Direct Action - 03

by Jack Murphy

  Sweeping around with his right hand, he found nothing. With his weight supported by his left arm, he was growing fatigued. Dehydration, physical exertion, and the stress of combat had beaten him up. Slowly, he switched arms and began sweeping around with his left hand. A few more shells came down somewhere outside.

  It was unnerving. He could also hear Rick breathing once or twice. He sounded like maybe he was to Deckard's two o' clock somewhere. The Operator was a ghost.

  Finally, he found something. His hand brushed up against a broken piece of concrete. Carefully reaching for it, Deckard grabbed it in his fist. Now he had something to fight with. As he lifted the concrete block and pulled it towards him, a low grinding sound echoed in the basement. A piece of rebar had been sticking out of the end of the block. As Deckard pulled it, the metal bar scratched against the floor.

  Boots pounded towards Deckard. He made it from down on his hands and knees to being up on one knee before one of the Liquid Sky mercenaries blasted into him. In the dark, there was little sense of depth perception by sound alone and the mercenary had simply charged into the dark. Deckard swung the concrete block and clipped his opponent but couldn't tell where.

  “Fuck!”

  Deckard recognized Rick's voice as he yelled out in pain.

  But Rick still had momentum on his side and carried Deckard down to the ground. He struggled to prevent the back of his head from slamming on the floor and splitting wide open. The fall jarred him but he was still in the fight, still swinging the concrete block. This time it glanced off Rick's shoulder. But now Rick was on top of Deckard and knew where he was. Rick's fists began to rain down on Deckard.

  Then, Rick was snatched off of Deckard. One second he was there, the next he was gone. A dozen feet away the fight continued, fists bashing flesh and boots scuffing around the floor. Deckard rolled over and crawled away. The Operator had gone into autopilot again, taking down Rick while thinking it was Deckard.

  Deckard found a wall and began tracing it to the back of the building. Behind him, he could hear someone's head getting slammed against the ground and he was pretty sure the grunting that came with each slam belonged to The Operator.

  37

  Ramon herded the Nusra fighters around the collapsed building. The Quds Force fighters had been beaten back for the time being and had retreated back to Syrian Army positions elsewhere in the city. A couple of civilians who were busy looting abandoned homes had told them where they had seen the white men go; into a building just before an artillery strike hammered it.

  The building was flattened with the outer walls all but collapsed, and the concrete slabs that had made up the three-story building rested one on top of the other. All three of the Liquid Sky men had to be dead, Ramon figured. He didn't much care about Rick or The Operator, but he was still trying to wrap his mind around the sell out by Deckard. He had turned traitor without any indication of why. Be that as it may, Bill was offering a huge reward for his head and he'd be damned if he wouldn't have the Nusra fighters pick through the debris until they found him.

  Soon, the jihadists located a basement window and began shining a flashlight inside. The yellow beam of light seemed to reflect back as it caught on sparkles of dust in the air. The window was narrow, maybe only one foot high by two feet wide. The Nusra terrorists continued to take turns poking their heads inside while others climbed up on top of the remains of the building. Then, they heard footsteps inside followed by someone coughing.

  Hands covered in white chalk dust reached up for the window. The Nusra fighters grabbed on and heaved the survivor up and through the small window. He was completely covered in dust and grime from the collapsed building.

  “Watch out,” the survivor said in Arabic. “The traitor is somewhere behind me.”

  By now Ramon was jogging over to see who they pulled out of the basement. With the survivor covered in dust, he couldn't tell if the Nusra fighters were talking to Rick or The Operator.

  Suddenly, the survivor tore the AK-47 from the hands of the nearest Nusra gunmen and all hell broke loose. Gunfire sprayed into the Nusra fighters, dropping two of them instantly. A third and fourth tried to run. The survivor, covered in white dust, looked like a ghost as he shot them both in the back. Catching sight of Ramon, the survivor then turned his newly acquired rifle on the Liquid Sky mercenary.

  Ramon cursed as he ducked behind the rubble while 7.62 rounds chiseled away at his cover.

  “Get up there,” Ramon yelled at the other Nusra fighters who were also seeking cover in the rubble. “Flank around and surround him!”

  Only by making some hand and arm signals did the Nusra fighters begin to understand, but by then it was too late. A couple grenade blasts covered the survivor's withdrawal. By the time Ramon got the jihadists moving and flanked around the side of the building, the survivor had already disappeared.

  Deckard.

  Ramon was about to radio in to Bill and tell him what had happened when he heard a grunt behind him.

  It was The Operator pulling himself out through the basement window. From close up, there was no mistaking the identity this time.

  “Where is Deckard?” The Operator asked as he got to his feet and began dusting himself off.

  “Broke contact,” Ramon replied. “Headed south.”

  “Into no-man's land. Nowhere else for him to go.”

  “Where is Rick?”

  The Operator looked straight through Ramon with piercing blue eyes. His face was completely expressionless.

  “Didn't make it.”

  The shadows were growing long, providing a place for Deckard to hide as he crept from cover to cover. He slid from behind a pile of debris to a wrecked truck and then back to another pile of rubble. He was running on fumes and he knew it. Constant combat had taken its toll. He needed to reset and get his systems back up. First he needed a hide site for the night.

