Ravaged River (Men of Mercy #6) (4 page)

Marcus and Brown had been hired by Mr. J to help ensure the bombs ended up in Al Seriq’s possession.

A deal that resulted in both men's deaths. A good thing as far as any of the members of TF-S were concerned.

"And Shane?" Ranger rasped out. Shane Carter, a former sniper with TF-S and Ranger's best friend, had been taken captive in the disastrous ambush in which Mr. J had faked his death, only to reappear the next year, a turned terrorist.

The door slid open and a new man stepped into the large open room. Mr. K. His dull brown hair was as unmemorable as his smallish average frame and face. Even his suit was non-descript. The guys nodded at him as he joined them at the table.

Grey shook his head and finally got around to answering Ranger’s question. "No. When Shane came back, he spoke Arabic. I think Al Seriq turned him. Besides, our old CIA liaison, Mr. J, was no fanatic."

"My team has been digging into Mr. J's old records,” Mr. K added, “and we discovered some offshore accounts he'd hidden. It seems my counterpart's main motivation was good old money."

Hoyt could barely hold back a sneer. Considering how their last experience working with the CIA had ended, he considered any member of their ranks about as trustworthy as a cobra coiled to strike. "And your motivation isn't?"

Mr. K stiffened and flushed red, his bony shoulders lifting beneath his suit. "No, Mr. Crowe, believe it or not, I take Mr. J's betrayal as deeply as all of you do. He was my mentor when I joined up. He trained me. I want to take him down. That's the reason I asked to take over as liaison for your team."

"If you're so eager, why aren't we packing up to go get him?" Hoyt bit out. The ISA ambush orchestrated by Al Seriq had nearly killed all of them. Every man on the team was thirsty for vengeance.

"I think you should wait for your commander to tell you."

Hoyt spun around to look at Colonel Grey. His normally expressionless mask had finally fallen. Hoyt tried to pinpoint the emotion he saw there. Agitation? Anxious? No. That was too mild. His commander looked afraid.

Shit. This was not good. Not good at all. Mack Grey was the most intimidating soldier in the entire Special Forces. He didn't flinch at anything. Not death, not bombs and IEDs, not even at Hoyt and his gruesome face.

But he was as pale as a damn ghost right now.

"Zafar has put a hit out on TF-S. He knows we're the ones who stopped the weapons shipment from moving through Mercy. His newest hire knows every detail about your lives. Where you live. Where your families live."

No big, just every single soldier's worst nightmare.

"Mr. K's team picked up some suspicious messages through ISA's social networks the same day Zafar hired Mr. J. His analysts were able to decode a few of the messages before Zafar shut the channels down." Grey paced right, then left. Stirring up alarm with every step. When he stopped and turned to face his team, Hoyt knew it was time for the really bad news.

Jared expelled a long breath and grabbed the table, his face hardening as every man fell silent. There was no need to speak. They had all felt this emotion before, and Hoyt had become intimately acquainted with it on several occasions.

Fear.

TF-S accepted the suicide missions no other branch of the military was willing to take, but they did it to protect their country and their families from the bad guys. They knew that if people like Al Seriq were allowed free reign in the Middle East, it would only be a matter of time before he found his way to the United States.

But they did it under the cloak of obscurity. Their uniforms remained stripped down. They wore no dog tags. No patches of rank or branch. No nothing. It was an anonymity they’d come to rely on.

"He's sending someone here isn't he?" Hoyt asked.

Grey shook his head. "No, they're already here."

H
oyt turned
the Jeep onto the main road running down the middle of Mercy proper. This section held all the typical staples of small-town life—Smith’s Hardware Store, check. Stellar Star Salon, check. New boutique with a French name no one in Mercy could pronounce, check. Picturesque wrought-iron lanterns casting a bright yellow glow every ten feet. Shiny cars parked in a precise line down the side. Manicured shrubs dividing the road. The crowd bubbling out of the little old movie theater—the women wearing new dresses and the men in creased slacks.

