"Tell me about it," Chili said and sat up. "You got something on your mind or is this just your usual hyper self?"

  "Another thing," Flame went on, "I always wondered about the guys on the teams who have wives and kids. How do they do that? How do they keep their minds mission-focused? Not sure I could do that to someone I cared about. I mean, leave ‘em behind to worry or get told I was killed or fucked up."

  "Pig's married," Chili offered, referring to Angel Luis Bravos, the member of the team now rehabbing after injuries on his last mission.

  "Hell," Flame said and made a phtt sound with his lips. "That's just some girl he played hide the burrito with. He knocked her up and his dad said he had to marry her. Then Pig runs off and joins the Navy and never thinks about her again. I'm talking about leaving someone behind that you love and care about. Somebody who'd be hurt if you bought it."

  "This is about that jarhead girl."

  "Yeah. I like her a lot, Chili. I keep thinking about her and not just the sex. Though I think about that a lot too."

  "You think about her smile, her laugh, shit like that?" Chili asked.

  "All that shit."

  "She feel that way about you?"

  "I think so. I hope so. I mean, we don't know each other but it seems like something's there. Something more than hormones."

  "Well that's great, Flame."

  "Is it, bro? We're dropping into deep, deep shit. Again. I keep thinking about the other side, after we get back. I never thought of that before. It makes me worry that I'll start being careful. That's a good way to get waxed, second guessing and half-stepping."

  "It's not going to happen. Once we're into it, your head will be in the game and nothing else will matter," Chili said. "You're just over-thinking pre-mission. We all do it. You do it. Only this time you have something to think about."

  "Yeah," Flame said. "I can see that."

  "Besides, anything happens to you, I'll make sure your little Marine forgets all about you," Chili said. "I mean, she already puts out for SEALs, right?"

  "Fuck you, Alabama," Flame said and got up to return to his seat.

  "Same to you, Panhandle," Chili said and went back to nodding over his book.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE GULF OF SIRTE

  The drop off from the sub USS Newport News (SSN-750) went along without incident.

  The crew of the Los Angeles class boomer was glad to have the SEALs off. In order to blend with the rebel population the team hadn't taken showers in days and were eating their meals heavily laced with garlic. The skipper had the officer quarters scrubbed down with bleach and the bed clothes put out the torpedo tubes once the SEALs were gone.

  The inflatable made its way toward the lights of the city bobbing far away on the horizon. The only lights were fires from the burning portions of Sirte as the electricity had been out all month. Heath sat at the stern and worked the small electric trolling motor. It was quiet enough and moved them along over the dead calm water at an easy eight knots. Three miles to shore. At the half-mile mark they'd shut the motor off and row in.

  They used a commercial made craft in case it was found. It was decorated in party colors but that was its camouflage. It shouldn't raise suspicion pulled up on the beach. The worst that could happen was it got stolen or vandalized.

  It had a capacity for twelve even though there were only four going in and, hopefully, only five coming out. The center portion of the raft was loaded with their gear. Guns, ammo, light armored vests to be worn under their civilian clothes.

  Each man picked out his look for maximum protective coloration by studying hours of video from the current unrest . Worn jeans in brands readily available in the region. Shapeless camo khakis in the pattern favored by the Libyan army. Flame and Chili covered their heads with knit caps. Manny wore a polo shirt. Heath favored a loose camp shirt decorated in the broad vertical stripes of the Libyan flag. Flame layered a faded work shirt over a soiled tank top and a checkered keffeyeh worn as a scarf to hide his tats. Chili chose a ragged Superman t-shirt with a tattered army coat worn over it for the same reason. All wore scuffed boots of French issue that Gaddafi's troops would sport. Solid footwear was too vital. The sandals and cheap sneakers favored by the locals were not an option. The four would look like either early deserters from the army or rebels who looted a military facility.

  They were confident they'd pass casual inspection. And hopefully they wouldn't be in country long enough to strain their disguise.

