Z: The Final Countdown Read online

  Thus it had been decided that the U.S. and South Africa, along with other African nations, were going to go into Angola and defeat the man whose forces the U.S. and South African governments had supported for so many years. Typical, Riley had thought, reading the Angolan country study in preparation for this assignment.

  Riley kicked back in his chair as Waller continued, giving Conner information Riley knew she already had in her laptop computer. He had to admit it felt good to be back around other Special Forces types after the past several years in the civilian world.

  Riley perked up as Waller started outlining the schedule they’d prepared for Conner. There were numerous briefings for her with various elements of the SFOB staff and visits to the various AOBs planned. Riley watched as she raised a hand, interrupting the S-3.

  “Yes?” Waller paused.

  “I’d like to work with an ODA.”

  “Excuse me?” Waller’s gaze shifted to his commander.

  Colonel Burrows turned in his seat. “We have a complete schedule worked out for you, Ms. Young. You’ll get a much better idea of what’s going on at the SFOB and—”

  “I’d like to accompany an ODA on their mission,” Conner repeated.

  Riley leaned forward in his seat. He’d coached Conner on this part and he was interested to see how it played out. They’d already set the ground work at the Pentagon the previous week. One thing Riley had learned the past year—Conner represented SNN, the Satellite News Network, and as such she was a very powerful person. The media was going to be an essential part of this mission as the administration tried to keep the voting populace behind the plan. Persons of power in Washington and around the Beltway understood that. He hoped Burrows would also.

  “Going out with a team would be too dangerous,” Burrows said. “This is a live combat zone and our rules of conduct—”

  “That’s the story I was sent to do,” Conner interrupted. “There will be other people from my organization in Luanda to cover whatever happens at the SFOB. I’m here now,” Conner continued, “for the purpose of getting down on the ground and showing the American people what is really going on.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t take the risk of allowing you—”

  Conner cut in again, probably the only time the group commander had been interrupted in his own conference room. “I’m afraid, Colonel, that this really isn’t a matter that is open for debate. I appreciate your concerns, but I’ve already discussed this matter at length with quite a few people in—what do you call it—your chain of command?” She graced Burrows with a bright smile as he nodded. “Anyway, your chain of command thinks it’s an excellent idea. General Long was most enthusiastic.”

  That was a bit of an overstatement, Riley knew. He’d been there in Long’s office with Conner when the phone call from the secretary of defense had come in, ordering Long—commander of U.S. Special Operations—to allow Conner Young of SNN free rein on this assignment. The Department of Defense had a long history of being burned by the media, and many of the wounds were self-inflicted. Obviously, the new administration wanted to change history. Long had grimaced and accepted the inevitable, as Burrows was going to have to do. If you can’t beat them, join them, seemed to be the unhappy new assessment of the Pentagon regarding the media.

  Burrows turned to Captain Kanalo. “Is this correct?”

  Kanalo was not a happy man, to be looking down the double barrel of a full colonel’s glare. “Uh, yes, sir. She has complete authorization from the Pentagon, sir.”

  “But, Ms. Young, you don’t seem to understand,” Burrows said, trying to change his tactics. “These teams will be going out into the bush. They’ll be going in fast and hard and—”

  “Mr. Riley,” Conner cut in again, turning her head toward the rear of the room, “has fully briefed me on the type of operations that will be conducted. He has had fifteen years of active duty service in the Special Forces.”

  Riley sat up a bit straighter in his chair as every eye in the room fixed on him, as if he were to blame for this unexpected change of events. Now he was glad he wasn’t wearing a uniform.

  “Mr. Riley and I spent the last three days down at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk getting familiarized with peacekeeping operations and media-military interface,” Conner continued. “Everything has been arranged, Colonel.”

  “But—” Burrows sputtered.

  Conner kept the initiative. “I understand the teams are in isolation and will be briefing back this week. I would like to get linked up with one of your teams and sit in on their briefback.”

