Clandestine-IsaacHooke-FreeFollowup (38 page)

Wait a moment...

There
was
motion there. Very slow, very gradual, almost undetectable motion—what appeared to be a limb was sliding backward.
 

Suleman was attempting to relocate deeper into the shadows.
 

"Gotcha," Ethan whispered.

He aimed for the center of the object and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash momentarily flooded his scope with green. Ethan worked the bolt, chambering a fresh cartridge, and repositioned his reticule over the indistinct outline. It no longer moved.

After several moments he folded closed Beast's bipod and stood. He approached warily, keeping his rifle aimed at the tango, pausing every ten steps or so to recenter the scope, but his quarry never moved.
 

Ethan kept the muzzle pointed at the lifeless silhouette as he closed. He couldn't discern the features in the dim light, but he had little doubt as to the identity of the dead man: only Suleman had wanted to kill him badly enough to stalk him in the dark for the past hour.
 

He placed his index and middle fingers over the radial vein. The man's wrist felt clammy. No pulse. Ethan experienced a moment of pity.

You wanted me to kill you, Suleman. You got your wish.

Sliding Beast over his shoulder, Ethan snatched the M16A4 from the corpse and searched the vest for a spare magazine. He found one and pocketed it. In the man's backpack he also discovered a laptop, Stingray-capable no doubt. He tried to turn it on, but the battery seemed dead so he unleashed a burst from the A4 into the machine's aluminum shell. The man carried no other weapons.
 

Ethan raced back to the phone-radio contraption he'd juryrigged. Right when he reached it the Android's power failed—the screen darkened and the alarm ended. He scooped up the bound devices and ripped away the tape that locked the radio in transmit mode. He accidentally brushed the volume switch in the process and an angry militant barked over the channel in Arabic:
 

"Thank you for turning that pig shit off!"

Ethan turned the volume low so that he could listen to any relevant updates, then he slunk to the northern gate and carefully scanned the outlying street with the A4. The 4x magnification of the RCO scope was much better suited to an urban environment than the 10x on Beast.
 

When he was convinced the way was clear, he dashed to the safety of the alleyway across the road. He emerged and headed west, keeping close to the buildings, wondering if William and Aaron had taken the same route.
 

The sky between the buildings ignited as a mortar ominously struck nearby.

He reached an intersection. The second-story window of a house to the south lit up with the muzzle flashes of DShK fire. On a rooftop a block away to the west, the shimmer of another heavy machine gun answered it. He aimed the scope of his A4 toward that rooftop, and in the green-black environment illuminated by the starlight he saw what appeared to be eastern-facing sandbags. If he was right, that was a Kurdish defensive position.
 

Almost there.

Ethan darted across the street; as he closed with the defensive position, machine gun fire abruptly whipped past just beside him. He dropped, low-crawling behind a broken fence.   
 

He rose to a crouch, keeping his flank pressed to the cinder block fence. He thought it was the Kurds who were firing at him, so he shouted in English, "I'm American! I surrender! I want to cross to the Kurdish lines! I am friends with Black Mamba!"

The two-way radio squawked to life with the Arabic voice of an Islamic State militant. "I've found another deserter trying to defect to the yellow-faces!"

Whoops.

Stone chips flew into his face as mujahadeen fired from somewhere to the east. Those bullets traced a path along the wall toward his head...

He spun away, diving into an open door; inside, he got up and hurried through the foyer at a crouch, worried that he might trigger a booby trap—the moment that thought entered his mind, he banged his hip against an unseen counter in the dark. Not a booby trap, but certainly painful.
 

He heard shouts outside. "He's in there! Use the rockets!"

Ethan sprinted to the far side of the home and leaped out the shattered rear window, landing in the small courtyard beyond. He felt a shockwave rip past as the room he'd vacated only moments before exploded.

He sprinted through the yard, pulling himself over a chest-high cinder block fence.

Gunfire whizzed past from his right.

