Standing the Final Watch Read online

  The pall of smoke rising from the jungle marked the pyre of a lot of terrorists, but the rest wanted revenge and Green Ghost knew a dumpster fire when he fought in one. Outgunned ten to one, they killed as many as possible and took off. Explosions rippled through the jungle as the Bulgarian PM-79A anti-personnel mines they’d laid out were triggered. Sometimes screams followed, sometimes not.

  Bullets dug chunks out of a tree by Green Ghost’s head. A splinter struck his eye. He ran through the jungle as fast as he could while hauling a dead man. Twice he dropped to return fire. Ahead of him Vapor did the same. Wingnut covered them both from behind the sweeping bole of a sycamore fig tree, eye to the scope of his M16.

  “I’m the last,” Green Ghost said. “Hug my six and gitfoh.” Get the fuck out of here.

  Wingnut followed, scanning for targets. He knelt, prepared to fire, moved back, knelt again, until they got back to their three Mercedes-made Unimog Dingos. Once there, Green Ghost helped load the casualties, five dead out of twelve.

  Without warning AK-47s opened up, hitting the door and ricocheting. Wingnut returned fire and then jumped in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle. Vapor drove and Green Ghost sat behind them, firing at the dark figures hovering in the jungle shadows. Vapor stepped on the gas. They bounced through holes in the dirt track, heading for a fork in the trail. In the distance they heard trucks starting up.

  “Which way, Ghost?” Vapor said.

  “Left! Head for the emergency XP.”

  Leaving swirling dust and clumps of grass in his wake, Vapor fishtailed onto the track heading east. He kept a death grip on the steering wheel, keeping the Dingo from slamming into a deep hole and flipping over. He blinked away sweat.

  “Eighteen clicks, people!” Green Ghost said into his head-mount walkie talkie. “Anybody on our ass?”

  The voice that answered was the newest member of the squad, a husky guy called Neon. “Somebody back there, boss, but we’re throwing up a lot of dust.”

  “We’re headed for the secondary XP. If nobody’s there, we keep going until we hit the Ugandan border. Everybody roger that?”

  They’d gone eight clicks and just topped a low rise when Vapor yelled “Shit!” and jammed the brake pedal with all his strength. The Dingo spun and slid sidewise, stopping just short of a giant kapok tree lying across the road.

  “Everybody out! Form up on the other side of the tree and set your demo charges,” Green Ghost said into the headset.

  They had only just spread out behind the tree when the first enemy vehicles sped into their sights on top of the rise. The first one, a Toyota pickup filled with men, was hit by a stream of .223 rounds that killed the driver. The truck rolled into the undergrowth and exploded. No other trucks came over the little hill, however, and soon enough they heard men advancing through the jungle.

  With their escape route blocked and enemies on all sides, the seven surviving Americans had nowhere to go. They abandoned their Dingos after setting booby traps, and then dove behind the tree’s massive bole. Using the vehicles as cover would have just gotten them shot up. This way, if they found a chance to run for it, they still had transportation and just had to disable the traps.

  “This is a fucked-up place to get killed,” Vapor said. “I knew I was gonna die one day; I just didn’t know I’d be covered in monkey shit when it happened. KMAG-YO-YO.” Kiss my ass, guys, you’re on your own.

  “FISHDO—” fuck it, shit happens, drive on “—brother, you volunteered for it,” said Green Ghost. “Don’t try and pin this on Saint Nick.”

  Bullets chewed up the far side of the tree and both men squatted lower.

  “I thought you said there was gonna be pussy,” Vapor said.

  “The only pussy here is you.”

  They deployed behind the tree. The men on the far left and far right slipped into the bush as flank protection, with no words needed. Their fire discipline would conserve ammunition and kept their enemies pinned down — but only until the ammo ran out. When it did, so did their lives.

  “Here’s the plan,” Green Ghost said while reloading his M16. “Flanks stay where they are. I hold here. Vapor, you and the others pull back a klick and set up covering fire. If we’re not there in ten, we’re not coming.”

  “Go tell the Spartans,” Vapor said.

  “Something like that. Go!”

