Agent in Place

Anders finished his meal, then looked over at Court. “Hey, you got any WAG bags?”

Court knew what a WAG bag was from his time in Ground Branch. WAG stood for “waste alleviation and gelling” and it was, effectively, a toilet in a bag that an operator could use to dispose of his solid waste. It wasn’t pretty, it didn’t make the highlight reels of snipers or Navy SEALs in action, but soldiers, sailors, and operators in the field had been defecating into plastic bags for a long time.

Court sighed a little to himself, because this meant his battle buddy was about to take a dump right next to him in this four-meter-square room. “No, Anders, I don’t. How ’bout you try to hold it?”

The Dutchman was already undoing his utility belt and heading to the corner. “Nope.”

Court resigned himself to the fact that the next few minutes were about to get even more unpleasant than the last few, but then he turned to Anders as he realized this was the opportunity he needed. “Look, you Neanderthal. There is a shitter somewhere in this apartment. Why don’t you go find it, and I’ll do the same when my time comes?”

“You think the plumbing works in this apartment’s bathroom?”

“Of course not, but it’s a little room with a porcelain bowl, and that’s a lot better than you taking a big crap in the corner here. Have some respect for the homeowners, at least.”

“Why? They’re dead.”

He was probably right, Court realized, but he needed him out of the room. He said, “Dude, I’ll watch your sector.”

Anders refastened his belt with a shrug. “You’re like a damn woman.” And with that he left to go find the bathroom.

As soon as he was gone, Court crawled across the floor over to the window that faced to the south. He sat with his back to the concrete eastern wall and looked back into the open room. He took one of the CDs from his pocket and held the shiny “down” side out the southern window, half pointing it towards the setting sun to the west. Turning around and looking through the hole in the middle as a sight now, he angled the disc towards the mountains to the south and moved it back and forth.

He was careful to keep his head and body behind the wall next to the window, and also careful to keep his ears tuned to sounds around the apartment. If he was signaling the enemy with his head out in the open, a sniper hiding on the desert floor would have a prime shot at him. And if he was caught signaling the enemy by the KWA men, Van Wyk would shoot him dead right here without question.

For a full minute and a half he flashed the hills, broadcasting his location to any possible enemy there, making it look like the lens of a pair of binoculars or a sniper scope had gotten caught in the setting sun.

He heard footsteps right outside the room, so he dropped the CD and brought his hand back inside the window. The shiny disc fell to the street below.

Court’s elbow was still on the window ledge when Anders reentered.

He looked at Court there in the corner. “You moved.”

“I can see both sectors from here.”

“Yeah, well you are going to get your arm shot off if you keep it there.”

Court brought his arm in, then crawled back over to his side and began looking once again to the east.

His idea had been for enemy fighters to begin harassing the building, with either snipers or mortars, just enough for the decision to be made for the KWA men to withdraw from the area before dark.

He didn’t think his simple action was going to prevent the Desert Hawks Brigade attack of the town to the east outright, but he hoped it would at least get the Hawks to actually engage with soldiers on the other side of the fight, be they FSA or Daesh or al Jabhat or SDF, instead of simply eradicating civilians of the neighboring town.

And he also hoped some sort of an attack might give him the opportunity to slip away, at least long enough to find a working cell phone. It occurred to him this was like yesterday’s bar fight, with stakes raised by a factor of one thousand.

He felt like going AWOL would be the only way he could transmit his intel. He had two days’ rations in his pack, and he could go to ground, make his way west back towards Palmyra, and provide even more intel if the FSA did try to engage Azzam while he was at the Russian base.

Just then Van Wyk leaned into the room. “Just got word from battalion. Shelling of the next town begins in thirty mikes.”

“Roger that,” Court said, and Anders echoed this.

Van Wyk looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes after that and we load up in the BMPs. Keep eyes on that village, get me any intel you can.”

Court and Anders sat in silence for twenty minutes, and by now Court had figured his plan to use the CD as a signal mirror to invite an attack had failed. He had a couple more CDs in a cargo pocket, but the sun was very low now, and he didn’t see any way he could get another chance to—

Saunders shouted from the living room. “Hey! I heard some pops! Keep eyes out for IDF.”

IDF was indirect fire, and Court realized his grand scheme to get himself shot at was going to work out after all.

Seconds later Van Wyk started to call “incoming,” but before the second syllable was out, three explosions ripped the desert floor in quick succession, just eighty yards south of the apartment building where Court sat. A few tiny bits of debris pinged off the building, not far from where Court sat near the southeastern corner.

He knew these first shots would be ranging rounds. A spotter would determine how to adjust the mortars so that the next rounds would hit closer.

Saunders stormed into the bedroom where Court sat. The two men locked eyes, and Court looked away. “What did you do?”

“What?”

“Did you signal somebody?”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“There’s no way we were seen from that distance. Impossible. You signaled them.”

Anders looked at Saunders like he was crazy. “Why would he signal them?”

“You weren’t going into the next town. I saw it in your eyes when boss gave the order. Figured you were gonna throw yourself down some stairs to get out of—”

“Incoming!” Van Wyk shouted now from the next room.

Three more rounds came in; this time they were much closer. The first two hit in the street just to the south of the apartment building, but the third impacted against a lower floor. The resulting shaking knocked Saunders to the floor and sent loose debris and dust flying in all directions.

Anders shouted now. “Why would he signal for an attack?”

Saunders pointed at Court, and he stood up in the cloud of dust, his face red with fury. “This fucker isn’t here to work with us. He came here to—”

“Mortars!” Van Wyk screamed. “And we’ve got multiple technicals inbound from the south. One klick out! All call signs, withdraw to the BMPs!”

Court hadn’t expected them to attack that hard and that accurately.

The three men in the corner room ignored the order from the team leader. Saunders answered Anders’s question. “Wade came to Syria just to snatch that kid in Damascus, and he’s using KWA for cover. He’s stuck with us but he’s trying to find a way out of the country.”

Three more mortar rounds slammed into and around the building, sending everyone flying, and filling the apartment again with dust and smoke.

Anders looked at Court. “You kidnapped that baby they were talking about this morning?”

Court climbed to his feet. “Boss said exfil!”

But Saunders blocked Court’s exit from the room.

Court said, “Not now, Saunders!”

Anders climbed to his feet and made a run for the door. Saunders let him pass, but he pointed a finger at Court.

“You’re fucking mad! Calling in the enemy? You’re gonna get us killed!”

“Not if we get out of here before we get—”

Court stopped talking when he saw Saunders move his hand to the long knife he wore on his vest.

A mortar shell crashed squarely on the roof, directly above the room. The ceiling collapsed in different portions of the apartment, and a dust cloud filled the room so thick that Court could no longer see Saunders.

He slung his rifle over his shoulder, threw his backpack on his back, and charged forward like a linebacker.

Saunders had drawn the long knife from the chest of his load-bearing vest, but he hadn’t expected the man hitting him so hard with his head low. Both men tumbled onto the ground in the debris, and Court threw knees into Saunders’s body and punches to his face.