by Mike Luoma
the tunnels.
Maybe I can get under the house itself?
She knows she can get close.
The sun begins to set as she reaches Sadr City. It takes her ten minutes to get within a block of the house. A few minutes more to take up a position behind one of the wrecked cars that litter the road here. She's crouching next to a burnt out white Nissan pickup truck, using her gun's site to get a closer look at the bombers' house.
Sadr City shares some similarities with Souverain's hometown. Utility poles carry power lines down the sides of dusty streets as groups of kids play and walk on the sidewalks below them. But here all the buildings are the same sandy color. Then there's the constant heat, the dust...
She peers through the twilight haze at the target. The house she's been casing looks like a small walled fortress from the outside. Tall dun colored walls shut out street noise, no doubt creating quiet living spaces within away from the chaos of the slum without. Decorative gaps in the shape of fat, upside-down Ts run along their tops, looking like the crenelations on castle walls. Souverain scans for any break in the walls, any weak points.
The strong, greasy odor of rotting fruit and vegetables from the bombed out market next to her mixes with more pungent whiffs of something or somethings dead and burnt wafting on the evening breeze. Souverain thinks briefly of the dentist's chair, the smell when the drill gets too hot.
A movement in the doorway of the house draws her attention back into the moment. A man steps out into the street to have a smoke.
Beautiful. That means they'll be expecting him back.
PIFF! PIFF!
The man drops.
Souverain lowers the gun.
She holsters her piece and scrambles over to quickly search the dead man. She pockets the small pistol she finds tucked into his pants.
She then drags the corpse out of the roadway, laying him in the gutter next to the wall of the house.
Lucky for me you're a little guy. Still damn heavy!
As she catches her breath, Souverain spies the still-smoking cigarette on the road next to where the man fell. She walks over and picks it up.
Seems a shame to waste it. Never did get to the PX...
She rips the filter off the end and tosses it aside.
She takes a long drag off of the cigarette and lets the smoke calm her, breathing out her stresses as she exhales.
She takes another quick drag, and then throws it away.
Souverain draws her piece back out. She weighs the gun in her hand, the familiar, slight droopiness from the silencer pulling it down in front just a little. She's learned to compensate for it. Totally worth it for the element of surprise it offers. Any delay on the part of those who would shoot back at her is a plus.
Ready?
Souverain contemplates her targets. The men inside: would-be suicide bombers and the men who cheer them on; those who video tape them; and those who take credit for their deaths and enjoy the publicity from their horrible actions. Those men are expecting their friend to return from having a smoke. There will be no kicking down doors. No noisome alarms.
Souverain walks up and tries the door. Unlocked, it opens. She lets it swing open full, and then she walks in.
PIFF!
"Surprise," Souverain says as she shoots a guard by the door in the head, point blank. The blood sprays the wall vivid red behind him. A second guard tries to bring up his rifle to shoot her from two feet away. She grabs the rising barrel with her left hand and pulls the man closer with a jerk on his gun.
PIFF!
Another headshot, close range. Two guards by the door down.
Souverain surveys the scene in front of her. Those in other rooms of the house may not yet know these two are down. They might. But there is no one else in this anteroom, this foyer. Doors lead off to both the left and the right. Souverain decides to go left.
Still have the element of surp...
The blinding light and the booming voice begin simultaneously.
"THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY. THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS AN ENEMY COMBATANT BASE OF OPERATIONS. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO LEAVE THIS BUILDING BEFORE IT IS DESTROYED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. THIS IS THE UNITED..."
The message repeats. The sound of helicopters grows louder, and more bright lights shine in through every open space.
Souverain hears quick crackling like fireworks. Small arms fire from inside the house.
Can't let them shoot the girl! They're cornered now – they could do anything.
She runs along the front corridor looking for a door on the right, some way in to the inner part of the house. The corridor bends before she finds one.
As she turns the corner, she's startled to see two men ahead of her. They're standing on stacks of packing boxes piled up in the corridor, firing up and out at the US forces outside through the decorative holes in the outer wall.
