Chapter 65
COLEMAN looked at the agency liaison, waiting for the man to elaborate.
He didn’t appear to be inclined to do so.
Instead, Hurley ran deft fingers over his weapon, checking that the magazine was seated, the firing selector switch was on safe, and that the front and rear sight posts were free of obstructions.
Unlike Coleman and his SEALs, whose rifles were outfitted with the new red-dot optics, the CIA officer’s submachine gun still featured its manufacturer-issued iron sights.
This was fitting, since the weapon itself looked to be a “Swedish K”—an integrally suppressed submachine gun used by the CIA and special operations forces during the Vietnam War.
Clearly, this Hurley character had been some places and done some things.
Coleman paused for another moment, until the CIA officer completed his pre-combat checks. Then he decided that a little prodding was in order. “When you say problems with the asset…”
“I meant Problems. With. The. Asset.”
Hurley’s expression seemed to suggest that he was wondering whether the SEAL had breathed mixed gases for a little too long.
Sighing, Coleman bit the bullet. “Look, I don’t mean to get all in your grill, but I’ve got five helicopters and a shit ton of frogmen flying into Iraq in the dead of night to hit a convoy full to the brim with enough death to wipe out a small city.
We’re doing this because the expectation is that your asset is vouching for the presence of chemical weapons on those trucks.
If that isn’t the case, I’d like to know. ”
If Coleman’s speech impressed the agency officer, the man didn’t show it. Instead, Hurley was patting his clothes in search of something. After trying his cargo pants without success, he tapped his shirt pocket.
“Gotcha, ya little fucker,” Hurley said with a smile.
He reached deep into the pocket, fished around, and then produced two objects with a flourish worthy of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat—a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. For a long moment, Coleman just stared at the CIA officer, convinced he was being punked.
Surely the man wasn’t going to try to smoke on board a helicopter.
Hurley seemed to feel Coleman’s stare. Turning, he shook out a cigarette with an expert snap of his wrist. “Want one?”
Coleman shook his head.
Hurley shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ve always found that a quick hit of nicotine does wonders to sharpen the mind before the bullets start flying.”
Coleman thought about pointing out that the crew chief would probably have a coronary if a passenger suddenly lit up, but he didn’t.
For one, anyone who brought a well-used, Vietnam-era firearm to a gunfight probably didn’t give two shits about the Army’s no smoking rule on helicopters.
But that was only part of the reason. Now that the old codger had gone to this much trouble, Coleman was genuinely curious to see if Hurley could actually light up in the middle of the hurricane-force winds generated by the aircraft’s rotor blades.
The spook did not disappoint.
With a maneuver that Coleman would not have believed had he not witnessed it, Hurley cupped his hand around the cigarette, lit it, and took a puff, all from behind his fingers.
The unmistakable scent of smoke swirled through the cabin, and as Coleman had predicted, the crew chief wasn’t happy.
The man turned, saw Hurley, and looked dumbfounded.
As the cigarette flared red from between Hurley’s cupped fingers, the crew chief’s astonishment morphed into something else.
Rage.
Clenching his jaw, he leaned across the crew compartment, his index finger jutting toward the CIA officer like the prow of a warship about to ram an enemy combatant.
Hurley eyed the Night Stalker over his threaded fingers.
The glowing ember flared a second time.
Then he tossed the butt out the helicopter’s open door.
“Keep your pants on, stud,” Hurley said, his basso growl somehow audible over the howling engine. “I put it out.”
The crew chief seemed to be on the verge of making his point more emphatically when something changed his mind. Turning back toward the pilots, he nodded, shot Hurley a final glare, and then situated himself behind his minigun.
“Kids these days,” Hurley said. “No sense of humor.”
Coleman could sympathize.
Hurley’s status bought him a certain amount of latitude, but Coleman was about through with the CIA officer’s old-crusty-operative routine. He was just minutes from putting boots on the ground in Iraq.
The time for playing grab ass was over.
“Here’s the deal,” Hurley said. “My asset isn’t some Iraqi paper pusher a case officer flipped. In fact, he’s not an asset at all. He’s agency. A badass who punches shitbags’ tickets for a living. He’s as American as apple pie, but he’s also fluent in Arabic and looks like he grew up in Baghdad.”
Hurley paused, tapped the cigarette pack, but then seemed to think better of it.
Rather than light another, he secreted the pack and lighter back into his pocket.
“My asset was supposed to contact me two hours after the convoy rolled out. He hasn’t.”
Hurley paused again, staring into the darkness for a beat.
Then he turned to look Coleman in the eye.
“I know the rules for this operation—no asset, no crossing into Iraqi airspace—but I need you to hear me. I’ve been doing this a long, long time.
This asset is the best I’ve ever worked with.
No contest. I believe he’s on that convoy because he promised me he would be.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but if you knew this man, you’d understand.
Since you don’t, the next best thing is to look at it this way—my ass is sitting right beside yours.
I’ve put my money where my mouth is. Now I’m asking you to put your faith in me. ”
At face value, what Hurley was asking him to do was ludicrous.
Covert operations were not authorized based on someone’s gut feel.
It was hard to overstate all that was riding on the raid into Iraq.
With the diversionary air strikes already hitting Iraqi air defense facilities to the north, the scope of this mission had already well exceeded that of the ill-fated Desert One tragedy.
If Coleman’s efforts failed, the risk to the Middle East, to say nothing of the lives of his sailors and the Army aviators and commandos assisting the raid, would be incalculable.
The right answer—the only answer—was to order the helicopter pilots to turn around and fly back to the Oasis One outpost.
And yet.
And yet, as someone who’d led SEALs for the past two decades, Coleman had been in the old codger’s boots.
On several occasions, he should have scrubbed an operation when the mission go criteria hadn’t been met.
Truth be told, more than once he’d been on the brink of giving the abort order when a crusty senior chief had persuaded him to give the boys on the ground just a little more time.
The special operations and intelligence business was an unforgiving vocation, and those who played cowboy with the risks often ended up in a premature grave.
Sometimes, their bravado took their teammates with them.
But for all the risk assessments, rehearsals, execution criteria, and decision matrixes that helped to build structure around high risk/high reward missions, even the most by-the-book operator would have to admit that there was something else at play.
Successful clandestine operatives fit a certain psychological profile.
A mindset that refused to accept failure and considered death the preferable option to quitting.
Freedom’s adversaries had learned to their detriment that America’s special operations and intelligence professionals should never be discounted.
If it had been one of his SEALs who’d gone dark rather than an anonymous CIA paramilitary operative, what would Coleman have done?
The visage of the first senior chief who’d mentored him as a young ensign filled Coleman’s thoughts.
The old frogman had once distilled down what Coleman needed to do as an officer to win his men’s respect into a single sentence.
Make the boys believe that when the shit hits the fan, you’ll have their backs.
Coleman didn’t know anything about this mysterious asset or the old spook seated beside him.
He did know that this raid might be one of the most important undertakings of his special operations career.
His nation expected him to make the impossible seem easy, and today would not be the day he disappointed his fellow Americans or the frogmen he was flying into battle alongside.
Swinging the boom mic over his lips, Coleman triggered the intercom system.
“Operation’s a go.”