No Sanctuary Box Set: The No Sanctuary Omnibus - Books 1-6

by Mike Kraus

  Linda glanced at Jackson in the rearview mirror. “Aref must have alerted Omar to our presence. We have to repel their attack and get to the port as soon as possible. If we don’t…”

  Jackson nodded as Linda trailed off. “We’ll make it happen.”

  Chapter 14

  As Frank pulled into the parking lot Jackson jumped out of the Humvee and began bellowing out orders. A defensive line quickly formed on the open side of the lot while squads of soldiers and airmen took cover behind their vehicles and in the buildings around the edge of the parking space. Frank parked the Humvee near the edge of the lot by an alley that Linda had pointed out would offer easy emergency egress should they need it.

  As the soldiers and airmen ran back and forth setting up their defensive positions Linda and Frank headed over to Jackson who was busy watching as a small surveillance drone was being prepared for launch. “How high can that thing go?” Linda pointed at the drone.

  “We usually fly these at five hundred to a thousand feet. They’re still fairly new so there aren’t that many guidelines for them yet. Mostly we’re just—hey! Get that truck moved over!” Jackson cupped his hands and shouted at a soldier who was backing a truck up near the entrance to the parking lot. He shook his head and sighed as the soldier hastily moved the vehicle. “What I wouldn’t give to have my old guys back. Anyway we started using these overseas to get real-time info on enemy troop movements.”

  “Sounds like just what we need.”

  “Yeah except this urban environment isn’t the best for them. Fly too high and we lose good resolution on the thermals. Too low and we’re liable to hit a building or power lines.” Jackson and the others stepped back as the drone’s four propellers spun up and it jumped into the air, soaring high above the parking lot and quickly out of sight and sound.

  “Fast little thing.” Frank whistled.

  Jackson looked at Linda and Frank. “Either of you two have any experience piloting these things? My main pilot caught a couple rounds in the chest and shoulder while we were evacuating. He’ll be fine but he can’t pilot for shit with his arm all jacked up.”

  Linda shook her head while Frank shrugged. “I toyed around with them a few years back but never to any serious degree.”

  “Good enough.” Jackson pushed Frank in the direction of a nearby table where a pair of soldiers were working with a joystick and what looked like a game controller. A small screen displayed two views from the drone, one from a camera pointed out from the drone’s front and the other a view from the thermal camera mounted on its belly. “Michaels, get up. Frank’s got some experience with these things.”

  “Oh thank God.” The soldier holding the controller stood up and handed it to Frank. “Last thing I want to do is crash this thing.”

  The soldier holding onto the separate joystick with his left hand glanced up at Frank, the motion pulling at the bandages around his chest and arm and making him wince. “Frank? You flown these before?”

  Frank looked around at everyone with wide eyes and shook his head. “Years ago I played around with one for a while. I was looking for some new hobbies and figured a quadcopter would be fun.”

  “Yeah, well I’d be flying it if I had been sitting in the back seat. As it is all I can do is work the thermal camera here.”

  Jackson pushed Frank down into the seat that Michaels had been occupying and patted him on the shoulder. “Williams is our go-to pilot for this baby. He’ll help you with whatever you need.” A shout from across the parking lot drew Jackson’s attention and he turned and ran off to see what was going on. Linda leaned down and whispered to Frank.

  “You’ve got this, okay? I’m going to go see what’s going on with the defenses. Jackson’s having a rough time holding things together and I want to make sure he didn’t miss anything. As soon as you have info on anyone approaching our position you need to let us know.”

  Frank nodded numbly, his eyes glued to the screen in front of him as his thumbs played with the sticks on the controller. The drone was highly sensitive to the inputs, zipping back and forth like an over-energetic dog. Memories of standing in an open field with an RC controller in his hands while a quadcopter zipped around overhead came back to him and he soon found himself handling the drone like an expert.

