The Ethan Galaal Series: Books 1 - 3

by Isaac Hooke

  "Or at least in range," William said.

  Ethan keyed in a message.

  "What did you say?" Aaron asked.

  "Basically that we're coming over," Ethan replied. "And please don't shoot."

  "How did the Mamba respond?"

  "He didn't. Not yet. It'll vibrate when he does, right?"

  "You bet."

  Ethan pocketed the smartphone and was about to rise when a figure emerged from the darkness immediately beside him. Apparently the newcomer had been hiding in the van, or behind it, because he'd escaped William's notice.

  The man's assault rifle was pointed directly at Ethan's head.

  38

  Ethan lifted his hands slightly, palms up. Though he couldn't see William behind him, he knew the other operative would have swiveled his own weapon toward the man by then.

  "What unit do you belong to?" the newcomer said, speaking formal Arabic with a Tunisian accent.

  It wasn't a voice Ethan knew. It certainly didn't belong to Suleman.

  "Wolf Company," he answered tentatively.

  The newcomer came closer, emerging from the shadows beside the van so that the moonlight illuminated his features. Definitely wasn't Suleman or anyone Ethan knew.

  When the militant noticed the Shahada headband Ethan wore, he lowered his AK and crouched beside him. "My apologies, my brothers. I heard you speaking English, and believed for a moment you might be Americans come to help the yellow faces."

  "No, brother," Ethan told the militant. "Not American. We are holy warriors who have made hegira from England."

  "But your Arabic is so good," the man protested.

  "Thank you."

  "I was separated from my unit," the militant continued. "May I join you?"

  Ethan glanced at the others uncertainly. They didn't need a mujahid with them to stir up trouble at the Kurdish lines. But he said, "Of course, brother."

  The Tunisian extended a hand. "I am Abu-Ahmed."

  Ethan introduced himself and his companions.

  The militant noticed Aaron's condition. "Does he need to return to the infirmary?"

  "No," Ethan said. "We move forward, to the front lines."

  Ethan hoisted Aaron to his feet.

  The instant the four of them left the cover of the van, the triple crack of an M16A4 filled the air.

  SULEMAN SWEPT the weapon left after the initial burst, firing again, hoping to take down at least two of his targets, but the muzzle flash momentarily blinded his night vision device—the A4 didn't have a flash suppressor.

  Suleman stared through his scope at the quiet, green-black environment. The van was positioned perfectly, neatly fitting inside his field of view, but no further movement came from the vehicle. The kaffir scum knew they were pinned.

  He wondered if he'd struck Emad. It was possible. Any of the four could have been him. Well, there was only one way to be sure. And that was by killing the remainder.

  Suleman settled in for the long wait. He had all night.

  BLOOD SPURTED in long streams from William's trapezius in time to his heartbeat as Ethan struggled to compress the wound with his hands. William remained motionless the whole time, his eyes closed, looking very pale, his forehead steeped in sweat.

  "Will," Ethan said in a hushed voice. "Come on!"

  William abruptly opened his eyes and groaned. "What the hell."

  "You're going to be fine, Will," Ethan said. "Just a scratch."

  William shifted slightly, and winced. Then he guffawed. "I think, I think I've been shot!" he said between bouts of laughter.

  Ethan was laughing too. "Yeah! You have, bro! Right through your trapezius!"

  "My traps!" William roared. "The mother skewered my traps!"

  Aaron shook his head in the moonlight. "Goddamn SEALs."

  Ethan let Aaron hold the compress, then he crawled to the fourth man. Ahmed lay lifeless on the pavement beside the van. He wasn't breathing. He had taken the brunt of the attack, with small holes punched into opposite sides of his back. That burst had sounded like it had come from an M16, and the steel-tipped, 5.56mm cartridges would have easily torn their way through the Kevlar body armor under the man's fatigues. Ethan checked Ahmed's pulse. Nothing.

  Ethan returned to William. He unsheathed his combat knife and began cutting a makeshift bandage from the hem of his own pant leg. Funny how Hollywood always made impromptu bandage creation look so easy in the movies. Only after a lot of twisting and ripping was he able to wrench the fabric free.