Or maybe those holes were more functional than I thought.
Their semi-automatics erupt like loud popcorn as they fire and then reload. The men, intent on their shooting, don't notice as Souverain approaches.
PIFF!
PIFF!
Both men fall, quickly dispatched by bullets to the bases of their skulls.
"Still some surprise," Souverain says to herself.
She finds an open door on the right just beyond the men's defensive position. She sneaks through the door, and finds the room on the other side empty save for a heavy, metal office desk. There's another door in the opposite wall, behind the desk. She crosses the room and is about to slip through the next door when a voice stops her.
"Hold it!"
Souverain turns around and looks back into the room. She doesn't see anyone. Then she looks down, at the desk.
There is a man hiding in the cubbyhole underneath the desk. He's leaning out just enough to threaten Souverain with the pistol he holds in his unsteady hand.
"Really? Are you kidding?" she asks.
POP!
He takes a shot at her!
PIFF PIFF!
Two round holes in the man's forehead. He slumps to the ground under the desk with much bigger holes where the back of his head used to be.
Souverain hears a familiar whooshing sound – luckily a ways away from her.
Stinger!
She ducks to the ground for cover.
BA-BOOM!
An explosion shakes the ground. The walls vibrate and dust falls and flies everywhere. Smoke billows through the door from elsewhere in the house.
The Army's shooting back!
So where's my girl?
Souverain gets up and dusts herself off. She reloads her gun, checks the fit of the silencer. Then she walks through the doorway down another short corridor. The door at the other end opens on chaos.
This is a main inner room of the dwelling, open and spacious; even more open now, thanks to the missile blast that just took off the front half of the building.
One back corner of the room looks oddly anachronistic. There are tripods with video cameras perched on them, lighting tripods, computers and recording equipment. The cameras point back at tapestries and flags taped up to the walls with duct tape. There is a side wall painted green, creating a low-tech green screen. The other back corner looks like some kind of sleeping area. What once were the dining and kitchen areas in the front of the room now appear to be gone.
Six men are scattered around the ruins of the room firing their Kalashnikovs out through the missing walls at the surrounding US forces.
Some kind of feeble last stand.
Souverain has but a moment to take the scene in before the thug closest to her starts to turn his rifle her way.
PIFF! PIFF!
He goes down.
Souverain scans the room, looking for the girl. It's hard to see through the dust and smoke and dying light of day.
She spies movement from what she first thought was a small sack at the feet of a man near the cameras. When the bundle mov
es again Souverain knows it's the girl.
PIFF! PIFF!
Souverain shoots the man standing over her teenaged friend in both eyes. As he falls, another of his comrades turns his rifle on Souverain. He fires.
CRACK! CRACK!
He misses. She spins to target him. The room seems suddenly quiet. Souverain swears the smoke clears as she shoots.
PIFF!
She knocks him down with a single shot between the eyes. Then all the noise and smoke and chaos come rushing back. The loudspeaker outside drones on as she tries to cross the room.
"...ARMY. THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS AN ENEMY COMBATANT BASE OF OPERATIONS. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES..."
Souverain reaches the girl.
The smaller version of herself looks up with a mix of fear and hope in her eyes.
"Souverain?"
"I told you you were gonna cause me trouble," Souverain says, trying to joke a little. But the girl takes her seriously.
"I know. You were right," she says. "I am sorry."
"S'okay," Souverain tells her. "Let's get out of here now, huh?"
The girl nods.
"I say we go out the back way," Souverain says.
She shepherds the girl protectively in front of her as they make for the back wall of the room. The three men still standing don't seem to notice them, instead focusing their attention on trying to hit something, anything outside belonging to the U.S. Army with their old Soviet rifles.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Like an elephant tired of swatting flies with it's tail, the U.S. Forces finally put their foot down. Souverain and the girl are in the back corridor when Souverain hears the familiar whooshing noises again – this time there are many of them, and far too close.
"Watch OUT!" is all she gets out as she covers the girl, as the Stingers explode and the floor drops and the air goes away and