The Seventh Pillar (19 page)

She felt as if she stood outside herself. She watched the muzzle flashes at the end of her barrel. She heard herself yelling. She swept death across the floor, where men tried to stagger up from their blankets. She saw herself eject another magazine, reload. She kept firing. She saw Nick spraying the room. The flashes lit the scene like strobe lights in a devil's nightclub, bodies rising and falling, spinning in a frenzied dance from the impact of the bullets.

Then it was silent. The smell of burnt cordite hung heavy in the room. Bodies lay across the floor. Shredded blankets turned dark with a spreading red tide. One of the bodies moved. Nick fired a final burst. The body stopped moving.

A slaughterhouse on a bad day. Selena bent over and threw up.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Stephanie and Lamont heard it all, safe in the warmth of Stephanie's office. First Nick's quiet voice. Silence, then the explosion of the flashbang. The shouts and screams. The constant fire of the weapons.

"Jesus," Lamont said.

"What's that noise?" Stephanie asked.

"Selena. She's yelling." The sound was chilling. They looked at each other.

The firing stopped. There was a brief silence. Then a short burst from an MP-5. Someone retching.

"Nick. Come in."

"Yeah, Steph."

"What's your status?"

"One less nest of vipers. Ronnie's down. Hold one."

They waited. After a moment they heard Nick and Ronnie talking.

"He's good." Nick's voice hissed with atmospherics over the sat link. "He took a hard hit in the head."

Lamont spoke. "Tell him I said that's the safest place for him."

"Thanks a lot, Shadow." Ronnie's voice was hoarse. "Wish you were here."

"What did you find, Nick?"

"I make it twenty-three assassin KIA. They thought they were safe up here. They got careless. Big mistake, but we were lucky."

"Is the nuke there?"

"Don't know, Steph. There's another floor above us. We'll go up now. Out."

Ronnie had his weapon trained on a staircase in the far corner of the room. The stairs were narrow and steep. They disappeared through an opening in the floor above.

Carter looked at the stairs. "There could be someone up there. The damn thing is almost like a ladder. I can get a flashbang up top from about halfway. Then I'll go up."

"You're too big."

Carter turned to Selena. "What are you saying?"

"You're too big, too slow. I'm smaller, I'm fast. I can be up there in half the time."

Carter looked at Ronnie. He shrugged. "She's right. She can do it faster."

The headache was instant, a wave of white pain. Nick staggered, caught himself.

"You all right?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." The pain settled to a steady throbbing. "All right. Make sure that flashbang doesn't come back down past you."

"I've got a good arm."

"It's not the World Series. Don't get fancy."

Selena armed the grenade. "Don't worry." She felt good that her hand wasn't trembling. She went to the bottom of the stairs and climbed. Fast. The dark opening above got closer. If someone was there, now was when they'd kill her. She heaved the grenade through the opening. She covered her ears and closed her eyes tight and looked down and prayed no one tossed it back at her.

Behind her closed eyelids a white light flared. The steps shook. Air thumped around her. Dust drifted down from the floor. Selena ran up the narrow steps and into the last room.

There was no one there.

"Clear," she called. She heard boots scramble up the steps..

The room was a communications center. The furniture consisted of a desk and a chair. On the desk was a black logbook, filled with frequencies and coded entries.

"Hood will want to see this." Nick put it inside his jacket.

A small, high end satellite transceiver sat on the desk, wired to a laptop computer. That made sense of the satellite dish they'd seen in the photo. Nick figured it wasn't there for watching TV.

There was nothing that resembled a six kiloton nuclear bomb.

"Ronnie, grab the sat unit. Selena, you get the computer."

They stashed the gear in their packs. Nick took a last look around .

"Steph. No nuke. We're leaving. Call for our ride."

"Roger."

The team went down the stairs and through the silent sleeping room. The smell of blood and bowels fouled the air.

They descended to the main hall, avoided the trip wire and went out into the courtyard.

"Leave the door open," Nick said. "Let some heat out."

Snow was falling, the kind of snow that came fast and deep. It was getting light.

