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“Rifled slug—seven of them.” A rifled slug is a chunk of lead weighing one and a half ounces. It has the diameter of a penny and it is a little more than an inch long with a muzzle velocity of 2700 feet per second. A Mossberg 590 is capable of bulls-eye shooting these slugs out to one hundred yards. The close quarter combat situations that Jim found himself in made these things one-shot showstoppers.

The door leading into the bunker began to open out. Both men twisted towards the unexpected intrusion. Jim grabbed the Mossberg off the floor. He pushed the safety forward with his thumb revealing the red fire dot, and fired before the door was half way open. The first shot deflected along the angle of the door crunching into and through someone standing to side of the door. It also forced the door open faster than expected for the second man up there.

Pump. Eject. Fire!

The second round caught the next Iraqi full in the chest. He disappeared from the frame of the doorway. The slug pancaked on the trauma plate of his flak jacket and hurtled him backward six yards. The door banged closed followed by a whump! The doorframe seemed to buckle inward.

“Sounds like a grenade, Jimmy.”

Harper nodded. “I think we need to leave.”

They scrambled to their feet and hobbled up the steps. Jim kicked open the door and they emerged into a rock strewn quarry. Saddam had hidden his most sensitive sites either in the open, behind the façade of palaces, or under the plentiful amounts of sand. Stealth was used to secure locations rather than high security, high profile installations. While this prevented frequent visits from the United States Air Force, it did raise certain security problems when ground teams penetrated installations.

The Republic Guard survived due to resource dispersal. Small four-man fire teams protected these installations. In the case of Saddam’s Data Center, they were committed piece meal. Unfortunately, they were still arriving.

They hobbled past two very dead soldiers and two others who looked close to death. Jim folded Jerry into the passenger seat of the Jeep before clambering in himself.

“Don’t you think I should drive—in case you need to shoot?”

Jim shook his head. He could see his friend was losing consciousness. The best hope he had was to exit them from the battlefield. He pumped another shell into the Mossberg, and flipped the safety back on. “I think you should try to sleep.” He gunned the Jeep and sped into the desert night.

Jerry died two days later in the desert between Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq. Jim buried him in a small grave under a cairn of stones. He said a prayer and marked the grave with a cross. It took another seven days on foot before Jim found a village in Jordan with a phone.

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Jerry and Jim had just finished planting a series of special user accounts in Iraq military information systems. Jerry looked up from the terminal, sweat streaming down his face. His hands wrapped around the M-16 A2 as he observed the two dead technicians on the floor. Jim hurriedly typed in the last of the commands on the aging HP-3000 systems. They were a two-man penetration team attempting to infiltrate a major installation—madness.

The doors leading into the computer room slid open without warning. Jerry yelled something and charged, firing the M-16 from his hip. Jim rolled sideways, pulling the black Mossberg up and ready. Rifle shots whistled through the room hitting irreplaceable equipment. The zing of bullets coming too close brought an instant response as the Mossberg roared with its full 12 gauge fury. The firefight was over as quickly as it had started—three more dead men on the floor leading into the computer room.

Jerry had been hit twice in the chest by armor piercing rounds. The Kevlar vest stopped the first at the cost of a broken rib, but the second made it through. The wound made a sucking sound each time Jerry took a breath. Jim hefted his friend on one shoulder. They tottered drunkenly down the bunker’s long corridor. Thin trails of blood marked their exodus and alarms blared throughout the complex. A distant explosion rumbled through the compound—probably one of the charges they had set up wired into the alarm system.

They came to a corridor intersection and started towards the exit. They collided with an Iraqi fire team. Jim went sideways, burying an elbow in the first man’s ear. The Iraqi soldier’s head smashed against the concrete wall. He collapsed like a broken doll.

Jerry brought his Browning Hi Power to bear. He double tapped the soldier he was hanging onto. The much-maligned 9mm round is extraordinarily effective when jammed against someone’s stomach. Jerry jerked the trigger twice. His attacker staggered and pitched backward, carrying Jerry into the next soldier.

Jim turned to his next target. He sent a back leg front kick straight to the groin. His target forgot about holding his rifle and concentrated on breathing. Jim latched onto the back of his head and drove his other knee straight into the Iraqi’s nose. A bloody explosion erupted as Jim’s second target tilted backwards.

