Wahid translated again and Fahad responded. They spoke for a short time and Wahid turned back to Donnie. “He says he’s feeling better. He says he just needs to work to make money to feed his children.”
Fahad nodded, gasping for air. He struggled with the wheel, then grabbed at his chest. The Toyota lurched forward.
“God damn it! Fahad, stop the truck.”
Kelvin turned. “What the fuck, Donnie?”
Wahid was yelling in Pashto, but Fahad did not respond. Donnie tried to reach inside, but the truck rolled forward just fast enough to keep him from grabbing the wheel. “I think he’s having a heart attack!” He beat on the side of the cab. “Fahad, stop the truck!”
Fahad slumped down. Donnie was concerned now, for Fahad’s well-being, but also for his own. If the CO saw them chasing a truck with a dying man in it, there would be hell to pay.
“Kelvin, get your ass over here!” He turned to point at the men riding in the back of Fahad’s truck. “Wahid, tell them to get the fuck down on the ground!”
Wahid shouted at the men and they bailed from the truck-bed and scrambled to the ground, hands over their heads.
“Shit, shit shit!” The truck was now only thirty yards from the main group of tents.
His PRC-148 squawked to life. “Delta two this is Delta one, over.”
He keyed his radio. “This is Delta two. We’ve got a local who’s not responding. I think he’s having a heart attack, over.”
“Say again, Delta two, over.”
“It’s one of locals. I think he’s dying. Can we get a medic out here?”
His radio squawked, and a pair of PFC’s came running from the mess hall along with the base doctor and nurse.
They were barely out of the tent when Fahad sat up and gunned the engine, the truck lurching forward.
“What the hell?” Donnie grabbed his rifle and struggled to bring it to a firing position. “Stop the truck!”
He saw Fahad holding a device, turning to mouth something.
Kelvin saw it too and screamed, “Bomb!”
The truck leapt forward and hit the tent at twenty miles per hour, then exploded. The mess hall blew apart, the tent shredded, and the truck became a pile of shrapnel as the shock wave expanded.
Donnie knew he had made a fatal mistake. He had a fraction of a second where time slowed and he saw the shock-wave race across the dusty ground, and before he could blink the shrapnel hit him moving at twenty times the speed of sound and then he knew nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eric woke, bleary-eyed, the furious rapping on his door rousing him from a deep sleep. He staggered out of bed and made his way to the door, stubbing his toe against his desk. He yelped and fumbled around the wall until he found the light switch.
He wanted to kick the desk that held his computer, the endless paperwork now the bane of his existence, but worried he might break a toe. He opened the door and found a young PFC waiting.
“Sir, you’re needed on deck.”
Eric nodded wearily and turned to put on his uniform, but the PFC stopped him. “Now, sir.”
He cast a baleful eye toward the PFC and struggled with the urge to strangle him, then nodded. The PFC was just following orders. Eric checked himself quickly in the mirror. There were deep bags under his eyes and his t-shirt was wrinkled, but it would have to do.
He followed the young man through the labyrinth of tunnels as the PFC explained the situation. “There’s been a bombing in Afghanistan. Twenty six confirmed dead.”
“Where?”
“Near Kandahar. There are teams in route from Kandahar and Bagram. The site is secure, but they need to evac the wounded.”
The PFC stopped at the security entrance. “Ms. Smith and Mr. Freeman are waiting.”
Eric dismissed the young man, navigated his way through the security entrance, and joined Nancy, Deion and Clark inside the War Room.
Nancy gave him a once over, her eyes lingering on his sweatpants and t-shirt. “You got briefed on the way?”
“Yes. Do we know who’s responsible?”
Deion offered, “Too sophisticated for the Taliban. It’s AQ, gotta be.”
Sergeant Clark displayed a map of Afghanistan on the big screen. The noise and buzz in the room receded as the analysts stopped to watch.
“This is Kandahar.” The mouse hovered over the city, and Clark moved it to the north east. “This is Forward Operating Base Wildcat, twenty six miles away. The purpose of the FOB was to test the deployment of a new drone, the RQ-170, code named the Sentinel.”
A picture of a gray-painted drone snapped into place on the upper right quadrant of the screen. “It’s a Lockheed Martin flying wing design. It was launching from Kandahar, but controlled by a team at FOB Wildcat. This was a shakeout session, with DIA, CIA and JSOC forces. If successful, the operation would move to Creech.”
“Did AQ know that a new drone was being tested?” Nancy asked.
“There’s no indication that anyone knew of the testing,” Clark said. “The FOB was built in a hurry.”
A live feed played on the overhead, showing the wreckage of FOB Wildcat. Clark continued, “Locals were employed to work in the kitchen and clean the latrines. A man named Fahad drove the truck. He’d recently been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. At 08:00 local time he approached the FOB in his truck. During routine inspection he faked a massive heart attack, drove the truck full of explosives into the mess hall, and detonated the bomb.”
On screen, the devastation was evident. The shredded remains of the tent flapped in the wind, plastic and wood debris spreading outward from the point of detonation. The truck frame was a barely recognizable pile of charred and twisted metal.
“Twenty six are confirmed dead,” Clark said, “another six critically wounded. Fifteen more are bad enough to require medical care. They’ll be evac’d to Bagram, triaged, and sent on to Ramstein.”
Eric’s stomach sank as he watched the wounded being loaded into helicopters, body bags full of dead soldiers still lying in the dirt. “Do we have identification on the twenty six?”
Clark nodded, his face grim. “I’m afraid six members of Delta were killed.” He turned to Deion. “And two CIA officers. Also, two Lockheed contractors, the base doctor and nurse, and the rest were DIA or Army.”
Eric’s stomach twisted. “Do you have the names of the Operators?”
Clark nodded and displayed a list of names on the screen. Eric barely recognized the first name, Joel Wood. His heart thudded at the next three. Joshua Goodman, Cedric Carpenter, and Dwight Spears.
He knew them. Had known them. They were good men. Joshua was a star quarterback in his Texas high-school, and used to talk about Texas high-school football like it was a religion.
Cedric and Dwight were good Operators, Cedric a big black man from Philadelphia, and Dwight a skinny little man from Seattle. They were best friends, quick to laugh, and quicker to kill. They made a hell of a team, as he found out on a mission with them in 2004.
He drew a blank on the next two names, Tanner and Lott. They must have gone through selection after him. He felt a stab of anger at the senseless loss of life, and anger that he was far removed from the action.
“You have the names of the CIA officers?” Deion asked.
Clark displayed two names, Jack Trevino and Gene Wiggins.
Deion sighed. “I don’t know Trevino, but Gene Wiggins was a good officer. I worked with him back in 2005.”
Eric glanced at him, surprised. “Was Wiggins the one who tried to push for the operations against the Pakistani ISI?”
“That’s the man,” Deion said. “Couldn’t get it approved, but his heart was in the right place.”