A Cold Day In Mosul (32 page)

Ethan gently kicked the brick toward Sam. She seized it and swung her hand upward before the Laika could bring the knife down. The brick impacted his temple with a sickening thud.

The Russian collapsed, landing on his side next to her. She struck him in the same spot before he could recover. Again. The Russian lost consciousness, but still she pounded away. His features became an indiscernible mass of red. Eventually his skull caved. She didn't stop, and in moments all that remained of his head was a gruesome pulp.

"Sam," Ethan said, approaching her cautiously from behind. "Sam. He's dead!" He restrained her arm.

She looked at him with such crazed, fiery eyes that he wasn't sure if she was going to attack him next. It was the same expression he had seen on mujahadeen who had volunteered for suicide missions.

"He's dead," Ethan repeated.

Her eyes finally seemed to focus upon him,
really
focus, and she looked down at the headless Russian. "Do you think I'm cruel for doing this, Ethan? Do you think I'm an evil woman?"

In truth, though Ethan had witnessed some gruesome sights in his day, he was disturbed by what he saw. To the core. He would have never imagined Sam capable of such raw violence. She was supposed to be on the side of the civilized.

He hid his discomfort behind an impassive face and said: "I'm sure he deserved what he got."

She wrenched her arm from Ethan's grasp and examined her palm. Blood dripped from the fingertips. "I cut myself."

"It's not your blood," Ethan said.

"No, I cut myself." She wiped the hand in her abaya and showed him the bleeding gash in the fleshy part of her palm. Her hand had probably struck some jagged fragment of the man's skull.

Ethan helped her bind it, using her hijab as a bandage, and then he pointed at himself.

"How's it look?" Ethan presented the right side of his face, showing off his bloody eye.

Sam's hard expression crumpled in concern.

"Here." She wiped the blood from his socket with the sleeve of her abaya. Then she spat into his face.

"Hey—!" He started to push her back but she stopped him with two words.

"Hold still." She rubbed the spittle over his eyelid, then wiped it with a clean portion of her abaya. "Try to open it."

Ethan tentatively obeyed. His eye burned terribly and at first he couldn't do it. The flowing tears helped clear out further irritants, and after a couple of attempts he finally managed to keep his eye open.

"Good," Sam said.

He explored the tender area above his eye with a finger, fearing the worst, but it seemed the flesh remained intact. His hand came away coated in fresh blood, however. 

"You're fine," Sam said, sensing his concern. "But you'll need to hold this over the wound for a while." She gave him her scarf. 

Looping the fabric around his head, Ethan secured the scarf over his wound like a bandage, leaving just enough room to keep his eye open.

Ethan started to help her to her feet.

"Wait." Sam searched the body of the Russian and found her smartphone. Then she allowed Ethan to walk her toward the staircase.

The original gash in Ethan's thigh was starting to sting again, along with the shallow wounds the Laika had opened in his forearm and neck. Those were nothing compared to the pain above his eye, of course. The ringing in his ears persisted, too. It was getting to be damn annoying.

William and Doug were just coming down the steps from the balcony. Both of them carried AKs; Doug also had an RPG launcher slung over one shoulder, with the warhead protruding absurdly from the waistline of his pants.

"The upstairs is clear," William proclaimed tiredly. He walked with a pronounced limp.

"Othunan?" Sam asked.

"He split. Into a couple of pieces."

"Let's go," Sam said.

"Wait." Ethan halted. "Your laptop? The radios?"

She shook her head. "We'll never find them in the debris. Not before reinforcements arrive. And even if we did, they're probably DBR." Damaged Beyond Repair. "I have my smartphone for GPS purposes, and that will have to do. Now let's go. Please."

Doug slung the AK onto his back and helped Ethan shoulder Sam down the winding steps. William struggled along behind them.

Outside, the air still hung with debris, and the sun appeared blood red through the smoke. A crater replaced the street. The sheer force of the explosion had collapsed several of the smaller buildings, their constituent bricks fanning outward from the blast site. There was no sign of life amid the mangled wreckages of the Humvees and pickups.

The acrid smell of dirt, ash, ozone and masonry dust, with a hint of cordite, permeated the area. Coughing, the team members made their way along the outer rim of the crater. Ethan's sweat-soaked shirt felt frigid in the cool air.