Jerry was weakening quickly. His left hand clutched at the rifle of the final fire team member. The Iraqi was kicking violently to free himself from the two men on top of his legs. He never saw Jim’s boot reach out and shatter the base of his chin—lights out a fourth time.

Jim lifted Jerry bodily off the two Iraqi soldiers. “How we doing?”

“Never felt better,” he wheezed.

“Liar,” Jim hissed.

They started their run for the door. Before taking the last half stairway to the outside, Jim slid Jerry back to the floor. Sweat was streaming down Jerry’s face, and his lips seemed a bit blue. Jim pulled open Jerry’s combat blouse and pushed back the Kevlar vest. The puckered entry wound continued to leak and wheeze. “We’ve got to do something about this.”
Jerry nodded and smiled, “It ain’t pretty, Jim. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Jim cut apart the combat blouse into two bandages. Not the cleanest solution, but maybe enough to get them out. From his backpack, he pulled a roll of duct tape and wound his partner’s chest until the worst of the sucking sound was gone. They had lost their first aide kit sometime earlier.

“What have you got loaded in that thing?” He nodded to the Mossberg 590 12 gauge on the floor. It was a black, nasty looking weapon with a twenty-inch barrel, ghost ring sites, a pistol, and forend grips. The grips were specially angled to control the considerable recoil of full powered rounds.

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Jim snapped his attention back to Louis. “This time? There is no this time. I’m not leading more men into another ambush. I’ve been there, and done that. Louis, I took ten men in and came out with three. One of them will never walk again.”

“Yes. One of the three you brought was Jonas. He works for me now. I think he’s trying to be like you.” He raised his hands in compromise.

“Tell him there are better things to strive for than to be like me. What use is there to have a past that you can’t share with your wife and kids because they might think you’re a monster once they know.”

“Jim, you knew the risks. There aren’t any guarantees in this life. You lost some men. You got the job done.”

Getting the job done was Edwards’ mantra. Jim had always gotten the job done—it’s just difficult living with yourself after some of the jobs. “I don’t do work like that anymore, Louis. So why don’t you take whatever it is you’re pushing and get out of here. I’m sure the Beltway crowd you work for these days will figure something out.”

Louis chuckled for the first time. “The Beltway crowd I work for would have a hard time finding Florida on the map if it didn’t have a lot of rich contributors. This isn’t for the Beltway crowd. It’s for the country. We need you because you’ve done it before. We can’t mess up on this.”
Louis had always been quick to wave God and country or honor and duty. Of course, those were just words to Louis. They were more than words to Jim. Throughout his career in the nether world known as Spec War, or black ops, or whatever euphemism was current these days, he had attempted to maintain a balance and a code of honor. Men followed Jim because they believed in his ability to lead them through the hard parts. His ability to lead and his self-confidence in his ability to survive were intangible assets men followed into the hardest battles.

Louis was very good at sending men to die. The part about holding them in your arms as the life left their eyes was something reserved to people like Jim. “Get out of here.” He flipped the lock on the door and shoved it open. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“It’s Iraq, Jim,” he said quickly. “Something happened last night. I think it’s something real bad and I need you to go back to Iraq. I don’t have time to plan a proper penetration. I need a team leader who can think on his feet and improvise a strategy.”

Harper paused, a war seemed to rage across his features. Slowly he let the door shut. He closed his eyes, trying to forget Iraq—a magic word of sorts—the cradle of civilization where the Tigris and Euphrates ran together, and maybe the location of Eden. Rocks, sand, pain, and blood blistered his memory from a ground war that lasted a lot longer than one hundred hours recorded on television. Special Forces had been in country for over six months before Stormin’ Norman sent the tanks over the dirt berms. There were subsequent in country penetrations required to monitor the Iraqi madman, and the terrible, bitter loss.

“You hunted Scuds in the desert. You wrecked communication centers for the Republican Guard. You penetrated their computer systems. You’ve gone in and out three times since the Gulf War. We may need to get back into their computer systems again. You know them. You coded a backdoor so we could watch what they were doing. Well, they’re doing something again.”

