by Chris Lowry
If his scientist was supplying terrorists with biologicals and chemical weapons, why weren't the SEALS tasked with stopping him, Brill wondered.
The fifteen miles disappeared under his feet and he came to the edge of another small village. It was wind swept and sand blown, brown buildings baked to a dull sand colored tone from years under the desert sun.
Brill didn't need to dig in and observe.
The scientist lived on the third floor of an apartment building in the middle of a jam packed residential street. There was no crowd now, but it seemed that all the residents lived in three story structures jammed side by side overlooking the narrow byway. As Brill moved along the street, he saw why. There was a well in the middle of a courtyard between two buildings, probably the only source of water for miles around. He walked up to the well and filled the bladder in his backpack, dropped in two iodine tablets to kill off most of the parasites. He would be going back under the morning sun, which would increase his sweat rate. Already he could tell he was getting low, so he sucked down the bladder full of water and refilled it again.
Dehydration was one of those things most people didn't talk about, but marketers in America had everyone convinced it was epidemic. Ninety nine percent of the people were never going to have a problem, but Brill learned that the jungle sucked the moisture right out of you. The desert was worse, even at night.
The brain was surrounded by a sack of fluid, which shrank when the body was low on water. It could impact thinking and critical motor skills at the wrong moment. Better to keep hydrated when he had the chance.
The scientist was on the third floor of the middle building. It was a secure location, and it made getting to him difficult. Not impossible, but Brill liked to play the odds, which were never in his favor.
In a street this crowded, the odds were against him that he would run into someone. In a crowded building, the apartment would have residents on either side, and even though advance intel told him the scientist lived alone, Brill knew that it was fifty/fifty he had someone in the studio with him.
The odds were always fifty/fifty. Either he would run across someone on his way up or he wouldn't. Either the neighbors would be fighting insomnia and hear him work, or they wouldn't. Either scientist was by himself or he was with someone. It was always a coin toss, and every coin toss, no matter how many times you flipped it, had an equal chance of coming up head or tails.
Since he knew the odds, he marched over to the building with the same confidence he displayed on the pier. No one hardly ever bothered a confident man. They just assumed he knew what he was doing.
The door to the stairwell was locked with a simple latch. He flicked open a six inch lock blade and shimmied the bar open. The door hinges squeaked as he slid it in.
Brill pulled the silenced pistol he carried from the pouch at his back and took to the stairs. He used the edge of the wood to minimize creaking, but the age, the dry wood and rusty nails conspired against him.
He didn't want to sound like a man sneaking up the stairs, so instead he trudged in his best imitation of someone coming home after a long hard day. Not too noisy, but not overtly trying to hide the noise either.
He hit the fifty percent chance of no one in the stairwell, and no one on the third-floor landing. So far, so good.
The apartment was the door in the middle.
He could knock, but that would attract too much attention.
Brill studied the doorknob. It was a simple brass knob with a skeleton key lock. He gripped the knob in one hand and lifted gently, sliding the lock blade between the frame and door, then sawing down softly. He felt the blade catch on the latch and maneuvered it in slowly, shoving it into the door.
If the scientist used a deadbolt or chain, he would have to think of something else.
But the simple door lock was all he used.
He passed part of the neighbor odds and said a silent wish to the universe that the man was alone.
He was.
He slept on a small twin mattress in the corner, an oscillating fan blowing warm air over his naked body. He was thin, and soft looking, with a scraggly beard and graying hair. The man didn't look like much of a threat, except between the ears where it mattered.
He was a chemist par excellence, with dual doctorates in chemistry and biology. A potent combination.
If the guy wasn't an Islamic terrorist, he could have put his big brain to work solving everyday problems that faced his people. The hunger and fear of food shortages could be solved with the creation of drought resistant crops. The safety everyone desired for their family and loved ones could be introduced through better living conditions. Brill knew that most advances in civilization came at the behest of a corporate entity working on increasing profit, so the common good wasn't always at the forefront of every development.
Still Arab history was peppered with genius, lost to fanaticism and fear across the ages as a thousand years of misguided shamans and imams led a righteous people backwards in time. They weren't progressing, except in areas of how to kill Western influences and subjugate the masses.
Brill raised the pistol and settled it just above the bridge of his nose.
In World War II, America and Russia stole German scientists working on the Atom Bomb and secreted them away to warrens and dens in hinterlands of the country to continue their work. In the war on terror, scientists were shot on sight, any potential good they could do for their world far outweighed by the horror they could inflict.
He pulled the trigger and spread the man's potential across the flat pillowcase.
Brill turned and faced the door to wait out the odds on the neighbors. No one came.
He gathered up some paper material spread out on the desk and stuffed it in his pack. Analysts back at Barraque could look over it to determine if it was viable intelligence. He stopped with one piece of paper.
