The team was up and seated about the fire that Gharib had prepared for them. They cooked up a dinner of rice they'd brought along with them. After the assault on their digestion from the take-out lunch they needed something to slow down the process. Everyone had awakened with a fire in their belly and trotted off to the latrine trench. Rice was the best thing for that. They even drank the rice water left over from the cooking.

  All but Woody had been seized with spasms.

  “You sure you’re not hurting?” Chili asked.

  “I’m fine. No problem. Maybe I just have a stronger constitution, is all,” Woody said.

  “Like a junkyard dog,” Pig said shaking his head. “I just took a crap that felt like I was going to go airborne.”

  “I thought Mexicans could eat anything,” Woody said.

  “Not this Arab junk food. Who knows what they put in it? Fuckers only keep one hand clean. Good thing we’re up to date on our shots,” Pig said.

  “Might have to get wormed when we get back,” Chili said.

  “Again,” Heath put in.

  After endless deployments, US forces found themselves living for extended periods of time in hostile lands that would be dangerous even if they were free of terrorists. There were invisible enemies everywhere. Viruses, bacteria and parasites could drop them out of the fight as easily as a bullet or shrapnel. They could take shots and swallow pills to protect them against the diseases with some confidence that they’d prevent illness. The only protections against the ticks, worms, flies, chiggers, fleas and mosquitoes were vigilance and endurance.

  Most of the team, and tens of thousands of other combat troops who served in the region, had suffered with what they called Baghdad Boil. It was a nasty parasite that entered the skin through bites from sand flies. It was common in Iraq and Afghanistan and, just like the country, the Afghan variety was meaner. The bites started out looking like acne or eczema then turned into swollen seeping welts that itched like hell and left scars that looked like third degree burns. It was miserable and painful but the health risks were greater than just bad skin. Some strains attacked the liver or spleen and one breed took the form of a flesh-eating bacteria.

  Then there were the hookworms that could enter through the soles of the feet. Other bugs could slip in through a tear duct. Infectious ticks and fleas were everywhere. And intestinal worms were always a possibility no matter how much treatment you dosed the water with or how many times you filtered everything you drank. It was routine to come back from an op, dose with Biltricide then shit out what looked like cooked shoestrings.

  While on an op in Somalia years before, Chili got what looked like a bite on his cheek. By the next morning he looked like Quasimodo with a boil on his jaw the size of a grapefruit and his eyes swollen shut. It turned out not to be a bite at all. A fly had laid eggs under the skin using Chili’s face as a nest. Chili wondered aloud why he got all the bad luck. Manny told Chili that the lady fly must have thought he had a pretty face.

  All around them across the park, cook fires glowed in the deepening dusk. The smell of grilled lamb and goat traveled across the park in a stratum of smoke. The sweet scent of hashish was in the air as well. Sharia law frowned on the use of recreational drugs and alcohol but the use of hash and cannabis were tolerated as long as no one lit up in the mosque. Dope was everywhere and bhang was a source of courage for most jihadis who went into battle high as kites.

  Most Americans only knew terrorists from the snippets of Al Qaeda training video they saw on the news shows; the ones where guys dressed as dollar store ninjas fired guns and rolled on the ground like Chow Yun-Fat on a drunk. Or maybe they saw shots of jihadis running ammo through AKs from the safety of cover in some war zone. And there were always the mug shots of ugly guys glaring into the camera from behind hedgerow beards.

  The team had actually hung with the bad guys on their home turf. They had observed them like zoo animals from a hide or mixed with them incognito. The SEALs knew that most terrorists were unserious assholes out for an adventure. Wandering the planet looting and killing sure beat having a job. Yes, there were real badass wolves in the dogpack. But most were clueless bums riding a hate high and acting at being hometown heroes.

  Priest and Freeman took advantage of the current party atmosphere and left the group to reconnoiter the neighborhood.

  While they were gone an impromptu drum jam formed at the end of the park that fronted a roundabout. The drummers set up in the dirt center of the turnaround. Men showed up with plastic buckets, oil barrels, cymbals and kettledrums decorated with fringe and beads. The number grew and soon they were pounding away in rhythm and creating a thunder that echoed off the dark faces of the buildings that faced the park. A crowd formed before them and began moving to the rhythm. It was mostly young guys, some of them very young. They danced with their rifles as partners, waving them in the air in upraised fists or firing them into the stars in exultation. These were the child warriors that were everywhere in the Third World. They were kids raised without conscience or mercy and playing at war for keeps. Kids like Gharib; kids who should be at school or working the land with their fathers or doing anything else but learning the hard lessons of the holy war.

  They danced and spun in the shifting light of the cook fires and called out imprecations to God and oaths of vengeance and courage. The beat shifted and grew more complex as the more virtuoso of the percussionists stepped up to take solos that the other built upon. It was a wild, barbaric display from another time but bore a strong resemblance to any Friday nightclub crowd. Except for the guns and shout outs to Allah. Except for the complete absence of any females.

