“Wang, confirm ID on target,” McDougal ordered.
Wang nodded, pulling the grainy image supplied by the CIA up on his lens. The rest of us spread out amongst the room, covering the entrance we’d just entered.
“ID confirmed, sir. This bloke is definitely Mushin Abdullah.”
“Good. Gag him, bag him and prepare to move him out.”
Wang responded by stuffing a piece of cloth in the man’s mouth, taping it shut with duct tape, followed by applying two zip ties around his wrists. I recalled times in training when I played a bad guy and my buddies had to come in to secure me. They were generally pretty nice about the zip ties, and left them relatively loose. Sometimes they weren’t so nice, and I remember one asshole who tied them so tight, I lost all sensitivity to my hands for hours. I only hope Wang did just as thorough a job.
Once Wang had him secured, he hauled Abdullah to his feet, completing the gesture by poking his gun into his back. Abdullah started moaning through the gag, so Santino shut him up with a simple cross-check to the man’s jaw with the butt of his rifle.
I looked at the man as he struggled, noticing foam seeping through the tape on his mouth, and eyes that didn’t seem to focus on anything. He didn’t look like the bioengineer and terrorist mastermind I had pictured. He just looked insane.
Shaking my head, I glanced at Santino as he walked over to Abdullah’s bed. His eyes squinted at something on the floor and I saw him lean over and pick up the weird glowing ball Abdullah had been clutching earlier. Santino turned it over in his hands a few times before shrugging and placing it in a bag.
McDougal twirled a pointer finger over his head in a circular motion and indicated towards the door. We filed out the way we came in, pausing only for a second so Bordeaux could plant one of his charges. This one, a twenty pound C-4 satchel charge, was the largest bomb he had. It had enough force to demolish a small office building. The room’s location near the exact center of the cave complex made it the best spot for the bomb.
Santino led us back the way we came, again stopping at each intersection, making sure the coast was clear. Things were going well until we were about halfway to where we left the trucks.
That’s when the shit hit the fan.
Rounding a corner, Santino ran into a trio of bad buys turning from an adjacent corner down the hall. The three men hesitated. Santino and Vincent did not. Santino shot the man in the middle with a quick three round burst to his chest while Vincent surgically placed a single bullet in the second man’s skull.
The third man was the lucky one. For the moment. Santino quickly adjusted his aim, shooting him in a similar fashion as the first, only those few seconds were all the other man needed to pull the trigger. Our rifles were equipped with suppressors, effectively muffling the noise to a soft cough, but the third man’s weapon did not. Thankfully all the dying man managed to hit as he fell to the ground were the walls and ceiling, but the sound of the rifle aimlessly discharging echoed throughout the tunnels.
So close.
“Bollox,” McDougal whispered. “Double time it to the truck.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice, and I started to pick up speed to catch up with the rest of the team. Only a dozen steps past the fallen men, I heard the familiar non-stop firing of a M249 as Bordeaux opened up on a group of bad guys coming up on our rear. SAWs were notorious for their ability to put an amazing amount of rounds down range in a hurry, and Bordeaux’s bulky frame and the cave’s narrow corridors made his line of fire a death trap for anyone who ventured down the hall. Within seconds, a dozen bodies hit the floor, twitching as their nervous systems shut down in a final act of protest.
We continued down the perilous corridors, mainly relying on Bordeaux’s cover fire towards the rear to survive. Only four other men got in our way, and they were quickly gunned down by precision fire from our lead pair.
I couldn’t complain about their efficiency. This wasn’t paintball, and I’d be completely satisfied if I never even had to fire my gun. All I cared about was getting out of here in one piece. Even so, if I was going down, I was taking someone with me.
Reaching the warehouse cavern, we quickly found a 4x4 pickup truck, and piled in. Wang and his hostage moved inside the cab, while Bordeaux, Santino, Vincent, and McDougal jumped into the flat bed.
“Hunter! You’re driving,” McDougal ordered.
I didn’t have time to answer. In true Dukes of Hazzard fashion, I dove through the window feet first and into the driver’s seat before frantically searching for the keys. Visor. Cup holders. Under the seat. Where?
They were in the ignition.
Leave it to the terrorists to be either that smart, or that stupid.
Before I started the engine, I noticed Abdullah struggling against his restraints. Wang, having none of it, threw an elbow into the side of his head, and the terrorist leader slumped unconscious.
Wang leaned over him and smiled. “Bloody good fun, eh, Hunter?”
“Yeah…” I replied, noticing a bad guy emerge from the hallway we had just come through. Before he could bring his AK-47 to bear, I stuck the muzzle of my rifle through my window and triggered a three round burst into his face. If not for the shemagh wrapped around his head, I would have been rewarded with the sight of a disgustingly mutilated face. “… real fun.”
I felt nothing at his death. I didn’t care about the nameless terrorist he had been, or his mother who had just lost a son, and I wouldn’t feel any different later. It had been me or him, and I shot first. I didn’t like it, but that wouldn’t stop me from doing my job.
Ignoring my first kill of the night, I quickly floored the clutch, threw the truck into first gear, and gunned the engine, fishtailing through a one hundred and eighty degree turn.
I heard a loud crack against the rear window, and I saw blood on it.
“Jesus!” Santino shouted, holding his head with one hand, shooting his rifle with the other. “Where the fuck did you learn to drive, Hunter?”
I laughed. Serves him right for all those smartass remarks. Besides, I finally get the chance to put all that reckless street racing time as a kid to good use. With a smile on my face, I slammed on the gas.
We accelerated quickly, but not quick enough to dissuade two guys with guns from jumping out in front of us, firing their AK-47s wildly.
“Down!” I shouted.
Everyone ducked as bullets passed through the area where our heads had just been, riddling the front windshield, making it impossible to see through. Wang kicked it out.
It didn’t stop bullets anyway.
The guys in back made short work of the shooters as we passed by.
We weren’t out of the woods yet. My rear view mirror revealed no less than six other trucks turning on their head lights, and revving up their engines for what I can only imagine will be a rather fantastic chase scene.
Communication silence no longer necessary, I radioed Helena.
“Strauss. We’re outbound from the cave complex. Under fire and pursued. Prepare to offer cover fire and get ready for extraction in a black pickup. We’re the ones getting shot at.”
All I got in response was the telltale double click.
It wasn’t long before I saw the end of the tunnel we were racing through, the white light never looking so good. My passengers were keeping the trucks in pursuit honest, making them think twice before gaining any ground on us. One lucky shot took the lead driver in the head, causing him to turn directly into the wall. The car careened off of it at high speed, and at an angle that caused it to roll over and over, ending up on its side. The other trucks slowed down, managing to avoid the crash.
“Sir, I suggest Bordeaux blow his charges in five seconds,” I yelled over my shoulder at McDougal.
That would just about give us enough time to squeeze out of the entrance before the tunnel collapsed behind us and the debris cloud obscured my vision completely.