Christmas at Peleliu Cove Read online

  “Bad ass bunch of boys,” Barstowe sounded suddenly angry, his voice that had been so contrite earlier abruptly harsh. A clear reminder that he was the commander of a platoon of very lethal Army Rangers. “They’ve twisted their religion so out of shape that they think prisoners are a right granted by God, especially young female ones. They’ve taken a lesson from the Boko Haram bastards to the south.”

  Her world fuzzed out of focus.

  Nika tried to breathe, but couldn’t seem to find any air. Somehow she’d dodged that particular hell. But she knew a lot of girls who hadn’t. Keila, her best friend in high school, had been gang-raped during freshman year at college. It had started as some drunken party game, landed her in the hospital with operations that had to cut out any chance of family she’d always wanted so much, and ended with a bullet in her brain.

  Perpetrators brought to justice, zero.

  Keila had always been the shining star: A-student, engineering, Navy ROTC, going somewhere. Nika had been a purposeless drifter scraping Cs on an English degree she’d never use. Keila had also been Nika’s refuge. In high school, if she was with Keila, everyone left her alone. And in the last few years, as her mother grew crazier and her dad quieter—if that was even possible—Nika had visited so much that she’d practically lived with Keila’s family.

  After the funeral Nika had skipped the wake, dropped out of school, and signed up Navy that very day.

  Tonight was going to be different. Tonight would be payback and damn the soul of every man in that camp to hell.

  “Landfall in three,” Tom announced, his voice unusually businesslike.

  Deep breath. Another. On the third, her thoughts cleared enough to recall this was a mission. On the fourth enough that she could see again.

  A glance at the mission clock. She’d only blanked for seconds, but the cesspool of her past had washed over her. She needed a shower to wash away the feelings that always accompanied her helpless rage.

  Focus! Just goddamn focus!

  No surprises on her dashboard of instruments. A careful inspection out her window showed no vehicles broken loose on the deck—not that such a problem was likely, especially in such mild seas.

  Nika rubbed her face and strained her vision ahead, but there was little to see. Radar said no ships in the area, not even any pleasure craft. The beach was dark except for a brightly lit ship’s terminal for offloading oil tankers about ten kilometers to the west. It was little more than a distant twinkle.

  With a skill she could only admire, Sly took the beach without slowing down. The wide cloud of water spray that shot in every direction from beneath the racing LCAC was replaced by a swath of sand particles. She shut off the windshield wipers to avoid grinding the sand into the glass.

  They crested the berm in a half ski jump—half wave roll that left them bobbing back and forth as they raced southward.

  From experience Nika knew they were leaving a rooster tail of dust to float behind them in a long choking line. It might not settle for an hour or more. They were now the roadrunner leaving a visible dust trail for Wiley E. Coyote to chase. Except they were the ones on the attack.

  The C203 highway was brightly lit by the infrared searchlights that the LCAC shone ahead. In her NVGs, night-vision goggles, everything was in shades of green from the near black of fire bush and sand to the middle green strip of the wide gravel road stretching ahead, still holding the December warmth. Two thin stripes of lighter green showed where a vehicle had passed in the last hour or so, leaving a path heated by friction, of the tires compacting gravel. Dual tires; a bus or truck.

  The LCAC was the width of the entire two lane road plus the shoulders. Without NVGs their vehicle was pitch black, moving at eighty miles an hour, and noisy as a jetliner with a bad attitude.

  “Chariot of justice.”

  “You got that straight, lady.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Barstowe agreed with her. She could still hear the hint of apology in the care he was taking with how he said it.

  “You want to get square with me, Ranger?”

  “Just show me the way, Navy.”

  “You go out there tonight and you kick some serious ass.”

  “Deal!”

  # # #

  There was an edge in Nika’s voice. It went beyond this mission, took a right turn at pissed, and detoured straight into barely-controlled rage. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

  Clint recognized it. When a Ranger had watched one too many buddies go down, you couldn’t miss it. It happened when the forward operating base was too far forward and was no longer operating so well. Then it became a base of mixed despair and terror. Ultimately, unable to do anything but defend the base, rage tipped free and spilled out the business end of a rifle. Ammunition flew so thick it could darken the skies in those moments.

  And it was always a mistake. It achieved little and always created a massive letdown. It burned ammo and anger until it was like a drug you couldn’t let go of. He’d lost too many good men to that rage.

  He was surprised to hear it fully embodied in the slip of a woman that was Petty Officer Nika Maier. He was also now worried. She was only partly in control of the hovercraft that was supposed to deliver him and his team. That kind of anger made a soldier unpredictable, capable of Herculean feats but also stupid ones. Squadmates had clambered atop HESCO barrier walls of stone and earth, clear of any defense, and screamed in rage at their heavily armed enemies. When their bloody bodies were blown backward on top of their comrades, no one spoke of it.

  Your son fell protecting his squad…freeing hostages…saving a fallen comrade’s life.

  Never: He died because The Rage won and he lost.

  Nika Maier had The Rage. He could hear it gut deep and ocean wide.

