Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  I pointed toward the door and the hallway beyond. Larry was at the door, and led the way to the stairs. “Friendlies coming down!” he called out, only starting down the steps when he got a confirmation from Jim.

  We pounded down the steps. “I heard,” Jim said, standing over Bob’s broken body, which had been laid out on a collapsible litter for transport. “You going after him?”

  “Damn fucking straight I am,” I rasped. “Get the vehicles in here, get Bob loaded up, and get ready to exfil the fuck out of here, before the IA show up. If need be, we’ll rendezvous on foot at Point…” I had to think for a second. “Charlie.” We’d set up RV points throughout the neighborhood for just such a possibility. “Keep your comms up.” I pointed to the Nick, Larry, and Little Bob. “You guys are with me. Let’s get this dogfucker.”

  “If we’re going to catch this guy we need to hurry up,” Hal said over the radio. “The IPs are on their way.”

  I snarled an inarticulate obscenity that I don’t even remember under my breath, and led the way, pounding out toward the street. I paused at the gate. Even though Hal and his boys had the cordon up, I still wasn’t entirely trusting that there weren’t more bad guys where I couldn’t see them. That’s an attitude that has kept me alive for a long time in places where it ain’t easy.

  “Where is he?” I asked Hal.

  “I just spotted him squeezing out between two buildings and into a front courtyard two houses south of you, on the west side,” Bing replied.

  We were on the east side of the block, but only a few houses from the northern street. Popping out into the street, I verified that it was empty, and started to run north. I hoped to get around to the other side while fuckstick was still hopping walls.

  I rounded the corner just in time to see the flashing lights of the IP trucks. They were closer than I’d thought. I took a hand off of my rifle to push the PTT as I kept running, splashing through the rank standing water in the street. “Dave, can you delay those IPs any?”

  “Not without starting another fight,” he answered.

  For as messed up as my head was at that moment, I still recognized that that wasn’t a good idea. We’d just have to move fast. I was almost at a dead sprint as I came around the next corner and raced down the street.

  I spotted the target struggling over another wall. He was slowing down; it’s a lot harder to climb than it is to run on the flats. He was still trying to keep in cover; I was sure he’d seen what Bing and Mack had done to his exterior security.

  My lungs were burning, but I pushed out some more speed, aiming for two compounds down from where I’d seen him drop over the wall.

  I couldn’t have picked a better spot. There was no gate in that wall; the driveway was open. I slowed down as I approached it, bringing my rifle up, just in case. We really needed to take this fucker alive; we needed the information in his head. But if he tried to shoot me, I’d kill him in an eyeblink, and with Bob lying dead a few hundred yards away, that wouldn’t be at all hard.

  I waited for the rest to catch up. All three of the guys I’d picked were bigger dudes, though Little Bob was deceptive; he might be big, but the guy’s fast. He could probably have outrun me, but hung back to cover my ass as I went haring after our target. Nick and Larry were a little slower, and it took a minute for them to catch up. By then my breathing was slowing down, and I could hear the Qods Force officer panting and scrabbling as he clambered over the wall into the compound.

  Little Bob was right behind me. Fuck it, I decided. There were two of us. I went for it.

  I buttonhooked into the compound just as the target dropped down from the top of the compound wall. He landed heavily, falling to all fours, then started to pick himself up. I hit him at a run, slamming him into the wall with a knee. The air left his lungs with a grunt, and he doubled up and dropped to the ground. A ZOAF 9mm fell to the ground, and I kicked it away. I hit him again to make sure any fight was out of him, then put my knee in his back, shoving his face in the dirt, as I reached for my flexcuffs.

  Jim came on the radio. “The vics are here. Shiny is loaded.”

  At that very moment, the IP trucks came around the corner, lights flashing. Nick and Larry ducked into the compound, hopefully just ahead of the headlights. I moved to the gate, pointing at Little Bob to keep our friend restrained and, more importantly, quiet. I peeked out. There was a Toyota Hilux with a red and blue light bar on top of the cab at the corner. There was no way we could get out on the street without being spotted.

