Syrian Rescue
“Youssef…” Karam warned.
“We have to stop them,” Sadek said as he tried to aim, a rush of hot air in his face, making him squint.
His first short burst was wasted, rattling off to the far right of the fleeing Jeep. Cursing, Sadek tried to correct his aim, but it was difficult, the door’s sun-heated metal nearly blistering his bare arms while the jolting of the truck made the Kalashnikov’s adjustable iron sights vibrate erratically.
He fired again, four rounds on full-auto, and imagined that he saw one punch a divot in the old Jeep’s fender. An improvement, but he had to do better if he meant to stop them.
Another rifle fired somewhere above him, making Sadek flinch. One of his men had followed his example, shooting at the Jeep. A flash of irritation stung him, then he realized it did not matter who managed to stop the vehicle, as long as it was done. A second rifle rattling overhead made Sadek smile.
The travelers had doomed themselves by running, even if they were not enemies. His men were hunting, and they wanted blood. So did Sadek, if he was honest with himself.
Now, if Karam would only hold the truck steady enough for him to aim…
* * *
A BULLET STRUCK the Wrangler’s right wing mirror, ripping it away. Sabah Azmeh slumped lower in his seat, half turned to watch the truck behind them slowly gaining ground. Two riflemen were aiming across the truck cab’s roof, a third man leaning from the passenger’s window, rifle in hand.
How had he come to this?
The answer mocked him: he had volunteered.
“I’ll try to slow them down,” Azmeh told the tall American who called himself Matt Cooper.
“Good luck,” Cooper replied, seeming to mean it.
Given how much they were swerving to avoid incoming fire, Azmeh couldn’t crawl into the rear. The best he could do was aim his AKMS through the hazy back window, hold steady when he fired, and hope the hot brass spewing from his weapon did not fall down Cooper’s collar, burning him and maybe causing him to crash the Jeep.
Azmeh braced one elbow on the low back of his seat to help steady his weapon, which was switched to semiautomatic. He didn’t think he could stop the truck, much less take out its occupants, but if he slowed them down a bit, perhaps Cooper could think of something.
Azmeh’s first shot drilled through the window’s yellowed plastic and flew on, hopefully to strike the truck. Azmeh would have loved to drill its radiator, stranding their assailants and leaving them to simmer through the afternoon and freeze overnight.
That mental picture cheered him, and he fired twice more before an enemy bullet pierced the Jeep’s window. Azmeh flinched and ducked as it struck the roll bar and shattered, spraying the seats with shrapnel. Something stung his left arm.
“Full-auto now, I think,” he said to Cooper.
“Your call,” the American replied, and somehow found a way to wring more speed out of the Wrangler’s howling engine.
* * *
AT LEAST THREE RIFLEMEN were firing at them now, by Bolan’s count. He couldn’t see them well, between the dust, his wobbling mirrors and the Wrangler’s canvas top, but they were gaining, and their prospects for a hit seemed better than Azmeh’s. Bolan was locked out of the action, doing what he could to dodge incoming fire without rolling the Jeep. He hoped there were no wadis hiding out there, waiting to derail them in the next few hundred yards.
Azmeh squeezed off another burst, then muttered something to himself. Before Azmeh fired again, Bolan called out, raising his voice over the wind. “I want to try something. Fasten your seat belt.”
Azmeh didn’t question him. He had to know that they were running out of time and options now. If Bolan couldn’t pull off a surprise for their pursuers, they were toast.
He heard the seat belt click and said, “Okay, hang on!”
Cranking the Wrangler’s wheel hard to the left, he whipped the Jeep’s rear end through a long, sliding one hundred eighty-degree turnaround. The knobby tires spewed sand and gravel, raising clouds of dust.
Before it settled, Bolan scooped up his Kalashnikov and bailed out of the Jeep, leaving Azmeh to follow him as they went to meet their enemies.
Whatever happened next would be on Bolan’s terms.
2
Washington, DC
“How much do you know about the Syrian civil war?” Hal Brognola had asked Bolan, thirty-odd hours earlier.
“The basics,” Bolan had replied. “The president’s been hanging on for what, twelve years?”