"There," Ethan said, pointing out a Humvee parked behind one of the buildings that had escaped the brunt of the blast.

A Hytera radio lay in the driver's seat; Ethan scooped it up before sitting down. Once everyone was inside he started the engine. There was no need to hot wire the military vehicle, as Humvees didn't use keys—one less thing for the professional soldier to worry about during the heat of battle.

The SINCGARS radios and Blue Force trackers had been gutted. Not that he needed those at the moment anyway. He just wanted to get the hell out of there.

He accelerated eastward onto the road, intending to follow the original extract plan. Outside the village, he swerved past the craters formed by the previous airstrike, passing the remains of two Humvees.

"Reinforcements," William said urgently.

Ethan glanced in the left side mirror. Beyond the razed village, several more vehicles sped along the road, coming in from the west. Enemy Humvees and technicals.

"Looks like the extract is going to be a little hot, Sam," Ethan said. His hearing had more or less returned to normal by then, though the ringing remained incessant. "Let's hope your ATV friends arrive early."

"Not going to happen," Sam said. "They were scheduled to insert under the cover of darkness. We have six hours until dusk."

He handed her the Hytera radio. "Then broadcast our position every couple of minutes. We'll just have to hope our allies are listening in on the radio chatter."

"They will be," Sam said. "Question is, when will we be in range of the listening posts?"

William leaned against her seat. "If we broadcast shit on those radios, won't we alert the enemy?"

"Do we have any other choice?" Ethan steered past the blast craters where another airstrike had hit earlier. The charred remnants of three pickup trucks were scattered across the road. "Look behind us, Will. I think the enemy is alerted already."

Sam clicked the transmit button on the Hytera. "Red Team, this is Jolly Roger. We are at position..." She read the GPS coordinates from her smartphone. "We are coming in hot. I repeat, we are coming in hot. Requesting early extract. Over."

"The only extract you will get, infidel," came the Arabic response over the unencrypted line. "Is a direct flight to the fires of hell."

In a few minutes Ethan reached the previously blockaded village. There were no vehicles barring the road anymore—the militants hadn't bothered to leave a contingent guarding it.

Ethan raced onward. Sam continued to announce their position over the radio every few minutes. The Humvees and technicals pursued doggedly. Airstrikes occasionally bombarded the pursuers, but the enemy vehicles were well dispersed and most emerged unscathed.

Thirty minutes later, the vehicle approached the outskirts of the village where they had originally planned to hide out until dusk. About fifty kilometers beyond it lay the thick, horizon-to-horizon wall of smoke that marked the Eastern Front.

"Time to turn north," Sam said.

Ethan spun the wheel to the left, crushing the grass that bordered the road. He barreled over small shrubs and areas of gravel and clay.

The distant pursuers followed. Another airstrike hit. From the plumes emerged technicals, Humvees, and SUVs alike.

"They don't give up, do they?" William muttered.

"You figured that out only now?" Sam said. "After all the battles you've fought with them?"

Ahead, the rolling hills of the foothills were in full play. Sam used the GPS to guide Ethan, keeping the Humvee to gently sloping plains and terraces. There was a lot of green around them, broken only by the ridges of clay and loam. 

The Humvee had no problem traversing the terrain, of course. The vehicle was built to negotiate treacherous land such as this. That didn't mean the ride was smooth, of course. Ethan and the others were jerked about often, especially when passing over any vegetation larger than grass; Ethan tried to steer clear of any obvious dips and rises, but the smaller obstacles were difficult to spot in time.

"I can't believe Sam wanted us to walk out here," William said.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Ethan told him.

"I lost my sense of adventure when we arrived in Iraq. I've been on survival mode ever since."

"Keep yourself in that mode, Will," Sam said. "You're going to need it yet."

Ethan struck a particularly nasty hump, sending the Humvee bouncing into the air. A terrible grating noise issued from the undercarriage.

"How are we doing on fuel?" Doug asked after the vehicle had leveled out.

"Just under a quarter tank," Ethan answered.

"Is it enough?"

"Dunno."

"Where's a damn dust storm when you need one?" William complained.