"Nick."

"Yeah, Lamont."

"We got a problem."

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

"What problem?"

"Actually, two problems. There's a company of Paki regulars starting up the canyon. They're still eight klicks away. They have to be coming for you."

"How the hell do they know we're here?"

"Does it matter? Probably a leak out of Langley."

"What's the second problem?"

"Taliban. They're between you and the LZ, on the Paki side. I don't think they know you're there. Just bad luck. Looks like they're setting up camp. The snow is making it hard to see what's happening."

"Wait one."

Nick turned to the others. "I thought this was too easy. The snow is going to screw everything up." Nick looked up at the thick flakes coming down. "Might help us get past the Taliban."

"What happens when those army people get here?" Selena gestured at the building. "They won't be happy with what they find."

"They won't find anything."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm calling in a strike. There won't be any building, or any dead bodies. We can't leave it behind."

"Then maybe we should get moving," she said.

Nick spoke into his microphone. "Lamont. Give us ten to get out of here and call in a Reaper on this dump. Blow it before those Pakis get here. A five hundred pounder ought to do it."

"Roger that." Lamont knew the score. "Wish I was with you."

"Yeah. Just keep the comm open and get our ride to the LZ."

"Roger that."

The team slung their weapons, climbed up the rope hanging down through the notch and headed west. Toward the LZ and safety. Toward the Taliban.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Merlin sat in front of his monitors in the Operations Center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Outside his cubicle, Merlin was First Lieutenant Zachary Tillson. Here in the Ops Center he was simply Merlin.

Tillson loved his job. Merlin, the magician. The man, the wizard who could make anything vanish in a cloud of smoke. It was like playing God. Tillson had a joystick in his hand, a fancy version of a war gamer's stick. The stick controlled an MQ-9 Reaper, the most sophisticated unmanned weapons system in the world. The wizard's wand, and he was the wizard.

In the elite group flying the unmanned drones, Tillson was acknowledged by all as best with the Reaper. It took a lot of practice to control the bird. Thermal currents and unpredictable winds at high altitude in that part of the world required a delicate touch to stay on task. The Reaper wasn't a Radio Shack model airplane. It had a 950 horsepower turbo charged engine that could make 260 knots. It had a range of a thousand miles and carried three times as many weapons as it's older brother, the Predator. One of those weapons was a monster five hundred pound Paveway bomb, reserved for special targets. The Reaper carried Hellfire missiles and other goodies to help it live up to its name.

Reapers featured a combination of thermal and satellite sensors and cameras that could pinpoint with total accuracy a target as small as a Volkswagen from 20,000 feet up. Or a man. A complex system of checks and balances made sure there were no accidental launches or cowboy attempts to take out a target.

Tillson had gotten his mission. He'd taken off from Bagram and now his bird was over Pakistan. He watched the rugged mountains of the Hindu Kush pass under the drone.

The cameras sent a clear picture of the landscape below. The target was at the end of a canyon. Snow made it hard to get a good visual, but the thermal sensors were reading a solid heat signature from the target. No problemo.

Tillson noted three heat signatures, bodies, moving away toward the west. They were already two klicks away from the strike zone. Not his target. Tillson also noted that the three signatures were moving toward a cluster of other heat signatures, west of them.

He eased the stick and throttled back, brought the drone around in a sweeping bank and followed the canyon north. The heat radiating from the target made it easy. A piece of cake. His readouts showed lock on. He spoke into his headset microphone.

"Victor One, target is acquired." Victor One was his control.

"Roger, Merlin. You are clear to engage."

"Roger, clear to engage. Release in three, two, one." Tillson pushed a button. The reaper lifted as the weight of the five hundred pounder dropped away. Tillson compensated, activated the autopilot.

The Paveway was laser guided and under his control. Merlin watched the bomb down to the building through a camera eye in the nose. Some kind of monastery. He made a minor adjustment, aiming for the open door of the building. It beckoned and drew closer. The screen blacked. From the drone, Merlin watched a bright white light spread across the area.

