by Chris Lowry
The crowd noticed something was wrong and the murmurs took on a new pitch, higher, more fervent.
Brill moved the sights along the group and aimed for head shots. He couldn't risk center mass because they might fire into the SEALS and ruin his rescue operation. He dropped three more before they began returning fire.
Bullets jackhammered into the wall above his head.
He dropped to one knee, sighted around the corner and sent two more to their death.
The SEALS went horizontal to give him a clean field of fire.
Damn their training was good, he thought. Too bad he couldn't say the same for the crowd.
They scattered like sheep, screaming and shouting as they tried to escape, but hysteria made them move in concert, shoving and pushing the weaker out of the way. They also blocked the field so Brill couldn't just lay down a line of fire.
He needed to make something happen and fast.
One of the Islamists would start grabbing hostages, either villagers or a SEAL and he didn't want that to happen.
It did.
Two of them grabbed Washington and cowered behind him as they stumbled toward a building on the far side of the University courtyard. Brill couldn't get a clear shot, not without exposing himself around the corner, and the remaining eight were emptying their rifles into the wall he hid behind.
Until they ran dry.
Rule number one of a firefight. Always have more bullets than your enemy. Brill listened as the fire rate trickled to dry clicks. An AK can empty a clip at full auto in four seconds.
Brill still had sixteen bullets plus the magazine in his pocket.
There were only eight terrorists in the courtyard, plus the two almost behind Washington.
He leaned around the corner and sent a bullet into the eight as fast as he could pull the trigger.
Washington dragged his feet, making it hard for the men to haul him backwards. They dropped him and ran for the corner. Brill put a bullet in each of their backs.
He rounded the corner and pushed past the last of the fleeing crowd. The two wanna be kidnappers were scrabbling in the dirt for their weapons. He took careful aim at the back of their heads, and then they didn't move at all.
Brill slung the rifle and gave Washington a hand up. He pulled the lock blade out and cut the twine binding his wrists.
“We've got to move.”
TWELVE
“Where's your LT?” he asked.
Washington turned Sinatra over and checked him for wounds. The terrorists had shot into his Kevlar and left him with broken ribs and wheezing. He listened to his breathing but the lung didn't make a sucking sound which indicated a punctured lung. Still it was going to hurt to move him and there was still the chance one of the ribs could penetrate the delicate tissue.
“They took him,” Washington said to Brill. “Aish and three others took a truck in that direction.”
He pointed to the West.
“How long?”
“An hour? Maybe two. It was tough to keep time.”
All of the men were battered and beaten. If they were captured during the raid, that meant they were tortured for four hours.
They were still good for a fight, but not for a rescue mission.
“Who takes command?” Brill asked.
“I will follow orders,” Washington huffed under the weight of Sinatra. “In the absence of orders I will assume leadership until such a time as the mission is complete or I am relieved of command by a superior officer.”
God damn he loved SEALs. They were just like Recce's.
“Get these men to the airfield. I left a truck four blocks over there by the edge of the city,” Brill ordered. “I'm going to get the Lt.”
“How long should we wait?”
“Until I get there.”
“I mean what if you don't come back man?”
“I'm coming back. Don't leave without us.”
Washington gave him the once over.
“At least let me come with you.”
“Your squad is down by half,” said Brill as he checked the load in his magazine. “You have wounded to tend, and a hostile force around our position.”
“You're one man going into the shit by yourself.”
“I am the shit,” Brill gave him a half smile.
“Yeah,” Washington grinned back. “You're full of it at least.”
He held out a hand. After a moment, Brill gripped it and shook.
“Give me an hour, ninety minutes. I'll bring your Lieutenant back.”
“We'll be waiting.”
THIRTEEN
They went that away is a pretty fair description when there's a posse chasing after the bad guys, but general directions weren't so great when one man was searching for another in the desert.
Still Brill kept his head as he ran in the direction Washington had indicated. The hard-packed roads were windswept almost nightly by the constant wind out of the desert, not only spreading sand across the clay, but also erasing all tire marks or hoofprints from the previous day's transportation.
The road was bare. No tracks, no traces of movement in the sand drifts, just the ever-present encroachment of this attempt at civilization on the edge of wild spaces.
Brill circled back toward the village and watched the buildings. The structures on this side of town were mostly houses, small adobe constructions that looked like they could have been lifted from the middle ages and baked under the burning sun.
Aish and his men may have carried the LT into one of them for a more thorough interrogation, or to hold for ransom in exchange for releasing terrorist prisoners.
But Brill doubted it.
Not the reason for the kidnapping and separation, no they would try to use the LT as a bargaining chip, just as they probably planned to televise the beheadings of half the SEAL team.
He doubted they would take their prisoner into a home.
A building on the corner of one street looked like a warehouse. Playing the odds again, it was fifty fifty the LT was sequestered there. But the building felt right.
