The bot turned and began walking down the hall. Chelsea followed it out, walking with it in the direction of the truck.
Johnny met her a few yards from the entrance.
“Where’s your headset?” he asked.
“I took it off while I was working with Peter. There’s something wrong with his AI. He should have protected you but—”
“Come on! Back inside,” he told her.
“What’s going on?”
“Russian planes. They’re shooting up everything. They’re close — hear them?”
“But—”
“Inside!” yelled Rosen, running up.
“I need to get Peter.”
“Inside!” he yelled, grabbing her.
“Peter!”
Chelsea’s shout was drowned out by the sound of gunfire as one of the Su-24s began shooting at the ground.
Failure to Close
Flash forward
Ghadab hunkered down against the stack of empty sacks, pretending to be sleeping. He was in the back of an empty vegetable truck, being ferried out of Syria with a half-dozen other men. They didn’t know who he was, a precaution against being betrayed. His fellow travelers were likewise guarded about their identities; he assumed most were Caliphate deserters, though they presented themselves as simple refugees.
They were a ragged, depressed bunch. They’d spent most of the past half hour complaining. But that was a typical pastime of men no matter what their condition.
“The war is lost,” said one of the men. “The dictator will never be overthrown.”
“The Iranians are to blame. Them and the Russians.”
“I blame the Americans. They could have ended it.”
Another man spit loudly at this. “The Americans cannot finish a meal, let alone a war. They leave and expect others to pay the bill.”
“As we have.”
“I wish someone would serve them justice. Kill them with their drones.”
“Explode them into space. That is what the Caliphate wished.”
“What will happen now that they are defeated?”
“The Islamic State will not be defeated.”
“They have been. All of their cities fall. Aleppo is next.”
Ghadab resisted the temptation to argue. It was difficult, though.
But there was truth in what they said. The immediate strategic position would not hold. The dream of creating a state on earth before the end days was impossible to fulfill.
Surely, he had felt that. He had never had that ambition.
The men in the truck continued to talk. Maybe they weren’t deserters after all — they seemed too critical of the Islamic State. It was harder and harder to pretend not to hear.
The truck came to a sudden stop. Ghadab felt someone kick him in the shoe.
“Up, up,” said a voice in a half whisper. “The border is a half mile away. There are guards. Walk with the others to the east, and you will be safe enough.”
Ghadab rubbed his eyes and slowly unfolded himself from the truck bed.
“Go with God,” the driver told him after he jumped down. “But go. I don’t need any trouble tonight.”
“God be with you,” Ghadab told him. “And don’t despair. Great things will happen for all of us. There will be salvation.”
“Not in my lifetime,” said the driver, walking away.
71
Chelsea screamed for Peter to follow, but her shouts were drowned out by the exploding bombs. Aiming for the entrance to the bunker, the Russian aircraft dropped two large unguided or “dumb” bombs; both missed, but not by much — the first hit the roof above the second barrier, and the second struck a few yards away. Already weakened by the TOW missiles, the roof there collapsed; a hurricane of dust and debris knocked everyone nearby back through the hall.
Chelsea flew against Rosen, who himself hit the wall. Cushioned, she rolled over, coughing and blinded. All but two of the battery-powered LED lamps they’d placed in the hall were smashed; the light from the others was not enough to penetrate the dust-filled dimness.
“You OK?” It was Johnny.
“I’m OK,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Here.” He patted her leg. “Rosen?”
The team leader grunted. A flashlight pierced the darkness. “Johnny?”
“Here.”
“Rosen?” asked Turk.
“Uh.”
The beam of light found Rosen’s face, a dark grimace of pain. Christian came out of the room behind Turk. He pulled a small med pack from Rosen’s leg.
“No morphine,” managed Rosen.
“You got two compound fractures,” said Christian. “You’re gettin’ stuck.”
He jabbed the needle home.
The rest of the team had taken shelter in the rooms before the bombs hit and, except for minor bruises and a few cuts, were all right. Johnny, rising slowly, took out his own flashlight to lead the way out. Chelsea followed.
They got only to the first bend. The bombs had knocked down the weakened structure, trapping them inside.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Those were the last words anyone said for a few minutes. Without orders, the team silently formed a chain and began removing pieces of debris from the pile now blocking their way. The narrow hall felt claustrophobic, the dust still thick in the air.
Suddenly Chelsea threw herself on the pile.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
“Calm down,” said Johnny, trying to pull her back. “It’s OK. We’ll get out.”
“You don’t understand,” she insisted. “Help! Peter, get us out.”
She was talking to the robot outside. Many of its trials were aimed at rescuing people from collapsed buildings and earthquakes.
Within seconds, they heard scraping from the other side of the wall.
Even with Peter’s help, it took two hours to get a hole big enough cleared for Chelsea to crawl through; another half hour of work was needed to make the passage big enough to slide Rosen out. By then, Johansen had arrived with two more vehicles and the rest of the team, except for Krista and Thomas Yellen, back at the base.
The Russian fighters had torn up the trucks and most of the gear pretty well; they’d also inadvertently killed the terrorists the team had taken from the bunker, who’d been handcuffed in the backs of the trucks.
A shame, thought Johansen — not because of the loss of life, but the intelligence they might have provided.
With the attack on Palmyra proceeding to the south, Johansen didn’t want to take the time to sort the debris into usable and nonusable; they piled everything they could into the backs of the two trucks they’d come down with, then blew the others up.
By the time they got back to their temporary base in Kurdistan, Krista and Yellen had secured the gear they were taking in a large mobile cubicle. Two Ospreys were already en route, tasked to bring them across the border to Turkey, where a C-17 was waiting.
Johnny and Chelsea sat next to each other on the fabric bench at the side of their Osprey as they took off.
“Hell of a day,” said Chelsea.
“Yeah,” said Johnny.