Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (15 page)

Chapter 42

The enemy
machine gun remained silent, but Nick’s men hammered the position on and off as
if it were a dragon, waiting to rise from the ground and bathe them with fire.

Nick allowed
it a few moments more, then yelled, “Cease fire. Everybody cease fire.”

Each team
member passed along the order down the line until all shooting had stopped on
the American side. A relative silence took hold though the Pakistani villagers
fired a few rounds in angry, half-hearted attempts that fell nowhere near the
mark.

Nick,
Marcus, and Truck scanned the terrain for targets, but the villagers stayed
low. A few periodically lifted a rifle to sling an un-aimed shot in the team’s
direction. And though they still outnumbered Nick’s team 2-to-1, they had
learned their lesson about showing themselves. Even at such a distance, they
could be hit and killed.

Nick inched
his scope along the rugged, rocky terrain. He detected pieces of fighters -- a
top of a head, a shoulder, a hand atop a boulder -- but nothing large enough to
engage.

“Nobody’s
showing themselves,” Nick said, still behind his scope.

He grunted,
unsure. What now? Nick pulled down his rifle and looked at his team.

Red was
reloading another seventy-five round drum into the light machine gun. Truck was
taking in some water from a green canteen. And Marcus was looking down at his
watch, checking the time with a look of concern.

Nick wiped
his sleeve across his sweaty forehead. Damn, he felt as tired as he could
remember feeling in a long time. He studied his men -- all bearded and turbaned
up, to fit in better. They looked like a ragtag bunch of religious wackos. He
stood and felt his legs shaky with fatigue. This needed to end soon. He was
getting too old for this shit.

The Fist of
the Taliban could feel the imminent victory as his trucks raced across the open
ground. The three trucks were fanned out, driving side-by-side on terrain that
had mostly flattened out. They and their twenty-four fighters were flying at
more than forty miles per hour across the rough land. And forty miles per hour
on this rocky, hard ground felt more like eighty.

Mushahid
couldn’t believe that none of the fighters ahead had noticed them or turned in alarm.
Everything was going according to plan, and these men were as good as dead.

Nick
couldn’t figure out an alternate plan. Though he was focused obsessively
forward on the machine gun, while also searching for other targets, he allowed
his mind to chew on the situation. But no matter how hard he thought, he kept
coming up empty.

There was no
way around this town if they were planning on staying in the truck. The valley
was a bowl that ended in a small pass through the mountains ahead. The only way
through the steep terrain was through the road beyond the village. And the road
passed through the village, which had some really pissed off folks waiting for
his team to get within range.

It was an
impasse. And there were no other options unless they wanted to go on foot. Nick
had walked all he planned to walk for a long damn time, so that ruled that out.

Nick,
frustrated, laid back down, incredibly pissed off. He was a sniper at heart.
And he’d just have to rely on his gun once again to get through this damned
mess. Maybe he could crawl forward and play turkey peek with these folks until
they decided the fun was all gone.

Red
apparently wasn’t happy either. He pushed himself off the cab of the truck,
cupped his hands, and shouted, “Come on you fuckers! You bunch of damn cowards!
Let’s do this!”

His voice
echoed across the open ground, but no one on the opposite side even bothered
shooting at the standing target. Both sides appeared to be conserving their
ammo – the distance too great.

Red seized
the RPK off the cab, placed it against his shoulder, and loosed a burst of
machine gun fire toward the targets across the distance.

Nick looked
up and said, “Knock it off, Red.”

Thankfully,
it was only a five-round burst.

Nick
returned to the scope and saw a very different picture than he’d seen only
moments before. The villagers weren’t hiding anymore. In fact, as he watched,
more and more stood. Their hands held up, weapons lifted.

Nick
couldn’t figure out what they were doing

“They’re
literally cheering,” Marcus said, looking through his own scope.

“What the
hell they celebrating about?” Nick asked.

“Red’s
shitty shooting, apparently,” Truck said.

Nick ignored
the banter, placed the scope’s crosshair on a target, and eased back the
trigger. But before he could fire, the hair on the back of his neck stood --
his involuntary alarm system that had kept his sorry ass alive numerous times
-- and Nick answered it immediately. He lowered the rifle and turned. And when
he did, he nearly threw up.

Chapter 43

Dust climbed
behind them like a tidal wave racing in their direction. It rose in height and
width, its breadth and density revealing the hazard beneath its cloud.

It appeared
ominous, and Nick froze for a moment after turning. The glint of the early
morning sun pinged off the glass and chrome of the vehicles and forced Nick to
squint his eyes against its glare.