Jim slowly shook his head. Louis certainly sanitized what he had done. Getting into Iraq’s Data Center had been easy. Getting back out had cost him a friend. It’s hard to visit a gravesite in the middle of the desert for someone who should have never been there.

“They received something last night. We think it’s a chemical or nuclear weapon.”

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Harper shrugged. “Maybe we should go a few rounds, Louis. Best two out of three. I promise not to break too many bones. Better yet, why don’t I deal with your two flunkies? I’m sure we’ll be able to get the blood out of the carpet—eventually.” He paused. “I want you out of here, Louis. I don’t ever want to see you again, and if I do, I’ll break something on you.”

“Jim, we do have laws against such behavior,” he chided.

“Laws never bothered you before, Louis. In fact, nothing moral, or right, or good, or pure, ever bothered you.” He spat the last out like bitter peanuts.

Louis nodded again. “We need you, Jim. We need what you, and only you, can give us. We need you.”

“The last time you needed me, a whole bunch of people got killed. Good people got killed for very bad reasons.” He walked around the parent wall to the door and flipped the lock shut. “What did you ever tell those mothers as to why their sons came home in body bags?”

Louis turned to face Jim. “We told them—”

“We!” snapped Jim. “There’s no we here, Louis. What did you tell them? Did you go to their homes and knock on their doors? Did you fold up a flag and hand it to a young wife with a little child? Did you give a medal to a heartbroken father with some letter written by our President? Did you do that Louis? Did you make the calls?”

A thought occurred to Louis. Maybe the truth would work with Harper. It was a rare concept for Louis Edwards; he would have to think about it before employing such a bold tactic. “No. I didn’t make those calls. A Marine Corp Major and a Chaplain made those calls. I did write the letters, and those boys did die for their country. They followed you, Jim, because they believed in you.”

Harper closed his eyes, not wishing to see those men. “They followed me for duty, honor and country. Nevertheless, somebody knew we were coming. Somebody told them where to find us. And they kept shooting.”

“You lived and a few others made it out. They lived because you brought them out, Jim,” he reminded. ”There were some who wanted to nominate you for the Medal of Honor. Of course, it was a black op and everything—big time presidential awards would be somewhat out of step for what never happened. You’re a hero.” He leaned back against the half wall. “Those boys you brought out alive, they’ll always remember you. And this time it’ll be different.”

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He pulled off his hand and elbow pads, tossing them towards the corner along with the cage mask. Harper never took his eyes off his target and examined his situation. The feral nature of his training kicked into overdrive as he started walking across the floor to the trio behind the parent wall.

Louis quit clapping and grinned. “Always a teacher. It’s good to see you haven’t lost your edge.”

“Really?” He shot a hard look at one of Edwards’s flunkeys.

Louis glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, I did hear about your encounter with Mister Smith and Mister Jones this morning. Caught them completely off guard.”

Jim had covered half the distance to the wall. He nodded. “Did they tell you what I’d do to them if they showed their ugly faces again? We don’t allow garbage in this school.”

Louis sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Perhaps it would be best if they waited outside.”

Jim nodded again. “Tell them to get lost, Louis—and while you’re at it—you can get lost with them. I don’t work for you anymore.”

Louis nodded to his men who walked backwards to the door. Jim Harper was not a small man. He carried very little body fat. His posture resembled a cat ready to strike; he projected total menace. “Yes, I suppose you might feel that way, Jimbo.”

Harper hated being called Jimbo. He stopped a few paces short of the wall. “What do you want?”

Louis clapped his hands together. “Always one to get right to the point aren’t you—no subtle moves—no finesse, just straight to the point. Well, it made you what you are.”

Jim folded his arms, waiting. The brown belt he had been fighting came out of the locker room. Louis said nothing and smiled. Jim looked behind him. “Have a nice week, Terry.”

“Thanks for working with me, Mister Harper.”

Jim smiled and waited until the kid left the through the front door. He turned back to Louis. “You never answered my question. Of course, that’s nothing new for you. What will it be this time—lies about North Korea or the perils of Red China? Maybe we need to find what’s going on in Bosnia. It’s obvious you folks haven’t got a clue these days.”

