Dead Six

Neither of us spoke. We’d go over the plan again later.

I’d gone through this routine many times before, and the jitters always passed, but it was different this time. It was just Tailor and me. No backup, no fire support, and our entire egress plan was to get in our car and drive away.

We’d gotten the word earlier in the day. Al Falah would be returning to the club tonight to broker some kind of arms deal with Khalid. Intelligence had given us the time of the meeting, but few other details. It was on.

But still my mind wandered. I had a lot of questions, many that I didn’t dare to ask. I wondered about this intelligence. Where did it come from? Do they have someone inside Al Falah’s network somewhere? Why not have that guy kill him? I wondered what happened to Wheeler and Hudson, too. Though they were supposedly assigned to our chalk, we hadn’t heard from them in days.

I chided myself. So many questions, but now was not the time to worry about them. I returned my attention to my gear. Standing up, I slid on my body armor and adjusted the straps until it snugly conformed to my torso. It was a low-profile vest, black in color, with pockets front and back for hard protective plates. The plates, designed to stop rifle fire, were made of ceramic and were thinner and lighter than any I’d ever seen.

On my left hip was a high-ride concealment holster for my revolver. Tailor flashed me a smirk when I pulled the big wheelgun out of my bag, but I paid him no mind. It was my good-luck charm, and I had a feeling I was going to need some luck tonight.

I put on my jacket. It was loose-fitting, and like my body armor and T-shirt was black in color. In Zubara, it was still fairly cool out in March once the sun went down. I wouldn’t look too out-of-place with a jacket on. The dark color of the jacket made it hard to tell I was wearing the armor vest underneath it.

Reaching down, I picked up my primary weapon and shouldered it. I pulled back the charging handle, observed that the rifle’s chamber was empty, and let the bolt close. I then looked through the scope. The Knight’s Armament SR-25 sniper rifle felt heavy in my hands. Its twenty-inch barrel was capped with a sound suppressor. A folding bipod was attached to its railed hand guards. I began to partially disassemble it so it’d fit in a discreet padded case.

While I did this, Tailor got his own equipment ready. His weapon was a 5.56mm FN Mk.16 carbine, also with a suppressor. The carbine had the short, ten-inch barrel installed, making it very compact. Tailor removed the suppressor, then folded his carbine’s stock. He was then able to fit it into his backpack.

As Tailor and I finished packing our gear, I realized Sarah had come down the stairs. Hunter had left her with us, as he’d been called away for something else. I wasn’t sure why they left her at the safe house instead of bringing her back to the base where she belonged, but I was happy to have her around.

“Be careful,” she said simply. The look on her face told me she wanted to say more.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, hefting my bag. I didn’t mean to be dismissive of Sarah. It was just that I had my game face on and it was hard to be sociable. I looked her in the eye and touched her on the arm as I walked past. She didn’t follow Tailor and me as we made our way up the stairs.

“Where is he?” Tailor whispered in frustration.

“Punctuality is not considered a virtue over here,” I said absentmindedly, scanning the front of the club through the SR-25’s scope. It was a lot more crowded than I would’ve preferred. By my count there were more than a dozen patrons, all of them Arab men, most of them in traditional garb, in the club now. I could see a few of them sitting by the windows, smoking, playing chess, and having animated conversations with a lot of hand gestures and laughter.

I looked up from the scope of my rifle and over at Tailor. His carbine was on the floor in front of him. He was propped up on his elbows, watching the front of the club through binoculars. I could tell he wanted a cigarette, but we couldn’t risk the light signature. In order to have a clear shot, we had to get a lot closer to the window than I liked.

Another ten minutes slowly ticked by as the jitters got worse. Finally, a yellow Hummer H2 pulled up to the curb and parked, trailed by the same white Toyota Land Cruiser as last time. I quickly hunkered down behind the rifle as Tailor picked up his carbine and looked through the ACOG scope mounted on it. The jitters melted away. My heart rate slowed down. I felt my body relax as The Calm washed over me again.

A rough-looking man with a brown suit jacket and a bushy mustache got out. It was the same driver from the previous day. Through the rifle scope I could tell that he had a compact submachine gun hidden under his suit jacket. He hurried around to the passenger’s side and opened the door.

Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah stepped out of his truck. He was on the opposite side of the Hummer, and I didn’t have a clear shot, but there was no mistaking his squat stature and white beard.

“That’s our boy,” I whispered. “You confirm?”

“I confirm,” Tailor said.

“Control, Nightcrawler,” I whispered into my microphone. “We have eyes on target.”

“Roger that, Nightcrawler,” Anita said, her voice distant and professional. “You are cleared to engage.”

“Copy,” I said, flipping the SR-25’s selector switch from safe to fire. Al Falah, trailed by his driver, made his way toward the door of the social club. This time he had a large black briefcase in his hand. His four other bodyguards had piled out of the Land Cruiser and fanned out. To my dismay, they seemed more alert than they had the previous day.

“I’ll hit his driver first, then switch to the other bodyguards,” Tailor said. “You take out the primary target first, then the secondary target.” The mission priorities were Al Falah, then Khalid, then the bodyguards. However, our practical priorities were to take care of the people who could shoot back as quickly as possible.

The front doors of the club opened. I recognized Khalid through the scope. As soon as the club’s doors closed behind him, I swiveled the rifle on its bipod, placing the illuminated crosshairs between Al Falah’s shoulder blades. I wasn’t going to attempt a head shot, even at this close range, with a rifle I’d never fired before, not when it was this important. My finger moved to the trigger, and I exhaled.

Crack! The suppressed rifle’s report sounded like a .22. The bullet smacked into my target in a puff of blood, a little higher than where I’d aimed, and tore right through him. Al Falah dropped to the ground like he’d been hit with a bat.

“He’s down,” I said calmly. Tailor fired off a double tap. Al Falah’s driver went down as I swiveled the rifle toward Khalid. The other men standing around began to scurry like cockroaches. The patrons of the club seated next to the windows reacted in horror. Several got up. In a moment, the entire place would empty into the street. “I’ve lost Khalid!” I was getting tunnel vision through my scope. Somebody was shooting back at us.

“He’s behind the Hummer!” Tailor said, firing off another double tap. There was someone crouched down behind the Hummer’s engine block, concealed from my view. I didn’t even see Khalid bolt for cover after I’d shot. He’s fast, I thought. I then cussed at myself. Damn it. I should’ve waited for them to shake hands. Probably could’ve gotten both of them with the same bullet.

The two remaining bodyguards were hunkered down behind the Land Cruiser as Tailor began shooting at it. One of them was foolhardy enough to bolt for Al Falah; I caught him in my crosshairs and put a round through him as he ran. He stumbled as the bullet hit and face-planted onto the sidewalk.

I still didn’t have a shot on Khalid. Swinging the SR-25 around on its bipod, I put two more rounds into Al Falah’s body, just to make sure. The terrorist convulsed as the bullets hit him. Al Falah was quite dead.

Switching back, I rapidly fired into the boxy yellow truck, hoping a bullet would punch through and hit Khalid. Shot after shot, holes appeared in the hood and fender. Then my rifle stopped. I looked at the action; a fired case was sticking sideways out of the ejection port, mashed between the bolt and the breech face.

That same instant, Al Falah’s surviving bodyguard raised his submachine gun over the ventilated hood of the Land Cruiser and ripped off an entire magazine at us. The bullets impacted all around us, kicking up clouds of plaster and dust as they hit. The noise panicked the patrons of the club, and they began to stream out onto the sidewalk, running in different directions. It was time to go.

Tailor roughly slapped me on the shoulder as he got up, changing magazines as he did so. I stood up, slung