Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (10 page)

BOOK: Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3)
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Chapter 28

 

The team
stacked by the door, still inside the middle hut and the protection of its
darkness. Red was back in the lead, but Truck took the second position this
time instead of Nick. Behind him, Nick took the third position followed by
Marcus.

The three huts were set in
a straight row, each building’s front wall perfectly plumb with the other two.
Both the left and right hut were pressed directly up against the surrounding
compound wall, creating twin alleys on either side of the completely detached
middle hut. The plan was to clear the left hut first followed by the right side
one.

Truck
glanced back at his two leaders to confirm the stack was ready. Seeing Nick and
Marcus nod, he squeezed Red’s shoulder -- the silent signal for “go.” Red
stepped through the door, in his heel-to-toe, ready-to-fire manner. This was no
time for running or noise. It was back to systematic clearing. Orchestrated
death, studied and rehearsed to no end.

Red briefly covered ahead
before turning sharply to the left. Truck peeled right and dropped into a prone
position, his body parallel with the middle hut’s front wall. He rested the
machine gun on its bipod legs and aimed it at the hut across the way on the
right side of the compound.

Nick and
Marcus exited and caught up with Red, who had paused against the wall to wait
for the rest of his stack. Nick bumped Red, and the three-man stack moved along
the front wall of the middle hut that they had already cleared. At its corner,
they wanted to make sure the alley between the middle and left hut remained
clear.

Nick stepped
back a couple of feet from the wall and covered their target hut with his
pistol. Marcus stepped even further out from him and brought his AK to bear on
the door, as well. Red knelt and peeked left down the alley before yanking
back. He then brought his weapon up and pivoted around the corner.

The alley
lay empty, except for the truck and generator in the background, the latter
humming loudly in the night air.

Nick and
Marcus advanced past Red toward the left hut. Once they crossed the four-foot
opening, Red stood and backed from the corner -- his AK up and covering the
alley the entire time.

Nick moved left along the
hut’s front wall enough for Marcus to hug the corner and take over watch of the
alley. As soon as Marcus raised his AK down the alley, Red advanced behind him,
past Nick, and assumed his position on point.

The cautious
movement might have been overkill, but there were only four of them and neither
the perimeter nor the two huts had been cleared. One thing was for sure,
though, and that was the left hut was about to have fewer occupants.

 

 

 

Chapter 29

 

The left hut
also had a flimsy door on it, but this one stood wide open. Perhaps the three
men who had attacked them while they were in the middle hut had come from here
and left it open. Or, perhaps someone inside had opened it so they could more
easily shoot out it.

It didn’t matter
which of the two scenarios it was. S3 was about to take the place down.

Red stopped
a couple of feet from the door, his AK covering the entry. While he protected
the stack from anyone stupid enough to exit the hut, Nick snatched a flashbang
from his web gear. He pulled the pin and hurled it into the room.

BOOOM!

Red and Nick
followed the shockwave of the flashbang. Flashbangs roared at 170 decibels and
created a temporary loss of hearing and balance since the shockwave rocks the
inner ear. The blinding flash also knocks your vision out for as long as five
seconds if your eyes are open when it explodes.

The three S3
members had closed their eyes and lowered their heads as it left Nick’s hand,
so they weren’t affected. And their ears thankfully had a nice, thick mud wall
between them and the concussion.

Red and Nick
burst into the room behind the shock. Both flicked on their blinding
flashlights as they split up and cleared the room. Their beams cut through the
dust and smoke from the flashbang, but they found only bed rolls and blankets.

“Clear,” Red
said.

“Clear,”
Nick echoed from the other side of the room.

This hut
contained only a single room. Apparently, just a place fighters slept. Outside
the hut, Marcus held security, but the team was in a vulnerable position as
split up as they were. Truck had his back turned to the alley they had just
cleared, so he was as good as dead if a fighter circled behind the middle hut.

Red and Nick
knew they needed to move fast, so they spent only a few seconds scanning the
room for intel or anything valuable before exiting.

“Man coming
out,” Red said as he stepped out. Nick followed, and the team reformed then
crossed the alley in the same method as earlier.

Truck
remained
behind his RPK in the prone. His weapon covered the third and final hut on the
right of the compound. The stack closed on him and the target hut, heel-to-toe
walking silently -- their weapon barrels barely moving with their practiced
assault walk.

They were
closing on Truck’s position when the door to the final hut suddenly flung wide
open. Light poured from the doorway, and two men sprinted out of it. Truck’s
RPK roared and raked the men. Red paused to add a barrage of fire from his
AK-47 into them, as well. Both attackers dropped to the dirt.

