Highest Law: A Gripping Psychological Thriller Page 2

  “No one in sight. Good to go.”

  The rusting metal gate is secured by a similarly corroded chain and a shiny combination padlock. And since this was actually in the intel brief, we’ve come prepared. Chappy does the honors, producing a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters he’s grudgingly hauled across this range for the past six hours, since fast-roping from a Black Hawk helicopter on the other side of the mountain. The Texan skips the padlock and just slices through the rusting chain before happily tossing the hefty tool aside.

  And just like that we’re inside the courtyard, taking all of seven seconds to cover the thirty feet separating the gate from the metal front door, which appears as heavy as described in the brief. So, again, we’ve come prepared.

  Chappy does the honors once more, working his own mix of PETN, nitrocellulose, and a plasticizer around the lock and hinges. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, is one of the most powerful explosive materials known. It’s also a personal favorite of my demolition man because of its punching power combined with a high degree of stability during transport. That means it isn’t going to go off accidentally, turning his rucksack into a suicide vest and popping his head fifty feet up in the air, which is what happens to the fanatics that wear them. Yeah, the moment a zealous Haji explodes his or her s-vest, off goes the head like a damn basketball.

  But maybe that’s TMI.

  It takes Chappy precisely twenty-one seconds to rig the door, before we all take a few steps aside even though it’s supposed to be a localized and shaped charge designed to blow the entire door into the structure. That way, any Talis lucky enough to be hanging out in the entryway will be taken out along with it.

  “Fire in the hole,” he whispers, before setting off the charge.

  We close our eyes for a moment to avoid any flashes through the optics of our GPNVG-18s. According to the operator’s manual, the goggles are supposed to be smart enough to shut themselves down for the duration of the flash. But I’ve never trusted manuals.

  The blast is deafening, shaking me to the bone, even rattling my teeth. But it does the job. One moment the door is there, and the next, it is shot into the structure like a missile leveling everything in its path

  Once more I lead the stack, rushing in through the haze and immediately shifting right to make room for Murph, who goes left. Together, we cover our self-assigned areas of responsibility while Chappy manages the center and Dix covers our six.

  “Clear left,” Murph reports.

  “Clear right,” I report, the burnt smell hovering in the dark interior tickling my nostrils.

  “All clear,” says Chappy, meaning this room is—

  It happens very fast. One second I’m staring at the greenish image of this anteroom through the residual smoke of the explosion, and the next, a figure lurches across my field of view with an AK-47 in hand.

  My MP7SD has a fire-selector lever with three options: semi-auto, three-round burst, and full auto. Mine—as well as everyone else’s in my team—is set in the first mode, meaning each time I pull the trigger, a single 4.6x30mm round is fired. The second option consumes too much ammo, and the third is for the movies.

  I fire once before he gets a chance to shift his weapon toward us. But to my surprise, I miss—and mind you, I seldom miss.

  Even though it is pitch black in here, and he clearly has no NVGs, the man leaped out of the way at the last second, almost as if he could tell there was a round headed his way. Then, in an impossible feat of acrobatics, he runs up the side wall like one of those Cirque du Soleil performers and executes a flawless backflip, landing on his feet while firing—and while glaring at me with a pair of crazy eyes.

  What the fuck?

  Now it’s my turn to swing left before firing again. His rounds strike the wall to my right while mine scores a direct hit to his right knee instead of his center of mass, which is where I normally place them. Remember, the mission is to capture, not kill—unless we have no other option.

  Murph is on top of Mr. Acrobat before the agile little bastard hits the floor bleating like a wounded goat. But I’m already scrambling away while the New Yorker kicks the AK-47 away, flex-cuffs him, shuts him up with a strip of duct tape, and then squirts superglue into the wound before draping it with more duct tape to keep him from bleeding out. Yeah, Murph’s quite the medic.

