First Strike (16 page)

The sniper in the far distance moved out from behind the sedan and slunk along the storefronts, down the sidewalk. He stopped at the corner of the building. He raised the rifle. Dewey watched as he acquired him in the crosshairs.

Dewey dropped to his stomach next to Mallory and placed the M4 in front of him, on the ground, taking aim at the gunman. A low thunderclap boomed from the gunman's rifle. The slug clanged behind Dewey, missing and hitting a car. Dewey yanked the trigger back hard. A burst of suppressed slugs struck the building just above the killer's head. He ducked into an alcove. Dewey moved the fire selector to semiauto and pulled the trigger. A cloud of slugs hit the front of the store, shattering glass everywhere around the alcove. The gunman was out of the target zone but the three-burst had bought Dewey some time.

To Dewey's right, police were climbing out of their vehicles and taking up position behind their doors, weapons raised.

The gunman broke from the alcove and started running back up the block, away from Dewey, crisscrossing wildly, ducking behind cars and other objects, making it difficult for Dewey to take aim. He had already spent too much ammo; the last thing he wanted to do was waste a mag throwing lead haphazardly in the air, attempting to hit an elusive target.

The gunman was looking for stability; he would attempt a snipe.

One of the police officers yelled to Dewey in Arabic, telling him to stop.

Dewey turned to Mallory. His eyes remained closed. Blood trickled from his nostrils and mouth. He felt Mallory's hand. It was soaked in blood. In the palm, still clutched tight, he found a small object, no bigger than a fingernail. SIM card.
The package.
He picked it out of Mallory's hand, stuck it in his pants pocket, and turned back to the field of fire.

The police were now arrayed in a line, all four officers crouching behind the open doors of their cars. He counted four muzzles, all aimed at him.

In the distance, the lone gunman ducked into another alcove. A second later, he kicked out the glass of a storefront. The long muzzle of the rifle emerged. He raised it and targeted Dewey.

Just then, a black police van entered the square on the opposite side of Dewey and Mallory, behind them. The van sped along the edge of the square and screeched to a stop a hundred feet away. Three SWAT-clad officers with carbines jumped from the back and took up position.

The sniper is the immediate threat.

Dewey swiveled. He ducked against the rifle, his right eye to the sight. Then he fired, just as unmuted gunfire exploded from the gunman in the shadows. The man's aim was off by less than a foot, and Dewey heard the clank of a slug hitting the concrete a few inches to his left. Dewey let up for a moment, then retriggered, remaining still as he did so, blasting a circular arc around where he knew the sniper was positioned. The sniper rifle's muzzle retracted. The slugs quieted the gunman, who now tried to avoid the fusillade. Dewey watched through the sight as slugs tore through glass and mortar all around the gunman. Then he heard a low scream as one of the bullets struck.

The police officer barked again at Dewey, first in French, then English.

“
Put the weapon down!
”

Dewey glanced behind him. The three tactical agents repositioned closer.

Dewey looked at Mallory. He reached his free hand out. He slapped Mallory lightly on the cheek.

“Rick,” he said. “Hold on. Help is on the way.”

Dewey hit him again, harder this time, and Mallory opened his eyes.

“Hey, buddy,” said Dewey.

Mallory's eyes were like jelly, unfocused and discombobulated. Then he found Dewey.

“Do you have it?” whispered Mallory.

“Yes.”

“It's over, isn't it.”

“No, we're fine,” lied Dewey. “We're just waiting for RECON. Hang in there.”

“It's okay,” said Mallory, looking at Dewey. “I just want to know the truth.”

Dewey was startled by a premonition; his head turned. The three policemen were closer now. That he expected. But behind them, on one of the side streets feeding into the square, a white van appeared. It arrived quietly, unbeknownst to the policemen. More gunmen poured from the vehicle. They were dressed in black. He counted two, three, four …

He turned back to Mallory.

“This part of the trip is over,” said Dewey, looking into Mallory's eyes. “But it was only the beginning. It's not over.”

Gunfire interrupted his words. Slugs struck concrete a few feet from Mallory's head as yelling in Arabic—yelling Dewey assumed was meant to get him to surrender—filled the streetscape.