“Fourteen and counting,” Brognola replied.
“He came up through the army, he’s a critic of the West, not much regard for human rights. The Arab Spring surprised him, like it did other leaders in the region. Where they folded, he’s clung to power, with accusations of atrocities against the rebels and civilians. He’s got the army and police, supported by Iran and outside Shi’ite groups. The opposition is a shaky coalition—Kurds, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sufis opposed to Shi’ites, take your pick.”
Brognola nodded. “So, you know the diplomatic picture, more or less.”
“Broad strokes,” Bolan said.
“Okay, well you won’t have heard about the new initiative. It’s strictly classified—which, given the UN’s Swiss cheese security, means only ten or fifteen thousand people know about it. Long story short, a couple of people from State have been talking to Syrian opposition leaders and an undersecretary from UNESCWA. In case that doesn’t ring a bell, it’s the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, concerned with all things Middle Eastern.”
“Talking? That’s the secret?”
“Nope. The secret bit is where they were supposed to hold their latest talks. In Syria, at Ar-Raqqah, east of the capital. They planned to slip in from Iraq, under the radar, have their sit-down, offer the rebels whatever they need to get rid of the president and restore civil order.”
“Not the UN’s usual approach.”
“Not even close,” Hal said. “And that’s why it was on the QT, more or less.”
“When you say ‘was’…”
“They tried it, yesterday, but something happened. No one’s sure exactly what that was. We’ve lost track of the UN flight from Baghdad—radio silence, no SOS to indicate that they were going down.”
“What about the beacons?”
“There were two on board, as usual,” Brognola said. “A distress radio beacon and an underwater locator retrofitted to the standard flight recorder. So far, neither one of them is functioning.”
“That seems unusual.”
“Extremely,” Brognola agreed. “One of the guys from State was also wearing an emergency locator transmitter, but he would have had to turn it on himself. So far, nothing. Could be it slipped his mind, or maybe he’s no longer with us.”
Bolan saw where this was going. “And you need someone to take a look,” he said, not asking.
“Right.”
“What have you got from satellite surveillance, so far?”
“Squat. Before we knew the plane was missing, a haboob blew in from the Sahara, dumping tons of sand all along the projected flight path. If the plane went down, it’s hidden from us now.”
“That isn’t much to go on,” Bolan said.
“Not much, but we need to try. Aside from our guys and the UN delegates, there were people from the opposition on the plane. They’ve been to Washington, been seen around the White House. If the Syrian army or their playmates bag the drop-ins, it’s a black eye for the States and the United Nations. Makes it look like we were setting up an end run to resolve the civil war.”
“We were,” Bolan observed.
“Which doesn’t mean the world’s supposed to know it,” Brognola reminded him.
Deniability. One of the oldest games in politics, diplomacy and war.
“Anything else I should know?” asked Bolan.
“Other than the fact that time is of the essence?” Brognola removed a flash drive from an inside pocket of his jacket, handing it to Bolan. “Files on the missing personnel. Same password as usual.”
Bolan nodded and pocketed the device.
“So, as I said, time’s critical, and we’re already behind the game. You have a seven-thirty reservation from Dulles out to London Heathrow, where we have a seat waiting on a flight to Baghdad. You’ll be met there, with arrangements for the crossing into Syria.”
“Equipment?”
“Waiting for you at the other end. Top quality. Deniable, of course.”
“Of course. Special instructions?”
“There’s a chance you’ll be too late. I’d call it fifty-fifty, given all that’s going on in eastern Syria. In which case—”
“It’s a rescue mission,” Bolan finished for him.
Brognola nodded grimly. “That’s the best case scenario.”
* * *
ONCE HE’D CHECKED IN and cleared security at Dulles, Bolan found a seat at his gate and opened his laptop to review the files on the USB key.
There wasn’t that much to them. But running down the list gave Bolan a feel for those who had been aboard the UN flight, matching names to photographs and fleshing out the details of their lives.
The head honcho on the flight was Sani Bankole, forty-seven-year-old from Nigeria. He had joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at twenty-one and worked his way up from there to his current UN post as deputy undersecretary-general for UNESCWA. His rank carried diplomatic immunity, which, Bolan thought, would mean precisely nothing in the devil’s mix of Syria.