  “The briefback?” Burrows said, surprised at her use of Special Forces terminology.

  Conner smiled. “Yes. The briefback.”

  “I have to reiterate,” Burrows said, “that the teams will be going into very dangerous areas. We can’t be held responsible for your safety.”

  “You will not be responsible,” Conner sweetly replied. “This has already been cleared by SNN’s legal people with the judge advocate general’s office. Also, to help ensure my safety, Mr. Riley is with me.”

  Burrows looked at Riley. “What was your MOS?”

  “I was a one-eight-C before I went warrant,” Riley replied, indicating that he’d been a Special Forces engineer while an enlisted man, then had received a warrant officer commission.

  “What units have you served with?”

  “First, Fifth, and Seventh groups. Ranging in duties from junior demo sergeant through team leader. My last tour was with the Special Warfare Center assigned to the officer committee of the Q-course.”

  Burrows frowned. “Your name sounds familiar. Have we served together?”

  “Not to my knowledge, sir.”

  Burrows took a deep breath. “Well, as long as you understand that we can’t be held responsible for your safety and it’s been cleared.” He turned to Waller. “Which team’s briefing back soon?”

  Waller grabbed a file folder and flipped it open. “We’ve got—” He paused as he scanned the page. “Uh, I would suggest ODA three one four, sir. You’re taking their briefback at eighteen hundred hours today.”

  Conner stood. “I won’t take up any more of your time, then, Colonel. I’ll see you at the isolation facility at eighteen hundred hours. Please make sure to put myself and Mr. Riley on the team’s access roster.”

  She shook hands with Colonel Burrows and walked out the door, Riley on her heels. They left the group headquarters. Mike Seeger, Conner’s cameraman, was waiting outside, his rig lightly tucked under one arm. He was a huge man, well over six and a half feet tall with a bushy gray beard. He appeared to be the classic Harley biker, which was misleading because outside of his job he was a minister in his local church outside Atlanta and one of the gentlest men Riley had ever met.

  “Are we in?” Seeger asked.

  “We’re in,” Conner said as she led the way to their van.

  “Burrows will call General Long,” Riley warned.

  “And Long will tell him that we’re to go with the team,” Conner said. “I called Long’s bluff and we played his little war game in Louisiana for three days,” she added. “Now he has to back up his end of the deal.”

  “I know that,” Riley said. He paused and lightly touched Conner’s arm. “I know you had to do that to get in with the team, but remember something. Burrows runs the SFOB and when we go in on the ground with the team, the SFOB is heaven and Burrows is god. He controls the most important thing to every team.” Riley could tell that Seeger was annoyed with his religious analogy.

  “What’s that?” Conner asked.

  “Exfiltration,” Riley said. “We go in with a one-way ticket and Burrows and the SFOB control the ticket out, so don’t get too far on his bad side.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Conner said.

  “This colonel is just a man,” Seeger said, putting his camera into the rear of the van. “I put my trust in no man. My trust is in God.” He walked around to the other side to get in
the driver’s door.

  “I don’t know if God spends too much time on the ground in Angola,” Riley muttered.

  “What was that?” Conner asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Vicinity Luia, Angola, 11 June

  “I can’t see a fucking thing in this jungle,” a man with an Australian accent whispered in the dark.

  Quinn tapped his top kick, Trent, who scooted back and edged down the line of prone men, searching for the whisperer. Through night vision goggles, Quinn continued to scan the forty-foot section of trail that was directly in front of his position.

  A grunt and a few hisses told Quinn that his senior noncommissioned officer had found the source of the errant whisper and there would be no more violations of noise-and-light discipline. His men didn’t need to see a damn thing; he had the goggles and he could do all the seeing necessary. He knew the exact placement of every one of his eighteen men and their weapons. All they had to do was fire between the left and right limits of the aiming stakes they’d carefully pounded into the ground during daylight and the kill zone would become just that to anyone unfortunate to wander into it.