Dewey gripped Mallory's hand, tight enough almost to break a bone. Then he let go.

Dewey dropped the M4 and picked up the Uzi. He sprayed a line of slugs across the patrol cars, hitting two of the officers, causing the other two to duck for cover. The noise was high and electric, like a swarm of angry bees. The first shots from the tactical agents struck the concrete above his head. Dewey rolled beneath the bench and pivoted his torso, then lifted the Uzi and aimed it at the SWAT-clad gunmen. He yanked the trigger—still set to auto-hail—and swept the muzzle in a smooth line across the edge of the square. He hit two of the gunmen. Frantically, he turned and fired at the police cruisers on the other side of him. He struck one of the officers in the head, another in the neck. Dewey turned yet again, firing at the third SWAT-clad agent, hitting him in the cheek, dropping him in a contorted tumble to the street.

The violent
rat-a-tat-tat
of automatic gunfire was like a war zone.

Dewey turned to face the last policeman, triggering the carbine, getting only an empty click. The officer fired. A bullet hit his leg—right thigh—and he swore as he desperately reached for the Uzi and turned it on the policeman, who was shielded by the door of the cruiser. Dewey ripped slugs beneath the door, striking the man's feet; he dropped, screaming, and Dewey finished him off with another quick burst of gunfire.

In pain, he popped the mag from the M4 and slammed in a new one. He swiveled and aimed at the black-clothed killers behind him. He moved the fire selector to three-burst and swept the badly kicking carbine as smoothly as he could. The first burst hit one of them; the others took cover and started firing.

Dewey skirted backward, behind the concrete bench, just as gunfire from the terrorists cracked the air. He reached frantically for the MP7A1—still strapped to his back—pulling it over his head, gripping it, aiming at the killers. Then he pressed the trigger. The sound was familiar, unlike any other firearm, at least in Dewey's mind. From the torpor of pain now roiling him, he found a hint of satisfaction in the menacing sound of the gun. The submachine gun burst lead in a frenetic, metallic, high-pitched drumbeat. He hit another of the men, who screamed as he fell. The others ducked back.

You have to move. Now!

Dewey stood up. A pained groan came from deep in his throat. His leg gave out and he nearly fell over. But it was his only acknowledgment of the pain that now shot through his leg, then up through his body, like fire.

He retargeted the black-clad gunmen now converging to the west. He slammed his finger against the trigger, gritted his teeth, and took a step on his right leg, testing the strength. The slug had hit muscle. The femur was intact. He let himself glance down at the wound. It was a graze, a thin dollop of thigh was missing a few inches above the knee, but that was it.

Dewey ran from the scene, limping noticeably. He moved to an alley beside the café. He ran until the alley intersected with a road, and then turned down the road, slowing a bit. He jogged a few blocks along a narrow, winding empty residential street as the sound of sirens echoed from several blocks away. He tucked the submachine gun inside the hijab as he moved as quickly as he could away from the horrific scene. After two blocks, he slowed to a walk and slouched, pretending to be an old man. He kept his right hand on the MP7, finger on the steel ring guarding the trigger, just above the trigger itself.

The sound of sirens grew faint and muted. After walking several more blocks in a zigzag pattern, trying to get as far away as possible, he heard the squeal of brakes somewhere behind him. He glanced back furtively, finger moving from the trigger guard to the trigger. He saw nothing; they were out of his sight line. He kept moving. Then his eyes caught another car ripping down a street ahead. The car screeched to a sudden stop at the end of the street. Trying to act natural, Dewey watched as the driver studied him.

In the same moment, Dewey became aware of an approaching vehicle behind him. He didn't need to turn; the two cars were working in conjunction, and they had marked Dewey, and he knew it.

The car in front of him—a yellow sedan—abruptly moved, jerking left as the driver turned the car and drove toward him.

His eyes swept the street. The roadway was barely wide enough for one vehicle, which meant there were no parked cars to potentially hide behind. Sidewalks on both sides of the roadway were tiny, perhaps two feet wide. To Dewey, it felt like a tunnel, with the light at both ends dimming, a gauntlet that, in that moment, Dewey understood would likely be the place he died.

