Read Task Force Desperate Online
Authors: Peter Nealen
Task Force Desperate (50 page)
Half running, half stumbling, we scrambled around the wreckage, trying to put it between us and the advancing Yemenis. Flames billowed through the night, and the heat scorched both of us as we pounded past the fiery crash. My lungs burned as I breathed in the foul smoke, but we couldn’t slow down.
As we got some distance from the conflagration and ran toward the beach, the warm night air seemed positively cool, after the inferno heat of the burning helicopter. Rounds were still cracking overhead, but they were pretty far off. Ahead, I could see the rest of the team running for the beach, every few yards stopping, dropping to the sand, and sending a few more rounds back at our pursuers to discourage them.
Then we were at the beach, spread out in a skirmish line, already half in the water, shooting back toward the city. I heard the second M60E4 go silent, and Eddie yell, “I’m out!” He was followed shortly by both Bob and Chris. Just as Chris sounded off, there was a flash up by the road, and a 90mm shell howled just overhead to splash into the shallow surf and detonate. Apparently, now that they were aiming out over the bay, the AML gunners felt they could use their main guns.
We scattered, trying to provide as little a target as possible. A second gun boomed, and sand geysered into the air only meters in front of us. They’d have the range in a second, and then we were dead. I glanced back at the water. Where the fuck were the boats?
“Into the bay!” Mike yelled. “Swim, we’ll RV with the boats away from the shore!” He started shoving the guys closest to him into the water. He was right. Swimming out to meet the boats was our best hope of getting off the beach alive. Almost as one, we surged out into the surf until we were up to our knees, then dove in and started to stroke for open water.
The guns continued to fire, and shells howled and splashed far too close for comfort, but we swam on, gathering together into what would have been a suicidally close group on land, but was necessary to make sure we had everybody. Bo was still towing Charlie’s body, and Alek had his hand clamped around Jim’s pull handle, helping him swim with only one fully working leg.
We hadn’t made it very far out before Bob lifted his head, listening. A moment later, I picked up the sound of outboards, then spotted the faint white trails of the boats’ wakes. All three were headed toward us, their throttles wide open. A flash of a red lens let them home in on us. Lee was in the lead and chopped the throttle just in time to keep from running Chris and Marcus over. They each grabbed side handles and hauled themselves aboard, reaching back for the next guys.
It took mere moments to load up, and then we were pulling for open water, followed by desultory fire from the shore. Patrol boats, probably including the one we’d bribed earlier, were converging on the beach, drawn easily by the towering pyre of the downed helo. Lee led the way, circling far enough out to the west to evade them before turning south into the Gulf of Aden.
There was silence in the boats as we bounced across the waves, heading back toward the
Frontier Rose
. We’d accomplished the mission. Al Masri was dead, and most of us were out, alive. But we’d lost Charlie, and the empty spaces where Colton, Hank, Tim, and Rodrigo had been haunted us. We were exhausted, and probably a little shell-shocked. It had been one hell of a few weeks.
Chapter 35
T
here was a knock on the door, and everybody in the hostel room we had to ourselves turned, hands close to concealed weapons that would have the Mumbai police down around our heads in an instant if they were seen. But it was just Bob, his arms full of the food we’d sent him out to get. He was drenched from the monsoon rains, and it looked like some of the water had gotten to the food, but it was still light years away from the fare we’d had in Somalia, so nobody complained. Johnny let him in, then closed and locked the door.
It had been a long trip from the Gulf of Aden to Mumbai. We’d had to bury Charlie at sea; there was no way to preserve his body, and even if there had been, Indian customs officials would have flipped out if we’d pulled into port with a dead body on board, that had obviously been shot. We kept Jim’s leg bandaged, and avoided the hospital, so there were no real questions asked, after the initial explanation of an accident. All the weapons except our pistols had been carefully hidden in the
Frontier Rose
’s keel; we’d retrieve them once we left Mumbai.
Now we were gathered in our simple, unadorned hostel room, waiting to talk to Tom. Right on time, the icon lit up, and Alek opened the videoconference.
“You guys alone? No curious ears around?” he asked first.
“It’s just us, Tom,” Alek said.
“All right, then.” Tom looked out at us with his usual icy impassivity. “The dust is starting to settle a little bit, and I’m starting to hear things, both official and unofficial. You guys did a hell of a job in Little Aden, let me tell you.
