by Mark Goodwin
Everett scanned the windows and roofs of the surrounding buildings while the approaching hostiles kept themselves busy attacking the other MRAPs. “You’re all clear, Levi. Just keep it steady.”
SHWOOFP! Everett felt the heat of the rocket as it left the tube. BLOOOM! The second minaret dropped with a mighty crash on top of the already decimated mosque. “Good shot!” Everett saw another window open on the grey building. He took aim and began firing, cutting down two armed men inside before they could get a shot off.
“What’s next?” Levi lowered the tube into the vehicle.
Everett signaled for Levi to drop down into the Typhoon, then lowered himself as well. Once inside, he addressed the team. “The buildings on each side of the mosque are crawling with MOC fighters. Let’s soften them up with some regular RPGs. If you see any activity inside a doorway or window, light them up. Two-man teams. David, you’re with Levi. Ali, with me. Tonya and Silas, you’re a team. One person fires, the other reloads the RPG launcher. Tobias and Courtney, you two are responsible for keeping that fifty rolling.”
Tonya furrowed her brow. “How do we know they’re hostiles if we can only see a figure through a window?”
“Non-combatants are probably going to be running out the back door or hiding under a bed. Anyone going toward a window after all the noise we’ve been making has to assume they’re taking their life into their own hands.” Everett loaded a grenade into a launcher and climbed up through the hatch over the cab. He saw movement through the window on the lower left-hand side of the concrete building. He swiftly took aim and pulled the trigger. Shoooowf! Boom! The grenade hit, blowing out the window and part of the wall.
As he lowered back into the cab, Ali took the launcher and loaded it. “I take this shot please.”
“Go ahead.” Everett handed off the launcher to Ali and looked at Courtney who was giving him a disapproving look.
BOOM! A loud blast shook the Typhoon, rocking it so hard that Everett was thrown from his seat. He instantly turned to Courtney who had also been knocked to the floor. His ears were ringing from the noise so he yelled at her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded with a concerned look and pointed to Ali who was lowering himself down from the open hatch above the cab.
Everett looked up. Ali’s eyes were open wide in shock and blood was coming from his mouth.
“Are you hit?”
Ali wiped the blood from his lip and looked at it for a brief moment before answering Everett. “No. The explosion made me bang my face on edge of hatch. I think I cut my lip.”
Everett nodded and surveyed the other crew members. His eyes met Tobias’. “Any idea what that was?”
Tobias repositioned himself to operate the big gun. “We’re not the only ones who brought RPGs to this party. You need to get this bus moving before we take another hit.”
Everett gave a short nod, spun around to the steering wheel, released the brake, and threw the shifter into gear. He gunned the engine and drove the Typhoon toward the back of the mosque, hoping the other vehicles would follow his lead. “Check the rearview. Is everyone else behind us?”
Courtney studied her side view mirror. “Looks like we’ve got four vehicles behind us.”
Everett growled. “There should be five. I hate this. We need radios!”
“Shoot, move, and communicate. That’s the three things you have to do in the battlefield,” Tobias said from behind. “With no comms, it’s like we’re sitting on a two-legged stool.”
“That’s not good,” Courtney added as she kept her eyes on the mirror.
Everett barked, “What?”
“Three Toyota technicals with machine guns mounted in the rear just cut in behind the fourth vehicle.”
Everett tried to concentrate on his driving despite the noise of battle all around him. Steady machine gunfire from varying distances was regularly drowned out by loud explosions. “We’ve got to get back around to the front of the mosque. The last vehicle in our convoy is cut off from the pack and probably being picked apart by MOC.”
Everett pulled the steering wheel hard to the left, slinging the crew around in the rear of the truck and catching the hip of a MOC fighter with his front bumper. “Ali, Levi, get some RPGs ready and make sure your hatches are unlocked. As soon as we get back to the front, it’s gonna be show time.”
“I am ready, Everett.” Ali held to the back of Everett’s chair with one hand and gripped the RPG launcher in the other.