It was away from the homes by the space of a house or two, set off by itself. People would hear the screams from torture, but it could be easy enough to ignore, softened by the wind.
Brill skulked toward it in the shadows of other buildings.
He didn't have much time. Someone might have reported the rescue of the team to Aish, or he may have heard the bullets.
If he was a vengeful man, the LT might not have much time, and Brill knew most Islamists were very vengeful, even if they were miseducator, misinformed and generally bad people.
And he hated bad men.
He reached the side of the building and leaned against the wall to catch his breath.
He could hear them inside. Men shouting, yelling in Arabic. The sounds of fists hitting a body hard.
He felt a tightening in his stomach.
Torture brought it out in him. He could feel memories of the time he was kidnapped and tortured by Angolan rebels well up at the back of his mind and fought them down. He did a quick set of box breaths, three count in, hold for three, three count out, hold for three.
He only needed to do it twice and the training kicked back in. The zen state constant meditation had produced gave him a sense of clarity.
There was a man behind that wall who needed his help.
There were an unknown number of enemy, as few as four, or as high as a platoon surrounding that man.
Brill had a job to do. Kill them all and save the man.
He checked the load in his clip, slipped the final full magazine from his pouch to have it close at hand in the pocket and unstrapped his pistol.
FOURTEEN
There was a saying he had been taught by Simon during his short time with Executive Options in South Africa. The mercenary mentor drilled into his young protégé the words that repeated through his mind like a mantra.
“Move fast. Strike first. Strike hard.”
He knew it worked because he had used the philosophy so effectively in the past. Maybe it was a maxim from the past. A gunfighter who keeps his head in a gunfight when the world around him is going to hell, is the one who walks away.
He moved toward the door.
It made sense. Most people aren't exposed to bullets and loud explosions. That's why Recce training and other SOG's around the globe used it so extensively. Fire at people repeatedly until it becomes second nature, and they learned to control the response mechanism that dumped adrenaline in the system. Breathing helped.
It's always good to breath.
He twisted the doorknob slowly. It was unlocked. Brill lifted the rifle to his shoulder, raised a boot and eased the door open with his toe.
“Hey!” someone screamed in Arabic.
Brill marched in and began shooting. He dropped two of the men before the other two recovered and began returning fire.
Their first shots went wild, stitching a pattern on the wall behind him.
Brill shot the one on the far left and swung right to hit the second. Too late. The man smiled as he pulled the trigger and Brill saw the flash of muzzle fire arc out and a bullet slammed into his shoulder.
He fell back against the wall as the terrorist zeroed in on his head.
The LT kicked Aish in the knee and bent it backwards with a loud snap. Aish screamed in pain and struggled to turn his rifle on the SEAL.
Brill yanked out his pistol and shot him.
“We were supposed to take him alive,” the LT gasped as he crawled across the floor on his hands and knees.
“You're welcome,” said Brill.
The LT cradled his right hand against his waist, but worked with his left. He dug a Quikclot package out of a leg pouch and sprinkled the powder on Brill's leaking shoulder.
“Through and through,” Brill grimaced.
Lt nodded and slapped a bandage on the front and back. He'd still need a medic, but at least he wouldn't bleed out.
Brill examined the LT. His hand was mangled, his face a mishmash of bruises and open cuts, but he was breathing.
“Did they shoot you? Any wounds?” he grunted.
“Beat the shit out of me,” LT grunted back. “Looks like we'll both live. How are my men?”
“Alive when I left. They pulled back to the airstrip to hold our LZ.”
“Then let's get moving,” the LT tried to get up.
It didn't work as well as he hoped. Blood loss and being beat left him dizzy. Brill helped him up, but mostly because he needed the assistance too.
The two grabbed weapons off the fallen terrorists.
“Search his pockets,” LT ordered. “Take what we can.”
Brill frisked the dead bodies and recovered a few scraps of paper. They didn't look like much, but there were two cell phones in his pockets that he grabbed as well. Maybe they could pull intel from them.
“Ready?” Brill glanced at the LT.
“What's the plan?”
“Running out of the question?”
“I can shuffle,” LT offered.
“Then we grab a car.”
“I don't see a rental company out here,” the SEAL smirked.
“Find a way or make one Hannibal,” Brill shot back.
He checked the exit, searching the perimeter and the two wounded men shuffled down the street shoulder to shoulder.
FIFTEEN
There wasn't a stolen pickup truck resting in the shade next to this building, but there was a rusty Peugeot that looked like it was held together with baling wire and prayers.
Brill set the LT against the hood and growled as he leaned under the dash to hotwire it. Hot white pain lanced through his shoulder.
He used the lock blade on his knife to pop open the steering column and strip the wires, then crossed the starter with the ignition and yelped.
Sparks arced out on his fingertips and the engine rumbled to life with the muffler popping.
