RW16 - Domino Theory Page 3

  “What room is he in?”

  “You’re not going in there, are you?”

  I hate it when people ask stupid questions, especially when they already know the answer.

  * * *

  I got to the door without anyone in the building seeing me. Aside from the two men Shotgun had killed, there was no one in the vestibule. The tangos still fighting were either above me or in the rooms on the north side of the building, engaging the main body of the ground assault.

  I went upstairs, taking two at a time.

  Yeah, I huffed a little.

  I threw my shoulder against the wall as gunfire erupted just outside the landing to the second floor.

  A figure came around the corner. I reached my foot out as he turned and he went flying face-first.

  It was a terrorist wannabe, still dressed for sleep in briefs and a T-shirt. I heard someone running in the hallway behind him.

  Once again I put out my leg, and this time added a little push to make sure he landed hard. It was a marine, but I figured I was teaching him a lesson — he should have stopped and looked around the corner before proceeding.

  What he really should have done was cleared the stairwell with a grenade. But that was in the advanced class.

  Shotgun had told me the sleeping tango was in room six. I didn’t have night glasses, and even with the gun flashes and flares outside I couldn’t see very far down the hall. I had to get right up close to the first room to look and see how they were numbered.

  The answer was … they weren’t.

  “Shotgun, which one of these is six?” I whispered over the radio as I slipped into the hall. “There are no numbers on the doors.”

  “Start from the north. East side is even, west is odd.”

  The room was on the other side of the corridor. I got about halfway when bullets started streaking through the window at the end of the hall, shattering the glass and throwing splinters of wood, metal, and cement everywhere.

  I didn’t really mind the mess that much.

  The grenade that followed the bullets — that was a different story.

  Fucking Murphy had arrived, in spades.

  ( III )

  Most hand grenades have a seven-second delay before they explode.

  Now seven seconds sounds like a long time. And it can be, especially if you’re looking at a grenade and waiting for it to explode. If you’ve watched a lot of World War II movies, you’ve probably come across a scene where a soldier very calmly pulls the pin, counts off to three, then tosses the grenade just in time so that it explodes after a tension-inducing bounce.

  Real life doesn’t quite work that way. Most people once they pull the pin realize they have 6.5 ounces of Composition B in their hand, and they do what any sane person does — get rid of that motherfucker ASAP.

  Which can mean that the grenade sits on the ground for a whole three or four seconds before going boom.3

  I think that’s what happened here. Truth is, though, I didn’t stop to count off the seconds. Instead, I spent my time diving into the open doorway to my right.

  Landing on my belly in the darkness, I braced for the inevitable crash behind me.

  In the next moment, I realized there was someone in the room with me. He was kneeling by the window, sighting a rifle toward the next building. He glanced over at me in the darkness, the white of his eyes glinting with a reflected light from a flash below.

  Possibly he said something — most likely the Arabic equivalent of What the fuck? But I didn’t hear it. The grenade cooked off in the hallway, the concussion strong enough to rattle the floor.

  My MP5 had been in my hand as I jumped into the room, but the hard fall had knocked it from my grip. The gun was somewhere on the side, probably a few inches from my hand; if I’d been thinking, I would have scooped it over and shot the tango wannabe while he was still trying to figure out who I was.

  But I wasn’t thinking; I was operating on instinct, doing something I’ve done maybe a thousand times before. I levered my arms beneath me, pulled my legs up like a sprinter’s, and launched myself at the nearby shadow. My left arm became a battering ram; my right was a guided missile.

  My left arm caught him in the chin, pushing his head back just enough for my right fist to connect with his temple. Meanwhile, the rest of my body crashed down on his, leaving him a wet puddle of unconscious murk on the floor.

  At least that’s what should have happened. That’s what my instincts wanted to happen.

  I did hit him, and as far as I can tell, I slammed him pretty hard. But rather than knocking him out, all I did was piss him off. He reared back and slugged me. I tumbled off him, then winced as he pounded my chest with his right fist.

  Those were baby slaps compared to the kicks. My chest felt like it was caving in.

  You’ve probably formed a picture in your mind of this terrorist being Shotgun’s size, or maybe even a little bigger. His arms are tree trunks and his legs pile drivers. His torso wouldn’t fit in a barrel. He’s got one of those scraggly Hollywood beards, a couple of missing teeth, and breath that would shame a grizzly.

  You’re right about the beard, the teeth, and good God the breath. But the rest of the image is wrong. If this terrorist wannabe stood more than five-two I’m Wilt Chamberlain.4 He couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds. Calling him a half-pint would inflate his size by at least a cup. But he was the most furious son of a bitch this side of Trace Dahlgren. Fortunately, my initial assault had sent his rifle down into the darkness.

  As we rolled around on the floor, he punched, he kicked, he squirmed, he bit.

  I hate that.

  He was a regular snapping turtle. I have teeth marks on the Kevlar to prove it.

  Finally I managed to get behind him and slid my arm up beneath his chin. Even then, he squirmed around so much that I couldn’t quite get the leverage I needed to twist the bastard’s skull off. I pulled and pulled, until finally his body went limp.