  There was a row of several blocks of buildings that made up a no-man's land between the Nusra front and the Syrian Army lines. Most of the structures were blown out and partially collapsed. A few were relatively intact. Deckard was dragging his feet as he stayed low and entered the nearest building. There was no electricity in the city and using a flashlight while trapped between warring factions at night was a surefire way to get nailed with another artillery strike. He needed to get situated before the sun went down.

  Both sides also seemed to know that fighting would be limited during periods of darkness since both lacked proper night vision equipment. They were getting in their final RPG and recoilless rifle shots before the sun went down.

  The stench of rot invaded Deckard's nostrils as he moved into the building.

  He knew what it was before he even saw it. Turning into a living room he saw the bodies lined up on the floor. Taking a step closer, he could see how they had been shot. Execution style, to the back of the head. The children had been shot through the top of their heads by adults who were pointing the guns downward at them, the exit wounds then being through their mouths or jaws. Their parents and grandparents lay beside them, murdered in the same manner.

  It was the ghosts. The Alawite death squad that Tiger had told them about. For once, Deckard regretted that Liquid Sky hadn't found someone and scalped them. Having missed them at the Syrian base camp, the ghosts were prowling the city, executing civilians in a brutal attempt to coerce the civilian population into compliance with government forces.

  Each apartment Deckard came to, he found a similar scene. Bodies on top of bodies. Flies feasting on the dead. Entire generations of dead piled on top of each other: parents, grandparents, and children.

  The murders, the smell of death, it triggered an old familiar feeling in Deckard. It wasn't rage. He was always angry. What he felt now was something he hadn't felt in a long time.

  It was certainty.

  His knees cracked as he grabbed on to the railing and pulled himself up the stairs. After all the disgust and all the doubt that he had felt as he infiltrated
Liquid Sky, he now knew that there was no question that his mission was just. American Special Operations soldiers were the good guys. For former operators like those in Liquid Sky to sink to the depths they had was unacceptable. They could engage in whatever rationalizations they wanted, but it was still wrong. No amount of mental gymnastics would ever justify cold-blooded murder.

  The death squads had to be put out of business, whether they were Syrian or American was irrelevant at this point.

  Climbing to the third floor, he began looking for a place to spend the night. As he searched around, Deckard did some of the math in his head. Zach was dead in Bahrain. He had just shot and killed Paul. The Operator had killed Rick for him. That left Ramon, Nadeesha, The Operator, and Bill. He had some rapport with Ramon and Nadeesha until today, but that wouldn't get him anywhere now. Bill almost certainly had them all out hunting him down.

  Finding an empty apartment, Deckard stayed away from the windows as he made a quick sweep. It was empty. Sitting on the floor, he powered up his satellite phone while he continued to run the numbers. Ramon was an intel specialist and sniper. Nadeesha was a manipulator and intel gatherer. The Operator was a lunatic. Bill was a human wrecking ball. He would be taking the fight to them while trapped between the Syrian military, Hezbollah, the ghosts, and Nusra with Samruk International in the mix somewhere. That, and a couple chemical weapons thrown in just because things were not difficult enough already.

  It was a suicide mission, but then, it had been all along.

  As the phone reached out and made contact with a satellite, Deckard began typing out a message:

  Cover blown. On my own. Somewhere between Nusra and Army lines.

  A few seconds later, Pat responded to this text:

  Heavy contact. Not even sure who we are fighting. We're pushing up to the front but I need you to mark on map where you are and where last loc of wpns was.

  Deckard went into the map feature and marked his current location and roughly where he had been when he shot Paul. The chemical weapons had surely been moved since then, but not far. Liquid Sky could not push forward into the Syrian Army lines and could not retreat to the rear with Samruk coming up behind them. That left them with limited maneuver room on their flanks. Deckard typed out the tactical situation to Pat as well and sent it along. Another incoming message came in half a minute later.

  We'll move as far up as we can tonight. Sorry dude, can't help you until we link up.

  There was nothing to be sorry for, of course. They were in an impossible situation. The sun had almost set beneath the skyline of the ruined city by the time Deckard went looking for food and water. With the electricity out, everything in the refrigerator had rotted. He managed to find some canned food and a couple warm cans of soda. In a nearby apartment he was able to scrounge up a bottle of water.

  Setting his stash of supplies in the corner of one room, he scooped up an empty soup can to use to construct a booby trap. Using a cinderblock that had fallen from one of the walls, Deckard wedged the soup can under it near the stairwell. Then he pushed one of his hand grenades inside the soup can. Using a piece of string he found, he then tied a knot around the grenade and the other end of it to a pipe sticking out of the wall. Finally, he very carefully removed the pin from the grenade. The spoon of the grenade was held in place by the soup can which prevented it from detonating, at least until someone came walking up the steps and hit the trip wire.

  With his early warning system in place, Deckard covered himself in a blanket to keep warm in the cool desert air. It was dark as he began tearing into the food. His mind and body were sluggish, moving in slow motion, and he knew he had to replenish himself. Tomorrow was another day. Even on his best day, he might not have enough to survive what was coming.

