Hunt the Viper Read online

  “Rastaman vibrations, man. Patch him in.”

  The colonel’s deep, British-accented voice resonated in Crocker’s ears. Twenty years ago the Peshmerga colonel had spent two years studying at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. “Crocker, my brother. Tell me some good news. All I hear are problems, problems, more problems. What’s the good word?”

  Crocker maintained a minute of silence. Rastan got the joke and chuckled.

  “Colonel, two things…” Crocker said, turning serious.

  “Yes. Hold on a minute.…”

  Akil steered the Flyer-60 around a deep crater in the asphalt road, which appeared to be the result of a recent air strike.

  “Crocker?”

  He heard heavy ordnance launching in the background. “Still here, Colonel. Where are you?”

  “Outside Mosul. Sorry. It was my wife. She’s at the hospital waiting for the results of the tests.”

  Aside from the warfare, people still suffered from regular problems like illness—a troubling mammogram in the case of Rastan’s missus.

  “How’s Lyla doing?” Crocker asked. He remembered a tall, dignified woman with large, dark, soulful eyes.

  “Nice of you to ask, but let’s talk about that later. What did you want to tell me?”

  Crocker switched channels in his head: back to business. “Two things, Colonel. First, we stopped a pickup filled with refugees heading toward the checkpoint at Mosul. A woman, her young daughter, and two sons. They should arrive there soon. See what you can do for them.”

  “Okay.”

  “Second, we’re on our way now to relieve the downed French helicopter.”

  “You near?”

  “Approximately ten minutes away.”

  “I hear it came down in the vicinity of Qabusiye.”

  “What’s that?” asked Crocker.

  “A farming town. The mayor has reported ISIS activity in the area recently.”

  “When?” Crocker asked.

  “In the last week or so. Criminal acts.…Gangs stealing trucks and goats. That’s Abu Samir al-Sufi territory.”

  “Who?”

  “The Silent Sheikh, the Viper.”

  He was referring to an ISIS commander—their leading military strategist—who had once been an officer in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Al-Sufi’s men controlled a wide swath of northern Syria and western Kurdistan and swore allegiance to Caliph Ibrahim—a.k.a. Ibrahim Muhammad al-Badri—who was rumored to have been injured as a result of a recent Coalition air strike on Mosul.

  The Viper’s men were known to be vicious, well trained, and heavily armed.

  “I’ll send one of my units to support you,” Colonel Rastan offered.

  “I’d appreciate that, Colonel.” Crocker figured he was referring to YPGs, which were groups of Kurdish militiamen and foreign volunteers who roamed the area—a mix of Kurdish nationalists, opportunists, and anarchists and adventure seekers from Canada, the U.S., and Europe—untrained and undisciplined for the most part; Syria’s version of Road Warriors, minus the tricked-out vehicles.

  “Godspeed, my brother,” said Colonel Rastan. “If you and your men are in Erbil this weekend, maybe we can get together at my house. We’ll have a party…drink some beers, smoke a hookah, relax.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. I’d like that.” Crocker was trying to remember if this was Super Bowl weekend, or if it had already passed. He wasn’t even sure which teams were playing.

  The wind picked up, and Akil turned the armored vehicle onto a dirt path heading south through new fields of tobacco. The resulting sandstorm turned the sky from hazy orange to a deep shade of purple. Today’s temp hovered in the low sixties, but Crocker knew it would drop like a stone as soon as the sun went down.

  “No way medevac is flying through this,” Akil remarked.

  “Not likely.”

  He glanced at his Suunto watch and saw that it was only 1400. Smiling to himself, he remembered his girlfriend, Cyndi, the dimples on her back, and the sweet smell of her hair as she stepped out of the shower.

  I wonder what she’s doing now.

  Her presence was so strong in the moment that he imagined he could reach out and touch her. Then the Flyer-60 hit a deep pothole and jerked right. Despite the seat belt he was wearing, he had to brace himself so as not to slam his head into the side window.

  “Dammit, Akil. Watch the fucking road.”

  “What road?”

  “We should be there,” Davis announced.

