Breaking Away (2 page)

Flash looked though his scope at the thermal images. A tango popped up, raised his rifle, took aim. Flash fired. The guy’s skull shattered, sending fragments into the air. The other terrorist turned to run, and Flash picked him off, too.

He swung his rifle toward the street. A man emerged from the building carrying a limp body over his shoulder. Oh, shit! It had to be Hawk and Cutter. Hawk had zigzagged only three quarters of the way across the street when the charges they’d set went off. The rumble of the detonation was a rushing train barreling straight at them, and the ground rose beneath Hawk’s feet in a wave, throwing him forward. The body he carried flew through the air and landed a few feet ahead of him at an awkward angle. The building they’d bombed leapt at least a foot in the air, then caved in on itself as the lower floors collapsed.

The roof Flash knelt on shuddered and shook as a dust cloud rose with the speed of a sandstorm, blocking his view. Rifle tucked against him, he rolled from his crouched position, grabbed his pack and raced for the stairs.

Cutter was dead. He had to be dead. He hadn’t even tried to catch himself. Nausea hit Flash’s stomach and he swallowed it back. They had to move out. And the other teammate, the one who’d climbed in through the window, was he buried in the debris? Was he dead?

Flash hit the door, and for a moment the darkness in the stairwell closed in around him. He shouldered his pack and paused to allow his eyes to adjust, his heart thundering in his ears.

He pounded down the rickety, uneven steps, his boots clattering and echoing as he went. Every terrorist within a ten-mile radius would be homing in on their position.
They had to get out of here.
He hit the door running, but pulled up to look out onto the street.

“Flash. What’s your position?” Hawk’s voice came over the com. He sounded out of breath.

“I’m a hundred feet east from your position.”

“Stay where you are, we’re on our way.”

The dust hadn’t yet settled on the street when four men hobbled out of the cloud, gritty sand and concrete debris painting them a ghostly gray-white. Doc supported Hawk on his left side. Strong Man had shouldered Cutter’s dead weight in a fireman’s carry, and Bowie brought up the rear, his MP-5 submachine gun at the ready. None wore a Boonie hat or helmet. Which one of them had disappeared solo into the building while Hawk searched for Cutter? And how the hell had he gotten out?

“On point, Flash,” Hawk said, cradling his MP-5 against his right side his finger hovering above the trigger.

“Movement from the east here,” Greenback said through the com from his position directly ahead, where he’d been guarding their back door.

Every nerve in Flash’s body went on high alert as they hoofed it down the street toward Greenback.

“Patrol coming at you,” Greenback announced. Flash signaled
go for cover
, though the men were already scattering into the dark doorways and alleys along the way.

A truck sped past. A few moments later more tangos followed on foot. Lights came on in some of the buildings surrounding them while shouts sounded from up the block.

Flash stepped out of the alleyway and hugged the shadows as he double-timed to the end of the block to scout out their position. A crowd moved up one of the side streets. He dodged into the open door of an abandoned building and thumbed his com button. “More movement coming from the side streets from the east. Drop back one block west.”

He took his own advice and circled around to the next block. A man stepped out onto the cracked sidewalk, a rifle cradled in the bend of his arm. Every muscle tensed, Flash sank back into a doorway and froze. The man jogged past him in the direction of the crowd.

They had to get out of the area
right fucking now
. Flash ran past the last two doorways and, sliding along the edge of the structure, slipped into the alley behind it. He signaled on the com and the team stepped out of hiding and hustled toward him. Derrick was breathing hard from carrying Cutter’s two hundred pounds plus his pack, so Bowie gave Strong Man a breather by taking Cutter, while Strong Man moved to the rear.

“We have to get off the street,” Flash said quietly. He radioed Greenback with coordinates. Two minutes later Greenback joined them.

“I’ve scouted a location where we can hole up and triage,” Greenback said. He led them through a network of dark alleys into one of the abandoned buildings. A small section of stairs leading to the second floor hung suspended by twisted metal supports, the rest having been blown away. “This way,” Greenback motioned them through a hallway to a back staircase that looked somewhat more stable. Flash climbed the stairs on point.

The building was a complex of one bedroom apartments. Flash positioned Greenback on the stairs and took Strong Man with him to do a room-to-room check of the second floor, then returned to the others.

“It’s clear,” Flash said.

Doc settled the two injured men in one of the rooms at the back of the structure. Hawk lowered himself to the floor while Bowie, with Doc’s help, laid Cutter next to him.

Flash stood by, poised to help, as Doc broke open his pack, snapped and shook a glow stick for some light and examined Cutter. “He’s got a concussion for sure. I can feel a massive bump on the side of his head, and one of his pupils is sluggish. He may have a fractured skull. He’s not going to come round any time soon. We need to make a stretcher.”

