Threat Zero Read online

  “Target down,” Weathers said.

  “Roger. See how it’s done, Reaper?”

  “You came close to him so we could kill him, Stone. Don’t pretend to teach me about combat.” What he wanted to say was, that was murder. But he checked himself. They had just started the mission.

  “You think Luttrell would be a millionaire today if they had just shot the goat herders?” Stone said.

  Marcus Luttrell was the lone survivor of a Navy SEAL mission gone wrong in Afghanistan. Selling the rights to his story had garnered him fame as “The Lone Survivor,” which was actually an extract from the Ranger Creed.

  Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.

  “I think we might have just burned ourselves,” Harwood said. Another man appeared on the deck, frantically searching for his fishing partner. Either he had been on the other side retrieving another net, or he had been down in the shallow hold.

  Either way, they were too far beyond the fishing vessel to stop and go back. Or, if Stone chose to do that, he would risk making a trivial risk the main thing, creating an even larger fur ball than he had already done.

  “Too late now. We’re heading into the landing area. Prepare to disembark,” Stone said, seemingly unfazed.

  The nose of the boat slammed onto the shore as Stone jacked the engine up to avoid damage to the prop and shaft. Harwood and Weathers jumped out and pulled the raft into a small alcove beneath the towering bluffs of the Crimean Peninsula. The port was a half mile to their north and the city of Yalta was a quarter mile to their south. Harwood and Weathers pulled a camouflage net over the Zodiac as they unloaded their gear.

  “This way,” Stone said.

  Harwood walked trail, as they had rehearsed. He was responsible for rear security of the team. Every three or four steps, he would spin in three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning through his night-vision goggle, which he had affixed to the harness on his scalp. A musty mixture of saltwater spray, a faint scent of petroleum, and Weathers’s body odor filled his nostrils. The time was 0100 local. Their plan was to attack the target at 0300, or 3 A.M., which was the ebb of the human circadian rhythm. Even the most dutiful guards had a hard time staying awake from 0300 to 0400. Once they could envision the dawn, the body could awaken, no matter how tired.

  Like on all missions, Harwood resorted to his training and his ethos. He knew how to secure a patrol. He also knew that soldiers always fought for their buddies, not necessarily flag or country. While Harwood was a devout patriot, when the bullets started flying, it was teamwork on his left and right that would win the day in the name of that higher calling.

  They stumbled rapidly up the east side of the bluff, following a minor trail filled with hard rock outcroppings. Soon, they were silhouetted by the half moon glaring down from a cloudless sky.

  “Need cover,” Harwood said. The infantryman in him was uncomfortable with Stone’s apparent lack of concern for concealment. Instead of a surgical ninja approach, such as Harwood preferred, Stone’s style seemed to be the proverbial bull in a china shop. They eventually found a covered position on the west side of the ridge about a hundred meters beneath the peak, a terrain feature known as the military crest. It was precisely the type of location Harwood preferred. High terrain, but not silhouetted against the sky, as they had been. The landscape reminded him of Southern California. Dry hills with hidden crags along the sides. They were only about 800 meters above ground level, but the vantage was a good one.

  The Sultan compound sat just a quarter mile below them. It was 0200 hours, an hour before hit time. Through his scope, Harwood studied the complex of buildings and fences. There was a large rectangular building that seemed to be the main living quarters. A few muted lights were on in rooms facing them on the northwest corner. The backyard was large with two small guest cottages. The homes appeared to be stucco with red-tiled roofs. The security fence looked to be about ten feet high but was no match for their vantage point. Harwood and team had clear fields of fire.

  “Movement in the backyard,” Harwood said.

  A young man was walking from one of the guest cabins to the back deck of the home. A second man stepped onto the deck, this one much older.

  “Confirm target,” Harwood said. “Looks like Murat and one of the sons. It’s thermal, but I think I can make out the scar. Must be Amrat.”

  “No need to confirm. This is the compound. All individuals are enemy combatants and are valid targets.”

  Valid targets. Team Valid. Harwood understood, now. What constituted a valid target remained to be seen.