Everett rounded the corner past a dozen other jihadis on foot armed with AK-47s. He craned his neck to get a visual on the other vehicle as soon as possible. The lone MRAP came into his view just as an RPG struck the left front tire of the isolated Patrol. The grenade detonated sending the front end of the truck up into the air several feet, then dropping it back down to the dirt road with a thud.
Everett grunted as he watched the MRAP try to back out of its volatile position while dragging a mangled front wheel rim with no tire. “They’re dead in the water. We’ve got to get them out of that truck and into ours. Tobias, keep that fifty running. Split it up and try to keep all the hostiles off their game. Ali, Levi, concentrate on those two technicals coming toward us.”
As Everett sped to maneuver the Typhoon up to the door of the disabled MRAP, his crew went to work fending off the combatants that were trying to close in on the inoperable Patrol vehicle.
Everett stopped the nose of the Typhoon inches away from the rear bumper of the Patrol. “Courtney, make sure Tobias has a fresh belt of ammo, then kick open the side door and tell the crew of the Patrol to get in here. Have them bring all their guns and ammo. We’re going to need it!”
“Yes, sir.” Courtney had never acknowledged his directives like that before.
But the proud feeling of being spoken to with such a level of respect was lost on Everett. He felt that everything happening to them was his fault. He mumbled in a low voice just above a whisper, “I never should have led these people into this quagmire, especially without radio communications. What was I thinking?”
Gunfire and grenade explosions rang all around while the fighting raged on. Everett watched as the five crew members of the Patrol boarded the Typhoon. “David, Silas, help them transfer as much weaponry as you can. We’ve got to get out of here before we get stuck.”
The two former IDF troops hustled to help the crew of the Patrol. The Typhoon accommodated up to nineteen troops, but with all the supplies and additional gear, the five extra passengers made for tight quarters. The munitions and weapons from the Patrol were loaded in less than four minutes. Courtney slammed the door of the Typhoon shut. “Everyone is in! Go! Go! Go!”
Everett sped away from the stagnate location, careening into a small, dirty Toyota Tacoma carrying six MOC fighters in the bed of the truck. The Typhoon easily pushed past the comparatively tiny vehicle, flipping it on its side and spilling jihadis all over the dirt road like a jar of moldy jelly beans. Everett only had to fight his smile for a moment as the gravity of their dire circumstances quickly overruled any notion of mirth.
The man who’d been the last to board the Typhoon from the incapacitated Patrol stuck his head between Everett and Courtney’s seats. Like most of the other former IDF troops, he wore his old Israeli Defense Force uniform. “Mr. Carroll, thank you for coming for us. You saved the lives of my crew.”
Everett didn’t feel like a hero. In his mind, it was he who’d put their lives in jeopardy in the first place. “You can call me Everett.” He swung the truck around the corner and raced to rejoin the rest of the convoy who was taking heavy fire from all directions. “And trust me, it was the least I could do.”
“Nevertheless, we owe you our gratitude. My name is Abram.” Two men and two women, all wearing IDF uniforms, pressed in behind Abram. “With me are Avigail, Daliah, Seth, and Micha.”
“Welcome aboard.” Everett had to focus on the road, so he couldn’t take time to match names with faces. He’d apologize for his poor manners later�
��if they survived.
The crew of the Patrol made their way to the rear of the vehicle, leaving Everett to concentrate on driving. He caught up with the rest of the pack who were heavily engrossed in a firefight with the Martyrs of the Caliphate. Everett shouted orders to his crew, “Keep engaging! We can’t give these guys five seconds to think about putting a plan together. Pop up through the hatch, shoot a five-round burst, then drop back into the vehicle. Take turns and always use a different hatch than the last guy. Hopefully, our whack-a-mole strategy will keep anyone from getting hit.”