  I kick open the door to my immediate right and once more go through the room-clearing drill, moving right just as Dix enters and shifts left while Chappy scans the middle, and now Murph covers our six. Half a dozen men are clambering out of their cots, emitting a cacophony of grunts and gasps. They’re tripping over each other in the dark, obviously disoriented from being awakened by a blast and gunfire. I see no weapons in sight, which only adds to the weird nature of this op. The Talis I’ve grown to know and despise sleep with their damn Kalashnikovs cradled like lovers.

  Chappy tosses a couple of light sticks before using a mix of bastardized Pashto and hand signals to force them to their knees while Dix flex-cuffs them. And I’m out of there without waiting for Murph as—

  A haji emerges from a room at the end of the hall, running toward me while zigzagging, and while also sporting a pair of those same crazy eyes.

  “Murph!” I shout, firing once but missing as the nimble Afghan leaps into the air like an Olympic long-jump gold medalist.

  What the hell’s happening?

  The bastard lands in a crouch, rolls, and surges to his feet while firing, the staccato gunfire reverberating in the enclosed area, pounding my eardrums.

  I dive to the left, missing the volley ripping through the mud wall just above my head, kicking up a river of debris.

  Who are these guys?

  I fire again, and this time the haji jumps onto the opposite wall and almost scrambles alongside it like fucking Spiderman. My rounds go low, punching the wall six inches below him.

  He once more lands on his feet and swings the weapon in my direction. In the same instant, two rounds smack the insurgent in the middle of his chest, propelling him back.

  I look over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of Murph standing tall above me with his MP7SD aimed at the haji.

  “No need to flex-cuff that one,” he says, helping me to my feet. “Who are these guys?”

  “Who the hell knows, man?” I say, for a moment remembering crazed junkies high on PCP back during my barrio days. Cops had to shoot the bastards multiple times before they went down.

  “Crazy mothers,” Murph replies, before checking the rest of the rooms, stumbling onto two more hajis in the next hallway wielding AKs. But unlike the circus performers, these guys quickly set their weapons on the ground when confronted.

  Chappy manages the flex-cuffing while Murph and I continue the sweep, finding one more room packed with men screaming, all unarmed, and finally two more hajis—kids really, I’m guessing early teens and scared out of their minds—in what looks like the kitchen in the rear of the place.

  The smell of freshly baked naan, caramelized onions, and grilled meat tingles my nostrils and makes my stomach grumble. I hate this country, but man, I love its food. The boys are apparently making breakfast, which explains the smoke coiling from that roof pipe. They’re also unarmed.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Murph mumbles, reading my mind. “Nothing here but the two hyped-up gymnasts. Probably on drugs. The rest are just goats, goat fuckers, and now a couple of kids.”

  Indeed.

  Only four guns and a large majority of noncombatants in a compound designated by NATO as a priority-one target far from our operational theater. There are no RPGs, no missiles, and no IEDs or IED-making hardware, no laptops or cellphones, and certainly no one that smells like Taliban leadership.

  “Place looks like a goddamned overnight inn for goat herders,” Chappy offers while Murph nods and Dix munches on a granola bar. The oversized Jersey boy has an insatiable
appetite, which he constantly feeds to keep up his imposing physique.

  “I’m calling it in,” I tell him while he proceeds to flex-cuff the kids, one of whom has already pissed his baggy pants.

  “Bravo Niner Six, Sierra Echo One,” I say into my MBITR after switching to KAF’s frequency.

  “Sierra Echo One, Niner Six, go ahead.”

  “Three-Five’s clear but is no IED mart. Only two possible combatants, though I think they may have been on drugs. The rest are definitely noncombatants, plus two minors—I repeat, two boys around eleven. They were cooking breakfast for what looks like a goat herder inn. How do you want to proceed?”

  “Sierra Echo One, stand by.”

  I stare at the poor bastards on the floor with their wrists and ankles secured. I notice that a pleading stare has replaced the crazy eyes of the one I shot in the knee. He’s crying, and he’s also pissed his trousers, unlike every single Tali I’ve come face-to-face with.

  Sighing, I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to apologize to the local tribal chiefs in the region for this Charlie Foxtrot. In this land, everyone seems to know everybody, and word will soon get out that we stormed this inn and even killed one and wounded another.