  “Kemosabe, Hillbilly,” I whispered into my radio. “Get moving. Dave, we need an exit.”

  “Hard to find one right at the moment, Hillbilly,” Hal replied. “They’re moving pretty fast to cordon off the block.”

  “We could use a distraction, then,” I said. “They’re going to search the whole damned block when they can’t find whoever killed those Iranians.”

  “On it,” Hal replied. “Give me a couple minutes.”

  I hoped we had those couple of minutes, as I ducked back into the compound. The target was still face-down in the dirt, and he wasn’t struggling. Little Bob had secured his pistol, and was busy searching him for anything else.

  Nick and Larry had positioned themselves to cover the open gate and the door to the house. So far there was no movement or sound from inside; I could only hope our little altercation in the front yard hadn’t woken the residents up. Given that our boy had set up his safehouse in this neighborhood, I didn’t have any idea of the local loyalties; he could have chosen it because he figured it was quiet and the last place anyone would look or it could be crawling with jihadis. We hadn’t had time to find out.

  An IP truck rolled past the gate, heading for the southwest corner of the block, its lights flashing blue and red and lighting up the inside of the courtyard. We all shrank away into the shadows. Little Bob had his rifle slung and his arms around the target’s neck, ready to choke him out if he yelled.

  The lights receded, though they continued to flash, lighting up the street on the other side of the wall. We didn’t dare move.

  For several minutes we waited, straining our ears to hear what was going on. I could hear Iraqi policemen yelling in Arabic up north of us, near the target house. So far none of them were moving around our hiding place yet, but it was only a matter of time.

  It seemed to take forever. I concentrated on watching and listening for the IPs, trying to stay focused. I hardly dared to blink. I sure as hell didn’t dare give myself time to think.

  There was more yelling, and I could hear doors banging. They were starting to search houses. If Hal didn’t hurry things up…

  There was a flash and a loud, rolling boom off to the west. The shouting got louder and more agitated. A long, ripping burst of machinegun fire echoed through the night. Four IPs ran past the gate, not bothering to glance in.

  I didn’t know for sure what Hal was doing; although I had no problem with shooting up the IPs after what I’d seen since being in-country, getting in another firefight if we could help it was just going to put the mission in jeopardy. And the mission was the slug that Little Bob was sitting on.

  More gunfire rattled out, from the same direction, some of the rounds cracking by overhead. It sounded like Kelso’s M60. He was laying it on pretty thick; as much as I appreciated it, and hoped it would be enough to get us out of our little box, I also hoped he didn’t stay in place too long and get nailed.

  It was hard to tell if the flashing lights from down the street were moving or not, but a short while later, they faded, and Hal’s voice came over the radio. “Hillbilly, Dave. They’ve pulled off the southern vehicles to check out who’s shooting the place up. You guys have about two minutes to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Roger,” I whispered back, still not one hundred percent confident that all the IPs were off the street. I peered out briefly enough to see that there weren’t any near us, then pointed to Nick and Larry. “You guys go first. Point Charlie. Move.” />
  The two of them flowed out on the street, weapons at the ready. As soon as they saw they were clear, the rifles went down along their sides, and they moved quickly out of sight.

  I turned back to the guy Little Bob had in a headlock. I grabbed his jaw and pulled his eyes to meet mine. “I don’t know if you speak English or not, fuckhead,” I said, “but just try to understand, if you yell, or struggle, or try to run, I will blow your brains out right here in the street.” Without bothering to wait for an acknowledgement, I turned aside, and checked my watch. “Time to go.”

  I went first, leading the way out into the street. Blue and red lights still flashed to the north, where one of the IP trucks was still stationed, but a quick glance showed the only IPs who had stuck around were all looking off to the west, in the direction of the machinegun fire, and the billowing cloud of smoke where the IED had gone off. I didn’t know exactly what Hal had blown up, but it looked like he’d managed to set something on fire in the process.

