Extraction (John Taylor #8) - Chapter 8

Woqooyi Galbeed Province, Somalia

They made good time the rest of the march and made it to the compound only a few minutes behind Stone’s timetable. Considering the stop to deal with the local kid, that was pretty impressive. He might be cruel and foolishly discount the risks, but at least Stone was good at getting his men where they needed to be.

They stopped on a ridge a half-mile out from the compound that their topographic maps showed as an overlook to the small depressed area the compound sat in. Taylor was amazed that the British had built a fort here. It didn’t maintain the high ground, it had poor visibility on two sides and an aggressor could get within a hundred yards or so of the walls before they were out in the open. He’d read of several colonialist military debacles where the British, or the French in a few cases, had taken a lazy approach to their strategic planning, choosing convenience over strategy, and gotten almost wiped out for it.

The fort here followed a similar setup to the one the British lost during the retreat from Kabul in the eighteen hundreds and the French lost at Dien Bien Phu, which had an eerily similar setup in a valley overlooked by hills they didn’t control. In this case, Taylor could see why they chose this spot, since the primitive road that ran south, more or less parallel, ran right past the fort, which would allow them to move material and control trade, but they could have done the same thing with the fort up on a more commanding position like the one Taylor and Stone now sat on, leaving a detachment down by the road if need be.

Of course, it wasn’t a fort any longer. The brick and stucco walls had been replaced, or at least covered up, by concrete ones. Stone had managed to get some satellite maps of the area from somewhere and they’d gone over it at Camp Lemonnier, so they knew the only permanent settlement in the area, besides the compound, was a small village about three miles to the north. They still had several hours of dark left and they needed to be sure, though, so they set up and watched the countryside in all directions, but mostly keeping an eye on the compound.

Because it was late, there wasn’t much movement except for a couple of sentries on the blown open front gate that looked extremely bored and spent more time talking to each other than watching the countryside. While that did lean into Stone’s ‘amateur’ theory of what they faced, in Taylor’s experience, guys like this might be lax on things like security and cohesion, but they made up for a lot of that in sheer aggression.

The other thing Taylor noticed was how many vehicles there were, with almost a dozen cars and pick-ups parked around the structure, which meant there could be thirty to fifty men in the compound, which was a bad ratio. In the open field, a trained squad of ten men could hold down and push back that many using cover and moving under a base of fire, but inside a closed space, their small group could get chewed up pretty bad.

“That’s a lot of vehicles,” Taylor pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter. Look at the guys by the doorway. Total amateurs. Once the fun starts they’ll turn and run.”

“And if they don’t?” Taylor asked. “There could be thirty guys in there and I don’t care how shitty they are, that’s a lot of lead getting thrown around. You’re going to lose men and you’re going to lose hostages.”

“So what, you think we should just walk away?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying we need to be smarter about this. They aren’t going to stay here forever. They’re sitting on another warlord’s territory. They’ll have to move the hostages before long. We could hit them as they come out, take most of them out early. If you don’t want to wait, we could try and take the building quietly instead of running in guns blazing. There are better options.”

“We stick to the plan. Since the last ransom demand was rejected by Northbridge, the hostages are on a ticking clock. At some point, they’re going to decide to cut their losses, kill the hostages and get out. Every minute we wait is a chance we might be too late already.”

That was the first time Taylor had heard Stone offer any concern for the lives of the hostages, and he didn’t buy it. Taylor didn’t know what Northbridge had been working on there, other than knowing it was important enough to stage this entire rescue mission to retrieve it, so there was no way of knowing what they were trying to keep the militia from doing. If it was data, maybe they wanted to keep them from decrypting or accessing it; if it was physical, maybe it was to keep them from using it. Whatever it was, Stone clearly felt he was on a time limit and wasn’t going to wait to reacquire it. Unless Taylor was willing to try and take out Stone’s entire team and then rescue the hostages on his own, he was just going to have to go along and hope Stone didn’t get the hostages killed before it was too late.