  “Nice work.” Williams nodded. He rotated the joystick controlling the thermal camera. “Take it up another two hundred feet and let’s do a sweep of the route we took from the baseball field.”

  Frank nodded and pushed the drone upward. With Williams guiding him Frank made several fast passes of the area around the parking lot over the course of ten minutes. It was on one of the last passes before the drone needed to be brought back and get new batteries when Williams shouted for Jackson.

  “Lieutenant!” Williams stood up and looked around before pointing at an airman standing nearby. “Get Lieutenant Jackson right now!”

  The airman nodded and dashed off. Jackson ran up a moment later with Linda following close behind. “What is it? You have something?”

  Williams nodded and pointed at the screen displaying the thermal camera’s view. “Frank, bring it back around like before.” Frank pushed on the sticks on his controller and the drone zipped to the side. The cold blacks and dark blues on the thermal camera were suddenly punctuated with large rectangular blocks of orange and yellow.

  “Are those trucks?”

  “At least a dozen of them, yes sir.” Williams nodded. “Looks like a good fifty, maybe seventy-five men. The vehicles appear to have mounted weaponry, too.”

  Jackson groaned and rubbed a hand across his face. “How far out are they?”

  “Four or five blocks. We’ll be hearing their engines soon.”

  “Okay. Keep an eye on them and let me know what their movements are.”

  “Sir,” Williams said, swiveling in his seat to look at Jackson, “we need to bring the drone in and swap out the batteries. We’ve got five minutes of flight time left.”

  “Fine, but do it fast. We need those eyes in the sky.”

  Williams looked at Frank. “Bring it home. We’ll get the batteries changed and get it back up in no time.”

  While Frank and Williams focused on getting the drone ready for another flight Jackson pulled Linda away from the others and spoke to her in a low voice. “This urban bullshit’s going to be the death of us unless we have someone guiding us who’s actually experienced. I know about some of the action you saw during your deployment in Iran, deep in their urban jungle. Any advice you can give would be appreciated.”

  “Keeping the drone up is going to be top priority for the initial assessment of where they’re going to be. Once they get inside buildings, though, the drone’s going to be next to useless unless they’re moving around outside a lot.” Linda turned and pointed at a tall building back behind the parking lot. “I would get a sniper team up there so they can provide intel as well as have a firing position on anyone across the street from us.

  “If they’re bringing in mounted weapons then my guess is they’re going to push an initial assault from the front to cover a flanking maneuver through the buildings and alleys. If you have any claymores you should set them up at chokepoints and make sure we’ve got plenty of elevated fire to take out their mounted gunners. Oh, and Frank and I left our rifles in the Humvee. Have somebody get us guns with plenty of spare mags.”

  “Third truck down has spare weapons and ammo.” He hesitated for a second before nodding to her gratefully. “Thank you.” With that the lieutenant hurried off to give the necessary orders required to carry out Linda’s suggestions.

  Before Jackson had asked for her advice Linda had managed to avoid thoughts comparing her time in the streets of Iran to what they were currently going through. Jackson’s reminder and her instinctual evaluation of what was going on made her glad she could help while at the same time bringing back more than a few unpleasant memories.

  Ultimately the thing she hated most about what was going on wasn’
t the fight against Omar’s men. It was the knowledge that each moment they delayed in getting to the docks and continuing their search for the bombs would mean another moment closer to Omar’s plan being fulfilled. That—more than anything else in her past—terrified her the most.

  BOOK FIVE

  THE GAUNTLET

  Chapter 1

  “They’re almost here!”

  Linda turned around at the sound of Williams’ shout and called back to him. “Copy!” She held a two-way radio up to her mouth and depressed the microphone, looking up at the twelve-story office tower behind the parking lot. “Sniper team, are you in position?”

  The answer was accompanied by a burst of static. “In position and ready to rock. We’ve got eyes on targets.”

  “Wait to engage until their trucks roll in.”

  “Copy.”

