Dead or Alive

  Though Driscoll didn’t consider their stroll through the Hindu Kush mountaineering per se, it was close enough to remind him of an old Everest saying: Reach the summit and you’ve only climbed half the mountain. Translation: Oftentimes getting back down safely was the real bitch. And for him and his team this was especially true: Mountaineers usually follow the same route up and down. He and his Rangers couldn’t do that, lest they risk ambush. To complicate matters, they were hauling along two prisoners, both of whom had so far been cooperating, but that could change quickly enough.

  Driscoll reached a flat spot in the trail between a pair of boulders and stopped, raising his fist as he did so. Behind him, the rest of the team halted in near unison and crouched down. They were five hundred feet from the valley floor. Another forty minutes, Driscoll estimated, then another two klicks along the valley floor, then head to the LZ, or landing zone. He checked his watch: making good time.

  Tait sidled up alongside and offered Driscoll a hunk of jerky. “Prisoners are starting to drag ass a bit.”

  “Life’s a bitch.”

  “Then you die,” Tait replied.

  Handling prisoners was always dicey, and even more so in terrain like this. If one of them snapped an ankle or decided to simply sit down and refuse to get up, you had three choices: leave him behind, haul him, or shoot him. The trick was convincing the prisoners that only one fate—the last one—awaited them. Probably true in any case, Driscoll thought. No way he’d put two gomers back into circulation.

  Driscoll said, “Five minutes and we’re moving again. Pass the word.”

  The boulder-strewn terrain slowly leveled out and gave way to barrel-sized rocks and gravel. A hundred meters from the valley floor, Driscoll called another halt and checked the way ahead through the night vision. He followed the trail’s zigzagging course to where it bottomed out, pausing at every potential area of concealment until he was certain nothing was moving. The valley was two hundred meters wide and bordered by sheer rock walls. Perfect place for an ambush, Driscoll thought, but then again, the geography of the Hindu Kush made that more the rule than the exception, a lesson that had been passed down through the millennia, starting with Alexander the Great, then the Soviets, and now the U.S. military. Driscoll and their now- leg-broke captain had planned this mission backward and forward, each time looking for a better exfiltration route, but had found no alternatives, at least not within ten klicks, a detour that would have put their extraction into the daylight hours.

  Driscoll turned around and did a quick head count: fifteen and two. Coming out with the same he’d taken in, a victory in itself. He signaled to Tait—moving—who passed it down the line. Driscoll stood up and started down the trail. Ten minutes later they were within a stone’s throw of the valley floor. He paused to check that nobody was bunching up, then started out again, then stopped.

  Something not right . . .

  It took a moment for Driscoll to nail down the source: One of their prisoners, the one in the number-four position with Peterson, no longer seemed as tired. His posture was stiff, his head swiveling left and right. A worried man. Why? Driscoll called another halt, brought the column into a crouch. Tait was there a few moments later.

  “What’s up?”

  “Peterson’s gomer is nervous about something.”

  Driscoll did a scan ahead with the night vision but saw nothing. The valley floor, level and clear of debris save the occasional boulder, appeared empty. Nothing moving, and no sound except the faint whistling of wind. Still, Driscoll’s gut was talking to him.

  Tait asked, “See something?”

  “Not a thing, but something’s got what’s-his-face jumpy.”

  “Grab Collins, Smith, and Gomez, then backtrack fifty yards and pick your way along the hillside. Tell Peterson and Flaherty to put their prisoners in the dirt and keep them quiet.”

  “Roger.”

  Tait disappeared back down the trail, pausing to whisper instructions to each man. Through the night vision, Driscoll watched Tait’s progress as he and the other three snaked their way back up the slope, then off the trail, moving from boulder to boulder, paralleling the valley.

  Zimmer had moved up the line to Driscoll’s position. “Little voice talking to you, Santa?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Fifteen minutes passed. In the green, washed-out glow of the NV, Driscoll saw Tait suddenly stop. Over the radio: “Boss, we got an open space ahead of us—a notch in the rock. I can see the peak of a tent.”

