AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We spent the nights here, observing their movement, the mornings slacking our lust with Zinnia, and the days sleeping. The plan had been to begin scouting during the day time over the next few days before we made our move. We’d learned a lot about the compound, Roj, and his men thanks to watching them and what Zinnia had managed to dig up.
She’d somehow found the schematics of the old bunker that he was using for his stronghold. How, I didn’t know because the thing had been here for decades, but she’d done it.
Zinnia had also found out that Roj had been a low ranking officer in the days when Saddam was ruling this country. When the country fell to American invasion, Roj had literally made off with the keys to several Iraqi Army bases and bunkers. All the secret stuff that the U.S. Army just blew past. It left him armed with weapons caches and hideouts all over the country.
She’d already proven to be as useful as the Army had hoped she’d be. She’d proven that she belonged on our team and every time she tracked down some new information she just cemented that fact.
“Do we follow them?” Torque asked.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “This is a change in routine. We need to find out what they’re up to.” There hadn’t been any sort of attack in weeks. This could be a new threat.
We packed up our gear and mounted our camels. It was easy to keep the truck in sight through the darkness. The headlights cut a path before them, lighting up the valley they were driving through.
We kept to the shadows, never getting close enough to be spotted. The camels had no trouble keeping up. They had to drive the truck slowly thanks to the dirt roads out here. Iraq still didn’t have a road department, so it was up to the locals to maintain things. And this far out into the desert it wasn’t a high priority to keep the roads graded.
They led us off to the west and excitement spooled up within me when I saw the building they stopped in front of. We’d have never known it was out here if we hadn’t followed them.
“Weapons cache?” Alden asked as we sat in a line on our animals watching from a distance.
“Could be damn near anything,” Rush replied. “According to Z, these bunker-buildings are scattered all over the desert.”
“We going in?” Torque asked.
“Let’s wait to see if they leave,” I suggested. The last thing we wanted to do was go in guns blazing and blow our cover.
The night stretched on and we ended up waiting for two hours before movement caught my eye. Three men left the building and disappeared into the black of the night. The moon wasn’t up yet so I couldn’t follow them very far. NVGs still needed some ambient light to work well. Between the pitch black darkness surrounding us and the distance we were from the building, I couldn’t see where they’d gone.
Roj had a fondness for underground bunkers, so I had no doubt that this building dropped down below the sand as well. I cursed and rubbed my jaw. There’d been six men in the truck, so three were still in the building, doing who knew what, plus there could be countless other men in there as well. And now we had three other shitheads wandering around outside, just out of reach of the spotlights they had surrounding their place.
The unknown of what—or who—was in the building made the decision for me in the end. “We go after those three.”
Turned out, we didn’t need to go looking for them. They found us. Bullets sprayed the sand near our camel’s feet, sending the animals into a panicked sprint.
I grabbed my rifle from the holster I had attached to the saddle and jumped off. The others landed nearby, their impact making soft thuds in the sand. We split up and began stalking the men who were shooting at us.
The sound of gunfire brought six more men sprinting out the door of the building nearby. That made it nine against four. Hardly a fair fight. They’d need to send another six out just to make it a challenge.
Torque and Rush broke off, leaving me and Alden to deal with the three who’d circled around behind us. I heard the steady shots start up as they took out the men sprinting toward us.
Alden was close to me as we crept swiftly and silently over the sand. They had stopped shooting, probably having lost sight of us when we dismounted. We continued toward where we last heard gunfire. Peering over a dune, we saw them lying down, rifles out. They were trying to find us and having as much trouble as we’d had with the moonless night.
I held up two fingers and motioned for Alden to go left. We’d spread out so we could have them pinned between us. Return fire echoed through the still sky as our team engaged the other enemies. They were buying time until we could take out the threat that was at our backs.
Slinging my rifle across my body and shoving it out of the way, I gripped my knife in my hand. We needed to do this as silently as possible. With three men to contend with, one of us needed to kill our guy as fast as possible so we could take out the third before they got a shot off.
We crept around them and they didn’t hear us sneak up from behind. I landed on top of the guy on my end, letting my knife slice over his throat. His cry ended in a wet gurgle. Alden had done the same, but I’d been quicker. My knife entered the third man’s neck from the side and I twisted it. The feeling of flesh and sinew tearing would cause most people to puke. I’d had far too many kills to respond to an up close kill that way. Even when I’d first started in the Berets, the kills didn’t bother me. I’d never bothered to examine what that said about me, but I knew a therapist would have a field day giving a diagnosis.
We only took a second to double check that these fuckers weren’t getting back up before we sprinted toward to the others.
We landed, belly down in the sand next to them, and lifted our rifles. Launching a frontal attack was a death sentence. These idiots had zero cover out here and it didn’t take us long to mow them down. They’d been hoping their three guys would surprise us from behind and leave us surrounded. They’d made the wrong move.
I had my team wait, watching the building, but no one else came out. “Rush. Take the truck. Find the camels. We’re going to search that building. Meet us back here once you’ve got them.” Camels were less conspicuous out here, not to mention they had a good portion of our gear on their backs. We weren’t leaving them out here.
We split up and the three of us moved in unison toward the building, guns trained on the door. Torque put his hand on the handle and looked over his shoulder at me, waiting for the signal. I nodded at him and he stepped out of the way as he opened it. I moved in, with Alden on my heels.
We swept the halls, and each of the rooms, coming up with nothing. The men outside were the only people here. There were no weapons, zero equipment, and nothing that would last them more than a day supply wise.
An uneasy feeling raced down my spine. I looked over at my teammates with a frown. “Why were they here?”
