KBL (13 page)

Loeser checked equipment. When he was satisfied, he called “Stand BY . . .” The shoothouse lights went out. “EXECUTE!”

Troy muttered, “Shit.” He dropped his NODs so he could see the fast rope. His left hand was on Cajun’s left shoulder; Padre’s hand was on his.

Troy was third in the stick. He moved forward as quickly as he could, following the breachers. Jacko hit the rope first. Disappeared. Cajun hit the rope, then Troy followed as Cajun’s head disappeared below the platform.

Hit the rope hard.

0.05 seconds. Hands up. As his arms go high, his rifle smacks the back of his head.

0.87. He can feel the heat start to build on his palms as the rope slides past his hands.

1.4. Brake-squeeze—heat.

1.6. Troy’s knees buckle as he hits the deck. He lands off balance, his NODs out of position.

Quickly he rolls to his port side, gets his night vision where it needs to be, and scrambles to his feet so he won’t get smacked by Padre.

Drops his thick gloves, retrieves his weapon.

4.8. Quick mag check. Senses Padre behind him.

5.9. Move toward door. Scan and breathe. Weapon up. Trigger finger indexed.

8.2. Door breached. Cut the pie. Clear. Make entry.

9.1. In. Go left. Scan and breathe. Furniture. Couch. Movement. “Gun!”

Head. Shoulders. An AK coming over the top of the couch.

Two-shot burst. Never stop moving. Head shots. Advance, advance, advance. Target down. Coup de grace as he goes past.

Keep moving toward the door on the left.

Padre’s voice in his ear. “EKIA.” Enemy killed in action. “Go door.”

Shots coming from their right. Breaching team has made entry and is engaging. Troy can hear their comms in his ears.

13.6. 1-Alpha has made entry and is proceeding to stairwell. Troy allows himself to think,
We’re swarming
.

17.4. At the door. No visible hinges. It opens inward. Paneled.

Padre’s hand on the knob. Troy’s head goes up-down once. Turn.

Locked.

Stand back. Kick.

Wood splintering. Door slams into far side wall.

Instinct: charge.

No: fatal funnel.

21.5. Light. Troy retrieves infrared flashlight from right chest pouch.

Cut the pie. Line of sight?

Clear. Ten-foot hallway. Door left six feet, second door left eighteen feet. Hallway ends in a T.

Troy starts to move forward. Stops. Shines the IR at the deck. “Deck clear.” He’s been checking for tripwires.

30.9. First room. Cut the pie. Scan and breathe. Troy edges slowly around the door jamb, his 416 up; Trijicon night-vision-capable sight bright. He keeps moving until he can see the whole room. It’s empty. “Clear.” He backs out of the room.

39.5. Padre leapfrogs Troy’s position. They move quickly down the hallway heel-toe, heel-toe, knees slightly bent, bodies angled slightly forward in an aggressive stance, the muzzles of their weapons absolutely rock steady. They are breathing steadily and their eyes never stop moving side to side, down the hall.

Padre’s muzzle is pointed directly ahead. Troy’s muzzle is parallel to Padre’s, eight inches off his right shoulder.

49.9. Second doorway. No door. Padre starts to cut the pie.

Troy’s peripheral vision picks up movement on the right side of the T, eight yards away.

Both eyes open, HK muzzle downrange, Troy’s left hand squeezes Padre’s shoulder.

Padre stops.

01:16.5 minutes. Troy’s finger is on the HK’s trigger. A hand appears, then an arm. Torso. Burka-clad figure at the end of the hall.

Padre’s flashlight is in his left hand. Shines a blue light down the hallway.

Troy: “Step out. Show us your hands.”

Burka-clad figure displays both arms, both hands. They are empty. Troy hears gunfire from above.

Can’t lose focus. They still haven’t cleared the second room. Can’t go past it.
Make her come to us
.

His hand on Padre’s shoulder. Pull Padre back. Quickly, they move backward until they reach the cover of the first room.

01:43.0. “Walk this way. Keep your hands in the air. LET US SEE YOUR HANDS!”

Burka-clad figure complies. When she is ten feet away, Troy shouts, “Stop!”

She complies.

“Turn around.”

She complies.

“Hands out where we can see them.”

No reaction.

“HANDS OUT WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

02:30.0. Finally, she shows her hands. There is nothing in them.

“BACK TOWARD US.”

She complies. Slowly. Way too slowly.

When she is within arm’s reach, Troy grabs her arms, pinions them, slaps flexicuffs on her wrists, forces her to the floor.

He drags her into the cleared room while Padre’s eyes and weapon never leave the hallway.

03:30.0. Troy has secured the flexicuffs with tape, bound the captive’s feet together, and taped around her legs at the knees. Once she’s been secured he pats her down to make sure there are no weapons or explosives. “Clear.”

03:55.0. They resume the search. Down the hallway to the second door. Cut the pie. Padre moves cautiously around the arc, HK up.

04:14.0. The muzzle of Padre’s HK is just past the plane of the doorjamb.

A burst of fire comes up from floor level. Stitches Padre from his waist to his right shoulder: six nasty pink marking round starbursts.

