“Risk 1, I have a priority target at grid.” The colonel read off the coordinates Harden had given him and waited for the pilot’s reply.
“Good copy, Anvil 6, I’m two minutes out.”
Harden knew the pilot had no idea what he was about to bomb, but the colonel had the correct identification codes and the pilot would prosecute the target under the assumption that it had been authorized. Procedure made the military predictable and all too easy to utilize, if you knew how to exploit the inherent technological weaknesses of the “green machine.”
“Anvil 7, stand by,” the colonel ordered.
He imagined the pilot punching the target grid into the onboard computer that fed the data to the thousand-pound joint direct attack munition attached to the aircraft’s wing. The bomb’s GPS guidance system would steer the munition down on the target from whatever altitude it was dropped at.
“Anvil 6, Risk 1, bombs away,” the pilot said.
“Good copy, Risk 1.”
The Taliban commander smiled as the children ripped the wrappers off the candies and stuffed them greedily into their mouths. He was recruiting the next crop of jihadists with a dollar’s worth of melted sugar.
Adieb opened his arms wide for the customary embrace as the commander tousled the hair of a young boy and stepped free of the knot of young beggars. They knew he had more candy and ignored the bodyguards who tried to move them out of the way. He was just within reach of his trusted friend when the bomb hit.
The force of the explosion evaporated any evidence of the meeting in a huge flash. A geyser of black smoke and brown earth erupted from the massive crater, and a second later the sound rolled up the mountains until it reached Harden.
Wuuuummphhh.
“Anvil 6, Anvil 7, good bomb,” he said over the radio as the inky black cloud rose high in the air.
“Risk 1 copies good bomb. I’m clearing the area, thanks for the work.”
“That’s what you think,” Harden muttered to himself as he looked through the scope at the wreckage below.
“Roger, Risk 1, Anvil Out,” Harden said over the radio.
There was nothing left of the trucks or the gate. A dull gray pall of smoke hung over the twisted remains of the compound as the women of the village rushed out to gaze upon the horror. For a brief second, before their plaintive cries rose heavenward, it was perfectly still.
From his perch on the side of the mountain the villagers looked like ants milling around an inverted anthill. While the mothers of the dead children looked for any remains with which they could enshrine their grief, the men gathered in militant knots just a stone’s throw away.
Harden turned off the GPS unit and slipped it back into his pocket. Gravel crunched behind him as one of his men moved up to the edge with an M240 Bravo machine gun. At seven hundred meters, the village was well within its range. Swinging the range finder to the north, he saw Colonel Barnes and the rest of the team creeping out of the low ground.
Five minutes later, the colonel came over the radio as Harden forced a pair of earplugs into his ears.
“All Anvil elements, engage,” he said simply.
Harden’s gunner pulled the M240 onto his shoulder and squeezed off a short burst of 7.62s down into the village. The rounds slammed into the group of men just as a long burst erupted from Barnes’s position.
The villagers were caught out in the open as the two gunners took their time raining fire into the village. Every few seconds a single shot from one of their snipers rang out, ensuring that no one made it out of the kill zone.
The rate of fire from the two guns slowed as the last of the villagers crumpled to the ground. A moment after that, the valley lay silent, as if nothing had ever happened.
CHAPTER 7
Mason took the precautions of a hunted man as he walked to the Internet café. He was pushing his luck by staying in the city, but crossing the border wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Certain arrangements had to be made before he cleared out.
As he walked, the American used the grimy shop windows to check for tails. He constantly changed direction and cut from one side of the street to the other in an effort to thwart any pursuers.
Slipping between a group of tourists, he moved deeper into the heart of the city, but despite his hypervigilance, his mind began to wander.
His fall from member of the most elite unit in the military to one of the most hunted men in the world had been as sudden as it was final. The years of war had turned his soul callous, and he’d lost the part of him that his friends and family had known. Like many of the men who’d fought nonstop since 2001, he had been changed by horrors civilians would never know.
Mason had been married once, back when he had a chance to be happy. He had met Meg on a flight to North Carolina, and the chance encounter had blossomed into a relationship despite their differences.
He knew he never deserved her, but she supported him when he went through Delta selection, and after he was selected to join the unit, he rewarded her by proposing. She wanted a diamond that wasn’t gaudy but was big enough to fill her friends with an innocent amount of envy. They planned a simple wedding in Florida followed by a honeymoon in Hawaii. But it never happened. Before he deployed, they stood before the justice of the peace. Afterward, he promised to make it up to her.
Six months later, when he got back, they went on their Hawaiian honeymoon, but he could never fit the dream wedding into the unit’s schedule. The fights started, which surprised them both because they’d never really fought — before the war.
Mason didn’t mind sleeping on the couch because, honestly, he didn’t sleep much anymore. He promised if she could just hold out a little longer they would be a real family outside the military.
The next deployment to Iraq came four months after the first, and when he came home this time, it was to an empty house and a Post-it note that read, “I can’t do this.” Every room in the empty house smelled like her, but drinking seemed to help. After signing the divorce papers and putting the house on the market, Mason tried to move on.
He volunteered for the next deployment because he didn’t want to stay in the States and figured that at least Iraq would be familiar, but he was wrong about that too. The country he’d left a few months before had imploded along the fractured lines of sectarian violence. The once-annoying insurgency had grown into a violent beast that roamed the cities and streets devouring soldiers and civilians alike.
His wife had been his foundation. She was the light that brought him through the darkness, but now she was gone and he was lost. Worse than being lost, Mason realized that he was a cliché. He was a “Dear John” whose girl had been stolen while he was away. When he slept he dreamed about her fucking some other guy whose hands and mouth touched places he would never see again. His war wasn’t in Iraq; it was in the sweaty, twisted sheets of some other man’s bed, and it was killing him.
One day he just stopped giving a fuck. Combat was the only thing that got him out of his head. What others called “heroic actions in the line of duty,” he called a way out.
Stopping to light a cigarette, he casually scanned the faces milling around him. Nothing stuck out, but he knew better than to ignore his instincts. Making his way up the street, he could see the Internet café perched two blocks north.
On top of the café’s roof was an ancient satellite dish whose exposed cables ran to a crudely patched hole in the wall. Inside, a dark-skinned Arab sat behind a small desk covered in cigarette ash and empty cans of Wild Tiger energy drink. Without looking up from the grimy television set, he peeled a cracked square of plastic from a stack and slid it to the American.