Princes of War (39 page)

Turnbeck would have to make the call now, tell the two rear trucks to peel off. The convoy was in single file. Dust from their movement filled the air and Wynn could see nothing clearly.

The convoy slowed. Seconds later, it almost stopped. Waiting. Waiting. Why nothing from Turnbeck? Was his visibility bad too? Wynn, restless, wished he was in the front vehicle so he could see better.

“Talk to me!” Wynn shouted on the radio.

They were in an open area, in front of the factory. Just as the dust cleared a bit, he heard Turnbeck’s voice. “Go for it!” Turnbeck instructed.

In seconds, Wynn heard and felt the screaming rear trucks, 23 and 24, pass on his right and move toward the factory entrance. D22 and 21 sped up, moving towards the left side wall of the factory. He didn’t have to say anything else for now. He felt a surge of pride as the platoon moved into place. D21’s acceleration sounded like a prehistoric bird going after prey.

The factory was a prefab building with metal siding, some of it torn off, probably stolen, exposing rusting metal support beams. Its carcass looked like a dinosaur’s ribcage. Pulling up alongside, he could see inside in places because of the missing siding. He watched for movement, his hunger to see someone—someone who could be a target for them—eating at his stomach. He turned to his front. Looking forward, he could just make out three kilns beyond the end of the factory. Still no signs of more insurgents or cars.

Baumann was quiet. Why? He’d be moving with 3rd platoon now. Should he radio and ask? No. Wynn would wait until Wolf Two entered the factory. Then he’d call Baumann, as agreed in the plan.

The brick kilns, spaced about 50 meters apart, looked defiant and stark, bleached almond white in the hot intensity of the sun, a reminder of the precarious existence of an ambitious people. The bricks once baked here must have been used in many local structures. A hard life had made this place; a hard people resulted from it. In the early light, the rutted and barren, yellow-moon openness of a thousand years surrounded the structures.

D 22 and 21 were at the back corner of the factory now.

“No bastards anywhere, Sir,” Singleton reported, as if reading Wynn’s mind.

“Look good,” Wynn encouraged Singleton. When the dust cleared, Singleton, from up top, would have the best view.

“Let me know when and if you see any Dobbies come around from the other side.”

As Wynn said that, Cooke came on the net. “21. 24, moving inside.”

Wynn reported to Baumann, then dismounted his Wolf One team.

Wolf One went in through a gap in the factory wall. Kale crouched, stone-still. Seconds later, he had the impression he hadn’t moved for a long time, as if time itself had slowed down, trapping him, pressing him, temporarily making him think he might be able to disappear and hide from this crazy world.

It was already very hot. Heat seeped through the factory walls, invincible, smoking him. It affected his vision, making it difficult to see the other men inside. His breathing was labored, rapid and heavy. He worried about hyperventilating. He looked around inside, hunting danger. With extended focus he could make out the walls and doorways. The next interior door was about 15 meters away. He tried peering through the dirty window of that door to the far side. Worry boiled his insides. His throat felt like a desert. He grabbed the tube of the almost-flat camelbak hanging over his shoulder; he’d nearly drained it. He sucked hard on the tube, taking several gulps of warm rancid water.

As he swallowed, the radio crackled. They got the signal to move. Now they weaved swiftly back outside through a break in the wall, in single file. Each man kept the right spacing, avoided bunching up, minimizing the chance for injury to more than one from explosions.

Other team voices called them forward. Kale was running again, without thinking, following the voices. Part of him felt powerless, propelled by irresistible force. They cut back inside the building, through another opening. Each team bounded forward again, alternating in short rapid bursts, like synchronized machines, then stop, take cover, and overwatch the other team’s movement. Then do it again. Kale stopped again, waiting for Turnbeck’s order. Movement was only on order, each team moving once the opposite team was set to overwatch. They held their rifles always at the ready, one hand on the trigger grip, one hand on the barrel guard.