He pulled himself into the driver's seat while LT hobbled over to the passenger door and fell in beside him.
“Buckle up,” said Brill and slipped it into gear.
The ancient crate took a moment to decide if it was going to roll, but eventually it did. Brill jammed the accelerator to the floor to get it up to twenty miles per hour.
“I don't know what we'll find at the airport,” Brill yelled over the wind coming through the windows.
“If they ambushed you, then they may know that's the only way in and out.”
“We weren't ambushed,” shouted the LT. “Stupid Murphy and his damn law.”
Brill nodded. He had some experience with that particular rule.
“We tripped over a pair of lovers in the garden and they gave us away.”
Brill stiffened in his seat.
“Weapons hot,” he called out.
The LT glanced ahead.
Someone, terrorists they assumed, had parked two trucks across the road to form a roadblock.
Brill was very familiar with this tactic. It was a common enough strategy down in the jungle. Rebels put up impromptu tollbooths to rob and steal from anyone using the road. They could move with impunity and operated pretty much everywhere.
These did not look like rebels.
As they drew closer, the visual became clear. Checkerboard headscarves meant Boku Harem.
“Can we bust through?” LT asked.
“In this?” Brill chuckled.
“I'm open for a plan,” the LT watched through the windshield.
“How accurate are you lefty?”
“I can shoot,” he sulked.
“Take the wheel.”
Brill lifted up his stolen AK and set two magazines in his lap. He reached for the LT's weapon. The man slid it back and held tighter.
“I said I can shoot.”
Brill nodded. The man set the rifle in his lap and grabbed the wheel.
“Pedal to the metal,” the LT ordered.
“No other way,” Brill answered.
He settled the rifle out of the open driver's window and employed a technique he hated.
Spray and pray.
He stitched a line of bullets across the two trucks blocking the road and the men cowering behind them.
He emptied one magazine, changed it out and emptied the next.
The LT steered with his uninjured left hand and somehow managed to rest his rifle out of the passenger window to add to their firepower.
Brill marveled at the training because it must have been excruciating to slip his broken mangled fingers through the guard and pull the trigger.
The terrorists returned fire.
They could hear bullets ping off the engine block and a cloud of steam and smoke poured out of the hood.
“Go right,” Brill screamed.
The LT yanked the wheel right.
They sailed past the roadblock in a sliding screech of sand and bullets.
Brill lifted his pistol and used it's more accurate sights to winnow down the enemy by three.
Then they were through. The remaining terrorists fired into the back of the car. The LT yelped.
“This is going to come back to bite me in the ass.”
“That's a bullet,” said Brill. “They call it a million-dollar wound.”
“I know what they call the damn thing,” Lt snapped. “We're leaving a trail of dead bodies that's going to create a stink to high heaven.”
“Would you rather they kill us?”
“We were supposed to be in and out unnoticed. How are we gonna exfil now?”
Brill watched the road ahead as they raced down the dusty desert road.
With a terrorist army on their ass, he was wondering the same thing.
SIXTEEN
The terrorists didn't catch up with them.
Murph may play fast and loose with the rules, but he had no favorites. Maybe they did some damage to the trucks at the roadblock, maybe they took out a key leader and in the absence of orders the remaining Islamists snuck
away to blow themselves up another day.
Brill couldn't be sure.
All he knew was they reached the airstrip and the rest of the team was there at the stolen truck.
He puttered up next to it at a blistering five miles an hour. The engine gave a groan, a shudder and what sounded sadly like a scream of hissing steam before it finally died.
“Good boy,” Brill patted the wheel.
LT fell out of the passenger door and splashed blood across the sand covered tarmac.
Washington ran over and slapped him on the ass with a bandage, then helped him hobble toward the plane.
The Red Cross worker stood on the steps and watched the team limp closer. He smiled, his eyes hidden behind mirror aviator sunglasses.
“Looks like you got into a little fight,” he called to them in an African tinged accent.
He pulled his hands from inside the door and pointed pistols at the wounded men.
Brill drew and fired.
A bullet ripped through the pilot's smile and pitched him down the steps.
“Boku Harem,” he said to the questioning looks from the SEALs.
Washington leaned the LT against one of the other wounded men and clambered up the steps. A second later he stuck his head out of the door.
“The pilot's dead,” he said.
“Can any of you guys fly?”
“We hitch rides,” said Washington. “He was our only way out of here.”
“Not our only way,” said Brill.
“Are you a pilot?”
“Not quite,” Brill said. “Get everyone on board.”
“What the Hell are you thinking?”
Brill pointed to a dust cloud rapidly bouncing toward the airstrip from the direction of the village. The terrorists found a leader.
“I'm thinking we have company.”
The unwounded SEALs lifted their comrades and shuffled them into the waiting belly of the CJ plane.
Brill climbed the stairs and flipped the pilot over to search his pockets.