The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (15 page)

Vincent moved up to the corner and pulled out a
small mirror to keep watch in case he needed to help. A few seconds
later, I heard a small clatter, which I assumed was Santino getting
one of the guard’s attention. Santino probably took him out the
second he was out of his partner’s vision. The second guard,
confused as to what happened to his buddy, followed his partner’s
path. A few seconds later, Santino emerged from the corner, wiping
his bloody blade clean on the shirt of one of his downed targets.
We made our way to his position.

I glanced down at his handiwork. Both men had died
by a single knife thrust through the back of the neck, their spinal
columns severed in typical Santino style. Their deaths had been
quick, and relatively painless, at least as far as death by knives
went.

“Nice job, buddy,” I told him.

“Thanks,” his friendly smile returning. “The second
guy didn’t walk directly into it like the first, but he went down
just as clean.”

I had to remind myself that he’s just doing his job.
Santino always had a penchant for allowing himself to “switch off”
whenever he needed to. He could be a compassionate friend one
moment and one of the deadliest killing machines ever made the
next.

Vincent used his mirror to look through the curtain,
making sure it was clear. After a few seconds he sent a thumbs up
our way. Slowly, we proceeded through into a conference room of
some kind. There was a long table and chairs positioned along its
sides. The walls were also adorned with decorations, easily making
it the nicest area we’d seen so far. There were still cups and the
remains of a meal lying about, proving my earlier theory of poor
parenting. Along the far wall was another door.

This time, Vincent pulled out a long, thin snake cam
that connected to his lens. He slipped it under the wooden door and
scanned the room. Retrieving it, he nodded.

“He seems to be sleeping,” Vincent reported. “He’s
lying on his side, facing the far wall.”

“All right,” McDougal ordered. “We go in slowly.
Wang, you know what to do.”

“Aye, sir,” he whispered, already pulling out zip
ties to handcuff the prisoner with.

McDougal stood primed beside the entryway, his
mustached face a chiseled block of marble, his posture relaxed but
poised. He took one last breath, whispering, “Go.”

We breached the room with fluid grace. Despite not
having worked together before and coming from different schools of
learning, we flowed into the room with deadly efficiency. Quickly
confirming the room was clear, easy due to its large size and
sparse furnishings, Wang moved for Abdullah. Unfortunately, our
target was far from sleeping. Facing the wall, he was mumbling
indecipherably, while simultaneously clutching an object about the
size of a melon. It was giving off an eerie blue glow and was dimly
illuminating his side of the room.

Our entrance didn’t go completely unnoticed, and our
target sluggishly moved into action. It was unfortunate to his
wellbeing, however, that Wang was far quicker. As soon as the small
Brit entered the room, he leapt at Abdullah as he lay on the bed,
locking the man’s arms behind his back before maneuvering him to
the floor, slamming his face into the ground. Forcing his knee into
the man’s neck and placing the barrel of his rifle into his cheek,
Wang effectively neutralized the target without a sound, but it
didn’t seem like Abdullah would come easily. He struggled
ferociously, far more than I expected, and his eyes flitted about
in unfocused confusion.

“Wang, confirm ID on target,” McDougal ordered.

Wang nodded, pulling the grainy image supplied by
the CIA up on his lens. The rest of us spread out amongst the room,
covering the entrance we’d just entered.

“ID confirmed, sir. This bloke is definitely Mushin
Abdullah.”

“Good. Gag him, bag him and prepare to move him
out.”

Wang responded by stuffing a piece of cloth in the
man’s mouth, taping it shut with duct tape, followed by applying
two zip ties around his wrists. I recalled times in training when I
played a bad guy and my buddies had to come in to secure me. They
were generally pretty nice about the zip ties, and left them
relatively loose. Sometimes they weren’t so nice, and I remember
one asshole who tied them so tight, I lost all sensitivity to my
hands for hours. I only hope Wang did just as thorough a job.

Once Wang had him secured, he hauled Abdullah to his
feet, completing the gesture by poking his gun into his back.
Abdullah started moaning through the gag, so Santino shut him up
with a simple cross-check to the man’s jaw with the butt of his
rifle.