“Contact
rear!” Nick hollered, his voice screeching, his alarm too great to control or
hide the fear in such a moment.

All four men
turned to confront their new threat. Nick was the first to fire. He estimated
the trucks at a thousand yards away but closing fast.

Nick aimed
several inches high and began shooting quickly, grateful in this moment that
his Dragunov was semi-auto instead of bolt action. Marcus and Truck fired on
semi-auto with their AKs, as well. Everyone trying to fire as accurately as
possible.

Red stood in
the bed of the Toyota and fired from the standing position with the RPK. Not
the most accurate position, but he, too, had panicked upon seeing the trucks
and wasn’t thinking entirely clearly. Each man knew they had to stop the
trucks, or they were all dead.

The three
trucks hurtled toward what was looking more and more like American invaders.
Mushahid Zubaida, riding in the passenger seat, was holding on for all he was
worth. His right arm was braced in the window, and his left hand gripped the
truck’s dash as tightly as he could squeeze it.

The truck
bounced and hopped, spending as much time airborne as it spent on the ground.
He glanced at the speedometer, but couldn’t brace his head still enough to read
it. The dry, dusty ground wasn’t rough here by most Pakistani standards, but no
open ground was designed for trucks to drive at more than forty miles per hour.

Make that fifty,
he finally saw the speed between all the bouncing and jostling. No doubt this
charge was wrecking the undercarriage of the truck. Well, when they uploaded
the video of four dead Americans caught in Pakistan, he was sure more donations
would pour in from his Muslim brothers across the world. They could buy new
trucks then.

He turned
his attention from the speedometer to their target, and a smile appeared on his
face. They were eight hundred yards away, and while their surprise had been
blown by something (it was too far for him to see the cheering villagers), only
light, ineffective fire from the Americans snapped by.

Mushahid
Zubaida had the infidels, and he knew it.

Chapter 44

Nick changed
mags on the Dragunov as the charging vehicles cleared the eight hundred meter
mark.

“Change
mags, everyone,” he shouted.

As he
slapped his own fresh magazine in, he knew the next few moments would be the
difference between life and death. The trucks were about to enter effective
range, which is why he ordered everyone to reload.
At this range, a single
man running dry could very easily turn into the kind of situation that ended up
with no one making it out of Pakistan.

They would
either make a few great shots and hit all the “should make” shots or they’d die.
Period. There was no middle ground, and Nick didn’t like their odds.

A few rounds
snapped by, fired from the villagers behind them. Great, Nick thought. Now the
villagers are back at us. He hoped they weren’t advancing on them; there was no
time to check. They wouldn’t be able to cover enough distance to matter before
the trucks decided their fate anyway.

Stay
focused, Nick, he thought as he brought the Dragunov back into his shoulder
with its fresh mag. But before he settled in to aim, he had an idea.

“Let’s all
focus on the middle truck,” Nick yelled.

The trucks
cleared six hundred yards. Closing fast. Nick noticed out of the corner of his
eye that Red was jumping down from the truck to take a prone position. Good.
With that bipod, he wouldn’t be missing anymore shots from this point on. And
he had seventy-five in that drum.

Nick brought
the scope up, aimed at the engine, and fired. KRAK. KRAK. KRAK. The other men
of S3 poured bullets into it, too, and Nick saw two tracers cut into the
engine. Those were from the RPK, and two tracers meant ten rounds had just
zipped into it. It also meant Red was really holding the gun tight and keeping
its groups controlled since machine guns often rose up on you.

More bullets
riddled the front of the middle truck, but the group of vehicles passed five
hundred yards without a pause. But now they were very much in the effective
range of their weapons.

Nick knew
his team didn’t miss at this range. Not at a man-sized target and definitely
not a truck-sized one. Four of the best gunman in the world were firing at a
single truck in the middle of a formation.

The Americans’ fire had
completely ceased. “They must be reloading,” Mushahid said to his driver.
“Hurry, Khalid.”

Mushahid quickly glanced
right then left out both windows to make sure the two flanking trucks were
still matching pace. Mushahid smiled and again urged Khalid to drive faster.

Suddenly the machine gun let
loose. He could tell from the muzzle flash that it was firing now from a lower
position on the ground. He could also tell that its accuracy was flawless.

Mushahid braced for impact
as t
he rounds slammed and cut into the truck. It
sounded like a mass of sledge hammers hitting one after the other, shaking the
truck and punching holes through the front window.

Khalid
screamed. “Agh!!!”

“Be strong,
my brother,” Mushahid yelled. “We have them.”