  Little Bob was right behind me, his beefy hand clamped on the back of the prisoner’s neck, the other holding his ISR like it was a toy. The Iranian stumbled a little on the street, but Little Bob gave him a warning shake that had to just about rattle the teeth out of his head. After that, he walked fairly normally.

  We didn’t run, we didn’t creep, we just walked normally, occasionally casting curious looks back at the IP truck we could see. If we’d run like we stole something, we’d have attracted attention. Apparently, with the explosion and the shooting to the west, the IPs weren’t convinced that we were still in the neighborhood, and weren’t as concerned with three men going for a walk in the middle of the night, even if one of them was twice the size of the average Iraqi.

  That was, of course, assuming they even saw us. I wasn’t convinced they did. Automatic gunfire has a way of focusing the attention.

  None of that was making me relax. I felt exposed as hell, walking nonchalantly down the street with a short-barrel AR tucked up under my armpit, trying to act like I hadn’t just kicked in a door, shot several people, watched my friend be shot and then wrap himself around a grenade, and like I wasn’t leading another man off to be interrogated, killed, and buried in a shallow grave. I had no second thoughts about what was going to happen to our unnamed Qods Force officer; he’d taken his chances, and the days of being nice to our enemies were long over for us. I just felt like I wanted to drop into the gutter, lay down some covering fire, and run like hell.

  We got around the corner and headed generally southeast, trying to keep to the more built-up portions of the city. There were a number of large empty lots scattered around, which we tried to avoid. There wasn’t much in the way of traffic on the streets; Arabs don’t do much after dark. The IPs probably wouldn’t be out, either, except for our little disturbance. Actually, I’d have to say after the Iranians’ disturbance. Our shots shouldn’t have been that audible. The Iranians had been running unsuppressed for whatever reason.

  It’s weird, the crap that goes through your head as you are E&Eing through a hostile city. Sure, I was alert and watchful; hell, I was as alert and watchful as a rabbit sneaking through a fox den. But that doesn’t ever account for one hundred percent of your attention, and as hard as I was working not to think of Bob’s broken corpse, that led to some odd trains of thought. And it wasn’t like Little Bob and I could carry on a conversation.

  We moved into an even less well-kept up part of town. A lot of the houses had been bombed out years ago, and still stood empty. Some were down to nothing more than the foundations. Most of the rubble had been taken away to build or repair other buildings. We kept to the less well-lit portions, which was pretty easy, as there didn’t seem to be more than three working lights in the entire neighborhood.

  I led the way into one of the ruined, roofless houses, my rifle now up and ready as I carefully cleared the six rooms. There was nothing in them but dust and broken bricks. I moved back to link up with Little Bob, who had our prisoner on his knees, head to the floor, while he watched our back trail.

  “Clear,” I whispered. “No sign of Nick or Larry yet, though.”

  “I think that might be them,” Little Bob replied, pointing to the west. I peered in that direction, and after a moment, thought I could make out two kneeling silhouettes in another wrecked foundation. I couldn’t tell if they had seen us or not, at least not until there was a faint, almost invisible flash of red light from low on one of the silhouettes. It repeated twice more.

  I reached for my own microlight, clipped inside a pocket that hadn’t been part of the original jacket. Pulling it out, I sheltered it inside the jacket so that it would only shine toward the silhouettes, and flashed it twice. It was our guys.

  It took only a minute or so for the two of them to work their way over to us. I had sent Little Bob inside with our prisoner in the meantime, with the totally unnecessary admonition to kill the guy if he got out of hand. Little Bob wouldn’t hesitate to do so, and he’d probably do it by way of a broken neck, thus keeping the noise down.

  Larry got to me first, and I just pointed inside the structure. He nodded once, and moved in. Nick was all of ten meters behind him. He stopped and took a knee next to me.

  “There’s some trouble brewing up,” he said. “We spotted about twenty armed men gathering about a klick west of here. Looks like a local militia. I’m guessing they don’t like the fact that we’ve stirred up some shit around here.”

  “Either that, or they don’t like having the IPs on their turf,” I whispered back. “Either way, it’s time to make ourselves scarce. Head in, I’ll contact Jim.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder and moved inside. I took another look around before following, then froze.

