If not, this was going to be a very short swim.
CHAPTER 44
“GHOST 7 is in position,” Coleman whispered.
“Ghost 9 copies all,” Will said. “Good hunting, 7.”
Coleman wasn’t normally a big believer in luck.
Normally.
But tonight, Coleman would take all the luck he could get.
“I’ve got eyes on the entrance to WILLIS. How do you want to play this?”
The whispered question came from Charlie, who was nestled in a shallow depression about two feet to Coleman’s left. While Coleman considered himself more than adequate with a long gun, there was no question that Charlie was the better long-distance shooter. Accepting that not all operators were created equal was one of the keys to success in the special operations community. Besides, on this operation Coleman was not just another shooter. He was the team leader, which meant he had more important considerations than just putting steel on target.
Like trying to figure out what Rapp was up to.
“You’ve got the thermal sight,” Coleman said, “so keep your attention on the exits. I’ll take the jihadis meandering around the entrance.”
“You’re the boss, boss.”
Even Charlie’s whisper seemed at ease. As if the sniper were lying in the sun on a beach somewhere rather than huddled beneath a length of camouflage netting hoping not to be discovered by a roving jihadi patrol. To be fair, Will and Mas were waiting in the MRZR on the other side of the sloping terrain about fifty meters back. The two men functioned as rear security as well as a makeshift QRF, but there was no getting around the fact that he and Charlie were hanging in the breeze.
“Ghost 7, this is Chaos Main. The fire mission is rounds complete. Do you want to transition to smoke, over?”
Coleman thought about how to answer as he surveyed the outcropping. His night-vision goggles “saw” in a different spectrum than Charlie’s thermal sight. This meant that the image intensifiers needed ambient light in order to work their magic. On low illumination nights, or in caves, thermal sights were much more valuable, but tonight’s quarter moon was custom-made for Coleman’s goggles.
The downside to this equation was that Coleman couldn’t see Rapp’s specially treated shirt. This was why he had Charlie scanning for additional egress points to the cave complex while he kept an eye on the jihadis lining the cliffs. And like ants emerging from a disturbed nest, more bad guys were crawling out of the caves every minute. The original plan had called for transitioning from high-explosive to smoke shells in order to obscure the objective as Garner’s Rangers made their approach.
While that plan had now been overcome by events, Coleman was still considering employing the white phosphorus artillery rounds. The thick white smoke the shells produced would obscure his visibility, and hopefully that of the jihadis, but would not hamper Charlie’s thermal sight. In essence, Coleman might be able to provide Rapp with a cloak of invisibility, assuming that the shells didn’t land in the vicinity of where he was exiting. White phosphorus burned at more than fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit and was almost impossible to extinguish. The best invisibility cloak in the world wouldn’t do a bit of good if Coleman accidentally turned Rapp’s egress route into the gates of hell.
Maybe smoke wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“Chaos Main, this is Ghost 7,” Coleman said. “What’s the time of flight on those shells, over?”
“Ghost 7, this is Chaos Main Actual. Wait one.”
Coleman breathed a sigh of relief that Steve didn’t attempt to field the question. The time of flight for artillery shells was a technical question that could only be answered after factoring a wide range of variables. The chief of base was a spy, not an artilleryman.
“Ghost 6, this is Havok 13. The guns are already loaded with Willie Pete shells. I’ll have steel on target ninety seconds after you tell me to execute, over.”
Once again Coleman found himself grudgingly admitting that he was thankful that the Ranger fire support officer was on the job. Though to be fair, Captain Jancosko was actually a Marine, which meant that he was technically part of the Department of the Navy.
Maybe Coleman didn’t owe the Army thanks after all.
“Roger that, Chaos Main,” Coleman said. “Stand by to shit—”
Like all serious operatives, Coleman prided himself on his radio etiquette. In a career spanning several decades, he’d never lost his cool on the radio and certainly never cursed.
Apparently, there was a first time for everything.
Like watching three bodies tumble down a waterfall. The action happened so quickly, Coleman wasn’t sure that he’d seen what he’d thought he’d seen.
Then a head popped out of the water.
A single head.
“Shit,” Coleman said again, this time to himself.
“What do you have?” Charlie said.
“Ghost 7, this is Chaos Main. Say again, over?”
Ignoring the understandably confused fire support officer, Coleman turned to Charlie.
“Three bodies just fell down the waterfall,” Coleman said. “Can you see them?”
Charlie shifted his rifle and then said, “Negative. But that water’s freaking cold. It’s probably masking their signatures.”
A second head bobbed to the surface closer to Coleman but quickly went under. The first person must have seen or heard the disturbance in the water because they started stroking for where the second person had disappeared. Coleman had spent his life in and around water. He knew how this would end.
No way would the first swimmer reach the drowning man in time.
“That’s gotta be Rapp,” Coleman said, “which means the nonswimmer is our precious cargo. Cover me.”
“On it,” Charlie said.
