“Protect Al-Kariya!” Haza shouted at the same moment, dropping to a knee and firing at the Russians on the other side of the open area. The fire from the SK-74 was short, controlled bursts. He fired twice then rolled to the side towards the riverbed, up on a knee, two more bursts.
Rashid grabbed the money-man by the arm and started backing away, firing his pistol in the general direction of the Russians.
“Come Haji Al-Kariya!” Rashid said but Al-Kariya had already picked up the hem of his robe and turned to the rear, breaking into a rather fast run for a man of his bulk.
The fedayeen guards were moving forward, their training in such a situation to be to counter-attack then withdraw. They were having to fire around the principles but they were all more than capable of doing so.
Rashid made it to the relative safety of the first pick-up in line and ran to the rear, dropping down and fumbling for a magazine.
“We must get the smallpox,” Al-Kariya said. He had dropped into the mud of the road next to the younger financier and was panting heavily. “We must.”
“The money is in the road back there,” Rashid snarled. “We have to get that.”
“To the devil with the money,” Al-Kariya said, hefting himself to his feet as the last of the fedayeen dashed forward. “The smallpox is what matters!”
“Haza will get it if it is possible,” Rashid assured him. “I will go forward and tell him.” The younger man had just seated the magazine, it was not a natural thing for him, and looked up into the barrel of a weapon.
“Tell him what, pray?” a camouflage clad figure asked in passable Arabic.
Rashid carefully set the pistol on the ground.
“Uh, sayyidi, you might want to raise your hands. Very slowly.”
Mike pounded across the open area, trying to look like a guard closing in to secure his principle. As he did, he started taking fire from the fedayeen, some of it damned close.
“Uh, guys,” Mike panted, keying his throat mike. “I could use some fucking FIRE here! And be aware that I’m in the middle of this gunfight!”
“Move! Move!” Sawn shouted as the Keldara boiled out of the streambed.
They were practically on top of the rear Russian vehicles. The Russians were concentrated on their firefight with the fedayeen and at first didn’t even notice the fire coming in from behind. Guys were dying in the rain. When a person’s hit, they generally fall forward whether they’re hit from the back or the front. And most of them had guys behind them firing past them. Most of them were snuggled into the dubious cover of the trucks, anyway. As were the fedayeen.
Sawn bounded forward and triggered a three round burst into the broad back of a Russian crouched into the wheel-well of one of the Mercedes SUVs. The fighter slumped into the wheel and his weapon fell to the ground out of slack fingers.
As Sawn moved forward, shooting another Russian in the back who had been firing around the next vehicle in line, Sawn’s number two pumped another burst into the Russian, just to make sure.
Some of them seemed to notice the fire from behind them, a few turned around. But by then it was too late. The Keldara were bounding forward in two man teams, spread on either side of the trucks, engaging targets with their backs turned who were concentrated on firing to their front. It was almost too easy. It wasn’t a firefight, it was a slaughter.
“We are coming, Kildar!” Sawn replied, keying his own mike. “We are coming.”
Lasko slid into place and scanned the far ridge. There were cooling forms in the thermal imager but the difference between that and someone heavily cloaked was hard to determine.
He had pulled a ghillie cloak up and pulled up both his balaklava and face mask. The combination was going to reduce his thermal image. The sniper on the far ridge had to be using a thermal imager; there was no way to pick someone out at this range in this blackness using an NVG.
There had been three pairs on the far ridge. He counted one, two… six cooling forms. Wait.
He fired without thinking, ducking at the same time to hear the enemy round pass overhead.
He rolled to the right, slid down the slope then up behind a tree, peering out again. Where the slightly hottter spot had been… Nothing. He needed a spotter, someone to check all the cooling targets for him but…
There. A sudden warm spot. Barely different from the background.
There was no time for careful measurement, no time for consideration. The rifle, again, slammed into his shoulder a surprise as it always was when the shot was good. He jerked back then, instead of moving, came right back up.
The hotspot… was still there. But… cooler.
“That’s for you, Sion,” Lasko whispered.
Revenge is a dish best served… cooler.
Fucking blackasses.
Ivar Terekhov wished that there was some selective plague that would wipe all the blackass Muslims from the face of the earth. He had joined the Russian Army as a conscript but after his first tour in Chechnya he had reenlisted to join Spetznaz. One mission to “support” a convoy that had already been overrun by the fucking Chechens was all it took. One look at the mutilated bodies of his friends, his fellow soldiers, and the formerly laid back Moscovite had hated the blackasses with a burning passion.
Oh, he’d lost his innocence over the years, as mission after mission had been completely fucked up by higher command. He had come to understand that incompetence and corruption were the reality of his motherland, just as betrayal was the nature of the Islamic. He had quit, he had taken pay from the mob, he had even attacked the motherland on more than one occasion. But he still hated fucking blackasses.
Unlike a lot of his peers he had studied them, had read a translation of their Koran, had read Western papers on their culture. He wanted to know what drove their thinking. And the thing that he came to, over and over again, was that the Prophet, spit be upon his grave, had promised them paradise for every lie they told an unbeliever. They weren’t just untrustworthy, they were the definition of untrustworthy. They would rather lie to an unbeliever than tell the truth. Betrayal, to them, was as natural as breathing.
This firefight proved it. How they had slipped into their midst and detonated Matvei’s grenades Ivar wasn’t sure. But they clearly had. Matvei and his grenades might occasion some joking among the “Group” but he never made mistakes with them.
Now he had the chance to kill fucking mutilating, betraying blackasses and he intended to send as many of them to meet their Prophet in hell as he possibly could.
Another moved across the open area in front and he targeted the figure, fired five rounds and dropped him. Fire was coming from the streambed that the muj had been headed for but even that was slackening off.
They were winning. Fuck these blackass motherfuckers. They would have the money and the biologicals. Hopefully, Sergei would just destroy the latter. Then they could all retire on a nice trop…
Tunnel vision has an evolutionary purpose; it permits the mind to avoid distraction and concentrate on the “prey.” It is probably derived from early hunting necessity; prey in herds scattered and crossed, making it hard to concentrate on just one target. Tunnel vision permitted the early human predator to ignore those distractions and dial down on just one prey. But the problem with it is that sometimes a distraction is important. Such as the “distraction” of someone coming up behind you and putting four rounds through the back of your head.