  Manny sat at the prow and eyed the water before them. Not for the first time did he wonder about mines. Their intel was full of the discovery of warehouses all over Libya loaded with anti-personnel mines. If the beach they pulled up on was mined, they might never know it until it was too late.

  Well, you go into the fight with the intel you have, not the intel you wished you had, Manny thought, paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld.

  The creamy lines of breakers began to form ahead and they could feel the swell lifting under them. Heath cut the motor and the four positioned themselves at the gunwales and paddled steady for the darkest portion of the shoreline ahead of them.

  Without the hum of the motor, they could hear the sounds of the city. The distant rhythmic thud of anti-aircraft guns. There were no parabolas of crisscrossing tracers against the night sky. Those quad guns were being fired laterally at defenses or personnel. Those sounds were punctuated by the occasional rumble of larger ordnance erupting; either bigger artillery pieces or satchel charges. And playing under it all was the most common soundtrack in the Middle East, the chugging freight train noise of Kalashnikovs on full auto. The ugly stuttering sound was as familiar to these men as the sound of a lawnmower or crickets chirping. And these days it was a lot more common.

  They rode over gentle breakers pushing them to shore and stepped from the raft into waist deep water to pull it in the rest of the way. The raft was secured on the beach between the broken hulls of two wooden fishing smacks pulled up in a row of ten or more. No one would be coming down here to go fishing any time soon, if ever again. Manny wondered if the hulls were broken on purpose on Gaddafi's orders to prevent the exodus of refugees from putting to sea for anywhere but here.

  Metal stakes on the end of nylon lines secured the raft in place in case the wind came up. They used the oars as shovels and covered it with a layer of sand. Anyone walking by would never see it. Though, these days, the chances of any idle beachcombers in Sirte were remote.

  Heath took a reading on his GPS and bookmarked the location. They all checked for landmarks to orient themselves in case they got separated. There was a water tower almost due south of the row of boats.

  They put on the light body armor and ammo vests packed with thirty round magazines for the AKs. They checked their weaponry. They worked the actions of their AKs and chambered rounds. Chili slung the Dragunov over his back. It was concealed in a crude case he'd sewn himself out of a section of woven rug. The long rifle would draw attention and certainly envy from any rebels who saw it. He'd keep it hidden as much as he could to avoid questions or challenges.

  In addition, each man carried a Czech-made nine mill handgun concealed in their waistband or cargo pocket.

  The team also carried over ten kilos of Semtex explosives split between them and lengths of det cord and detonators. And each man had a pair of Russian-made night vision goggles that might be rare among the rebel forces but not unheard of.

  They also carried unlabelled plastic bottles of safe drinking water in their shoulder packs. God only knew what kind of bugs crawled in the swill that passed for potable water in Sirte. It wouldn't be wise to risk dysentery or worse on a mission this far into the bad guys' backyard.

  They moved along the beach away from where they left the raft. The inland road they wanted was to the north a ways. They neared a group of tents and lean-tos pitched on the sand and figures silhouetted about campfires before them. Thumbs snapped the long safety levers down and fingers stayed firm on trigger guards. The team relaxed when they saw the hunched figures by the fires were women and children who drew away at the approach of armed men.

  Women in these countries had the shit end of the stick in the best of times. Their lives must be hell with bands of armed men roaming around riding on a high of rage and retribution.

  The team passed without regarding them. Manny met the eyes of a huddle of kids watching him without blinking as he passed. The whites of their eyes flashed in the flickering light. All he saw was fear and want, and it gave him a hollow feeling in his gut. One boy, who couldn't be more than twelve, stood and glared defiantly at the men. What chance did a kid like that have? And what kind of adult would he make? Revolutions like this ate the young and spit them out the other side as bitter men with no faith in their own future. This boy would be carrying a gun soon. Maybe before the month was out.