  Quinn had chosen this spot because it was where the trail ran straight for a while, with a steep slope on the far side. Anyone on the trail would be caught between the weapons of Quinn’s men and the slope, which was carefully laced with some of Trent’s “specials,” as Quinn liked to call them.

  Trent and Quinn had served together for four years now. A very long time in the life of a mercenary, in fact well past the effective life expectancy of those who stayed in the job. There were four or five men in the group that Quinn felt comfortable working with. The rest, well, they were what one got on the international market. Men searching for quick money and life on the edge. The problem was that most of the men wanted the first and weren’t too keen on the second. Nine of the sixteen men were brand new to Quinn, picked up just before they’d crossed the border from Zaire into Angola two weeks ago.

  They were here because the money was here, Quinn knew. He himself had earned enough here in Angola over the past three years to easily retire in comfortable style. It was such a perfect scam that even Quinn, hardened as he was by combat in half a dozen spots around the world, had to wonder sometimes.

  He got paid by the Angolan government to kill rebels, and then he got paid again by a private party to collect what those he killed carried. It all added up to quite a bit of change.

  But the money didn’t matter much to Quinn. Even if he wanted to retire, he wasn’t sure where he could go. Not many countries hung out welcome mats for mercenaries. He’d always planned on South Africa, but that was out now with the recent changes. Maybe somewhere in South America if one could stay away from the cocaine cowboys. Namibia was a possibility if rumors he had heard about the future of that country came to fruition.

  There was no way he could ever go back to Canada. Dear sweet Canada, where the fucks in their fancy uniforms had been so readily done with him after what had happened in Somalia. He’d served, and served well, in the best that mother Canada had to offer: the Canadian Airborne Regiment. The reward for being the best was a paltry check and a kick out the door. He’d heard that they’d finally done away with the Regiment itself because of the Somalia scandal, and that was the last straw. He’d never go back there. Not that he would be allowed back in.

  Quinn interrupted his train of thought when he heard someone moving behind him. He assumed it was Trent, and that was confirmed when the NCO tapped him on the shoulder. “Andrews has a message on the SATCOM. He’s copying it down.”

  Quinn twisted his head and looked over his shoulder into the thick jungle. Andrews was back there with satellite radio, their lifeline out of this hellhole. What did those nitwits want now?

  No time for it, Quinn realized as he heard noise coming from down the trail. He returned his attention to the matter at hand. There was the sound of loose equipment jangling on men as they walked; even some conversations were carried through the night air.

  Bastards must think they’re damn safe, Quinn thought. And they should be. This location was over two hundred kilometers inside rebel territory. And you could be sure the Angolan government forces, the MPLA, wouldn’t be out here in the daytime, never mind the dark.

  The point man came into view. Jesus, Quinn swore to himself, the fool was using a flashlight to see the trail. And not even one with a red lens! It looked like a spotlight in the goggles. They must be in a real hurry, he thought. Quinn adjusted the control and looked for the rear of the column.

  There were thirteen men and two women in this group. There were more shovels than weapons scattered among them. They were also carrying two of their number on makeshift litters—ponchos tied between two poles. They were excited about the closeness of the border with Zaire and getting out with their load of contraband, and they must be in a rush because of the two wounded, Quinn thought.

  Quinn pulled off the goggles, letting them dangle around his neck on a cord. He fitted the stock of the Sterling submachine gun into his shoulder. His finger slid over the trigger. With his other hand he picked up a plastic clacker.

  The man with the flashlight was just opposite when Quinn pushed down on the handle of the clacker. A claymore mine seared the night sky, sending thousands of steel ball bearings into the marching party at waist level.

  As the screams of those not killed by the initial blast rang out, Quinn fired, his 9mm bullets joining those of his men. The rest of the marchers melted under the barrage. A few survivors followed their instincts instead of their training and ran away from the roar of the bullets, scrambling up the far slope, tearing their fingernails in the dirt in desperation.