  The party was still raging when Priest and Freeman slipped back to re-join the SEALs. The sounds coming from the turnaround created an aural cover for them. They sat in a tight group away for the fire and spoke freely in English. Gharib sat at the fire and watched for any men who might move close. All the men visible were standing watching the celebration at the other end of the park. For added security they switched on their sat radios and set receivers in their ears. This allowed them to speak in a low voice inaudible to anyone standing even a few feet away.

  “The facts on the ground line up with the sat images,” Blair began, his voice clear with zero delay through the earbuds they wore despite a two hundred mile round trip to space and back. “The hospital and garage building share the block with a mosque. The hospital grounds are heavily guarded. Our best entry is through the mosque.”

  “There’s access between the buildings?” Heath asked.

  “Not directly,” Priest answered. “Freeman and I can get over to the hospital over a roof at the rear of the mosque’s open courtyard.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Chili this time.

  “Only Freeman and I will enter the target. More than that draws heat. The rest of the team will provide outside cover after you confirm we made entry. We find the bugs, we confirm their location and the rest is up to the wizards back home.”

  “This is spy shit. This is ninja shit,” Heath rumbled.

  The others agreed but silently. The SEAL teams were hunter/killer units. They were gunfighters. They were built and trained and focused on killing America’s enemies. They were not made for sneaking through shadows peeking through windows and taking snapshots like a pack of pervs. These men had courage in spades but did not feel natural exposing themselves to the kind of extended dangers that espionage entailed. It was bred into them over years of schooling that a successful mission was one where they came and went like a bad rumor leaving only the right people dead behind them. And it was not lost on them that the key figure here was Blair Freeman. They were riding shotgun on the agency officer and they railed under that role. These men were willing to die for their country but they objected to being spent like this.

  “That’s the operation,” Priest said evenly.

  “Just bitching,” Heath shrugged.

  “Then stow it starting now. All of you. We could wrap this op tonight and head home. Nobody wants to get back to the business of waxing bad guys more than I do. But this mission we do our best to keep our swords sheathed.”

  The rest of the SEALs muttered.

  “Can I get an amen?” Priest said.

  They each replied with their own amens.

  “Let me lay this out and then we move,” Priest said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MARLBORO MAN TO THE RESCUE

  It was full-on dark before midnight. The town was in blackout either to conserve power or because the electricity had been cut off by the fighting. No one was really sure. Central command and control were not concepts known to the Free Syrian Army.

  The drums had died away. The celebratory gunfire continued in fits and starts. The smell of burning hash grew thicker.

  The SEALs let the cook fire die. They geared up in the deepening gloom. They switched their boots for simple sandals. The jihadis all around in the dark sat talking about their fires making them effectively night blind. The team would be practically invisible when they moved out.

  Through night vision scopes, Priest quick-scanned the hospital grounds and connected garage building before proceeding. The garage was dark. The hospital minimally lit. He and Blair had observed the buildings throughout the day and during their walk-around. They determined that the hospital was still functioning as that. Ambulances, trucks and cars came and went. A jitney even made regular stops to let off and take on passengers at the stop before the entrance. It was just another day at any community medical center.

  The only difference was the heavily armed men in black at every entrance. These guys were here in force walking the grounds in what appeared to be casual strolls. The trained eye knew these walks for what they were. They were patrols. The presence of the armed men increased as the sun went down. They walked sentry and kept ready eyes at vantage points all around the end of the block that the two buildings occupied. Whoever they were, these guys owned the hospital.

  This was a recon in force for the SEALs not a hunter/killer call-out. If they were to accomplish their mission it would be without blood. One hundred percent success meant that the bad guys would never know they were here.

  The target building backed up on a mosque. That would have to be their entry point. It was the quiet path.

  Priest and Blair slipped from the park first and were followed after an interval by Chili and Pig. Heath and Woody were last. Heath held out a hand and told Gharib to stay. Heath had no real experience with kids so he spoke as if to a dog and expected the boy to obey. Gharib nodded, gave the last two Americans a thirty-second head start and then followed.

  After exiting the park there was no need for stealth. There was still enough foot traffic for the SEALs to blend in. They moved in uneven pairs separated by fifty paces minimum. The loose plan for the recon was to keep one another in sight. Orders would be relayed back from Priest via hand signal to Chili and Pig and through their ear receivers. Heath and Woody only had to watch the behavior of the two men in front of them and act likewise. To the disinterested eye they just looked like every other pedestrian on their way to some nighttime destination.

  The lead men crossed the boulevard and walked to the entrance of the street that ran north/south along the side of the garage building. Figures clad in black sat upon the cab roof of a technical and watched them pass. Another leaned on the curtain wall on the roof of the garage scanning the passers-by below. Priest and Blair appeared to be in deep conversation complete with hand gestures. The silently watching men gave no appearance of interest or movement. Chili and Pig passed a half minute later walking solo; just two bumpkins in the big city and looking for fun. Heath and Woody brought up the rear. Woody kept his white boy head covered in a checkered keffiyeh. They moved on past, keeping the pair of SEALs in line before them in sight. The black-garbed men sat quiet as though napping.