So Taylor kept watching the small compound, waiting for Stone to give the word that they were going, trying to think of any way this wasn’t going to end up a complete disaster.

Washington D.C.

Kara was sitting a few doors down from Packer’s brownstone apartment in Mary Jane’s car, watching his front door and listening for a ping from the cell phone scanner to tell her he was making a call. Mary Jane had been a little nervous to loan her car at first since, although Kara had her license, she’d only driven a handful of times in her life, and D.C. was not the best place for a new driver to practice. Kara had managed to talk her way through it without directly lying to Mary Jane about what she needed it for, but only barely. She also only had the one day, since her friend would be back in town tomorrow and would almost certainly insist on driving.

Kara was sure that, had she explained the whole thing, Mary Jane would have been on board with helping her track Packer. She’d dealt with the man on her own and hated him, partly because he’d come very close to letting a maniac murder her in her sleep. Kara wanted to avoid that if at all possible though. Partly, because she didn’t know where this whole thing would end up and Kara wanted to avoid passing any trouble on to her friend, but mostly because Mary Jane would mean Secret Service agents.

Mr. Carter had made it pretty clear what she was doing was very much in the grey area of the law, and she seriously doubted Mary Jane’s Secret Service detail would let her do it if they knew about it. So she really only had this one day to follow Packer and work out an alternative plan for how to tail him the next day.

It turned out that it was a lot easier than she anticipated. She’d gotten the tracker on Packer’s car without much of a problem, and that’s where the activity stopped. Packer left a few times, once to go to a neighborhood store and once to step out and make a phone call, but he never even got in his car, let alone drove away from the apartment.

Kara had wondered why Packer had walked out of his house and down the street to the river to make his call, but that was explained a few hours later when a woman in exercise clothes left his house. She was pretty sure Packer wasn’t married so she had to assume this was some kind of girlfriend, although the idea of anyone being romantically involved with that troll completely boggled her mind. The call itself, while not directly referencing anything illegal, had been incredibly shady, and she could see why he wouldn’t want it to have it in front of a witness, even one he was dating.

She reached over and pressed play on the digital recorder she’d used to capture the call, which she’d saved as evidence to hand over to Robles if she managed to get enough. She’d missed the first few seconds of the call, since she was still getting used to the equipment, but she’d gotten enough to know she was right to be worried about him.

The first voice on the recording was Packer. She’d recognize his nasally, wheezing voice anywhere. The second voice she didn’t know. She’d marked down the number so she could ask Carter if he could track it down for her.

“… yeah, I talked to them last night. Everything’s set.”

“We don’t have a lot of time left. Our buyers are getting restless.”

“It should be tonight.”

“If it isn’t, we’re going to have to call the sale off and try it again once we have it in hand, and just hope no one talks between now and then.”

“We’ll have it. Just make sure you’re ready. As soon as they’ve retrieved it and are on the way back, I want to get the auction going again. We can have our agent pick it up when they’re back at the base and deliver it the next day.”

“Have you seen where the numbers are getting to?”

“Yes. This’ll be it for us. We shouldn’t need to do anything else after this.”

There was a long pause in the tape at this point. Kara had almost thought that would be the end of the conversation, until the unknown voice spoke again.

“What about this guy the directors forced on you? Is he going to be a problem?”

“No, I’m taking care of him.”

“You should have kept him out entirely.”

“I tried, but people started asking questions. I had to back off.”

“If he sees something he shouldn’t and talks, we’re going to have serious trouble.”

“I said I’m taking care of it. It won’t happen. They’ve already told me he’s not coming back. Every operation like this has casualties, right? Maybe the brass learns not to let some crying women talk them into telling us who goes on these things next time.”

“You were clear with them, right? We can’t have any more miscommunications.”

“Yes, I was clear. Stone told me he’d take care of it.”

“Fine. Make sure it happens.”

