“Bring an automatic weapons guy and a couple RPG guys with you,” Hank said, “and together we’ll get Commander al-Iraqi in the basement. We’ll go in quiet until they make us go loud. Split up the rest of your men between assaulting through the ground floor and securing the bunker’s perimeter. Tell your men on the truck-mounted guns to assist with securing the perimeter, and our snipers will help them.”
“We must move fast. If Daesh know what happen, hundreds come from city. Maybe more. We not many men. Can’t fight hundreds.”
“We’ll go fast,” Hank assured him. “Which one of your lieutenants will assault through the ground floor and which will secure the perimeter?”
Omar put the question to Durain and Emarat.
“I’ll assault the ground floor, and you can secure the perimeter,” Emarat said in Arabic.
“You want the glory of being part of the assault,” Durain argued in Arabic. “I don’t care about the glory—I just want to get the job done. I’ve done so many assaults that it’s easy for me. I can get the job done. I’ll assault the ground floor, and you can secure the perimeter.”
“You’re all talk,” Emarat said.
Max was pleased to see that Durain and Emarat were eager to get their guns on—a good sign. He knew too many Arab soldiers, especially officers, who, when the going got tough, were nowhere to be found.
Omar looked at Hank and said, “Durain protect outside; Emarat attack ground floor. We must hurry.”
Max fist-bumped Tom and said, “Payback.”
“Let’s kick some ass,” Hank said.
“Jazrah Militia!” Omar shouted in Arabic.
The men cried back, “Jazrah Militia!”
11
“Moving,” Hank reported over the radio.
Max worried if Paris and Rojin would get into position soon enough to provide overwatch for the assault. He waited for their call.
The Jazz’s three-truck convoy rumbled over dusty streets through the southwestern part of al-Raqqah. Max had never fought on this militia’s side, and he only knew from Army intel that these guys were any good. So he hoped for the best and expected the worst.
Omar’s was the lead vehicle, and he rode in the passenger seat next to his driver. Max, Tom, Hank, Mr. Overly Friendly, and two more of Omar’s men sat in the back. One more militiaman stood manning the machine gun mounted in back. Max looked back to see Emarat’s men follow in the second truck. In the third truck came Durain and his men, bringing up the rear. The three trucks travelled at a conservative thirty-five miles per hour with their lights on.
Max used imagery to imagine the whole mission in his mind before he did it. More than just visualizing, he tried to feel the metal trigger against his finger, smell the powder, and hear the shooting before it started. The more he could sense the entire mission, the better he could perform it in real life.
Paris spoke quietly in the receiver bud in Max’s ear. “Sierra One and Two ready.” Now Max and his team had two angels over their shoulder protecting them. Angels of death.
“After we get in the compound, kill the guard in the tower,” Max said.
Paris broke squelch once to acknowledge the message.
Soon Max spotted the spotlight of the guard in the tower outside of al-Iraqi’s bunker. Max’s truck neared the tower, and the spotlight locked onto them. As they neared the compound, the spotlight stayed on them. Then the light left them, and their truck passed the tower without incident. The other trucks passed, too.
One hundred meters before the entrance to the compound, two armed terrorists appeared beside the road, one on each side. Max’s heart jumped. Where the hell did these guys come from? One guard motioned for them to halt. But Omar’s driver ignored him. The guard raised his weapon as if to shoot and hollered in Arabic, “Stop!”
Omar’s driver slowed down, and Hank said, “Take ’em out.” Max and Tom gave the guard on their side a dirt siesta. Max looked back to see if the guard stood back up, but he stayed down. The terrorist on Hank’s side was down, too.
The noise of the truck engines were too loud to allow Max to hear Paris’s enhanced M14 or Rojin’s Dragunov. From Max’s angle, he couldn’t see if the guard in the tower was still standing. He had to trust that Paris and Rojin took care of him.