“Yes, well, they did warn me you might be less than receptive to a visit.” Louis suggested. “Maybe I could buy you lunch?”

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His opponent came with a double round kick, but Jim was no longer where he had been. The kicking leg dropped. Jim stepped in and back punched—not full power, but enough to remind his student not to make the same mistake again.

“Combinations—kick punch or punch kick,” he explained.

The brown belt nodded and turned towards him again. He tried a back fist and punch combination, but Jim slid sideways. He delivered a round kick to his middle and dropped a hammer fist inside the shoulders next to his ear. Again, the brown belt turned.

“Remember to fake next time.”

He came with a kicking blitz that looked more like a one bladed helicopter than a trained fighter. This time Jim blocked the kicks with his front hand. The brown belt made a common mistake of most young fighters. He was so intent on kicking high and fast that he forgot to cover his stomach. His rear hand was waving behind his hip in an effort to keep balance. Unfortunately, this opens up an enormous target called the body. Jim swung under the leg and struck with a double punch.

“Control your hands.”

The fighters danced for another twenty minutes. Jim did little more than counter or jam. Occasionally, when the opportunity was too great to pass up, he landed a sidekick on the brown belt’s hip. Sometimes he rolled left and sometimes right. A few times straight in with a hand blitz or a backhand ridge hand. The odd ax kick or turn sidekick. When finished, they stopped, bowed, and clasped hands thanking each other for a good fight.

A good fight usually meant a soaking wet T-shirt and sweaty hair as the cage masks came off. The front windows steamed up from the heated bodies. Jim popped the Velcro tabs holding his rib guard, and started walking towards the locker room at the end of the school.

The slow, ponderous clap from behind the half wall, where parents gather to watch Johnny and Suzy learn how to kick, caused him to turn. A man in his mid fifties stood with a topcoat slung over his arm. The faded blond mustache and bear-like paws belonged to Louis Edwards. The men on either side of him were the same two Jim had chased off earlier that day. His eyes narrowed and his pulse quickened. These people were not supposed to be here. This part of his life was over, and was never to follow him again!

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5


Roselle, Illinois
Saturday, November 15, 1997
1:30 P.M. CST

Karate schools are simple places. In the best ones, there are mirrors on one wall, handrails along the other walls, and a fairly good industrial grade carpet. The carpets usually have a different colored square in the middle. It defines a ring without the need for ropes and posts in the conventional sense of a gymnasium. This floor had a red center with a gray border, and it contained two fighters. Each was clad in workout pants and T-shirts. They looked more like aliens than people with their cage masks, rib guards, and hand pads flashing about.

For some, the best part of martial arts is the intricate forms. A form, or kata, is simply telling a story of a fight in classical stances and moves. Indeed, classical basics have their place in training and self-discipline, but for others, it is the chase and the fight that holds the allure. Most instructors will explain to new students: “This is a contact sport and you will get hit.” In the very next breath, they explain that the first rule in sparring is to not get hit.

So it was for Jim Harper. He had learned his forms, and worked on his classical basics, but fighting was the chance to test himself against another trained fighter. The most difficult challenge seemed to be against people he fought on a regular basis. They began to recognize the feints and fakes. They understood the tendencies to hook kick towards the head and sidekick towards the stomach. Good fighters made good friends who pointed out things to each other like steel sharpening steel.

Jim Harper was no novice to fighting. A fourth degree black belt represents at least ten years of training as a black belt, and probably another two or three years as an under belt. Today, he was working with an under belt, just as his trainers had worked with him. He was giving back to another generation what he had been given. He surveyed his opponent—a brown belt teenager. Teenage boys were fascinating adversaries. They had magnificent physical capabilities. They could kick and jump higher and faster than Jim could. But youth and speed was rarely a match for age and deviousness.

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* * *

“Plot a course for open water. Ahead slow.” He flipped off the monitor. “I’ll be in my cabin. Report when you have a damage assessment.”