  Visibility was shit front, sides, and back. Fifty feet max, before the landscape became completely obscured by churning sand and dust.

  “CT. Gunner up,” Crocker said through the headset.

  CT, in the back of Truck Two, slipped on a pair of goggles, stood in the gusting wind, and readied the SAW.

  “What am I looking for?” CT asked.

  “A column of smoke, flames, a shattered bird…”

  Crocker felt a twinge of foreboding at the bottom of his stomach. Then he thought he heard the crackle of AK-47 fire over the growl of the engine and hiss of sand.

  “Stop!” he said into the headset, as he tightened his grip around the HK416, customized with an M320 grenade launcher and Aimpoint sight.

  Akil applied the brakes. “What?”

  He heard the sound again, this time more distinct.

  Even though it was dark, Crocker’s NVGs (night-vision goggles) were useless since the cause of the limited visibility was the swirling sand and dirt. Mancini crouched beside him and pointed ahead and to the right.

  Squinting through sand goggles, Crocker made out the back of a Toyota pickup and traced the outline of a .50 cal machine gun in its bed, like a crane leaning forward.

  He went down on his belly, then whispered into his mike, “One technical…two o’clock.” The extended cab Toyota pickup, also known as a “technical,” seemed to be the preferred choice of insurgents throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Most of them accommodated some kind of machine gun or antiaircraft weapon. Whoever the dealer was had to be a very rich man.

  “Any sign of the Cougar or French survivors?” Davis asked from Truck One, parked 100 meters away.

  “Negative.”

  Crocker took a deep breath, extended his left arm, and led the way to the back of the Toyota. From that vantage, he spotted two more parked at odd angles. Still no sign of the Cougar. Hearing a man’s voice ahead, he hugged the ground and became aware of his accelerated heartbeat and the sweat on his chest.

  The wind let up for a second and three men came into view. Two of them bearded with black bandanas over their faces. One of them young with long, stringy brown hair. ISIS—an acronym for the full Arabic name of the Islamic State, Dawlat al-Islamiyah f’al-Iraq wa Belaad al-Sham—or Daesh in Arabic.

  They were leading a slight man in a tan uniform who appeared to be bleeding from the head. One of the bearded figures pushed the captive from behind, causing him to stumble forward and crash into the side of the Toyota and fall.

  Motherfuckers! Cowardice and cruelty never failed to ignite Crocker, and now he had to battle the impulse to shoot at or otherwise engage the sons of bitches. Wanted to see the complete picture first.

  “Boss…” Manny whispered through the earbuds.

  Maybe fifty feet past the front of the Toyota he caught a fleeting glimpse of the Cougar, lying on its side, and maybe a dozen or more men around it. In an instant, the wind gusted and the image disappeared behind a veil of dust.

  “What’s the plan?” Manny whispered.

  Crocker pointed right, and led the way on his belly, reminding himself that in conditions like these he couldn’t depend on his 416. Glad he had a SIG Sauer P226 on his hip. The land dipped slightly, and the air became so thick with crud that it was difficult to breathe.

  “Boss…” It was Davis’s voice.

  “Wait.…” Crocker had reached into the pouch on his belt and was tying a scarf over his nose and mouth.

  Someone shouted i
n Arabic and muffled shots rang out. The wind gusted hard, causing debris to sting his ears and neck, and then it eased, and the dust started to settle and visibility increased.

  Ten feet, fifteen, twenty, thirty…He saw that he and Mancini were facing the bottom of the downed Cougar. Its top rotor hung at an odd angle, creaking slowly in the wind. Past its tail sat two more technicals with black flags flapping vigorously. “There is no God but Allah,” or whatever the scribble on them meant. The vehicles were bad news, as they multiplied the number of insurgents. He’d never seen an extended cab Toyota pickup without at least six armed men aboard.

  Did the math in his head. Five trucks; minimum thirty militants.

  “Boss…” It was Davis again.

  “Just a sec.”

  Visibility became decent from the ground up to about four feet. It allowed him to see that they were in an eight-foot-wide gully that swept around the left side of the downed helo. Following the gully back toward the road with his eyes, he spotted a row of four men in olive flight suits, kneeling, and a crowd of militants standing behind them.

