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  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  The Shroud of Heaven

  Copyright © 2008 by Sean Ellis

  ISBN: 1-59998-181-5

  Edited by Sarah Palmero

  Cover by Vanessa Hawthorne

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2008

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  The Shroud of Heaven

  Sean Ellis

  Dedication

  For Connor and Campbell, the future of adventure.

  Prologue

  The Chains of God

  January 1991

  The Chinook abruptly lurched, gaining fifteen meters of altitude in a heartbeat, only to plunge back down an instant later. The pilot, an insectoid-looking figure in his bulbous headgear and night vision goggles, tilted his head sideways as if to grin at the helpless passengers clinging to nylon web straps in the rear of the helicopter.

  “Sorry, mates. Telephone lines.”

  Nick Kismet nodded indifferently, though his stomach was still pitching from the sudden maneuver. Some of the Gurkhas were not as adept at hiding their momentary nausea; the one he knew only as Sergeant Higgins looked positively green despite the liberal coating of camouflage paint that concealed his face. Of course, in the monochrome display of the PV-7 night vision device affixed to his Kevlar helmet, everything looked green.

  The swooping flight of the CH47 seemed an appropriate metaphor for Kismet’s life recently. Still trying to overcome the temporary shock of the mobilization orders—a not entirely unexpected event given the escalation of tensions on the Arabian peninsula—he had been further thrown off guard by the strange mission thrust upon him less than a week after his arrival at CENTCOM in Riyadh. Unable to adequately process all of that information, he elected to simply ride it out until things made a little more sense. It was the same philosophy that would, he hoped, get him through this roller coaster insertion.

  The flight was probably routine for the pilots. Kismet knew that American Special Forces and British SAS soldiers had already been dropped into enemy-held territory to gather information. As an officer in US Army Department of Intelligence, albeit a lowly 2nd Lieutenant and a reservist at that, he was aware of the covert missions that were laying the foundation for the impending assault designed to drive the fourth largest army in the world from their entrenchments in Kuwait. That he would find himself a part of such an operation, much less one that would penetrate deep beyond Iraq’s border, was a scenario too ludicrous to even consider. Nevertheless, here he was.

  The sergeant swallowed queasily and flashed him an insincere thumbs up. Kismet nodded again.

  The Gurkhas signified yet another indecipherable factor in the clandestine mission. He did not know a great deal about the men or their combat division; it was his understanding that they were a sort of foreign legion for the British, originating in Nepal and modeled after the fierce warrior tribe that was their namesake. They were indeed a cosmopolitan bunch, evincing a full spectrum of racial characteristics. Higgins, one of two Caucasian soldiers in the squad, was a Kiwi—originally a citizen of New Zealand.

  Though their sand-colored uniforms had been sterilized—no indication of nationality, unit or rank—he had recognized them by virtue of their kukri knives. The large chopping knife with a broad, boomerang-shaped blade was their signature weapon. According to their tradition, each recruit was initiated into the elite corps through a bloody ritual in which he was required to behead a young bullock with a single stroke of his kukri. A few bits of presumably outdated trivia, however, represented the full extent of Kismet’s knowledge about the Gurkhas. Not much intelligence for an intelligence officer, he thought sourly.

  The presence of soldiers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain was a riddle at least partially explained. According to his commanding officer, the information leading to the mission had been channeled through British resources, and despite the fact that Kismet, an American officer, had been singled out for special attention, the British would continue to manage the particulars of the insertion. But that did not satisfactorily explain CENTCOM’s decision to send this particular unit.

  Though legendary for their fierceness, the Gurkha warriors were not an ideal choice for covert insertions. Those assignments, at least where Her Majesty’s armed forces were concerned, typically went to the men of the SAS—Special Air Service—who trained extensively for everything from anti-terrorism to hostage rescue to long-range reconnaissance. He could think of only one compelling reason for the commander in charge of the mission to choose men who were not natural citizens of the British commonwealth, but rather rogues and expatriates: they were expendable. Kismet wondered if he fell into that category as well.

  What little he had been told had not inspired him to confidence in the success, much less the importance, of their mission. He knew only that it involved the possible defection of a high-value target; someone who might be a member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle of advisors. After reading the operation order, a bare bones overview of what he would be expected to accomplish, Kismet had immediately become suspicious. His first impulse was that the supposed defection was an elaborate ruse designed to test the capabilities of coalition forces in penetrating Iraqi air defenses. Despite assurances otherwise, he remained skeptical.

  The Chinook continued through the desert night, following the nap of the earth to avoid detection by radar, jinking and swooping when necessary to dodge phone lines and possible SAM sites. There was little for the passengers to see through the small portals on either side of the ungainly looking aircraft. Even with the aid of night vision goggles, the desert was a featureless wasteland. Each wadi—the dry gullies that cut randomly across the dunes—looked very much like the next, but one of them concealed the man he had been sent to meet.

  In the earpiece of his headset, Kismet heard the pilots continue their exchange of information, calling out the obstacles that lay in their path as they became visible. He knew they were nearing their destination because the co-pilot regularly updated their ETA. The countdown was now a matter of mere minutes.