Everett drove near the front of the oncoming MRAP. He motioned backward with his thumb over his shoulder and then held up five fingers. The driver nodded. Everett hoped the driver understood that he meant to fall back in five minutes. Everett maneuvered the Typhoon so that he could make eye contact with the driver of the next vehicle from his convoy. He made the same motions but got a very dissimilar response. The driver shrugged and shook his head. Everett waved at the man and headed to the next vehicle, hoping that the drivers who were less adept at this critical game of charades would catch on once the convoy began moving out.
Everett swung the vehicle around to face the next MRAP. The third driver nodded as if he understood when Everett signaled with his hands once more. He moved on to the fourth truck whose driver seemed less sure of the intended message than the last.
Everett called out to the crew in his MRAP, “Keep them occupied for two more minutes, then we’re all going to fall back.”
“Roger!” Tobias kept the remote-controlled fifty-caliber rolling, pausing only for Courtney to help him reload.
Everett eyed his watch, waiting until the five minutes were up. Everett’s convoy managed to kill dozens of MOC fighters and destroy more than ten MOC vehicles which consisted mostly of civilian pickup trucks, some armed with large weapons in the beds. “Five minutes are up! Everyone in your seats, we’re moving out.”
Everett raced back toward the main road. All four of the remaining MRAPs followed him. He glanced at his side view mirror from time to time to see if the Martyrs were going to give chase. He hoped that the attack had created enough fires and damage to keep them busy for at least a few minutes. Everett pulled onto the main road and turned the Typhoon around to face the village. He then stood up and opened the hatch above him, signaling for the other four drivers to do the same.
Everett looked up the road to see the first vehicles of the main convoy heading toward them. He called out, “We’re going to have to go back in there before the civilian motorcade passes by, I just wanted to pull back long enough for us to put together a better plan since we can’t communicate.”
“What’s the plan?” a driver yelled out from the top hatch of the MRAP parked next to Everett’s.
Everett looked up the road again. “We should have some reinforcements in the front of this group of vehicles. When they get here, we’ll divvy up into two elements, Team Alpha and Team Bravo. Alpha will roll straight back into the square and start raising havoc. The second element can cut around to the east and slide in quietly from the side. Snipers can shoot from up the road toward the jihadis running around us trying to take us out.”
“Sounds great, but the snipers will be shooting straight at us,” the man replied.
“We’ll stay inside, hatches closed. We’ll only operate the remote-controlled fifty-cals. As long as Bravo’s snipers don’t take a direct shot at the center of the windshield or take out a tire, their fire won’t hurt us. The enemy, on the other hand, doesn’t have any heavy armor that we’ve encountered so far.” Everett looked at the other drivers. “What do you guys say?”
All four nodded in agreement. The man closest said, “Considering we’ve got no radios, I guess it’s the best play we’ve got.”
Four more MRAPs soon arrived from the front of the main convoy. Everett briefed the drivers on what they’d just been through, then brought them up to speed on the latest plan. Everett gave the signal and all nine vehicles rolled toward the small but irascible village.
The four newcomers split off from Everett’s convoy and went east. Everett’s team rolled back into the square they’d left minutes earlier and begun peppering the buildings with their fifty-caliber machine guns.
Tobias looked for targets while Everett drove. “How long do we have to keep this up?” Tobias asked.
“Until they decide we’re too big of a force to take head-on and crawl into a hole to hide.” Everett intentionally rammed the back of a pickup truck full of MOC fighters, sending the vehicle through the front window of a shop, on the bottom floor of the building next to the mosque.
Tobias unleashed a volley of bullets on the concrete building as they passed it. “I hope that’s soon because we’re eating up a lot of rounds. If the little town of Hafik is this tough, we’re going to need a lot of ammo for Sivas.”
“You don’t have to hit anything. Just keep them busy until the convoy can get through. Team Bravo’s snipers will take kill shots when the opportunity presents itself.” Everett rammed an abandoned truck which was still burning from an RPG earlier, pushing it up against the building. He hoped it would ignite the structure and give the jihadis another problem to worry about besides the civilian convoy trying to pass by on the main road just blocks away.
