“Wait! Don’t shoot!” The man’s English was pure American Midwest. No doubt he thought he could negotiate himself out of the situation, but he hadn’t counted on Bash. As the terrorist opened his mouth to make his demands, Bash put a bullet through the middle of his forehead.
The child screamed, but she was drawn away from the terrorist’s body by a man that Bash recognized from the mission briefing as Aaron Tate, the American businessman they’d been sent to rescue. The other hostages were his wife and two children. Tate scooped his daughter into his arms and kept her facing away from the corpse as he comforted her.
Bash turned to his men. “Three, secure the house and call for exfil,” he said, and then he approached Tate. “We need to go, sir. The chopper will meet us in ten minutes.”
The only light in the room was from a bedside table lamp, but Bash could see the surprise and relief in Tate’s eyes as he cradled his daughter and let her weep on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” Tate said, his voice husky. “I don’t know who sent you, but thank you.”
Bash smiled, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he herded his charges out of the room and made a last sweep of the house before lining them up just inside the front door. Three of his team had gone outside to watch for the chopper and for additional threats, and his radio suddenly came alive.
“One, Three. Boss, we have incoming. Headlights along the road from Nineveh. Looks like two big trucks. ETA seven or eight mikes.”
“Three, One. Roger.” Bash frowned and considered his options as he checked his watch. The chopper was at least eight minutes out. The trucks might have nothing to do with their mission, and they’d drive by. But Bash trusted his gut, and it was telling him the incoming trucks presented a danger that had to be considered. After a moment of thought, he settled on a plan.
“Listen up. We’re going to head west, away from the road, quick and quiet. I’ll contact the chopper and we’ll have them home in on my GPS. Go, go, go!”
Aaron Tate was still holding his younger daughter, and Bash scooped up the older girl, who was perhaps ten. He gave her a quick smile. “Hang on, honey, okay? We’re going to get you out of this, I promise.”
The child regarded him with brown eyes full of doubt, but then she nodded, and Bash glanced at her parents. “Let’s go. Two, take point.”
With a swift nod, Two opened the door, rifle out, and Bash pushed Mr. and Mrs. Tate ahead of him and followed hard on their heels. Fortunately, the terrorists had let the hostages keep their shoes; otherwise, they would have been in a hell of a lot of trouble on the rock-strewn sand and scrub around the house. The rest of the team closed into a guard perimeter around the family, providing a human shield against incoming fire, and they moved forward as quickly as possible, which was about half the speed Bash would have liked.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and spotted the headlights of the trucks as the vehicles closed in on the house. The drivers might have to take a few precious moments to determine which way the escapees had gone, but Bash couldn’t count on it. He had to contact the helicopter and make sure it met them where they were going, not where the plan had said they should be.
“Helo, Helo, Helo, this is Kilo Actual. Come in low to the west, fix on my GPS ident delta three seven two x-ray niner. We are trying to make it west. Repeat west of Point Alpha.”
“Kilo Actual, Helo. Roger. Got you on the scope, and I’m stepping on the gas. Should I come in weapons hot?”
Bash wished he could order the chopper to strafe with its dual machine guns, but he didn’t know if the trucks were actual hostiles, and he didn’t want to risk the chopper being shot down if the trucks had large caliber weapons. “Helo, Kilo Actual. Negative weapons. Just get here before they do.”
“Kilo Actual, Helo. Roger that, Bash. Got your transponder. ETA six mikes.”
Six minutes seemed an eternity, and Bash wished he could put more distance between them and the trucks — especially when he glanced back over his shoulder again and saw the vehicles were approaching even faster than he’d first thought. There was nowhere out here to hide, no trees, no cover at all. Their flashlights were shielded and held low, but if the people in the trucks were armed, they’d have scopes or binoculars and would spot the team easily no matter how low a profile they tried to keep.
Bash counted every second. At two minutes, he heard the thumping beat of the helo’s rotors and glanced back over his shoulder to see if the trucks were going to bypass the house. But their luck had run out, because the trucks pulled up next to the building, and several men with flashlights climbed out, their voices carrying on the night air. He couldn’t make out the words, but their shouts of anger needed no translation.
“They’re going to come after us, aren’t they?” Aaron Tate’s tone conveyed his anxiety, despite his breathlessness from their rapid pace. “They’ll catch us before the chopper gets here!”
Even in the dark, Bash could see the terror written on the man’s face, and he understood it. This was a man who thought his family had been delivered from captivity and possible death, only to find the specter of the reaper reaching out for them again. No parent should have to fear for their children’s lives, much less ever have to watch their children die.
And the Tates wouldn’t, not if Bash could stop it.
“Two!” He veered off toward his second in command and stripped the GPS transponder off his battle harness as he moved. “Take her and give me your rifle.” When Two objected, Bash thrust the child at him and grabbed his gun. He slipped the carabiner clip of his GPS onto Two’s harness as the two of them kept moving. “Go for rendezvous. I’m going to make sure you get there.”
“But Bash…” Bash’s implacable expression convinced Two to cut off his argument. Instead, Two nodded jerkily, his dark face a stoic mask. “Give ‘em hell, brother.”
“Keep them safe, Greg.”
Bash dropped back and turned as Two and the rest of the team herded the civilians onward. The men at the trucks were yelling, and he could see their flashlights scanning through the darkness.
Slipping out his night vision scope, Bash did a quick recon and watched the men. He counted fifteen, and from the looks of the weapons they carried, they weren’t just dropping by for coffee and donuts. One of them must have been smart enough to look for tracks, because a group of five headed toward Bash’s position, and one of them lifted a scoped rifle and squinted through it, seeking a target.
Bash stowed the scope, spared a final glance at his team and their charges. Then he drew in a deep breath, hefted the rifle, and ran back toward the house.
1
“Get in there, you bastard! You’re spending a few days as our guest before we send you on to Jahannam!”