  All he could do was hope that he had enough left in him to complete his mission.

  38

  Deckard was up on his feet and moving the second the grenade exploded. It was early morning and the cold night air cleared his head as he threw the blanket off. Running out the door, he turned through the smoke hanging in the air from the explosion and sprinted down the hall as he slung his Kalashnikov over his shoulder. He had done a quick route recon before drifting off to a restless sleep and now it was paying off.

  Diving into another empty apartment, he made for a window and took a quick look before jumping. Vaulting out of the window, he sailed through the empty space above an alley before his combat boots made contact with the balcony of an adjacent apartment. He had quickly broken contact with the enemy but had to keep moving. Using the butt of his rifle, he cleared away some broken glass and climbed through a window.

  Once inside, he carefully looked out a few windows at the building he had just escaped from. He could see the Nusra fighters taking a knee in the shadows at two corners of their target building. He had no doubt that they were on the other two corners as well. Someone had directed them to isolate the building before the assault team began clearing. They were using American tactics. It was Nusra with Liquid Sky in an advisory role. They were looking for him.

  Whether they had been able to specifically track him to his bed-down site or if they were just doing a cordon and search on the entire area was irrelevant. Now they were back on his trail. Deckard couldn't run and hide. There was nowhere to run to as he was in enemy territory no matter what direction he went. A stand up fight was out of the question. He'd be gunned down in seconds as he was up against overwhelming numbers.

  Mentally noting the enemy positions one last time, he turned and looked for a way down to the ground floor. What he could do was wage an unconventional battle, nickle and dime Nusra bit by bit and wear them down with a harassment campaign. Hopefully he could hold out until he could link up with Samruk.

  Deckard quietly stepped down the stairs and out on to the street. There were four Nusra shooters at the nearest blocking position up ahead. Deckard stayed low with his AK in his hands as he moved forward in the dark. It would be another hour or so before the sun starting coming up. There was a burned-out car in the middle of the street and he was able to keep that between him and the enemy as he advanced towards them. When he came up alongside the car, he was less than ten meters away.

  The undisciplined jihadists talked amongst themselves as they waited. They had been posted at the corner of the building to prevent anyone from escaping, specifically Deckard. They didn't seem to be taking their job all that seriously despite the booby trap that their comrades had set off. The four gunmen squatted on the street corner next to the target building.

  Deckard slowly eased off the safety on his Kalashnikov. Staring down his rifle sights, he had them dead to rights. The jihadists were all facing in towards the target building with no rear security posted. Deckard quickly worked them like human e-type silhouettes at the range, shooting from left to right, two shots center mass in each one.

  Crawling forward towards the bodies, he could hear shouts from the other security positions. White lights flashed from inside the building as the assault element continued to clear room to room. A walkie-talkie radio snapped inside the pocket of one of the dead jihadists crackled. Arabic voices came over the net as the other checkpoints tried to find out who was shooting.

  Working quickly, Deckard stripped a couple chest rigs full of AK magazines off two of the bodies, grabbed the radio and then retreated back the way he came. The voices were getting more frantic on the radio. Depressing the push-to-talk button, Deckard began shouting in Arabic.

  “He's at our position, he shot at us until we had to retreat. He's there now.”

  Seconds later, one of the other blocking positions opened up on the one he had just taken out. The bullets kicked up little clouds of dust around the dead bodies.

  “Not that one,” Deckard corrected. “The other blocking position!”

  That did it. The remaining three blocking positions began opening fire on each other. In the confusion, they then returned fire on each other as well. The radio cracked and
hissed as shouts and screams were garbled over the net. The jihadists were working themselves up into a confused panic as they shot their team mates.

  Deckard turned the knob on the radio until it clicked off. He wasn't about to get decisively engaged with the enemy when they could just wear themselves out instead. His work was done here.

  For now.

  They were getting close. Pat could feel it.

  The fighting had picked up in volume and intensity over the last few minutes. The jihadists had their backs up against the wall and they knew it. The Syrian Army had them stonewalled on one side and Samruk International was turning the handle on the meat grinder on the other. The boys had already run through their ammunition and were scrounging what they could off dead enemy. It was Deckard's foresight that they had to thank when he bought a 7.62 platform for the mercenaries rather than going with something cooler and more high-tech which would not be able to fire ammunition found on the battlefield.

  Deckard knew that Samruk would be going into austere environments and denied areas.

  Homs seemed to fit the bill.

  Between a rock and a hard place, the Nusra fighters knew this was their last stand and were not budging any further. Samruk had traded fire with them off and on throughout the night. With night vision capability, their shooters were much more accurate at night fire to say the least. Nikita had been having a turkey shoot up on the rooftops. Every time a Nusra gunman poked his head out from behind a wall, the Kazakh sniper had taken it off.

  But now the momentum had stalled and they were not making any further progress. Samruk needed to attempt a breakthrough to blitz forward, locate the chemical weapons, and capture them. Right now they were at a stalemate; every time they tried to push across the street they took fire from multiple heavy machine guns spread around the surrounding buildings.