  Which explains the nervous gomer, Driscoll thought. He knows the camp is there. “Life signs?”

  “Muffled voices—five, maybe six.”

  “Roger, hold pos—”

  To the right, fifty meters up the valley, came a pair of headlights. Driscoll turned to see a UAZ-469 jeep skid around the corner and head in their direction. Throwbacks to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, UAZs were favored among the country’s sundry bad guys. This one was open-topped and equipped with another piece of Soviet Army equipment, a mounted NSV 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun. Thirteen shots a second, 1,500-meter range, Driscoll thought. Even as he recognized it for what it was, the muzzle began flashing. Bullets thudded into rock and soil, throwing up shards and plumes of dust. Farther down the valley, atop the cliff opposite Tait and the others, muzzles began flashing. Peterson’s prisoner began shouting in Arabic, none of which Driscoll understood, but the tone was unmistakable: encouragement for his compatriots. Peterson popped him behind the ear with the butt of his M4, and the man went limp.

  Tait’s team opened up, their M4s cracking and echoing through the valley. Driscoll’s remaining men had found cover and were lighting up the UAZ, which had skidded to a stop twenty meters away, its headlights aimed at the Rangers.

  “Tait, put some grenades into those tents!” Driscoll ordered, then ducked left and snapped off two quick bursts at the UAZ.

  “On it!” Tait replied.

  Up the trail, Barnes had found a niche between some rocks and had his M249 SAW—Squad Automatic Weapon—up on its tripod. The muzzle started flashing. Its windshield spider-webbed, the UAZ started backing up now, the 12.7-millimeter still pumping rounds into the hillside. From Tait’s direction Driscoll heard the crump of a grenade, then another, then two more in quick succession. Now more shouting in Arabic. Screams. It took a half-second for Driscoll to realize the screams were coming from behind. He spun, M4 to his shoulder. Fifteen meters up the trail, Gomez’s prisoner was on his feet, facing the UAZ and shouting. Driscoll caught a snippet—Shoot me. . . . Shoot me....—and then the top of the man’s head exploded and he toppled backward.

  “Barnes, get that thing stopped!” Driscoll shouted.

  In answer, the SAW’s tracers dropped from the UAZ’s cab and roof to its front grille, which began sparking. Bullets thudded into the engine block, followed seconds later by a geyser of steam. The driver’s-side door opened and a figure staggered out. The SAW cut him down. In the truck’s bed, the NSV went silent, and Driscoll could see a figure scrambling. Reloading. Driscoll turned around and signaled to Peterson and Deacons—grenades—but they were already on their feet, arms cocked. The first grenade went long and right, exploding harmlessly behind the UAZ, but the second landed beside the truck’s rear tire. The explosion lifted the truck’s rear end a few inches off the ground. The gunner in the bed tumbled over the side and lay still.

  Driscoll turned back, scanned the far cliff wall through the NV. He counted six gomers, all prone and pouring fire into Tait’s position. “Light those fuckers up!” Driscoll ordered, and eleven guns began hosing down the cliff face. Thirty seconds was all it took. “Cease fire, cease fire!” Driscoll ordered. The gunfire ceased. He got on the radio: “Tait, head count.”

  “Still got four. Caught a few rock splinters, but we’re good.”

  “Check the tents, mop it up.”

  “Roger.”

  Driscoll picked his way up the trail, checking each man in turn and finding only
minor scrapes and cuts from flying rock. “Barnes, you and Deacons check the—”

  “Santa, you’re—”

  “What?”

  “Your shoulder. Sit down, Sam, sit down! Medic up!”

  Now Driscoll could feel the numbness, as though his right arm had fallen asleep from the shoulder down. He let Barnes sit him down on the trail. Collins, the team’s second medic, came running up. He knelt down, and he and Barnes eased Driscoll’s pack off his right shoulder, then the left. Collins clicked on his hooded flashlight and examined Driscoll’s shoulder.

  “You got a rock splinter in there, Santa. About the size of my thumb.”

  “Ah, shit. Barnes, you and Deacons go check that truck.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  They trotted down the trail, then across to the truck. “Two dead,” Deacons called.