The team
dropped all pretense of silence and caution. Red, Nick, and Marcus sprinted to
the opening. Truck spun around as they passed him and oriented his weapon
toward the compound’s front gate further down the hill, which for the moment
was closed.

The three
men cleared the final hut with flashbangs, but it lay empty same as the
previous one. With the compound secure and the computer-wiz al-Habshi in hand,
they were one step closer to finding their primary target: Rasool Deraz.

 

 

 

Chapter 30

 

Nick, Red,
and Marcus exited the third hut and headed back toward the middle one.

“Marcus,
Red,” Nick said, “check the back of the compound and make sure it’s empty.”

The two
nodded and left to clear the back of the compound and make sure no fleeing
enemy (or squirters) had hidden back there. Nick walked over to Truck, who lay
behind his RPK, still oriented on the front gate.

Nick knelt
and said, “Hold your position and keep that entrance covered. We’ll get
everything loaded up.”

Nick hurried
to the middle hut, remembered he still carried his pistol in his right hand,
and holstered it for his flashlight. He entered the hut and pushed into the
computer room.

 

Marcus and
Red investigated the back of the compound, even checking a couple of nooks and
crannies behind the generator and behind a small upright structure that turned
out to be a storage shed.

“Red, go
find us a truck,” Marcus instructed. “I’ll run in and help Nick.”

Red ran up
to the truck behind the middle hut. The truck was a four-wheel-drive Toyota.
Burgundy. Exterior banged up a bit but probably a mid-90’s model.

Through the
glass, he saw a long gear shifter sticking up from the floorboard in the
middle. A stick shift. Not a problem. He tested the door handle and found it
unlocked.

Red opened
the door not worried about IEDs as he would have been back in Afghanistan. He
slid into the seat, saw the keys were in the ignition, and pushed the clutch
in. The ignition turned the motor, and the engine easily caught.

He pulled it
out of gear and listened to the idle. The engine sounded good. He turned the
lights on to test them -- both worked -- and noted the truck had a half-tank of
gas. He revved the engine a few times then pushed the pedal to the floor to
hear it roar. Nothing clanked or squeaked.

Mileage
showed 113,743. It’s just a baby, he thought. Red felt good about the truck. He
shut the door and pulled the seat forward three notches to fit his short legs.
He leaned back, confirmed the seat was close enough to allow him to work the
pedals easily, and drove the truck down the alley and around the front of the
middle hut.

He turned it
off to conserve gas and jumped out to investigate the tires and check the spare
underneath. He also wanted to investigate the other
two
trucks to confirm this was their best option.

While Red
checked the trucks, Nick and Marcus worked like madmen in the computer room.
They yanked wires from computers, servers, and monitors, stacking gear they
planned to haul off in a corner. The two men heard Red pull the truck up.

Nick nodded
at Marcus, and they increased their pace. They hurriedly hauled servers and
computer towers out to the truck and loaded them along the front near the truck
cab. Back inside the room, they slung crap they didn’t plan to take into an
opposite corner. The pile grew as monitors, power strips, and keyboards were
tossed into it.

The two men
also rifled their way through files, stacks of papers, and two metal file
cabinets. Marcus spotted a duffle bag on the ground. He reached for it,
unzipped it, and discovered a pile of half-folded clothes. He hastily dug in
the bag and confirmed nothing else was hidden in it. He dumped it and tossed it
to Nick.

“Let’s use
this,” he said.

The two
hastily began cramming files, documents, and disks into the bag.

 

 

 

Chapter 31

 

Nick and
Marcus looked the room over one last time and departed the hut for good. Red
was running across the compound back toward them as they reached the truck.

“The other
two are shit,” he said, nodding back over his shoulder to the other two trucks.
“Higher mileage, less tread on the tires. I slashed the tires so no one uses
them to pursue us.”

“Might be
courier vehicles,” Marcus offered.

“You find
any spare gas?” Nick asked.

“No,” Red
said, “but we have half a tank. That’s plenty to get us back to the border.”

“Good to
go,” Nick said. “You two go get our packs and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Nick checked
his watch and saw that dawn was rapidly approaching.

About a
minute later, a blast made Nick jump, and he remembered Marcus and Red were
blowing a hole in the wall to retrieve their packs. Nick pulled a map out and
studied their route under a red penlight.

He had it
practically memorized, but with all the adrenaline pumping through him, he
wanted to etch it down in his mind once more. He traced their exit route with
his finger and worked on some contingency plans, trying to rehearse mentally
for worst-case scenarios.

Nick had
learned that when it came time to actually need a solution, you didn’t have a
chance to work one out. Marcus and Red returned, tossing two of their massive
packs into the truck bed. The truck bed shook with their weight, and Nick
wondered how the hell they had carried the things for two weeks straight.