  Clint didn’t know whether to pity her or try to help; steering clear didn’t appear to be an option. Sly had said that she had more potential than any sailor he’d ever known aboard the Peleliu. He hadn’t said that she might not survive all that potential.

  Maybe Sly hadn’t seen it.

  It took facing death, not just in some litter dragged off a helicopter, but in its ugliest, messiest form to feel The Rage at that level.

  He studied the men sitting with him. Rather than sitting up with Sly, he was down in the troop cabin and had picked up an intercom headset there. Despite earplugs and sound insulation, the cabin echoed with the gas turbine engines’ roar. They were packed in tighter than bark on a tree. Half of these men had been with him in Afghanistan. Every one of them had seen two or more tours in the Dustbowl. Since then they’d flown as embedded trainers and action support throughout the region. And that was before they’d mounted up on the Peleliu.

  Clint knew the measure of every one of these men. Knew how they’d behave under fire, when desperately bored, when delivering humanitarian aid during earthquake relief efforts.

  What did he really know about the Navy crew? He and Sly had grown close since the Rangers and Night Stalkers had come aboard—the easy friendship between two career enlisted men. Even if Clint had gone officer, he still thought of himself by his enlisted roots. The day Sly had asked him to stand best man at his wedding had surprised the hell out of Clint. And touched him deeply. Too bad he’d never be able to return the honor.

  The other guys on the LCAC crew had seemed steady and reliable enough.

  But Maier had always stood out.

  Clint knew the type; he’d seen it among his own teams often enough. Someone who just didn’t fit. They could be skilled, committed, dead reliable, but they remained an outsider. It didn’t make them less of a soldier but it did make them less predictable—a constant crack in a team’s cohesiveness.

  That’s why he’d sided on the “no female Rangers” side of the debate. Not because he had a thing against them; hell, if they could make it t
hrough Ranger School, Airborne, SERE, and RASP there was no question about their qualifications. He wasn’t like the other idiots who thought they were somehow skating through or less qualified even if they did make it.

  But he didn’t like that “crack” in his teams. When he’d been asked to form up a platoon in support of a long-term combined Night Stalkers and Delta Force operation, he’d selected his men very carefully. Rangers were all smart and tough, but he’d been careful to quietly shed the outsider types and definitely those who had The Rage.

  And now he was doubting Petty Officer Maier seated just up the ladder his shoulder was pressed against. He shrugged against his vest’s straps trying to loosen the itch that had lodged there. A dozen years of service had taught him to listen to that itch, but that didn’t mean he had to like what it was telling him.

  # # #

  They settled LCAC-316 five miles and three minutes south of the Libyan camp. Nika knew that under Gaddafi, terrorists had done well here. Now that there was no consolidated government at all, they thrived. Al-Qaeda, Libya Shield Force, Ansar al-Sharia—it didn’t matter. They all needed to be erased.

  Nika was down the ladder even before the skirt was deflated. The engines were still whistling down from full roar toward idle; they’d be keeping the LCAC ready for immediate flight.

  It took her and Jerome less than two minutes to crack loose the chains on all of the vehicles. Dave had the skirt deflated and the front ramp already lowered to the arid sand amid a swirl of choking dust.

  The Rangers had saddled up. The two big Ranger Special Operations Vehicles rolled down the ramp and onto the sand. Dark clumps of struggling growth showed black in her NVGs against the background of warm earth still radiating the day’s heat. Once the RSOVs were clear, a swirling cloud of smaller MRZR off-road vehicles and dirt bikes followed after. Without his Santa hat to distinguish him, she’d missed seeing Clint Barstowe roll out.

  She wished she’d had a chance to apologize. Not for voicing her irritation—well, maybe a little—but definitely for unloading her mother’s shit on his head.

  But she knew from experience that Lieutenant Barstowe led from the front and he’d be out in the lead MRZR. She watched the departing Rangers as long as she could. They climbed a low dune and then they were gone except for the faint trail of heat from their passage across her night vision.

  “You okay, Nika?”

  “More pissed at myself than anything else, Jerome.” The two of them stood alone at the head of the ramp.

  “Uh-huh,” his grunt was sympathetic. “Chains,” he continued.

  Nika turned to help Jerome reset the tie-down chains. They might not have the luxury of time when the Rangers reloaded and everything had to be ready.

  It was only as they were laying out the last one that the double-meaning of Jerome’s word caught up with her. What chains were still tying her down?

  Crap! Jerome always was the deep one.

  Chapter 3

  Clint and four of his top shooters edged up behind the last clump of fire bush to look out at the camp. Terrence said that’s what it was, just another withered creosote look-alike plant to him. They’d left the vehicles a mile back where they could be on site in ninety seconds. The desert had chilled during their hike in. It was now an hour to midnight, the darkness was thick and the puffs of their own breath showed up on the NVGs, even if it wasn’t cold enough for them to make white vapor clouds. Have to breathe shallow and through their noses when they got in close in case they had any NVGs for their guards.

  He’d wanted to ride into camp hell-bent and take them by surprise, but there were prisoners and hostages at risk. He had to secure as many of them as possible before the battle began.

  There was no need to discuss tactics, the layout was obvious enough. Garbage-heap worthy tents for the new recruits. They wouldn’t have any luxuries at all; hopefully not any live weapons either.