  “Frisk ’em, check for intel,” Driscoll said through gritted teeth. The numbness was giving way to white-hot pain.

  “You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Collins said. He pulled a field dressing from his pack and pressed it against the wound.

  “Pack it up as best you can.”

  Tait, on the radio: “Santa, we got four KIA and two wounded, both are on their way out.”

  “Roger. Intel check, then get back here.”

  Collins said, “I’m gonna call for an evac—”

  “Bullshit. In about fifteen minutes we’re gonna be drowning in gomers. We’re humping out of here. Get me up.”

  6

  IT WAS GOING TO BE a sad day, Clark knew. His gear was already packed—Sandy always handled that, as efficiently as ever. It would be the same at Ding’s place—Patsy had learned packing from her mother. Rainbow Six was moving into its second generation, much of the original crew gone by now, rotated back stateside in the case of the Americans, mainly back for Fort Bragg and Delta School, or Coronado, California, where the Navy trained its SEAL candidates, there to tell such stories as the rules allowed over beers to a very few trusted fellow instructors. Every so often they’d come through Hereford in Wales, to drink pints of John Courage at the Green Dragon’s comfortable bar and trade war stories rather more freely with fellow graduates of the Men of Black. The locals knew who they were, but they were as security-conscious as the Security Service agents—called “Five” men in a nod to the former British MI-5—who hung out there, too.

  Nothing was permanent in the service, regardless of the country. This was healthy for the organizations, always bringing in fresh people, some of them with fresh ideas, and it made for warm reunions in the most unlikely of places—a lot of them airport terminals, all over the freaking world—and a lot of beers to be drunk and handshakes to be exchanged before the departing flights were called. But the impermanence and uncertainty wore at you over time. You started wondering when a close friend and colleague would be called away, to disappear into some other compartment of the “black” world, often remembered but rarely seen again. Clark had seen a lot of friends die on “training missions”—which usually meant catching a bullet in a denied area. But such things were the cost of belonging to this exclusive fraternity, and there was no changing it. As the SEALs were fond of saying, “You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.”

  Eddie Price, for example, had taken retirement as Regimental Sergeant Major of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, and was now the Yeoman Gaoler at Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London. John and Ding had both wondered if the UK’s Chief of State understood how much more secure her Palace and Fortress was today, and if Price’s ceremonial ax (the Yeoman Gaoler is the official executioner there) had a proper edge to it. For damned sure he still did his morning run and PT, and woe betide any member of the regular-Army security force quartered there who didn’t have his boots spit-shined, his gig-lines in order, and his rifle cleaner than when it had left the factory.

  It was a damned shame that you had to get old, John Clark told himself, close enough to sixty to see the shadow of it, and the worst part of getting old was that you could remember being young, even the things best forgotten, in his case. Memories were a double-edged sword.

  “Hey, Mr. C.,” said a familiar voice at the front door. “Hell of a day out, isn’t it?”

  “Ding, we talked about this,” John said without turning.

  “Sorry . . . John.”

  It had taken John Clark years to get Chavez, colleague and son-in-law, to call him by his first name, and even now Ding was having trouble with it.

  “Ready if somebody tries to hijack the flight?”

  “Mr. Beretta is in his usual place,” Ding responded. They were among the handful of people in Britain who got to carry firearms, and such privileges were not lightly set aside.

  “How are Johnny and Patsy?”

  “The little guy is pretty excited about going home. We have a plan after we get there?”

  “Not really. Tomorrow morning we make a courtesy call at Langley. I might want to drive over and see Jack in a day or two.”

  “See if he’s leaving footprints on the ceiling?” Ding asked with a chuckle.

  “More likely claw marks, if I know Jack.”

  “Retirement ain’t fun, I suppose.” Chavez didn’t push it further. That was a touchy subject for his father-in law. Time passed, no matter how much you wished it wouldn’t.

  “How’s Price handling it?”

  “Eddie? He takes an even strain with life—that’s how you sailors say it, right?”

  “Close enough for a doggie.”

