Triangle Of Terror. Don Pendleton

wrinkle to the mission. It was just the kind of horror—and hassle—he didn’t need. This wasn’t Task Force Talon of Afghanistan infamy, where he had served under Colonel Braden, and soldiers turned a blind eye, or else. Out here, there were new grunts on the block who might go over his head, flap tongues to starred brass who would land his neck on a chopping block. At that moment, he wrestled with any number of conflicting loyalties as to whom to report to, aware his next move could well lead to a court-martial. But he knew what had to be done.

      And he knew he would do it, if he wanted to survive, if he didn’t want his own atrocities brought to light.

      Listening to the whapping blades of his Apache helicopter, the two Hueys framing the stone hovel in a white halo from a hundred yards south over his shoulder, feeling the swirling grit sting his neck, he silently urged Task Force Iron Hawk’s medic to emerge with a final report. Feeling the ghosts of fifteen dead Iraqis, he scoured the black walls of the wadi, M-16/M-203 combo ready to cut loose at any rebel who might have fled the firefight some eight hours earlier.

      It had been a fluke, stumbling across the building while roving the skies in search of armed runners. Going through the door, ready to shoot, they found the two victims, stricken and stretched out on prayer rugs from God only knew what, though he had his suspicions. A man and a woman, husband and wife, it turned out. His interpreter, donning a HAZMAT suit, had pried from them a very unnerving tale.

      And confirmed what he’d been hearing during the briefs the past several months.

      He told himself he really had no business this far north, edged up against the Turk border, this neck of rugged mountain country. Kurd-controlled, there was enough ethnic hatred wandering around to mow down any resistance rabble who escaped their steel talons. But his orders didn’t always come direct from Central Command.

      The problem was how to avoid reporting what he’d found.

      He saw the spacesuit emerge through the doorway, Captain Medley removing his helmet. With no way to read the grim expression, Hawke waited until the man was on top of him.

      Medley appeared to gather his thoughts on how to proceed. “The good news is it doesn’t appear to be a bio agent, but I’d like to draw blood, take tissue samples for further examination,” he said.

      “No.”

      Medley looked aghast. “But, sir—”

      “What’s killing them?” Hawke asked.

      “Killed.”

      Hawke groaned to himself, more an act than anything else, hoping Medley read the noise as disappointment at the lack of information. In this case ignorance was bliss.

      Medley continued. “The spasms, the manner in which their limbs locked up, asphyxiation, all classic symptoms of exposure to a nerve agent.”

      “Sergeant Ellis informed me they had just returned from across the Turk border, delivering some cargo they could or would not specify.”

      “My guess is they handled the agent, a seal broke on a drum, or whatever they were shipping it in. They must have been exposed to high doses given their symptoms.”

      “Are you telling me this wasn’t their first trip?”

      “That, running the nerve agent in faulty containers, or there’s a good chance they overturned the vehicle, dumped the cargo, got splashed in the process. For a nerve agent, inhalation or direct skin contact will do the deed.”

      “If your scenario is correct, they should have dropped right then, across the border.”

      “Not necessarily. It would depend on how much of the agent they were exposed to. Either way, they’re long past any atropine injection now.”

      Hawke looked his medic dead in the eye. “You are to forget what you saw here. Do you copy, Captain?” He could see Medley didn’t like it, was poised to argue, but seemed to think better of it.

      “Yes, sir,” the medic said with reluctance.

      “Hop on board then,” he told Medley, then whistled at the four shadows hunkered in the wadi, rotating his raised fist.

      So it was true, he thought, holding his ground, waiting while his troops hustled past him to board the Hueys. Whatever had begun in Afghanistan, all the talk he’d heard from CIA spooks dancing with the devil, Braden…

      Marching for his grounded Hueys, forging into the whirlwind, Hawke raised his Apache crew and ordered, “Give me one right down Broadway, mister.”

      The order copied, he gathered speed. The Hellfire missile flamed away from its pod. As the thunder pealed behind, and suspecting how the sins of the past were about to create hell on earth, he thought, God help us. God help us all.

      4

      “Calm down.”

      “That’s a Presidential Directive, in case you’ve never seen one, Colonel. And in case you haven’t guessed yet, we’ve got an official human shitstorm headed this way. I, for one, can say I don’t much care for the tone from the Oval Office. It damn near hints at treason.”

      Examining the faxed letter with the presidential seal in the Humvee’s headlights, Colonel Braden glanced at General Compton, bared his teeth at the beefy tub in jungle fatigues, then returned to reading their orders.

      “Someone talked, Colonel, maybe even someone we thought we could trust. Which, if true, means they know what you’ve been doing down here!”

      The more Compton whined, worried, no doubt, about saving his own fatass, the more Braden felt the blood pressure pulsing in his eardrums. He imagined he heard the HK-33 assault rifle slung over his shoulder calling the general’s name. From behind him he heard the splash, witnessed the sight of al-Tikriti’s body, wrapped in a plastic shroud, being dumped in the river by two of Task Force Talon’s finest. It interrupted the man’s bleating for all of two seconds.

      “Maybe you want to tell me how we’re going to account for two murdered detainees. Maybe you’ve got a makeup kit I don’t know about that we can use to patch up and mask four more who look like they’ve gone a few rounds with—”

      “Calm down!” Braden shouted.

      Braden’s hands shook with simmering rage. He scanned the next two lines, but Compton was nearly barking in his ear.

      “You listening to me? We are looking at a fat whopping mess that no amount of sterilizing will sanitize unless we burn the whole damn camp down and build it back from scratch. I have cargo back at camp with no manifests, no serial numbers. I have the Brazilian making noise to return to Brasilia and blow the whistle unless he sees—”

      “Calm the fuck down! Let me think here!” Braden was seething.

      Whether it was the feral look he turned on Compton or that they both knew he was actually the one on the hot seat with blood on his hands, the General shut his mouth. Braden turned his back to Compton, took a moment to survey the walls of lush vegetation flanking the dirt trail, and composed his thoughts. It was one of the last stretches of jungle in this remote outpost, a few miles east of Camp Triangle, where they could dispose of their mistakes. There was a time, he believed, when caimans and ferocious little fish with razor-teeth would have devoured decomposing flesh.

      The problem was the new massive hydroelectric generating plant. He hoped the bodies didn’t bob to the surface if they made it to the dam’s wall. That would prove another, perhaps fatal mistake, since it appeared Washington thought it smelled the putrefaction. Listening to the caw and screech of wild birds in the distant veil of black, feeling his nerves soothed by the chitter of insects, he bobbed his head and turned to face Compton.

      Braden wadded up the Presidential Directive and tossed it into the brush. “Okay, General, here’s what we do before we greet with open arms and winning smiles this asshole colonel from Washington—”