  “Sierra Echo be advised that OGA’s on the way. They have command authority on site. It’s their call.”

  Well, that just makes absolutely no sense. Our rules are to treat every Afghan as a noncombatant until proven otherwise, like if they start shooting at us. Otherwise, we simply cut them loose. These guys aren’t Talis. Not a single one of them resembles the warriors I’ve had the pleasure of capturing alive in the past, not even the acrobat that survived, who keeps staring at us in horror.

  The eyes on these men, and especially the boys, lack that proud and unyielding stare of battle-hardened combatants, and especially of its senior leadership, which was supposed to be holed up in here. Yet, KAF has just—

  “Sierra Echo, do you copy?”

  “Roger,” I reply. “We copy. But for the record, we’re flex-cuffing one possible combatant, a bunch of Afghan noncombatants, and two minors. Totally against CENTCOM SOP.” Since these transmissions are recorded, I decide to throw in there that this decision is in conflict with U.S. Central Command standard operating practice.

  “Roger, Sierra Echo. Proceed as instructed.”

  Murph leans over and whispers, “Told ya. Charlie foxtrot all the way, man.”

  I really like Murph. In addition to sharing the bond of growing up in poor neighborhoods—he in Harlem and me in the barrios of East LA, where Pops settled after emigrating from Mexico City in the 1930s—we were only children and are now orphans. He lost his parents during an armed robbery outside their apartment when he was in basic. I lost dad back in ‘91, and mom five years ago to breast cancer.

  I just nod while standing there contemplating just how truly screwed up this is.

  “I’ll hang back here, Boss,” Dix says, “while you wait for the spooks.”

  Before I can reply, the Jersey boy tosses the remainder of his granola bar and replaces it with naan he snatches from a basket next to the wood-burning stove. He starts dipping it in a pot with a yellowish steaming brew that smells like curry. Chewing it slowly, he says, “Little bastards may not be T-men, Murph, but they sure can cook. Check it out.”

  Murph gives me a shrug, says, “Might as well get something out this FUBAR op,” and joins him.

  The two of them start consuming the meal prepared by the kids, both of whom are now drenched in their own urine.

  I shake my head at them and head out to wait for the OGA cavalry. Chappy is already along the front of the compound lining up everyone we’ve flex-cuffed. Half of them have also pissed their pants.

  Poor bastards, I think while filling my lungs with the cold and dry air of—

  My goggles pick up the motion, fast, to our far right, like shadows shifting amidst shades of green delineating the rocky surroundings. They’ve just made an impossible leap over the outer perimeter wall like damned gazelles and are dashing straight for me.

  “Chappy!”

  He’s on me like gravy on rice a second later, and we both track the incoming figures, five of them, moving faster than anyone should while crisscrossing each other. I fire once, twice, but my rounds go wide. Chappy also misses the damned hyper hajis with his first burst.

  I adjust and try again as the shadows rush across the clearing separating the outer wall from the compound. This time I set the weapon’s sights slightly ahead of the lead Tali and let him come to me, before squeezing the trigger, finally scoring a hit.

  One down.

  Chappy tries again but misses.

  I do the math, and the math sucks. The four remaining ones will overrun us in another—

  The air parts right above our heads, and I feel the unmistakable compressing power of a fifty-caliber full-metal jacket singeing the space just ahead of us the instant before the lead Tali’s chest explodes. The impact lifts him off his feet and pushes him back into the two men immediately behind him.

  It’s both brutal and beautiful.

  Chappy and I take out the two hajis that tumble onto the ground, but the last man in the stack manages an impossible jump over his fallen comrades and lands less than a dozen feet from us.

  I stare into his eyes, the crazy stare of a wild beast, just like that haji we wounded inside. But his face is there one second and gone the next as another fifty-caliber round vaporizes it, splattering it on the rocky terrain behind him.