Ethan dove behind some rubble situated in the middle of the road. No, not rubble. It was an upturned Jersey barrier, barely high enough to shield him. The Dragunov dug into his arm below him. He turned onto his back, flattening himself, and slid the rifle down. He let off a few random shots at his opponents without looking over the barricade, then discarded the Dragunov when the magazine emptied.

More shots came in. Bullets ricocheted from the barrier above him, sprinkling his temple with slivers of concrete. He was pinned worse than ever. The tiny barricade might protect him
from gunfire—at least until the militants outflanked him—but it certainly wouldn't save him from a rocket or grenade attack.
 

He was done.

"I
'm with you, my brothers," Ethan shouted in Arabic. "I fight the yellow-faces!"
 

But the militants kept firing.

As he lay there on his back beside the barricade, he found his gaze drawn inexplicably to the stars. The quarter moon had broken free by then. So beautiful.

More cement broke away as bullets pounded the Jersey barrier. It would be so easy to give up. To let them outflank him and fire their rockets while he just lay there, doing nothing, staring at the moon one last time before he died.

A voice growled at the back of his mind in protest. It spoke a quote from Winston Churchill that had helped Ethan endure SEAL training, a quote he'd always kept close to heart.

Never give in—never, never, never, never. If you're going through hell, keep going.
 

Well, if ever he was in hell, it was then.

Keep going.

Staying low, he surveyed his surroundings in the quarter moonlight. There was a single-story shop to his left. Five meters away. The front door was invitingly open.

He could make it.

He
would
.
 

The incoming gunfire momentarily ceased. He heard the militants calling out instructions to one another from opposite sides of the street. It sounded like they were preparing to outflank him.

He switched the A4 fire selector to burst mode, then pivoted so that he lay face down behind the Jersey barrier. He brought his knees forward as far as he could without exposing the rest of his body, took two deep breaths, then lifted the muzzle of the A4 over the barricade and unleashed two separate bursts without aiming.
 

He pressed the assault rifle into the barrier and, using it as leverage, clambered to his feet. He sprinted toward the shop, firing off two more bursts, spray-and-pray style, to his left.

Return gunfire echoed in the night and bullets whipped past. He felt a rude poke in his left bicep and knew he'd been shot. He dove into the ruined shop, landing prostrate on the floor.

By then his left bicep was pulsing with an excruciating, burning pain. He had hoped the distraction of battle would lessen the agony, but no such luck: it felt like a steaming hot carving knife had been driven into the muscle, and some cruel torturer was twisting it, cutting into the tendons, fascia, and bone. It was an illusion, of course. The pain was the aftereffect of the round passing clean through the head of the muscle, and his subsequent attempts to move the arm. It was fortunate the bullet hadn't deflected into his torso, as the protection from the Kevlar vest was dubious at best.

Hot blood drizzled down his forearm from the entry and exit wounds. The lesions were located conveniently below the Quick Cuff. Ducking behind a table, he dropped the A4 and opened the cuff's velcro attachment, quickly retightening it to stanch the bleeding.
 

He scooped up the A4, stumbled to his feet, and made for the rear of the building. He spotted the silhouettes of several men beyond the windows there. Surrounded. He steered toward the open trapdoor in the ceiling instead, where the moon beckoned invitingly. The roof would prove a more defensible position.
 

Left arm dangling uselessly, Ethan started up the stairs but tripped halfway. Instinctively he tried to extend his injured limb to cushion the fall, sending a jolt of pain through the muscle; he smashed into the stairs, only worsening the excruciation. Beast, hanging from his left shoulder, dug into the tissue.
 

With his right arm, he braced his other rifle—the A4—against the steps, and forced himself up. He heard shouts outside.
 

"He's on the roof!" came the Arabic words.

He heard the characteristic tumble of a fragmentation grenade on the rooftop above.

Ethan was far enough from the trapdoor to consider himself safe, so he chose to stay on the stairs. He swiveled to face the foyer, lay back against the steps, and balanced the A4 on his chest while he set the fire selector to semi-automatic. Then he raised the rifle awkwardly with his good hand, pointing the muzzle toward the main door across from him.
 

