BRAINRUSH, a Thriller (34 page)

Hoisting their weapons to their shoulders, the duo weaved through the rocks toward the radar array and the remaining two sentries.

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

2:55
am

T
he sheer cliff wall rose above Jake like a massive hundred-story skyscraper. Twin green ropes climbed up the rock face, disappearing into the darkness above. It would take hours to scale this cliff the old fashioned way, and only then with the help of a rope dropped from fifteen hundred feet above. But the battery–operated, Atlas Rope Ascender attached to Jake’s chest harness would get him to the top in less than three minutes.

Jake watched Snake and Ripper vanish above him. The rest of the team was either already up, or on their way above them, along with the special equipment. Jake and Tony waited for the go  signal from above.

Except for the gusting wind growing more intense by the second, so far everything had gone smoothly. Tark and Willie had taken out the two guards at the radar array and broken through the locks on the equipment shack. Once in, they’d spliced into the cables and attached a small processor that allowed them to hack into the system and create a narrow cone of silence in the radar’s coverage area. To the technician deep in the cavern, everything would appear normal.   But any inbound flights on a vector between 180 and 184 degrees would be invisible. 

The V-22 had made a low-level approach down the center of that cone, landing undetected at the base of the mountain. It was parked nearby in a shallow ravine. Cal, Kenny, Lacey, Marshall, and Ahmed remained on board.

Kenny had just launched the Raven recon drone. Jake heard its high-pitched whine fade as it made its spiraling climb to the ledge above. In a few minutes, it would be two thousand feet above the ledge, out of sight and sound range, its powerful lenses and sensors providing real time images and data to the team. 

Unlike the rest of the team, Jake’s and Tony’s disguises didn’t offer them the benefit of a helmet-mounted HUD and comm system. Instead, they each wore a three-inch wrist display under the long sleeve of their
dishdashahs
, giving them a digital interface with the battlefield. Earbuds and embedded microphones linked them into the comm-net. The Raven’s infrared sensors sorted through the heat signatures on the ground and transmitted the overhead images to the small screens. Friend or hostile designations were represented by flashing green dots for the team and solid red dots for everyone else.

Tony was strapped to the second rope on Jake’s left, staring at his wrist screen; his face shimmered from the reflected light of the LED display. Jake caught an intensity in the big man’s eyes that was absolute. Tony was back in his element. 

As if sensing his stare, Tony looked over and said, “You ready for this?”

Jake hesitated, recalling the unbelievable chain of events that had brought him to this point. It occurred to him that he had crammed more adventure and pure living into the past seven days than most people did in their entire lives. For a guy who had been diagnosed with less than a few months to live, that wasn’t bad. He smiled back at Tony. “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my entire life.”

Tony grinned. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I love this shit!” He flipped the Velcro cover back over his wrist screen and looked up the rope to the darkness that awaited them.

Jake was anxious to get going. The wind was picking up speed at an alarming pace, gathering a thickening wall of sand in its wake. The region was notorious for its sudden sky-darkening sandstorms, and it looked like they were going to be caught in the throat of a big one. 

A huge gust lifted a whirlwind of sand past Jake, bringing on a sneezing fit as he fought to clear his nose. He pursed his lips closed, rubbed his eyes with his gloved fingers, and slipped on his protective goggles. Following Tony’s lead, Jake wrapped the tail of his
keffiyeh
over his mouth and nose, tucking it in at his ear.

 Tark’s voice came over his earbud, “Team Three—go!”

Jake squinted at Tony through his goggles. Bits of sand lodged in the corner of his eyelids caused him to tear up. Tony gave him a thumbs-up and they started their ascent, the rope corkscrewing through the threaded APEX gear at an impressive ten feet per second. 

By the time they were halfway up, the whistling wind sounded like an army of banshees. Gusting waves of stinging sand screamed past them up the cliff face, jostling them dangerously close to the rocky wall.

Jake glanced to his left. Tony’s back was to him, his body swinging from the last gust.

A fluttering shadow above Tony drew Jake’s attention. 

An immense wraith of darkness seemed to peel itself from the cliff wall above them, its black wings blotting out the stars as it swooped down and engulfed Tony in its deadly grasp, abruptly arresting his climb.

Jake smashed the
stop
button on his APEX. Where Tony had once been there was now an undulating black cocoon wrapped tightly around the rope, twisting and swaying in the torrent of flying sand.

“Tony!”

There was a faint reply, but the howling wind sucked it away. Tony’s voice didn’t register in Jake’s earbud.

“Tony, do you read me?”

Kenny’s voice answered him. “Read you five by five, Jake. What’s wrong?”

“Tony’s tangled in something and his mike must be messed up. Stand by.”

The wind-borne sand grew sharper, blurring the view through Jake’s goggles. He cupped his gloved hands around his eyes like binoculars to keep the sand from the lens, trying to discern exactly what was happening. 

A sprawling swirl of black silky fabric and nylon cords flapped against the cliff face behind Tony. It appeared to be one of the SEAL team’s parachutes, caught on an outcropping of rock. Stirred to a whipping frenzy by the sudden wind, one corner of the chute must have snagged on the spinning gears of Tony’s APEX, twisting violently around him and pinning his limbs. Tony’s struggles only aggravated the situation.

In between wind gusts, Jake yelled, “Stay still. I’m coming over!”

There was a muffled reply and the cocoon settled down.

A stiff gust whipped past Jake, lifting the tucked end of his turban loose from around his face. It flew up, snapping into the wind above his head. Sand encrusted Jake’s nose and the corners of his lips.  He spit to clear his mouth and rewrapped his face.  