  I look at the mess we managed to make in less than ten seconds before staring up the mountain and tipping my head at our guardian angel. Most snipers prefer the TAC-338, the TAC-50’s smaller and more manageable sibling that still fires the very powerful .338 Lapua Magnum round. But Cope prefers the monster fifty-cal for this very reason. That round touches any part of you, and you’re toast. Even if it doesn’t kill you, it will certainly disable you.

  “Charles Whitman was a pussy, Cope,” Chappy mumbles.

  The former Delta sniper replies with a double click of his mic as Dix and Murph decide to join the fight. The former has a mouthful of food that he’s struggling to chew and swallow. Finally, he says, “What the hell, Boss?”

  “Yeah,” I say, inspecting the carnage with my wide-angle goggles. “What the hell, indeed.”

  Chapter 2

  It takes less than thirty minutes for a pair of Chinooks to reach the plateau, which is far too quickly for any helos out of KAF, meaning the spooks were staged somewhere nearby.

  And that tells me that these guys are damn special because ten minutes ago KAF advised me that our exfil helo—as well as every other available bird in the region—had been diverted to support some big rescue op near Lashkar Gah, a city by the foot of the Sulaiman Mountains about a hundred klicks west of KAF. Apparently, a division of Marines was just ambushed.

  Dawn has already broken over the eastern horizon, staining the mountainside with an orange and yellow glow.

  Dix and Murph had gone back inside to keep enjoying the local breakfast while keeping an eye on the nervous youngsters still flex-cuffed in the kitchen. Chappy and I guard the gate just behind the perimeter wall while Cope remains on station in his sniper perch covering us. There’s enough sunlight now, so we shut off our goggles and swing them up over our helmets.

  The twin-rotor helos settle on the clearing beyond the wall, kicking up clouds of whirling dust.

  I slip on a pair of clear Battle Vision glasses in time to catch a single man materializing amidst the haze through the rear ramp of the closest helo.

  He’s medium build, with long salt-and-pepper hair pulled tight into a ponytail, a five-o’clock shadow, and steely blue eyes that settle on me as I step across the gate to meet up with him. I know SEALs are supposed to be tough hombres and all, but this guy here gives me the creeps as he walks up to me and just stand
s there. He looks like he’s lived hard, with creases on his forehead and around his eyes and mouth, probably mid-forties with a deep in-country tan.

  “Lieutenant Commander Lawson Pacheco?” he shouts over the rotor noise.

  I nod.

  “Thought you’d have Mike Oscared by now!” he adds, using our jargon for ‘moving out,’ before introducing himself as “Jones” but without offering a hand.

  These OGA types all go to the same finishing school.

  I shrug. “Our exfil helo was diverted to rescue—”

  “I’ve heard,” he says, frowning while looking over his shoulder at the twin birds as their turbines spool down. “That’s very fucking unfortunate.”

  I can’t tell if he means the Marines getting shot up or us still being here. My little voice votes for the latter.

  “Looks like we’re gonna be here a while,” I finally say.

  “Negative, Commander. You can exfil in one of ours.” A semblance of a smile cracks his hard-etched face, which makes him look even creepier. “We’re the ones who are gonna be here a while.”

  Before I can reply, a dozen men and a couple of women emerge from the Chinooks’ rear ramps hauling quite the load of gear in duffel bags and also in those large rolling hard cases used by concert bands. They’re all also dressed in civvies and wear the same stone faces of Agency field personnel.

  I frown, having seen my share of interrogations inside the wire. This many spooks hauling this much hardware aren’t here to interrogate, especially when I know—and I’m positive they also know, since they were likely listening to my radio calls—that the majority of hajis in there are non-combatants.

  This is something else, and it has Special Access Program, or SAP written all over it. SAP is what’s commonly known as Black Ops, which technically means it’s above my paygrade.

  As the large group starts walking past us, I notice four Slavic-looking men. One of them looks in charge, walking slightly ahead of the others while dispensing orders I can’t hear. He is quite pale, almost albino pale, with closely-cropped ash-blond hair and very light hazel eyes. Like a damn ghost. But what really catches my attention is the language they’re using as they walk past me.