An explosion rocked the ceiling as the grenade detonated, sending a blast of displaced air down through the trapdoor.

Ethan scarcely batted an eye. He kept his rifle arm extended, leaving a slight crook in the elbow. He tried hard to maintain a pistol grip of sorts on the A4, with a straight wrist so the force of the recoil would transfer into his arm rather than the joint. The unbalanced weight was difficult to sustain, however, and he found himself using his right leg to help support the barrel.
 

The silhouette of a crouching man appeared in the doorway.

Ethan centered the muzzle on the muj's torso and fired one-handed. The trigger guard banged against his fingers and he felt the recoil energy transmit into his elbow, but he hit the target.

The man dropped like a fly.

A grenade bounced inside. Ethan hauled himself to his feet and raced through the hole in the ceiling. The bomb detonated, sending a fireball through the trapdoor behind him.

He low-crawled westward, toward the side street, and peered over. Militants milled below. Ethan immediately ducked.

He heard movement in the room below.

Staying prostrate, he spun around and aimed the A4 toward the trapdoor.
 

So this is the end
, he thought.
Surrounded by mujahadeen, going down in a blaze of glory.
 

There were worse fates. He was doing what he was born to do. Fighting on the side of good against radicals who sought to destroy the world. This was the good fight.

The best fight.

The sound of artillery fire ripped through the air. Bright threads of light drew his attention to the side street. In the distance, from the Kurdish lines, a pickup truck roared over the potholes. A ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun was mounted in its bed, and it fired directly into the militants who had him surrounded.

Another technical advanced from a parallel road, also from the Kurdish positions. It too unleashed havoc with a ZU. Ethan flattened himself, knowing how notoriously inaccurate the weapon could be when fired from a moving vehicle.

The gurgled screams of mujahadeen filled the air as the 23mm shells tore through them at
a firing rate of over four hundred rounds per minute. The rooftop shook as some of the rounds collided with the side of the building.
 

The first pickup surged past and Ethan heard the screech of braking tires, followed by a loud crash. He thought the vehicle had plowed into the upended Jersey barrier.

The second technical pulled up behind it, judging from the sound.

Their anti-aircraft guns continued firing sporadically.

Ethan heard the burst of an AK-47 downstairs, followed by a single rifle report from the street. Another AK salvo. Another rifle crack. He kept his A4 aimed at the hole in the rooftop.
 

The exchange continued for about half a minute, with the rifle reports sounding successively closer. Then the stairs creaked below.
 

Ethan held his A4 steady on the trapdoor...
 

A head appeared; before he fired, a familiar voice bellowed: "Death Adder coming up!"

Ethan slumped. "Damn it, Wil, I almost popped your head off."

William climbed onto the rooftop. "I've been trying to message you."

"Phone's dead. How the hell did you find me?"

William ignored the question. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah. It's the arm that's busted."

William helped him to his feet, though he accidentally wrapped a hand around Ethan's injured bicep in the process and he nearly blacked out. "Sorry."
 

William led him downstairs. "As to how we found you, we've been listening in on the radio chatter, but we also had one of the Predators zoom in on the neighborhood. Wasn't hard to pinpoint your location—we just looked for the biggest firefight in the area."
 

Ethan emerged from the shop, feeling like he was walking in some sort of dream. He was vaguely aware that the pickup, a battered and muddy Kia 4000S, had turned around. In the truck bed a Kurd manned the anti-aircraft gun, guarding their rear, releasing 23mm bursts down the street every few seconds.

William led Ethan around the front and opened the passenger side. Ethan lethargically hauled himself into the seat with one hand. William squeezed in beside him and shut the door.

Ethan wasn't sure in the dim light, but he thought the driver was Doug.

"How's it hanging?" Definitely Doug. He floored the accelerator, sending the Kia leaping forward.