  Hinojosa’s voice chirped in his ear.

  “I’m watching through your scope. I confirm that is Murat and Sadiq Sultan, our two primary targets. Intelligence analysts are telling us that they are planners for a team that calls themselves Threat Zero. Like patient zero, I guess. Regardless, facial, gait, and voice recognition confirm. Valid targets.” Harwood’s scope connected to a satellite feed so that Hinojosa had full situational awareness of the mission.

  “Roger,” Harwood said. Then to Weathers, “I’ve got the dude on the left. Stone, you’re spotting.”

  “Easy shot, Harwood. No need.”

  “Then make yourself useful and check our six,” Harwood said. In his tactical element, he didn’t care who was in charge of the mission, he had the combat experience to lead and survive on any battlefield.

  “Fuck you. I’m watching for squirters,” Stone said.

  “I’m on target two,” Weathers said.

  The two men looked up. Harwood heard it, also. The faint sound of helicopter blades.

  “On three,” Harwood said.

  Before he could count, Weathers shot and the man on the right spun and fell against the deck railing. Holding his aim steady, Harwood sent the SR-25 7.62 round into Murat Sultan’s head as the man turned in his direction. He watched half the skull come off as the man stumbled, banging against the glass storm door, shattering it, and sliding down in a bloody mess.

  The wood door opened, and a younger man stuck his head through the shattered storm door. Stone fired and missed. Weathers dropped the third man in the doorway.

  Had to have been Amrat, Harwood thought.

  The helicopter blades became louder.

  “Stone, what have we got?” Harwood asked, scanning the target for Malina.

  Flashes moved through the rear window, which Harwood figured to be the kitchen. Stepping over the dead bodies and onto the back deck was a young child, perhaps three or four years old. The child’s arms were in the air, flapping like a bird, as if playing a game.

  “Target,” Stone said.

  “Not valid,” Harwood countered.

  A woman dashed through the storm door, tackled the child and rolled off the deck into the yard. Racing to the far side of the deck, she lifted an assault rifle and began returning surprisingly accurate fire. She held the baby behind her in an artful move as she raced to the northeast corner of the main building.

  She didn’t make it that far.

  Weathers fired and hit her center mass. The woman stumbled, her rifle spitting a final volley of bullets into the air. The child tumbled away, crying, and stood in the middle of the yard next to Malina Sultan, staring at the apparent mother. Harwood’s mind was cycling. This is a baby. Her wide eyes looked up, as if knowing they had killed her mother. It was a little girl, he could tell now. She had a pacifier in her mouth. Long, curly black hair fell around her neck. Harwood jumped up and leapt onto Stone.

  But he was too late.

  Stone fired.

  Harwood wrestled the weapon away from the former SEAL and shouted, “That was not a valid shot!”

  He looked through Stone’s riflescope.

  Stone didn’t miss this time. The child had fallen across her mother, dead, as if she intended to snuggle.

  “That was not a good shot!” Harwood repeated. “Not fucking val
id!”

  He was breathing heavy, rasps of air escaping from his lungs.

  “Not fucking valid, you son of a bitch!”

  He thought of Monisha. This girl was maybe three. She had nothing to do with anything.

  “Calm down, Reaper,” Hinojosa said into his ear. “You need to extract. You’ve been detected.”

  Without thinking, Harwood tossed Stone’s weapon away from him and it skittered down the hill. Then he pulled his knife and leapt toward Stone, who was ready. Their knives sparked as Harwood dropped his knife, grabbed Stone’s knife hand with both hands, wrenched it to his left, twisting until Stone released his knife in obvious pain. Harwood kicked Stone’s left heel out from under him and then put his knee in Stone’s chest. He anticipated Stone reaching for his pistol and beat the SEAL to his own weapon, pointing the man’s HK pistol at his face. His hands trembling, Harwood’s mind flashed with images of Monisha, the Chechen, and Samuelson. If he murdered Stone on a mission he would be in jail. Who would take care of Monisha?