  A six-lane coastal highway ran along the beach. It was an engineering marvel running east to west along the Mediterranean shoreline from Benghazi to Tripoli and border to border. It wasn't made for commuters of tourist traffic. It was a desert Autobahn built to carry armored vehicles and troop carriers. It was Gaddafi's artery for his army and mercenaries to travel on to put down insurrections and civil unrest.

  Now it was the route favored by the rebel army. The revolt began in Benghazi and rolled west along this road. A small contingent stayed to besiege Sirte. The bulk moved on to Misrata and brought the ruling class to their knees in that town and swelled their ranks for the assault on Tripoli. Now, rumors that this was Gaddafi's hideout were drawing them back here in droves.

  The traffic had slowed after dark and now the highway was empty for the most part except for wrecks pushed to the side after they either broke down or were shot up. The roadway was dark; the halogen street lights were dead in their towers.

  The team moved at a casual pace to cross the road. They knew they were being watched by rebels and refugees encamped on either side. They kept it to an easy amble and Manny engaged Heath in an involved conversation in Arabic about which French car company was the most reliable, Peugeot or Renault. No one challenged them and they passed off the highway to a service road in search of the inland street that would carry them to the Ahhamid compound.

  Sufi pop music echoed from somewhere as they moved along an empty street lined with three and four-story apartment blocks. There was no movement except for a pack of bone-thin dogs that scattered when Chili threw a half-brick their way.

  The only difference between this and any other street in any other third world town in the dead of night was the bodies.

  Still forms that looked like heaps of rags lay against buildings and curbs. Some looked as though they were dragged there to allow traffic to pass. There were large and small heaps. One belonged to a boy left lying by the remains of his mangled bicycle. There were a few no one bothered moving. A woman, she was recognizable only by her burka, was mashed flat like a cartoon character by the passage of trucks and tanks. A dark stain cut through the dust from her crushed form to the gutter.

  The neighborhood was untouched by signs of any heavy fighting. These bodies were people who just got in the way or showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of this was new to the team. This kind of casual slaughter followed every kind of uprising. They saw it in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia. Revolution changed the rules; cancelled the rules. Not just the rule of law but the rule of civilization. The social contract was abandoned and in its place most men turned to primitive desire. You flip the table in a place like Libya and there was no telling where or when it would end. It was the Serengeti and the innocent paid the most.

  There was a dark side to liberation in that it released men from fear of retribution and a murderous and vindictive kind of saturnalia set in. And not only men. The women would get into it too. Stones killed just as efficiently as bullets and they'd come upon their share of young women unrecognizable under dark bruises and with their skulls crushed in and legs broken. All about them lay fist-sized stones and bricks.

  This Arab Spring was a killing field and would remain so, especially in Libya, for a long time to come.

  Manny stepped into a narrow alley to check their position on the GPS. The others stood idle on the sidewalk while Manny postured himself as if taking a piss and shielded the glow of the small monitor with his hands. The reading showed that they were almost on top of where they needed to be.

  "Is that an Ipod?" a voice from the dark spoke in Libyan accented Arabic.

  "Yes," Manny said, his voice even as he replaced the device in his pocket and opened his fly to take the piss he was only pretending to before.

  The man stepped from the dark. Fortyish with a belly and a face unaccustomed to making the friendly face he was forcing now. Manny was practically marinated in garlic and onions yet the stench coming off this guy was still nauseating.

  "Is nice the Ipod, yes?" the man said and moved way inside Manny's personal space. No one who rolls up on a man with his dick out has good intentions.

  "It is," Manny said without commitment.

  The man had an AK hung under his arm on a length of clothesline for a sling. He'd be naked without a rifle in this neighborhood.

  "I wish to see it," the man said, the smile gone. His hand slid down the stock of the rifle.

  "No," Manny said and turned to the man and drove a thin bladed dagger up at a point just past his chin, up though his palate and into his brain. Manny gave the dagger a sharp clockwise turn and the man slumped lifeless into him.