  He secured the cloth to William's trapezius muscle, wrapping it under his armpit and tightening it until the blood flow ceased.

  "How's that feel?" Ethan asked.

  "Heavenly," William answered.

  Ethan sat back to consider their predicament. How the hell had Suleman found them again? The streets were a warren back there, and Ethan had made several random direction changes, pausing occasionally to sweep his six. Classic evasion protocol. The first encounter he had attributed to luck. But two accidental encounters in a row? Unlikely.

  Ethan grabbed his phone to check for a reply from Doug. Nothing. Worse, battery power was under fifteen percent.

  As he looked at the smartphone it suddenly dawned upon Ethan.

  "He has a Stingray! Goddamn it." Ethan switched the cell to Airplane mode. "How could I be so stupid? He's damn MI6."

  "Who's MI6?" Aaron asked in a hushed voice. "Our sniper?"

  "Yeah." Ethan sighed. "Long story."

  "All right, so what are we going to do about it?" Aaron pressed. "We're stuck here behind this trash heap."

  "What if we bring the van with us?" William sat up. With his trapezius bandaged, his strength appeared to be returning.

  "No way we're moving this piece of shit," Aaron said. "We're pinned, bros. Thoroughly."

  SULEMAN GREW IMPATIENT. He decided it was time to ask for help. It was selfish to kill the remaining infidels all by himself anyway.

  Keeping his eye glued to the scope, he reached for his harness and activated the two-way radio. "My brothers, I have important news. I have trapped four kaffir spies at the corner of the industrial section. They are hidden beside the mosque there, across from a fountain on the southern side, behind an upturned van. Any mujahadeen in the area who seek glory, come to me. We will flush them out."

  Smiling confidently, Suleman released the transmit button and waited for the enthusiastic replies to start pouring in.

  What he heard back surprised him.

  "It's a Kurdish trick!" came the voice over the common band. "They're trying to draw us away from the front lines. Everyone stay at your posts!"

  It was Emad.

  Suleman cursed quietly. He hadn't struck the man after all, then.

  He spoke into the two-way again. "My brothers, who are you going to believe, me or the kaffir? I have already injured them. Probably killed at least one. They are wounded animals, cornered, and trapped. This is the glory you sought when you came to this land to wage jihad. Come, my brothers! Fight with me!"

  "Stay at your posts!" Emad retorted. "Or the Kurdish pigs will break through!"

  "Get off the line, you idiots!" a random voice barked over the radio.

  Suleman couldn't believe how easily his brothers were deceived. In despair and anger, he almost cast aside the radio. Would evil win so easily?

  But then he realized his mistake. He had been using the common channel.

  He clicked scan and found another frequency in use by a squad nearby. The men were issuing terse instructions to one another—something about outflanking a group of yellow-faces.

  "My brothers," Suleman spoke into the radio. "How would you like to become famous?"

  ETHAN MANEUVERED to the far side of the van, away from where the shots had come. He unclipped the night sight from Beast and brought it to his eye, then carefully leaned past the front of the vehicle. He utilized the night scope like a zero magnification lens to survey the immediate area. Because the device was intended for use in front of
a day optic, a large, hollow black circle impinged on the view—it looked like he was observing the green-black street through a tube.

  He spotted the fountain Suleman had mentioned earlier on the radio. It was three meters away, and appeared dry, with parts of its jagged rim broken away. Two meters past it lay a brick wall, roughly twice the height of a man. Ethan could see the dome of a mosque silhouetted against the night sky beyond it, maybe a football field distant.

  Sweeping the scope from left to right, he noticed a blast hole in the wall, close to the fountain. It was big enough to fit a man.

  "Check it out," Ethan helped Aaron to the far side of the van and handed him the night scope. "See that gap in the wall of the mosque?"

  "Too far," Aaron declared.

  Ethan and Aaron exchanged places with William so that he could look.

  "If we make a run for it," William said as he looked through the scope. "One of us might make it."

