He tapped the transmit button on his throat mike twice in quick success to indicate that he was in position and ready to go and immediately heard the “tsk… tsk” response, indicating Poacher and Flounder were also in position.
This close to the house, before the assault, they wouldn’t talk over the radios. Although encrypted and secure, it was always possible someone with the right gear could listen in. There was also the risk that prolonged transmissions could potentially interfere with television, radio, or phone reception, thereby alerting anyone still awake that someone was nearby.
Avery tapped the transmit button three more times in rapid succession — the signal to Flounder to blow the doors — and braced himself and turned his head away from the door.
Three seconds passed.
The explosion sounded, a sudden thunderclap with accompanying bright flash lasting less than a second. The door simply flew outward and off its hinges, over the porch, along with splintered wood and a few small chunks of debris, and landed several feet in front of the house. A cloud of gray smoke lingered in the space of the doorframe.
Avery exploded onto his feet and sprinted the distance to the front door. He kept his rifle in the low ready position, letting the barrel lead the way toward the entrance of the house. Closer, he prepared to pull a flashbang from his vest’s D-clip, igniting the 2.3 second fuse and hurl the grenade into the darkness.
But two muzzle flashes lit up from somewhere inside the darkened house.
The AN/PVS-21 night optics responded instantly to the flashes and automatically switched off the night vision, so that Avery now looked through the clear lenses of the goggles. It was a life-saving feature over older models of NVGs, which would have left him blinded and subsequently dead meat. There was the sound of automatic weapons fire within the small confines of the living room. The shots penetrated the wall and doorway in front of him. He returned his left hand beneath the barrel of his M4 and released a three-round burst in the direction of the one of the muzzle flashes, pivoted his aim, and fired at the second target’s position.
As he took a step back, to get to a safe position from which to throw the flashbang, Avery felt something punch against his vest, low on the right side of his body, like someone whipped a hammer at him, and he grunted and tensed and stumbled back a step before catching his balance, hoping the armor plate in the vest wasn’t penetrated.
The muzzle flashes continued, closer now as the enemy advanced on him.
Avery fired another three round burst to push the attackers back as he pivoted left, out of the open space of the doorway and slid behind the wall and squatted low. He started to reach again for the M84 stun grenade.
Bullet holes opened up in the wall in front of him, just inches over his head. He turned and launched himself to the left, out of the way of the open door space, as two constant streams of full automatic fire chewed through the wall he had just been positioned behind.
Avery smacked hard against a patch of dirt. The gunfire stopped from the house. There was quiet, and he imagined the men inside were reloading, having each just emptied their magazines against the wall, spraying and praying that they’d hit him.
So much for catching the fuckers in their sleep.
Movement caught Avery’s attention. A shadowy man-sized shape materialized in the doorframe and stepped out of the house, a submachine gun held in front of him as he pivoted and swept left-to-right looking for a target or, more agreeably, a dead body. He spotted Avery lying on the ground, adjusted his aim, shouted something out in Uzbek to the man still inside the house, and tapped the trigger.
Avery rolled across the dirt, skirting out of the way of incoming bullets. The rounds bored into the ground, kicking up a dry cloud of dirt and dust. He aligned his sights over the target’s torso, pressed back on the trigger, once, twice, and felt the recoil.
Despite the attached suppressor, the carbine still made a perfectly audible and sharp, whip-like thwack, resembling a muffled firecracker and not at all the silent pfffttt in movies (though Poacher and Flounder’s silenced MP5s firing subsonic ammunition came close).
The IMU terrorist took the hits against his body armor. He grunted and stumbled back a few steps, his finger letting up on the trigger of his own weapon. Avery raised his aim a couple degrees and placed two rounds through the IMU’s face. Blood splashed into the air as his head snapped back, and his body went instantly limp and dropped like a ragdoll. Face first, head down he sprawled over the dusty ground.
On his feet, Avery tracked his rifle for threats. From the crumpled heap in which the downed terrorist lay, Avery was certain he was dead, but he discharged a single round into the side of the man’s head to make sure, and kicked the submachine gun away from his hands.
Another burst of automatic fire came from the doorway.
Avery reacted, dropped to one knee, and kept his head low, to present a smaller target, and fired back, forcing the gunman back inside the house, behind the doorjamb for cover. With his partner down, this one would be more cautious now.
Without any more muzzle flashes or other sources of ambient light, Avery’s night optics automatically engaged again, casting his world into shades of green. He ripped the M84 from his vest and pulled the pin as he stood up, commencing the grenade’s three second fuse. He took a step forward, released the grenade in the air through the open doorway and into the black, open space of the living room, and fired another couple shots to keep the gunman back.
The terrorist inside likely heard or saw the grenade hit, panicked, and leapt behind the nearest cover he could find. Avery could hear the frantic movement and a shout in Uzbek. The stun grenade detonated a second later. A brilliant white flash lit up the interior of the living room, bright enough to immediately over-stimulate and temporarily blind the photoreceptors of the eyeball’s retinas, blinding anyone within several feet, accompanied by a resounding and deafening blast powerful enough to disturb the fluids inside the ear and disrupt a person’s balance and coordination, as well as induce nausea.
Avery bolted. He jumped over the first Uzbek corpse, and passed the threshold into the darkened house. He controlled his breathing, taking deep breaths in and out, so that a steady stream of oxygen supplied his brain. His eyes scanned, constantly moving around, side to side and up and down, taking in everything and never become fixated on one point, and he never stopped moving.
The furniture — two heavy, square tables and a double couch — were overturned and positioned across the floor, along with stacks of lumber, cinder blocks, and metal and wire cages taken in from outside, to create cover for firing positions as well as obstacles for the entry team. The house otherwise appeared to be sparsely furnished. Most Tajik households couldn’t afford much, and Tajiks generally opted to sit on the floor on rugs at low tables.
The terrorist was barely four feet away from Avery as he came through the doorway. Avery watched him stumble and trip over a table leg while his head spun frantically around, like he was inebriated. He was completely oblivious to Avery’s entry and anything else taking place around him. The effects of the stun grenade could last up to several seconds, more than enough time for a tactical unit to make a dynamic entry and clear a room of hostiles.
Moving left, his back to the wall, Avery aligned his sights, passed the aiming aperture over his target, and double tapped the trigger, drilling the terrorist through his head. Two little red puffs appeared in the air for a quick second, while little bits of skull and brain flew. The terrorist collapsed onto the floor in stages, first dropping onto his knees, simultaneously dropping his rifle, and finally plopping forward onto his face. As he stepped over the body, Avery kicked the submachine gun away from its hand and fired one more shot into the back of the man’s head.