  The four pushed off from the tree and sprinted down the road. Green Ghost rose to his knees and sprayed the brush. He could hear the others doing the same thing on either side. Bullets buzzed by his head and smacked the tree. He fired until his ammo ran out, and then he slumped behind cover again, only to see his men running back toward him.

  “It’s a shit sandwich, Ghost,” Vapor said, panting. “We’re cut off. Burps all over the place back there.”

  “Fuck,” Green Ghost said. “How did they flank us so fast?”

  He sent two men to reinforce the rear flank and tried to think of some way out. The terrorists moved in without hurrying, avoiding casualties. Everyone knew they would run out of ammo sooner rather than later.

  “Just what I wanted — another Fallujah,” said Vapor.

  Green Ghost clenched his teeth. He knew better than to expect rescue. He had nurtured the secret hope that somehow, someone would rescue them anyway, but that looked ever more unlikely. Faced with the inevitable, the stark reality of impending death made his men fight even harder.

  The firing came in bursts now, sometimes nothing for thirty seconds, then a cascade of automatic weapons fire, followed by another lull. During each lull the enemy crept closer. With ammo running low, they caught glimpses of figures scurrying through the underbrush and dropped several.

  “Listen up, boys,” Green Ghost shouted over the din. “If they come through, chew the glass. Do not let them take you alive!” His eyes met Vapor’s and they both nodded. They’d swallow their suicide pills. The time had come to die.

  The firing stopped and the jungle grew quiet, as if both sides paused to catch their breath before the final fight. Then, in the distance, came the cra-a-ack of a gun being fired, but not an M16 or an AK-47. Instead, it sounded like a very large-caliber pistol, one he thought sounded familiar. Seconds later, a rocket arched into the sky no more than three hundred yards from their position.

  “Ghost, what the fuck was that?” Vapor said. “Do we unass or what?”

  Green Ghost held up his left fist. Beneath his feet the soil vibrated faintly, and the rumble of unknown vehicles became louder with each second. In the distance a heavy machine gun opened fire, a sound he also recognized. Birds and monkeys flitted through the treetops, chattering and squawking. The shooting stopped after a two-second burst and quiet again settled over the jungle.

  “Listen up, you high speeds!” Green Ghost said. “Unknown incoming. Ammo up. If they’re enemy, it’s blaze of glory time. You dicks always wanted a range named after you; now’s your chance.”

  His men smirked. He waited for the flankers to move closer.

  “Gunner’s circle!” he yelled, loud enough for all to hear. It took less than five seconds for all six men to gather around him, squatting behind the tree. No words were necessary because they had made the gunner’s circle under fire before. Using hand gestures, he let them know they were going to make for the Dingos, disable the traps, take all three, and try to go back the way they had come. As one, in perfect coordination, they slid over the huge bole and formed the circle on the other side.

  With rifles pointed in six directions and Green Ghost in the center, they were almost to the Dingos when shots came from across the road, hitting one man in the left leg. He went down, but did not scream or roll around, which would have increased blood loss. Instead, grinding his teeth against the pain, he fished his first aid kit from a side pocket. As two of his buddies returned fire, Green Ghost knelt and worked fast to staunch the bleeding. Bullets kicked up dirt around them.

  “We can’t hold them!” Vapor yelled.

  More of the enemy ope
ned fire, and then Vapor yelped as a slug creased his shoulder. Two men in tattered green dungarees jumped into the middle of the road about thirty yards away, aiming right at Ghost. Still kneeling, Ghost rolled left and tried to bring his M16 to bear. The men in the road adjusted their aim, but before they could fire, the unmistakable crack of a Magnum Desert Eagle fifty caliber rocked the jungle.

  Five times the pistol fired, one after the other in rapid succession. Ghost watched one man’s head explode, while the other fell forward with his entrails spilling out. Only one man used such a mammoth pistol, the same man who would travel hundreds of miles into hostile territory, against orders, to rescue his men. His heart lightening, Ghost shook his head. Generals did not do stuff like that, except for this one.