This was the nice part of town.

Hoyt kept going, faintly aware of Merc tapping on his magnesium-alloy, armor-protected laptop in the passenger seat beside him.

He took a left onto South Main, clonked into a pot hole the size of a tar pit and cursed. That hit would require a visit to the auto shop for a realignment.

A few hundred more pot holes dotted the road all the way into the horizon. They were like land mines waiting to take out the next vehicle daring enough to brave the crossing. Freaking North Korea could take notes from Mercy’s lack of maintenance.

It didn’t take long for the neighborhood to change. The ancient stores lining this road had black bars on the windows and bright flashing signs advertising booze and beer. Women wearing low cut tops and miniskirts tottered on high heels, somehow managing to deftly maneuver the cracks and crackheads. Men in saggy jeans and oversized T-shirts swaggered in the mix. The lights on this street popped on and off, a few steady and dim, highlighting the seedier residents as they wavered in and out of the shadows.

Hoyt and Merc had been assigned to go do a little recon. There were three names on their list of suspected sleeper cells. They were going to check out the first—the owner of the gas station on the way out of town. “You got the intel on this guy?”

Less than a mile to go to the station.

“Yeah, Raheem Jubar. Married. Three kids. His wife, Masarra, is here on a spouse visa. Both of them are from Pakistan.” The bright screen of the laptop cast a dim glow of light on Merc in Hoyt’s peripheral vision. “No criminal history. Raheem is a distant cousin to Zafar, but they haven’t had any recent contact. He’s gone on two trips to his homeland in the past ten years. Nothing to raise suspicion.”

“So basically he’s done nothing to stand out.”

“Exactly.” Merc closed off the computer and pulled out his pistol, locked and loaded.

The good sleeper cells flew low on the radar. They owned cell phones and sold beer and lottery tickets. They didn’t wave a red flag and declare war. That’s why they were so damn hard to I.D. That is, until they strapped on a vest filled with ball bearings hooked up to a remote cell phone for a kill switch.

“What I wouldn’t give to go back to the days of George Washington. Everyone knew who their enemy was,” Merc said.

“Yeah, they also lined up fifty feet apart and took pot shots without armor. No, thank you.”

The run-down gas station appeared about a hundred yards out, a beacon of lights. There were two rows of pumps, each with two stations apiece. They were spaced close together, like there’d originally been only one row and the second had been crammed into the small space left between the station and the road.

As Hoyt turned into the drive, his headlights illuminated a bright yellow Hummer parked on the inside row of pumps. The driver was inside, head hunched down behind the steering wheel. Hoyt slowed the Jeep and angled it toward the outside row, next to the low curb lining the edge of the lot.

A Honda sedan with a few rust spots dotting the rear end was parked facing away from them, the driver’s side door open. Hoyt made out the top of a dark head of hair as the man stood and went to check his pump.

Male. Arabic. About twenty years old. Slim build. Loose clothing.

“Shit. That’s the second mark on the list.” Merc cocked his pistol. The man cast a quick narrowed glance at their Jeep and then looked away, pretending not to care.

“You see that? He made us.” Hoyt eased the car to a stop but didn’t put it in park. He pulled out his own Beretta and cocked a round into the chamber.

“Yep.”

“You ready?”

“Yep.”

Another man of Middle Eastern descent emerged from the store, a bottle in one hand, the other in his pocket. “Got another possible bogey,” Hoyt said under his breath.

“Fuck, what is this place? Their meeting ground?” Merc eased a hand to the door handle, ready to launch out of the vehicle.

Hoyt instinctively tightened his grip on his pistol. The man from the store made eye contact with the Honda driver. The look was brief. “I don’t like this.”

The Honda driver returned the gas hose to its slot, closed the gas cap, and turned to his open car door.