  “City lights,” observed the flight officer, pointing over the pilot’s shoulder. He consulted a military map specifically designed for use with night vision gear. “That’s Nasiriyah.”

  “Close as I want to get.”

  “I have a visual of the target,” the co-pilot announced. His voice dropped to an incredulous murmur. “Bloody wanker’s having a fag.”

  Kismet absent-mindedly translated the idiomatic expression. Somewhere out in the desert, the man they were supposed to meet was smoking a cigarette. In the display of the night vision devices used by the flight crew, the pencil-thin ember would flash beacon-bright as the man drew smoke into his lungs, even from a distance of several hundred meters.

  One of the Gurkhas tisked. “He should know better. Must be an officer.”

  Kismet laughed, grateful for their humor. He was the highest-ranked person onboard and well aware of the age-old rivalry between enlisted men and officers, but he took
no offense at the veiled jab. This close to the objective, with his adrenaline spiking, he needed the distraction. Nervously, he checked his gear one last time.

  The mission called for the team to be dropped near a rendezvous point established by the Iraqi defector. This would give them an opportunity to reconnoiter the area, just in case it was a trap. The Gurkhas would then dig in, securing a temporary forward operating base, while Kismet made contact with the defector. They expected their mission to last no more than forty-eight hours, but even that short time span required each man to carry several liters of drinking water, along with all of their combat gear and body armor. In addition to his ruck, Kismet carried a stubby CAR15, the carbine version of the M16A2 assault rifle, and his personal side arm, a Beretta M9 automatic pistol. Most of the Gurkhas carried American M203s—M16s equipped with integrated 40 millimeter grenade launchers under the rifle barrel—but two of the men were packing fully automatic Minimi light machine guns. Kismet noted that the latter pair would not be carrying their own water, a fair trade for the additional weight of a thousand rounds of ammunition apiece, stored in drum magazines and cloth bandoliers. Ideally, they would not have to expend a single round. If everything went according to plan, they would be returning to Saudi airspace with only their water supply depleted.

  The Chinook dropped quickly to the desert floor, bouncing the passengers violently one final time. The Gurkhas immediately burst into action, pitching canvas bags out into the sand as the aft ramp slowly descended. Their movements seemed practiced, belying the tension that Kismet knew each man must be silently enduring. After swiftly disembarking, the small group of soldiers huddled close to the ground as the twin rotors of the Chinook whipped up a sandstorm. A few heartbeats later, the helicopter vanished into the night.

  Higgins removed his NOD and gazed skyward, fixing the North Star with a fingertip. He extended his other arm at a ninety-degree angle. “Our guy’s that way. Wong, Renke, dig us a nice little den. Lieutenant, I guess you’re leading the way.”

  Kismet was thrown by the Kiwi sergeant’s pronunciation—“Lef-tenant”—and gaped dumbly at the other man for several awkward seconds. “Sorry,” he finally mumbled, hefting the CAR15 and turning in the direction Higgins had indicated. “Let’s go.”

  They stayed low to the ground, pausing at the dune crests to survey the landscape for signs of the enemy. Visual contact with the defector—still puffing away on his cigarette, or perhaps chain-smoking one after another—was reestablished almost immediately. They were less than two hundred meters from the man’s location.

  “I don’t see anyone else,” Kismet murmured. “No vehicles either.”

  “How the hell did he get out here?” Higgins wondered aloud. “Flying bloody carpet?”

  Kismet stifled a chuckle. “Maybe.” He turned to the sergeant. “I guess this is it. I’m counting on you guys to watch my back.”

  The Gurkha nodded, but Kismet was not overwhelmed with confidence. Nevertheless he crept forward, topped the dune and scooted down the other side, moving unaccompanied toward the sole Iraqi. If it was a trap, he alone would face that peril. Even if the Gurkhas brought their firepower to bear, there was little hope of his surviving the first moments of a hostile encounter.

  As he drew closer, he was able to make out the facial features of the defector. The bland countenance seemed pale beneath his thick black brow, as if the man had somehow managed to avoid direct exposure to the sun during his life on the cusp of the Arabian desert. Only the nervous quivering of the cigarette at his lips bore testimony that his bloodless hue had more to do with anxiety than pigmentation. In the green-tinted display of his night optics, Kismet noted that the man’s pupils were tiny white dots. The incessant lighting and smoking of cigarettes had compromised the waiting defector’s ability to see naturally in the dark, verifying the earlier observation made by the Chinook pilot. Either the man was too inexperienced in matters of survival to know better, or he simply didn’t care.

  Kismet paused, scanning the surrounding desert for any indication of an ambush party in concealment.

  Nothing. If the defector was bait for a trap, then it was a well-covered snare. He edged forward, circling around the smoking man, and approached from his left side. When no more than ten meters separated them, he rose from his cautious crawl and pushed his goggles out of the way.