“Sure, I’ll call you when it’s done.”

Kara stopped the playback. She’d considered just leaving and taking it to Robles right then, but decided she needed more. Nothing was direct or specific, at least not enough for someone like Robles, who seemed to need everything spelled out for him word for word before he’d do anything. Packer hadn’t said what they were retrieving specifically and they’d never mentioned Taylor by name.

The only really hard part was that Kara couldn’t watch him all the time, since it was just her. It was late, well after dark, and it had been hours since Packer’s last appearance. She had the tracker on his car so she’d know if he left, but she had to actually be nearby to catch his phone calls. She was caught in a catch-22. She needed someone to help her keep an eye on Packer all the time to get proof that he was up to something and trying to hurt Taylor, but she needed the proof of it if she was going to get anyone to listen to her.

The worst part was that Taylor would have believed her if he had been here.

Woqooyi Galbeed Province, Somalia

Stone had seen enough. It was almost zero-five-hundred local time and the sun would be up soon. He’d already called all of his guys in and they’d all withdrawn back several hundred yards, putting a fairly large hill between themselves and the compound.

Draping a poncho over his shoulders to block the light in the direction of the enemy, Stone laid out a map of the compound, shining a low-powered flashlight at it.

“Okay,” he said in an almost whisper. “Here’s the plan. They only have one roving patrol in a pickup, but it’s lazy. Their guys are only doing one loop of the building and then hopping out by the gate to talk to their buddies. That means we can come in from the eastern side of the building unseen if we time it right. Webb, you hold here and signal us when they’ve dismounted. When we hit the back wall, we’re going to break into two groups. O’Brien, myself, Quinn, and Ellis will circle the building to the north. Dunn, you take Taylor, Patrick, Lopez, and Hunter and come around the south side of the building. I want the south team to break wide and use these vehicles as cover points, aiming in towards the door. We’ll come in straight down the wall at the gate guards, hopefully being on top of them before they know what’s happening.”

“They haven’t replaced the gate from the initial assault, so we’ll be able to get in no problem. Just make sure you’re watching your crossfire. Once we’ve neutralized the guys on the gate, the second team needs to move up fast. I want you in on our heels. We can’t afford to get boxed in, so I want Lopez, Patrick, Taylor, and Web to hold the front gate.”

“I thought they’d run at the first shots. If we’re holding the gate, won’t we end up in a gunfight with a superior force?”

Taylor didn’t believe that the people holding the compound would run, but since that had been Stone’s entire plan was based on it, a deployment where they blocked the only exit didn’t make any sense.

“Hold just inside the gate, using one of these two structures,” he said, pointing to two single-room buildings or sheds on either side of the doorway into the compound’s open-air courtyard. “I didn’t mean literally stand in the doorway. You can either pick off guys as they come out or let them through so they can high-tail it into the hills. Patrick, you’re in charge so you make the decisions, since it seems to confuse Mr. Taylor here.”

Taylor didn’t respond, since he was still planning on moving into the compound to find the hostages once the rest of Stone’s men deployed. He just couldn’t get his head around why Stone would make such a schizophrenic assault plan.

“The rest of us will break into two groups. Dunn, you take Quinn and Hunter and move clockwise through the buildings, looking for any sign of the hostages and routing out the hostiles. I’ll take O’Brien and Ellis and move counter-clockwise. If anyone comes across the hostages, announce it on the radio so the teams can converge. Once both assault teams are together, we’ll escort the hostages back to the blocking force and then exfiltrate as a group. Are we all clear? Any questions?”

Taylor had a lot of questions like, ‘is this seriously the plan’ and ‘why wait for both search parties to concentrate before removing the hostages,’ but Stone had already made it clear he wasn’t up to hearing any other viewpoints.

As they packed up and started heading towards their jump-off position, leaving Webb behind to observe the front gate, Taylor was having trouble seeing how this plan ended without several of the hostages dead.