I looked at the man as he struggled, noticing foam
seeping through the tape on his mouth, and eyes that didn’t seem to
focus on anything. He didn’t look like the bioengineer and
terrorist mastermind I had pictured. He just looked insane.

Shaking my head, I glanced at Santino as he walked
over to Abdullah’s bed. His eyes squinted at something on the floor
and I saw him lean over and pick up the weird glowing ball Abdullah
had been clutching earlier. Santino turned it over in his hands a
few times before shrugging and placing it in a bag.

McDougal twirled a pointer finger over his head in a
circular motion and indicated towards the door. We filed out the
way we came in, pausing only for a second so Bordeaux could plant
one of his charges. This one, a twenty pound C-4 satchel charge,
was the largest bomb he had. It had enough force to demolish a
small office building. The room’s location near the center of the
cave complex made it the best spot for the bomb.

Santino led us back the way we came, again stopping
at each intersection, making sure the coast was clear. Things were
going well until we were about halfway to where we left the
trucks.

That’s when the shit hit the fan.

Rounding a corner, Santino ran into a trio of bad
buys turning from an adjacent corner down the hall. The three men
hesitated. Santino and Vincent did not. Santino shot the man in the
middle with a quick three round burst to his chest while Vincent
surgically placed a single bullet in the second man’s skull.

The third man was the lucky one. For the moment.
Santino quickly adjusted his aim, shooting him in a similar fashion
as the first, only those few seconds were all the other man needed
to pull the trigger. Our rifles were equipped with suppressors,
effectively muffling the noise to a soft cough, but the third man’s
weapon did not. Thankfully all the dying man managed to hit as he
fell to the ground were the walls and ceiling, but the sound of the
rifle aimlessly discharging echoed throughout the tunnels.

So close.

“Bollox,” McDougal whispered. “Double time it to the
truck.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice, and I started to
pick up speed to catch up with the rest of the team. Only a dozen
steps past the fallen men, I heard the familiar non-stop firing of
a M249 as Bordeaux opened up on a group of bad guys coming up on
our rear. SAWs were notorious for their ability to put an amazing
amount of rounds down range in a hurry, and Bordeaux’s bulky frame
and the cave’s narrow corridors made his line of fire a death trap
for anyone who ventured down the hall. Within seconds, a dozen
bodies hit the floor, twitching as their nervous systems shut down
in a final act of protest.

We continued down the perilous corridors, mainly
relying on Bordeaux’s cover fire towards the rear to survive. Only
four other men got in our way, and they were quickly gunned down by
precision fire from our lead pair.

Reaching the warehouse cavern, we quickly found a
4x4 pickup truck, and piled in. Wang and his hostage moved inside
the cab, while Bordeaux, Santino, Vincent, and McDougal jumped into
the flat bed.

“Hunter! You’re driving,” McDougal ordered.

I didn’t have time to answer. In true Dukes of
Hazzard fashion, I dove through the window feet first and into the
driver’s seat before frantically searching for the keys. Visor. Cup
holders. Under the seat. Where?

They were in the ignition.

Leave it to the terrorists to be either that smart,
or that stupid.

Before I started the engine, I noticed Abdullah
struggling against his restraints. Wang, having none of it, threw
an elbow into the side of his head, and the terrorist leader
slumped unconscious.

Wang leaned over him and smiled. “Bloody good fun,
eh, Hunter?”

“Yeah…” I replied, noticing a bad guy emerge from
the hallway we had just come through. Before he could bring his
AK-47 to bear, I stuck the muzzle of my rifle through my window and
triggered a three round burst into his face. If not for the shemagh
wrapped around his head, I would have been rewarded with the sight
of a disgustingly mutilated face. “… real fun.”

I felt nothing at his death. I didn’t care about the
nameless terrorist he had been, or his mother who had just lost a
son, and I wouldn’t feel any different later. It had been me or
him, and I shot first. I didn’t like it, but that wouldn’t stop me
from doing my job.