"Victor One, Target terminated," Tillson said into his headset. 

"Roger, Merlin. Well done."

Tillson leaned back in his chair and reached for a handful of M&Ms he kept in a dish near his computer. Just another day on the job.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Nick and the others were well off the slope and heading east when they heard the explosion. The falling snow turned brief orange with reflected light. Then it was gone. The gray, muffled morning returned.

The snow lay thick, two inches or more since they'd started down the slope. Clouds of snow swirled around them in freezing wind. Bits of ice pelted them. Sometimes they could see for yards, sometimes Nick could just make out Ronnie and Selena walking next to him. He looked at his GPS. Without it, they'd be lost in a moment.

The GPS wouldn't help if they stumbled onto the Taliban camp. He called Lamont.

"You're almost on them, Nick. Thermals are faint, but we've got them. You are off their left flank. I make it fourteen bodies. Looks like they've got animals with them, probably goats. They're clustered together, keeping warm."

"What's our extraction status?"

"All flights are grounded. Once you're past these guys, get to the LZ and hole up. Weather says clear later today."

"Roger. We're..." Nick didn't finish. A figure emerged from the snow twenty feet in front of them. He fumbled with the front of his robes. Yellow stains on the snow showed what he had been doing. He wore a dirty turban tied sloppily around his head. He had a full beard, an AK-47 and a loud voice. He saw them and shouted an alarm.

Ronnie shot him as the AK came up. The man went backwards into the snow, firing into the air.

All hell broke loose.

"Down," Carter yelled. They dove for the ground.

Shouts and the chatter of AKs sounded in front of them. Nick froze.

He's in the market. He can smell himself, his fear. He keeps away from the walls. A baby cries. The street is deserted.

Men rise up and begin firing, dozens of AKs trying to kill him, bullets flying everywhere. The market stalls explode in splinters and plaster and rock fragmenting from the buildings.

He ducks into a doorway. Then the child runs toward him screaming and throws a grenade as Nick shoots him. The boy's head disappears in a red geyser. The grenade drifts toward him in slow motion...everything goes white...

"Nick." Ronnie shook him. "Nick."

The white faded into the white of snow.

"Yeah. I'm all right." His headache was back. "Grenades." He turned to Selena.

"Remember when I showed you how to use a grenade, just in case?"

"Yes."

"Well, this is the case." He pulled a grenade from his pouch, pulled the safety clip. Held the lever down. Pulled the grenade from the pin. He got to his knees. Rounds hummed past. The Taliban were shooting blind into the snowfall. He arched back and lofted the grenade toward the sound of the AKs in front of him. Ronnie and Selena followed. They hit the deck.

The explosions sent a ripple of death through the morning air. Screams pierced the clouds of blowing snow.

"Go." Carter got to his feet and ran toward the screaming, firing blind as he went, his MP-5 held at waist level. He tripped over a dead goat and went sprawling onto the ground.

He got up, ran forward. Shapes appeared. He shot a man bleeding from his ears before he could level his AK. He shot another. He heard Ronnie and Selena firing, the distinctive sound of their weapons contrasting with the staccato blasts of the AKs still firing.

Carter saw Selena go down hard. Something twisted deep in his gut. A red mist clouded his vision. He charged the man who had shot her and swung his MP-5 like a club and brought the man down before he could fire another burst.

Nick hit him again. And again. He beat him about the head. He raised his gun high and was about to bring it down again when he felt Ronnie grab his arm.

"He's dead, Nick."

Carter paused, the MP-5 high in the air. He looked around. The red film cleared. He looked down at the man at his feet. His face was gone, a bloody pulp left behind. The firing had stopped.

He looked to his left. Selena lay face down. She wasn't moving. Her helmet had come off. Snow drifted onto her red-blond hair.

His MP-5 was bent and covered in blood. Nick dropped the useless weapon and ran to her. He turned her over, wiped snow away from her face. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. He bent his head down. She was still breathing. Labored, harsh breaths. There were three holes across her chest where the rounds had hit. Her armor had kept her alive, but she was in trouble.