  Linda jogged over to Jackson, who was standing at the front of a Humvee along with several soldiers and airmen. “Snipers are in position. They’ve spotted ground troops moving in. Are the chokepoints ready?”

  Jackson nodded and pointed to a crude drawing on the hood of the Humvee that outlined the parking lot and surrounding area. “We’ve got wreckage blocking this side alley and the building entrances are lined with claymores.”

  “Good. They’ll likely start with sending in ground forces, then they’ll graduate to vehicles or RPGs once they test our strength. Whatever you do just make sure you don’t throw everything we’ve got at them up front.”

  “What’s the split between the elevated firing positions and boots on the ground?”

  “Sixty-forty, like you said.”

  Linda nodded. “Good. I’m going to watch the drone with Frank and Williams.”

  “I’ll be over in a second.”

  Linda patted Jackson on the back and ran over toward where Frank and Williams were sitting. Frank’s eyes were glued to his screen as he guided the small military drone above the city, watching the incoming troops. She sat down next to him and watched the images of the vehicles and individuals moving around, appearing as white-hot images against a cold black and blue background.

  “How much longer?”

  “Five minutes. Probably less.” Williams answered as Frank executed a low dive over the troops, biting his lip as he slipped the drone between a pair of dangling power lines hanging over the street. “This sucker’s maneuverability is incredible.” Frank mumbled to himself. Next to him, Williams toggled the thermal camera off, giving them a more detailed view of the soldiers.

  “Looks like rifles and a few RPGs. Trucks with mounted guns.” Williams pointed at the screen as Frank flew the drone over the enemy’s heads before pulling back on the stick, sending the small craft rocketing up into the air before any of the men on the ground noticed it was there.

  “There’s a lot of them. More than we saw earlier.” Linda looked at Williams. “Any estimates?”

  “We guessed seventy-five or so last time. I’d say another fifty on top of that. And half a dozen more vehicles.”

  “A hundred and twenty-five men and eighteen vehicles?” Linda groaned. “What hole in the ground did these guys all crawl out of?”

  “Beats me.” Williams shook his head.

  “Hey!” Frank took one hand off the controls in his hand and pointed at the screen. “They’re almost to the perimeter!”

  Linda jumped up and looked around. She was about to start running toward Jackson when she saw him heading in her direction, a concerned look on his face as he saw her standing up. “What’s up, Rollins?”

  “They’re here.”

  Jackson nodded and spoke into his radio. “Attention all units. Enemy forces are outside our perimeter. Hold fire until you are otherwise ordered to do so. Ground units, you have clearance to engage at will.”

  Jackson waved an arm in the air and shouted at the soldiers who were milling around the cluster of vehicles in the parking lot. “Move out! Get to defensive positions right now!”

  While Williams and Frank moved their equipment to the back of the parking lot behind a ring of heavily armored vehicles, Jackson and Linda helped round up a few stray soldiers who were still moving vehicles and checking their weapons. The five minutes predicted by Williams came and went without incident and Linda was about to run back to them to see if they had any further updates when her radio crackled and Williams’ voice came over the line.

  “Here they come!”

  The chaos began approximately seven seconds after his warning.

  Private Dan Tucker crouched in the dark hallway of a building on the far side of the street, just across from the parking lot. The doorway at the far end of the hall had long since been torn off, making it the perfect entrance for anyone trying to sneak up on the parking lot without being seen. The hall, like many of the entrances of the buildings in the area around the parking lot, had been rigged with explosive devices that would go off if their laser tripwires were crossed. The soft red beams coming from the explosives were just barely visible down the hall thanks to the light amount of dust gently floating through the air.

  Footsteps and whispers in a foreign language drifted down the hall, alerting Tucker to the imminent arrival of the enemy. He looked back at the three soldiers crouched behind him and motioned for them to get ready. They, like him, were all young, low in rank and had barely seen any combat since joining the Army less than a year ago. The ambush a short time earlier had been their first real combat experience and they were more than a little nervous about what was to come.