  "Not good enough." Ethan faced Aaron. "Have any RGD-5's left?"

  Aaron nodded. "Two."

  "We can use the fragmentation grenades to momentarily blind our sniper."

  Aaron seemed doubtful. "His night vision scope is auto-gating. It'll adjust to the brightness. We'll have maybe half a second before his vision returns to normal."

  "But you're forgetting the smoke plumes. They're about three meters wide, and last six seconds. That's enough time and coverage to cross from behind the van to the mosque, if we toss both grenades. We throw the first between us and the fountain. The second between the fountain and the gap in the wall."

  "What if he has a thermal imager?" Aaron said.

  "He doesn't. I know the man we're dealing with, and his equipment." Ethan did his best to project confidence, though he couldn't be sure that Suleman hadn't acquired a thermal imager along the way. It was a risk he was willing to take. Goddamn MI6.

  "We'll have to toss the grenades in just the right spots," William said. "Too close to the van, or too far, and the smoke won't give us the cover we need. If we mess up the aim or timing, we'll be eating grenade fragments for lunch. Plus our sniper friend will probably fire randomly into the smoke while we cross."

  "I'm open to other ideas."

  There were none.

  Ethan grabbed the NV clip-on from William and reattached it to Beast, then swung the rifle over his shoulder alongside the Dragunov. "Aaron, get ready to hand me those grenades." He removed the phone from his pocket, disconnected the USB adapter, and crept to the frontmost edge of the van.

  The two-way radio crackled to life. "What are you doing, Abu Emad?" The distaste Suleman placed on the Arabic word for brother was obvious. "I can hear you down there, speaking English, plotting like the Americans spies you are!"

  Ethan thought Suleman was taunting them to convince any listening mujahadeen of their identity more than anything else.

  "Please be aware that the man speaking over the channel is a British MI6 spy," Ethan said into the radio. "He is not to be trusted, and should be executed on sight." He released the send button and turned toward his companions. "We move at two second intervals." That would leave enough room between them in case Suleman happened to have an RPG launcher, while still giving them enough time to cross the street before the smoke cleared. "William, you go first. Aaron, you're second. I'll go last."

  "You expect me to cross alone?" Aaron said. "Ain't going to happen. Not with this bum leg."

  "I'll help him," William volunteered.

  "Fine. You both go first, then. I'll follow three seconds after."

  "Are you looking forward to bathing in hellfire?" Suleman continued to taunt over the radio. "With pigs taking turns raping your asshole every night from now until eternity? When I plant the black flag of the Islamic State on the roof of the White House, I will take a shit in the Oval Office, so that the flies have something to eat while they breed in the corpse of the kaffir President. And I will think of you in that moment, Emad, as I am taking that shit. I will think of how you attempted to betray us. And how I stopped you."

  "Ready?" Ethan asked his companions.

  "Let's roll."

  Ethan leaned past the van and pressed the flashlight icon on his phone; the built-in flash activated, illuminating the street. Aaron handed him the grenades one after the other and Ethan threw them. The first bounced a little farther to the right than he had intended, but it should still suffice; the second landed spot on.

  "Good to go." Ethan switched off the flash.

  The grenades detonated almost simultaneously.

  On cue, William and Aaron emerged from their cover behind the van, trusting that the temporary smoke would shield them from view.

  Ethan began counting down the seconds in his head.

  One-one-thousand.

  As expected, their hidden attacker unleashed random bursts into the smoke plumes.

  William and Aaron reached the cover of the fountain.

  Two-one-thousand.

  Keeping low, William and Aaron began the crossing from the fountain to the stone wall.

  Three-one-thousand.

  Ethan left the van. 5.56mm bullets whipped past. He ducked behind the fountain, and then raced toward his lagging companions.

  In moments it was over. He dove through the ragged gap in the wall, pulling William and Aaron inside with him.

  Aaron moaned in pain as the three of them crashed to the ground. "Damn it, Ethan. A little warning would have been nice."

  "Usually there isn't time to warn someone when you're saving their life," Ethan declared quietly.

  The gunfire ceased beyond the wall.

