Echo Platoon (10 page)

He shrugged, took the cigarette out, placed it between his lips, lit it with a cheap butane lighter, inhaled deeply,
and then exhaled dragonlike through his long nose. I noted the look of relief on Ashley’s face when I didn’t press for a quick answer to my question. But then, I knew perfectly well it would have been rude.

No, I haven’t been here in Azerbaijan before. But it didn’t take me more than a few minutes on the ground to understand that the culture here is more Middle East than European, and Middle East is a mentality, a culture, a gestalt, that I understand as fundamentally as any Islamic fundamentalist. And so, one takes one’s time in all things; one does not press one’s hosts unnecessarily. One does not “step in front” and cut off a colonel. That’s why Ashley, who knew all the answers to these questions, kept her diplomatic mouth shut, and was obviously gratified to see that I was doing the same.

More smoke. More wistful staring at the sky. “The Dauphin,” Araz finally said, a longing tone to his voice. “It belongs to your ambassador Madison. She brought it with her from the United States.”

Y’know, friends, it pisses me off when I discover that my life could have been made easier, not to mention less dangerous, if I’d been given an asset that was on hand.

Let me pause long enough right now to explain something about Warriordom. The Warrior does not look for death unnecessarily. He is not afraid to die, but he doesn’t want to die without reason, or because of stupidity—his or anyone else’s. And so, while danger and peril are both a part of the Warrior’s life, the true Warrior will always look for ways to make his job less risky. The ambassador’s chopper would have given me an alternative way in which to take the platform down. And it is always preferable to have alternatives—which
add flexibility to an operation—than to be forced to use a single, rigid plan.

And so, from here on in, you will see that I’ll be dealing with Ambassador Marybeth Madison carefully. I will treat her with the Roguish respect to which her rank entitles her, just as I will salute the president because he is the nation’s commander in chief, even though I know that he is a lowlife, cowardly, draft-dodging, nipple-rolling, pussy-fingering, double-dealing, lying cocksucker (and those, as we all know, are a litany of Blow-Job Bill’s best attributes).

Likewise, knowing that Madam Ambassador put the lives of my men at greater risk than necessary, I will still treat her with respect. But I will deal with her as if she were my enemy, not my ally. Full stop. End of story.

But now, it was time to get on with things. The hostages were safe, and we had training to do. “Araz,” I said, “let’s get the fuck back to Baku. I’m bone tired and the major here has already told me I stink. I’d like a hot shower and a cold beer—and not necessarily in that order.” I didn’t say what I was simultaneously thinking: that I wanted to get back to Baku to check out this Sirzhik organization, because it didn’t sound very kosher to me. But that was for me to know, not Araz.

The Azeri looked at me strangely. I could see the translation forming in his mind’s eye. Then he threw his head back and laughed, snorting cigarette smoke all the while. “Then we go—now,” he roared. “I bring the trucks. We load. We go back to Baku. I hose you down. Then we drink much vodka, we eat grilled goat balls, then the rest of the goat, and then we drink much vodka some more.”

He may not have been talking about Bombay
Sapphire, but it still sounded good to me.
“Spaciba
—thank you,” I said. Araz and his men watched as my guys sorted equipment, reloaded magazines, and put their gear in working order.

Not one unit in a hundred would do that so soon after coming through an op. But these were SEALs, and so their dedication was unmatched. They also knew that they were here in Azerbaijan as teachers—inculcators, who had to show by example that attention to detail, and a constant readiness, were a big part of what SpecOps is all about.

So, sure, they were exhausted. No doubt about it. But they also had the glow of accomplishment about them—the kind of can-do body language that told the Azeris there was nothing they couldn’t do, even though they were bone weary, wrung out, and overworked.

We were on the road by 0800, chugging at thirty-one kliks an hour (that’s a whopping nineteen mph) in a trio of circa-1968 Czechoslovakian-invasion, Soviet Army surplus diesel two-bys. You’ve probably seen similar transport in all those Cold War–era documentaries on the History Channel. We’re talking big, high, squared-off, ugly trucks with uncomfortable wood bench seats, drafty canvas tops, and no springs. I rode shotgun in the first truck. Major Evans sat in the middle. Araz drove, fighting the eight-speed, synchro-smash transmission and strength-sapping Stalinesque steering every fucking centimeter of the way. I thought about asking Ashley about the Sirzhik Foundation, but didn’t want to do it in front of Araz. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t know him well enough to allow him a hint of what I was thinking. That is the
Warrior’s Way: keep thy thoughts to thyself and thine enemies guessing.

