Avery finished his sweep of the room. He never stopped moving. In close quarters combat, it was vital to never become stationary.
There were no other immediate targets. He tapped his throat mike and reported, “Carnivore for Sideshow, two crows, Green Six secure,” stating that he had two dead terrorists and the front of the house was cleared.
The sound of gunfire continued from the back of the house. Surprised that Poacher and Flounder apparently still hadn’t made entry, Avery reckoned that the IMU had a good position from which they were able to hold back attackers. These assholes had been expecting an assault.
Staying near and following the perimeter of the wall, Avery proceeded to the west-side doorway going into the hallway. He stopped there, hesitated and didn’t know why, staying within the living room and violating the vital rule about not becoming still.
Slowly and deliberately, he searched his surroundings. Left-right, up-down, taking in and processing every little detail. That’s when he spotted the ultra-thin cord running the gap between the sides of the doorframe across the hall, just inches off the floor. He looked directly down and saw a similar cord, inches away from his shins. He stepped high over it and into the hallway. He saw that the cord was taped to either side of the doorframe. On the right side, in the corner of the wall, near the jamb, the cord was tied through the pin of a hand grenade.
The door to the bedroom with the sole occupant — presumably Cramer, maybe not — was four feet away and closed. Avery tried the doorknob. It was locked. He wanted to continue through the house, and come up on the flank of the IMU holding back Poacher and Flounder, but he couldn’t just assume that it was Cramer in the room and not another IMU.
As if reading his thoughts, Avery suddenly heard Poacher’s voice over his earpiece, announcing that he was coming around the house through the front.
Avery swept his sights over the west-end entrance to the hallway, where the kitchen was, and found no targets, but heard the familiar crackle of AK fire from the back of the house. No immediate threats present, he carefully disabled both of the grenade-traps.
A second later, Poacher announced his arrival over the comms, entered the house through the front door, and crossed the living room, catching up with Avery, who indicated the traps. Poacher acknowledged and signaled Avery to cover his six. Avery acknowledged, and Poacher continued cautiously through the house, going across the kitchen and the dining room.
The remaining IMU tango was crouched behind a large, sturdy couch that had been flipped over onto its back and positioned to offer the defenders a clear line-of-sight on the backdoor. Beside him, another IMU body lay sprawled over the floor, with massive quantities of blood draining from his collapsed skull. Thick pieces of wood and sheets of metal were laid out against the couch, to reinforce it. The IMU popped up from behind the couch and let off a burst of automatic fire in Flounder’s direction.
Flounder was still outside, in the back. He’d taken cover behind the tapchan, a free-standing, porch-like structure in the backyards of Tajik houses.
Poacher radioed Flounder and ordered the ex-SEAL to hold fire.
Keeping his MP5 sighted over the oblivious terrorist’s back, Poacher stepped up behind him and put a single 9mm round through his rear left deltoid, which wasn’t covered by his armored vest. The terrorist’s whole body jerked. He screamed out and dropped the weight of the rifle, holding onto it with one hand. Poacher stepped up behind the wounded terrorist, yanked the rifle out of his hand, whacked him over the top of the head with the stock of his MP5, and called in Flounder.
Simultaneously, Avery aimed low and blasted the lock of the bedroom door with two shots and kicked the door in on its hinges. With heavy wooden boards over the two windows and no light sources, the room was even darker than the rest of the house.
Avery stepped forward and allowed the M4 to lead him past the threshold, into the darkness. He held the rifle in the low ready position, with the barrel angled toward the floor ahead of him and the stock nestled comfortably against his right shoulder.
The air inside this room was heavy, warm, and smelled of human excrement and old sweat. The stench was so overpowering Avery could taste it in the back of his throat, and nearly gagged on it. A man lay on a kurpacha—a Tajik-style mattress — on the floor, underneath a heavy duvet. He was on his stomach, his head facing the wall, away from Avery. Avery could make out large splotches that appeared to be old, dried blood on the mattress. He swept his sights across the room, from one side to the other, and came back around to check his six. Then he kept his aim trained on the unmoving form on the mattress and slowly stepped closer.
“Bob?” Avery called out.
The body stirred, a weak and muffled voice murmured something incomprehensible. The head lifted slightly, as if the man tried to look back over his shoulder at the intruder. But the movement seemed to require too much exertion. The head dropped back against the mattress with a defeated groan.
“Can you speak?” Avery called out. “Bob, if that’s you, give me some kind of sign.”
The head, face pressed halfway into the mattress, bobbed up and down twice, the movement barely noticeable and seeming to cause the man great pain.
“We’re going to get you out of here.” Even as he said it, Avery’s senses told him something was wrong.
Poacher announced his presence to Avery’s back as he entered the room.
Avery nodded once, not taking his eyes off the shape on the mattress. He took his left hand away from his M4 to motion for Poacher to stay where he was.
Flounder remained standing in the hallway, covering them, keeping his eyes and ears open.
Avery motioned to Poacher that he was going to approach the captive, and Poacher shouldered his MP5, keeping it trained on the subject.
Avery closed the distance to the mattress in four steps. Closer, he could at once tell from the mangy, curly dark hair that this was definitely not Cramer. Cramer was balding and kept the remaining hair on his sides closely buzzed. Avery reached down, ripped the blanket away, grabbed hold of the man by the shoulder, flipped him over, and stepped back, barreling his M4 down on him.
The man was wide awake and thickly bearded, Islamic fundamentalist style, his eyes wild, staring up at Avery with fear and bewilderment. He wore a homemade martyr’s vest fastened around his torso. His fist clenched around a black remote connected by wire to the vest. His thumb, trembling and twitching, was poised over a switch.
Avery’s guts churned inside out.
Poacher saw it, too. He and Avery reacted the same second and opened up, firing into the terrorist’s head, pulverizing it, blasting it apart and spilling its contents all over the wooden floor and mattress. The hand carrying the detonator went limp and dropped, hanging over the side of the mattress but still holding onto the device, the thumb relaxed now.
Avery fired until his weapon clicked empty. Then he held up a hand to signal Poacher to cease fire and bent forward and pulled the detonator out of the terrorist’s dead hand and disconnected it from the vest.
He examined the vest.
It was fitted with cut thin, metallic pipes filled with TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, an easily made explosive compound often utilized by Palestinians. It is also highly unstable, which accounted for why so many Palestinian bomb makers have burn scars and missing fingers. The pipe bombs were surrounded by a fragmentation jacket. These are simply cloth pouches loaded with screws, nails, marbles, or any other item that can serve as shrapnel. The detonator was a household light bulb, with the glass broken and removed and the wire coated with flammable material so that when the light bulb is turned on, the wire is heated, detonating the explosives and dispersing the shrapnel.