  There were men spreading out through the scattered houses near the open area I assumed was a soccer field. My night vision was pretty good, even without NVGs, and I could tell they were armed. Well armed. One was toting what could only be an RPD or RPK, it was too dark to tell which. Another had an RPG-7 over his shoulder.

  I couldn’t get all that accurate a count, but I could tell they were moving in our general direction. Which, I don’t need to tell you, was bad news. The most dangerous part of any operation is extraction, and this one looked to be no exception. We didn’t dare move while these guys were poking around, unless we wanted to get in another fight. They were obviously local militia, just like Nick had described. I didn’t know where they stood, and in the middle of the night, with IEDs going off and machinegun fire spraying up north, was not the time to have a chat about it.

  This also wasn’t the time or place for a firefight. I still checked my mags; I’d gone light for the night’s festivities, as had we all. I’d brought five mags, and had three full ones left. No more bangs or frags. My TRP was still high on my hip, just below my plate carrier, with two extra mags.

  The thing was, I didn’t dare call any of the guys inside to come out. Either the sound of my call or the movement could give us away. So I stayed in the shadows, tried to get as small as I could, and not move a muscle. Trust me, that gets painful as hell after a while when you’re on a knee.

  Four of them stopped at the edge of the playground or soccer field, or whatever the hell it was, and talked for a moment. It looked like they were trying to decide something.

  Don’t come over here. Don’t come over here. I tried to will them to stay away. It didn’t work. One of them pointed toward the cluster of houses we were sheltered in, next to the main hardball road.

  Fuck. If I got in a fight with these guys, I was dead. There was no doubt in my mind. I’d probably take all four of them down, but we’d get swarmed immediately thereafter.

  I heard a rustling sound, and risked turning my head to look back at the door with the corner of my eye. Nick was kneeling just inside, his rifle raised, covering the four militiamen who were now walking toward us. He was far enough back in the shadows of the door that I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t be seen.

  �
��Get in here, Jeff,” he whispered. “I’ve got these clowns.”

  Carefully, slowly, my joints protesting with every move, I got up into a crouch. Being painfully careful as to where I put my feet, and moving slowly enough I hoped they wouldn’t spot my movement, I crept over to the door, and stepped through, barely squeezing by Nick’s bulk. Nick was shorter than me by about half a head, but he weighed about thirty pounds more.

  As soon as I was past him, I moved to cover the door as well. “Larry!” I hissed. “Let Little Bob cover the front. We need you back here.”

  Almost as soon as I’d finished speaking, Larry was there. He could be remarkably quiet for a six-foot-four, almost three-hundred pound man. “We’ve got local militia headed this way. If they come in here, we’re going to have to take them out,” I explained.

  Larry just nodded, stepping back from the door, and bringing his Honey Badger to the low ready. I stepped back to one side, and motioned for Nick to do the same on the other side of the door. The three of us had the fatal funnel covered. Nobody was getting through it alive.

  I was still hoping that the militiamen would stay out. I didn’t know who they were, so I wasn’t necessarily all that anxious to turn them into corpses. There was also no guarantee that we’d be able to take them all down without their buddies out there noticing. The last thing we needed was another firefight. By the time we got them sorted, we’d have the IPs around our ears.

  Murphy, however, is a misbegotten, miserable bastard. I heard talking in Arabic just outside. A moment later, a man with a Saddam mustache, wearing a light-colored dishdasha and carrying an AK with no buttstock stepped through the door. His buddies were right behind him. I brought the SBR’s sights to my eye and stroked the trigger.

  Larry shot the lead guy between the eyes. Nick and I both got number two at the same time. His head just seemed to disintegrate under the impacts of four 200 grain bullets. I quickly swung to the guy behind him, who was looking shocked, the contents of his friend’s skull spattered across his face. I put two more rounds into his center-mass, the suppressor muffling most anything besides the clack of the action cycling. He crumpled, his heart destroyed, the same look of shock on his face.