Deployed (19 page)

“Right side.” Pike’s warning came at the same time Bekah noticed him in motion, twisting to the right and bringing his rifle around.

21

THROUGH THE SMOKY, DUSTY HAZE
that filled the immediate area, Bekah barely spotted the five men running toward them. All wore the red-and-white-checked
keffiyehs
and long jackets that marked them as al-Shabaab. They carried AK-47s and SAR 80s, already firing, and the harsh
crack-crack-crack
of the weapons sounded muted and far away because her ears still rang from the explosives that had detonated.

The bullets, however, weren’t far away. They tore into the earth in front of her and pinged off the nearby rubble. Chunks of stone leaped into the air.

Something slammed into Bekah’s helmet as she returned fire. Her head bounced back slightly, but she quickly recovered. She knew she’d been hit by a round but that the helmet had stopped it. She also knew the round had to have been one of the 5.56mm rounds from the SAR 80s instead of the heavier rounds fired by the AK-47s, otherwise the impact would have been much more serious.

But she’d come only inches from leaving Travis without a mother.

Pike fired from the crouched position, squeezing off exact three-round bursts into their attackers. Two of the al-Shabaab terrorists went down almost immediately. The three remaining gunmen recognized that they weren’t going to easily overpower their prey as they’d believed and split up.

Slightly leading the gunman who had run off to her left, Bekah aimed for the center mass of the man’s body and squeezed off two bursts. The gunman’s gait suddenly lost rhythm, and he fell in a headlong rush as the AK-47 tumbled free of his hand. He rolled and landed on his back, reaching for the assault rifle. Bekah took aim again and fired another burst of rounds into the man’s head and chest. The terrorist shivered and lay still, and the amount of bright blood spilling out across the ground under the late-morning sun told her that he wasn’t getting up again.

When she’d first gone into combat, Bekah had never thought about the emotional consequences of killing others. That was something a person didn’t talk about back in the real world. Sometimes a civilian asked a question like that, and she ignored it. Most military personnel who had been in combat acted the same way. When a Marine went back to the civilized world, they tried to keep the war in a different place.

She didn’t think about the number of opponents she’d killed. Or possibly killed. With everything that happened in a battle, it was hard to know for certain.

But she knew she’d killed this man, and she accepted it just as she had all the others that had been confirmed.

The two remaining al-Shabaab fighters tried to reach cover, but a hail of bullets knocked them to the ground.

“Let’s go.” Bekah glanced at her team and made certain they were in one piece. Then she rose in a crouch and ran forward to confirm that the men were down.

All of them were dead.

Tyler looked at the men and quickly turned away. His eyes had rounded behind the John Lennon glasses. Whatever exposure he’d had to combat, it hadn’t been this up close and personal. Bekah made a mental note to talk to him later, see where his head was at. Having him freeze up at some point would be dangerous for all of them.

On the move again, Bekah led the team into an alley on the other side of the broken remnant of the building and resumed her heading toward Indigo One’s position. The firefight continued, only this time a new sound entered the fray: a roaring engine.

Glancing ahead toward the end of the alley, Bekah paused next to a doorway as a pickup truck with a 7.62mm machine gun mounted on the rear deck screeched around the corner and sped toward them. She lifted her rifle and opened fire, a half second behind Pike.

Their rounds bounced off the thick metal plate welded to the front of the pickup. More metal covered the windshield, giving the driver a narrow field of view. The vehicle looked like a bulldozer coming at them.

“The door! Move!”

Pike heaved himself at the flimsy wooden door and crashed through into the room beyond. Trudy and Tyler
went through on his heels as Bekah brought up the rear. She crouched on one knee in the doorway, barely having time to drop into position before the pickup raced by. Thankfully the room was empty and no noncombatants were endangered by the exchange.

Pike was already down and swinging around with his rifle in his hands. “Get down!” Trudy dropped and went flat. When Tyler didn’t react quickly enough, Pike kicked the Marine’s legs out from under him just as the pickup truck drew even with the room.

The machine gun ripped a ragged line of bullet holes through the wall just over Bekah’s head. She had seen that the machine gun’s field of fire was limited by the sides of the vehicle and hoped her low profile would keep her safe. As the pickup roared past, Bekah stepped out into the alley and fired her rifle dry, but she got chased back to cover by the support riflemen using small arms on either side of the machine gunner.

“Indigo Eight, have you reached Indigo One yet?” Gunshots echoed over the connection to the lieutenant, and Bekah knew he and his group were taking heavy fire as well.

