The Phoenix Affair, Dave Moyer [best ebook reader for surface pro TXT] 📗

there.

Jones looked at Ted. “OK, you’re the integration guy. Do you have a theory?”

Ted looked right at him. “We do. We think the guy at the border was an inside job, and he called the landline just to report something he thought might be unusual. But no reason for the landline guy, this Mohammed, to call Khalid on his mobile unless the Brigadier and the three Americans were of interest to him, right? So we think he called and got instructions. Where are your people now, Mr Jones?”

“At a family compound with the Saudi General on the north side of the city of Ha’il”.

“Right. Well, it turns out that a guy named Ripley out of Paris had been tracking the same mobile number, this Khalid, since things started happening there last Tuesday or Wednesday. We think Khalid has sent Mohammed and at least 25 guys to Ha’il to take out your friends there.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he told us.” Ted shuffled his papers and came up with the one he wanted. “Thursday afternoon he talks to some guy in Dhahran, we think it’s Mohammed. They’re talking about a ‘birthday party’ they tried to attend the night before, but nobody was home. Khalid’s ‘brother’ it says. Mohammed says there was nobody home, but Khalid says now he thinks the nephew or whatever is in Ha’il, and he wants Mohammed to go there and pay his respects.”

“So?” Jones didn’t like this, but wasn’t sure where it was going.

“So, Khalid tells Mohammed and I quote: “yes, I have thought of that Mohammed, that is exactly what I have in mind. I have thought to have some people meet you at al-Buraydah with the gifts. I think perhaps something like twenty-five would do. What do you think?” and then Mohammed says “Khalid, I should think that would do, if God wills it. Are their gifts to be, err, so heavy? And Khalid says yeah, they are very heavy.” So we think Mohammed and a few guys, say 5 or 6 altogether for the aborted party in Dhahran, are driving cross country…” Ted nodded to Max who thumbed his remote. The map changed on the screen.

“They drive to Riyadh, then Buraydah, then a short drive about an hour and a half, to Ha’il. Khalid says his nephew and this birthday party is in Ha’il, Mr Jones. We think about 30 heavily armed Saudis are headed for your people and this Air Force brigadier’s compound. We think they were likely all in Ha’il on Saturday afternoon, about 33 hours ago.”

Jones was pale. “Do we know when? Did he say when?”

Ted looked straight at him and said: “he said Sunday night, Mr Jones. It’s about 0230 there now, Monday morning. What would you be doing?”

“Holy shit” and Jones was out of his chair. “I need a secure phone, have to call an Iridium number and warn my guys.” Jones was out into the Ops Center floor. “Comms, who’s the fucking comms officer??”

*****

Allen woke up, suddenly completely alert, but he didn’t know why. Then he heard it again. The night was silent, cold, still, but wasn’t that a sound like metal hitting concrete? His brain was getting up to speed. Again. And that was three, he was awake now and that was the sound that had woken him. He moved, shifted the duffel off his legs and in a fluid motion was up on his knees with the MP5 in his hands. He fired up the night scope, removed the glove from his right hand, gripped the pistol grip and lifted it to his shoulder.

First the gate. All looked fine there. Then along the top of the wall to his left, he got about halfway to the corner and saw nothing. Panned right past the gate to the right side. He almost missed it, had to back up. About 30 feet to the right of the gate something was on the top of the wall. Black, curved, ugly. Grappling hook? He panned further right. Two more, all the same.

“Holy Shit” he breathed into the stillness. He started thinking about the tactical problem. Three hooks, three ropes. The wall was 75 yards from where he knelt, downhill from his third floor perch. But 75 yards away was a long way for supressed rounds from an MP5SD. Not ideal. He hoped they didn’t have body armor or he might as well have been using a BB gun. Three ropes. How many guys? Five each? Ten? Thirty guys would get interesting really quick. He looked down at the fire selector behind his trigger, switched it to single shot. No use spraying bursts around at that range. Slow, deliberate fire, one at a time, that’s the thing. See if they could be discouraged by some of their guys going down. He had 4 30-round magazines…

The night’s silence was shattered by the phone going off in the cargo pocket of his pants. He had to look down, reach in with his right hand, pulled out the phone, and ducked below the edge of the parapet. “Allen” he whispered.

“Allen, Jones calling from Langley. What’s happening there?”

“Nice of you to call. I happen to be on the roof taking the night air and three grappling hooks just landed on the compound wall, right front of the gate. I’m a little busy here…”

“Right, well you’re gonna be. We think there may be 30 of them, and they may have heavy stuff with them.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know, but the word “heavy” was used on the intercept. We’re on the phone to the embassy watch officer in Riyadh to try to get you some local help ASAP. But this time of morning, and the distance…you may be on your own for a while.”