Omar’s driver floored it. They arrived at the front entrance to the compound, where six terrorists stood. Two were on Max and Tom’s side, but Hank had four on his. The tangos appeared bewildered. The deception seemed to be working. Max shot at the one closest to him, and Tom the other. Both tangos went down. Hank took one out on his side, and Mr. Overly Friendly gunned down another, but two escaped—one ran inside the compound and one ran outside. It looked like Hank or someone on his side had winged the one who ran inside the compound because he ran with a limp. Before the Waynes or Omar’s men could stop the squirter from getting away outside of the compound, he bounced back as if he’d run into an invisible brick wall, and a spray emitted from his back. The angle of the spray couldn’t have been caused by a shot from the Waynes or Omar’s men. Thank you, Paris and Rojin.
Omar’s truck sped inside the compound, where the limping terrorist cried out, “They’ve gone insane! They’re killing us!”
This time Hank finished the job, and he mowed down the fleeing man. Max and the others removed their black hoods and jumped out of the truck, leaving their driver and gunner behind. They hit the ground running with Omar at the lead and Hank directly behind him. Max was next, followed by Tom, two guys carrying RPGs, and Mr. Overly Friendly. Max didn’t know if Omar had a key or if the basement door was unlocked, but the Waynes and the Jazz moved like liquid through the door that was supposed to lead to Commander al-Iraqi.
The odor of the basement smacked Max in the nose. It reminded him of the putrid smell of death—human blood and gore. A dog might recognize the difference between human and animal slaughter, but to Max, they both smelled the same. He followed Hank and Omar down the stairs. The floor was one huge stain with drains spaced out across it, and the walls were stained, too. A tango popped up from behind a desk in Hank’s sector, and Hank dropped the hammer on him. Another tango appeared in Omar’s sector, but before Omar could fire, the terrorist sprayed, and Omar fell. Max drilled the terrorist who’d shot Omar and shuffled past the bodies of the Jazz leader and the tangos. There was no time to stop now. They had to eliminate immediate threats; they’d get Omar on their way back.
Max and the team swept through the next room, but RPG One and Mr. Overly Friendly were too fast, and RPG Two was too slow—they bunched up and spread out like a busted accordion. The Jazz were good by militia standards, but they weren’t up to Wayne standards, and Max kept his fingers crossed that none of them shot him or his family in the back.
A tango appeared. Hank dropped him with two to the chest. Max finished him with a pop to the piñata. After leaving the steps, they reached a hallway with three doors, spaced close together, indicating small rooms that could be cleared by individual operators. Hank took the first and went inside. Before Max took the next room, two tangos rushed through the hall at him. Max gunned the first one down. Tom waxed the other.
While Tom continued to guard the hall, Max burst into his room. He looked for threats or the commander. This was a kitchen. From the corner, a burst of AK fire greeted him. It scared the hell out of him, and he returned the greeting. Max’s first two bullets nailed the greeter in the left lung and left shoulder, spinning him. As the greeter screwed into the deck, Max shot him in the back, and when he hit the deck, Max shot him in the back of the head—no more surprise greetings. Max glanced down at his own body to check for leaks, but he was surprised to find none. When he turned to leave the room, he could hardly believe all the bullet holes plastering the wall and door frame near where he’d entered. He’d lucked out.
Max exited the room, and in the hall he met up with Tom. Hank seemed to be taking a while until he came out of the third room, and Max realized he’d cleared two rooms. The Jazz were
gone, but an explosion and automatic gunfire blasted from up ahead around the corner. The Jazz were moving ahead of the assault team. Max entertained the hope that their bravery would compensate for their lack of tactics.
Max dashed forward with his father and brother and rounded the corner. They discovered what appeared to be a tactical operations center with two bloody tangos sprawled on the deck, a third one severely wounded, and Commander al-Iraqi on his knees, one side of him covered in blood. It wasn’t clear if the blood was al-Iraqi’s or someone else’s. Above him, a monitor played video from what seemed to be a camera that had fallen sideways on a dirt road and stayed there. An arm partially obstructed the view, but it didn’t move. Gunfire and explosions overpowered the speakers.
RPG One was missing, but RPG Two and Mr. Overly Friendly stood with smoking weapons. They seemed to be waiting for orders, as if not sure what to do next.
“Good job, good job,” Hank told them in Arabic.
Their eyes went wide, apparently surprised that Hank could speak their language.
“You two guard the door,” Hank told them.
They did.