“Not yet. On our way.” Bekah reloaded her weapon from the ammo rack across her Kevlar vest. Pike had already taken a support position near the door.

“Pickup’s gone. Ran out onto the next street.” Pike scowled and spat.

Bekah nodded. “Let’s go.”

Pike headed out the door and took point. Bekah followed close behind the big man, surprised at how athletically he
moved despite his size. He was like the wind, every movement fluid and natural.

Less than a minute later, while the ambush continued around them, Bekah and her team reached what remained of Indigo One. They had to stay low because the al-Shabaab had a sniper’s nest in a nearby building. The gunmen inside popped out occasionally to pepper the area with rifle fire or launch a rocket-propelled grenade.

The only protection Indigo One had was an L-shaped wall remnant no more than five feet tall. Pike and Bekah kept sporadic fire on the building window to pin the snipers down, but she’d already detected other terrorists running into the building. She didn’t know if the men were trying to retreat or intended to provide additional support.

“Bekah,” Trudy called out from a kneeling position beside a wounded Marine who was bleeding profusely. “I need another pair of hands.” Tyler had joined her there, but he was providing cover fire with the surviving Indigo One Marine.

Bekah swapped looks with Pike. She had worked field medical triage with Trudy before.

The big man nodded as he reloaded his weapon. “I’ve got this. I’ll cover you.”

When Pike started firing, spraying rounds across the window where the snipers were, Bekah darted toward Trudy and the wounded Marine. The other two Marines in the fire team lay a few feet away in the open, torn apart by one of the ground-emplaced explosives. They’d never had a chance.

Bekah took up a position opposite Trudy over the wounded Marine. “What do you have?” She laid her rifle
nearby and focused on the mass of blood-soaked material stretched across the Marine’s midsection.

“Abdominal bleeder. Bullet must have taken a weird bounce and got up under his armor. Or he took shrapnel. I can’t tell. I need to get under there and clamp it off if I can, or he’s going to bleed out. Help me get the vest off him.” Trudy pulled at the vest on her side, freeing the Velcro closures. Her hands were covered in blood.

Ignoring the sounds of the battle and the flying stone chips that rained down on her from the sustained sniper fire, Bekah grabbed the vest and tugged at the closures on the wounded man’s side. They opened with a rip. Then she reached for the closures at his shoulders and saw his face for the first time.

“Hey, Marine.” The young man smiled at her, and it took Bekah a second to realize the first time she’d seen his face had been at the auto parts store. His voice was hoarse and shaky, and his eyes looked dull and glassy from shock.

“Hey, Private Caxton.” Bekah put a smile on her face even though she wasn’t feeling it. He was in trouble, maybe dying, and they weren’t far from that fate themselves. The young man was badly hurt and needed to know he was in good hands. “You’re not supposed to get wounded on the first day of the job. I guess you missed that at the briefing.”

Ralph Caxton tried another smile, but he broke into a coughing fit that left bloody spittle around his lips. He tried again. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

“Bekah.”

Looking back at Trudy, Bekah noted the concern on the
other woman’s face. She shifted her gaze to Caxton’s stomach. There wasn’t one wound there. The young man had suffered what looked like three, all close together, all jagged and irregular. Bekah realized then that he must have been standing close to the two Marines who had lost their lives. He hadn’t caught a bullet. He’d been hit by shrapnel, and those shards were probably still inside him keeping the wounds open.

Blood poured out of the Marine like water from a boot.

Trudy gazed at Bekah helplessly.

There was nothing they could do for Ralph Caxton, and Bekah knew it. The pain of the loss coupled with the shock of recognition hit her like a fist. She pushed those thoughts away and took a breath.

Deal with this. He needs you to be strong. Deal with it. Maybe a corpsman will get here in time. Maybe he’ll pull through. Don’t give up on him.

“How bad is it?” Ralph’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but he sounded calm.

Bekah made herself smile reassuringly while Trudy called for a medic over the MBITR. “I’ve seen worse, Private.” Bekah reached out and took the young man’s bloody hand. “We’re not going to let you get out of this that easily.”

“Okay.” Ralph took her hand, but he had hardly any strength in his grip. The most noticeable thing was the shaking.

Suddenly he convulsed and gasped.

“Ralph.” Bekah leaned more closely over him and looked into his eyes. “Stay with me, Marine. Do you hear me?”

Ralph’s hand went slack in hers. His eyes turned glassy, and the pupils dilated into black pools that nearly filled the irises.

“Ralph!” Bekah squeezed his hand, willing him to be okay and knowing that he wouldn’t be. He’d lost too much blood. A heart couldn’t pump when it was dry, and his body was shutting down. Death was stealing him away.