A noise from the front of the compound snapped Allen up to the parapet, where he held the scope to his eye with his left hand and the phone in his right. One guy was on the ground inside the compound, there were two more on the top of the wall and two halfway down the inside of it. Looked like all had AK-47s either already in hand or slung across their backs. He prayed that was all that “heavy” was going to mean, big enough problem there all by themselves.

“Jonesy, I’m gonna be real busy now, there are a bunch of nasty people coming down the inside of my wall. Do us a favor and start calling the other phone to see if you can wake Ripley and the Colonel, I’m gonna need a little help here. I’ll leave this one open for you, but don’t expect much talking from me.”

Allen put the phone down to his right and rose up to his knees. Not high enough to depress the sights down to ground level. He got to his feet and squatted to keep his head low to the parapet, the gun resting in his left hand and the hand on top of the wall. Four guys on the ground, three on top of the wall, two part-way down the inside. He thought, but faster than it seemed: “which one first? Which ones so that the rest don’t panic right away and start shooting? Gotta get a few before all hell breaks loose…”

And then he shifted aim to the guy on the right, part way down the wall. It was a long shot for a 9mm weapon, even longer for one that deliberately cut muzzle velocity down below supersonic so it’d be quiet. No telescope. He aimed for the top of the guy’s spine, then elevated to the middle of the back of his head, and squeezed off one round.

There was the sound like a telephone book being dropped on a concrete floor from about the height of a kitchen counter. Plop! Not quiet like the movies, but that was bullshit. But not the ‘crack’ of a rifle shot either, or the sharp bark of a pistol. He saw the round hit and the guy dropped like a sack of stones to the ground below. He shifted aim and shot another guy off the top of the wall, that one went back over to the outside. He shifted back down to the guys on the ground.

They were looking at the wall, apparently wondering about their clumsy brothers falling off. One headed right to look at the guy on the ground. Allen could hear another rasping some commands. Two more guys resumed climbing down the wall, two guys already down turned back to face inward toward the villas …

Allen shot them both in rapid succession, but it took two rounds for the guy on the right. Plop! Plop-plop! It was loud enough to him there on the roof, but 65 yards away, with some concrete from the parapet helping him, and the noise those guys were probably making trying to climb over…the guys were down 4 people and hadn’t figured it out yet. Another nice thing about the MP5SD was all the gas paths in the suppressor not only knocked the sound way down, it also cut the muzzle flash to almost nothing so if you didn’t know where to look, you likely wouldn’t see it. He liked the gun.

He shifted aim and shot the guy facing the wall and giving orders in the back of the head. He went down, but that was the end of the easy stuff. One of the guys on the ground must’ve been looking right at him, because he’d seen the muzzle flash and his AK was coming up fast. He yelled something in Arabic, loud, and was part way through “Allahu akhbar….” when Allen shot him in the face and the back of his head exploded.

But that was definitely it, because now there were 6 guys down but 4 on the ground still up and 3 more on the wall, and two guys opened up with their AKs. The night exploded, and Allen flattened himself on the roof deck as high velocity rifle bullets flew over his head, some pinged off the top of the wall and some chewed into the outer surface. He was pretty sure they’d come through the concrete wall pretty soon, too. It was likely made of cinder block, and from that range, the 7.62x39mm round from the AK-47 would make quick work of it. Bits of concrete were landing all around him, things were whizzing about above him, but with the angles he was relatively safe laying flat on the roof.

But there was no time for taking it easy. He grabbed the duffel and stuffed magazines and Iridium into it and started low-crawling toward the opposite corner of the roof where nobody was shooting. Halfway there Ripley burst through the roof door and promptly hit the deck when he heard the first rounds whipping past his ears.

“Where’s Cameron?” Allen yelled.

“Sent him down to the hallway to hold the door” Ripley replied. “What’s going on?”

“Probably 30 guys coming over the wall, all with AKs or maybe something heavier, but haven’t heard anything bigger yet. I put 6 of them down, so 24 to go”.

“How do you know how many?”

“Got a call from Langley right after their grappling hooks woke me up. Did your phone ring?”

“I’d just picked it up when I heard your first shot. Dropped it, pulled on pants and boots and headed up here. Jones?”

“Probably, told him to wake you up.” He looked at the parapet, still no fire on the right-front corner. “let’s crawl over there, full-auto, unload a mag each on these guys. Probably in a big crowd by now. Then we drop and scoot for the door and get off this roof before we get killed.”

“Right. How many mags you have?”

“This one has 23 left, I have 3 more full. You?”

“Four, full. Let’s do it. One mag each and we scoot.”

They moved quickly for men on their bellies. At the corner of the wall they readied. Just before they moved another AK opened up, but closer and to their right.