In less than five seconds he taken out six men, who were dead or in various stages of dying. He gritted his teeth as he ran across the room and kicked in the door. Two women cowered next to the bed. They never stood a chance. Darkness provided no cover as he emptied the rest of his magazine into them. Their chests bloomed with red in his thermal vision, and he dropped the magazine and inserted a new one, then cycled the bolt.
“The guard is coming back,” Eric said.
“I see him,” he said.
“You’ve got two more on the west and four in the other house.”
“I know,” he said.
He ran out of the house and headed west as one of the men in the house opened the door. He caught the man with his HK, and the man registered shock, his bearded mouth opening wide, then collapsed as the bullets tore through his chest.
Bullets pinged around him. He pulled a grenade from his harness, yanked out the pin, and tossed it through the open door. The men inside dove for cover and he cut loose with his HK, killing the second man who stood over the body of his friend in the doorway.
The bullet ripped through the man’s face, entering one cheek and exiting the other, spraying blood and teeth against the door-sill. The grenade went off and he heard shrieks from inside. The overhead thermal vision bloomed red inside the room, then faded away. He saw the outlines of the men inside, convulsing, and knew they were no longer a threat.
That left three guards, two running toward him from the west and one approaching from the south. They were shouting in Arabic and firing wildly.
His black Battlesuit made him no more than a shadow as he ran at them. He fired on the run, killing the guard on the left. The guard on the right, a short man with a pato, ducked behind a low stone wall, screaming incoherently.
He barely had time to register the man approaching from the south before he felt the impact in his leg, like a baseball bat against his thigh. He grunted in pain and dropped to the ground, then carefully shot the man… center mass… with his HK. The man fell in the dirt, his legs spasming.
The last guard was still shouting from behind the low stone wall, but John didn’t care. He stood, picked up a stone the size of his fist, and tossed it a dozen yards behind the wall. The guard popped up, turning to face the other direction, his AK-47 hammering away.
John took the opportunity to put a burst of rounds through the man’s back.
In less than two minutes, he had cleared the compound. He shook his head in disgust and went back to the first house. A lamp in the room cast a dim glow, but he didn’t need it. The VISOR turned night into day.
He removed a black nylon bag from his hardened backpack and placed two laptops, found on the wooden table, inside. He inspected the rest of the room, rolling the dead men over, methodically going through their robes. He found a notebook and tossed it in the black bag, a USB thumb drive from another man joining it. He grabbed the computer on the corner desk and kicked it open, exposing its guts, then yanked the hard drive free of the enclosure and placed the drive in the black bag.
He glanced around at the men splayed across the room, their clothes stained with blood, their bladders and colons emptied and filling the room with an unbearable stench that even the VISOR’s filters couldn’t mask. He searched the dead women in the bedroom, as well, but found nothing except for an RPG in the corner and cases of ammunition stacked between two beds.
He tried and failed to ignore the women’s glassy eyes, which appeared hollow and accusatory in his night vision.
“The site is secure and I have the merchandise,” he said.
“Copy that. Extraction is inbound.”
John nodded to himself. The Sikorsky UH-60 would be there in moments. The gunfire had surely been heard in the town to the west and fighters would soon investigate. He exited the house and ran east, his legs pumping hard. A faint thrumming grew louder, then suddenly intensified as the Black Hawk descended.
The helicopter was quiet and sported enough stealth technology and electronic counter measures to make it invisible to RADAR. The side door opened and a tall black man waited, his HK 416 at the ready, scanning the area to the west.
John dove into the helicopter. “Make it rain.”
The black man nodded and signaled to the pilot. John’s stomach fell away as the Black Hawk soared into the sky. The black man grabbed him by the shoulder to steady him and grinned. “Welcome back,” Taylor Martin said.
John nodded to him. “Thanks, TM.”
The other Delta Operator, Mark Kelly, a short man with sad brown eyes, helped haul him into the seat, grabbing the nylon bag with the recovered evidence. “Good work, John.”
John fumbled with the restraints, before managing to secure them. He glanced back through the open door and watched the houses turn red in the VISOR’s thermal vision, then felt the distant whump-whump-whump of multiple missile strikes as the area was reduced to flaming rubble.
From half a world away, Eric’s voice cut through. “Deactivating the Implant. Excellent work.”
John said nothing. He knew from experience he would crash as the drugs left his system, his brain working overtime to process the experience. He would watch in slow motion as he killed the men and women, grabbing the valuable intel, and make his escape. The flight back to the States would give him time to dream, to relive the horror of combat. It put his teeth on edge.
So much for their perfect killing machine.
The chirp of wheels hitting the runway woke John from his restless sleep. He rubbed at the grit in his eyes, then nodded at Taylor and Mark. The Gulfstream taxied into a hangar where a Humvee waited.
The heavy stench of jet fuel washed over him as he exited the plane, jolting him wide-awake, and he shook his head. “God, I hate that smell.”
Behind him, Taylor laughed. “Really? I always thought it smelled kinda sweet.”
“Because you’re weird,” Mark said.
John couldn’t help but laugh. The past two years had brought an easy camaraderie with both men. Former Delta Force, like Wise, they were not only the most competent soldiers he had ever worked with, but also genuinely likable men.
Taylor had suffered severe injuries in Texas, and they had bonded in rehabilitation. Mark had checked on them every day, helping them through surgeries and checkups, until they were fit for duty.
There had been days when he felt he could barely go on, days when Taylor was down, too, and Mark would offer some sardonic comment, usually directed at their nurse, Kara Tulli. It made the bad days better, and Wise was there too, coaching them, pushing them to get their medical clearance.
They loaded the cases with their weapons and the Battlesuit into the Humvee and drove west. It was another twenty minutes before they had entered the underground base west of the runways and hangars, cleared the checkpoints, and found themselves in the War Room.
The War Room was a large chamber a hundred feet across, carved from rock and lined with concrete and steel. Rows of desks neatly divided the room and gigantic monitors hung from the walls. The place hummed with activity, and the officer on deck, Sergeant Todd Clark, led them to the conference room where Eric waited with Nancy Smith.
Nancy greeted them coolly, her chilly blue eyes barely acknowledging their presence. “Gentleman.”
“Glad you’re back,” Eric said with a warm smile. Eric was the epitome of a Delta Operator, short brown hair just a little too long for regulation, and sharp brown eyes that glittered with intelligence. “Karen’s been analyzing the data since you scanned and uploaded it.”
They took seats as Eric signaled for Karen Kryzowski, the OTM’s lead data analyst.