Bankole’s number two was Tareq Eleyan, a thirty-six-year-old Jordanian. Most likely, he had been assigned to translate and to offer insight on the mind-set of his country’s neighbors to the north. Roger Segrest led the US team. Age fifty-two, he was one of four deputy secretaries from the State Department’s Executive Secretariat. That job normally involved liaison between State and the White House or the National Security Council, but it seemed Segrest was branching out. His backup, barely half Segrest’s age, was Dale Walton, a relative fledgling with eight years at State. He had a master’s from Columbia in Middle Eastern history and politics, and he was fluent in Arabic. Beyond that, there was nothing else of interest in Walton’s dossier.
The mission’s wild cards came from Syria. Muhammad Qabbani was an old-looking forty, highly placed in the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. That group, as Bolan knew, was constantly in flux, but Qabbani managed a delicate tightrope act within it, working to alleviate dissension in the ranks, mediating personality clashes between spokesmen for such disparate partners as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurdish National Council and the al-Nusra Front, affiliated with al-Qaeda. Qabbani’s second was Rafic Al Din. He’d been imprisoned by the regime for joining demonstrations in the Arab Spring, then caught a break when amnesty was briefly offered in a bid to pacify the West. He’d joined the Free Syrian Army, and the rest of his file was a blank, presumably involving covert work that wasn’t on the record.
Bolan didn’t care for wild cards, but he’d worked with many in the past—sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. His present mission, if he found the diplomats at all, would not allow him time to argue or cajole the targets into playing ball with him, accepting orders from a man they’d never met before and never would again. He’d have to pull rank, seize control—a problem in itself.
Bolan’s experience with other members of the diplomatic breed enabled him to profile these men with fair precision. Even in this extremity, they’d be suspicious of outsiders turning up out of the blue and giving orders. There could be resistance, possibly defiance from the men he’d been assigned to save.
Closing the laptop, Bolan made a private resolution not to fail.
It was a do-or-die assignment. Fifty-fifty. Right.
* * *
Baghdad International Airport
THE AIRPORT’S SINGLE terminal was crowded as Bolan deplaned, shouldering his carry-on. Greeters were lined up with signs on the far side of passport control, and Bolan recognized his contact from Brognola’s flash drive. Sabah Azmeh was holding a piece of white cardboard with “COOPER” written across it.
“That’s me,” Bolan said, as he approached the smaller man. Azmeh wore a blue blazer over khakis and well-worn loafers.
“Mr. Cooper, excellent!” He beamed, but there were still formalities to be observed. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step,” he added.
“Not all who wander are lost,” Bolan replied, completing the exchange.
“Indeed.” Still smiling, Azmeh pumped his hand three times, then let it go. His grip was strong and dry. “Do you have other luggage?”
“Just this,” Bolan answered, hoisting his lone bag.
“Perfect. A man who travels light, yes? We’ll find our vehicle outside and then perhaps collect some heavy baggage.”
They headed out to the parking lot and got into the Wrangler. Once they were on the move, with Azmeh driving, Bolan asked him, “Was there any problem with the hardware?”
“No, no. Nothing whatsoever. Weapons and explosives are as common in Baghdad today as vegetables. Perhaps more so.”
Bad news for residents whose only goal was to get on with normal life, but good for Bolan when he’d traveled halfway round the world unarmed. He’d grown accustomed to flying unarmed, but working the streets of a city like Baghdad without hardware made him feel naked.
On their way to meet the weapons’ dealer, Bolan filled out Azmeh’s sketchy dossier from Stony Man. His guide was twenty-eight, a Syrian expatriate who’d lost his parents and three younger siblings to a chemical attack at Ghouta in August 2013. Prior to that, the Syrian police had killed his older brother, leaving Azmeh as the sole survivor of his family. Despite those losses, he seemed fairly cheerful—or he’d learned to fake it. Instead of joining rebel forces to unseat the regime, Azmeh still hoped his homeland might achieve stability without more slaughter. To that end, he’d signed on as a native asset of the CIA and volunteered for Bolan’s mission when it came around.
