Tengu. John Donohue
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It was nice to be able to shoot back.
The two elements that made Cooke uneasy on any operation were the insertion and the extraction. Target approach was always a challenge; the slightest thing could give you away. Extraction had a different dynamic and was often more hairy, but this night they were in a nominally friendly environment and he wasn’t too worried about that. His focus was on the approach. He and the Filipino Special Forces’ troopers moved with exquisite care as they made their way through the forest that surrounded the farmhouse.
You never took the road. That was rule number one. The Filipino Lieutenant Aguilar had kept his group together fifty meters in from one side of the dirt road that led north from the main highway. The bush was alive with noise. Tree leaves rustled in the breeze, small animals scurried about in the underbrush, insects whirred and hummed, and the careful passage of nine heavily armed men was swallowed up in the night noise of a tropical forest.
At one point, the buzz of a small motorbike froze them in their tracks. They could hear it getting louder as it made its way toward them down the dirt road, the beam of light from its headlamp bouncing among the trees. The soldiers sank silently to the ground in a smooth ripple. Cooke watched their reaction with approval. The sound of the motorbike faded as it approached the main road. Cooke hoped the blocking force there snapped the rider up without too much fuss.
The soldiers waited, breathing quietly in the moist darkness. No sound from the main road. Good. Aguilar motioned the advance, and it began again. They were using night vision goggles, and they were familiar enough with them to move without too much of the exaggerated head movements that people tended to use when they first wore them. It made navigation easier, but when the point man came back to report the building in sight, Cooke and Aguilar flipped their goggles up to confer.
“We are set, Sergeant,” Aguilar breathed, avoiding the sibilant tones of a whisper. Cooke nodded, even though it was doubtful Aguilar could see him. Aside from the darkness, Cooke’s skin was dark brown and covered with face paint to decrease the sheen of perspiration that might catch light. Cooke had a fleeting thought, this is a long way from Detroit, but he pushed it aside and waited for Aguilar to continue.
The young officer flipped a cover off a luminous watch face. The other teams were to report in sometime in the next twenty minutes or so. The squad knelt in a defensive arc, keeping good noise discipline. Cooke nodded again in satisfaction. They had developed the knack of the good soldier; they knew how to wait in silence.
He felt the sweat sliding down the curve in his back. He sipped quietly from his camelback and listened impassively as a mosquito whined by his ear. The troops were equally still, and he liked the fact that they seemed contained and ready. After a while, he heard the squelch of the radio in his earpiece. One squelch for Alpha. The east force was in place. Not ten seconds latter, two squelches on the radio told them Bravo had arrived on the other side of the V.
A soft touch on his shoulder from Aguilar warned Cooke that his troopers were on the move. They crept to the edge of the clearing, flankers out. They all scanned intently with their night goggles, looking in the washed out green for the bright optical signatures that would reveal sentries. They waited and watched for movement.
The building was constructed of some sort of adobe, big enough for multiple rooms. A veranda faced them, and their view of the door was partially blocked by the overhanging tin roof. They would have to be careful with the approach; the wooden floor of the veranda could give them away. Windows spilled light out into the night. Cooke could hear the sound of a generator from the rear of the building. It sounded like a diesel engine to him and he sniffed the air, almost imagining he could detect the exhaust’s odor. He had grown up in the city, and diesel always smelled like home. He let the fleeting thought fade away and stayed focused on the here and now. He swept the target, looking, feeling. He sampled the air for the telltale smell of a sentry’s tobacco. But nothing registered. Mostly, he smelled the rich dirt smell of decaying things, his own sweat, and the faint scent of oiled metal.
Aguilar pulled them back from the edge of the clearing and into a circle. Cooke looked at him without saying anything. There was enough ambient light this close to the clearing for him to see. The young Filipino spoke to his men in a quiet, calm voice, giving final orders: “You two men around the building to cut the generator on my command. Sergeant Bantay, take Gumato and Inclan to the front door to blow it. The rest of the squad—line up to pile in the entrance while the targets are still stunned by the explosion.” Aguilar glanced at Cooke only once, and the older American nodded slightly in encouragement. Aguilar squelched his transmitter four times, sending the agreed signal for the assault to Alpha and Bravo.
Aguilar’s team slipped across the clearing. Two men whipped around the corner, going for the generator. Cooke could hear voices inside. This was the moment of greatest risk—the moment before the assault, when the team was outside the building, exposed in the clearing. They waited for the interior to be plunged into darkness. Cooke could feel his heart beating faintly. The Filipino troopers were crouched and ready, waiting. Cooke wished they’d pull the plug on that generator. Aguilar was whispering into his microphone. Cooke came up to him. “What?”
“The generator is in a locked shed. They cannot get in.”
Shit. The aerial surveillance photos hadn’t been angled enough to reveal that sort of detail. It’s always the little things. “They’ll have to blow it,” Cooke told the Lieutenant. The message was relayed. As the others waited, the soldiers charged with assaulting the door inched slowly toward it, easing across the veranda.
The old wooden floorboard creaked faintly and Cooke winced. One of the soldiers on the veranda jerked to a halt, over-reacting, and a piece of hardware on his harness clinked. They all froze for a moment. It seemed so loud out here, but surely it would go unnoticed by the people inside. Seconds ticked by. Slowly, they resumed their approach. One soldier moved to either flank of the heavy wooden entrance. The Filipino sergeant approached to place small shaped charges at the hinge points.
It all unraveled in an instant. The sound of approaching voices and footsteps from inside the building triggered a push of adrenaline through Cooke’s body. He crouched, breathing deeply to focus his mind through the rush. He brought his rifle to bear on the door as it was flung open, throwing light across the crouching attack force. Cooke closed his eyes because the wash of light through his night goggles would be intense. A shout of alarm, and someone fired a quick burst. Then the door slammed shut. He couldn’t be sure who had fired, but Cooke heard a yelp of pain. He yanked his goggles up and alerted the other two teams. “We’re spotted.” Bantay was laying face up, his torso in the dirt and his legs on the veranda. Aguilar was calling for his medic and simultaneously ordering the blowing of the generator. The other troopers were poised, waiting.
Cooke knew combat viscerally, and everything in him urged movement. This is where lack of experience showed. Aguilar and his men were good, but they had been caught off-guard and now hesitated. Right now, every second that bled away meant that their enemy would be better prepared for the assault. Cooke’s nerves screamed with urgency. He had to get his men moving.
Cooke grabbed Bantay by his harness and hauled him out of the way. Aguilar was fumbling for the detonator, dropped somewhere in the dark. Cooke grabbed him by the shoulder. “No time!” he grunted, swinging his shotgun around and blowing the hinges off the door with two quick blasts.
The blast seemed to shock the troopers back into action. They rocketed through the door like a human torrent. Cooke heard the generator finally cut out and the assault force poured into the farmhouse, leading with their rifles and shouting for the occupants to get down.
The rule was simple: anyone inside holding a weapon was shot. Anyone not immediately compliant with a shouted order to lie down was shot. Muzzle blast was bright in the confines of the farmhouse. A man with an AK-47 screamed at them and loosed off a volley, turning to run even before he stopped firing. A trooper caught him with a tightly spaced pattern—three shots stitched up the side from hip to chest. The terrorists were stumbling over one another, some trying to escape, others lunging for cover. They were disoriented in the dark, and the room was cluttered with overturned chairs.
Good training made