“One squeal and the rest will scatter, barking.”
He turned to the master sergeant.
“Will you send someone to the med center? Ask for the strongest and fastest-acting edible anesthetic they have. And from the commissary, some packs of raw beefsteak.”
The sergeant got on the phone. The Pathfinders exchanged glances. Tracker moved to the still photos, the last taken in natural daylight.
The hamlet was so crusted with desert sand that, being built of local sandstone the same color, it had virtually disappeared. There were a number of scrubby trees around it, and in the center of the square, its life-source: a well.
The shadows were long and black, thrown from west to east by the setting sun. The three technicals were still clear, parked next to one another near the well. There were figures around them, but not sixteen. Some must have gone straight inside. There were eight photos from different angles, but they all told the same story. What was of most use was to learn the angle from which the attack should come—the south.
The house to which the Marka party had gone was on that side, and there was an alley that led from it into the desert. He moved to the large-scale map pinned to the wall beside the photos. Someone had helpfully marked with a small red cross the speck in the desert on which they would be dropping. He gathered the six Pathfinders around him and spent thirty minutes pointing out what he had deduced. They had seen most of it for themselves before he arrived.
But he realized they would all have to sandwich into three hours the sort of detail absorption that could take days of study. He glanced at his watch. It was nine p.m. Wheels-up time could not be delayed beyond midnight.
“I advise we aim to drop five clicks due south of the target and tab the rest.”
He knew enough to use British army slang: click for “kilometer” and tab for “forced march.” The captain raised an eyebrow.
“You said ‘we,’ Jamie.”
“That’s right. I did not fly down here just to brief you. The leadership is yours, but I’m jumping with you.”
“We don’t usually jump with passengers. Unless, of course, the passenger is in tandem, strapped to Barry here.”
Tracker glanced at the giant towering over him. He did not fancy plunging five miles through freezing blackness harnessed to this human mastodon.
“David, I am not a passenger. I am a U.S. Recon Marine. I have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have done deep-dive scuba and free falling. You can put me where you like in the stick, but I’ll go in with my own canopy. Are we clear?”
“Clear.”
“How high do you want to exit the plane?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
It made sense. At that height, the four roaring Allison turboprops would be almost inaudible, and to any alert listener it would still sound like a passing airliner. Half that height might sound alarm bells. He had only ever dived from 15,000 feet, and there was a difference. At fifteen, you do not need thermal clothing or an oxygen bottle; at twenty-five, you do.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” he said.
David asked the youngest, Tim, to go to the Hercules outside and come back with various pieces of extra kit. They always carried spare equipment, and because they were returning home from a fortnight in Oman, the hull of the Hercules was stacked with things that might otherwise remain on the ground. A few minutes later, Tim came back with three extra men in army fatigue overalls; one of them was carrying a spare BT80, the French-made canopy the Pathfinders always insisted on using. Like all British Special Forces, they had the privilege of picking their own stuff on a worldwide spectrum.
In this manner, apart from a French chute, they chose the American M4 assault rifle, the Belgian Browning thirteen-shot sidearm and the British SAS combat knife, the K-bar.
Dai, the comms man, would be packing the American PRC-152 TacSat (tactical satellite) handheld radio and the British FireStorm video-downlink optical sensor.
Two hours to wheels up. In the operations room, the seven men dressed themselves, piece by piece, in the equipment that would finally leave them, like medieval knights in armor, hardly able to move unaided.
A pair of jump boots were found for the Tracker. Fortunately, he was of medium build, and the rest of the clothing fit without a problem. Then came the Bergen haversack that would contain night vision goggles, water, ammunition, sidearm and more.
They were assisted in this, and most of all the Tracker, by the three new men, the PDs, or parachute dispatchers. These, like squires in the days of old, would escort their Pathfinders to the very edge of the ramp, locked to tether lines in case they slipped, and see them launch into the void.
In dummy runs, they pulled on both BT80 and Bergen, one on the back side, the other on the chest, and tightened the straps of both until they hurt. Then the carbines, muzzle pointing downward, gloves, oxygen bottles and helmets. The Tracker was surprised to see how similar to his motorcycle helmet was the Pathfinder’s, except that this version had a black rubber oxygen mask dangling beneath it, and the goggles were more like the scuba version. Then they undressed again.
It was ten-thirty. Wheels up could be no later than midnight, for there were almost exactly five hundred miles to cover between Djibouti and the speck in the Somali desert that they intended to attack. Two hours’ flying time, the Tracker had calculated, and two hours’ tab to target. Going in at four a.m. ought to catch their enemies at the deepest depth of sleep and at slowest reaction time. He gave his six companions the last mission briefing.
“This man is the target,” he said and handed around a postcard-sized portrait. They all studied the face, memorizing it, aware that in six hours it might show up in the glow of their night vision goggles inside a stinking Somali shack. The face staring out of the postcard was that of Tony Suárez, presumably enjoying the Californian sun eleven time zones to the west. But it was as good as they were going to get.
“He is a very high-value al-Qaeda target, a practiced murderer with a passionate hatred of both our countries.”