position from view. If something happened to her, the computer will let me know.
***
It wasn’t long before my GPS tracker showed we were coming up on what I assumed was some kind of military checkpoint. The truck started to slow, confirming my suspicion, before coming to a complete stop.
This was it. If the driver, whoever he was, couldn’t smooth talk his way through the guards, we were as good as dead.
Hearing muffled voices outside, I pulled out my Sig P220. It was equipped with a suppressor, so I could make silent work of any potential peeping Toms, and hopefully turn a bad night into a slightly less shitty one.
I held my breath, hoping the additional silence would prompt the checkpoint guards to send us on our way. Three minutes in, I began to feel the need to breath, but knew I could hold it for another two minutes if I needed. SEALs spent considerable time training our lungs to be as proficient as possible under water. As a result, we could withstand pressure at slightly deeper depths than most people, and could hold our breath well beyond the average minute and a half.
Just in case.
Thankfully, a few seconds after the fourth minute rolled around, the driver gunned the engine and I slowly exhaled under cover of the moving vehicle.
So far, so good. All we needed to do was make it through the guards at the entrance to the enemy’s base, and we could slip out of the containers in the unloading area. Hopefully, most of the base would be asleep and only a few drowsy guards would be milling around. At least that was the plan.
Thankfully, the rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. We slowed as we rolled up to the base’s entrance, but the guard must have waved us through because we quickly sped up and moved inside. As we passed into the cave, my GPS stopped updating through the satellite, and instead our green dots were overlaid against a black background. Thanks to the UAV, stowed away but still active, we could at least keep track of where we were in relation to each other, but lost all terrain details.
The truck stopped, and I heard two car doors open and shut quietly. Then came the sound of someone subtly tapping on the container. All clear. I waited a few minutes until I heard the double click over the radio, indicating it was time to move.
I slowly opened the container door, pistol aimed and ready. As the door swung open, I tracked the opening down my gun sights. It seemed to be clear, so I carefully hopped out of the cramped container, finding myself in what looked like a large storage room. It was a domed cave the size of a small warehouse with a shit ton of boxes, crates, containers, and the like sloppily arranged throughout the room. There was no order to the chaos, just junk strewn about in as inefficient a manner as I could think of. It looked like my old dorm room. I guess mommy terrorists didn’t make their spawns clean their rooms or make their beds as baby terrorists.
Holstering my Sig, I pulled out my HK416, checked the inserted magazine, flicked off the safety, and formed up with the rest of the team. With Helena playing sniper, I was teamed up with McDougal. He quietly started issuing orders.
“All right, mates. Nice and slow and quiet. Remember, don’t pop the first thing you see. We’re here for Abdullah. Santino, you’re on point. Vincent, hang back a bit with the rest of us. Bordeaux, place the C4 at your discretion, but keep it subtle.”
There was a chorus of double clicks indicating we all understood the orders. A second later my eye piece flashed. Quickly taping through the Velcro sheath over the LCD screen, the most recent activity was brought up on my lens. Helena had sent a data packet labeled “Strauss” which consisted of a single green dot with two adjacent green lines running out from the dot in the shape of a V. The area between the lines was shaded a light green, indicating Helena’s field of fire. She also had a few, smaller, red V’s, indicating areas where she’d placed claymores. The red indicating they were set for manual detonation.
Thoughtful of her.
It looked like she had taken position on the roof of a building situated alongside the main road we’d driven along. Three red V’s were situated along that road, intermittently placed, for three individual explosions to cover out escape. The map I had drawn earlier to the equipment cache ran right through the field of explosions. If we had to bug out quick, straight ahead was our best bet.
The cave complex we were in was typical of the kind used by terrorist cells throughout the former Crescent Empire. It was a honeycomb of passageways and dead ends, and no two complexes were anything alike. The ceilings were low, forcing Bordeaux and me to continuously keep our heads down, and the tunnels were poorly lit, with a string of light bulbs hung sporadically along the way. There was a dank, old smell in the caverns, even though they may have only been dug out a few months ago. Santino was thankfully an expert at navigating through them. He’d been in these kinds of caves before, and he had his innate ability to find whatever he was looking for. He was a born tracker.
He carefully made his way along the walls, never straying more than a few inches from them, pausing at each junction. Occasionally he’d pause and drop his night vision for a clearer look, but never long enough to break up our rhythmic movement. We didn’t run into a single soul for most of the trio, not surprising considering the unprofessional discipline of this particular bunch, as well as the late hour. Occasionally, Bordeaux would stop and place a brick of explosive along the ceiling, inconspicuously hiding it away in the shadows.
Ten minutes of wandering through the seemingly endless maze, we made it to a doorway guarded by two men leaning lazily against a wall, flanking a curtained doorway. Santino halted, and held up a clenched fist. He then pointed to his eyes with his pointer and middle finger indicating the count of bad guys with both fingers. Turning his hand into an open palm, fingers spread apart, he indicated towards the bad guys’ position.
McDougal understood and slashed a hand along his neck, indicating Santino dispatch the guards silently. Santino gave him a sinister smile, completely devoid of the jovial attitude he normally exuded. A smile filled with nothing but vehement professionalism, a trait that had saved my life. He drew his nasty looking combat blade and double backed along a side passage, coming up along the guards’ flank.
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’s 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.
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
