firepower.
Five minutes — an eternity for those back at the compound, but not nearly as long as Blackburn would have liked for his team.
Gregor’s men had run into some trouble. Nothing they couldn’t handle, but it had slowed them down more than he liked.
He had expected the guards to be unarmed, but as Gregor’s team approached the pillbox building in the heart of the compound, their armored vehicles illuminated by the fires burning around them, they ran into some small arms fire coming from gun ports in all four sides. From the sounds, the guards didn’t have anything bigger than.38- caliber, but that wasn’t what worried him. If the personnel in any of the apartment buildings also had weapons, Gregor and his men could be caught in a deadly crossfire before they accomplished their mission.
This was the point where the battle plan went to hell. Up until now, everything had gone like clockwork — which was especially pleasing considering how little time they’d had to prepare. But now it was time to improvise.
Reaching down, he grabbed the headlight knob and gave it a quick yank. At the same moment, he stomped on the switch on the floor, flipping the lights to bright.
“Get ready, Nikki,” he said, pulling hard on the hand brake.
Diving out of the still moving BTR-40, he rolled a couple of feet, being careful to stay in the zone of darkness created behind the bright headlights. Coming up to one knee, he sharpened the focus on his goggles, raised his rifle, rested his elbow on his left knee, and sighted carefully on the nearest gun port.
He could see the face of a frightened guard staring down over the barrel of what looked like a 9mm Beretta. A nice weapon, but pretty much useless under these conditions.
Gregor took a deep breath, let some of it out, and then, holding the rest of it to calm the slight shake of his rifle, he gently squeezed off a single shot.
Even with his goggles, he couldn’t see the bullet hit home. He was still riding the recoil of his shot when it struck, but a moment later he could see that the gun port was empty, and there were no more shots coming from this side.
A moment later he saw Nikki fire off another round from the BTR-40’s mortar, dropping it squarely on the roof of the pillbox. The remaining gunfire fell silent, and the rest of Gregor’s team opened up with their own grenade launchers. Within minutes the little white building was little more than a burning ruin.
Gregor turned to his team and gave the order to fan out. With their primary objective accomplished, their orders were to search for any survivors and to neutralize them.
Using hand signals, he motioned the three members of his personal team to hang back slightly. This part of their job wasn’t war. It was simple murder, and he’d be happy to let Gilea’s men do most of it.
Max Blackburn could see the flames as they drew near the compound. He was leaning forward in the back of the truck, trying to will the driver to go faster. Beside him, Megan had gone still and silent as the impact of what they were seeing hit home.
“My God,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Max didn’t say anything. He merely clenched his fists tighter.
His team was ready. They had all seen the flames leaping into the night sky, and they all knew what those flames meant. All of them, even the driver, had their Kevlar on and their night vision goggles adjusted. They had their weapons prepared and their lines of fire planned out. They had received their orders and made all the plans they could. Now all they needed was a target and a chance for revenge.
Fifty yards out, their headlights off, Max ordered the driver to slow down and head around toward the back. This close to the compound, the road was finally smoothing out, and every part of him wanted to take that command back, wanted to tell the driver to drive even faster, but he knew he couldn’t. The personnel in that compound were counting on him — if any of them were still alive — and waltzing in there like an idiot and getting himself and his team killed wouldn’t do any of them any good.
No, as much as he would have liked to ride in like the cavalry, Blackburn knew he had to play this one by the book.
Slowing near the first corner, Blackburn motioned for four of his twelve-man team to jump off the truck. It would be up to them to get over the wall and take up positions with two men at each of the front corners. Four more would take up similar positions at the rear corner, and Blackburn, Megan, and the other three would come over the back wall, directly opposite the gate. The driver would stay with the truck.
Beside him, Megan reached out and touched his hand, offering silent support, but he didn’t notice. He was too intent on the sounds of stray gunfire coming over the wall, and the visions of vengeance playing in his head.
Gregor heard the gunfire taper off and he smiled. A few more minutes and he’d recall the team.
“Good work tonight,” he said to Nikki. And he meant it, too. She had performed flawlessly, making all her shots clean and keeping her cool when things got hot. She was a good fighter, a good soldier, and he was pleased that she’d made it through this far.
To his right, he heard a single AKMS snap off two shots and then fall silent.
That was it, he thought. The last one. Reaching for the transmitter on his belt, he pressed the squawk button three times — short, long, short — giving the signal to join up at the motor pool, with the only undamaged building in the compound. Once his team joined up again, they would take the building, clean out any survivors, and then take whatever vehicles Gregor thought he could resell.
That was the plan. Gregor’s first clue that the plan had gone wrong was when a hand fell on his arm and the blade of a knife pressed against his throat.
Max was proud of his team. Like true professionals, they had turned off their emotions and were going about their jobs in complete silence and with utter proficiency. With tactics learned from the Army Rangers, the Special Forces, the Navy SEALs, and other SpecOps groups, they identified the enemy and took them out by ones and twos, all without firing a shot. What was even more surprising was that, ignoring the rage that had to be burning within them as brightly as the compound, they neutralized the attackers without firing a shot and, as far as Blackburn could tell, without killing a single one of the enemy. This was one band of terrorists that
Seeing the last two enemies in front of them, Max raised his hand, signaling for extra caution, and then moved forward. Megan was on his left, and the two of them were flanked by two other members of his team.
Under other circumstances, Blackburn might have played it more cautiously and let one of the others take the point. Then again, he might not have. He and Gordian had argued about this countless times, but the simple fact was that Max refused to consider that any member of his team, no matter how new or how young or how inexperienced, was less indispensable than he was himself. And he absolutely refused to send men in where he himself would not go.
Slipping forward on silent feet, he waited for the man’s hand to come off the radio at his belt, and then he acted, reaching forward and seizing the man’s arm with his right hand and laying a knife along his throat with his left hand. He didn’t say anything. He was more than half hoping the man would react, would start to fight, would do anything to give him a reason to use that knife.
Beside him, Megan wasn’t so nice. Stepping forward in tandem with him, her own short-bladed knife in her hand, she closed on the woman who was her target. Reversing her blade, she brought the hilt down hard on the base of the woman’s neck. The woman tumbled to the ground, unconscious, long, dark hair spilling out from beneath her helmet as she fell.