He had his damage assessment and a casualty list. Tze Wong thought about praying, but who would listen? He had failed in his mission and in his command to safeguard his boat. He had seventeen dead sons and no bodies to return to grieving mothers. He had five severely injured men, and limited facilities to treat them. He had a ship with the handling characteristics of a pregnant whale and a maximum speed of seven knots. He had the American Navy with its aircraft carriers, destroyers, and attack submarines. He wondered when they would start hunting. He could fight, but he could not run.

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Wong turned away from the monitor showing the sail camera’s perspective. “Override elevator and close the hull.” He looked across the control room. The ready board had more red than green showing. “Prepare to dive.” He looked back at the sail monitor. The elevator was not closing. A sick feeling crept into his gut. “Elevator status?”

A moment passed before a weak voice answered, “Captain, elevator is jammed open.” It came from the intercom. Wong locked eyes with his Number One. Dead men at the bottom of the elevator were piling up, and those that remained had already been poisoned.

Wong turned to his Number One. “Manual override.”

The officer shook his head. “Manual override can only take place from inside the biohazard room.” He flipped the channel switch on the monitor. “The biohazard room, Captain. Those men are dead or close to it. There’s no one left to raise the elevator.”

They could not stay on the surface. The American Navy would find them in daylight and discover the terrible weapon they had been sent to deliver.

“Take her down.”

“Captain, we’ll have flooding in the hull.”

Wong shook his head. “Secure water tight doors. Rig for shallow dive.” There was another moment’s pause, but the age-old tradition that a captain is lord and master took hold.

“Yes, sir.” Number One turned and shouted the correct orders.

He turned back to the monitor. The deck canted slightly and the 404 began to disappear beneath the surface of the Gulf. Water rushed in from the open wound in the hull. Waves flung the inert bodies about the biohazard room before the camera failed, and the relentless sea took for its own those men still clinging to life.

That was when they discovered the periscope had been hit by one of the Iraqi bullets. Water began dripping from the eyepiece, and the delicate Japanese electronics did not react well to salt water. The pressure hull integrity was compromised. A vessel that could be tracked by American sonar now made more noise than ever due to the hole in the hull.

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Wong hit the biohazard klaxon. Instantly, special biohazard and watertight doors dropped inside the 404. A seal was created around the storage and elevator rooms, where the casks were stored. Anyone who remained in the biohazard area was a walking dead man. Once the biohazard doors dropped inside the 404, they could not be raised again until they returned to their homeport. Wong was trying to save the rest of his boat. He had no idea how many men he had just condemned.

Incredibly, the Iraqis started shooting. Three Iraqis opened up with automatic weapons—as if steel core bullets could cripple the death spewing from the cask. It was panic fire. The bullets went wide, walking across the deck and ricocheting into the men still standing. Eventually, something important came under fire as well. A submarine has a variety of sensors in the periscopes jutting like misshapen sticks from the sail. The main periscope was shattered by a lucky shot, and all crew on deck that night were cut down.

The Iraqi crane operator yelled for someone to grab an axe. With the clattering of automatic weapons, no one heard him. If there had been enough light, they would have recognized the atomization of the chemical weapon. It began to drift like a cloud over the open elevator shaft, slowly settling towards the deck and seeping into the bowels of the submarine. Fright overrode discipline, and no one noticed the coating of death drifting towards the Iraqi boat in the aftermath of the accident.

Realizing no one could hear him, the crane operator found an axe and chopped through the steel cables holding the ruptured cask. The lines snapped like angry snakes hoping for one more kill before sliding away from the Iraqi barge. The cask could not have landed more squarely on the elevator—still leaking its green death. The cables attached to the hook swung around in a vicious tangle, and the elevator platform continued to lower into the hull of the boat. What little chance the men inside the biohazard chamber had for life ended as the cables and cask snagged the machinery necessary to bring the elevator back up and close the hull.

The engines on the barge surged to life. One of the Iraqi sailors had dropped his AK-47. He was clawing at his air mask. Somehow, he ripped it off, gagging for air his lungs could no longer process. His lungs were disintegrating with each beat of his heart, and soon it, too, would be nothing more than ruptured tissue. His crewmates delivered the same fate they had rendered to the Chinese. Rifle bullets ripped into his body. The bullets’ impact shoved him over the side. Less than ten seconds had transpired since the cask first ruptured.