Mechanically, Bekah released Ralph’s hand, then straddled his body and started doing a series of chest compressions.

“Bekah.” Trudy pulled at her. “Bekah. He needs blood. Lots of it, and we don’t have any. He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do.”

“No.”

“Bekah.” Trudy pulled at Bekah’s arm again.

Stubbornly, working to wall the grief away inside her, Bekah shook off the woman’s hold and got up off the dead Marine. There would be time to deal with the loss later. She told herself as much, just as she had before, but she knew from experience that a person couldn’t really deal with losses like that. A Marine survived them, accepted another scar that no one else could see, and moved on.

She picked up her M4A1 as another rocket went wide of the wall and blew up inside the building that Pike used for cover. Trudy was canceling the call for the corpsman. Bekah crept to the surviving Marine’s side. She looked him in the eye. He was just a scared kid, bony and angular, looking like he’d just graduated high school.

“What’s your name, Marine?” Bekah made her voice neutral.

“Mike. Mike Carruthers.”

“Mike, I’m Bekah. You’re going to be all right.”

He looked at her wildly and held tightly to his rifle. “They’re going to kill us. We walked into a trap.”

“That’s right, we did. And we’re going to walk back out of this. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes.”

“You keep listening to me and you’re going to be fine.” Bekah spoke with more confidence than she felt. She kept reminding herself that other Marines were in the area and they were doing all they could to reach them.

“All right.”

Another warhead detonated against the wall. More rubble showered over them as the wall quivered but miraculously remained standing. Bekah pressed herself against the stones and kept her head ducked, listening to the debris ping off her helmet. The dust gathered intensity and thickened so much she had trouble breathing. When the moment passed, she pulled away from the wall again.

Looking at the young Marine, Bekah knew he was frozen. Getting him out of here was going to be difficult with the snipers in place. She looked back at Pike, who was judiciously returning fire. His presence was probably the only thing keeping the terrorists from pouring out of the building and overrunning their position.

“Pike.”

He looked at her as he reloaded his weapon.

“We need the high ground.” Bekah shoved a fresh magazine into her own weapon and checked her webbing for grenades. She had a small assortment of flashbangs and antipersonnel explosives for urban encounters.

Pike nodded. “Me and you?”

“Yes.”

He smiled grimly. “You think we’re that good?”

“We’d better be.”

“We get through this, I’ll buy you a beer.”

“I’ll let you.” Bekah turned to Trudy and Tyler. “Hold your position here. Give Pike and me cover.”

The two Marines nodded and took up positions along the wall.

Bekah shifted behind the wall, crept toward the corner, and glanced back at Pike. “You take the door. I’ll take the window next to it.”

“Good enough.” Pike rose and cradled the M4A1 in both hands. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Bekah took a deep breath and thought of Travis and her granny.
You’re going back home. No matter how bad this looks, you’re getting through it.
She let the air out of her lungs and raced around the corner of the wall. Pike ate up the distance with long strides and was on her heels as they crossed the alley to the building where the snipers nested.

22

BULLETS RAKED THE ALLEY
around Bekah as she sprinted. At least two struck her body armor and another glanced off her helmet, but she never broke stride. Stopping or turning back was a certain path to death. On the other side of the alley, she slammed into the wall between the door and the window on the first floor.

Pike fell into position on the other side of the door.

In a former life, the building had housed a business. A faded sign with fresh bullet holes hung overhead. Bekah couldn’t read the Somali words written there or on what was left of the shattered plate-glass window beside her. More scars from bullets cratered the building’s front, and not all of those were new. War was an old thing here.

Tyler and Trudy kept a constant barrage of fire going, drawing the attention of several of the gunners inside the building, but Bekah knew the al-Shabaab were aware of Pike and her at the door.

“You ready?” Pike looked at her. Dust covered his broad face and blood wept from two long scratches on his left cheek.

Bekah nodded. “Do it.”

Whirling around, Pike drove his shoulder into the wooden door. Hinges shrilled as screws tore from the jamb, and the door flew inward and broke at the same time.

Bekah spun around and raised the M4A1 to her shoulder as she peered through the broken window. The room held a counter and broken shelves that had been Swiss-cheesed by scavengers looking for wood and metal they could use or sell. A few pictures of breads remained on the wall, along with a chalkboard with more Somali writing and advertisements from other vendors.

Shadows moved on the other side of the room, and the dust filling the area gave Bekah pause for a moment. Then she spotted the red-and-white-checked
keffiyehs
and the assault rifles in the hands of the men. She opened fire as Pike rolled against the counter on the left side of the room.