The Hummer roared to life, its brilliant light bar shining on the old wood fence bordering the right side of the property. It eased into a wide arc and lined up right behind the Jeep. In the perfect position to ram them. Hoyt had a flash of fear. The Hummer was over two thousand pounds of reinforced steel doors and bullet-proof glass. And there was a black steel brush guard across the front. They could gun it and demolish the Jeep, effectively trapping them inside for a quick and easy kill shot.

The Honda driver got in his car, shut the door, and slowly pulled out, curving out of the parking lot in a tight right turn. Hoyt eased onto the gas pedal, accelerating onto the road behind the Civic. The Hummer followed them out, its spotlights on, keeping a steady distance right behind him.

“Gun it, man,” Merc said. “We’re not trying to hide from them.”

Hoyt clenched his teeth hard and sped up. The Honda reappeared on the road in front of them. “Seems as if they don’t feel like talking to us.”

The lights behind them disappeared. Hoyt glanced up to see the Hummer turn off down a side street. He loosened his crushing grip on the steering wheel and gave a shaky laugh. “I thought that bastard was about to flatten us.”

“Shit, me too. Let’s just follow this guy and see where he’s headed. I have a feeling there are more of Zafar’s men around than we know about.”

The Honda kept going straight. The buildings grew scarcer and had the look of abandonment.

Suddenly blinding lights flashed through the driver’s side door. A loud roar ripped the air as the Hummer unleashed the full power of its 316-horse power V-8 engine. Hoyt closed his eyes and thought about…

Hayden.

A thunderous blast filled the air as
the Jeep flew left and crashed into a light pole. Hoyt’s head cracked the side window and white lights exploded across his vision.

He heard the loud ringing first and then the sound of a door slamming shut. Hoyt realized he’d blacked out. Could only have been for a second, or he’d be full of lead and greeting the devil with a hand shake.

Merc groaned but didn’t wake, a dark trail of red oozed from his head wound.

Footsteps sounded outside, then voices speaking in Arabic. Hoyt kept his head down, pretending he was still unconscious, and peeked up through barely cracked eyelids.

The Honda had backed up close, trapping the Jeep in a vortex of vehicles. A man got out of the sedan and started gesturing wildly to someone off to the side. Someone Hoyt couldn’t see due to the new hood ornament jammed into his Jeep. The Hummer reversed. Metal shrieked.

Hoyt gripped his Beretta in both hands. They were sitting ducks. Fucking pop up targets at the fair. His only hope was that the guys would want to do a little interrogation before killing them.

Then the back door of the Jeep was yanked open, and Hoyt breathed out a short puff of relief. It would be awkward for the men to pull them out from behind, which tilted luck in Hoyt’s favor. The man went for Merc first, grabbed his shoulder and tugged.

Hoyt lifted his gun over his left shoulder. Fired. The retort of gunfire deafened him temporarily. The man fell flat in the back seat.

The other bogey, standing outside Hoyt’s door, started shouting. Hoyt turned, calm and efficient, and fired. His spider-webbed window shattered.

Fuck, he’d missed. He’d have to get out of the car if either he or Merc wanted to survive.

He palmed the weapon in his right hand and yanked the recline handle to his bottom left. As soon as the seat fell back, he lifted his feet and shoved against the steering wheel, angling his body to the left and out the door, and rolled up to his feet.

He crouched behind the open door and grabbed the handle as a wave of dizziness swept over him. The door rocked back once. Twice.

Hoyt realized that while he wasn’t hearing the sound of gunfire over the roaring in his ears, he was feeling the bullets ping into the door. He crouched and sprung back behind the vehicle, using it as a shield. A few more pings. He chanced a glance over the trunk just in time to see the terrorist holster his pistol and reach into the Honda.

Fuck.

He emerged with something a hell of a lot larger and deadlier than a 9mm.

The AK-15 was big, bad and capable of piercing a steel door.

And the man was taking aim with it.

