American Terrorist (The Rayna Tan Action Thrillers Book 1) (17 page)

There were another four settlements to hit before nightfall and all the team members had just one thing in mind—the dozen cold beers stored in the refrigerator in the MRAP. Heck, this wasn’t the government military, so why not take advantage of that?

A sweltering, dusty hour later, another village was on the horizon, but there was something else as well. A pick-up truck was leaving the town, ninety degrees in a different direction. Rayna brought binoculars to her eyes and saw three young girls crying in the back of the truck. Two young men, possibly in their late teens or early twenties, and a tall bearded man were ripping off their clothes.
 

“Go!” shouted Rayna into the microphone.

The MRAP turned toward the desert to follow when BOOM! A huge explosion rocked the earth. This was no ordinary IED, but a booby trap with the power to shake the gates of Hell.

Boom Boom slammed on the brakes as the MRAP came flipping over toward them. Praying there wasn’t another explosive in its tracks, he turned off the asphalt road and into the desert before stopping to take a look. The mammoth vehicle was on its side in a huge cloud of dust.

“Go, Boom Boom! We’re okay. Follow them!” croaked Steve’s voice on the radio.

“We’ll wait for back-up,” yelled Boom Boom.

“No! Did you see that guy? He was like huge. He might be our guy and you might not another chance. Go!”

“Who’s running this chicken shit outfit anyway?” muttered Boom Boom as he floored it in the direction of the pick-up. It was just a mile away, but the rough terrain made it a hard slog for the Jeep to navigate through. The saving grace was that it was likely there would not be an IED waiting to ambush them in the barren desert.
 

Boom Boom and Rayna watched the men toss the girls out of sight to the floor. One of them picked up an RPG, waiting for the Jeep to get just a little closer to be in range of its firepower.

Rayna put down her binoculars and donned sand goggles. She tossed another pair to Boom Boom, and he put them on while Rayna grabbed an M16. There was a momentary flat and calm spot and Rayna fired. Just as she did, Boom Boom hit an eighteen-inch deep indentation in the crusted sand, knocking the Jeep out of control. It took every bit of strength for the big soldier to hold the steering wheel firmly so the vehicle didn’t spin out of control. Rayna’s spray landed nowhere near the target and she was knocked back into her seat.

Boom Boom stabilized the Jeep and floored it, ignoring any potential traps along the sandy route. The nimble vehicle gained ground rapidly on the rust bucket pick-up. Noting the pick-up followed a path free of IEDs, Boom Boom copied its route as he navigated the Jeep onto the crumbling tarmac.

The Jeep was less than a quarter of a mile away and gaining rapidly when Boom Boom spotted the tall man drop out of sight.

Now within range, Rayna picked up her assault weapon again and stabilized herself for the shot.

“Careful, Rayna!” shouted Boom Boom as he spotted the tall man rising.

Rayna fired just as the giant heaved three grenades in quick succession at the oncoming Jeep.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
 

An enormous dust cloud blossomed. Boom Boom slammed on the brakes hard to avoid falling into whatever crater was hidden in the man-created sandstorm.

“Get the RPG and fire!” ordered Rayna as she began firing indiscriminately. “Then pick up an AK and fire like mad!”

Thank God for Boom Boom’s adherence to military protocol where the CO was always right. Otherwise he might have questioned or commented on the idiocy of Rayna’s command. Because of the sand cloud, he’d be shooting blind and they had lost valuable seconds while the pick-up traveled even further out of range.

Boom Boom quickly shouldered the RPG, then fired in the direction of the unseen pickup. Then he obediently picked up the assault weapon and began blasting away ferociously... but randomly.

Thundering booms in the distance on either side of the Jeep indicated that not only were they out of range of their weapons, the enemy had detonated a few more grenades either to taunt them or to make it more difficult for the Jeep to approach once it got its bearings.

Rayna nodded her head, ordering a stoppage of firing. “Let’s go get them.”

“How? By now, they’re out of range and, by the time the sand clears, they’ll be out of sight.”

Rayna grinned. “Special delivery?”

“Huh?”

“The moment I saw them, I dispatched a couple of our friendly little drones, both of which carry tracking devices.” Rayna pulled out a sat phone and made a call.