  Without warning the foliage overhanging the road burst apart and an APC appeared, with a man standing in the forward hatch holding a Desert Eagle and searching for a target. Two identical APCs followed, both field-modified to mount the deadly M242 Bushmaster 25mm chain gun in place of the turreted fifty-caliber machine gun the factory had installed. All three were Swiss-made MOWAG Piranha V eight-wheeled APCs, used by military forces around the world, and Green Ghost recognized them at once from the motor pool in Kenya. Bouncing down the rutted road, they poured fire left and right, suppressing the enemy. The Bushmasters in particular shredded both jungle vegetation and terrorists alike. The stout man blasting away with the Desert Eagle might have just walked off of a recruiting poster.

  The first APC stopped ten yards short of the gunner’s circle.

  “Saddle up, Snake Eaters!” Angriff yelled. “Let’s down range and home, now!”

  Green Ghost’s body eased as two squads of riflemen poured from the Piranhas and fanned out, providing cover. Bullets still whizzed by in all directions. Angriff sought a target amid the banana plants, then, satisfied no enemies were within sight, he stepped down and walked over to Green Ghost, changing magazines without breaking stride.

  “Good shooting,” Ghost said, pointing at the dead terrorists in the road. All three APCs had run over them, leaving only a jelly-like smear in the mud.

  “Is this it, seven?” Angriff said, indicating the small knot of men.

  Ghost nodded. “We lost five, but we recovered the bodies. They’re in the third Dingo.”

  “How bad are they hit?” Angriff said, pointing at Vapor and the other wounded man. An AK-47 round ricocheted off the APC behind him, but he did not flinch.

  “Bad enough.”

  “All right, we’ll load your KIAs. You get your men into the APCs and let’s unass the AO. The LZ is hot; we can’t hold it forever.”

  “The Dingos are rigged. We could just blow them.”

  “No, those men are heroes. They deserve a burial on American soil with full honors.”

  As a trained killer, Green Ghost did not cry. He had survived nightmares most men could not imagine, horrors his brain could only process by shutting down emotional responses. But Angriff’s determination to honor his men caused him to tip back his head and close his eyes. He grabbed the older man’s thick forearm and stared straight into the famous gaze. “I thought this was Judgment Day, boss. Thank you.”

  “I don’t leave my people behind.”

  “It’s a six hour flight. You had to have left as soon as the XP was compromised.”

  “I didn’t have anything else planned for today.”

  “I won’t forget this,” Ghost said.

  “Don’t even think about kissing me,” Angriff said.

  They torched the Dingos and made it to the landing zone in fifteen minutes, a bouncy ride smoothed by the independent suspension of the Piranhas’ eight wheels. Two Russian-built Mil MI-26 transport helicopters waited in a clearing with rotors turning. The giant machines were registered to a mining operation in Myanmar, a company protected by layers and layers of dummy corporations, and a company which itself did not exist. The three APCs and all of the men fit into their cargo bays with room to spare.

  Once airborne and out of Congolese air space, Angriff settled in for the six-hour flight back to Kenya. They would be over Uganda for most of the trip but, since they had bribed all the right people, there would be no hindrance from the Ugandan military.

  Angriff had placed a quart of Tennessee Black whiskey on each helicopter, with a box of his favorite Cuban cigars, Cubano Monte Cristo Number Threes. Once the two birds had lifted off, he cracked the bottle’s seal and gave Green Ghost the honor of taking the first hit. The bottle gurgled as he turned it up and drank, swallowed with his eyes closed, and passed it to the next man. After the bottle had gone around for the first time, including a mouthful for the man who’d brought it, Ghost stood and raised his hand for quiet.

  “Listen up, boys. I’ve got a toast. Today Charlie Foxtrot paid us a visit. We volunteered for it, which probably says something about how smart we are, but the fact is we were royally fucked. I don’t know any other man who would have done what Saint Nick did for us. He put his ass on the line because that’s what he does for his men. So let’s drink to the health of General Nicholas Angriff. May his wife give him the best blowjob he’s ever had!”

  Everybody laughed, including Angriff. In no other setting would he let someone mention his wife in those terms, but there had always been a special bond between men in combat, and he loved every one of them. They all drank deep, and when the bottle came back to Angriff, he got the last swallow. He stood and swished that last little bit.