Hoyt didn’t think. Didn’t process. He two-handed his Beretta, broke cover and hammered out three rounds, timing the slight recoil with each step. Closer. Closer. The terrorist dropped.

Hoyt ran forward, holding his gun ready. He pulled level with the man. His wide sightless eyes stared up at the sky. One in the head, two in the chest. Done.

Hoyt holstered his gun and squatted. The loud roaring in his head started to fade and he could hear the Hummer’s engine still running behind him. Sirens were approaching from a distance.

He did a quick check of the man on the ground. He had three things on him. His pistol. His Koran. And his student visa.

Something warm dripped into Hoyt’s eye, and he reached up wiping his face. When he brought his hand back down, dark red blood shone in the headlights. More ran down his face.

His peripheral vision flashed white. He felt the rough asphalt beneath his palms and his ass as he realized he was about to black out again. Then another, much subtler sound, registered. Dripping.

Like the sound of gas dripping out of a wrecked car.

Dammit.

He closed his eyes and took a slow, measured breath. His training from the Special Forces and SERE— Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion—had taught him how to control his body in survival situations. Even if his every instinct was screaming to slide into oblivion, he couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.

Hoyt concentrated on getting to his feet first. Start small. He took a breath, pulled one foot under him and pushed up. When he was sure he wouldn’t pass out, he got the other foot down and stood, keeping his knees slightly bent. The world tilted around him before righting itself.

He took a step. Then another. He looked up and stopped. The Jeep was crushed into a nasty figure eight, the result of a Hummer and light-pole sandwich.

He’d have to pull Merc out of the back seat.

Not an easy task with a possible concussion, particularly since Merc was so much bigger than him.

Hoyt made it to the passenger side of the car. The front half of the back door was folded in from the side of the light pole. Hoyt grabbed the handle and yanked. Nothing.

He cursed the VA again. His weight loss was turning into a real non-asset. He yanked again, and this time there was a little creak. Hoyt inhaled deep and pulled as hard as he could. The door groaned about halfway open and stopped.

That was as far as it was moving. He got into the back seat, reached around the side to the seat lever and pulled. Merc fell back into Hoyt’s lap, his head lolling around, slinging fresh blood on the material of his headrest. He shoved his hands underneath Merc’s arms and leaned back, dragging the six-foot-five soldier out of the Jeep one excruciating inch at a time. By the time Hoyt had them both a safe distance from the car, he was close to a black out again. The roaring in his ears was back, and it hit a crescendo. He held onto his consciousness long enough to roll over and check Merc, make sure he was still breathing. He got the brief flash of blue. The sound of car breaks skidding across pavement.

“Two down! Two down! Need an ambulance, stat.” That voice was oddly familiar, but Hoyt couldn’t pull his thoughts together long enough to connect the audio with a visual.

“Sheriff, I got two more over here. Damn, look at that Jeep, I’ve never seen anything like that.” Feet scuffing the ground and a pair of black shoes in his side vision.

“These two are dead.”

“Mine aren’t.”

Another pair of black boots, this time cowboy boots. “Hoyt? Shit man, what happened?” Sheriff Lawson. It was his voice. The Sheriff had helped TF-S on a couple of local missions in the past. Lawson’s head seemed to float above him, blocking out his nice view of the stars. “You hear me?”

Hoyt tried to focus on the sheriff. What had he said?

“Hoyt, can you talk?”

He concentrated. He opened his mouth, and groaned out one word. “Wreck.”

Lawson gave his deputy a measured look and then turned his attention back to Hoyt. “And the AKs on the ground over there?”

Classified information. Hoyt didn’t know if the sheriff was privy to their mission or not. But he wasn’t about to be the one to leak intel and get his ass busted by the Colonel. Only one thing to do. Hoyt pushed off the ground, sitting up fast. The blood leached from his head, depleting his brain of oxygen. The crescendo came back in a hot roar. Hoyt smiled as he finally let himself give in to the impulse to pass out.