Fractured images flittered about in Kale’s field of vision, disconnected, gray and indistinct, disconcerting, mostly irrelevant. He passed another outer wall opening and could see the road encircling the factory. To the front and across the road, a scrawny dog scurried around the factory, hugging the wall. Something hanging from the ceiling, maybe 20 meters to his front, started swaying back and forth. He looked at it, unclear what it was. Electric wires maybe. No, too thick. A trip wire? No, too thick for that too. Maybe a rope of some sort, from which something had been hanging. He looked sideways again. A soldier kneeled not five meters from him. Who? Another opening in the wall. Outside, a long thin scrap of paper, possibly a newspaper or a wrapper, danced over the ground. Kale refocused. The inside of the factory looked zebra-striped with morning light coming in through the wall penetrations. He scanned the interior windows and doorways down the hall, hunting movement. Somebody spoke behind him. Kale looked back. Sims was ten meters behind him and appeared to be scrutinizing the pieces of junk equipment inside the building. All that Kale could make out were skeletons of abandoned machines.

Kale saw the Wolf Two team on the far side of the room. He watched the soldier’s dark silhouettes traversing the interior of the factory’s other side.

“Move your ass!” Turnbeck yelled at him, impatient, urgent.

Kale moved forward, uneasily eyeing the way, unsure what was ahead. The tension and the heat combined to make him feel as if he was drowning in air, unable to get enough breath, unable to think clearly. He heard the movement of other men. Boots scraping the ground. Plastic knee pads bumping surfaces. Grunts. Gear slapping. Men moving. Sudden stops. Urgent sharp voices. But no strange language. No explosions. No gunfire. His eyes struggled to possess everything around him. Anxiety and ambiguity consumed him. Still, inside this oxygen-less world, his eyes and mind worked together, like a giant optic vacuum cleaner, sucking in everything seen, but making sense of little.

After a few more short runs, both Wolf teams reached the back of the factory, near a door that looked like an exit. Kale saw Wynn on the far side. He watched the platoon leader as he lay down in the prone position and looked through a gap in the wall, immobile as a statue. Time crawled, each minute an hour.

What’s next? Kale, uncertain, glanced to his rear. Damn, he was breathing hard, as if he’d climbed a cliff. Did others hear him breathing? Did Wynn? Kale saw nothing around him but the empty factory, dark and eerie.

Suddenly, Wynn was moving again. Kale got up and moved. He hadn’t even heard the command, didn’t know what actually got his body going. It was like a coupled train car effect, as if he were physically connected to the other men, pulled where they went without conscious decision. Moving, he heard the jingling of equipment on running men.

Outside again. Kale immediately saw several of the brick kilns ahead, within 150 meters. He stared at them, looking for signs of occupation. The kilns looked like massive ant hills, the scrap of millions of labor hours baking bricks spilled out of their tops, covering the round half-circle structures like crystallized lava. Breathing hard and gasping for air, he looked left and right. Other men ran at full speed, fury in their faces, as if chasing away damnation.

Exhausted, he reached the nearest kiln and dropped to one knee. People shouted, but he couldn’t make out their words. Perspiration soaked him. His underwear stuck to his testicles. He grabbed the fabric bunched around his crotch and pulled. His desert camouflage blouse, flattened against his back by his protective vest, stuck to him like a second skin. His chin was the only place that didn’t feel hot. Evaporating perspiration from his chinstrap cooled it. He struggled to get bearings on where he was and what to do.

Wynn halted behind a kiln. He rested momentarily, breathing hard, feeling as if he’d been underwater too long. An acute sensitivity came over him, as if all the circumstances and demands of existence clamored for his attention. His eyes adjusted rapidly, hungering to absorb everything he could see. Tyson was next to him.

Wynn radioed Cooke that Wolf One was in position, and ordered him to move the gun trucks up to the end of the building to overwatch.

Baumann came on the radio. Wynn pressed the headset closer to his ear to hear. Baumann reported that the Dobbies stopped the vehicle caught driving away. No shots had been fired. Two men and a teenager—who appeared retarded—were in the car, and all had now been flex-cuffed.

“Haven’t seen anyone else?” Baumann asked, seeking confirmation from the platoon leaders.

“Negative,” Wynn reported. Then D’Augostino did the same.

Wynn got back on the radio. “In front of
Endzone
now. Going forward in two mikes—if the Dobbies are in place,” he reported. Then, realizing his thumb had slipped off the mike-key button, he repeated his report.