Bolan was cautious, hoped that Azmeh wasn’t lying to him, and that no one from the Company was playing games behind the scenes, pursuing some agenda they had kept from Brognola. When they’d stocked up on hardware, clothing for the field, and everything they needed to survive the desert, it was time to roll. Bolan got behind the wheel, following Azmeh’s directions as they headed westward to Syria. Checkpoints at the border would have stopped them dead, but that was where the Jeep paid off, churning cross-country through the open desert toward the invisible line between countries.
3
Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria
Bolan hit the ground running, clutching his AKMS, using the Jeep’s roiling dust cloud as cover. He tracked the charging truck by sound at first, then saw it looming through the gritty haze.
Never mind disabling the vehicle. The only way to stop or divert it, this close to impact, would be to nail the driver. Bolan stood his ground just long enough to aim a short burst at the dirt-streaked windshield, then he leaped and rolled aside before the hurtling juggernaut could crush him. He scrambled to his feet and fired another burst into the driver’s door as it swept past him. The driver lurched and slumped, but Bolan couldn’t tell how badly he was wounded, if at all.
Regardless, the truck was slowing down. Bolan dove back toward the Jeep, his only standing cover. Better for the Wrangler to absorb a few more rounds than for him to take a hit at such close range.
And guns were blazing now, no fewer than six or seven from the truck bed. To Bolan’s left, Azmeh had joined the fight. As the dust began to settle, Bolan saw his adversaries jumping from the truck and scrambling for the cover of their own vehicle, firing wild bursts as they ran.
The truck was rolling on without them, slower by the moment. Finally, its motor hitched and stalled, most likely from a lack of gas while it was running in third gear. That meant no driver managing the clutch and stick shift. Bolan hoped he’d killed the stranger, but he wasn’t taking it for granted.
He counted eight men on the ground, plus a shotgun rider in the cab. Make it ten if the driver was still fit for action.
When the truck died, it provided solid, stationary cover for his enemies. They couldn’t rush him safely over the thirty yards of open ground between them, but they could snipe around the tailgate, across its hood, or wriggle underneath and try to sight him from a worm’s-eye view.
The Jeep was taking hits now; time was on the opposition’s side. Still, nothing had come close to nailing Bolan—yet.
If the enemy had a working radio, how long until reinforcements could arrive?
Azmeh was scuttling backward to the Jeep now, trading fire with hidden opponents. Their bullets kicked up spurts of dust and sand around his feet as he retreated. Bolan saw trouble coming, but he didn’t want to call out and distract his comrade in the midst of battle.
Azmeh ran into the Wrangler’s left-rear fender, grunting from the impact as he lost his balance and went down. The tumble saved him, as a well-aimed burst cut empty air where he’d been standing a second earlier. The bullets smacked into plastic fuel cans instead.
Bolan returned fire, pinning down the rifleman, while Azmeh rolled and crawled behind the Jeep. He wasn’t safe, just covered for the moment.
Meanwhile, they were both pinned down.
* * *
“YOU MISSED HIM!” Sadek snarled, kicking one of Haaz Gemayel’s legs where they protruded from beneath the truck. “What’s wrong with you?”
Gemayel scooted backward, rising to his knees. He glared at Sadek, index finger on the trigger of his AK-47. “He fell down! That’s not my fault, and I don’t see you helping.”
“I didn’t have a clear shot,” Sadek answered.
“Then get down here with the rest of us,” Gemayel sneered before he ducked back under the truck.
That one was trouble, Sadek thought, a lazy bastard who defied authority when he believed he could get away with it. Why he had volunteered to fight in Syria remained a mystery.
Sadek had already lost one man. Sami Karam was dead or dying in the cab, struck by bullets through the windshield and another burst that had raked his door when Karam had failed to run his killer down. Sadek had bailed when the truck stalled, taking a moment to confirm that Karam wasn’t moving before abandoning him.
At a time like this, if someone was not fit to fight, what good were they?
