David Bruns - Weapons of Mass Deception

“Brendan, I need you back at home base on the double. You’re on the mission tonight.”

The walls of the compound glowed an eerie, pale green through the lens of Brendan’s night vision goggles. His earpiece crackled and Radek’s voice said: “Five minutes to go. McHugh’s team will breach the wall.”

Brendan dialed the volume up a touch. When things got hot, he wanted to make sure he could hear Radek over the background noise.

He squirmed deeper into the dirt. The land around him was rock, sand, and a few scrubby trees — not much cover. Even though the sun had gone down hours ago, the ground beneath him was still warm, and the gentle desert breeze did nothing to cool him off.

The only sign of life was a lone dog barking from a cluster of houses a few hundred yards away. The entire area was without power tonight, thanks to US control of the power grid in this part of Iraq. These people rarely had more than a few hours of electricity a day anyway, so no one would think anything amiss. Some of the houses, including the one in front of him, surely had generators, but fuel was too valuable to waste on electricity and lights would only attract unwanted visitors.

Radek’s whisper floated in his ear as his OIC acknowledged their air support: two RAF Tornados were somewhere up in the moonless sky, each with enough ordnance to level the compound in front of them many times over. They also had a Quick Reaction Force of an additional sixteen SEALs on fifteen-minute standby.

Brendan waited for the final call to engage from CJSOTF. Before that, Radek would get a final sitrep from the intel team. In the situation room back in the Green Zone, there would be live feed from the on-station Reaper UAV up on the big screen. The drones were piloted out of air-conditioned secure trailers on Creech Air Force Base, half a world away in Nevada.

“Standby for final head count,” Radek’s voice whispered in Brendan’s ear. Brendan tensed and pictured the compound in his head. “We have a total of nine, I repeat nine, hostiles in two locations. Two are in the main house on the second floor, six in the east building, probably a bunkhouse. IR indicates the lone guard just went to take a leak. Be advised we want live captures, if possible.

“McHugh’s team will breach the wall and take the main house, my team has the bunkhouse. McHugh, you are cleared to place the charges.”

Brendan keyed his microphone. “Roger, team leader.” His hands automatically checked his weapons: M4A1, the Sig Sauer P226 on his hip, the Bowie knife strapped to his calf. He shifted his torso inside his Kevlar vest as he came up on one knee and signaled to his team. The men moved as a unit over the next hundred meters, crouching low, the only sound the whisper of sand under their boots. Three men remained at the recover point to provide covering fire, while the rest continued to the wall. Two men placed charges eight feet apart, working quickly to outline a makeshift doorway. They retreated to their rally point.

“Charges in place, team leader,” Brendan whispered into his mike.

“Blow it.”

“Fire in the hole.” Brendan nodded to his demolition expert and put his face in the dirt to save his night vision. The trigger man punched the remote, radio-frequency trigger.

The muffled explosion, like someone had slammed a door, rang through the night air. His team was on their feet before the echo had even faded, racing through a rain of concrete and cinder block chunks.

The first few seconds were the most critical of any raid — those few moments when the targets were roused from sleep by the noise, stunned, unsure whether the sound was real or part of a dream. Before any lights were turned on or weapons found in the dark. Those first few seconds made all the difference between a high body count and a successful raid.

Brendan’s team burst through the cloud of dust that filled the gap in the compound wall and made a sharp left toward the two-story house. The first two men in the team hit the wall on either side of the door, while the third man shot through the lock and kicked the door open. The first two tossed in flash-bangs, and the glass on the windows next to them blew out as the concussion grenades went off. Weapons raised, they entered the room and fanned out.

“Clear!”

Brendan rushed in with two more men behind him. The sharp smell of the expended grenade lodged in his nostrils. He dimly heard more flash-bangs being detonated from the direction of the bunkhouse, followed by sharp bursts of automatic weapons fire.

The first team took the back room on the ground floor, while Brendan’s team took the stairs to the second floor. The muscle memory of “kill house” tactics took over. As the first man, Brendan stood by the door as the rest of his team stacked in tight single file behind him. He kicked open the flimsy door. The flash-bang was in his hand and through the door before he even formed the thought in his head. He closed his eyes.

Bang.

Eyes open, weapon up, through the door. Scan.

Two targets registered in his senses. The first held a handgun.

Brendan released two shots to the man’s chest and a third to the head.

Shift.

The second man raised his arms.

Calls of “Clear!” sounded from his left and right as the rest of the team swept the room.

“Take him down,” Brendan shouted back. The other two SEALs rushed at the target while Brendan kept his rifle trained on him. They forced the man to his knees, and Brendan heard the sound of zip ties being tightened. The pair heaved their prisoner to his feet and patted him down. One let out a low whistle as they pulled out a long knife from a sheath in the small of the man’s back. In the ghostly green of the night-vision goggles, the handle glowed a brilliant white. The SEAL handed Brendan the knife, a Zippo lighter, and a half-used pack of Marlboros from the man’s breast pocket before marching him to the door. The captive’s jaw quivered as the SEALs forced him to step over his comrade’s corpse.

The assault team met in the dirt yard formed between the three buildings and the wall. One of the SEALs had found a generator and energized the lights. The team who had raided the bunkhouse frog-walked their prisoners into a line and forced them to their knees. In the harsh illumination of the floodlights, the prisoners looked confused and a little frightened, their hair matted with sleep and their dirty beards bent into all sorts of odd shapes.

Brendan saw that most of them were his age, maybe even younger. All except the man he had taken down in the upstairs bedroom. He was old enough to be Brendan’s father. Their commander? Brendan studied him in the white glare of the spotlights.

Whereas most of the captives stared at the ground or exchanged furtive glances with one another, this man returned Brendan’s gaze without fear. His dark eyes, icy with confidence, were set in a thin, handsome face. Despite having been roused from bed, he looked fresh and alert, and his short-cropped hair, shot with gray at the temples, was neatly trimmed around his ears. A few days’ worth of stubble coated his chin. Unlike the others, he was dressed in tan trousers and shirt, and his breast pocket was still undone from when the SEAL had removed his pack of cigarettes.

There was something else, the way the man wore his clothes… like a uniform. This guy was military, Brendan was sure of it.

Brendan weighed the knife in his hand. Then he stepped forward and slid the cigarettes back into the man’s shirt pocket.

“Thank you,” the man said, in perfect English.

Brendan’s thoughts were interrupted by Radek. “McHugh, what’s your status?”