No, Gentry told himself. A meager measure of pay-back would be righteous, but it would set off a bigger shit storm than he was prepared to deal with.
Gentry was not a gambler. He was a private assassin, a hired gun, a contract operator. He could frag a half dozen of these pricks as fast as he could lace his boots, but he knew such retribution would not be worth the cost.
He spat a mixture of saliva and sand on the ground in front of him and turned to put the huge Barrett back in its case.
The camera crew from Al Jazeera had been smuggled over the border from Syria a week earlier with the sole purpose of chronicling an Al Qaeda victory in northern Iraq. The videographer, the audio technician, and the reporter/producer had been moved along an AQ route, had slept in AQ safe houses alongside the AQ cell, and they’d filmed the launch of the missile, the impact with the Chinook, and the resulting fireball in the sky.
Now they recorded the ritualistic decapitation of an already dead American soldier. A middle-aged man with handwritten name tape affixed to his body armor that read, “Phillips — Mississippi National Guard.” Not one of the camera crew spoke English, but they all agreed they had clearly just recorded the destruction of an elite unit of CIA commandos.
The customary praise of Allah began with the dancing of the fighters and the firing of the weapons into the air. Although the AQ cell numbered only sixteen, there were over thirty armed men now in step with one another in front of the smoldering metal hulk in the street. The videographer focused his lens on a moqtar, a local chieftain, dancing in the center of the festivities. Framing him perfectly in front of the wreckage, his flowing white dishdasha contrasting magnificently with the black smoke billowing up behind him. The moqtar bounced on one foot over the decapitated American, his right hand above him swinging a bloody scimitar into the air.
This was the money shot. The videographer smiled and did his best to remain professional, careful to not follow along with the rhythm and dance in celebration of the majesty of Allah to which he and his camera now bore witness.
The moqtar shouted into the air with the rest. “Al lahu Akhbar!” God is greater! He hopped in euphoria with the masked foreigners, his thick facial hair opened to reveal a toothy smile as he looked down at the burnt and bloody piece of dead American meat lying in the street below him.
The crew from Al Jazeera shouted in ecstasy as well. And the videographer filmed it all with a steady hand.
He was a pro; his subject remained centered, his camera did not tremble or flinch.
Not until the moment when the moqtar’s head snapped to the side, burst open like a pressed grape, and sinew, blood, and bone spewed violently in all directions.
Then the camera flinched.
Gentry just couldn’t help himself.
He fired round after round at the armed men in the crowd, and all the while he cussed aloud at his lack of discipline, because he knew he was throwing his own timetable, his entire operation out the window. Not that he could hear his own curses. Even with his earplugs, the report of the Barrett was deafening as he sent huge projectiles downrange, one after another, the blowback from the rifle’s muzzle break propelling sand and debris from the ground around him up and into his face and arms.
As he paused to snap a second heavy magazine into the rifle, he took stock of his situation. From a tradecraft perspective, this was the single dumbest move he could have made, virtually shouting to the insurgents around him that their mortal enemy was here in their midst.
But damn if it did not feel like the right thing to do. He resecured the big rifle in the crook of his shoulder, already throbbing from the recoil, sighted on the downed chopper site, and resumed his righteous pay-back. Through the big scope he saw body parts spin through the air as another huge bullet found the midsection of a masked gunman.
This was simple revenge, nothing more. Gentry knew his actions altered little in the scope of things, apart from changing a few sons of bitches from solids into liquids. His body continued firing into the now-scattering murderers, but his mind was already worrying about his immediate future. He wouldn’t even try for the LZ now. Another chopper in the area would be a target too good for the angry AQ survivors to ignore. No, Gentry decided, he would go to ground: find a drainage culvert or a little wadi, cover himself in dirt and debris, lie all day in the heat, and ignore hunger and bug bites and his need to piss.
It was going to suck.
Still, he reasoned as he slammed the third and final magazine into the smoking rifle, his poor decision did serve some benefit. A half dozen dead shitheads are, after all, a half dozen dead shitheads.
TWO
Four minutes after the sniper’s last volley, one of the Al Qaeda survivors warily leaned his head out the doorway of the tire repair shop where he had taken cover. After a few moments, each second giving him increased confidence that his head would remain affixed to his neck, the thirty-six-year-old Yemeni stepped fully into the street. Soon he was followed by others and stood with his compatriots around the carnage. He counted seven dead, made this tabulation by determining the number of lower appendages lying twisted in the bloody muck and dividing by two, because there were so few identifiable heads and trunks remaining on the corpses.
Five of the dead were his AQ brethren, including the senior man in the cell and his top lieutenant. Two others were locals.
The Chinook continued to smolder off to his left. He walked towards it, passing men hiding behind cars and garbage cans, their pupils dilated from shock. One local had lost control of his bowels in terror; now he lay soiled and writhing on the pavement like a madman.
“Get up, fool!” shouted the masked Yemeni. He kicked the man in the side and continued on to the helicopter. Four more of his colleagues were behind one of their pickup trucks, standing with the Al Jazeera film crew. The videographer was smoking with a hand that trembled as if from advanced-stage Parkinson’s. His camera hung down at his side.
“Get everyone alive into the trucks. We’ll find the sniper.” He looked out to the expanse of fields, dry hillocks, and roadways off to the south. A dust cloud hung over a rise nearly a mile away.
“There!” The Yemeni pointed.
“We… we are going out there?” asked the Al Jazeera audio technician.
“Inshallah.” If Allah wills it.
Just then a local boy called out to the AQ contingent, asking them to come and look. The boy had taken cover in a tea stand, not fifteen meters from the crumpled nose cone of the chopper. The Yemeni and two of his men stepped over a bloody torso held together only by a torn black tunic. This had been the Jorda nian, their leader. There was a splatter path of blood from where he’d fallen to the outer walls and window of the tea stand, all but repainting the establishment in crimson.
“What is it, boy?” shouted the Yemeni in an angry rush.
The kid spoke through gasps as he hyperventilated. Still, he answered, “I found something.”
The Yemeni and his two men followed the boy into the little café, stepped through the blood, looked around a fallen table and back behind the counter. There, on the floor with his back to the wall, sat a young American soldier. His eyes were open and blinking rapidly. Cradled in his arms was a second infidel. This man was black and appeared either unconscious or dead. There were no weapons apparent.