We wound our way through the narrow streets of Alät, slaloming around the vegetable vendors with their donkey carts, and big-wheeled tractors pulling flatbeds filled with miscellaneous crap, and finally ground our way onto the main road headed north, a two-lane ribbon of concrete whose bullet-dinged road signs told me we were on the A-322, which paralleled the twin high-speed (okay—it was only relatively high-speed) electric-powered railroad line, running on a more or less north/south axis.

We hit Gobustan at 0935. I nudged Araz and pointed toward a small shed at the side of the road where a wrinkled old man in an embroidered skullcap was selling tea from a shiny samovar, and cakes from a brass tray. “Let’s pull over and get something to drink.”

Let me tell you something about Azerbaijan: it is hot here. Moreover, between the trucks (which were like ovens), and the dust (which was persistent), and the stench of raw petroleum (which was ever present), and the remorseless heat of the diesel engines, even I of the cast-iron constitution was queasy.

Araz nodded. He steered hard right rudder, hit the brakes, and we shuddered to a stop. I clambered down and stretched, relieved to ease the pressure on my spine.

1010. Back on the road. I let my head loll back against the hot metal of the cab and closed my eyes for a short combat nap. I hadn’t even begun to relax when Ashley Evans smacked me in the chest. “Yo, Dick—reveille.”

I shook myself awake and tried to get my bearings.
I looked at my watch. It was almost 1100. “Where are we?”

“Near Sangachaly,” Araz answered from behind a haze of thick, acrid cigarette smoke, as if the name would have meant something significant to me.

Ashley pointed east. “There—” She pointed ahead and off to the right, where heavy black smoke was coming from somewhere beyond the scrub-covered dunes that lay between the highway and the Caspian.

I gestured toward the plume of black smoke. “What’s over there?”

“Old Russian airfield,” Araz said. “Deserted now. Empty.”

I scanned the road ahead of us. About half a klik away, I could see a detour sign had been set up on a wood post. The main road had been blocked off by a pair of heavy wood blockades, with the international road sign for “construction ahead” tacked to them. Burning flares were spiked into the black macadam of the highway. An arrow pointed to the right, directing traffic toward the sea. “I guess we take it.”

“But that is the road to the airfield—not the way to Baku.” Araz scratched his head. “It wasn’t this way when we are driving to meet you, Captain Dickie.”

“It wasn’t like this when Grogan and I convoyed the limos down, either,” Ashley said. “And that was two, three hours after Araz came through.”

The little red warning light in my head—the one behind the bullshit meter and next to the pussy detector—started blinking like crazy. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

I wasn’t about to drive blind down that fucking road. No way. “Pull over. We’ll take a look before we do anything.”

Araz’s men removed the barricade and extinguished the flares. Then we hunkered down at the side of the highway while Araz drew a rough sketch of the airfield with a stick in the dusty shoulder of the road. He drew the highway we were on. Then the long runway, which ran parallel to it. Then the narrow, unpaved service road leading to the airfield, which resembled a capital L, with a single half kilometer approach from the south leading to the airfield. A second, slightly longer L-shaped road led to the airfield from the north.

I borrowed his stick and used it as a pointer.

As I spoke, Ashley provided simultaneous translation. “You go here”—I indicated the northern service road—“and head back toward the airfield. I’ll work my way up the south road.” I pointed toward the bottom of the L, where the northern road took a ninety-degree turn. “There’s the point to be careful,” I said.

Araz looked at Ashley and nodded. His finger traced the curve. “Bad ambush spot?” he asked.

Ashley and I nodded simultaneously. Then, she rattled thirty seconds of machine-gun Azeri, her hands speaking even faster than her voice. When she finished, Araz looked at his men. They all shook their heads in agreement and spoke to one another, expanding on Ashley’s riff.

“What did you tell ’em?”

“I said it’s much more effective to ambush on a curve than it is on a straightaway. First of all, you can employ two fields of fire. Second, I told them it’s normal to slow down on a curve, which gives you more time to kill your enemies, so we have to be very careful as we approach that curve up there.”

“Okay—then let’s go to work already.” Quickly, we
unpacked enough gear for a counterambush. Nod made sure our radios were working.