Transmit: “Padre down. Port side hallway ground level.” The sonofabitch was lying prone, up against the hallway wall.

Padre falls back. Troy already has a grenade in his hand. Pulls the pin, reaches around, lobs it into the room, drags Padre to safety.

Waits for the flash and the explosion. Starts to move down the hallway to the T, and then—

5:07.0. A whistle. Then: “Stand down, stand down,” in Troy’s headset.

The shoot house lights come up full.

The SEALs assemble in the landing area. They clear weapons, pull off their helmets, reach for the hydration hoses secured to their shoulder harnesses, and suck on water or sports drinks. It is forty-six degrees inside the shoot house, but every one of the two dozen SEALs has sweat through his uniform.

Troy shakes his head. “Not great.” He and Padre had fallen behind schedule almost from the get-go. There has to be a way to factor in prisoners and still maintain pace. And—worse—his shipmate got shot. In fact, of the twenty-four assaulters, five have telltale pink starbursts on their uniforms. That’s more than a twenty percent casualty rate.

Totally unacceptable.

0919 Hours

Dave Loeser dropped his gear on the deck. He’d been watching the exercise from the control room, a cargo container on a catwalk fifty feet above the deck. Night-vision-capable video cameras had taped the entire exercise.

He wasn’t happy with what he’d seen. The entire assault force had fallen behind schedule. They’d been slow to react. The Alpha SEALs took forever to get up the stairs—in fact, no one had made it to the third floor, where five role-players were waiting.

And no one in the assault force saw the sentry who was crouched behind the eight-foot-high square structure, and who’d shot two of the SEAL rear-guard security element.

But this was only the first time today they’d run this particular scenario. The role-player positions might change over the next several iterations, but the layout would remain the same. That’s what JSOC wanted, and that’s what JSOC would get.

More to the point, this was a teaching exercise. The Red Squadron CO understood two of the most basic principles of Warrior training: that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and the more we sweat in training, the less we bleed in battle.

Which is why Loeser knew he had to go positive. Everyone knew they’d screwed up—he could see it in their faces. No need to rub it in.

So he started on a light note. “Here’s the good news, gents: we are making progress. No one shot themselves or their swim buddies.” He paused, looking at the pink starbursts on Padre’s multicams. “Although, I do see Padre was . . . blessed. Or is that, as they say in French,
blessé
, Padre?”

He waited for the laughter to subside. “But you know and I know we got a lot of work to do.” He paused. “First, let’s hear from the role-players, see what they thought of your performances and how they took advantage of you. Then you can critique yourselves, see what lessons we can take away from this. And then we can do it all over again. And again. Until we get it right.”

9

Lahore, Pakistan
January 27, 2011, 1315 Hours Local Time

Ty Weaver checked the side mirror of his rented white Honda Civic. Shit. The same motorbike and tuk-tuk—one of those three-wheeled scooter-powered minitrucks ubiquitous in Pakistan—had been following him for the past eight minutes. Ty had picked out the vehicles just after he’d pulled cash from the Deutsche Bank ATM on Mall Road, a short distance from the house on E Street he shared with Loner, Kent, and Gary just south of the Lahore American School.

He’d shot video with his cell phone. He would blow it up later, so hopefully they could run a trace on the license plates. Too bad he hadn’t been able to get shots of the drivers—two Paks on the motorbike running thirty, forty yards behind him, and one in the tuk-tuk, playing catch-up.

He’d intended to go straight to the consulate. Instead he veered east, circled around Alkman Road, then turned south until he hit Lawrence Road.
Let’s see what they do
.

After six minutes, the bike was still behind him. He couldn’t find the tuk-tuk.

Ty drove with his left hand. His right eased the Glock 19 out of its Galco concealable and slipped the pistol under his left thigh.

Better safe than sorry.

The question was, who were these assholes? ISI’s gumshoes favored Mercedes sedans, Hondas like his, or Toyotas. Ten days ago they’d followed him up to Peshawar in two Toyota pickups.

He’d never seen a motorbike-tuk-tuk combo before. So who were these guys? They could be Taliban or AQNs who wanted a Gringo scalp for their belts. They could just as easily be snatch-and-grabbers who’d seen him at the ATM and were looking for an easy score. Or they could be ISI gumshoes, out to rattle his cage in new sets of wheels.

He snorted. Well, ISI had cause. The past month had been . . . interesting would be an understatement. On Christmas Day he’d given up his consulate vehicle and its diplomatic plates for a rented Honda and local plates.

The local plates lasted less than a week. Currently he had six sets of forged license plates in a sealed envelope in the RSO’s safe and a seventh set on the car. They’d been Dip-pouched to the consulate by Langley. He switched them out every few days.

He had stocked the Honda with equipment that said SPY in neon: binoculars, two cameras, a four-foot-nine by three-foot-six 1:500,000-scale National Imagery and Mapping Agency tactical pilotage chart of northwest Pakistan marked “G-6C,” a GPS unit, a telescope, a six-power night-vision monocular, four mags for his Glock 19, and two of Loner’s 9mm Beretta magazines. He’d also tossed a Paki outfit and a dark wig into the trunk.