“Roger,” Baumann answered.

Wynn waited for confirmation. Either Dobbie One would report or Baumann would.

Baumann’s vehicle should be behind Cooke’s team now. Wynn could not see them. A low rise in the ground to the west shielded visibility in that direction. Cooke would come up on the net when he was in position.

Wynn peered around the kiln edge cautiously, looking for signs that other kilns were occupied. Were those guys captured guys, insurgents?
A retarded boy?
What was he doing here?
Nothing ever made sense.

Wynn twisted around, looking for dismounted Wolfhounds. Two of his men were behind the kiln to his left rear. The other two would be further left, but he couldn’t see them.

A cloud of dust rolled into the sky behind him. Cooke’s trucks must be moving into place.

No other vehicles had been reported. What about the earlier UAV report identifying several vehicles? Had they left? Who shot the rocket? One of the captured guys? Unanswered queries accumulated. They always did. As tension increased, and the mind awaited violence, questions broiled like a volcano nearing eruption. He bottled up parts of his mind to prevent drowning in information overload. Free space for what’s most important. Concentrate. No other insurgents, so far. He hadn’t seen any, and from inside the factory he’d had a good look at the ground ahead, at all the kilns. It could be ridiculously quiet in the buildup to combat, as if impending violence stilled all noise. Did they miss something? Where insurgents hiding somewhere? Inside kilns? Most likely. Other than inside the factory, which they had just finished searching, that’s what the UAV pictures suggested.

Movement caught his eye. In the distance, he saw Dobbie Humvees. Two of them had taken stand-off positions, perhaps 300 meters away, behind a lip of ground. With their large round headlights they looked like colossal desert bugs. Friendly bugs, fortunately.

Wynn still hadn’t received an update from Cooke. Should he call him? No, he’d wait longer. He didn’t want those hearing to sense his concern. He kept his focus forward.

Things happened so fast. So many moving parts. It was like steering an out-of-control car, and he scrambled to slow things down. No time for reflection. What was next? Every man in the platoon waited on him for leadership. They expected that of him. He could not disappoint them.

The plan had been to make sure all the kilns were clear. He crawled along his and peered around the edge. He couldn’t get a good view of the other kilns, each about the size of a one-car garage, but he needed to see. Then he slid backwards, reducing his exposure. He again checked his map to confirm. Kilns number three, four, and five were the main targets, the Endzone objective. Wynn decided to clear number three first, while Wolf Two provided overwatch. According to his map, one kiln was between where he now was and number five, which was perhaps 60 meters away. He took a deep breath and slid forward again, taking nearly a minute to inch far enough around the circumference to see what he thought was the objective. The ground around them was dry, no scrub grass, the soil brittle and impotent. He felt as if he was crawling on the moon.

To his left, other Wolfhounds positioned behind kilns. They waited for his orders.

He took out his binoculars and looked. He refocused, resting his elbows on the ground, hoping to see inside the door of number three kiln, but no door was visible from this angle. As he watched, two black birds flew off the kiln roof. Why? Movement inside? The kiln leaned slightly, as if bent by years of fighting a steady wind. Perhaps it was damaged. Wynn thought he saw cracks in the wall, but not big enough to penetrate into the interior. The door must be on the opposite side. Was somebody inside?

He scanned the other kilns. Then he studied the surrounding ground, looking for signs the area might be booby trapped or mined. Leaning out beyond the edge of the kiln, he was exposed. The binoculars would make him a favorite target. But he had no choice. He had to see what was ahead.

A hollow feeling grew inside him. Maybe they wouldn’t find this sniper today. This fear, more than getting shot, began dominating his mind. The men would be disappointed. But the Dobbies had captured the squirting car. Something was going on here.

Were they interrogating the prisoners already? Baumann had said nothing else on the radio. His last report had been a minute ago, when they’d apprehended them. In combat, what he wanted to know to sharpen his analysis came to him slowly, if at all. Wynn looked back around at his men.

His uncertainty grew like a fever. Was somebody else here? Why wasn’t Baumann giving the go ahead?

Wynn tightened, pressing his lips together as if compressing his thoughts. Everything was very still, waiting. His body was in the eye of the storm.