I looked at the force at my disposal. “Boomerang—take seven guys with you, and take all the Azeris, too.”

Boomerang’s long index finger pointed at Mustang, Butch, Goober, Hammer, Randy, Digger, and Nigel. “You dudes come with me.”

“That means I’m going with him,” Ashley said, her thumb jerked in Boomerang’s direction. “Just in case we need some translation.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

“I’ll need a weapon.”

I unstrapped my tactical thigh holster with the USP-9, three extra mag pouches, and handed them over. “Go crazy,” I said.

She withdrew the weapon, dropped the mag into her palm, ratcheted the slide back and extracted the chambered round, then secured the slide back and examined the pistol stem to stern with a practiced eye.

Happy with what she saw, she released the slide forward and listened to it as it shot home. She sighted, aligned, and dry-fired into the scrub alongside the road.

The USP passed muster. She locked the slide back, shoved the mag home, released the slide and chambered a round, then dropped the magazine, put the single round she’d first extracted back in it, slammed the mag northward once again, then attached the holster and mag holders to her web belt. When she was finished doing business, she smiled in my direction. “Nice piece. You have some trigger work done?”

It’s always nice to work with a pro. “Good of you to notice.”

She cracked a smile. “One thing—”

“Yo?”

“If I were you, I’d keep four of the Azeris here.”

“Why?”

“To keep traffic moving on the road.” She paused. “They like to rubberneck in this country.”

“Good idea. You set it up.”

“Aye, aye.” She and Araz went back and forth in Azeri. He growled at a quartet of youngsters, who unslung their AKs and took up positions on the roadside.

The major gave the highway detail a once-over. “All taken care of.”

Nu,
what did she want, a fucking medal? “So what are you waiting for?”

I watched as Boomerang’s detachment climbed into the first two trucks and headed north.

The rest of us hunkered down for about six minutes, taking cover alongside the road leading to the airfield, far enough off the A-322 to be out of sight. Then, when Boomerang radioed that he’d set up a security detail at the barricades they’d discovered at the north service road, and were in position, we moved off toward the coastline.

I led the way, staying off the service road so as not to raise any dust. We made our way through the rough bramble and thorn bushes of the dunes, moving slowly, our weapons ready. It wasn’t hard to stay on track, because the heavy black smoke was hard to miss, no matter what our position was.

We covered the half klik in about fifteen minutes, making steady progress in the rough terrain. For most of it I could see the road below our position. Then, it disappeared, falling away and toward the sea, as we came up on a huge, long, ten-meter-high earthen berm.

I silent-signaled that I was going to take a look-see. Dropped flat. Crawled slowly up the berm, found a crenel that had been formed by erosion, and s-l-o-w-l-y eased my way up, and pushed my puss into the opening.

The old airstrip sat below me. It was deserted. I panned left/right, right/left with my binoculars, examining the site intently. Nada. Zip. No one in sight. No signs of life at all. No ambushers—although they’d left ample evidence that they’d been around a short time ago. The concrete control tower complex, obviously destroyed by sappers, lay in ruins, its roof pancaked atop the collapsed walls. The runway itself had been blown up, too—cracked and cratered by demolitions. But that was old. Vegetation grew in the runway craters. Small, hardy wildflowers pushed their way through the destroyed terminal building, dotting the gray rubble with bright chrome yellow. Thorn bushes had taken root, too—and their bloodred buds stood out against the dark concrete and macadam.

Below me, I could see the ambush site. It had been a classic L-formation ambush. Textbook perfect. The targets—three 600 series Mercedes limos—had traveled along the L from left to right, approaching the old control tower and slowing down as they approached the ninety-degree turn.

That was when the ambushers had set off a series of Claymore mines and other explosives. I could read it like a fucking book. The first Mercedes had been disabled by an explosive charge that blew its front axle off. The rear limo had simultaneously been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade or a LAW, disabling it. With the trio of cars immobilized, the motorcade was subjected to a withering, lethal barrage of RPGs,
LAWs, and automatic weapons fire. The occupants hadn’t made it out—they’d been trapped in the big, bulletproof cars, which had been set afire by Willy-Peter
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grenades—and incinerated. Flanking the three limos sat six other destroyed vehicles—two cars that once had been Peugeots, one ancient Renault station wagon, and three small Zil panel trucks. I could make out the charred corpses in some of them.