It was an invoice from Barraque, payment to the man dead in the bed.
Brill tilted his head in confusion. Why had Shelby sent him after a scientist on the Barraque payroll. Had the man gone rogue? What was he doing out here?
A motor engine cut through the quiet of the village and set his hair on end.
It was out of place and ripped apart the silence.
No time to wonder, he shoved all the paper in his pack and took the stairs down three at at time.
NINE
Luck. It's one of those things that everyone says is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Brill thought maybe the Scottish had a better angle on it. Luck was something mystical, and energy in the universe that gave some folks an edge over others. The converse could be true as well.
Brill was lucky.
At the bottom of the stairs, he slipped in the sand and spilled across the floor in a sliding heap. As he fell, bullets peppered the doorway and shattered the wooden stairs where he had been just a microsecond before.
He covered his head and rolled behind the wall. Bullets shattered the wood and sprayed him with splinters.
He pulled an extra magazine from his pouch and got ready.
Who was shooting? Why?
Those questions rolled through his mind as he searched for a way to peek outside. He had no idea how many there were, or where they were situated. They were using AK-47's, that much he could tell from the distinct sound it made when firing at him.
AK's were ubiquitous on the continent, practically a prize for every boy that turned thirteen. No answers there.
Still he just killed a terrorist scientist, so he could assume they had some sort of alarm on his door. Even though he hadn't seen one.
Bootsteps pounded on the walk outside. He heard the chatter of their voices, Arabic with a heavy African dialect. They kicked in the front door and three men stormed the stairs, never bothering to clear the small foyer.
Brill lifted his pistol and sent three shots into the back of their heads. The bodies pitched forward and slid down the stairs, leaving smears of blood and brains in a pa
th. One of the legs of the lowest man twitched in a dead man's dance.
Screams erupted from outside, followed by more bullets.
They avoided the bodies of their fallen comrades, so the shots went high. Brill cowered on the floor and wondered how fast he could roll across and grab a rifle. Would the men outside react in time?
The door was hanging by one hinge, giving him a limited view outside. Six men gathered around a pickup truck, a Nissan four wheel drive which was one of the most common vehicles in Africa. There was a mount for a .50 cal in the bed, but it was empty.
The men were arrayed in a random pattern from the tailgate to the hood of the truck, each of their rifles trained on the door and spitting bullets into the dark opening. Lights were coming on in some of the apartments, though smart residents were staying dark until the shooting stopped.
Smart, thought Brill.
He took careful aim through the crack in the door, moving his pistol from the head of one man to the next in sight.
He couldn't get all six, not from this angle, but two were sure to fall.
Brill popped them both. One minute they were standing, the next it was like someone cutting the strings on a puppet and they dropped.
The others noticed and stopped shooting, screaming obscenities instead.
Brill rolled across the floor, yanked a rifle and rolled back.
A line of bullets stitched the ground next to the dead body.
He checked the magazine, half full. He had never been a fan of spray and pray, but with four men left, and maybe more on the way he needed to escape.
He stuck the barrel around the corner and squeezed off three round bursts in three blasts with one hand. He leaned around the corner and shot the other four men as they scrambled for cover.
The last one squirmed in the dirt, crying and squealing, his ripped abdomen spilling into the sand.
Brill checked the street in both directions.
No one there yet.
He grabbed a second rifle from one of the dead bodies on the stairs, and ran outside. Two of the men were still breathing, the gut shot crier and another who was gasping with a sucking chest wound. Brill put him out of misery with a rifle shot to the head, then flipped over the gut shot man.
“Speak English?” he growled in Afrikaans.
The man mewled.
He was worthless, concerned only with his own agony now. Brill ended his suffering. He grabbed two more rifles and magazines off the dead bodies, and left them where they fell.
It was going to be a story for authorities to piece together, but so far, no witnesses had popped out to the street. He was sure they were watching him though, so as he jumped into the cab of the pick up truck, he grabbed a scarf and wrapped it around his head.
Let anyone watching tell a story about Boko Harem shooting a scientist and then fighting it out among themselves.
He cranked the truck. It wouldn't start. He pumped the gas and tried again, and this time it turned over. Brill dropped it in reverse and backed out of the village as fast as he could manage. When he reached the end of the street, he swung around in a giant cloud of dust and raced the fifteen miles back toward the SEAL team.
He wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew there was no alarm. That team had been on him too fast, and they were too ready to kill him.
Someone had talked and when he found them, they were never going to speak again.
TEN
Washington knew they were screwed. The cluster they had walked into turned sideways the moment the stepped onto campus.
Three am was when most people were supposed to sleep, and SEALS were damn good at sneaking. So were young couples in love.
Sinatra was focused on the building and tripped over the young couple sleeping on a blanket wrapped in each other's arms. Their cries of alarm woke up the dorm rooms, but instead of disgorging students, armed militants streamed out.