  There was no way to avoid startling the oblivious defector, but he tried to minimize the shock by softly clearing his throat. The Iraqi man turned his head slowly, almost absent-mindedly, before reacting exactly as Kismet feared he would. Yet, as the man flailed backwards, waving his hands defensively, Kismet’s apprehension that he had walked into a trap eased considerably. The defector had not groped for a concealed weapon or called out in alarm; no hidden accomplices had leapt to the man’s aid. Kismet waited motionless for his contact to recover.

  “Is salaam aleekum.” Peace be upon you.

  The softly spoken greeting did not seem to soothe the frightened man, but he heard the muttered, traditional reply: “Wa aleekum is-salaam.” And upon you be peace.

  “Well that’s a good sign,” Kismet muttered in English. His grasp of Arabic was not as strong as he would have liked. A lifetime of world travel with his father had immersed him repeatedly in foreign language environments, but he considered himself fluent only in the Romance languages.

  However, despite the fact that his self-directed words were barely audible, the defector suddenly brightened. “You are Mr. Kismet?” he asked in halting English.

  Kismet blinked. In his pre-mission briefing, he had been given precious little information about how the rendezvous would proceed. There had been no arrangement made for passwords and counter-signs. His commander was unable even to supply a name for the defector, much less any sort of safeguarding procedures. The last thing he had anticipated was for the Iraqi man to know his name. He switched off his night vision goggles and swung them up, away from his face. “That’s right.”

  “Il-Hamdulillaah,” breathed the man. “God be praised. I feared that you would not be coming. I am Samir Al-Azir.”

  He sensed that the man expected to be recognized, but the name triggered no memories. He smiled and gave the man a knowing nod, hoping nothing would happen to further expose his ignorance. “We should probably get moving.”

  Samir seemed further relieved at the suggestion, as if suddenly remembering why he was lurking in the cold desert night. He flipped his cigarette onto the sand. “Yes, yes. Follow me.”

  Before he could protest, Samir turned and began climbing the dune. Dumbly, Kismet started after the Iraqi. At the top of the rise, he signaled the waiting Gurkhas by extending his arms out to either side, as though waiting to be searched. The unusual gesture was a previously established signal, indicating to his comrades that he was not being taken along under duress. If Samir noticed, he said nothing.

  Based on his recollection of aerial reconnaissance photographs of the area, Kismet knew that the nearest road was more than a kilometer from their present location. That roadway was a featureless track snaking across the desert to provide access to the semi-permanent Bedouin communities, and more importantly, to expedite the deployment of troops in the event of a war. With that war now looming large, the likelihood of armed forces moving along the highway was greatly increased. He did not find Samir’s eagerness to approach that destination encouraging, but what he saw as they crested yet another dune a few moments later increased his anxiety tenfold. Barely visible across the intervening distance was the unmistakable silhouette of a vehicle waiting beside the highway.

  It took another ten minutes of struggling over the uneven terrain to reach the parked sedan, long enough for him to ascertain that the battered, silver Mercedes was unoccupied. “Where are we going, Samir?”

  The defector flashed a grin over his shoulder, but Kismet could see the other man’s concern etched in deep lines across his forehead. “Not far. The tell is nearby.”

  Tell? There were many
ways of interpreting the word, none of which made sense in the context. He frowned, but did not press for more information. Instead, he opened the rear driver side door of the sedan and carefully slipped inside. Samir’s pale face registered confusion at Kismet’s decision to sit behind instead of beside him, but he said nothing as he turned the key and eased the car onto the paved road.

  Kismet rested the CAR15 on the seat beside him, shifting the waist pack of his load-bearing vest to avoid sitting on it. That the Army-issue equipment had not been designed for use in the cramped interior of a passenger vehicle was only one factor owing to his choice of the rear seat. Sitting in the back represented an attempt, however insignificant, to take a measure of control over the situation. He was completely at Samir’s mercy. Even if the defector meant him no harm, there would be no effective way for Kismet to respond in the event of a sudden crisis. From the back seat at least, should the worst case scenario play out, he would be able to encourage the Iraqi to heed his suggestions by holding the business end of his sidearm to the base of the other man’s skull.

  True to his word, Samir drove the car only a few kilometers along the highway before once more pulling off into the sand. Kismet hastened from the confining interior of the sedan, and began scanning the dunes for any sign of enemy forces. They appeared to be alone in the night. Samir lit another cigarette then motioned for Kismet to follow as he headed into the desert.

  The path chosen by the Iraqi defector led north across a section of flat land where bare rock struggled up through the ubiquitous layer of sand. Kismet gradually became aware that they were descending into a low valley sculpted by centuries of wind and, perhaps in a forgotten age, water. In the otherworldly green display of his goggles, he saw clear evidence of previous foot traffic along their course; not simply a scattering of prints, but a line of disruption indicating the passage of several people. He hefted the CAR15, his thumb poised on the fire selector and his finger on the outside of the trigger guard, but resisted the impulse to spin strategies for dealing with a hostile encounter. He would likely be outnumbered and outgunned in such a situation, so there was little to be gained by worrying. Samir, however, seemed to relax, as if each step brought him closer to a place of refuge. Their destination soon became apparent.