  “You’re the finest combat soldiers in the world,” he said. “Very few men have the privilege to command such heroes. I salute you all.” Turning up the bottle, he finished it.

  By the time they landed, the buzz from the whiskey had worn off. Fatigue sapped their energy as adrenaline levels dropped. Angriff felt it more than his younger subordinates, but he held himself to a higher standard than he did everyone else and bounced off the helicopter first to help the others dismount. He laughed and slapped them on the back, ignoring his own aching muscles and painful joints. Nick Angriff felt happiest when among soldiers. He loved his family, of course, but outsiders could never understand a kinship with men like Green Ghost, a bond of steel forged in combat.

  A long rectangle scraped from the jungle served as the base landing zone. The mammoth helicopters threw up giant clouds of fine mustard-colored dust that infiltrated and settled on everything. When at last he headed over to the command building, little more than a huge shack made from coconut logs, Angriff’s sweaty green uniform had turned pale yellow.

  His closest friend, Norm Fleming, stood in the doorway with arms folded, looking grim. For himself, Angriff could not stop smiling.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Mission accomplished and losses were less than expected, but you look like we took out an orphanage. I lost the optic sight for one of my Eagles; is that what’s got you all broken up?”

  Fleming shook his head. “No, the op exceeded expectations by an order of magnitude. The early intel is that half the leadership attending the meeting were killed outright. The groups are already blaming each other. I doubt we’ll see African terror groups cooperating in the foreseeable future. Reuters has it and it’s big news in Europe. Speculation is that Mossad was behind it.”

  “The Israelis will love that. So why do you look like your dog died?”

  “CentCom isn’t happy.”

  Angriff shrugged. “By tomorrow they’ll be tripping over each other to take credit.”

  “You ignored an abort order,” Fleming said.

  “We were dark. Responding would have endangered the mission.” But Angriff sensed something else bothered Fleming besides a pissed-off Pentagon. “And we both know they won’t do a damned thing about it. What’s really going on here, Norm? What don’t I know?”

  “Sit down, Nick.” Fleming stared down at his hands. His normal low baritone dipped into a deep, mournful bass. Angriff knew that tone from the previous year, when Fleming broke the news that Angriff’s oldest daughter, Morgan
, had died in action.

  Acid filled his throat. “I’m fine standing,” Angriff said, keeping his voice even.

  “No,” Fleming said. “You need to sit down.”

  In all the long years they had known each other and all the battlefield reverses they had suffered together, Fleming had never spoken to him that way except that one time. Chest muscles tightened and dizziness drove Angriff onto a chair near the doorway.

  “Who is it?” Angriff said.

  Fleming gave it to him straight. “There was a terrorist attack on a tour boat at Lake Tahoe, like the one in California. The terrorists are believed to have been an ISIS or Al-Queda sleeper cell. They didn’t find any survivors. I’m so sorry, Nick… Janine and Cynthia were on that boat.”

  Chapter 2

  O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth

  And roll in ashes;

  Mourn as for an only son,

  A lamentation most bitter.

  For suddenly the destroyer

  Will come upon us.

  Jeremiah 6:26

  One of six Above Top Secret facilities in the world, the Kenyan base demanded extreme security precautions, including forbidding direct flights into Nairobi. As the highest ranking U.S. serviceman in the African theater, Angriff could have overridden his own protocol, yet he did not, even in such an extreme circumstance. Instead, he drove four hours over bad roads to a waiting Learjet 60XR provided by the CIA. The trip to Reno took seventeen hours, with stops in Egypt, Italy, Spain, and Bermuda, before changing planes in North Carolina. The final leg ended at 8:57 a.m. Pacific Standard Time with touchdown at Reno.

  Angriff did not sleep during the entire flight. He alternated between drinking coffee and smoking cigars, and convincing himself that somebody had made a colossal error and his family would be waiting for him on the tarmac. He paced the plane’s narrow aisle and tried to think of anything except his family being dead. His mind drifted into that semi-conscious state of being too stimulated to rest but too tired to think. Counting the long day rescuing his team from the jungle, and the inability to sleep the night before that, sixty hours had passed since he’d last slept. By the time they landed his eyes burned and dehydration gummed up his throat.