  Yeah, I know he’s faking — now. Not then, though. I dropped him to the floor, anxious to get my bearings and figure out where the hell our target was. Suddenly my breath was snatched away by a bowling ball in the gut. I fell back against the wall, slapping wildly at the tornado trying to drive itself through my chest.

  I couldn’t breathe, though given the stench of his breath that may have been a blessing. I wasn’t seeing all that well either; not only was it dark, but my eyes were starting to swell from his punches.

  They say hold your friends close and your enemies even closer, but that strategy wasn’t helping me much here. I realized what I needed to do was hold this enemy far away. I grabbed the back of his pants, lifted, then flung with all my might. I wasn’t thinking of where I was throwing him, let alone aiming, but sometimes working blind is the best strategy: he flew right through the window, still twisting and squirming. For all I know, he bored through the ground when he hit and dug a hole to South America.

  I grabbed his rifle, then found my submachine gun. I literally staggered out of the room. Any suggestion that I take a less active role in the company would have been welcomed with open arms at that point.

  The hall was clear. I found the room where Shotgun had left the doped tango. This time I took no chances, ducking and moving in close to the shadows as I entered. I found him passed out on the bed.

  I grabbed him, flipped him over, and hauled him onto my back.

  Then nearly collapsed. This guy was borderline obese, heavier than Shotgun by seventy-five pounds if an ounce.

  My only choice was to suck it up. I waddled out of the room, glancing left and right at the hall.

  Still clear, thank God.

  Just as I started to gather steam, I saw a flash in the stairwell I was aiming at. A boom followed almost simultaneously.

  It was a flash-bang grenade, a prelude to the arrival of the marine assault team.

  Not wanting them to see me with my prize, I turned on my heel and headed back in the other direction. Somewher
e around room seven or five, I found an open door and lurched inside. The room was empty, though at that point it wouldn’t have been much of a problem if there’d been a dozen people here. I would have dumped the whale I was carrying on their heads, not only crushing them but violating five clauses of the Geneva Convention in the process.

  I spun and dropped him as gently as I could on the bed. Then I ran back to close the door.

  “Shotgun!” I hissed over the radio.

  “Hey, boss,” he chirped in his disgustingly cheerful voice. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on the second floor, west side. I need intel. Where are you?”

  “Heading in your direction.”

  “Are there marines on my side of the building?” I asked, visualizing the game plan in my head. “There should be a pair near that little cluster of bushes. Find them.”

  “Yeah. I see two guys.”

  “Get them out of there so I can jump.”

  I went to the window and looked out. The second story looked a lot higher than I remembered from the exercises. Suddenly my knees started creaking, reminding me that they weren’t shock absorbers.

  If I were jumping on my own, they’d hold. But put fat boy on my shoulders and my knees would snap like thin sticks as I hit the ground.

  There was no rope handy, but there were bedsheets. I rolled Fatty off the mattress and whipped off the sheets, fashioning them into a crude, prison-break-style rope. It wasn’t going to get me all the way to the ground, but a jump from six or eight feet wasn’t nearly as bad as what I’d do otherwise. Worst case, I could drop Fatty from there without too much risk of breaking his neck.

  Outside in the hall, the marines were going door to door, clearing each room. They used a stun grenade in each room, moving methodically, just like I’d taught them.

  Methodically doesn’t mean slow — I realized they’d reach me before I could get out. And there was no lock on the door. The only thing to barricade it with was the bed.

  Well, I could have used Fatty, but that would have defeated the purpose of coming inside in the first place.

  I hauled the bed against the door, then went to the window, knocked out the panes, and secured my makeshift line to the frame.

  “How are we doing out there, Shotgun?” I asked over the radio.

  “Ready for you.”

  I made like Atlas and pulled my overweight package onto my back in a fireman’s carry. Now that I felt his weight again, I worried that he was going to be too much for the sheet. But there was no time to reconfigure it — there was a loud slam against the door, followed by a few rounds fired at the doorknob.

  The sheet held much longer than I had any right to expect. I was just about even with the first-floor window when it started to strain. I reached my hand down, hoping to descend a few more feet before it gave way. But it was too late — gravity gave me a big wet kiss as my feet hit the ground. I lost hold of Fatty and shot forward, rebounding off the wall before falling backward into Shotgun.

  We rolled down in the dirt, tumbling over.

  “Wow, he’s a big one,” said Shotgun, scrambling to his feet.

  “Don’t tell me he’s the wrong one.”

  “No, the face is right,” said Shotgun, putting his eyes practically in the tango’s nostril. “He’s just a lot bigger than I thought he was. The intel was all wrong.”

  The intelligence we’d gotten hadn’t said the guy would outweigh an elephant, but it was pointless now to worry about it.

  This will tell you how strong Shotgun is — he deadlifted the guy over his head and onto his back. He barely bent under the weight as we made our way back to Special Squadron Zero’s gathering point.

  “Where’d you send the marines?” I asked Shotgun as we ran.

  “La la land,” said Shotgun.

  “La la land?”

  He pointed to the left as we passed their position. The two marines were slumped forward over their guns.

  “I couldn’t think of anything to tell them to get them to move, so I just bopped them in the head from behind,” he explained.

