Page 93 of Over the Edge

“One and the same.”

“Will he shoot us if we scare him?”

“Nah. He’ll expect the ambush. It’s a thing we do every time we run into each other in the field.”

“Why is your brother in this part of the world?”

“Intelligence officer.”

She grinned broadly. “Well, then. Let’s go scare the hell out of him.”

Cal ledthe Reapers away on foot from the unmarked Indian Army convoy with one last wave of farewell for their contact. General Patel waved back and flashed him a thumb’s up.

Patel had been willing to give the Reapers passage into Pakistan in return for a small favor. He wanted them to take out a training facility for a local terrorist group. It had taken several phone calls back to the CIA overnight for Cal to get the mission greenlighted, but thankfully, it had been approved. The terrorists in question happened to be on several U.S. target lists, also.

The Reapers fell into their usual marching order and moved quickly and quietly in the gathering dusk. The target facility was hidden in the wild territory between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Zagistan.

The Reapers’ plan was to infiltrate the camp, set explosives to take out the main buildings, then back off and detonate the charges. He stared down at the quiet camp in the steep, roughly circular valley.

He glanced at the other Reapers and asked, “Is it just me, or does this feel too easy?”

Axe shrugged. “Maybe they think the location of this camp is so secret they don’t need to take security measures.”

Lily added, “Or maybe they practice what they preach and have hidden traps in the likely approaches to the camp. It’s what I would do in a place like this. If hostiles actually made it into the valley immediately above the camp, the people down there would be sitting ducks.”

“Let’s treat the approach to the camp as a clearing operation. Expect tripwires, landmines, and booby traps. I want Leo out front with a metal detector. Jojo, you do your magic; spot and disable any tripwires. Lily, you’re with him. Axe, scout us an unexpected approach to the camp that no one down there will anticipate. I’ll stay put and provide overwatch from here.”

His back was killing him, and he desperately needed to get off his feet and lie still for a while. As the others dispersed to their assignments, he unpacked his sniper kit and set up the bipod mount and rifle under a camouflage net. Since none of the other Reapers were here to see his pain, he used his sleeping bag as a belly cushion to drape his aching back over. Thank God he was a decent sniper and could stand off at long range and spare his back any more direct abuse.

His NOD’s lit up the hillside below in green and he watched his team’s progress as they painstakingly approached the camp. Activity in the facility diminished and then ceased as the separatists settled down for the night. Two guys inside the perimeter walked bored circles around the tight cluster of shacks.

It took until after midnight for the Reapers to return to his position. “Report,” he breathed.

Leo went first. “I found and disabled about two-dozen landmines. All the actual paths through the forest were mined. They use strips of cloth tied about ten feet up in the trees to mark the location of each. To my knowledge, I found every mine and removed these.” He dumped a handful of bolts and firing pins on the ground. “Nothing’s going boom in the woods that we don’t put there.”

Cal nodded. “Jojo and Lily?”

“Go Lily,” Jojo muttered.

“We found trip wires around the camp just inside the woods. They’re all removed, now. They hooked the wires to directional charges and a couple of claymores so old I don’t know if they would have exploded or not. At any rate, all the charges are neutralized…or ours. We collected all of their stuff.” She gestured toward a big duffle bag mostly full of explosives.

“Nice. Extra ordinance for us,” Cal commented.

“Axe?”

“Two possible paths. One involves a short technical climb down a vertical face about forty feet tall that’s close by here, or a longer hike around to the far side of the valley and a nasty gravel field to traverse. It would be a bitch to cross quietly or without falling on it.”

“Which is better?” Cal asked. Despite his Bubba persona, Axe was highly intelligent and a solid decision maker. Someday in the not too distant future, the guy would make a good platoon leader.

“I recommend the technical climb. Shadows obscure the cliff from view below, and it won’t be a bad climb down. Only issue could be a rapid egress. If we have to bug out under pursuit, we might need to go around the cliff. There’s heavy brush next to the cliff that we would have to crawl through, or we could run an even longer route around the cliff but on a relatively open path that would give our pursuers sight lines to shoot us in the backs.”

“Show me the routes in and out,” Cal ordered. He spent the next few minutes on his belly beside Axe, peering down through his shooter’s scope at the valley and memorizing the routes Axe lit up with his infrared pointer.

He ran through the next phase of the plan one last time with the group. Leo would go first and cut through the fence. Leo and Axe would enter when the guards were on the other side of the encampment and set up a watch while Jojo and Lily set charges at the base of each building. They would all convene at the hole in the fence and egress together, ideally without anyone inside being the wiser that the SEALs had made a little visit.

Cal looked around the tight circle of his operators. “Everyone clear on their job?”

Nods all around.

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