Marcus and
Red departed for the other two packs, and Nick reviewed their route one final
time, studying it from where they sat to where he intended to cross the border.

Marcus and
Red lugged the final two packs into the truck bed, and Nick folded the map.
Marcus and Red stepped away again and entered the first room to carry al-Habshi
out. They hefted the man’s unconscious body into the truck bed and slid him
forward.

That must
have been some kind of drug because he never moved or made a sound. Nick
worried and checked his pulse. It still throbbed, though weaker than Nick would
have preferred.

“Let’s go,
Truck,” he hollered to the man still holding security.

Marcus
looked up and checked the sky for any cloud cover and the possibility of rain,
but stars flickered above them, mostly unobstructed. Red tightened a boot that
had loosened up on him while a scuffing sound pulled Nick’s eyes up from the
map he was stowing in his gear.

Nick watched
as Truck pushed himself to his feet. He then reached down, grabbed the RPK from
off its bipods, and trotted up to the truck.

“Let’s get
ready to move,” Nick said.

Truck handed
his machine gun to Red, who climbed up in the truck bed. Truck would be driving
since he was by far their most experienced driver.
After all, the man hadn’t
earned his nickname for just being a big, beefing machine with only one gear:
forward. Of course, his infamous reputation hit its peak while driving a heavy
truck as a contractor in Afghanistan. But he’d also been a tractor trailer
driver in the States, after being fired by said contractor.

Red lay the
RPK down in the bed, and Truck passed up several seventy-five round drums to
him. While they staged ammo, Nick said, “Red, put that gun on the cab of the
truck on its bipods and stay behind it. We’re probably going to need it.”

Marcus
jumped up in the crowded truck bed, as well, and Nick asked if they had grabbed
his Dragunov sniper rifle. Marcus pointed in the corner, and Nick leaned over
the bed to see it placed snugly among the soft packs, its scope facing up and
protected from the bumps they all knew would be coming.

The truck
bed was crammed pretty tight with their packs, the computer servers, and
al-Habshi sprawled across the back.

“You have
enough room, Marcus?” Nick asked.

“I’ll be
fine,” Marcus replied, as he bent over to rearrange and organize things better.
As Marcus created a firing position for himself at the back of the truck, Nick
grabbed Red’s AK-47 from him. Red passed him all his magazines, and Nick
stuffed them in pockets and pouches.

Nick checked
his gear one last time and checked the AK to confirm it was on safe. Truck
jumped in the driver’s seat, bitched loudly about the seat being too far
forward, and made adjustments to it and mirrors.

Nick pulled
the AK to his shoulder and aimed away from everyone at the wall of the
compound. He repeated the maneuver several times and reacquainted his eyes to
the notch open sights of the AK. He’d re-attach Red’s ACOG when dawn (and
daylight) arrived.

He lowered
the weapon and looked back at his team.

“Who’s ready
to go home?” he asked with a grin.

“I am,” Red
replied. “I haven’t seen a single woman, beach, or beer on this side of the
border. And that just ain’t healthy for a sane man.”

Truck guided
the Toyota down the hill closer to the compound’s front gate and stopped. Nick
pointed to the dashboard.

“Figure out
where the lights are and rehearse flipping them on and off,” he said. “If we
make contact, I want them instantly turned off so we’re not lit up like a
perfect target. The last thing I want is to catch some rounds through the hood
and into the engine block. I am
not
walking back.”

Truck
rehearsed flipping the lights on and off several times.

“Good to
go,” he said.

Nick nodded,
and Truck continued toward the gate, stopping five feet from it. Up close, with
the light beams shining on it, they saw the “gate” was a gate by name only. In
truth, it was a rotted, patched-up set of doors that weren’t heavy and daunting
at all, but rather shoddy and flimsy.

It wasn’t
even chained closed.

“Just hit
it,” Nick said. “And be ready to douse those lights.”

Truck edged
forward until the bumper made contact. He eased the truck forward, and the
gates half-collapsed, half-flopped open. As the driveway down the steep hill
became visible, Nick rolled his window down and pointed his AK toward the
front.

“Be ready,
Red,” he warned to the man above.

Red leaned
into his machine gun and braced himself. He pushed the wrap-around turban up on
his head to keep it out of his eyes and took a deep breath. Marcus stumbled on
gear as fought his way forward and took a position next to Red. He leveled his
AK toward what could be a mess of trouble. After all, who knew how many men
might be waiting for them?

There had
been shots, explosions, and shouts in the compound, which was presumably a
well-known Taliban site. Surely the sympathetic locals would respond. It was
more a matter of how many men down the hill might have climbed up to
investigate in the minutes they had been in the compound.

 

BOOK: Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3)
2.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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