Ignoring my first kill of the night, I quickly
floored the clutch, threw the truck into first gear, and gunned the
engine, fishtailing through a one hundred and eighty degree
turn.

I heard a loud crack against the rear window, and I
saw blood on it.

“Jesus!” Santino shouted, holding his head with one
hand, shooting his rifle with the other. “Where the fuck did you
learn to drive, Hunter?”

I laughed. Served him right for all those smartass
remarks. And I was all the happier for the chance to put all that
reckless street racing time as a kid to good use. With a smile on
my face, I slammed on the gas.

We accelerated quickly, but not quick enough to
dissuade two guys with guns from jumping out in front of us, firing
their AK-47s wildly.

“Down!” I shouted.

Everyone ducked as bullets passed through the area
where our heads had just been, riddling the front windshield,
making it impossible to see through. Wang kicked it out.

It didn’t stop bullets anyway.

The guys in back made short work of the shooters as
we passed by.

But we weren’t out of the woods yet. My rear view
mirror revealed no less than six other trucks turning on their head
lights, and revving up their engines for what I could only imagine
will be a rather fantastic chase scene.

Communication silence no longer necessary, I radioed
Helena.

“Strauss. We’re outbound from the cave complex.
Under fire and pursued. Prepare to offer cover fire and get ready
for extraction in a black pickup. We’re the ones getting shot
at.”

All I got in response was the telltale double click
of static.

It wasn’t long before I saw the end of the tunnel we
were racing through, the white light never looking so good. My
passengers were keeping the trucks in pursuit honest, making them
think twice before gaining any ground on us. One lucky shot took
the lead driver in the head, causing him to turn directly into the
wall. The car careened off of it at high speed, and at an angle
that caused it to roll over and over, ending up on its side. The
other trucks slowed down, managing to avoid the crash.

“Sir, I suggest Bordeaux blow his charges in five
seconds,” I yelled over my shoulder at McDougal.

That would just about give us enough time to squeeze
out of the entrance before the tunnel collapsed behind us and the
debris cloud obscured my vision completely.

“Do it, Bordeaux,” McDougal ordered. “Three, two,
one. Hit it!”

The shock waves hit us in succession, one for each
charge, the truck buckling after each detonation.

Too soon. The trucks behind us would make it out as
well.

My apprehension was quelled a bit when we arrived at
the cave entrance where I saw six bodies crumpled on the ground,
blood oozing from shots to their chests.

That’s my girl.

It was at about that time when I also began to see
the lights strung along the tunnel behind us going out, with the
dust cloud getting closer, the cave collapsing. Maybe I could lose
them in the cloud, if I wasn’t caught in it as well. Just as the
cloud reached the last truck, I blew through the entrance and never
looked back.

Outside the narrow tunnel, I immediately swerved the
truck violently, hoping to throw off the fire that was now incoming
heavily. The enemy trucks that managed to escape as well spread out
in a long line, and fired on us simultaneously. My passengers in
back were now at a disadvantage, and were reduced to keeping their
heads down and hanging on for dear life.

I couldn’t see Helena, but I saw an update on my eye
piece, which I called up with one hand on the wheel. It showed a
solid green dot on a side street, with a timer running steadily
towards zero. She’d be ready at that position in twenty
seconds.

Within that time, I noticed two of the trucks behind
us swerve out of control with one neat little hole a piece through
each front windshield. These trucks didn’t receive the punishment
from the gunners in my truck, so it must have been Helena.

And she didn’t think she could handle it.

“That girlfriend of yours can really shoot, Jacob,”
Santino commented from the flat bed.

“Shut it,” I replied, turning the truck through a
wicked turn down the side street that Helena had indicated would be
her pickup location.

Slowing as I approached the waypoint, I saw Helena
bolt from a side alley and leap into the back of the truck with the
same grace she had shown exiting the cargo container earlier.

“She’s aboard,” McDougal yelled, his rifle ablaze.
“Move!”

I gunned the truck once again, following Helena’s
map past the claymores, our pursuers gaining quickly.

“Those claymore would really come in handy now,
Strauss,” I yelled back to her.