Jim Bob and Victor stepped out of their van and joined Chris and Hannah in the SUV. “This is about as close as we’re going to get by vehicle,” Jim Bob said. “We can wait until nightfall to retrieve the Switchblade Whisper and hope it is still up here. The darkness will cover our movement, but if anyone catches us, no matter what story we give, we’re going to look suspicious. Or we can go now and use our Adventure Tours cover until we reach the Switchblade Whisper. Of course, if the Syrian Army catches us with it on the way back, smooth talking won’t do us much good. We’ll need to do some smooth shooting.”
“Let’s go now,” Victor said.
Jim Bob looked at Chris.
“I’d rather do a nighttime op than a daytime op, but it’s your call,” Chris said, meeting Jim Bob’s gaze. Whatever the decision, he hoped there’d be no need for shooting. He still hoped for a perfect op.
“I’m easy,” Hannah said. “Whatever you guys decide.”
“All right,” Jim Bob said. “Saddle up. We’ll pick up the Switchblade Whisper and go straight to the yacht.”
Jim Bob is a brave man. Or an idiot.
10
“It should be about four klicks east of here,” Victor said with a nod. He looked back down at the GPS tracker and gestured to the others to follow — Jim Bob, then Chris, and Hannah bringing up the rear. Wearing their green Adventure Tour polo shirts and brown slacks, they still carried their concealed pistols. They stepped through long grass and wildflowers, passing myrtle bushes flowering with small explosions of white.
Victor signaled with two fingers: two kilometers to go. After the four crossed a dirt road, young fir trees surrounded them but not so many as to block out the fading sunlight. Thorny broom bushes scratched Chris’s left leg, but the scratches were the least of his worries.
Once Victor gave the one-kilometer signal, Jim Bob motioned for everyone to spread out. They continued for nearly the whole kilometer but found nothing. They backtracked — still nothing. Hannah wandered north then disappeared. Minutes later, she returned and signaled them to follow her. She led the crew through heavy vegetation until she stopped and pointed to a long grey shape at the base of several charred tree trunks. A grey angled line, too straight for Mother Nature and more like the wing of something manmade, broke the uneven lines of foliage.
They neared a wing. Its skin was glassy smooth, and there was no fuselage that they could find, part of the stealth design of the Switchblade Whisper. They’d found it. The starboard side had broken near a sensor pod, and the port side of the main structure and wing had broken into much smaller pieces. Among the wreckage were broken directional cameras that, when working, were used for projecting the surrounding environment onto the skin of the aircraft — making it virtually invisible.
Jim Bob pointed to a meter-long length of wing and gestured for Victor to take it. Then he disconnected the black box and placed it in his backpack. “Okay, Chris, blow it up,” Jim Bob said.
Victor turned to head back, but Hannah grabbed his arm and stopped him. He growled. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m going with the Switchblade Whisper,” she said.
“Your job is to stay here and protect Chris while he rigs the demo.”
“You stay here and protect Chris,” she said calmly.
“How am I supposed to carry this and guard him at the same time?”
Hannah took the length of wing from him. “I’ve got the wing.”
He glared at her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked innocently.
“I just don’t like the sudden change in plans,” Victor said.
“It’s all right, Victor,” Jim Bob said. “Let her carry the wing. You guard Chris.”
Jim Bob headed out, and Hannah followed.
Victor turned to watch Chris, who pulled a satchel charge of the highly classified explosive heptanitrocubane (CL-20) from his backpack. Packing more punch than TNT or HMX, CL-20 was the best non-nuclear explosive that money could buy. Chris attached the satchel to the main body of the Switchblade Whisper. From his left pocket, he removed a rectangular case made of high-impact plastic and opened it to expose a padded interior. He unfolded the pads, revealing a blasting cap. Chris inserted the blasting cap into the CL-20. Then he crimped the blasting cap into two timed fuses—two is one and one is none. Next, he screwed two fuse igniters tightly onto the fuses. With his left hand, he grasped the igniters, and with his right hand, he tugged on the lanyards until he heard them snap. The pungent odor of cordite smoldered a trail up his nostrils. Fifteen minutes till boom-time.
“Fire in the hole,” he said. He turned to see if Victor had heard, but he was gone — they were all gone! Jim Bob and Hannah were probably hurrying to load the wing and the black box into the van, but Victor should’ve stayed and covered Chris’s six.
“Hey, you! Stop!” Fifty meters south, a middle-aged Syrian soldier in a tight-fitting uniform waved at Chris.
Ignoring the soldier, he tried to put some distance between himself and the Switchblade Whisper. If the soldier saw the drone and the explosives planted on it, Chris’s cover would be blown, they would frisk him and discover his pistol, and then his Adventure Tours cover wouldn’t mean squat.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the soldier raise his rifle. Chris kept walking away when a shot rang out, and the round popped the sound barrier as it barely missed his head, causing his sphincter to tighten. He’d experienced different kinds of being shot at, ranging from an ineffective enemy having no idea where he was to an effective enemy zeroing in for the kill, and this was the latter.
His heart beat faster, and he felt like he wasn’t getting blood to his head. His breathing became more rapid, and he craved oxygen. The commotion of birds in the trees became as loud as if they were perched on his head. With his physiology sped up, the soldier and leaves in the breeze seemed to move in slow motion. He’d thought with all the experiences of war, he’d assimilate quickly, but he’d thought wrong — he was shocked to find that he’d regressed to being a virgin SEAL.
Chris’s hand shook as he managed to draw his Glock and turn to face the man. Only the stippling on the pistol grip and his white-knuckled grasp kept Chris’s sweaty hands from losing the weapon. He tried for a shot to the upper torso, focusing on the soldier’s neck in order to compensate for the distance, but he failed to ensure that he could see the sights of his trembling pistol when he squeezed the trigger.
The first shot struck the soldier in the shoulder. The man dropped his rifle and spun around with a yelp before he retreated. Before Chris could escape the area, a square-shouldered soldier came into view pointing his rifle at Chris.
Slow it down and aim, Chris tried to calm himself. This time, he carefully aligned his sights across the soldier’s neck. He coolly pulled the trigger back until the weapon fired. Pop. In the chest. Pop. Another in the chest. One moment the soldier was full of life, and now he was dead — like a marionette with its strings suddenly severed. It made him nauseous.
There was no time to dwell on his reversion to virgin SEAL or his nauseated stomach. The other soldiers would soon outnumber and outgun him, and he didn’t want to stick around for face time with the grim reaper.