“Not only did you kill Mahmoud Al-Khalidi, you shwacked most of his personal security unit. I have it on good authority that the other three big shots you killed were very important people from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and the UAE. Together, those three were worth probably about ten million gold eagles. One of them, Ahmed Faisal Farouq, was a Saudi who also had access to the Brigade of Salah ad Din. They’re the unit that was formed from the hard-core jihadis who dragged the royal family out into the streets and beheaded them a couple years ago. That’s leading some to think that Al-Khalidi was trying to put together a wider alliance of Brotherhood-linked killers. For what, we have no idea.
“Nobody knows for sure who pulled off the hit; you guys did a good job of getting in and out clean. The Egyptians, Saudis, and Dubai are now mightily pissed at the Yemenis, and how that’s going to work out, we don’t know. There have already been a few incidents that point to some serious bad blood over this. You might have just put a wedge into the Brotherhood’s cohesiveness for a while.
“Back home, well.” He sneered. “Most people don’t know that anything that’s gone on in the last month even happened. The government’s keeping quiet about it, and most people are worried a lot more about where their next paycheck is coming, or when the currency’s going to take another nosedive, to really give a fuck about what’s going on halfway around the world. Some of the sharper blogs are talking about it, but most people aren’t paying much attention. Too far away.
“The Agency suspects something, I think, but from what I’m hearing, they can’t prove it. Some, particularly in Special Activities, don’t really care, from what I’m hearing.”
He leaned forward. “But we need to be careful. There are some very powerful people who have quietly taken notice, and not all of them are happy about a private organization pulling off a raid like this. Don’t forget, the UN managed to get Executive Outcomes shut down for very similar stuff. There are some people on both sides paying attention now, and some of them will probably stop at nothing to shut us down. Not only are we ‘mercenaries,’ but the Brotherhood has a lot of clout in Washington now. You guys hit them at home, and they’re not happy. They find out it was Praetorian, and we could be in for some trouble.
“On top of that, we’re already persona-non-grata over the earlier job in Somalia. We won’t be getting work from the Agency again, that’s for sure. It’s going to take some serious legal-fu to make sure they don’t try to charge us with anything, but I’ve got that covered.”
He looked down, then looked back up at us. “Any thoughts?”
Alek looked around at the lot of us. “What about the hostages?”
Tom sighed. “As near as we can tell, there are about eighty left alive. It sounds like they’ve been consolidated in the Egyptian Mukhabarat’s new prison complex south of Cairo.”
“Any chance of getting to them?” Jim asked.
Tom shook his head. “No way. They are in the heart of the Brotherhood’s power, and a couple hundred miles inside Egypt. You guys could pull off a coastal raid on Yemen, but this is a whole other order of magnitude. Maybe someday, but not now.”
“Someday?” Alek asked. “That sounds like you’ve got ideas, Tom.”
The Colonel nodded. “I do, as a matter of fact.” He steepled his fingers in front of him. “This operation went way beyond what we originally set this company up to do. Back here, I’ve already had to expand our intelligence and support arm far faster than we had planned. This has actually had a side benefit that I hadn’t foreseen.
“Turning our little intel shop into a mini-intelligence agency cost money, a lot of it. To defray the costs, I’ve already set up our own little private intelligence service, rather like Stratfor or the Cavell Group. It’s already bringing in some not-insignificant revenue. It’s also highlighting some opportunities that we didn’t know were there. Opportunities to hurt the Brotherhood and its ilk.
“Now, I know we all went into this to make money. I know I did. But we’re all still warriors at heart, and I know all of you well enough to know you’re not happy with the way the world’s going. I think I can find a way for us to hit back at the bad guys, and still make money. What do you think?”
There was a long silence. It was Jim who finally broke it. “I think all of us went into this business more for the chance, however slim it looked a few years ago, to get back into combat.” He looked around at the rest of us. “Most of us got out because we thought the Army, or Marine Corps, was getting too political, turning into a bunch of pussies more concerned with cultural sensitivity than fighting. We all fought these assholes before, and got choke-chained when we needed to cut loose. We’ve all felt the frustration.”
He looked down at the floor for a second, gathering his thoughts. “I guess what I’m saying is, as long as we can still pay the bills, I’m happy to kill bad guys, wherever, whenever. And I don’t think I’m alone.”
I shook my head. “You’re not. The assholes are just getting stronger and stronger. Our people just keep knuckling under, and scolding anybody who doesn’t. I say fuck all of them. If we see an opportunity to fuck these assholes up, let’s go for it.”
Everybody in the room was nodding by then. Alek looked at the screen. “That answer your question, Tom?”
He smiled, a tigerish expression without warmth. “It does indeed. Welcome to the time-honored profession of privateer, gentlemen. Get back here as soon as you can.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
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