Direct Action - 03 (48 page)

Then he heard the crunch of debris grinding under two pairs of combat boots. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Rick and The Operator as they dropped down over the wall. The Operator snarled, his teeth exposed as he brought his AK-47 into play.

Without missing a beat, Deckard twisted back around and threw himself into the gaping hole in front of him. He landed hard and rolled, then scrambled forward. The Liquid Sky shooters lost their line of sight on Deckard as he moved deeper into the basement and were forced to drop down behind him.

That was when the arty strike fired by the Syrian Army rained down.

Deckard was tossed into one of the retaining walls at the edge of the basement as the Syrian Army fired for effect. Both Liquid Sky shooters were also knocked off their feet. The artillery rounds never found their exact target, but the blast radius shook the entire building on its foundation. The concussion rattled Deckard's teeth as cement dust engulfed the basement.

Then, the building pancaked in on itself as the upper levels collapsed. Once one of the outer support walls collapsed, the roof of the building gave way. The weight slammed into the top story and collapsed down into the second story. The entire building came down like a house of cards, right on top of the three Americans trapped in the basement.

Deckard coughed as he pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Everything was black. Running his fingers over his face, everything felt intact. He couldn't see his hand in front of his face, but it wasn't because he had been blinded. The building had collapsed and trapped them in the basement.

He heard something shuffle in the dark. A boot slipping on a piece of debris.

“Where is he?”

Rick.

“Shut up.”

The Operator.

“I can hear him breathing.”

Deckard froze where he was with his hands planted in front of him. He slowed his breathing and could feel his lungs taking in the cement dust with every shallow breath. The moment he made some noise would be the moment that the two Liquid Sky shooters vectored in on him. He had lost his rifle as he fell during the artillery barrage. He dared not sweep around the ground looking for it. The Liquid Sky gunmen probably still had their weapons and would start shooting the second he made a sound.

It was quiet. Nothing moved. Deckard swore that his joints were emitting an audible groan as he shifted his body weight. Somewhere in the darkness, two rifle barrels were sweeping back and forth waiting for him to make a mistake. Slowly, carefully, he reached out with one hand. His fingertips gently brushed across the floor as he looked for something to grab hold of. A rock, a piece of rebar, anything he could use as a weapon.

Sweeping around with his right hand, he found nothing. With his weight supported by his left arm, he was growing fatigued. Dehydration, physical exertion, and the stress of combat had beaten him up. Slowly, he switched arms and began sweeping around with his left hand. A few more shells came down somewhere outside.

It was unnerving. He could also hear Rick breathing once or twice. He sounded like maybe he was to Deckard's two o' clock somewhere. The Operator was a ghost.

Finally, he found something. His hand brushed up against a broken piece of concrete. Carefully reaching for it, Deckard grabbed it in his fist. Now he had something to fight with. As he lifted the concrete block and pulled it towards him, a low grinding sound echoed in the basement. A piece of rebar had been sticking out of the end of the block. As Deckard pulled it, the metal bar scratched against the floor.

Boots pounded towards Deckard. He made it from down on his hands and knees to being up on one knee before one of the Liquid Sky mercenaries blasted into him. In the dark, there was little sense of depth perception by sound alone and the mercenary had simply charged into the dark. Deckard swung the concrete block and clipped his opponent but couldn't tell where.

“Fuck!”

Deckard recognized Rick's voice as he yelled out in pain.

But Rick still had momentum on his side and carried Deckard down to the ground. He struggled to prevent the back of his head from slamming on the floor and splitting wide open. The fall jarred him but he was still in the fight, still swinging the concrete block. This time it glanced off Rick's shoulder. But now Rick was on top of Deckard and knew where he was. Rick's fists began to rain down on Deckard.

Then, Rick was snatched off of Deckard. One second he was there, the next he was gone. A dozen feet away the fight continued, fists bashing flesh and boots scuffing around the floor. Deckard rolled over and crawled away. The Operator had gone into autopilot again, taking down Rick while thinking it was Deckard.

Deckard found a wall and began tracing it to the back of the building. Behind him, he could hear someone's head getting slammed against the ground and he was pretty sure the grunting that came with each slam belonged to The Operator.

37

Ramon herded the Nusra fighters around the collapsed building. The Quds Force fighters had been beaten back for the time being and had retreated back to Syrian Army positions elsewhere in the city. A couple of civilians who were busy looting abandoned homes had told them where they had seen the white men go; into a building just before an artillery strike hammered it.

The building was flattened with the outer walls all but collapsed, and the concrete slabs that had made up the three-story building rested one on top of the other. All three of the Liquid Sky men had to be dead, Ramon figured. He didn't much care about Rick or The Operator, but he was still trying to wrap his mind around the sell out by Deckard. He had turned traitor without any indication of why. Be that as it may, Bill was offering a huge reward for his head and he'd be damned if he wouldn't have the Nusra fighters pick through the debris until they found him.

Soon, the jihadists located a basement window and began shining a flashlight inside. The yellow beam of light seemed to reflect back as it caught on sparkles of dust in the air. The window was narrow, maybe only one foot high by two feet wide. The Nusra terrorists continued to take turns poking their heads inside while others climbed up on top of the remains of the building. Then, they heard footsteps inside followed by someone coughing.