  “Not valid!” he shouted in Stone’s face.

  The sounds of his voice were drowned by the humming blades of a Russian Hind attack helicopter. Rockets peppered the terrain around them. The upgraded Hind had enhanced avionics and optics. They were sitting ducks.

  “Bigger issues, Reaper,” Stone replied. He smiled until Harwood smashed his mouth with the butt of the pistol.

  The helicopter continued to zero in on their position, the rocket and machine-gun fire becoming more accurate by the second.

  “You ladies can fight,” Weathers said. “But we need to unass the AO.”

  Stone smiled at him through bloody and chipped teeth. “Just doing what the prez asked us to do.”

  Weathers tugged on his shoulder. “Need your firepower, bro. Leave this shit for once we’ve exfilled out of here.”

  Still reeling from Stone’s ruthless murder of the child, Harwood stood, shook off the shock, grabbed his knife and SR-25, and focused on the slow-moving Hind. It was maybe a half mile away and closing. It slowed as it locked onto their position. The nose flared up, taking the pilots out of his view momentarily, then leveled, spitting rockets into the hillside below them.

  His best shot was on the pilot in the starboard seat, one he figured to be the copilot. It didn’t matter. He needed to create as much confusion as possible so that they could escape. His real desire, though, was to go into the compound and check on the girl. He scanned the area. It was either wishful thinking or his imagination, but the girl had moved. She was halfway up the steps, crawling over the dead men. A soldier seeking shelter from the beaten zone.

  Police sirens now filled the air with their shrill warning. Harwood removed a parachute flare from his rucksack and laid it by his side.

  He established a solid sight picture on the copilot and fired twice. At least one of the rounds struck the man.

  “You got pilot, Weathers?”

  “Roger.”

  Weathers fired and the helicopter began to flare upward, as if the pilot had manipulated a control to slow the aircraft.

  “We’ve got an intercept that the fisherman you shot called you guys in. You need to exfil now,” Hinojosa whispered in his earbud.

  “Roger. Find a way to send an ambulance to the target. The child is still alive.”

  Hinojosa didn’t respond.

  “Do it!” Harwood said. “Or I blow the roof off this fucking op.”

  After a long pause. “Done.”

  “Tell them I’m marking it with a parachute flare.”

  Harwood grabbed the parachute flare, removed the top of the canister, placed it on the bottom, and slammed it against the rock. He angled the mouth of the tube at forty-five degrees to send it far enough to hang near the target location.

  The helicopter spun wildly out of control and crashed at the base of the hill. The flare opened with a pop and hung above the backyard, highlighting the child crawling over glass inside the house.

  “Don’t you dare shoot,” Harwood said to Weathers. He locked eyes with the marine, who nodded.

  “We’re moving now,” Weathers said.

  The three men retraced their route over the hill, and down to the boat, which wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER 6

  “The Russian military is tracking you,” Hinojosa said through the headset. “Improvise.”

  Harwood had been improvising his entire life. He didn’t need some lady in an airplane twenty miles away to tell him what to do.

  “You tossed my rifle, douchebag,” Stone said. He reared up in Harwood’s face, pouring stale breath on him. Harwood could bench about 425 pounds by now since he had been doing extensive rehab from his combat injuries. His hand lashed out like a cobra and grabbed Stone’s thick neck, squeezing it in his vise grip.

  “I don’t give a shit about your rifle. You shot a defenseless girl, you coward. I’m in charge. Do what the fuck I tell you to do or I will absolutely slit your throat.”

  “Come on, guys,” Weathers said. “We gotta move.”

  Harwood shoved Stone backward, feeling the hateful glare burning into his skin.

  “Follow me,” Harwood said. He picked up the pace at a slight jog, which was no problem for him, given that he ran daily with his rucksack on his back. Stone was laboring a bit, but Weathers seemed to be doing fine.

  He found a dirt road that led north, toward the industrial port ten miles north. Keeping to the low ground, he navigated through shallow dry creek beds, always checking his magnetic compass to make sure they were on azimuth. Their exfiltration plan had been to meet an American fishing vessel in the Black Sea prior to sunrise. It was 0430 and the sun would be up within two hours. They had to move quickly.