Ejected brass spun and glinted as Bekah fired, and the rifle chugged repeatedly against her shoulder. Bullets cut the air around her and knocked jagged pieces of glass from the window. The two terrorists went down, sprawling at the foot of a narrow stairwell.

“Good shooting.” Pike got to his feet with ease and took the lead.

Swapping out her empty magazine for a full one from her ammo rack, Bekah stepped up onto the window ledge and plunged into the room with her rifle at the ready. She followed Pike’s lead as he checked the bodies of the men on
the floor, then stepped over them to cover the stairwell. He paused as Bekah caught up with him.

She nodded and let him go first, covering him as he went as much as she could and making sure their exit route remained clear. Having a group of terrorists take away their retreat would leave them trapped on the stairwell like fish in a barrel.

Pike was almost at the landing when another terrorist peeked down from the next set of stairs. Bekah trotted up behind Pike and fired upward, driving the man back to cover as splinters ripped from the stairwell railing.

At the same time, a door in the hallway near Pike burst open and another terrorist aimed at Pike’s head from only inches away. Bekah scrambled to get a clear shot but couldn’t because the angles were all wrong. She knew she was about to see Pike die, either by the man beside him or from the guns hidden above.

Instead, Pike’s left hand flicked out, caught the offending rifle muzzle, and yanked. The terrorist flew toward Pike and managed to squeeze off a burst of bullets that chipped plaster from the wall beside the Marine’s head. A white cloud wreathed Pike as he stepped forward slightly while still holding his opponent’s rifle. He swung his elbow into the man’s face and knocked him into the wall behind him.

Tossing the AK-47 to the floor, Pike stepped forward again and wrapped one big hand around the back of the terrorist’s neck. Spinning, Pike brought the man around and turned him into a human shield as he raised his M4A1 under the dazed terrorist’s arm and fired the weapon one-handed.

Bullets chewed along the stairwell and ripped splinters and plaster from the walls and the railing. Return fire caught the terrorist as he screamed and tried to break free. But Pike’s inexorable grip on the back of his captive’s neck held him in place. In the space of a heartbeat, the fight left the terrorist and he hung limply against Pike.

Another terrorist spilled down the stairwell in a loose-limbed sprawl. Bekah followed the gunman’s progress automatically, then pulled her aim off him when she realized the guy was dead.

Pike dropped the dead man he held and shoved another magazine into his assault rifle while he headed up the stairs again.

After a brief glance at the front of the shop to make certain there was no one behind her, Bekah followed Pike. The steps shivered and felt uneven, showing years of wear and tear as well as the newer damage from the bullets.

Another dead man sat on the next landing. His sightless eyes stared out of the gloom, and his weapon lay abandoned across his knees. For an instant Bekah thought the man might still be alive, but then she noticed that half of his head was missing, swathed in a torn and bloody
keffiyeh
.

She followed Pike up the stairs and had trouble breathing the thick air swirling with dust and smoke. She and Pike moved in unison, and she always made sure her weapon pointed away from her partner’s back.

“Indigo Eight, what is your twenty?” Lieutenant Bridger sounded out of breath.

“Taking out a sniper nest that has my people pinned down.” Bekah swung around the next landing and stepped out into the hallway after Pike.

“Affirmative. All Indigo teams are en route, and we have air support coming.”

Bekah pictured the building in her mind as she stepped after Pike. She tried to remember all the twists and turns she’d taken, struggling to figure out where the snipers would be.

The hallway was narrow, but the rooms on either side of it looked like they’d been small shops, not residences. Large windows held pieces of glass. There was a small drugstore with empty shelves, a clothing store with broken mannequins, and other shops, barren and unidentifiable.

Evidently Pike had a better grasp of the layout, though. He glanced back at her and waved to one of the doors ahead of them as he fell into position against the wall. He freed a grenade from his combat webbing.

On the other side of the door, sharp rifle bursts cracked. At first Bekah hadn’t been able to get a handle on the direction the gunfire was coming from because the sounds of battle echoed all through the hallway.

Pike looked at her, and she nodded. He leaned around the doorway and tossed the grenade inside. Bekah closed her eyes to preserve her vision. Three seconds later, the deafening explosion filled the room, and bright light tore away the shadows in the room as well as in the hallway.

Immediately, Pike spun into the doorway and entered. Bekah followed and took a flanking position to Pike’s right. There was a wall at the back of the room, obviously once intended to set off another room, but now the wall was filled with holes that had been knocked through the plasterboard.

