Chapter 32
Turkey/Georgia Border
“Sorry, mate,” Wu said in his East London accent.
“All good,” Conza replied. He studied Wu more closely. “Last time I saw you was on a ship in Bohai Bay.”
“Small world, huh? But glad to be here. We owed you one from that day.”
“I don’t keep those kind of scores, but if it’s still on y’all’s minds, then so be it.”
Conza took in the scene in the distance.
The GAZ lay on its side, its hulking frame still smoking.
Clark was extracting the only surviving member of the squad from the wreckage—Boss Man.
Clark had smashed in the front windshield to gain access and wasn’t being particularly gentle about dragging the man out.
The rest of his team was gathered around the cargo compartment of the overturned truck, doubtless to gather intel on the GPS spoofing device.
A man and a woman in civvies were standing near the wing of the aircraft.
They were watching the road, probably keeping an eye out for oncoming vehicles.
“Thanks for getting here as fast as you did,” Conza said to Wu. “Glad to see Mr. Clark kept the team together.”
“I’m glad, too. And we found you quick because we had good intel.”
“I should get word to my boss in Bodrum that I’m okay.”
“We’ll let her know.”
Conza looked at him suspiciously. He hadn’t mentioned that his boss was a female.
“Like I said,” Wu repeated, “we had good intel.”
“What about the crew from the Black Hawk?”
“Only one made it, the crew chief, and he’s pretty banged up.”
“Damn.” He regarded the man Clark was propping against the hood of the GAZ. “Any idea who these guys are?”
“We’re trying to figure that out,” Wu said. “That one speaks fluent Russian. The others are hard to say. Based on tats, one’s likely a Kazakh, and another has a Serbian mob symbol on his neck.”
“So that’s what that was.”
“Is that what you were wondering when you choked him out?”
“Just trying to stay on this side of heaven, brother.”
“Aren’t we all.”
“I guess the bigger question is, who are they working for?”
“I think our intrepid leader is pursuing that question.”
Conza saw Charlie approach Clark from the back of the truck.
She handed him a big roll of duct tape—no doubt the one he’d spotted when he’d been searching for a weapon.
Clark used it to secure his prisoner, wrapping him repeatedly with the roll of tape and binding him to the bent bumper.
Conza thought it seemed strange, since the man could barely move to begin with.
When he was done, Clark went to the back of the truck and spoke at length with Hyori. Then he walked over to the senior pilot and exchanged a few words. Clark motioned for everyone to join up at the back of the overturned GAZ.
As Wu began moving, Clark called out, “JC, you can stay there if you want.”
Conza stood uneasily and limped over to join the team—just as Clark had probably known he would.
“Here’s the plan,” Clark began when they’d all arrived.
“We’re supposed to recover this hardware if we can manage it.
The problem is that this thing weighs half a ton.
Major Wheeler says the C-41 can handle the weight, so the challenge will be transferring it.
I think we can do it, but we have to be quick.
We’ve already been on the ground fifteen minutes, and I don’t have any interest in finding out how the Republic of Georgia or Turkey or anybody else is going to respond to our little incursion. Let’s make it happen.”
It all came together quickly. Bauer and Wu retrieved the longest two-by-fours they could find inside the GAZ.
They slid the lumber into metal lift points on the corners of the container.
From there, it became an all-hands effort.
The seven members of Task Force 99, along with the two pilots and a marginally functional Conza, dispersed themselves to the four corners and managed to lift the device.
The hardest part was shimmying the big case clear of the wrecked GAZ.
Once the device was outside, they turned it right-side up, then set out along the road like stevedores hauling a massive steamer trunk, the two-by-fours planted on their shoulders.
Everyone was grunting and straining by the time they reached the C-41, and with a final burst of effort they carried it up the ramp and set it on the steel floor of the cargo bay.
Wheeler had used the half-full sandbag that had been Ding’s shooting base to mark the exact spot where he wanted it.
A heavy load in a small aircraft had to be placed near the center of gravity; too far forward or aft could make the airplane unstable in flight.
Clark ordered everyone to prepare for launch. The pilots went up front and began flipping switches. Wu and Bauer ratcheted tie-downs to secure their new cargo.
