge, wearing a short-billed service cap and carrying an AK-47. Wolfe shifted the aim on his H&K; his NVGs revealed the otherwise invisible spot of red light marking his aim point, which he planted squarely on the target's center of mass. He tapped the trigger, and his sound-suppressed weapon gave a stuttering hiss, sending a quick-spaced three rounds into the target just as it emerged fully from the cover of the hilltop.
The target flopped backward, the AK flying end over end through the night.
"Echo One-one," Wolfe said, identifying himself over the Motorola strapped to his combat harness. The needle mike secured just in front of his lips transmitted every word to the other members of his squad, and to his far larger audience elsewhere. "Contact! North ridge, bearing zero-zero-five. Tango down."
In Wolfe's specialized lexicon, tango could mean either terrorist or target. Usually, in his line of work, the two were synonymous; this time, though, he wasn't facing terrorists, but an enemy far more dangerous to him, his men, and his mission.
"Echo One-five," a voice said over the speaker in Wolfe's ear. One-five was Machinist's Mate First Class Danny French. "Multiple contacts, at two-eight-zero. Tango down! Correction, two tangos down!"
Tangos to the north, tangos to the west. The bastards were moving to cut the team off from the sea.
"Echo One! Fall back! Fall back!" Another target appeared on the north ridge, and Wolfe tapped him down. "On the double! Move!"
Chris Wolfe was a SEAL, a member of the elite naval commando unit deriving its acronymic name from the words Sea, Air, and Land, the elements within which the Teams routinely operated. From their first day of Basic Underwater Demolition School — BUD/S — SEALs were hammered with a particular piece of life-saving indoctrination: The water is your friend. When you're in trouble, get to the water.
SEAL Team Detachment Echo One was in very bad trouble now, but the sea was less than a mile away.
The question was whether they would be able to reach it in time.
"Thank you for coming down, Captain," the intelligence analyst said. "We appear to be watching the proverbial shit hit the fan. Thought you would want to see…. "
Captain Thomas Garrett sized up the speaker in a glance — a small and wiry individual with a bushy mustache just barely regulation in its exuberance. The three gold stripes above the cuff of each sleeve identified him as a naval commander, a rank not usually given access to the deliberations held within such deep and clandestine electronic fortresses as this. The bulky eagle and trident pin on the breast of his uniform, however — his "Budweiser" — marked him as a Navy SEAL. His name was Carl Berkowitz, and he was one of the Navy's premier spooks in the ONI — the Office of Naval Intelligence.
"I do indeed, Commander," Garrett replied. "Thank you."
A dozen men and women sat at as many work stations around the basement communications center, with a dozen more high-ranking officers — admirals and captains, generals and colonels, most of them — watching over their shoulders. Several civilians were present as well, some in suits, some in shirtsleeves. Most of the audience's attention was focused on a single large display screen on the wall, a green-lit monochrome image of several men running down a steep hillside, viewed from high overhead.
"So what's going on?" Garrett asked. He'd known the op was going down tonight, but no details.
Berkowitz pointed at the monitor. "We're aborting. Two hours, seventeen minutes into the op. Damn it."
"What happened?"
"Echo One ran into some unexpected opposition. We think it's Pasdaran. A Guards unit that moved into the area without our seeing it. Our people have been engaged in a fighting withdrawal back to the beach."
"Shit."
"Exactly."
Garrett watched the scene unfold on the screen. The detail, even with infrared imaging, was startling. He could see the individual members of the SEAL unit designated Echo One working their way rapidly down the hillside, two men moving from one position of cover to the next while two more held their ground and covered their retreat, then switching off in a deadly game of leapfrog. But another four weren't playing. Garrett could see two men, each hauling another in a fireman's carry across their shoulders.
Two casualties. It could have been worse, he thought. Then he added to himself, But it might get a hell of a lot worse, too.
Voices crackled from speakers overhead, voices ragged with exhaustion and edged with stress.
"Okay! We're set! Move! Move! Move!"
"Echo One-one, Echo One-seven! Shooters! Shooters on the north ridge, more shooters on the crest to the west! We're taking fire!"
"One-seven, One-one! Never mind the shooters! Just keep moving!"
One of the technicians made an adjustment, and the image zoomed in on one of the SEALs. Though grainy and taken from an awkward angle overhead, the image clearly showed a man in combat vest and balaclava, wearing a night vision headset and carrying an H&K MP5SD submachine gun, the heavy length of its integral sound suppressor unmistakable. The man was crouched behind a boulder, loosing short, precisely controlled bursts of fire at an off-screen enemy. Garrett could see empty cartridges, aglow with heat, spinning clear of the weapon's receiver three at a time. The picture drifted, zoomed in and out, then pulled back to show a broader view once more.
"Good detail," Garrett observed. "Satellite?"
"Hell no," Berkowitz replied with a shake of the head. "UAVs. Better than satellites. They stay put. We have three of 'em up, off the Sirocco."
"Ah." Yeah, he should have known. Spy satellites were good, but they couldn't resolve an individual expended 9mm cartridge, even by infrared. Garrett turned his attention to the words appearing on-screen along the bottom of the picture — date, time, GPS positioning data, altitude… right. That was a UAV feed, real-time data from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle orbiting eight hundred feet above the battle area — a Navy Fire Scout, to be exact. Since Afghanistan, UAVs of various types— all-but-invisible aerial recon platforms — had become more vital in the observation and control of the modern battlefield.
"Take cover!" A new, frenzied shouting erupted from the overhead speakers. "RPG! RPG!"
On the screen, a brilliant white point of light streaked in from the upper right, then detonated in a silent, blossoming flare. One of the SEALs carrying a wounded buddy fell, knocked forward by the blast, which sent the two tumbling down the slope. Two more SEALs rushed to their aid, as others turned their weapons toward this latest threat.
Garrett saw Berkowitz leaning forward, his lips moving in some unvoiced command… or prayer. Fellow SEALs, Garrett thought. Those are his brothers out there.
"Let's see number three," one of the other watchers, a lean and weathered-looking civilian, said in a dry voice with a touch of New England to it. The scene on the display screen switched to another aerial view, this one of a large number of armed troops advancing along the crest of a ridge. They were accompanied by several vehicles, trucks and Russian-built BMP-2 armored fighting vehicles, the heat from their engines showing white against the cooler green backdrop. Two of the figures on the ground carried the unmistakable sewer-pipe bulk of a loaded RPG-7.