  There was a shift of a shoe sole on concrete coming from the dark of the alley and Flame was past Manny and rushing into the shadows with a pistol raised in his hands. The long tube of a silencer extended its length.

  The lane lit up with the bloom of a muzzleflash as Flame fired a controlled three-round burst into the dark. It made no more sound than someone politely clearing their throat three times in succession. It was answered by a yip from down the alley. Flame moved swiftly forward and the walls of the lane lit up twice more.

  "His friend," Flame said in Farsi when he emerged.

  "They wanted my Ipod," Manny answered in kind.

  "That was just foreplay," Flame smiled. "What they really wanted was your fine Kosher ass."

  Manny pursed his lips and made a kissing sound. He wiped the dagger on the shirt of the dead man at his feet and replaced it in the sheath under his belt.

  They spoke low as they walked in a loose pack down the center of the street.

  "The building we want is in this block," Manny said.

  "How will we know it?" Heath asked.

  "I'm counting it off," Manny said. Each SEAL was schooled in orienteering as well as map reading. Counting steps and estimating the length of marches was drilled into them until it was second nature. A SEAL was so ingrained with keeping track of their progress that they found themselves counting their steps from the bed to the head when they got up at night to take a leak.

  "Here," Manny stopped before a brick façade covered in peeling blue paint. The four-story building had a single door facing the street and swirling lettering across the face that proclaimed it was home to the Hamid Olive Press Ltd.

  "A dummy building," Chili said in his own halting Arabic.

  "Who's going to break into an olive oil warehouse?" Flame asked.

  "How do we get in?" Heath asked.

  In answer, Manny led them into a narrow space between the Hamid warehouse and the garage building next door. Heath followed while Chili and Flame took seats on the sidewalk with their backs to the wall to look as though they belonged and keep an eye on the street.

  As quietly as he could, Manny pried some boards from a fence at the rear of the building and ducked through into a courtyard choked with trash. No one had been here in years and the houses and businesses all around were using the enclosed space as a dump. Heath stood by the gap in the fence and watched the alley that twisted away between the rear lots of closely packed buildings with dark interiors.

  A rusting metal Bilco door was set at the bottom of a well of steps against the rear wall of the building. It was the only sign of an entrance around the entire expanse of the building. The whole structure screamed out that it was a false front for something. It was a testament to the level of fear that Gaddafi inspired that it had gone all these years undisturbed. The door was secured with a heavy brass padlock run through a steel hasp welded to the doors.

  Manny crouched and opened his shoulder bag. He pinched a corner from the block of Semtex he carried and shoved it into the keyhole of the padlock. He lit the glob of plastic explosive with a Bic and stood back. A sharp pop and the lock burst open. He kicked it off the hasp and gave a low whistle that Heath echoed.

  Chili and Flame joined them in the cramped courtyard and held their AKs up and sighted down the well of steps as Manny pulled open one of the metal cellar doors with a pistol cocked in his free hand. Heath stood close by with his rifle trained on the opening.

  The hinges made a high chirping sound as the door swung open. Manny dropped down through the door. Heath followed when he heard Manny's all clear. Soon they were all in the building's cellar, and Flame drew the Bilco door closed shutting them in a complete darkness that smelled like damp and fuel exhaust.

  They placed night vision goggles over their eyes and flipped on the batteries. The Russian models were not up to the standards they were used to but were enough to illuminate the area around them to a greenish blur that turned the impenetrable gloom into the light of an overcast afternoon.

  The room below the Bilco was a kind of anteroom with a broad exit set in one wall. Flame was through first with his rifle up. The other three followed.

  It was a stairwell. Cinderblock walls. Girder ceiling roofed in concrete slabs. They moved down the well along switchback landings until Heath estimated they were a good seventy feet or more under the street. At the bottom of the well was a doorless opening.