Dead Zero by Stephen Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

the ignition wiring, probed it with his knife blade, and in a bit it had stirred to life; he let it idle, peeped up to make sure no one in the guard post had noticed and that no drunken, high Dutchie was comingto check. He was momentarily secure.
    He looked to the radio, saw that it was the standard mounted high-frequency AN/MRC-138, a higher-powered version of the PRC-104, the universal talk box of the war on terror. Ray knew it well, having been a radioman sometime in an ancient Marine Corps past, and turned it on, watching it pop and crackle to life as a small red light reached peak intensity, signifying full power, then went to the frequency knob, turned it slowly, and finally acquired 15.016 MHZ, the battalion operating freak. With no mountains in between, it ought to be a loud-and-clear chat.
    He held the push-to-talk button down, and spoke into the phone.
    “Whiskey-Six, this is Whiskey Two-Two. Do you receive, over.”
    “Whiskey Two-Two, this is Whiskey-Six, roger. Authentification, please.”
    “Olympic downhill,” said Ray.
    Commo tumbled out of protocol.
    “Ray, Jesus—”
    “Whiskey-Six, do you have Six Actual there, over.”
    “Negative, Two-Two, I’ll get him, over.”
    “Whiskey-Six, negative, no time now. Be advised Two-Two is on-site and will execute tomorrow. I say again, Two-Two on-site, running hot, straight and dead zero, will execute as planned tomorrow and then exfiltrate by any means possible. Scrub the chopper pickup, Two-Two will hump it out the soft way. Do you read, over?”
    “Copy that, Two-Two, will advise Six Actual ‘On-site and will execute to—’”
    “Whiskey Six, that is all. Two-Two out.”
    Ray cut off the power, hung the phone on its cradle.
    He turned off the idling engine, eased out of the vehicle, low-crawled seventy-five feet to the sector of fencing farthest from the guard post, staying out of the lights, and took his cuts and punctures while slowly picking his way through the lower coils. That wasn’t easy but far from impossible, for the barbed wire was meant to slow down, not stop, incursion. A little beyond the wire, he found shadow and rose and slipped away to the site where he’d cached his SVD. Tomorrow was shaping up to be a very interesting day.

2ND RECON BATTALION HQ
    FOB WINCHESTER
    S-2 SHOP
    ZABUL PROVINCE
    SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN
    2350 HOURS
    Jesus Christ,” said Colonel Laidlaw, “and kiss my ass! He made it. The Cruise Missile made it.”
    S-2 asked, “He didn’t say anything more? No details, no—”
    “I had the idea he was stressed,” said the corporal who’d been on radio watch. “He didn’t want to talk at length. He just communicated the message—those are his exact words, sir—and signed off. I have no idea of the origin of the call. He had all call signs right, authentification code right, and I know Sergeant Cruz well and recognized his voice.”
    “That’s fine, Nichols, you can go now,” said the colonel, and the young NCO rose, left the bunker tent, and headed back to his duty station.
    The colonel, in his nighttime sweats, the exec still in camos, and S-2, also still in camos, sat around the working table under the now-dead monitor on which they’d watched the fate of 2-2 play out. Cigarettes were consumed, and the colonel had the whiff—just the tiniest—of bourbon to him.
    “Should we notify higher HQ, sir? The Agency liaison? At least helos at Ripley so we can put a bird airborne to get him out if he calls in again and needs emergency extract, no matter what he says tonight.”
    “Negative, negative,” said the colonel. “I don’t like the way they were jumped and that the shooters knew exactly who they were.”
    “Sir, it could have just been Taliban assholes. They’ll shoot up anything and say it was God’s will.”
    “These guys were not Taliban. They were too disciplined. They were all in prone, they were in a good tactical array, when they moved, they moved professionally, not like hadjis going to a