Now that escape was unlikely, Dewey swore at himself for the few moments of freedom he'd had just after fleeing the square. He should've uploaded the contents of the SIM card while he had the time. He thought he could get clear and just carry it out. Mallory's life, the entire mission—all of it would be pointless if the data on the SIM card was lost.

The yellow car began speeding down the narrow street.

Urban combat. Tight quarters. Daytime. You're outnumbered and exposed. What's your move, Andreas?

The words from training echoed inside his head. He was in Damascus, trapped on a narrow, curving residential side street, walled in on both sides by sandstone, cut off on both ends by men who wanted him dead.

His mind flashed to a long ago memory. Training. Fort Bragg. Close quarters combat—those exhausting, terrifying, occasionally exhilarating weeks learning urban guerrilla fighting tactics.

Find egress. A doorway, steps to a basement, anything that offers a physical or visual shield.

Dewey scanned the street as the yellow sedan came closer. He registered the vehicle behind him. It was a dark van, and it was closing in as well. The van's front window was tinted black; he couldn't see how many men were inside. Looking to the sedan, encroaching from in front of him, Dewey counted a driver, passenger, and two more men in back.

There were no windows, doorways, passageways, alleys, or other exits. The only thing he saw was a slight bend in the wall of homes twenty feet away, across the street, which created a small indentation. But it was not egress; his only hope was to shoot his way through one of the flanks.

He was trapped.

Being trapped is a state of mind. Even if you're incarcerated, a gun against your head, even if a rope is tied to your neck, you're never trapped. Unless you allow yourself to think you are. If you believe you're trapped, you're done.

Dewey ripped off the hijab, letting it fall to the sidewalk, and charged up the street, away from the van, toward the oncoming sedan, raising the MP7 as he ran, then firing at the oncoming vehicle. The spray of automatic weapon fire was like a thousand buzzing bees, electric and frantic, echoing along the sandstone walls. Slugs struck the front grille of the car, then the windshield, ripping a checkerboard of holes in the glass. The driver's head was pulverized by the wash of bullets, but the passenger ducked, as did the men in back. Driverless, the speeding car veered sharply and slammed into the lip of the sidewalk, tires jumping the curb, just before barreling into the wall beneath a shutter-covered back window of a home.

Dewey sprinted the remaining yards to the small indent as the three occupants of the car jumped out, rifles in hand, and took refuge behind the wrecked automobile. Bullets from a carbine boomed behind him, and he dived, hitting the sidewalk with a shoulder, rolling and turning so that his back was against the wall. He was now in the small indent, just as a fusillade of slugs pounded the wall above his head.

In one motion, Dewey whipped the muzzle of the submachine gun toward the gunfire, triggering the MP7 as his left hand reached for a mag from the vest. Instead of a new magazine, he found a lump. A grenade. He grabbed it, putting it to his mouth as he fired. The van was now parked in the middle of the street, thirty feet away, two gunmen on either side, another in the front seat, shooting through the windshield. He was the first gunman. Dewey let up on the trigger, ratcheted the muzzle right, then fired; a loud, pained grunt came from the van as bullets took out the first gunman.

With his left hand, Dewey threw the grenade toward the van. Before the explosive even landed, his head pivoted, his eyes catching a glint of reflection near the wrecked car. Sunglasses. Black steel. Then a loud boom. The grenade exploded just a few feet from the side of the van. The explosion rocked the van sharply, flipping it onto its side and leveling the two men closest to the blast. The ground shuddered and the concussion made the street shake. A gunman who'd marked Dewey fired the moment after the grenade exploded. His slug—an easy shot for any half-decent marksman—ripped the sandstone inches from Dewey's shoulder, barely missing, raining grit and pebbles onto his head. Before he could fire again, Dewey triggered the MP7 and took the man's head off with a well-aimed burst of slugs, before the mag clicked empty.

Dewey searched for a new magazine, but bullets were flying from both directions. He made his profile as small as he could against the wall and searched frantically for the mag but found, in the chaos, only the butt of one of the handguns. Dropping the submachine gun, he ripped the pistol from beneath his armpit; he leaned out to get a quick view, then ducked in just as slugs hit the wall. He fired blindly toward the van, then swept it in the other direction, sending a three-slug cover line toward the car.