KUWAIT
CRAAACK! THE BIG SNIPER rifle kicked back hard against Kyle Swanson’s shoulder and 800 meters away the.50 caliber bullet gouged out a hole in the paper target. The three other Marines with him also were running rounds downrange into the great nowhere in a mad fusillade designed to keep their muscle memory sharp.
The four of them had taken a Humvee from the special ops camp, loaded it with ammo and an assortment of weapons, from light machine guns to pistols, and ventured into the heat wearing full body armor. They would spend some time making sure every tool they had, including themselves, was in top working order. Training never stopped, no matter how good you were.
Staff Sergeant Darren Rawls, a tall African-American from Alabama, ripped through a thirty-round magazine with an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, the faithful 5.56 mm air-cooled, belt-fed, gas-operated SAW. Sergeant Travis Stone, a sweaty bandana covering his stubble of red hair, chunked away with an XM203 40 mm grenade launcher, blowing up fountains of dirt. Staff Sergeant Joe Tipp was testing a small-grip SIG SAUER P250 combat pistol that he had liberated from a Navy SEAL in a poker game. It sounded like a small war.
After an hour, they took a break and retreated to a rectangle of shade provided by the Humvee, where they shucked the heavy helmets and body armor, drank bottles of water, and sat on the dirt. The land all around was flat and hot and brown, nothing to see all the way to the horizon.
Rawls studied it, squinting into the bright sun, then raised his eyes to the crystalline blue sky. “Space ain’t the final frontier. This is.”
Joe Tipp raised his nose and sniffed the air. “Anybody else smell another Rawls scam?”
“Fuck you. Just listen. Space tourism! Rich assholes are paying millions of dollars to go into space and even want to go to the moon. Now what’s up on the moon?” He pointed to the bleak horizon of Kuwait. “Same shit as out there.”
Kyle Swanson finished his second bottle of water, feeling the cool wetness all the way down to his toes. “Brilliant analysis. You got a point?”
“We’ve got all those freako tourists who show up at the edges of a war, thrill-seeking motherfuckers who think combat is some kind of paint-ball game. So how about we form a little company, sell escorted trips out here. Get the muthas all armored up, ride around in civilian Humvees, let ‘em pop off some rounds like we’ve been doing. Like a safari in Africa.”
Travis Stone stopped eating a pouch of peaches and tossed the sticky plastic spoon at his buddy. “Again with the money schemes. Remember the reality TV series for Elvis impersonators? The golden treasure of the Spanish kings in Memphis? Drill an oil well in Harlem? At least the soft porn movie idea had naked women involved.”
“Those movie people lied to me! I wrote a damned good script!” Rawls shrugged away the criticism.
“And lost your investment. Again.”
“You never want to expand your mind, try nothin’ new. When I put in my twenty years with the Corps and get that retirement paycheck, I’m gonna invest, man. We gotta think ahead if we want to be rich in our old age.”
If they only knew, thought Kyle. These guys will never have to worry about a job if I go into Excalibur.
Joe Tipp spoke. “You keep on thinking, Darren. I kind of liked the porn idea. Just watching some of the interviews with the actresses was worth my thousand bucks.”
Darren Rawls started cleaning his SAW, fighting the ever-present talcum of desert dust that could foul a barrel or jam a magazine. “So I’ll do another script. This time, the four of us will do the whole thing. How difficult can it be? Joe does the camera, Trav does the sound, Kyle directs, and I’ll be the star! You white rabbits don’t have the qualifications that I do for a good sex show. Sell it on cable or on the Internet.”
Travis looked over. “What about the combat safaris?”
Rawls gently stroked the automatic weapon with a soft, oily cloth. “No hurry. That can come next, after the movie. The Middle East ain’t goin’ nowhere. And writin’ is hard, so I can’t even think about it now. Anyway, got something else on my mind.”
“What?” Joe Tipp asked.
Rawls smiled broadly. “Killin’ terrorists.”