“Hey, Rayna.”

“Hi, Julio. Can you see where tracking devices seven and eight are?”

“One sec.”

Rayna heard clicking in the background, then Julio’s voice came back. “Okay. One is not moving and is about half a mile ahead of you. The other is traveling due east. My guess is that’s the one you want me to find.”

“Thanks, Julio. Keep us informed.”

Boom Boom looked at Rayna with admiration. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“You mean I’m not a dumb Chinese blonde?”

“I was thinking more of a bimbo with brains.”

Rayna shook her head. “What do we do with the MRAP?”

“They’re big boys. They’ll figure it out. I’ll just drive slow.”

***

At 2000 hours, night blanketed the small world but this meant little to Boom Boom or the pick-up driver—both were well experienced at driving in the desert night.
 

Unaware he was being tracked, the pick-up driver took his time. After all, they’d been lucky so far in not encountering any IEDs but, if you tempted the fates long enough, they would eventually bite you in the ass.

Boom Boom matched the pick-up truck’s pace. It was now less than a mile away. On the pick-up truck, one of the young guys had torn the top off one of the girls. Readying to mount the whimpering girl, his palm was pierced by a small object as he hovered over her. Rolling over, he yelled, “Ouch.” He picked up the offending object. “Holy shit! Ahmed, look at this.”

Even in the almost non-existent light, the tall man smiled as he saw what it was—a small tracking device. “Let’s have some fun,” he said, picking up an RPG.

On the outskirts of town, he knocked on the back window of the pick-up. “Get ready to stop,” he told the driver as he dropped the tracking device on the ground. Thirty yards later, he rapped on the window again. “Kill the lights.”

The truck stopped. Ahmed shouldered the RPG. “Be ready to send them to the devil.”
 

The young man quickly obeyed. Leader and follower stood side by side, waiting for the ducks to show up.

***

“They’ve stopped moving,” called Rayna. “Lights off. You think they ran out of gas?”

“They’re too smart for that. Get ready for Hell.”

In complete darkness, save for the little light of the navigation system, the Jeep slowly approached the position of the tracking device.

Arriving, Rayna jumped out. Boom Boom heard a horrible familiar sound and instantly realized they’d been suckered. He leapt out of the Jeep, picked up Rayna and threw her as far as he could in the opposite direction.

“What the…?” While Rayna was in mid-air, she looked back to see the RPG’s grenade land ten feet in front of Boom Boom.

BOOM!
 

“No!” screamed Rayna. She watched Boom Boom’s body and the Jeep get blown to pieces as she landed hard on the ground. Operating on autopilot, she rolled over just in time to avoid having one of the Jeep’s tires and flying shrapnel land on her, but one of the random celebratory bullets fired by the crew in the truck landed in her lower chest. She heard shouts of a vehicle with a shot muffler approaching. Bleeding and bruised, she crawled as far as she could into the darkness.

The muffler noise stopped, but not the boisterous Arabic high-fiving. As the light of the fire lit up his face, Rayna saw a tall man with a long scar running down from under his right eye almost to his chin.

“Hey, Ahmed! Look at what I’ve got!” said a young man carrying the remains of Boom Boom’s head in his hands.

“Keep it. It’ll be great for our next video.” Ahmed motioned for the group to get back into the pick-up. “Let’s get some girls!”

The pick-up headed back into town.

Rayna struggled to stand up. She was bruised, burned, shot and bleeding. An RPG grenade had been launched directly at her. The man she’d wanted to have a relationship with for seven years had just died saving her. Now this was about more than just protecting America; this was personal.

No back-up, no sat phone, no communications. Just an incredible hatred and a desire for revenge. Rayna hobbled into town. And she was lucky. She didn’t dodge a bullet, but the bullet that hit her was not a direct hit. It had ricocheted off the Jeep and lost some of its velocity. If that hadn’t been the case, she would have joined Boom Boom for that date.

Chapter 19
 

It was 4:45 in the afternoon. Peak after-school and before dinnertime, the mall was full of moms pushing strollers with toddlers in tow looking for the best bargains in kids’ clothes, groceries and games. Teenage guys hung out with their ultra-baggy shorts, hoodies covering their heads, hoping to catch the attention of some of the teenage girls wearing skirts so short that no imagination was required for what was half an inch away. It was a pattern of behavior repeated at this same hour at this same mall in this small town three hours from San Francisco since it opened its doors a dozen years ago.
 

