Terror Rising: Book 0 – The Insurgence (17 page)

***

Kareem ran out of the room behind his
panicked men and into the otherwise empty hall where ten other
sleeper cell operatives flew off cots, startled awake by the
commotions.

“Get up, you lazy goats! We have to leave.
Now!” Kareem shouted.

“No!” said a bald man with a light shade of
stubble on his face. He grabbed the AK-47 from under his cot and
pulled the charging handle back. “We must stay and fight.” He stood
defiant in his thin, baggy white pants and matching white top. The
other men scrambled around, unsure of what to do.

“That is not the plan!” Kareem shouted
back.

The men got the message and moved quickly to
a corner room that looked to be little more than a closet. “Salah
told us if we were to be found to destroy any sensitive documents
and leave. This place is compromised. We have to go underground and
escape while we can.”

The other men stood half awake and uncertain
of what to do.

The bald man hurried toward Kareem with his
rifle pointed upward. “What do you think Salah will do to us if we
run, brother? He will make an example of us, like all the
others.”

“Then that is Allah’s will. Stay here and
you will die,” Kareem said. “Grab your things. Escape while you
still can!” He then pointed to the room where Captain Martinez was
being held. “First there was one American. Now there are more. It’s
over if we stay. If they capture us, they will surely torture us
for information.”

The men seemed convinced as they grabbed
their packs and rifles and ran toward the escape room. The bald
man, however, remained in place.

Kareem narrowed his eyes at the man and
shook his head. “You’re going to ruin our entire operation with
this foolishness, Salazar.”

“
I’m not scared of the Americans,” the
bald man said. “Let them come.”

A loud burst erupted at the end of the hall,
sending Kareem to the floor on his chest. After an instantaneous
flash, they could see smoke seeping into the room.

“
They’ve breached the door!” Kareem
said, jumping up. “Run!”

The other fighters were halfway to the
escape room when two men kicked the door open and charged in,
firing into the air without warning. A third man rushed inside and
threw a flash grenade which exploded instantly, sending the fleeing
men into a frenzy.

Salazar flew to the ground under his cot, as
the intruders aimed their pistols at the confused, blinded men and
shot them dead, one by one. Kareem ran past the carnage into the
escape room just as bullets whizzed by his head.

He threw himself into the tightly confined
room as more gunfire erupted, shaken to the core. His loyal
security team was at the shelved wall behind him, revealing their
secret exit. He could hear Salazar yelling at the men in Arabic,
cursing them to hell. The AK-47 erupted with a hail of bullets only
to be met with more gunfire from the Americans. Then, for a moment,
everything was quiet.

“
Clear!” he heard one of the Americans
yell.

“
Where are the others? I saw more,”
another one said.

Kareem stood up, balancing himself against
the wall as his legs shook. “Hurry up!” he said to the men in a
panicked whisper, as they pushed the heavy wall open.

“
Did you kill him?” one of the masked
men asked.

“
Who?” Kareem asked back.

“
Who do you think? The American! He’s
seen your face.”

At that moment, panic gripped Kareem’s
rapidly beating heart. In his haste, he couldn’t believe he had
been so careless. But it was too late to turn back now. His only
option was to escape or die.

“
It’s opened!” one of the masked men
said, pushing against the wall.

“
Hurry!” Kareem said, rushing past
them. “We have to seal it back up before they find us!”

His men rushed down the darkened tunnel,
leaving one man behind to pull the bookshelf wall closed. But it
was too late. Another man rushed into the room and shot a round
through the ISIS lackey’s head.

From down inside the cramped tunnel, Kareem
led the way. The final entry underground was near. Kareem was too
concerned with his own life to think about the underground weapons
caches and military uniform storage that the Americans would surely
find after a search of the perimeter. For Kareem and his men,
martyrdom awaited, whether they were ready for it or not.