  Sometimes the easiest solution is the best.

  * * *

  “There you are, Commander Rick!” said Captain Birla. “We were worried that your Mr. Murphy had caused you distress.”

  “He was just keeping things interesting. What’s our sitrep?”

  Active resistance had ended; the marines were completing their room-by-room search. With Fatty in hand — or on back, to be more precise — we had recovered all of our subjects, with one to grow on.

  Time to get the hell out of Dodge.

  “The helicopter will meet us at the rendezvous point in ten minutes,” said the captain. “Sergeant Phurem has already gone to the landing area.”

  “We’ll join him. See you there.”

  Our helicopter was meeting us in a field about a half mile to the southwest — not coincidentally out of sight from the marines. We put our prize on a stretcher and with considerable help from two other squadron troopers made our way down the rocky path to the road leading to the LZ.

  Sergeant Phurem was waiting there with most of the squad. The team corpsman had changed Corporal Bhu’s splint, immobilizing his head. He’d also given the corporal a nice healthy shot of morphine, which may explain why he was humming.

  “Indian lullaby,” explained the corpsman. Just as on a SEAL team, he was a shooter with special medical training — he could sew ’em up almost as fast as he could shoot ’em up.

  Captain Birla appeared as the helo hoved into view. A few minutes later, we were all safely aboard, once again zigzagging our way toward the border.

  With the notable exception of Corporal Bhu, Special Squad Zero had not sustained any serious casualties. The marines, it would turn out, lost two men in the operation, one shot by a guard in the first building we hadn’t known about, and another who got a gut wound from a grenade and bled out before he could be evaced back to the hospital.

  Very possibly the grenade had been thrown by one of the marines, which really sucked. Naturally, that didn’t make it to the obit.

  Two other marines sustained injuries, one to his leg and the other to his arm. And there were the usual cuts and bruises, the inevitable pulled muscle and a dislocated shoulder, none of which are ever actually entered on the casualty report, though the guys that suffer them sure know about them.

  Most are thankful for such an “easy” souvenir.

  On the other side of the ledger, twenty-eight terrorist trainees, all but one of whom were from outside of Pakistan, were killed in the raid. Pakistan raised an official protest several days later, but in truth they were probably just as happy as the Indians were to be rid of them.

  Among the items found during the raid were tickets for airplane and train travel into Europe and back into India, presumably for the raid they were planning. There were also documents relating to a pair of ships we think were to have been used to transport weapons into the country. Those ships never made it to port.

  The accident rate at sea is simply astounding.

  Among other papers found during the raid were documents indicating that the group leaders made regular trips to a part of Karachi controlled by a Pakistani political party with known affiliations to terrorists. There were also indications the group had contact with an operative the CIA believes is a Taliban “fixer” for Pakistani intelligence.

  My personal favorites were the dunning e-mails to a supposed organization demanding money for jihad. They gave the slogan “Give until it hurts” a very literal meaning.

  There were a number of other goodies that I won’t go into because the leads were still being followed as I wrote this. The intelligence haul was solid, and all in all, the “official” part of the secret mission was a resounding success.

  But I didn’t particularly care about that part of the raid. It was the secret part of the mission that I’d tagged along for. And evaluating that was considerably more complicated.

  ( I
V )

  Before getting into the intricacies involving our guests, I should probably backtrack as promised and explain how it is I came to be in India.

  When last we communed,5 I was heading back to Rogue Manor, having spent a rollicking good time in the socialist workers paradise of Cuba, where the rum is heady and the girls are always willing. I’d barely walked in the door when the phone rang. I picked it up and found myself talking to a guy who sounded so much like a computer help desk that I braced myself to be put on hold.

  “Is this Richard Marcinko?” he asked.

  “What are you selling?”

  “No sell. Dis is Assistant Minister Ahal. Please hold for the minister.”

  “I’m already a faithful member of the Church of No Tomorrow,” I told him. But before I could slam the phone down, I heard a sexy female voice ask if she was talking to the Richard Marcinko, aka Demo Dick, Sharkman, and other names too dirty to mention.

  “This is me.”

  “It is very much my honor to speak with you,” she said.

  When I tell you she had a sexy voice, I don’t mean that she sounded like she could work a 900 number for a year and then retire a millionaire. I mean she could bring a stadium to tears by stepping up to the microphone and speaking, not even singing, the national anthem. Men don’t go to war over women anymore — a damn shame, if you ask me. But if they did, this woman would have caused World War III, World War IV, and several small police actions on the side.

  Her name was Minister Dharma, and she was the newly appointed cabinet minister for Interior State Security and Commerce in India.

  Dharma — rhymes with “charmer.” Kind of. And she was. No doubt about that. When she told me her title and responsibilities, I was ready to apply for the position of undersecretary. And very well might have, had Karen Fairchild not been glaring at me from across the room.

  Karen is my girlfriend. And while she’s unusually patient and rarely jealous, her eyes at that moment were sharper than the blade on the latest prototype of my Rogue Warrior knife. Women have a special radar about these things.

  “You have heard of the Commonwealth Games?” Dharma asked.