Three al-Shabaab gunners struggled to overcome the effects of the flashbang. The grenade caused disorientation through sound as well as light, and they’d gotten a full dose of it. Still, disorientation didn’t put them completely out of the fight.

One of the men lifted his AK-47, and Pike and Bekah both opened fire, knocking him back. Blood covered the wall behind him. Another man got off a short burst that chopped through the wall next to Pike. Holding his ground, Pike fired, and the terrorist jerked back and slumped to the ground.

The third man threw down his weapon and held his hands up, speaking rapidly in broken English. “I surrender. Do not kill me.”

Pike held his rifle centered on the man, and Bekah thought he was going to pull the trigger anyway.

“What’s the matter, Muhammad? Not ready for all those rivers of wine and virgins?”

“Do not kill me. I beg of you.” The al-Shabaab terrorist placed his forehead on the ground.

Pike fished a zip tie from his kit and moved forward. “Cover me.”

Bekah did, but she also opened her team channel on the MBITR. “Trudy.”

“Yes.”

“You guys okay down there?”

“Yes. You and Pike?”

“We’re fine.”

Pike finished binding the terrorist’s hands behind his back and stood with his rifle.

“That truck’s coming back.”

Bekah moved to the window, mirrored by Pike, and they both looked out to see the pickup truck with the machine gunner mounted in the rear deck racing back through the alley below. The machine gunner blazed away at the buildings.

Bekah watched helplessly as the pickup driver suddenly braked and shouted, throwing his arm out the window in the direction of the wall. From the way he’d come, the Marines hiding behind the wall were visible. “Indigo Eight, move. They’ve seen you.”

The three Marines got to their feet and retreated as the al-Shabaab vehicle opened fire.

Bekah shoved her weapon through the open window and squeezed the trigger, managing to take out the machine gunner before the other gunmen drove her back. She hated feeling helpless, knowing that her team was about to get cut to ribbons.

The pickup swerved into position below the window but remained where it could cover the Marines on the ground as well. Another al-Shabaab man had already taken over the machine gun and had opened fire, driving the three stranded Marines to cover.

Bekah knew she had to get down there and turned to get Pike, surprised that he wasn’t at the window with her.

Pike picked up one of the dead men from the ground and easily carried the body over to the window. Shots thudded into the dead terrorist, but Pike ignored them while he reached for an oil lantern that sat on the floor. He opened the lantern, emptied the contents over the dead man, then tucked a spherical antipersonnel grenade into the corpse’s pocket. Taking a flare from his kit, he set the corpse ablaze, pulled the grenade pin, and heaved the dead man through the window.

The gunfire from below intensified for a moment.

Horrified by what she’d just witnessed, certain that Pike was the most callous man she’d ever met, Bekah watched the dead man plummet toward the bed of the pickup truck. His arms and legs flailed, and for an instant he looked like he was still alive.

Then the corpse landed amid the al-Shabaab gunmen, and the burning oil spread among them. Someone grabbed the dead man’s foot in an effort to yank the body clear of the pickup. Then the grenade went off. Shrapnel blew through the surrounding gunmen, killing or wounding everyone in the back of the pickup.

By then Pike had heaved himself over the window as well and hung by his fingers to stretch out to his full height, then let go. The drop to the ground was about fifteen feet. He landed on his feet and went down into a three-point crouch before lifting his rifle to the ready.

Although she didn’t like the risk of turning an ankle, Bekah liked the idea of leaving Pike on his own even less. She threw a leg over the window ledge and followed suit, hanging by her fingers, then releasing. She didn’t try to land standing up. She tucked and rolled, dissipating the force of the landing, and came up with her rifle in her hands.

Pike was already in motion, running toward the driver’s side of the pickup.

One of the men who had been blown free of the pickup by the grenade lay on the ground nearby and tried to point his pistol at Pike. Bekah raised her weapon and fired from ten feet away, killing the man at once.

At the driver’s window, Pike slapped aside the rifle muzzle that someone tried to thrust into his face. He shoved his own weapon into the pickup cab, ducked, and emptied the clip. He slid away as the vehicle jerked into sluggish motion, shoving another magazine into his weapon automatically.

The pickup rolled to a stop a few feet away. Pike went forward, yanked the door open, and stepped back from the driver’s body as it spilled out. Bekah flanked him, peered over his shoulder at the dead men inside.

“We’re clear here.” Pike scanned the nearby rooftops.

Bekah did the same, thinking that surely some of the al-Shabaab were still present, still wanting to close the jaws of their trap. But no one was there.