The wounded man next to Commander al-Iraqi wore a captain’s rank. He reached for a pistol, but Tom terminated his reach. Max and Hank put a black bag over al-Iraqi’s head and plasticuffed his wrists. Max snatched the commander to his feet, and Hank led them out.
Tom grabbed some thumb drives off a desk and stuffed them in his pockets. He put a laptop in his backpack.
“Where’s your friend?” Max asked RPG Two and Mr. Overly Friendly.
“I don’t know,” they said.
Max and their crew hastened out of the TOC with their prisoner. They turned the corner. In the hall they ran into RPG One, whose face was panic-stricken, and he aimed at them, but everyone yelled at him, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! We’re your friends!” RPG One stopped aiming at them.
Hank led them back to the room where tangos and Omar lay motionless in pools of blood. Max had his hands full with al-Iraqi, and Hank gestured for Tom to attend to Omar. Hank covered the area. Tom checked Omar’s pulse for a moment, then he respectfully closed his short-lived comrade’s eyelids. Omar’s militiamen shook their heads, but when Tom told RPG One and RPG Two to carry the body, they did what had to be done.
Hank exited the building first. Commander al-Iraqi, apparently having regained his strength, dug his heels hard into the deck—until Max kicked him in the nuts. Al-Iraqi dropped to his knees in the doorway, blocking it. Max struck him in the head with the metal of his muzzle. “Get up and walk.” The commander fell over, but he struggled to his feet again and staggered out of the building.
Max and his teammates climbed the stairs out of the bunker, but the technical they’d arrived in wasn’t there waiting to take them out like it was supposed to. There were no vehicles in sight. Hank called over the radio in Arabic, “Omar’s driver, Omar’s driver, we need you back at the compound’s south gate, immediately.”
Gunfire crackled over the radio with a voice. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
“Quickly!” Hank barked.
Voluminous small arms and heavy weapons popped off directly north of the compound—not good.
A black-clad terrorist walked into the compound toward Hank with his arms raised high—surrendering. Hank shouted at him to halt, but the tango kept walking toward them. Hank repeated himself, but when the tango kept coming, Hank double-tapped him in the chest. The terrorist’s upper body erupted in fire, like a suicide vest gone wrong, and he screamed, “Allahu, akbar!” God is great! Hank shot again, silencing him. The flaming tango fell, polluting the darkness with the stinking odor of his burning flesh. Hank walked past him, and Max pushed al-Iraqi forward.
“Omar’s driver, where are you?!” Hank demanded.
No answer.
Commander al-Iraqi dug his heels into the dirt again, and Max gave him another nut cracking. This time, the commander didn’t need the muzzle follow-up to the head to remind him to walk—he became mobile. With one hand on the stumbling commander’s shoulder, Max glanced back to make sure Tom and the others were still there. Tom’s head appeared as if it were on a swivel, scanning for targets. RPG One and RPG Two grunted and groaned under the burden of Omar’s body. Mr. Overly Friendly stopped to check their rear.
The bunker door leading to the ground floor flew open, and an armed black-hooded tango came at them. Mr. Overly Friendly sprayed bullets at the terrorist, winging him. The tango cried out and jerked off his hood. He was Emarat. In all the shooting and looting, he must’ve forgotten to remove it. More hooded men came out of the same door, but Emarat yelled at them to remove their hoods. They took off their black balaclavas, revealing that they were Jazz militia.
Emarat berated Mr. Overly Friendly, who apologized profusely for shooting him.
“Come on, we’re moving,” Max told them in Arabic.
Mr. Overly Friendly turned and followed Tom, and Emarat held his bloody shoulder as he followed Overly Friendly. One of Emarat’s men radioed for their vehicle.
Hank led them out of the compound, and two technicals, Omar’s and Emarat’s trucks, skidded to a stop in front of them. “Hurry, hurry,” the men in the vehicles cried. “Daesh is coming from the north, they’re coming.”
Max and the others piled into their vehicles. Inside the truck, al-Iraqi rose as if to make a break for it, but Max slapped him upside the head with the butt of his rifle. He collapsed to the truck bed.
“Where’s Durain’s truck?” Max asked.
“They drove away,” Omar’s driver replied angrily. “They abandoned us.”