Sadek himself had yet to fire a shot since exiting the cab, but that was his prerogative as leader of the team. He had been chosen to command and supervise, not do the dirty work himself. Of course, he’d killed before and would not hesitate to jump in if he had a clear shot at the enemy, but was it wise to risk a leader’s life unnecessarily?
Sadek heard bullets strike the truck like hailstones, clanging into sheet metal. Someone cried out in pain under the chassis, a pair of legs thrashed briefly, then their owner started worming backward in fits and starts. Sadek was set to scold Bashar Alama when he emerged, face awash in blood, an ugly gash from a bullet graze above one eye.
“Youssef?” the wounded soldier asked. “Is that you? I can’t see you.”
Sadek fumbled for a handkerchief in his pocket, then pressed it into Alama’s hand. “Wipe off your face,” he said. “It’s just a scratch. Each man must do his part.”
“I will, but—”
“Be strong!” Sadek urged him, moving on before he had to answer any questions or fake a show of sympathy.
For his own sake, and for the estimation of his men, Sadek knew that he had to join the fight. But how? Rushing into the no-man’s land between his truck and the old Jeep would be suicide, and he had never cherished dreams of martyrdom. For all he knew, one of his men might shoot him in the back before their common enemies could cut him down.
So, what else could he do?
He reached the front of the truck, where one of his young soldiers crouched and peered around the fender, straining for a glimpse of the enemy. Sadek tried to remember his name but drew a blank.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Nothing,” the young man replied. “They’ve gone to ground.”
“We need to draw them out.”
“Good luck with that,” the soldier answered.
Sadek considered striking him for insolence, but then decided he had pushed his luck as far as it would go with these inexperienced, poorly trained guerrillas. Discipline was clearly fading in the ranks, the longer Syria’s insurgency dragged on.
Sadek needed to make a grand, dramatic gesture to assert himself, to regain whatever measure of respect his men had felt for him before the shooting started and their nerve ran out. But what could he—
Of course!
There was an RPG-29 launcher lying behind his seat in the cab, with three rockets ready for loading. All he had to do was reach in, retrieve the ordnance while avoiding Karam’s corpse, load the launcher, then take out his foes.
One step at a time, Sadek thought, as he returned to the door he had left hanging open. The Vampir and its ammo were in easy reach.
* * *
SABAH AZMEH SWITCHED out his empty AKMS magazine and snapped a full one in its place. His hip throbbed from his collision with the Jeep, a stupid, clumsy slip that made him feel like a fool even though it saved his life.
His jacket smelled strange, and he realized that gasoline had splashed on to his sleeve after he fell, one of their fuel cans punctured by the slugs that might have killed him otherwise. The stench stung Azmeh’s nostrils and made his eyes water, but all that he could do was scoop up dirt in his free hand and rub it into his wet sleeve. He glanced at Cooper and found the tall American scowling at their predicament. Whatever he had planned, turning around to face the truck and stopping there, it was not working out. Unless he had hatched another scheme…
Cooper shifted, then walked over to the passenger door, keeping low. A burst of hostile fire drilled the Wrangler’s bodywork, one slug caroming off the door near Cooper’s head. He did not flinch as he leaned inside and rummaged through duffel bags. When he backed out, he was holding two grenades.
Each F1 “lemon,” Azmeh knew, weighed a shade under one and a half pounds. A strong man could pitch one forty-five yards, remaining outside the grenade’s estimated thirty-yard kill zone. But could Cooper drop one behind the stalled truck while under fire?
“How can I help you?” Azmeh asked, worried that Cooper might suggest he make the throw himself.
“Give me some cover,” Cooper said. “I’ll tell you when.”
“Done.”
Kneeling, one shoulder against the Jeep’s sun-heated fender, Azmeh held his carbine ready, muzzle pointed at the pale blue sky, his finger on the trigger. Full automatic fire would empty his fresh magazine in four seconds flat, unless he controlled it. He’d go with short bursts to frighten his opponents and keep them from dropping Cooper in his tracks.
He waited, barely breathing, and had started feeling dizzy when the tall American said, “Now!”
* * *
BOLAN PULLED THE GRENADE’S pin and dropped the spoon as he began to move. He had about four seconds until detonation.