Courtney watched through the passenger’s window. “It looks like your plan is working. I think the enemy combatants are taking cover inside.”
“Probably they think we will invade house to house,” Ali said. “I think so they are preparing for fight soldier if we come into building.”
“As long as they don’t hit the main convoy, we’re doing our job,” Everett replied.
The armored vehicles kept up the assault, and one by one, the MOC fighters slowly pulled back from the fight. An hour had passed when Everett signaled to the other drivers of Team Alpha to keep circling the mosque while he drove back to the main road. When he arrived, he saw the convoy progressing at a steady pace, roughly forty miles an hour, but the back end of the convoy still stretched farther than Everett could see. The main convoy used both the eastbound lanes and the westbound lanes, leaving the shoulders for security teams to travel on.
Courtney looked through her binoculars. “Is that the end of the motorcade?”
“Can I see the field glasses?” Everett held out his hand and Courtney passed them to him. Sure enough, the convoy was nearly through the area of Hafik. Everett breathed a sigh of relief. “We did it! Let’s go tell the others it’s time to roll out.”
CHAPTER 14
Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about. They are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly. They have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their eyes bowing down to the earth; Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a young lion lurking in secret places.
Psalm 17:8-12
Once the word to withdraw from the town square of Hafik had been given, Everett’s team zoomed past the main convoy leaving Team Bravo behind as the rear guard. Everett’s vehicle and the four remaining MRAP’s from the advanced team raced to the front of the motorcade on the shoulder of the road. When they reached the staging area outside of Sivas, Rabbi Hertzog was there waiting for them. Everett pulled close to the black 6X6 Patrol armored vehicle in which the rabbi had been riding.
“Rabbi!” Everett stepped out of the Typhoon.
Hertzog stood beside several troops in IDF uniforms. They were studying a map which was spread out on the hood of a Jeep Wrangler. The rabbi turned his attention to Everett. “My friend! How are you?”
“We’re good, praise God. We lost one vehicle in the assault against Hafik, but none of our people were killed.”
Courtney walked up behind Everett. “Not even any injuries.”
“Almost no injury.” Ali tenderly touched his swollen lip with the back of his hand. It was no longer bleeding, but th
e swelling was sufficient to impair his speech slightly.
The rabbi hugged Ali with one arm. “If that’s the worst thing that happened, we must give all the glory to HaShem.”
“Indeed. All glory to Jehovah.” Ali smiled carefully with one side of his mouth.
The rabbi turned his attention back to the map. “My security detail tells me we are roughly five miles out from Sivas.”
Everett nodded. “Our team will escort you and your security force through Sivas. Once you’re through, we’ll act as one of the response teams in case the perimeter line along the main highway is attacked. You’re in a Patrol which is a very secure vehicle, plus you’ll have the heavily armored Golan, which we brought from Israel, as part of your escort. That’s in addition to the civilian vehicles in your security motorcade. I’m confident that they’ll be able to provide you with enough protection to get you to the underground cities, once you’ve cleared Sivas.”
Hertzog put one finger high in the air. “And I will be hidden in the shadow of the wings of Adonai!”
Everett smiled, grateful for the reminder that the fate of Israel did not rest solely upon his own shoulders. “Yes, and the covering of the Almighty.”
“But I do so appreciate your efforts, Everett.” Rabbi Hertzog squeezed Everett’s hand, then turned to Courtney, Ali, and Tobias. “And the bravery of your friends.”
“It is an honor to serve you and the people of God,” Ali said.
Everett looked at the long line of cars parked bumper to bumper in all four lanes of the highway. “The most dangerous part of our journey lies just ahead. We should be going.”
The rabbi looked at the soldiers around him and nodded. “Then let us be on our way.”
“Remember, you have the staff. Nothing is more important than getting that staff to the underground cities. Without it, the subterranean dwellings are just pre-dug graves.”
“Yes, Everett. I will do all that I can.” Hertzog shook Everett’s hand and walked to his armored vehicle.