  "Anyone hurt?" Ethan said.

  "We were fine before you piled in on top of us," Aaron complained again.

  "William?"

  "I'm good," his friend said, sounding slightly pissed as well.

  That's gratitude for you.

  Ethan surveyed the courtyard of the mosque in the moonlight. The place was a mess. The enclosure was indeed the size of a football field. The actual mosque resided on the western side and looked to be about the size of a small stadium. The blast-damaged building had partially collapsed, its white bricks overflowing onto the grounds. Several of the outbuildings had suffered, too: their smashed structures fanned out into the courtyard, leaving behind partially standing husks.

  Ethan helped Aaron northward, following the wall; William brought up the rear, guarding their backs. When Ethan reached the north perimeter he turned west, again staying near the courtyard's wall and its shadow. Behind them, the eastern perimeter provided an effective shield against any outside snipers.

  The trio quickly came upon an open iron gate.

  While William watched the somewhat distant hole in the wall behind them, Ethan lowered Aaron, unclipped the NV scope from Beast, and scanned the street beyond the gate. He picked out an alley opposite their position, between two cinder block fences about six meters away. He handed the NV piece to William.

  "There's an alley across the way," Ethan whispered.

  "I see it," William said, looking through the NV.

  Ethan glanced at Aaron, who sat on the ground, guarding their rear. "Want me to bring Aaron this time?"

  "No," William said. "I got him."

  "Wait." Ethan reattached the NV to the forward Picatinny of Beast and, clipping the sling to his Quick Cuff, he assumed a seated sniping position beside the gate. He leaned past, aiming eastward. He swept the scope from left to right, studying the green-black environment. There were a few buildings Suleman could have used as a hide, but there was no way Ethan would be able to see him in those darkened window frames.

  "Anything?" William said quietly.

  "No," Ethan said. "He could be anywhere out there."

  "Too bad we don't have more grenades. What do you want to do?"

  Ethan clenched his jaw. Where are you?

  "We've moved about a hundred meters north of our last position," William said. "Maybe more. Do you really think our sniper has had time to relocate?"<
br />
  "Depends on his initial position," Ethan said.

  "Which was probably close to the van, way over to the southeast. Look, the longer we delay, the more time we give him to find a new hide."

  "Let's cross," Aaron urged.

  "Ethan?" William said.

  "All right. Fine." Ethan didn't look from the scope. "If you're going to go, now's the time then."

  "Come on, bud." William heard shuffling behind him: the sound of his friend hoisting Aaron over one shoulder. "Ready?" he asked Ethan.

  "Go." Ethan scanned the eastern buildings as their footfalls receded across the street. He held his breath, counting out the moments. He thought it would take maybe three seconds for them to reach the alleyway.

  One-one-thousand.

  Two-one-thousand.

  Before he reached three, the terrible triple report of an M16 tore through the night air.

  39

  Ethan quickly altered his aim. The muzzle flash had come from beyond the scope's field of view, to the upper right, but he discerned nothing in the black squares representing the building windows there, roughly two hundred meters to the east. The rooftop appeared empty, too.

  "Are you all right!" Ethan shouted. He spoke Arabic in case other militants were listening nearby.

  "We made it!" Aaron called from the alleyway behind him. His voice sounded strained. "We're good."

  "He's not so good," William yelled. "We made it, yes, but the sniper hit Aaron in the same wounded leg. The bullet tumbled on impact. It's not pretty."

  "Damn it," Ethan said quietly. Louder: "Can he still walk with your help?"

  There was a pause. William was obviously applying a makeshift tourniquet. If the bullet tumbled, Aaron would be bleeding heavily from the shredded tissue. Finally:

  "Barely," William shouted back in Arabic.

  "I can do it," Aaron called.

  He would have to.

  Ethan continued shifting his scope over the various windows and rooftops, hoping for some tell that would betray Suleman's position. There was no way Ethan could cross, not while the sniper had a bead on the gate.

  "What's the plan?" William hollered.

  "The two of you have to continue," Ethan said. "I'll find another way."