It’d turned out that Durain was all show and no go, but there wasn’t time to get pissed at him. Omar’s and Emarat’s drivers sped from the compound. They passed the dead terrorists beside the road and the tower with its sentry visible no more.
Max radioed Paris and Rojin, “Sierra One and Sierra Two, this is Yukon, meet us at Rendezvous One, over.”
“We are moving,” Paris said.
Max was happy to hear her voice. They were still alive.
Hank radioed the boat using his call sign. “Bucket, this is Alpha, HVT secure,” Hank said. Their high-value target, Commander al-Iraqi, had been captured. “Heading to rendezvous before extraction, over.”
Chief answered, “Roger, Alpha. We’ll arrive at extraction site in five mikes.” Five minutes to extraction, but Max wondered if his team would survive that long. They were out in the open without trees or buildings to hide behind, and the city to the west was still half a klick away.
Behind Max’s truck rolled Emarat’s, and behind them came five technicals, packed with Daesh shooting automatic rifles and heavy Russian .50-caliber machine guns, DShKs, mounted in each truck. The DShK shots sliced through the metal Jazz trucks like knives through butter.
The Waynes and the Jazz answered their enemies with a hail of fire. The .50-cal gun in Max’s truck shook the bed and nearly busted Max’s eardrums as it blasted at the enemy, but the noise of the heavyweight gun was music to his ears. He lined up his sights on the closest enemy driver and squeezed, but both his and the enemy’s trucks were bouncing and turning so much that he failed to score a direct hit.
Enemy fire blasted off a side-view mirror and punched holes through the body of Emarat’s truck like Swiss cheese. The muzzle flashes and thunder from Emarat’s truck faded. “They are killing us! Too many!” Emarat cried. “Must break away. Split them up.”
“Break off,” Hank radioed back.
Emarat’s vehicle veered off road across a farm and kicked up a cloud of dust. Not one enemy truck followed him. All five barreled after Max’s truck.
“Sshhit!” Max cursed. He fired repeatedly at the driver of the lead tango truck until the vehicle slowed and drifted away.
Tom pulled the pin on a grenade, let the spoon fly, and cooked off a second or two before pitching it at the next truck. The grenade bounced before exploding beside the enemy vehicle and blasted a couple tangos hanging o
ver the side.
Mr. Overly Friendly and the .50 gunner got a piece of the same tangos. They blasted the windows and the men inside. The technical came to a stop beside the road.
Commander al-Iraqi got up like he was going to try to escape again, but a bullet hit him in the arm, and he howled before dropping to the deck. His arm was still intact, so it couldn’t have been a .50-caliber round that hit him—probably an AK bullet.
The three remaining Daesh trucks filled the widening gap and unleashed hell. Like lead-filled Coke cans hurtling through the air, the heavy .50-cal projectiles crushed everything in their path—including RPG Two and their gunner on the .50 cal. Human hunks and goo sprayed the back of the truck. Max, Tom, and Mr. Overly Friendly ducked, but hot metal sliced Max’s shoulder, and glass from the cab showered him. Their truck decreased speed.
They had to keep moving if they were going to stay alive. “Speed up, damn it, speed up!”
RPG One stood with his weapon and fired off a shot, but he didn’t hit jack. The tangos’ guns were more accurate. A chunk of RPG One’s back came out, his arm was ripped off, and the top of his head erupted.
Max’s truck came to a stop, and the tangos’ technicals closed in.
“Get the .50 up!” Hank shouted. They needed to get their machine gun back in the fight in order to survive.
Even so, the .50 wouldn’t be enough to save them if they sat like ducks. “Speed up!” Max shouted. He wanted to bail out and take his chances on foot, but their vehicle did speed up—Hank was behind the wheel now. Max stood and took over the .50. Now the enemy focused their fire on him, but before he could take hold of the gun, Hank made a sudden turn, and Max slipped in a puddle of blood and fell on his ass.
Hank barreled into the city on a narrow street between buildings that squeezed the technicals into single file behind them. Only the enemy’s lead vehicle had a clear line of fire at them. Max regained his footing on the slippery deck and grasped the .50. He answered the tangos with a long belch—focusing his fire on the tango behind the wheel.
Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller Page 7