***

Angela rushed toward the compound just in
time to hear a barrage of shots fired from inside. Her heart jumped
as she remained close to the windowless wall to her side, near the
place where the FBI team had breached the door. While running, she
looked behind her to see Thaxton gaining on her and shouting for
her to stop.

Too close to turn back
now
, she told herself.

She reached the end of the compound,
exhausted, and glanced around the corner, pistol drawn, to make
sure no one was there. The door in back was open, with light
spilling out onto the desert sand from the inside. She could hear
shouting followed by more gunshots, which caused her to flinch.

What in the hell was
happening in there?

She took a deep breath, her pistol
pointed up and close to her chin, and then ran around the side and
toward the breached door. She stopped at the side of the door and
peeked inside just in time to see Lynch, Sutherland, and Hopper run
into a room in the distance. As she examined the open hall before
her, she saw several low-hanging fluorescent lights interconnected
by extension cords.

How the building lasted in the middle of
nowhere was beyond her. Knowing that Thaxton was hot on her trail,
Angela took another deep breath and stormed inside, pointing her
gun in each and every direction. A thin cloud of smoke permeated
the air, and what at first looked like piles of clothes strewn on
the floor in the distance came into focus as bodies.

A man lay under a cot with an AK-47 near him
in a pool of blood. His head was spilt open in multiple spots,
brain matter exposed. Most shocking of all were the men lying on
the floor in contorted poses, maybe ten of them, riddled with
bullets, their blood splattered all over the concrete floor.

The sight was shocking, but Angela knew she
had to keep pushing forward before Thaxton’s inevitable arrival and
interference. She moved around the mass carnage of dead
bodies—young Middle Eastern-looking men—and examined them only to
see if Martinez was among the dead. He wasn’t.

She had no idea if he was anywhere near or
why he would be there in the first place. The dead on the ground
hardly looked like members of the South Texas Border Recon.

She trusted her instincts and charged
forward into a single darkened room, where she immediately came to
a wall pushed open and another dead body, masked but with a hole in
his head.

“Agent Gannon!” she could hear from afar.
Thaxton had arrived.

She ignored her and crouched to enter a
five-foot hole where a vent had been removed and proceeded on,
feeling as though she was on a hunt of her own. With her
night-vision goggles, she navigated the cramped confines of the
tunnel until reaching a wall and, oddly enough, finding a drain
cover that had been removed, leading to an underground ladder. She
listened for voices or gunfire but heard nothing. There was no
turning back then either.

She climbed down the ladder, breathing the
damp and stale air, and reached the bottom, twenty feet below,
enveloped in total darkness. Down the tunnel ahead, there were men
running. The back of their jackets said FBI. She was close.

She ran forward with her pistol drawn.
Beyond the FBI team, she could see several other men running down
the long corridor of a tunnel. No telling how long it was or where
it might end.

The FBI team was gaining on its quarry, and
before she could make her presence known or say anything, she
watched as they fired multiple shots into the fleeing men, taking
each one of them down. The gun bursts were loud and alarming, and
she instantly backed against the wall for cover. The gunfire ended,
but she remained in place, frozen, goggles at her side. Surrounded
by complete darkness, she tried not to make a sound.

“No! No, please!” a man’s voice shouted
out.

Gunshots followed in three white flash
bursts, and the pleading man said no more. She instantly brought
the goggles to her eyes and saw Lynch, Hopper, and Sutherland ten
feet ahead standing over several bodies, their guns pointed
downward. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to run back
up the ladder and never turn back.

Hopper whipped around,
scanning the area. “
Who’s
there?
” he shouted, raising his
pistol.

Angela threw her hands in the air. “It’s
just me, Agent Gannon!”

The men stopped and looked at each
other.

“What the hell are you doing here?”
Sutherland asked.

She felt angered by his
question and approached the men defiantly. “What am
I
doing here? Watching
you shoot fleeing suspects in the back.
That’s
what I’m doing!”

