Court could tell Saunders had been around. He had an impossibly hard, weathered air about him. Even though this guy might have been labor, he was clearly a veteran employee of Klossner’s organization, and since he was British, this probably meant he could well have been former Royal Marines or SAS, Special Air Service, the UK’s elite special operations unit.
Court couldn’t help but wonder what had befallen the man to where he now found himself working as a mercenary, employed on a contract with a militia of cold-blooded murderers in Syria.
But he didn’t ask.
Saunders said, “All right, ’ere’s what’s gonna happen. Those blokes are with us.” He nodded to the four men in camo uniforms standing around the technical. They were all looking Court’s way now. “They are Desert Hawks Brigade, and they go where we go, just to make sure we get there.
“We’ve got a long drive ahead, all the way to our base just east of Damascus in Babbila. It’s three hundred klicks, and it’s not gonna be a joyride, so we’re gonna tag along with a convoy that’s forming up in Jableh, just fifteen minutes from here.”
Saunders led Court to the passenger side of the white Toyota, and Court opened the door. A set of body armor and an SA80 bullpup rifle lay on the floorboard.
“Is this for me?” Court asked as he sat down and put his feet on the gear.
Saunders climbed in on his side. “No, mate. That’s my kit. You’ll get your kit once we get down to Babbila, but we’ll find a surplus weapon and armor for you to take along on the convoy.”
Both men had to show their credos twice before leaving the airport, but once outside, the bald man stomped on the gas and raced to the south. Behind them the Desert Hawk technical followed, with one man standing in the bed holding on to the machine gun.
They rode in silence for a moment, but just when Court thought Saunders wasn’t going to do any talking, the man said, “Today’s your lucky day, Wade. That is, assuming you came down here to see some action. You and me are gonna get shot at this afternoon.”
“On the road to Damascus?”
As they made the turn off the highway that led towards Jableh, the Brit nodded. “It’s been a bloody shooting gallery for the past few weeks. I came up here in a convoy the day before yesterday on the same road we’ll be taking back. We got hit twice in the hills. Small arms, nothing coordinated. Still, two SAA blokes traveling with us were hit. One of the poor sods didn’t make it through the night. Shot in the bum, he was, which would be a laugh if it hadn’t clipped his femoral.” He looked over to Court. “And last week Daesh cut off the highway for ninety minutes. Killed seven civilians and two Syrian cops. FSA, Daesh, Al Nusra . . . that highway goes right through the middle of the territory of a lot of enemy groups.”
Court nodded, in a casual manner. “How are we supposed to know who is who?”
The question seemed to surprise Saunders, and he thought about it for a moment. “Sometimes you see blokes wavin’ flags, sometimes you see kit or clothing that tells you who you’re up against, but you usually only have time to ID the colors on the bodies after you kill the buggers. Does it matter? If some bloke is shooting at you, shoot back at them. We gotta hard job down here, Wade, but that part’s dead easy.”
“Right.” Except it wasn’t so easy for Court. Jabhat al Nusra was the local brand of Al Qaeda, and Daesh was ISIS. He’d pour lead at either of those groups if he ran into them, no questions asked. But FSA was the Free Syrian Army. While it was a loose coalition made up of a lot of different disparate elements, in theory, at least, they were the good guys in this fight. Court, on the other hand, was most assuredly working on the side of the villains down here. Would he really open fire on an FSA unit attacking the Russian and Syrian regime forces?
He told himself all he could do was hope he didn’t come into contact with FSA fighters, and sort out what he would do if the time came.
As they drove along in silence, Court realized Saunders wasn’t going through the typical security contractor process of asking who he knew and where he’d been. It was commonly referred to in the industry as “butt sniffing,” a way of sizing up others in the field to establish one another’s bona fides. Court had answers ready if Saunders asked, and he’d expected a grilling. “Wade” was a pseudonym, but Court was here in place of a real man, with a real background Court had studied on the flight from Munich to Beirut.
But Saunders hadn’t asked a thing about his past or his experience.
Court appreciated the silence, but on top of this it only made him more certain of his assumption that the guys he’d come into contact with down here would be cut from a different cloth than the private military contractors he’d worked around in the past. These men were straight-up mercs, and they were not here for the camaraderie or any belief in the righteousness of their mission.
* * *
? ? ?
They arrived at a small Syrian Arab Army base just after one. Both men climbed out of the pickup, headed into a guard shack, and handed over their embossed KWA badges and travel papers. Still, they were frisked for explosive vests and the pickup was checked over thoroughly for bombs.
Back in the truck they waited for the Desert Hawks traveling behind them to make it through security, and then they all drove to a row of low buildings within sight of the ocean to the west. A group of four light-duty military trucks of various makes and models sat single file in a lot out front. Court saw two trucks with Russian military markings, and two older and larger trucks with the markings of the Syrian Arab Army.
Saunders said, “This ’ere’s our convoy. We don’t leave till thirteen twenty, so we’ve got a little time to find you a weapon.”
Court followed Saunders into a warehouse, where the British contractor spoke with some Syrian Arab Army soldiers. After yet another show of badges and some signing of some forms Court couldn’t read, a squeaky padlock was removed from a squeaky door and they were let into a room full of weaponry: AKs stacked on tables and shelves, along with ammunition, cases of big green helmets, and stacks of steel body armor in chest rigs.
Court could see dust hanging in the air; the smell of gunpowder and gun oil was thick in Court’s nostrils.
The American said, “Let me guess. You want me to take one of these pieces of shit.”
“Like I said, you’ll get a proper weapon when we get down to our base, but we want you ready for today’s run. You can borrow what you need here for the drive down. This is what they hand out to the civilian regime-backed militias.”
The equipment was decidedly low tech, but Court had trained on, and implemented in the field, weapons of all types and quality.
He pulled on a heavy olive-drab vest that held armor plates, and then he stepped over to choose a rifle.
If given any choice for a weapon to take on a mission such as today, he would have chosen an HK416 A6 rifle with an eleven-inch barrel and a Gemtech suppressor and a second, twenty-inch barrel that he could exchange with the eleven-inch if he found himself pinned down by shooters at long range, along with a holographic weapons sight and a quick-detach three-power scope. His rifle would have a laser acquisition device, a high-lumen flashlight with a pressure switch, a six-position adjustable stock with an adjustable cheek weld, and a horizontal forward grip.
Yeah, that would have been his dream choice for a vehicle operation through a high-threat area.
But this grungy and small armory had probably never seen anything like that.
Instead he pulled a worn-out and worm-holed wooden-stocked AK-47 with simple iron sights off a rack. It was virtually identical to the model invented by wounded tank crewman Mikhail Kalashnikov back in 1947, but Court knew AKs, and he could use the weapon with deadly effect out to five hundred yards.
He checked its function and deemed it in proper working order. As he adjusted the weapon’s old nylon sling for his height and preference, Saunders loaded a big canvas satchel with rusty thirty-round magazines. He handed the satchel over to the man he knew as Wade, who immediately put the heavy sack down on a table and began counting the magazines.
“Fourteen mags. Four hundred twenty rounds,” Court said. “That’s more than I’ve ever carried in my life.” Even though he was in character, it was the truth, at least when carrying a weapon that fired a big 7.62 round like the Kalashnikov. He picked up the magazines one at a time, loaded them into his chest rig, locked one into his new rifle, and racked a round into the chamber. He flipped the safety up, then pushed the five remaining magazines away on the table. “I’ll go with two hundred seventy, just in case we get attacked by Godzilla.”
The Brit looked at him like he was an idiot. “Right. So you’ve made the Latakia-Damascus run before, have you now?”
“You know I have not.”