“Is there some ingredient in that shit that I don’t know about?” Villa asked, watching him swish the blue liquid around in his mouth for the third time that day.
Boz had already gone through one of the travel-sized bottles and had been forced to open this one before the day was even over.
“Who knows, but for the longest time I thought it was vodka or something,” Harden said. “The man should have been a dentist.”
Barnes stood by himself, waiting for Jones, who had crossed the border the day prior with Hoyt, to send in his latest update. He’d considered his options and decided he didn’t want to go north in search of another crossing. Without knowing who was in control of the checkpoint, he could be walking into a trap. When the phone finally rang, Jones didn’t do much to help his decision.
Jones advised that he had a good vantage point on the crossing but that there wasn’t any traffic coming from the Syrian side. Hoyt assumed that someone had cut the road and that al-Qaeda was letting people in but refused to let anyone out.
Barnes hung up the phone and called Harden over to him. Explaining the situation and lack of intel, he decided that they would dismount short of the border crossing before nightfall and conduct a recon before continuing on. Harden nodded and went to brief the team.
The civil war in Syria had brought every major terrorist group in the Mideast to the war-torn country. The violence and lawlessness meant that it was unsafe for most reporters, and therefore he didn’t have to worry about his men showing up on the news.
Barnes sat in the front while Scottie drove, and if traffic stayed light they would arrive at their drop point fifteen minutes after the sun went down. He grabbed a map from the visor and checked his position on his wrist GPS. Once he found his location, he began searching for a good place to stop the van.
“Scottie, in another five kilometers I need you to pull off the road and head into the desert. Harden, you stay with the van and I’ll take Boz and Villa up for the recon. You guys go ahead and kit up.”
“Roger that, boss.” They had bought the van from a smuggler who had built compartments into the seats that were virtually impossible to find. Villa and Boz moved off the bench seat and depressed the hidden lever that opened one of the compartments. The two men began pulling kit bags out of the hiding spot and laying them on the floor.
“I got your kit, sir.” Boz handed the colonel’s kit bag to Harden, who stood up and switched seats with him.
Barnes squeezed his large frame into the back of the van and slipped into his plate carrier. Instead of the HKs they were going to use AK-47s that had been modified to take a suppressor. He didn’t want to leave NATO brass around the objective — not that it mattered. The 7.62 magazines that they were carrying were bigger and heavier due to the size of the round, and Barnes had made sure that everyone had a rig that would carry the magazines.
The colonel checked his optic to make sure it was working. He had never liked the EOTech, so he used an Aimpoint M68, which did the same job but had a dot instead of a reticle. They had modified the rifles because unlike the M4s, the Russian rifles didn’t have rails to mount hardware. Boz had solved the problem by welding a small rail forward of the bolt, which allowed the team to mount optics onto the rifles.
The van came to a halt at the predetermined spot and the team conducted a quick radio check. From his position on the other side of the border, Jones was monitoring the same channel while Hoyt used thermals to scan the area.
“Anvil 6 is stepping off time now. How copy?” Barnes asked as he led the team away from the road.
It was common for Muslims to stop on the side of the road to pray, so the van wouldn’t draw any attention. What would draw attention was three armed men running across the desert, so they made sure to push far enough out of sight that they wouldn’t be detected by any passing motorists.
“Yes, sir, I read you. Our position is about one kilometer northeast of the checkpoint. We couldn’t get any closer without being compromised, and there has been no traffic from this end for the last two hours.”
“Roger that.”
Barnes used the GPS to navigate away from the target before swinging wide and coming in from the south. He could see the road in the distance as it snaked east of him. According to the map the road would open up into a Y, and there would be a metal guard tower on a hill next to the intersection.
The terrain was flat and the sandy ground had been packed hard, making it easy to walk. Barnes could see low-lying shrubs and tufts of grass through his NODs as his feet gently scuffed the ground. He wasn’t even breathing hard when he saw the guard tower rising over a low set of hills.
As they quietly slipped across the border, Barnes realized that he could have easily driven across without anyone seeing anything. However, in the back of his mind he knew that a plume of dust coming out of the desert might have drawn attention. The terrain was beginning to rise beneath their feet as they moved into the hills, and when they were five hundred meters out he called a halt.
“Be advised, we are five hundred meters from the objective.”
“Check, boss,” Harden replied.
“You must be in the low ground, sir — we can’t see you from here.”
“Roger that, we’re moving out.”
Barnes pivoted and touched Boz on the shoulder before he moved off in the darkness. He kept to the low side of the hill for as long as he could before he began working his way up at an angle. They made their approach carefully and avoided silhouetting themselves on the crest of the hill. The moon was beginning to peek out over the horizon, and they were close enough to the target to hear voices and smell the guard’s cheap tobacco.
“Sir, we have you now. We aren’t observing any movement.”
Barnes keyed his mike but didn’t say anything. In Vietnam, long-range reconnaissance teams referred to this as “breaking squelch.” The technique allowed them to communicate nonverbally when talking could compromise them.
He pointed at Boz and motioned for him to set up on the hilltop. Boz nodded and began low-crawling toward the crest of the high ground. Once he reached a good vantage point, he keyed the radio, signaling that he was set. Barnes and Villa moved silently from their position and approached the target.
The colonel crawled as close as he could to the edge of the hill, and since no one had bothered to cut the grass he had plenty of concealment to work with. He was able to move all the way to the edge without any effort. He took a moment to relax as he looked around. Five feet below him was a metal shack made out of corrugated tin. He could see light filtering out of the west side of the shack, and he assumed there was a window over there.
“Boz, give me a sit rep?” he whispered.
“I’ve got one military-age male. He doesn’t appear to be wearing a uniform.”
“Roger that. Stand by for my count.” Barnes motioned for Villa to follow him as he slid back down the hill. Reaching flat ground, he used the dead space between the hill and the shack to mask his approach. The sound of laughter emanated from inside the small building, and he was positive that they hadn’t been compromised.
It was almost too easy.
He signaled to Villa that he was going to flank the building. Villa responded that he would hold on the east wall and breach on his signal. The silent conversation took only a second due to the countless missions they had run together. Keeping low, Barnes moved to the rear of the shack and out of sight.
A telephone line fed into the shack from a pole to his left, and he assumed they had access to a phone and maybe an alarm. He’d have liked to cut the phone line but didn’t have the time. Carefully, he peeked into the window and got a partial layout of the room. Barnes saw four rebels inside, sitting around a table they had made from ammo boxes and an old pallet. The concrete floor had seen better days and was covered in dust and trash.