“Did we get all of them?” Lynch asked,
cutting in.

“I don’t fucking know,” Sutherland said.
“You see anyone else alive?”

“What… is… going… on… here?” Angela asked
with each hardened step she took toward the men.

“Relax,” Sutherland said, raising a hand.
“We were given specific instructions to neutralize the
situation.”

“Do you even know who you’ve killed?” Angela
shouted. She couldn’t see them very well, but it didn’t matter.

They grew silent. Then Lynch spoke up, but
in a calmer way, setting a new, friendlier tone. “Looks like we got
the terror cell to me.”

“Was that
really
who you were
looking for?” Angela asked, closing in. “Or is Captain Martinez the
real objective here?”

“We were trying to rescue him, Agent Gannon.
I don’t know what else you’re trying to imply.”

Angela pointed at the men, unconcerned that
they were still holding loaded pistols. “This is not the way things
are done, and I’m not going to be a part of whatever the hell this
is.”

“What are you trying to say, Agent Gannon?”
Sutherland asked.

“I’m saying that I’m reporting every bit of
this operation to my chain of command. This wasn’t a rescue
mission. This was a massacre!”

The men said nothing, and Angela lowered her
finger. Their silence had her reconsidering her words. What had she
gotten herself into? Before anyone could respond, Thaxton’s voice
shouted from the ladder above.

“I found Martinez! Get up here, now!”

For a moment, nothing else mattered to
Angela. She ran back down the dark tunnel without saying a
word.

“Agent Gannon, wait!” Sutherland said. “Let
us cover you.”

“Stay away from me,” Angela said, with her
anger rising. She didn’t know just how far the tunnel went in the
opposite direction toward the outside, and she no longer cared. All
that mattered was finding her partner and leaving. “Please let him
be okay,” she said under her breath, and grabbed hold of the wooden
ladder, leaning against the wall.

She climbed up in no time, ignoring the
increasing weight of the medium-size vest that was gradually
wearing her down. Sutherland was right behind her, and the ladder
creaked with their combined weight as she reached the top.

Thaxton was nowhere to be seen, but Angela
pushed on through, familiar with the intricate fortifications of
underground tunnels commonly used by the cartels. Martinez had been
on to something. There was a new threat in town.

Reunited

Once emerging from the tunnel, Angela rushed
past the lifeless, blood-soaked bodies that lay about the open hall
of the compound.

“Assistant Director Thaxton!” she shouted,
looking around.

“In here!” she called from a room to
Angela’s left. The air was a noxious combination of fresh
gunpowder, misty smoke, and the stench of blood and death, but she
continued and went straight to a dimly lit room, hopeful that her
partner was okay.

She stormed inside, mortified by what she
saw. Thaxton was standing at a table where Martinez was strapped
down. He was moaning, barely conscious, with his left arm mangled
and bloody.

Thaxton turned around with a stoic, pale
expression. “Help me get him loose,” she said, pulling on the
leather straps that bound him to the table.

Angela ran over, pushing out of the way a
rolling cart that displayed a series of knives, drills, and pliers.
She noticed a chair in the middle of the room bolted to the ground
with rope lying nearby, and an empty metal bucket, a backpack, and
a long cane. She couldn’t imagine what Martinez had been through
and at what cost.

She started working at his ankles,
unfastening both straps as Thaxton worked at his chest. Their brief
time alone together gave the assistant director a moment to get a
reprimand in.

“It was unacceptable for you to run off like
that. You put yourself and this entire team in danger.”

Angela said nothing, just moved her hands up
to the straps around his waist. Martinez’s eyelids flickered with
another moan. He was pale and losing a lot of blood. His left arm
lay in a large puddle of blood that dripped onto the floor.

“You’re to tell no one about what happened
here tonight,” Thaxton continued. She expertly unfastened the strap
on his other arm and another over his chest. “You’ll be signing
some documents to attest to that as well, understand?”