WHEN THE BANTER AND insults quieted and they were reluctant to leave the square of shade, Kyle spoke: “Okay, guys, listen up. I hauled your asses out here for more than just some shooting. Needed to get away from curious ears back at the base.”
The other three locked their eyes on Swanson. He had been back for less than two days and had been withdrawn and curt with everyone except Major Summers.
“I need to bring you up to speed on the situation next door, over in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “Top secret.”
“We see it on TV every night and it’s all over the Internet,” said Joe Tipp. “What else is there, really?”
“A lot. It’s pretty complicated,” Swanson said, stretching out his legs and closing his eyes, reciting what Sybelle had briefed him on last night. “You probably know that the president and the new Saudi king are friends, but they really had it out during a meeting in the Oval Office a few days ago, when Abdullah was still the ambassador in Washington. He told President Tracy that any American movement to protect the oil fields would be considered an unwarranted military intervention by a foreign power and would be resisted.”
Travis Stone doodled in the dirt with an empty brass cartridge case. “You think there’s a chance that our good buddies might actually fight us?”
Swanson’s eyes blinked open and he stared at them, each in turn. “That was the implied threat, but nobody wants it to go that far. Then things happened fast and, bingo, next thing we know, Ambassador Abdullah becomes King Abdullah.”
Darren Rawls stood, brushed off his pants, and stretched his six-foot-two frame. Loose and lanky with a shrewd mind, Rawls had been a star high school basketball player and a better student in Alabama. When his brother was killed in Iraq, Rawls walked away from the college scholarships and joined the Marines. He was tough, an excellent sniper, and a voracious reader who carefully sheltered his intelligence beneath a homeboy speech pattern. “That was kinda weird. The crown normally would go to another old relative. It’s a family thing.”
“Way our intel people piece it together, installing Abdullah in the position represented an internal, bloodless coup. With both the king and the crown prince dead, there was no clear line of succession. The country was, and still is, on the verge of falling apart. So the real movers and shakers in Saudi Arabia apparently got together, flexed their muscles, and chose the toughest, smartest member of the bloodline to take the reins. Abdullah was jumped over a whole generation but the monarchy remains absolute.”
Swanson paused to drink some water, then continued, “Let me get to the point. I met this Abdullah dude in England.”
“You know the new king?” Stone was surprised.
Swanson nodded. “He was wounded during the terrorist attack in Scotland and was a patient at the clinic where Sybelle and I took out those tangos.”
“Sweet,” said Travis Stone.
Swanson’s eyes blinked open and he stared at them, each in turn. “Not so fast, Trav. Just as the rebellion cooked off, we found out that the Saudis had five nuclear missiles. Only bargain basement nukes, but the threat is huge.”
Rawls said, “Ghetto nukes? Civil war. Oil. Terrorism. Can this get any better?”
Swanson peered up at him. “Sure. One of their missiles has gone missing.”
Rawls groaned. “You’re shitting me.”
Swanson smiled. “When King Abdullah learned about that, he did a flip-flop on refusing all American help. He wants to turn the remaining four missiles over to the United States and asked the White House specifically to name me as the U.S. liaison during the handover. Like I say, he knows me.”
“So what’s our mission?” Travis Hughes asked.
“I leave for Riyadh tonight to meet with King Abdullah and finish setting up the transfers. You guys will be in charge of removing the four missiles that are still scattered around the country. You each will command a plane that will fly in to do the pickups, personally take charge of the warheads, and stay with them until they can be safely stored on a ship. A platoon of MEUSOC Marines will provide overall security. Your only concern will be the nukes. Sybelle will oversee things from here. You report only to her. This is a Trident show all the way.”
Tipp asked, “Uh, what about that fifth one?”
Kyle Swanson gave them his special, meaningless smile. “Not to worry about that one. I snatched it while I was visiting over in Khobz and it’s already aboard a navy carrier.”