Then a
second burst and other weapons opened up.
The truck appeared to be catching bullets like a
giant magnet.
It sounded like sticking your head in
a metal trash can and banging both sides with baseball bats.

“Be brave,
Khalid!” Mushahid called out.

Khalid
didn’t answer, and Mushahid saw his driver’s body slumped against the window as
the truck veered sharply to the left. Mushahid reached over to grab the wheel
and stabilize the vehicle before it flipped.

Chapter 45

Nick saw the
middle truck veering and slowing, the other two trucks roaring past it.

“Shift
left,” he shouted. “Shift left. Shift left.”

They each
shifted their fire onto the left truck, now within three hundred yards. It came
under even more withering, accurate fire than the first. At two hundred yards,
it, too, slowed -- its driver riddled with bullets, the hood shredded and
flapping above a smoking engine.

No one
needed to say “shift right.” The final truck was at one hundred yards and
flying straight toward the middle of their line. Without question, the driver
intended to run over them.

Red unleashed
the light machine gun on it while Marcus slammed in a new thirty-round
magazine. Nick doubted they’d stop the truck before it and its fighters were on
top of them. But then he remembered the best news ever.

He released
his sniper rifle, jumped to his feet, and leapt over the side of the truck bed.
He landed precariously, stumbling all over packs and gear. One leg crumpled
under him, and he bashed his knee into a computer tower.

But in that
death dance when time slows, Nick’s body responded as it always had. He found
his footing, hoisted the stolen RPG, and switched off the safety as he spun it
toward the oncoming truck.

He aimed low
and fired. WHOOSH. The smoke trail flew toward the truck and an explosion
thumped the truck, striking in front of the passenger side front tire. The
blast ripped the wheel off, and the truck jerked to its right and flipped on
its side. It rolled and rolled and rolled, fighters flying, falling, and
flattening under the weight of the truck.

The fighters
(who still could) struggled to engage their assailants. But none of them had a
chance. Bullets lanced them with laser-like precision. Not a single bullet
fired from Nick’s team missed at such a close range. And how could they at less
than one hundred yards, outfitted with scopes and precision-tuned weapons
synced in by one of the country’s best armorers.

The closest
truck’s eight Taliban fighters were each dead in a matter of seconds. But there
was no time for cheering. The fighters from the first two trucks were getting
their act together.

Those from
Mushahid’s middle truck, which had been stopped at five hundred yards, had
deployed from the truck. These were some of Mushahid Zubaida’s most loyal
fighters, and they needed to close the distance while the Americans were
focused on the other trucks.

“Let’s go,
my brothers,” Mushahid yelled.

His troops
had seen the riddled body of Khalid in the driver’s seat, and they needed no
urging. The seven of them sprinted forward, covering ground as only lightly
armed guerrillas can do. Unlike most troops, they had no heavy flak jackets,
helmets, or gear ranging from canteens to first aid kits to weigh them down.

The seven
fighters from the second truck just two hundred yards away from Nick’s team
were already spreading out and firing. The shots from these fighters were
intense and accurate enough to drive Nick’s team into the prone, searching for
cover.

“Fuck!” Red
screamed as three bullets smacked in front of him.

Nick rolled
out of the truck and ducked as bullets snapped by his head.

“We can’t
stay here,” he yelled.

Red pulled
his machine gun into his shoulder and yanked the trigger, but it clicked. Dry.
Out of ammo. And the ammo was in the truck bed.

Truck
noticed the situation and rolled next to Red.

“Take this,”
he said, tossing Red’s AK-47 to him and grabbing his RPK back. “I’ll grab more
ammo from the truck.”

Red
immediately resumed the fire to cover Truck, as did Nick and Marcus. Not having
a machine gun up and running was a guaranteed way to lose a firefight.

Rounds
snapped by, their whip-like stinging coming painfully close to pinning the team
down. The seven Taliban from Mushahid’s truck had caught up and joined the line
of fighters already firing.

The incoming
fire picked up, heavier and more deadly.

“Shit!” Red
screamed. A round had blown a fist-sized rock toward him from just a foot away.
Nick ducked after a particularly close round snapped by so loud it felt like it
burned. All Nick wanted to do was crawl into a hole or ball up into the fetal
position.

Nick all of
a sudden remembered the villagers. The last thing they needed was for those
bastards to be running up on their rear. He leaned up, looked behind him, and
felt something smack his shoulder. He slammed his body back into the ground, to
avoid further damage.

He burrowed
his face into the ground as more rounds whipped past him within inches. His
glance to the team’s rear had confirmed his worst fear. The villagers behind
them were firing and moving toward them. They were about to be doubly fucked.