Oh, sure, every now and then someone got a little rowdy. Every Black Friday someone was going to get a black eye, a broken hand or bruised ribs from another someone wanting to snag the last greatest whatchamacallit on sale from another customer. And, last year, the mayor’s wife swatted her husband’s secretary when she spotted him stroking her hand over a cup of coffee. But other than that, not a whole lot of anything went on, just like in tens of thousands of other malls across the United States.

An old panel van pulled into the parking lot. It was a beater but it worked. However, inside...
 

Casey, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, addressed his team, decked out in battle fatigues. “Okay. One last time. I’m going out to look for someone, probably a young mom approaching a minivan. I’ll be pushing a shopping cart. When she opens the door, I’m going to distract her, knock her out, shove her inside, grab her keys and wait for you.”

Nabil nodded, then continued, pointing at Lennie, Kuramoto and Worm. “That’s our cue. We pull down our balaclavas and storm the mall. Lennie, you and I toss the grenades. Worm and Kuramoto will fire at everything in sight. Ninety seconds only. I’ll give the cue. Throw the last grenades, then we blitz out the door where Casey’s waiting.”

“Then we take off and I drive while you all take turns with the lady.” Casey flashed a wicked grin. “And then our own van goes boom!” Back at the commune, Nabil and Casey had carefully placed explosives strategically so that, upon detonation, all traces of who they were would become a flaming untraceable memory.

“The Great Satan will be in in utter turmoil and chaos. The only thing they’ll be able to find is this.” Nabil held up two round bronze disks six inches in diameter. Each disk had “American Muslim Militia” engraved on it. “From here on, everyone is going to be afraid to go to the mall, corner store, theater or public john because we are going to be completely random in what we hit. America will be constantly on its guard, wondering, ‘Am I next?’” concluded Casey. “Any questions?”

“We’re good,” said Worm. “Let’s do it. Show time, boys.”

Casey exited the van and found a grocery cart. He started looking for a female victim.
Aha. She’s three rows over, just about to enter her van.
 

Casey turned to give the “go” sign but couldn’t see any of the group close to the mall entrance. Puzzled, he turned to the van and saw it pulling away fast. His heart sank as he realized what had happened. He and Nabil had been suckered.

And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. His cell phone was too far out of range to activate the detonation.

***

Inside the van, Lennie pounded on Nabil as Worm blitzed toward the mall entrance.

Fist to the eye, elbow to the windpipe...

“You stupid shit. You really think we’re gonna risk going back to the big house so you can play tough guy?”

Nabil opened his mouth, revealing that his front teeth had been knocked out. “It’s for the cause,” cried the young man.

“Get rid of him,” snapped Worm.

Kumamoto opened the side door, picked up Nabil and tossed him out of the speeding vehicle.

“Allahu Akbar,” exclaimed Nabil loudly and proudly, the last words of his life. Unknown to Casey or the ex-cons, Nabil had put together a second cell phone detonator. Forcing his broken fingers to move, he fingered a sequence of numbers into his cell phone’s number pad. A second later, the van exploded.

Casey turned toward the sound of the blast to see Nabil completely on fire and running into the fiery mess.

A second even larger blast than the first sounded. Moments later, a crater fifteen feet in diameter stood where the van was just seconds earlier. Fifteen-foot flames shot toward the sky. Body parts, fragments of metal, glass and artillery rained down onto neighboring vehicles and pedestrians.
 

Chaos erupted. Mall cops emerged, mothers started hurrying away with their children, brash teens strutted out and nodded, “Cool.”

Chapter 20
 

Al-Tubak

Only in the movies is emotion enough to carry a situation. Rocky, Rambo and Jason could get away with being half-dead and saving the world, but not Rayna Tan. She had barely entered the town of al-Tubak when she stumbled and fainted at the door of a stone building.

Hearing a faint female cry and a thump on the door, Shafi hurried to the entrance. He definitely did not expect to see a young Chinese woman lying in front of his home with a gunshot wound in her abdomen and exposed skin with shrapnel wounds.