“Just a flesh wound,” Ritter said. Mike motioned to the red light with a nod.
Moshe had a map on his thigh, a pencil tapping against it. He whispered to the rest of the Israelis in Hebrew.
“We’re off,” Moshe said to Ritter and Mike.
“How far?” Ritter asked.
“Almost… four kilometers,” Moshe said, “and there’s a canyon between us and the target location.”
“I got a quick look at it,” Ritter said. Five canyons running from north to south split the southeast quarter of the island. Their target was a group of buildings built on a bone-dry wash in the middle of the canyon.
“Which means there’s a detour, which means about eight kilometers, five miles, to move.” Moshe looked to the east, where the first hints of the sun’s arrival were manifest. “If we run, we might get there before sunrise.”
Moshe rose to his feet and started running. For a man wearing a bulletproof vest with Kevlar plates and another thirty pounds’ worth of gear, he could move fast.
Ritter’s lungs burned, and his blood pumped fire as they ran toward a ridgeline. The sun had nearly cleared the horizon, and the team was open and exposed against the bare desert. His injured leg throbbed against the bandages. His boot squished from the blood that had run down his leg and pooled within.
They cleared the ridgeline and stopped in a sparse grove of dragon blood trees. The trees looked like gigantic mushrooms; thin branches spread like veins beneath a canopy of tiny needles. Deep-red sap glistened in the morning light. Ritter took a drag of water from the hose on his CamelBak, less than his parched throat demanded. Who knew when they’d come across clean water again?
“Eric, take this.” Shlomo passed Ritter a dark plastic device, which was the size of his hand. A concave disk was embedded within it. “You run down to the road and set it up once we find a nest. Set the thermal trigger, and nothing will get past. You know how to use it, right?”
The M4 SLAM antitank mine weighed a little more than two pounds and, when detonated, used the power of the explosives within to turn the concave copper plate inside out and fire it off as a gigantic bullet, an explosively formed penetrator. Firing it at the nuclear weapon wouldn’t end well. The Israelis had brought some specialist equipment with them. Goldstein carried an AT4 rocket launcher for use against vehicles and buildings. Another Israeli had an antipersonnel claymore in his gear.
“Let’s hold on to that idea,” Ritter said as he handed the mine back to Shlomo.
“No, you keep it.”
“You’re just sick of carrying it, aren’t you?” Ritter said. Shlomo grinned at him.
The bleat of sheep came from deeper in the dragon blood forest. Ritter aimed his Tavor rifle at the sound as a flock emerged from between the tree trunks. That many sheep meant a shepherd would be with them, someone who could spoil their mission with one shout.
The sheep meandered between the trees, their bleating loud and frequent. There was no shepherd walking among them.
Mike stepped past Ritter, his weapon at the ready. Ritter stood up and followed him. What was Mike planning to do when he found the shepherd? Shoot him?
They stepped around the arched roots of the dragon blood trees and into the flock. Sheep skittered away from them.
Mike clicked his tongue twice. His rifle pointed to a skinny man dressed in rags and a turban lying face down in the dirt. A dark patch of dirt was beneath his head. Ritter approached the man slowly, then nudged him with his foot. No response.
Ritter dug his toe under the man’s ribs and kicked him over. He flipped over, his limbs loose. This was a man — no, just a teenager — with the hints of a beard. A red canal across his throat bespoke a professional touch. Someone had sliced into his throat with a garrote and left him in the dirt. Ritter reached down and touched the dead man’s side. Still warm. With no rigor mortis, he hadn’t been dead long.
Ritter keyed his mike. “Moshe, got a body over here. I think—”
The distant echo of machine gun fire boiled over from their target. Ritter knew the sound of AK-47s when he heard them; the acoustics of the canyon multiplied the sound of shots.
“We aren’t the only ones here,” Ritter finished.
“You and Shlomo cover the road going north,” Moshe said over the radio. “No one gets out. The rest of us attack.”
Mike ran back to Moshe, crossing paths with Shlomo, before following the Israelis down a wash leading to where the nuke was being stored.
Ritter and the black Israeli ran parallel to the ridgeline by a few yards and found an outcropping. Shlomo slid into the crevice and popped open the sight for his sniper rifle. The plain around the ridgeline was bare desert for hundreds of yards. No one would sneak up on them.
“Movement,” Shlomo said.
Ritter lifted his head over the ridgeline. A beat-up Kia Bongo pickup truck, the same kind he’d seen in Iraq, drove away from the target houses at high speed. The truck rode low, a heavy load causing it to slide across the packed dirt as if it were on an icy road.
“Moshe, you get eyes on that truck?” Ritter said into the radio.
No reply.
A different crack of gunfire erupted in the canyon. Moshe and the team were otherwise occupied.
Ritter looked north; the wash led to an improved road and the rest of the island. If the nuke was in that truck…
“Shlomo, can you disable the truck without hitting the cargo bed?” Ritter asked.
“What happens if I hit the cargo?”
“Let’s not find out.”
Shlomo let out a slow breath and squeezed the trigger.
The truck was three hundred yards away, moving over uneven terrain. Shlomo’s rifle fired, and the bullet shattered the Bongo’s front windshield. It kept going.
Shlomo worked the bolt action, and a smoking cartridge ejected into the morning light.
The second shot didn’t have an immediate effect, but a second after the report faded, the truck rumbled into a shallow ravine. There was no movement from the driver.
Gunfire continued from deeper in the ravine, with the sound of a nightlong thunderstorm compacted into minutes. If the nuke wasn’t in that truck, then it was in the crossfire.
“I’m going to check out that truck. See if the package is in there. Cover me,” Ritter said.
He stepped over the ridgeline, not waiting to talk things over with the protesting Shlomo, and half slid, half stepped down the slope. Dirt and rocks broke loose with each footfall, a dusty avalanche following him. He wasn’t sure whether all the dirt would be a better screen or a “shoot me” sign for anyone watching the valley.
Once at the bottom, he ran to the truck with his Tavor rifle aimed at the cab. His injured leg flared with pain every time it hit the ground.
The truck canted off the road, the right wheels dangling inches about the ground. The dusky-skinned driver was hunched over the steering wheel, one arm stuck out over the ruins of the windshield. Ritter opened the driver’s door. The cabin reeked of spilled blood. Blood ran down the driver’s left shoulder. An unseen exit wound on the other side of the driver poured blood over the seat; it ran in rivulets over the front edge and pooled on the passenger’s side.
Ritter ran to the rear of the truck and looked in the bed. A wide green case was tied down with bright nylon cords. Ritter grabbed one of the handles and shook it. It was so heavy that it hardly budged.
He keyed his mike. “Shlomo, I think I’ve got it.”
A bullet snapped in the air over his head. Ritter crouched and took two steps toward the driver’s side. The turn signal burst in a shower of glass as a bullet shattered it.
Ritter ran to the front of the truck and stepped into the ravine — the truck and the nuke between him and the firefight in the village.