  “Hey, man, I said ‘sailor,’ not ‘squid.’”

  “Duly noted, Domingo. I beg your pardon, Colonel.”

  Chavez enjoyed the next laugh. “Yeah, I’m gonna miss that.”

  “How’s Patsy?”

  “Better than the last pregnancy. Looks great. Feels great—least she says she does. Not a big complainer, Patsy. She’s a good girl, John—but then again, I ain’t telling you anything you didn’t already know, am I?”

  “Nope, but it’s always nice to hear it.”

  “Well, I have no complaints.” And if he did, he’d have to approach the subject with great diplomacy. But he didn’t. “The chopper is waiting, boss,” he added.

  “Damn.” A sad whisper.

  Sergeant Ivor Rogers had the luggage well in hand, loaded in a green British Army truck for the drive to the helipad, and he was waiting outside for his personal Brigadier, which was John’s virtual rank. The Brits were unusually conscious of rank and ceremony, and he saw more of that when he got outside. He’d hoped to have a low-profile departure, but the locals weren’t thinking that way. As they rolled onto the helipad, there was the entire Rainbow force, the shooters, the Intel support, even the team armorers—Rainbow had the best three gunsmiths in all of Britain—formed up—the local term was “paraded”—in whatever uniforms they were authorized to wear. There was even a squad from the SAS. Stone-faced, they collectively snapped to Present Arms, in the elegant three-count movement the British Army had adopted several centuries earlier. Tradition could be a beautiful thing.

  “Damn,” Clark muttered, getting out of the truck. He’d come pretty far for an old Navy chief bosun’s mate, but he’d taken a lot of strange steps along the way. Not knowing quite what to do, he figured he had to review the troops, as it were, and shake hands with all of them on the way to the MH-60K helicopter.

  It took more time than he’d expected. Nearly every person there got a word or two with the handshake. They all deserved it. His mind went back to 3rd SOG, a lifetime before. These were as good as those, hard to believe though that might be. He’d been young, proud, and immortal back then. And remarkably, he hadn’t died of being immortal, as so many good men had. Why? Luck, maybe. No other likely explanation. He’d learned caution, mostly in Vietnam. Learned from seeing men who’d not been lucky go down hard from making some dumb mistake, often as simple as not paying attention. Some chances you had to take, but you tried to run them through your mind first
and take only the necessary chances. Those were plenty bad enough.

  Alice Foorgate and Helen Montgomery both gave him hugs. They’d been superb secretaries, and those were hard to find. Clark had been half tempted to try to find them jobs in the United States, but the Brits probably valued them as much as he had and would’ve put up a fight.

  And finally Alistair Stanley, the incoming boss, was standing at the end.

  “I’ll take good care of them, John,” he promised. They shook hands. There was not much else to be said. “Still no word on the next posting?”

  “I expect they’ll tell me before the next check comes.” The government was usually good about getting the paperwork done. Not much else, of course, but paperwork, surely.

  With nothing left to be said, Clark walked to the helicopter. Ding, Patsy, and J.C. were already strapped in, along with Sandy. J.C. especially loved flying, and he’d get a gut full in the next ten hours. On lifting off they turned southeast for Heathrow Terminal Four. Landing on their own pad, a van took them to the aircraft, and so they were absolved of passing through the magnetometers. It was a British Airways 777. The same type they’d flown over on four years earlier, then with the Basque terrorists aboard. They were in Spain, though in which prison and how the conditions were they’d never asked. Probably not the Waldorf Astoria.

  Are we fired, John?” Ding asked as the aircraft rotated off the Heathrow tarmac.

  “Probably not. Even if we are, they’re not going to call it that. They might make you a training officer down at The Farm. Me . . . ? Well, they can keep me on the payroll a year or two, maybe I can hold down a desk in the operations center until they take my parking sticker away. We’re too senior to fire. Not worth the paperwork. They’re afraid we might talk to the wrong reporter.”

  “Yeah, you still owe Bob Holtzman a lunch, don’t you?”

  John almost spilled his preflight champagne at that reminder. “Well, I did give my word, didn’t I?”