  There were a half dozen trucks: four for transport, and two Toyota Highlanders with heavy machine guns mounted on the back—technicals. They were bad news, but Night Stalker Kara Moretti’s drone overflight had spotted them already, so they weren’t a surprise.

  Mud-brick buildings lined the other side of the camp in a hodge-podge fashion that said this had once been a village. There was only one guard visible, and he was watching the third building on the left rather than the camp’s perimeter.

  Confirmed. Prisoners in number three on the left.

  Posting a solo guard seemed sloppy, even for terrorists, but his attention confirmed that building was their target. A second man exited the doorway of the building next to that one, his rifle over his shoulder and his hands rearranging the lower part of his clothes. He came over to lean against the outside of the third building and waved for the other guard to go into the second; the man didn’t hesitate.

  Confirmed. Female sex slaves in number four on the left.

  No other guards on the compound. Nice of them to show him so clearly where both the prisoners and the captured women were housed.

  Two guards posted. Both dead men.

  He pointed to Hanson and then the two technicals. Ruiz, Mitchum and Dupree followed him as they slipped up to the buildings. The guard still itching his crotch went down silently with a snapped neck. Ruiz and Mitchum eased quietly into the third building to free and guard the prisoners. In seconds, Ruiz was back and flashed five fingers, then two more. Seven hostages. Exactly the count they’d expected.

  Clint stepped into the next doorway where he assumed the women were kept. The room was lit by a single guttering lantern, not that he needed it through his goggles. He saw a dozen women huddled against a wall. Some of them couldn’t be old enough for high school, if these radical bastards had believed in educating women. On the far side of the room the guard who had entered the building still wore his rifle across his back. He had one of the girls bent over a table with her clothes pulled up around her waist and was a moment from driving himself into her.

  It was a moment he never had a chance to enjoy.

  Clint dropped a pair of silenced rounds into his head.

  The guard’s hands reflexively dug into the girl’s hips and she whimpered in despair; then she yelped when he collapsed on top of her. Several of the women screamed in surprise, only now aware of him standing in the shadowed doorway.

  “Well, so much for that.” Clint keyed the radio, “Do it!”

  He waved Dupree into the room and counted to three for Hanson’s grenade launcher to fire across the compound.

  At four seconds, two small explosions announced direct hits on the Toyota pickups.

  At five, the second round of 40mm grenades landed and it was too much—the technicals blew apart with a massive roar that shook the air and filled the doorway with blinding light and a wall of dust and sand.

  “Stay!” Clint shouted in Arabic to the shrieking women. He repeated it in French in case any of them had been taken from the countries to the south. He dragged the dead guard off the girl and shoved her toward the others.

  Then he moved back to guard position as Dupree rapidly checked that the women were all unarmed. They were. Dupree fell back to guard and Clint shifted to the doorway to begin sniping at the armed men pouring into the compound.

  Surveillance had said there were over a hundred men in this camp, far too many for he and his four teammates, not that it kept them from trying. Any man with a weapon went down hard.

  But the Rangers weren’t alone.

  Thirty seconds after those first screams of panic had alerted the compound, an unholy sound lashed from the sky.

  A pair of Night Stalker helicopters had flown a different route in from the Peleliu. They now made racing passes less than a hundred feet above the roofs. With each pass they unleashed five-second bursts from their M134 miniguns. As if an entire Ranger Battalion all shot their rifles every five seconds, four hu
ndred rounds of hell unleashed like a dragon’s angry roar—still one of the most terrifying sounds Clint had ever heard. It made his nuts clench just imagining what that could do if he got in their way. Lines of fire chewed across the compound in swirling arcs of tracer-green light that left no armed figure untouched.

  At ninety seconds, right on schedule, the rest of his Rangers roared up to encircle the camp. The terrorists who bolted for the safety of the desert didn’t find it.

  In three minutes, the main battle was done.

  The Rangers closed in and began room-to-room clearing. Firefights, brief ones, announced pockets of resistance.

  By five minutes even that was done. Now only the occasional single shot echoed across the compound.

  And then he heard it, the heavy drone, like a jetliner coming in to land. The massive LCAC crested that last dune where he’d crouched less than a dozen minutes ago. It nosed right into the compound, its big fans tumbling aside both bodies and debris, like a whale cresting through the ocean. Looking down at him from her high perch sat Nika Maier.

  # # #

  Despite being geared up like every other Ranger, Clint Barstowe was impossible to miss. He stood in the center of the mayhem of the fire-lit village square as if he was invincible. Men rushed by, crouched, weapons raised.

  Clint stood tall, his rifle held loosely, as he surveyed the scene. Nika wondered how many rounds were in his magazine; far fewer than he started with she’d wager.

  When someone hurried up to him, he directed them to new tasks with easy gestures and supreme confidence. He looked like one of those arrogant sons of bitches who thought they were indestructible.

  He also looked like a dark god.

  When his gaze turned in her direction, a shiver ran through her. She couldn’t tell if it was warmth or a chill, but it was powerful enough that she checked to make sure that her hands weren’t near anything critical.