  A blade flashed through the milling dust and he intuited what was about to happen. Heads would be lopped off, and then the militants would drive away with the other one, two, or maybe three Frenchmen taken hostage.

  A high voice pierced through the whine of wind. It was someone reciting an angry vow or prayer in Arabic.

  “Manny, you got any M14s on you?” he whispered into the head mike.

  “One.”

  He removed the incendiary grenade from his belt and handed it to his teammate.

  “Continue to the right to those two technicals. Take ’em out.”

  “Copy.”

  “The rest of you stay in the trucks. Make sure the SAWs are manned and ready. You’re gonna hear a blast. See a fire. Soon after that the technicals will be coming your way. Try to disable them, and be aware that they’ll be carrying hostages.”

  “Roger.”

  “Boss…”

  “No time. Go!”

  “Boss…”

  “Fucking go!”

  He heard Manny scurry away, and slithered on his belly toward the downed helo. Closer, closer, and under the rear rotor until he was maybe twenty-five feet from the kneeling Frenchmen. That’s when he heard the explosion of the first AN-M14 TH3 grenade. Then another, illuminating the shocked faces in front of him, turning them white, then yellow, then orange.

  The light grew brighter again as the chemical mix burned at more than four thousand degrees Fahrenheit, searing through metal and finally igniting the gas tanks, so that the vehicles exploded like twin volcanoes and flew off the ground. Shards of sizzling metal whizzed through the air.

  He heard the scream of a militant, then saw the face of another thickly bearded one as he lifted a sword over one of the captured Frenchmen’s heads. Crocker quickly aimed his 416 and hit the insurgent in the neck and head, causing him to let go of the sword and fall backward.

  Manny, behind Crocker and to his right, opened up with his MP7A1 submachine gun, and total chaos ensued as militants screamed and scattered. Some fired wildly. Most, as he had anticipated, ran back to the other three trucks. The ones who tried to drag the Frenchmen with them, he picked off with carefully placed shots.

  That’s when he became aware that the wind had let up, increasing visibility, which wasn’t good. Engines started, the technicals roared off, and then he heard the thrashing sound of SAWs engaging.

  “Bring it the fuck on!” Akil shouted through his earbuds.

  The battle grew fierce. SAWs against .50 cals, causing a huge, continuous racket. Even though the four SEALs in the Flyers were severely outnumbered, they had the advantage of being in armored vehicles.

  Crocker launched himself forward on a powerful pulse of adrenaline. He was face to face with the four kneeling Frenchmen. He cut through the plastic around their wrists, and helped them to their feet.

  “Non! Non!” one of them protested.

  “How many are you?” he shouted at their stunned faces, only to realize that they didn’t speak English.

  “Combien? Combien? You?”

  “Américain?”

  “Huit,” one of them answered.

  “Eight, right?”

  “Eight.”

  That’s when he heard the rip of a PMK machine gun and a shrill shout of “Allahu akbar.” He’d assumed the militants had fled together, but was wrong. Pushed the Frenchman down to the ground and went to his knees and returned fire, rounds flying over his head and tearing into the Cougar. Located the young man behind the machine gun and raked him across the chest.

  One of the Frenchmen had been hit in the leg. Crocker opened his medical pouch, removed an Israeli trauma bandage and some QuikClot combat gauze, and growled into the headset. “Manny?” His mouth was clogged with mud.

  “Boss?”

  Chapter Three

  Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  —Winston Churchill

  Mancini had fought his way back to Truck One and was now behind the left rear fender using the electric sight system of his M320 grenade to line up the front of a technical. He pulled the trigger and the HE round glanced off the top of the Toyota’s hood, sending up a stream of sparks, slammed into the cab, and exploded. Blood and body parts created a cloud of red as Manny slid another round into the side chamber. The second grenade hit the .50 cal machine gun and tore it out of its bed.

  He was so pumped and focused, he didn’t notice Crocker shouting his name. Imagined he was behind him at first, and as he turned an AK round ricocheted off the asphalt and tore into his boot.