They had a choice.
Firefight with superior numbers, or retreat with the mission incomplete. The LT called retreat and the team moved back under the cover of darkness.
But Abu Aish was no fool.
He had a backup squad with instructions to seal off the University and the SEALS ran right into a bottleneck trap. Aish piled on the men surrounding them, until the team was in an untenable position. Outgunned, outmanned and on lower ground.
“Hold your fire,” LT commanded.
Washington had seen this scene in a movie once. A SEAL team sneaked through the sewers and came up in a prison basement, but set off tremor sensors that alerted the bad guys they were coming.
When the last SEAL popped up into the basement, they were faced against a superior force with overwhelming firepower shooting down from high ground.
A classic no win, get killed situation.
“Surrender,” Aish called out to them.
His voice was light and effeminate, a harsh contrast to the demented terrorist he was.
“LT,” Washington grunted.
The team glanced around, weapons drawn, ready to face down and die if called for. There would be nothing gained for it, except the deaths of good men. They would be tortured, but when they missed extraction, the US would send in Para-rescuers, or negotiate for their release.
The LT weighed their options. He wasn't sure if the team could take out enough terrorists for their loss to hold meaning.
The bullet slammed into his Kevlar and knocked him backwards. He could hear six more shots follow as he struggled to catch his breath, struggled to reach his weapon and return fire.
A boot slammed on his hand and crushed the bones. He screamed and lunged at the terrorist standing on his fingers. The man slammed a rifle butt into his head and the LT blacked out.
ELEVEN
Radio silence is nerve wrenching and painful. Brill wanted to reach out to the SEAL team to get a situation report, but didn't for two reasons. One, orders were to keep quiet to avoid detection from electronic monitoring. The presence of the terrorist kill team waiting for him outside of Fazi's house told him the mission had been compromised, or at least parts of the mission.
Two, his radio had been shot in the firefight. A piece of metal or plastic from the shattered casing was embedded under his skin and causing him great pain. He ignored it, but he couldn't ignore the blood leaking down his leg. He ripped off a sleeve and made an impromptu wrap. It didn't feel like the shrapnel nicked anything vital, just a nice long tear wound. He cinched it as tight as he could with one hand and vowed to ask Washington for some Quik-clot and gauze once he hooked up with the team.
The Nissan bounced across the rutted dirt path carved out of the sand that passed for a road in these parts. He was used to it. A ride on a jungle path was usually an adventure in not breaking down, which the trucks always inevitably did. He hoped it wasn't the same for this stolen pickup.
It carried him back toward Sokoto and he paused on the edge of town. He couldn't see past the buildings, but something was up in the middle. A cloud of dust swirled up into the air before being whisked away and dispersed on the whistling wind.
His eyes narrowed. The activity was near the University building, if he recalled his maps correctly. That's where the SEALS were supposed to make their capture.
He expected to find them on the other side of town, but needed to investigate first. If the dust was trouble, they might need his help.
He pulled the truck beside a building and killed the engine. There was a scarf on the seat and he wrapped it around his head and shoulders. He still looked out of place in black BDU's, but the checkerboard headdress and assault rifle might dissuade second looks.
He jumped out of the truck and jogged through the streets toward the University. He kept to the edge of the buildings, staying in shadows where he could. The small village was quiet, except as he drew closer to the dust cloud.
Ahead he could hear the murmur of a crowd.
He sneaked to the edge of a building and peeked around.
A group of
AK-47 toting terrorists surrounded six of the SEALS. The Islamists had their faces hidden behind black scarves, waving their weapons, slamming them into the men.
Each time one of the sailors pitched face first on the ground, the other terrorists would jump in and pound him with kicks, rifle butts, yelling and spitting.
There were fifteen of them.
Brill could make out Washington, being the only black face in fatigues, and maybe the tall one was Sinatra. They were missing one man. Brill couldn't see the LT.
That meant two things. Either he was dead, or being interrogated.
He checked the clip in his rifle and pulled a spare out of the pouch and prepared it for quick insertion. The reason the AK-47 is so ubiquitous in third world countries was because it was so simple to use, and practically indestructible. But they still jammed.
Brill didn't have time to dissemble and clean the weapon, so he checked the action and sent up a silent prayer to the gods of war that the previous owner had at least kept it out of the mud.
One of the Islamists raised his gun and shot a SEAL in the thigh. The man screamed in pain, then rage. The terrorists laughed and shot the man next to him in the other leg.
Brill raised the rifle and flicked the selector to semi-auto. He'd rather be using his pistol up close, but from this range it was hard to miss.
He didn't.
The terrorist shifted his rifle toward the next SEAL and dropped to the ground. A second glanced over at him and made a questioning noise. A hole opened up in his forehead and he pitched over backwards.