  Heath and Woody stepped up on the narrow curb as a clutch of mopeds tore past them. Woody felt a sensation like a fist clenching in his guts. It wasn’t fear or tension. It wasn’t anything to do with the moment. It was that greasy hadji junk food they ate for lunch. It went down easy enough. Now it wanted out in the worst way. It was an effort to walk normally as the tightening fist turned to downward pressure in his colon. He touched Heath’s arm and then withdrew it as if scorched. Casual physical contact was a no-no here. But the street was dark. No one saw them.

  “What is it?” Heath said in a normal speaking voice. In Arabic, of course.

  Woody wasn’t sure how to put it in that language so he chose to simply describe what he was experiencing in the closest analogy he had the words for.

  “I feel like I’m going to have a baby.”

  Heath looked at him, brows knitted, and read the pleading eyes visible through the slit in the keffiyeh. Heath stifled a laugh.

  “The local food not agreeing with you?” Heath smiled.

  “My guts are on fire.”

  “Well, everybody poops,” Heath said sotto voce in English and grinned.

  “Funny.”

  “Is it just Delhi Belly or are there other symptoms?”

  “Just the runs. I’m not chilled. No headache.”

  “Thought you told us you had an iron stomach.”

  “Yeah. But it’s not my stomach right now.”

  “Let’s find you some place to squat,” Heath said and led the way.

  They stepped across the walk to the recessed entry of a shuttered storefront. Woody went within and untied his pajama pants to squat behind a column. Heath sat down on the curb as though to take a rest and kept an eye on either end of the street. He saw no movement from the dark beyond the archways of the garage on the opposite side of the street. He smiled dumbly at men walking past as ghastly sounds filled the alcove behind him.

  Woody had a hand clapped over his mouth to suppress a grunt as his bowels emptied in one long fiery explosion. It felt like his lower bowel had been tied in a knot. His legs wobbled. Sweat popped out on his face and back. He kept his eyes locked through the store window on the other side of the security bars. It was a bookstore. Paperbacks in neat rows with titles in Arabic scrawl. He could read enough of the language to recognize that a few of the books were Stephen King novels. Another was The Hobbit. Jesus.

  He did what he had to do and wished fervently that America’s next war could be fought some place where toilet paper was a thing. A bit shaky, he re-joined Heath and they moved on.

  “Our friends are already around the corner,” Heath nodded to where the street ended at a ‘T’ intersection. They were past the garage building and now walking along a high wall of brick running to their left; a featureless barrier wall that enclosed the mosque courtyard. There was an alley no wider than a shoulder span in width running between the back of the garage building and the rear wall of the mosque. A mechanical puttering reached them from somewhere deep in the alley. That was the sound of the generators supplying power to the hospital.

  The engines were suddenly drowned out by loudspeakers atop the mosque tower calling the faithful to prayer for one final time that day. Across the rooftops of the town the call went out from minarets. Heath picked up the pace as others did. Woody trotted to keep up.

  No Chili or Pig in sight. They kept their hurried pace to the corner, matching the march of pedestrians around them. They reached the end of the street and turned left on the walk. Chili was in sight ahead taking his time to select a drink from a street cart. He saw them approaching and waved a hand of dismissal at the vendor who followed a few paces pointing at the juice bag in his hand. Chili growled something foul at the vendor who stepped back to his cart grumbling. The guy was still bitching as Heath and Woody stepped past him heading for the muted lights before the mosque entrance.

  Pig was seated on a stone bench outside the mosque entrance portal. Great wrought iron gates were swung wide and secured open to allow entry for the faithful. Chili stood further along the wall loitering like so many other men did around the city. Heath met eyes with Pig for a second’s acknowledgment. Pig nodded. Heath and Woody stepped into the throng and were swept into the mosque.

  ****

  Priest and Blair were inside the mosque. Their sandals were already somewhere here in the ranks of sneakers, sandals and boots waiting before the doors to the main chamber of the mosque on wooden shelves. Pig and Chili were to remain at their position to help cover a hasty exit if it came to that. Heath and Woody took off their sandals just as the other faithful were doing. They stepped along barefoot toward the main prayer hall. The crowd was all male, of course; mostly white-bearded older guys with a few armed jihadis mixed in. Not a lot of young hadjis here. The SEALs had reached the mosque just as Isha’a, the night prayer, was beginning. They joined the others and washed their bare feet in a running trough of cool water set in the floor of the entryway. They all padded in a straggling file into the main prayer hall as the call from the speakers died away.

  Though the mosque’s outer walls ran parallel to the streets on three sides of it, the main prayer hall and the domed building that contained it were angled to allow the faithful to face Mecca. The qibla wall ran across the front of the hall with the decorated mihrab at its center. This was the niche in the wall that indicated the true direction of the city of the Hajj and the focus of all prayer. The place was SRO when they arrived. Hundreds knelt and bowed toward the gold-tiled niche marked on either side by columns of rose marble. The rest crowded along the walls with bowed heads. The room was lit by kerosene lanterns hung from hooks along the walls. Black smears rose up above the lanterns to stain the whitewashed walls. The light cast from the guttering flames died in the shadows of the dome invisible over their heads.