  “Fuck!”

  The disabled technicals burned behind him, casting eerie shadows and heat as Crocker collected the Frenchmen. The wounded calf on the one he’d treated had stopped bleeding. The bullet tore through mostly muscle and had missed the peroneal and anterior tibial arteries. The other three who had been on their knees awaiting execution appeared to be in various states of shock. One was talking to himself. Another stared at his hands.

  The pilot, who he helped from the downed Cougar, had a badly broken leg and possible injuries to his back and pelvis. The copilot had sustained major head trauma and was dead.

  Either the firing from the road had stopped, or his eardrums were damaged.

  Speaking into his headset, he said, “Davis, report status.”

  “Daesh has fled north. All good in Truck Two. We’re gonna need to replace one of the tires. Will do that now. Minor damage to the windshield and hood.”

  “CT?”

  “Good in Truck One, boss. No significant damage.”

  “Romeo?”

  “Ready for more.”

  “Rip.”

  “Can barely hear, but good.”

  “Big Wolf.”

  Silence.

  “Manny?”

  “Nicked in the foot.”

  “Davis, call medevac. Tell ’em we’ve got wounded. One seriously.”

  “Roger.”

  Crocker’s brain spun fast. “Then get on the phone and call Rastan. Tell him to block the jihadists’ retreat. I’m gonna need help getting these Frenchmen into the trucks. And we’d better get out of here fast, before Daesh returns with reinforcements.”

  The battle was over for now, but there was a shitload more to do.

  Colonel Rastan had suggested that they move five klicks south to the town of Qabusiye and wait there for the medevac helo. Which is what they were doing now on the outskirts of town, near a dirt soccer field, as the sun set, turning the clouds ever-deeper shades of red.

  The five Frenchmen and the covered body of the copilot waited behind a waist-high concrete wall with a doctor from the town clinic—Housani, he said his name was. Tall, with tight curly black hair. They’d been there for more than an hour, and the air was getting colder. The Frenchmen looked confused and scared.

  Crocker cut the energy bars he kept in his pouch
in half and handed the halves out to the Frenchmen. Offered one to the doctor.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You speak English.”

  “I have a cousin who lives in Michigan.”

  “You spend time there?”

  “A few months on vacation. I’m Turkish. From Ankara. A volunteer with Doctors Without Borders.”

  “God bless you.”

  The conflict had attracted good-hearted people, too, who came to help ease the massive distress. Doctors, nurses, and humanitarian workers from all over the planet.

  Now he jogged around the field to get his blood moving, and stopped beside CT, who scanned the sky through a pair of binos. Glanced at his watch…1805 hours.

  “Who’s coming? U.S., Dutch, or French?” CT asked.

  “The guys in the TOC didn’t say.” The TOC (or Tactical Operation Center) located on Erbil Airbase monitored all military air and land traffic throughout the region on huge computer-generated maps.

  CT wanted to talk about the upcoming Super Bowl. He was rooting for the Falcons. His wife and mother would be cooking a southern meal—fried chicken, beans, and collards.

  “I thought you grew up in SoCal?” Crocker asked, blowing into his hands to keep them warm. He’d given his gloves to the wounded Frenchman.

  “Mom is originally from Alabama. My wife’s family still lives in South Carolina.”

  Crocker didn’t care about the outcome of the game or the fact that Lady Gaga would be performing. He was more of an Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan kind of guy. Dug be-bop and fifties jazz. Currently number one on his listening list was the sublime Charlie Parker with Strings. Stirred up memories of his grandparents whenever he heard it.

  He was more than happy to discuss the relative talents of the quarterbacks and merits of defensive schemes to pass the time, and distract him for a few minutes from the grim realities of western Kurdistan and the feeling in his gut that ISIS would be back to seek revenge.

  Colonel Rastan had told him they wouldn’t. That they were concentrating their forces for a counterattack on valuable oil fields east of Mosul. That his units controlled this part of Iraqi Kurdistan. That the ISIS team they’d met at the Cougar crash site had crossed the border from their base in Syria and had likely returned.