  Russian helicopters were buzzing around the hill from which they had ambushed the Sultan family. The first casualties delivered by the president’s Team Valid. In Harwood’s mind, it was an inauspicious beginning. He believed that every terrorist deserved to die a terrible death and personally wanted to be the one to deliver that final note.

  He was the Reaper, after all. Thirty-three kills in ninety days. Always there saving everyone’s ass. It was a team sport, but the Reaper might as well have been the quarterback, calling the plays, delivering the touchdowns. Killing the bad guys when it most counted.

  After an hour of jogging through the scrub and washboard ditches, Harwood saw the lights of the port. They paused, sucking in oxygen. A light sheen of sweat covered Harwood’s cut body. The polypropylene shirt wicked away the moisture, keeping him dry. He drank some water through his CamelBak tube.

  “Need to cut it,” Harwood said. He nodded at Weathers then looked at Stone, who glared at him. Helicopter blades chopped in the air behind them, circling their sniper lair. The air was moist and cool, a fresh breeze blowing off the Black Sea. Stone was wheezing from the run. Harwood felt fine. The conditioning delta between him and Stone seemed important to him and so he logged it away in the back of his brain.

  Weathers used wire cutters to snip the chain-link fence. He pulled back the cut semicircle of fencing and used the pliers to bend a small loop into the metal to hook onto the standing fence and hold open the gap. Weathers went through first, sliding on his belly, followed by Harwood. Stone slipped under last. They huddled behind a four-foot-high mound of dirt and grass about fifty meters from the main port building and the steps to the piers.

  They were in what looked to be a hybrid commercial and industrial port. About twenty fishing boats were haphazardly lined up against a concrete pier. Large pipes ran along a second pier. They appeared to be for fluid trans-load, such as liquid natural gas or fertilizer. At the end of the pier were two additional T berths where ships could anchor in the Black Sea and take on or discharge liquid through the piping.

  “Security, ten o’clock,” Harwood said. Two uniformed men were talking on radios, scanning. Almost certainly, they had been alerted. Both were armed with pistols on their hips.

  From a low brick building a man walked up
to the two security guards. He had on a black watch cap and a heavy waterproof parka. Stadium lights surrounded the perimeter and made any concealed movement within the port facility impossible.

  They chatted briefly, looking around, as if one of them were saying, “There was a shooting and the suspects are on the loose.”

  Lots of head nods and urgent movement of hands.

  “We need to kill them,” Stone said, gritting his teeth.

  Stone’s answer to everything seemed to be slaughter. No finesse.

  “What we need is a boat,” Harwood said. “That might involve killing them, but we should be focused on finding an operational boat.”

  The helicopters patrolling the skies crept closer to the port, maybe a mile or two away. They were doing a classic grid search. By Harwood’s calculations they had maybe another twenty minutes before there would be no escape.

  “Wait a minute,” Weathers said. “There’s our boat. It’s at the end of that T head.”

  Harwood looked through his scope and recognized the distinctive outline of the Zodiac. Saw the high-tech engine with its unique stealthy trapezoid shape.

  “We can go in right here, slip across the water, get in the boat, and blow out of here,” Weathers said.

  “Roger. No match for the helicopters though,” Harwood said. He pressed his push-to-talk button. “Any way to keep those helicopters off our ass?” he said to Hinojosa.

  After a moment, Hinojosa came back with, “Negative. You have an hour to link up.”

  “Roger, out.”

  Their only option was to make a gun run for the transport in the Black Sea that awaited them. From there, they would have a decent shot at escaping.

  “Okay, Stone, you go first,” Harwood said. “Then Weathers. Then me.”

  Stone smiled. “Don’t want me capping those assholes? You’re such a pussy, Harwood. Reaper my ass.”

  “You’re in lead because you’re in charge of the boat. You’re the Navy SEAL, I think. I’ll be over watch until you’re in the boat.”