Hands covered in white chalk dust reached up for the window. The Nusra fighters grabbed on and heaved the survivor up and through the small window. He was completely covered in dust and grime from the collapsed building.

“Watch out,” the survivor said in Arabic. “The traitor is somewhere behind me.”

By now Ramon was jogging over to see who they pulled out of the basement. With the survivor covered in dust, he couldn't tell if the Nusra fighters were talking to Rick or The Operator.

Suddenly, the survivor tore the AK-47 from the hands of the nearest Nusra gunmen and all hell broke loose. Gunfire sprayed into the Nusra fighters, dropping two of them instantly. A third and fourth tried to run. The survivor, covered in white dust, looked like a ghost as he shot them both in the back. Catching sight of Ramon, the survivor then turned his newly acquired rifle on the Liquid Sky mercenary.

Ramon cursed as he ducked behind the rubble while 7.62 rounds chiseled away at his cover.

“Get up there,” Ramon yelled at the other Nusra fighters who were also seeking cover in the rubble. “Flank around and surround him!”

Only by making some hand and arm signals did the Nusra fighters begin to understand, but by then it was too late. A couple grenade blasts covered the survivor's withdrawal. By the time Ramon got the jihadists moving and flanked around the side of the building, the survivor had already disappeared.

Deckard.

Ramon was about to radio in to Bill and tell him what had happened when he heard a grunt behind him.

It was The Operator pulling himself out through the basement window. From close up, there was no mistaking the identity this time.

“Where is Deckard?” The Operator asked as he got to his feet and began dusting himself off.

“Broke contact,” Ramon replied. “Headed south.”

“Into no-man's land. Nowhere else for him to go.”

“Where is Rick?”

The Operator looked straight through Ramon with piercing blue eyes. His face was completely expressionless.

“Didn't make it.”

The shadows were growing long, providing a place for Deckard to hide as he crept from cover to cover. He slid from behind a pile of debris to a wrecked truck and then back to another pile of rubble. He was running on fumes and he knew it. Constant combat had taken its toll. He needed to reset and get his systems back up. First he needed a hide site for the night.

There was a row of several blocks of buildings that made up a no-man's land between the Nusra front and the Syrian Army lines. Most of the structures were blown out and partially collapsed. A few were relatively intact. Deckard was dragging his feet as he stayed low and entered the nearest building. There was no electricity in the city and using a flashlight while trapped between warring factions at night was a surefire way to get nailed with another artillery strike. He needed to get situated before the sun went down.

Both sides also seemed to know that fighting would be limited during periods of darkness since both lacked proper night vision equipment. They were getting in their final RPG and recoilless rifle shots before the sun went down.

The stench of rot invaded Deckard's nostrils as he moved into the building.

He knew what it was before he even saw it. Turning into a living room he saw the bodies lined up on the floor. Taking a step closer, he could see how they had been shot. Execution style, to the back of the head. The children had been shot through the top of their heads by adults who were pointing the guns downward at them, the exit wounds then being through their mouths or jaws. Their parents and grandparents lay beside them, murdered in the same manner.

It was the ghosts. The Alawite death squad that Tiger had told them about. For once, Deckard regretted that Liquid Sky hadn't found someone and scalped them. Having missed them at the Syrian base camp, the ghosts were prowling the city, executing civilians in a brutal attempt to coerce the civilian population into compliance with government forces.

Each apartment Deckard came to, he found a similar scene. Bodies on top of bodies. Flies feasting on the dead. Entire generations of dead piled on top of each other: parents, grandparents, and children.

The murders, the smell of death, it triggered an old familiar feeling in Deckard. It wasn't rage. He was always angry. What he felt now was something he hadn't felt in a long time.

It was certainty.

His knees cracked as he grabbed on to the railing and pulled himself up the stairs. After all the disgust and all the doubt that he had felt as he infiltrated Liquid Sky, he now knew that there was no question that his mission was just. American Special Operations soldiers were the good guys. For former operators like those in Liquid Sky to sink to the depths they had was unacceptable. They could engage in whatever rationalizations they wanted, but it was still wrong. No amount of mental gymnastics would ever justify cold-blooded murder.

The death squads had to be put out of business, whether they were Syrian or American was irrelevant at this point.

Climbing to the third floor, he began looking for a place to spend the night. As he searched around, Deckard did some of the math in his head. Zach was dead in Bahrain. He had just shot and killed Paul. The Operator had killed Rick for him. That left Ramon, Nadeesha, The Operator, and Bill. He had some rapport with Ramon and Nadeesha until today, but that wouldn't get him anywhere now. Bill almost certainly had them all out hunting him down.

Finding an empty apartment, Deckard stayed away from the windows as he made a quick sweep. It was empty. Sitting on the floor, he powered up his satellite phone while he continued to run the numbers. Ramon was an intel specialist and sniper. Nadeesha was a manipulator and intel gatherer. The Operator was a lunatic. Bill was a human wrecking ball. He would be taking the fight to them while trapped between the Syrian military, Hezbollah, the ghosts, and Nusra with Samruk International in the mix somewhere. That, and a couple chemical weapons thrown in just because things were not difficult enough already.

It was a suicide mission, but then, it had been all along.

As the phone reached out and made contact with a satellite, Deckard began typing out a message: