"Don't get too cocky yet," Cabrera warned, surveying the passing land with his intense gaze. "You know what that means, right?"
"We get to go home, sir?" Neal hoped from the back.
"Consider this the darkest hour, Cassidy. Ready to show me what you're made of?"
"Yes, sir." Neal clenched his jaw and tensed at Cabrera's foreboding tone. It was ten miles. Less than that. What could possibly go wrong?
Almost three miles out and they were driving through a dilapidated village. Neal had seen his fair share of abandoned towns before, but this one took the cake. There was no sign of life and barely any indication that this had been a village at all if it hadn't been for the withered, termite-eaten sign two miles back saying they were approaching. It couldn't have been host to no more than ten housing structures, maybe fifty or so people once travelling these roads, children chasing each other, men and women washing and praying, but the walls of nearly all of them had crumbled down to its foundation. Not one house was left standing in usable order, the closest being two stone walls precariously standing, the front one broken down in a slope joined adjacent with the east wall, a few ceiling bricks keeping it together at the corner.
Mainly, the town was just rock walls, dry sand, and broken down fences. Not even a dog had stayed to mourn its loss.
"Do you know what happened here, Sergeant?" Emma cast a glance at Cabrera as she followed the makeshift path the vehicle ahead was providing.
Cabrera shook his head. "From my guess? Someone here was involved in something sinister and they got bombed."
"What's sinister enough to wipe out an entire village, sir?"
Neal didn't get his answer for he lurched forward in his seat when Emma slammed on the breaks suddenly. They were inches away from Fred and Ken's truck, its red break lights on and not moving an inch.
"What the hell was that?" Cabrera demanded over the radio.
"I thought I saw something, Sergeant," Frederick provided. "Movement in the northeast section."
Grumbling into the line, Cabrera conceded. "Keep the prisoner out of sight. We'll do a walk-around."
Slowly Neal, Emma, and Cabrera stepped out of the vehicle and surveyed the land. He pinpointed a wall large enough to hide three or four guys behind it to the south. The remnants of the wooden shutters were hanging at the base of the stone under where the windows once were. Boulders northeast were painted a dark burgundy down its front like some medieval beheading stone. Maybe whatever traitor lived here suffered that fate before the bomb came down. Or maybe he was too far away to see that the boulder was naturally reddened by the earth. Yeah, that explanation made his gut settle.
"What'd you see, Holt?" Cabrera asked as Frederick left the truck leaving Kennedy inside with their detained.
Frederick pointed further east where thick pillars stood in a wayward crumbled fashion. By the looks of it, the building may have been a small mosque once if the careful design on the pillars were any indication. A revered place at the very least. "I thought I saw movement there, sir."
"You thought or you did?" Cabrera grabbed a pair of binoculars and looked outward to where Fred had pointed.
"Thought, Sergeant."
It took a moment before Cabrera brought down the binoculars, and Neal wondered if he actually saw anything out there.
"Whatever it is, it's gone now. Let's get the hell outta here before it gets any dark—"
The driver's side window shattered just above Fred's head, and the four soldiers out in the open dropped down instinctively as silent bullets blasted out the windows of both cars.
"Where are they?!" Cabrera demanded over the shattering.
Cabrera didn't get his answer. The whips of wind from the silencer around the unseen gun stopped and the land was quiet once more.
"Chambers. You alive?"
"Yes, sir," Ken called from the back of the truck. "So is Mohammad over here."
Cabrera nodded and turned his attention to Neal, Emma, and Fred, all of whom were face down on the dirt not moving a muscle. "Get behind—"
Bullets rang out overhead, and this time, Neal could hear and see where they were coming from. From the northeast corner of the village, behind the pillars, behind the walls, behind any piece of stone that could shield them, were men with machine guns trained at them, ski masks over their faces like some petty robbers.
Neal crawled, following Cabrera through the gap between the two vehicles and avoiding the glass that littered the ground. Within moments they were behind the trucks with the cracking of bullets still pounding against their only shield. Kennedy slipped out from the safe side of the vehicle, yanking Mohammad with him. The man was yelling out, calling to his rescuers, but Kennedy elbowed him in the gut, silencing him.
"Anyone see how many there were?"
"Five? Six maybe?" Neal guessed. "Judging from the shots I'd say they're spread out."
Cabrera nodded decisively, moving to a crouch and positioning his rifle. "Let's take them out."
Gunfire and explosions sounded all night long until dawn broke. They didn't break for food or water, and any bathroom breaks were taken a foot away. Better to be seen and alive than be dead with privacy. Cabrera was the only one to get a hit, and that was because Neal had used a grenade to knock down a wall and exposed the guy. In the confusion of the blast, they had managed to relocate behind several broken down walls low enough to shield their bodies if they remained lying down. What got them distance made them lose visibility. Every time they even tried to pop their head up a shower of bullets flew over them, sand erupting where they hit or lodging in the stone mere inches from their faces.
Every so often both sides would pause, letting the eerie quiet fill the air. Sometimes the silence was more deafening than the gunfire, but in that silence, they waited. Act or react. Offence or defence. You played the hand that got you home at the end of the day. At this point, Neal was certain the deck was stacked.
When the sun rose fully in the sky, Cabrera slid down onto his forearms and looked on either side of him where the team was dispersed over the span of fifteen feet. "Sound off!"
Cassidy. Holt. Swan. Chambers. Even Mohammad was alive and well, though well might have been an understatement for the soldiers since the strain in their voices was evident. One long night bled into an even longer morning.
"They've isolated fire on the trucks again, Sergeant," Kennedy called from the end of the line.
"Are they usable?"
"Looks that way, sir. Just hard to get into without getting a bullet in you."
"Serge," Fred said ominously. Everyone turned their heads to look at him, and when they saw him point outward behind them, their stomachs dropped. A dust cloud roughly 600 yards away formed in the southern region of the plane directly behind them. The cloud grew bigger and bigger, and when the dust cleared for half a second by the sheer luck of the wind, it was evident what was in the midst of the sand. Neal's eyes widened just as the rest of the team's did at the realization.
They weren't ours.
Bullets hailing from the north. Threat sneaking from the south. They were surrounded.
"What about reinforcements, Sergeant?" Emma hastily asked.
"Negative. Closest team can meet us only a mile out."
"So we're just sitting ducks then," Neal stated aloud. No one gave him an answer but the shots firing overhead was a resounding yes.
"No," Cabrera determined and pointed to the prisoner lying in between Neal and Fred. "I'm not dying for this bastard, and neither are any of you. Find the shooters and take them out. As soon as it's clear, one of you take him and get the hell out of here. Is that clear?"
"What about—"
"You worry about the others when they get here. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."