  “Now,” Quinn said.

  It wasn’t necessary. Trent knew his job. In the strobe-like flashes from the muzzles of the weapons, the people fleeing were visible. Trent pressed the button on a small radio control he held in his hand and the hillside spouted flames. A series of claymore mines Trent had woven into the far slope at just the right angle to kill those fleeing and not hit the ambushers on the far side of the kill zone wiped out the few survivors.

  “Let’s police this up!” Quinn called as he stood. He stepped among the bodies and pulled off his bush hat, placing it, top down, on one of the few parts of the trail that wasn’t covered with blood and viscera. “All the rocks in the hat.”

  He pulled up his night vision goggles and watched. Trent took up position at the other end of the kill zone. Quinn’s mercenaries descended like ghouls upon the bodies, hands searching. A shot rang out as one of the bodies turned out to be not quite dead.

  Quinn pulled a Polaroid camera out of his butt-pack and popped up the flash. He took several long-range pictures of the bodies. Then he took close-ups of faces and made sure he had each body accounted for, stowing the pictures in his breast pocket as the men continued their search. In the brief light of the flash, various black faces appeared, frozen in the moment of their death. Some of the faces were no longer recognizable as human, the mines and bullets having done their job. Quinn was satisfied with getting an upper torso and head shot of those.

  As he got to the one of the bodies that had been carried, he saw a female’s face caught in the viewfinder, the eyes staring straight up, the lips half parted. He could tell she had been beautiful, but she was covered in blood now and there was a rash across her face—broad red welts. Quinn walked over to the other makeshift stretcher. The body in there was in even worse shape. There was much more blood than the round through the forehead would have brought forth. The same red welts across the face. Quinn reached down and ripped open the man’s shirt. His body was covered with them. Quinn snapped a picture, then slowly put the final picture in his pocket.

  “Let’s get a move on!” Quinn yelled out, moving back to his hat. After five minutes, the men began to file by, dropping their find into Quinn’s hat until it bulged with raw, uncut diamonds.

  Chapter 4

  Fort Bragg, North Caro
lina, 11 June

  “ODA three one four’s mission is to deploy to AOB Cacolo in the country of Angola and perform reconnaissance missions throughout Operational Area Parson at the discretion of the SFOB Commander.”

  Riley stood in the back of the briefing room, watching and listening. The officer who had just spoken, Captain Dorrick, was the detachment commander of 314. The rest of the team was seated in a line along the left side of the room. Colonel Burrows and his staff, along with Conner Young, were seated in a cluster of chairs in the center faced forward. Behind the captain were maps showing Angola.

  Riley checked the right side of the room and smiled. The team’s code names and other essential pieces of information were listed on easel paper taped to the wall—all within view of the team so that, when they were questioned, a memory lapse could be covered up with a quick read of the opposite wall. Riley had always had his team do that trick, and he was glad to see that it was still alive and well.

  “The politico-military implications of this mission,” Captain Dorrick continued, “are immense.”

  Riley glanced down at the mission briefback format he had xeroxed out of the new FM31-20, Doctrine for Special Forces Operations. This part of the briefback was new, and it was one that Riley had never heard briefed before.

  Dorrick began explaining why the implications were immense. “The United Nations has issued a mandate in conjunction with the Organization of African States, OAS, regarding Angola. Our mission is in support of enforcing that mandate. The political and military goals are fivefold.

  “First, to end the civil war that has raged off and on in that country since 1975. Second, to prevent intertribal and ethnic warfare from breaking out upon the cessation of the civil war. Third, to end famine and introduce new agricultural techniques to the country to make it, at an absolute minimum, self-supporting in food. Fourth, to consolidate the natural resources of the country for the benefit of the majority of the people. Fifth, to improve the health and educational infrastructure of the country.