"Wrong season," Doug muttered.

"And location," Ethan added.

The tense minutes ticked past. Ethan kept glancing at the pursuers in his left side mirror, but they always appeared the same distance away. Whether because of the terrain or the airstrikes, several of the pickups had dropped out of the chase, leaving mostly Humvees and SUVs. The vehicles traveled in a long, dispersed, zigzagging row, keeping at least two hundred meters apart from one another.

The ominous wall of smoke that marked the Eastern Front loomed over the landscape in constant accompaniment. It curved to the north, blotting out most of the horizon ahead.

"Red Team, this is Jolly Roger," Sam said, sending the latest positional update over the unencrypted radio band. "We're coming in hot."

"Jolly Roger, we read you loud and clear," returned an unexpected yet welcome voice. "We're coming for you. This is Red Team, over and out."

"Red Team, you don't know how happy we are to hear your voice right now," Sam said, sounding close to tears.

A moment later Ethan saw four dark dots on the northern horizon. Their ATV escort.

The radio activated. "Jolly Roger, be advised, hostile vehicles are on an intercept vector from the northeast. Navigate northwest at your earliest convenience."

Ethan altered course accordingly.

"You're going to burn in hell, infidels!" a militant hooted over the comm. "Hell hell hell!"

The incoming ATVs swerved toward the Humvee, and eventually took up positions alongside, two per flank. Raptor 700Rs. The riders were dressed in combat fatigues patterned in woodland digital, and dark goggles shielded their eyes. 

The ATV rider to his left saluted in greeting, and Ethan returned the gesture.

To the northeast, the boxlike shapes of roughly thirty Humvees appeared from the wall of smoke. The military vehicles were arrayed in a long, well-spaced line.

"There's our muj from the Eastern Front," William said.

The moment the words left his mouth, more airstrikes came. Multiple fireballs consumed the enemy positions, both to the northeast and behind. Clouds of dust billowed skyward in huge plumes. These were the biggest strikes yet.

Unfortunately, like the previous bombardments, several of the enemy vehicles emerged unscathed from the blast clouds. Ethan counted ten to the northeast and another seven behind.

He continued driving northwest, heading toward a forty-kilometer-wide gap in the wall of smoke that screened the front line. The two enemy groups eventually merged behind him, forming a cohesive, though dispersed, mass.

Halfway to the gap, another airstrike struck. Nine of the pursuing vehicles emerged. But Ethan didn't care so much about them anymore, because up ahead several enemy reinforcements approached from the northeast and northwest, racing to cut them off in a pincer maneuver.

"Looks like it's going to be close," Ethan said.

"Red Leader, we need more airstrikes, damn it," Sam said into the radio.

"Already on it," returned the familiar voice.

Ethan had the accelerator floored, and could only watch helplessly as the pincer grew tighter. It was close as hell, because Ethan and the ATVs passed right through the pincer with only five hundred meters to spare on either side. The riders in the lead Humvees launched RPGs but the grenades missed by a wide margin.

The pincer vehicles quickly fell in behind Ethan and his escort, merging with the other nine pursuers to form a total of thirty.

Five minutes later he tore through the forty-kilometer-wide gap in the smoke wall and drove into Kurdish territory. Another airstrike reduced the pursuers by half, but in the side mirrors Ethan spotted even more enemy vehicles racing to join the fray from the front lines. The operatives' mad ride had apparently drawn out every militant in the region. And unfortunately, it appeared the Kurds had no presence whatsoever in that portion of Kurdistan.

The harrowing drive continued for another ten minutes. And then:

"Looks like our ride is here," Sam announced.

Up ahead, three MH-60M Black Hawks approached close to the ground. The helos performed a "tactical" landing, banking sharply to avoid potential incoming fire before touching down. Manned by gunners, M134 miniguns poked through the door hatches on either side of each bird, right behind the cockpits.

"This is it," Ethan said. "We're on the final run, people."

"We're going to make it," Sam said.

"We are," Ethan agreed.

He closed on the birds, heading straight for the nearest one. He slammed on the brakes, halting just outside the rotor downwash. Unlike in southern Iraq, there wasn't enough dust in that relatively fertile ground to cause a pilot-blinding brownout condition.