Using the rope as a fulcrum Jake swung his legs toward the wall and then tucked them and reversed the process.  He pendulumed several times, each swing bringing him nearer to the wall.  When he was close enough he levered his legs into a fierce shove off the rock that angled him toward Tony. His first swing wasn’t wide enough, so he swung back and repeated the process, springing off the rock each time to increase his arc. On the fourth try he reached out and grabbed hold of the rope above the tangled canopy. His feet slammed into Tony’s head under the fabric. 

There was an angry grumble beneath the shroud.

Jake shouted over the wind, “You okay under there?”

“Yeah, but the APEX is jammed to hell. I’m so trussed up I can’t even get to my KA-BAR.”

“Stay still and I’ll cut you loose.”

“Hey, Jake.”

“What?”

“Don’t cut the rope!”

“Shut the fuck up and don’t move!”

Kenny broke in over the radio. “Jake, what’s going on?”

“I’m on it. Stand by.”

Jake used a carabineer to clamp himself to the rope above Tony’s tangle. He pulled out his pilot’s survival switchblade and snapped it open. The razor-sharp edge made easy work of the chute. He used the knife’s secondary hook blade to slice through several of the twisted shroud lines. The chute snapped up and away in the fierce wind, its other end still hooked on the outcropping, the fabric whipping against the rock.

“Clip on,” Jake yelled.

Tony hooked himself to Jake’s rig. Once he was securely tethered, they unclipped from Tony’s ruined APEX and swung away together on Jake’s rope.

“Hope it holds,” Tony yelled under his scarf.

Jake switched the APEX to its spare battery pack and they restarted their ascent up the mountain. The cracks and snaps of the flapping parachute faded into the distance beneath them.

They were three hundred feet from the top when a hollow, deep-throated whistle rose over the howl of the wind. The whistle grew louder as they climbed closer to its source, its intensity rising and falling on the waves of each gust. It emanated from a dark smudge in the rock above and to their left. 

Beneath the eerie sound, Jake sensed an undercurrent of vibration coming from the mountain. It seemed to resonate deep inside his head, tugging at him. When they were abreast of the dark patch in the rock, and the vibration was at its peak, Jake stopped their ascent.

Tony’s eyebrows creased above his goggles. Still yelling over the wind, he said, “Why’d you stop? We gotta get up there!”

“I’ve got to check out that vibration first.” Jake pointed at the deep shadow. “Grab the flashlight out of my pack.”

“I don’t feel any vibra—”

“Tony, it’s important!”

Tony didn’t argue. He opened one of the flip covers on Jake’s backpack and handed him a slim flashlight. 

The shrill oscillating sound was like a steam whistle that was only occasionally getting enough steam to sound its loudest. It was in tune with the gusts of wind screaming up the mountain. But the vibration Jake felt under the whistle was a constant and steady low-pitched hum. 

Jake aimed the flashlight at the shadowed cleft in the face of the rock. The dust-filled wind obscured its beam, but Jake saw enough to confirm his suspicions. There was a car-size opening in the rock wall.

Tony yelled into his ear. “We’re runnin’ outta time!”

Tony was right. Jake shook his head, forcing himself to ignore the vibration. He hit the
up
button and continued their ascent.

They were only a hundred feet from the top when Kenny’s panic-laced voice filled Jake’s earbud. “Tangos are swarming on the ridge!”

Jake stopped their ascent and snapped open the flap on his wrist screen. There were several red dots moving toward the team’s position overhead. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion on the ledge above. The rope lost tension and they dropped five or six feet before lurching to a violent stop. Jake’s stomach was in his throat. He watched the rope next to them plummet out of the sky like an angry serpent, the mangled remains of the tubular A-frame following in its wake. It shrieked past them amidst a shower of rocks and gravel. Jake threw his arms over his head for protection and his forearms were pelted by debris.

It stopped as quickly as it started and Jake opened his eyes to find Tony limp in his harness, his goggled eyes rolled back in his head. Blood trailed down his forehead from beneath his turban.

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

2:50
am

B
ecker and Azim had been the first up the ropes. They’d hurried inland to scout their position. 

Taking cover behind a large boulder, Becker studied the Raven’s overhead view on his helmet-mounted HUD. Azim was at his side, the
mujahedin
warrior as strong as a pack horse, carrying all of the explosives and two heavy canisters of fifty-cal ammo for the remote-control machine guns. 

A large clearing spread out before them, the high peaks on either side outlined by the star-filled night. The wind had calmed; the ridge guided the currents from the sandstorm up and over them. The chill mountain air was deadly quiet. Becker caught the faint scent of goat feces nearby.

Treading the earth in the deepest hours of night, weaving through rocky crags and scrub brush, silent and watchful—for Becker it was like returning to his roots in the outback. When he was twelve, his parents had died and his aboriginal grandfather had taken him on his first of a countless number of walkabouts designed to shed the stain of city living from his psyche. He’d learned the ways of his ancestors, to live not on the land but
with
the land, to become a part of the cycle of life in the wild.

Becker switched his HUD to night vision and analyzed the terrain in front of them. The relatively flat clearing widened to the size of a large soccer field, the area likely used by Battista’s men for games or training exercises. This would be the killing ground. He studied the perimeter. Like an oblong bowl, it was surrounded by towering walls of granite on its left side and a steep rocky slope of loose stone on the right, the bottom of which was littered with a patchwork of car-size boulders, offering excellent pockets for concealment. 

The far end of the clearing lay two hundred yards away, where the only other entrance to the bowl narrowed to a winding cleft less than two yards wide with sheer canyon walls towering up either side. That was the path that would bring reinforcements from the village and the lower caverns, and that was the target for his first trap.