“Boss, we have a visitor,” said Charlie, who was now outside on watch duty.
The team members went outside and looked up the road. A single pair of headlights were approaching from the north, roughly two miles away.
Charlie raised a set of low-light binoculars, and said, “Doesn’t appear to be a threat. Civilian vehicle. As best as I can tell, two occupants.”
Clark surveyed the team. His eyes settle on Conza. He stepped forward and handed Conza an assault rifle. “Go deal with it.”
Conza took the rifle willingly, but struggled to comprehend why he’d been chosen.
To the others, Clark’s logic was obvious.
Conza was bruised, bloodied, and bandaged.
His peg leg projected from a torn pant leg.
Topped off with an assault rifle, not to mention the dirt and grime from two crashes—one helicopter and one truck—he was a sight to behold.
Any civilian with functioning eyesight would take one look at him and turn tail like they’d stumbled into the zombie apocalypse.
When Conza saw the others looking at him and smiling, it finally hit home. With a grin, he said in a salty sea dog voice, “Aye, cap’n.” He hobbled away to do his duty.
Ding approached Clark, thumbing toward their lone prisoner. “What about him?”
Clark regarded the man, and as he did something in his demeanor shifted.
Ding had known his father-in-law for a very long time.
He knew him as a family member, and also as well as any soldier could know another.
Yet in that moment, he couldn’t read Clark.
On most days, his blue eyes didn’t reflect his mood as much as his circumstances.
Playful, menacing, loving, cold. His gaze was what he needed it to be. But right now, Ding was at a loss.
Clark walked back to the GAZ. The others also seemed to notice the shift in their commander’s demeanor as he approached the lone enemy survivor.
No one went with Clark.
If he had wanted backup, he would have asked for it.
—
Boss Man did his best to mask his trepidation as the American commander approached. Surely, he failed. He was not easily unnerved, yet he couldn’t push away an impending sense of doom.
Most likely, it was because he saw something of himself in the big American.
He had served sixteen years in the Wagner Group, marauding through some of the world’s most miserable hellholes.
He’d been to Ukraine and Mali, Libya and Sudan.
He’d shot peasant miners to steal the diamonds in their pockets.
Dug trenches in the dirt of Chernobyl to keep from getting blasted by Ukrainian artillery.
Yet this…this felt different. All three of his comrades were dead.
He was injured and bound to a smoldering truck.
It was a level of helplessness he had never before experienced.
The kind of helplessness he had only inflicted upon others.
The American knelt down, putting them face-to-face. His blue eyes were cut from a glacier.
“Name?” the man asked in Russian.
Feeling a need to negotiate, hoping a bit of truth would be in his favor, he gave it. “Dmitri.”
A nod. A good start.
“All right, Dmitri. There are a great many things I would like to ask you. Unfortunately, neither of us has the time for an extended conversation. So I will be brief.” The American looked him up and down.
Boss Man knew he must be a sad sight. His right ankle was swollen, probably broken.
The rest of his battered body had been immobilized, wrapped in so much duct tape he looked like a mummy.
The American continued. “In a few minutes my team and I are going to fly out of here. We have the device you used to bring down a United States diplomatic aircraft, which means the details of your plot will be uncovered. That said, if you can answer two questions it would save us a great deal of trouble. As things stand, you are alive—that makes you the lucky one of your little expedition. You’ve suffered injuries, but on the whole, I think you’ll survive.
At some point in the next hour or two, a vehicle will drive up the road, find you, and contact the authorities.
There will be an ambulance and a hospital in your future.
I’ll let you fill in the rest. But there is an alternate scenario.
The one that happens if you don’t answer my two questions. Are we clear?”
Dmitri nodded. He was massively relieved, but tried not to let it show.
He recognized an empty threat when he heard one.
American operators were known for operating by a different set of rules.
They were highly proficient, motivated, and always had the best equipment.
Their weakness, however, was their rigid code of ethics.
They were constrained by high-minded rules against opponents who fought by the law of the jungle.
“I understand,” he said.
“Excellent. I want to know who you were targeting when you took down that airplane in Bodrum, and also who you work for. That’s all. Two names, I walk away, and we’ll never see each other again.”