Hostage Zero

Harvey made a show of thumbing the safety switch on his MP5 to three-round burst. Jonathan and Boxers had both been in fire mode since they’d slung their weapons. Trigger discipline meant that you kept your finger away from the damn thing until it was time to shoot. The American public would be horrified to know the number of their sons and daughters who had been killed in various wars by some inattentive yahoo who tickled his weapon’s trigger at the wrong time.

Jonathan continued, “I’m going to go on white light to find this trap, so keep your eyes averted. Box, I want you for close cover. Harvey, stay back here and turn your back to me. One of us needs continued good night vision. We good?”

“Good as gold,” Boxers said.

“Oo-rah,” Harvey grunted.

Jonathan smiled. Oo-rah was the Marine Corps version of the Army’s hoo-ah (Marines always had to be different), and it meant that Harvey’s Inner Marine was being reborn.

Snapping his NVGs out of the way, Jonathan brought his muzzle-mounted flashlight to life and pointed it at the ground at a spot three feet in front of him. He bent low at the waist to a half-squat and advanced cautiously, scanning the light from one edge of the path to the other to search for any signs of a trip wire or other triggering device. Next to him, his hips pressed to Jonathan’s ribs, Boxers advanced in lockstep with him, his rifle trained on the trail up ahead, trusting Jonathan to find any hazards they might step on. The two men had depended on each other so completely and so successfully over so many years and through so many battles that it seemed sometimes as if they knew each other’s thoughts.

They advanced with agonizing slowness-the kind of advance that made younger soldiers impatient and frequently cost them their lives. A minute or so into it, Jonathan stopped and consulted his GPS, which said they should be within a foot or two of whatever they were looking for.

Where was it? What was it? He took another few tiny steps forward, then stopped and consulted his GPS again. “Okay, Box,” he said, “don’t move anymore, okay?”

The Big Guy froze. “Am I in danger?” he asked. He never stopped scanning for potential targets.

“I don’t know. This is definitely the spot that Venice marked, but I’m not seeing anything. I was expecting a trip wire. A grenade or something. I’m not seeing anything.”

“What about a mine?” Boxers asked.

Wow, Jonathan thought. Could these guys be that sophisticated? He pulled the light from its muzzle mount and stooped to his haunches, scanning the dirt of the path for any signs of disturbance. “I don’t suppose you have a ground-penetrating radar on you,” he quipped.

“I left it in my other pants.”

The hairs on Jonathan’s arms and the back of his neck felt electrified as he lowered himself to his knees and leaned to within a few inches of the dirt. “They’re damn good,” he mumbled. He saw nothing. Leaning closer to the ground, he moved the light to the side, hoping that the different angle might give him a different perspective.

He was about to abandon the effort and move on when he saw the brush marks. They were just light track marks in the dirt-an obvious effort to even out the ground-too regular in their appearance to be a natural occurrence. There was only one reason Jonathan could think of for someone to brush over an area like that, and it was to conceal a hole that had been dug for a mine. (If anything else had been concealed, the burier would have just used his foot-something a mine installer would be foolish to try.)

“I found it,” Jonathan announced. “Good call, Box.”

“I live to serve,” Boxers replied. “Now mark it, and let’s get on with it.”

“No, we need to pull it out.”

Big Guy sighed loudly. “I hate it when you say macho shit like that. I hate it even more when you play with toys that can turn us both into humidity.”

“If we leave it, we’ll have to worry about it during extraction,” Jonathan explained. “We’ll be moving a lot faster then, I expect. For now, we’ve got the luxury of time.”

He wasn’t soliciting votes on this. He unclipped his M4 from its sling and set it on the ground. With the light clamped in his teeth like an old stogie, he drew his KA-BAR from its scabbard on his left shoulder and gently inserted the blade into the disturbed earth. As he’d expected, it went in easily, indicating that the hole had been gently backfilled. Using the tip of the blade, he began the painstaking process of exposing the face of the mine. After three minutes, there it was.

“Well, well, well,” he mused aloud, removing the light from his mouth. “The Soviet Union lives on. We’ve got a PMN-2 here.” He returned the KA-BAR to its sheath.

“Of course we do,” Boxers growled. “What’s the sense of finding a mine if it’s not a nasty one?”