  Tucker was about to whisper a few words of encouragement to the others when nearby footsteps were immediately followed by a deafening explosion. With the laser tripwires on the Claymores having been crossed by some unfortunate soul, a combination of metal spheres and conventional explosives rocked the hallway. The spheres acted like slugs from a shotgun, blasting out from the device and tearing through flesh and bone like tissue paper. The conventional explosives sent out a massive shockwave, tearing apart eardrums and vital organs as a small ball of fire plumed outward.

  Despite the hearing protection worn by Tucker and the soldiers with him, all four men found their ears ringing after the explosion. Tucker peeked out from his cover after the Claymore went off to see three bloody bodies on the floor down the hall with several more men beyond them, still on their feet. With a shout, Tucker and the other soldiers took aim and added a healthy dose of lead to the mix.

  Similar scenes took place nearly simultaneously in the buildings around the parking lot. The dull explosions echoed out from the buildings, breaking the tense silence that had settled around those in the lot, the elevated positions and in the tower. The time for hasty preparation was over and Linda was about to find out just how well her strategy was going to work.

  Jackson and a pair of airmen worked the radios as the explosions went off, keeping in touch with the soldiers in the halls. Bursts of gunfire made Frank flinch but he kept the drone steady, trying to get an eye on what the enemy was doing next. Linda stood near Frank and Jackson, her rifle hanging from one shoulder while she idly chewed on the thumbnail of her free hand. Each shot and explosion made her want to go get involved in the fight more than ever before and she had to resist the temptation so that she could continue handing out advice and orders to Jackson and the others.

  Taking a leadership role hadn’t been Linda’s desire. On the contrary, during her time in the sand she had vastly preferred carrying a rifle and a hundred-pound bag on her back to sitting in an armored vehicle or an office trying to decide who would live and who would die. Formulating a plan, strategizing and deciding who would go where and do what was something she was good at. What she preferred, though, was carrying out those orders. There was no responsibility for dozens or hundreds of lives hanging over her when she was another pair of boots on the ground. There was only her duty to obey her orders, help the members of her squad and her responsibility to complete her mission.

  A tap on Linda’s shoulder pulled her out of her r
everie. She blinked several times and turned around to face Jackson, nearly forgetting where she was for half an instant. “Rollins? You okay?” Jackson’s eyebrow was raised and he shook his head, dismissing his own question before continuing. “Ground teams are holding. Minimal causalities. It looks like the initial assault was repelled.”

  “Good,” Linda nodded. “They’ll probably pull back for a minute, regroup and then try to break through with the trucks. Is everyone in hard cover?”

  Jackson was about to respond in the affirmative when a loud crash of metal on metal came from the far end of the parking lot, along the road. Several engines accompanied the crash as a group of trucks rammed the makeshift barricades set up by the soldiers and airmen. Another crash came from the opposite end of the road a second later as a second group of trucks came through. Both groups converged on the parking lot, stopping at the perimeter of vehicles parked near the road.

  Gunfire from the vehicles began as soon as they stopped in front of the parking lot. Fifty-caliber rounds sprayed from the guns mounted in the backs of the light pickups, their operators swaying and rocking as they twisted the weapons back and forth. The gunfire was intense but lacked direction or focus and Linda almost immediately realized what they were doing.

  “Jackson!” She shouted at the man crouched nearby, hiding behind a nearby armored vehicle.

  “What is it?” He yelled back, straining his voice over the thundering booms of the guns.

  “They’re trying to sneak people in under cover of fire! We need to take out those gunners right now!”

  Jackson turned toward the buildings to the sides of the parking lot, shouting into the radio as he watched the positions where the elevated shooters were still in cover. “Open fire on the trucks! Ground units, watch our flanks! Snipers take out the gunners and call out anyone you see trying to get in behind us!”