What the hell had happened to Cutter?

Hawk used his SOG knife to split the seam of his pants and exposed a knee puffed up like a soccer ball. More bad news, as he clearly wasn’t going to be able to walk on that leg.

Since Doc and Bowie were helping the wounded, Flash said, “I’ll take care of the stretcher.” He worked his way through the rooms one by one, looking for any kind of supports he could use. Five apartments down the hall he found an old bed frame. The mattress was long gone, but the bed frame was still nailed together. He jerked the structure up, and using his SOG knife, loosened the nails enough to tear the sides free of the head and footboard. Then he jogged down the hall to the stairwell to hit up Greenback and Strong Man for their t-shirts.

Returning to the room Doc was using as a temporary ER, Flash set aside his rifle and the boards. While Bowie finished wrapping Hawk’s knee Flash scrounged the other teammates’ t-shirts and created a stretcher for Cutter. Now they needed to get the hell out of here.

“I’ve positioned Strong Man at the east corner of the building. Bowie, take a position on the west,” Flash said.

“Roger,” Bowie said and jogged from the room.

Flash reported to Hawk, “Greenback is covering the stairwell, and I’m setting up a defensive position on the roof if I can find a way up there.”

In the dull light of the glow stick, he watched Doc insert an IV into Cutter’s arm.

“As soon as Doc has Cutter stabilized we’ll move out. They’ll be expanding their search for us,” Hawk said. “And we only have an hour to make it to the extraction point.

“Roger that.”

Flash pulled a map from his pack. Now their route was compromised, they’d have to plot an alternate. Using the light of the glow stick, he and Hawk plotted a new course that might get them to the extraction coordinates in time.

Finding no way to get to the roof, Flash took position at the south side of the building. Movement up and down the street, sporadic at first, grew more frequent with every passing moment. His tension escalated.

“We’re moving out,” Hawks voice came over the com.

Flash’s relief was short lived. As he double-timed it down the hall, he had to wonder how the hell they were going to slip through enemy lines with a man on a stretcher.

They’d find a way.
They never left a man behind.

And if they had to, they’d fight their way across Fallujah.

Bowie and Strong Man took up the stretcher. Doc secured the IV bag between Cutter’s legs, then moved to help Hawk keep the weight off his injured knee. That left only Flash and Greenback to cover the team front and back.

Greenback led them to the back entrance of the building while Flash stepped out into the alley and worked his way to the southern end. Seeing the street deserted, he gave the all clear. The rest of the team followed him west across several streets and along alleys littered with refuse and sewage.

Two pickup trucks sped past through the intersection ahead of them, followed by a group of twenty men on foot. He signaled the team to take cover as he pulled up tight against the rough concrete building. The air that had felt clammy before seemed to cling to his skin like mist. The weight of his pack scraped against the building and tugged at his shoulders. His grip on his rifle tightened and sweat trickled between his shoulder blades.

As they waited, Bowie and Strong Man crouched over the stretcher, shielding Cutter from possible attack. The building’s back door swung open with a clang and a young boy of perhaps eight darted into the alley. Dim light from the stairwell spilled over Strong Man and he looked up, his blond, close-cropped hair exaggerating his American features. Time slowed to a crawl.

Flash’s stomach cramped as he leveled his rifle, the only suppressed weapon in the group, and targeted the boy. His heart lurched.
Dear God, he couldn’t kill a kid.

The child’s eyes widened and he staggered back, and would have sprung back up the stairs, had Hawk not shoved the door closed and leaned back against it. The light cut off, Flash blinked and waited for his vision to readjust to the dark, but he was aware of movement as the kid pivoted to flee.

Once his vision cleared, he saw Strong Man had the kid hugged back against his much larger frame, his hand covering his mouth. He reached his free hand inside his TAC vest and the boy froze. Strong Man extended his hand. A candy bar lay in his palm. His softly breathed words didn’t reach Flash, but the boy’s body relaxed and after a moment he nodded, reached for the candy, then snatched it out of Strong Man’s hand.

Strong Man continued to speak close to the boy’s ear until the terrorists had passed. Flash watched the men’s progress down the street, then gave the all clear.

Strong Man released the kid, patted his shoulder, then took up the stretcher. Flash looked back to see the boy standing at the corner watching their progress down the next alley.

If he alerted his family—

But hurting a kid wasn’t an option. He was an innocent bystander.

They had to get the fuck out of Dodge!

They moved west through an area of buildings that had been scarred and damaged by heavy artillery. Rubble clogged the streets, and it was slow going. But the surrounding wreckage also insured there were no civilians to contend with, and no patrolling militia.

The sound of an engine revving in the distance grabbed Flash’s attention. The Iraqis seemed to have a never-ending supply of small pickups to transport men and weapons, and every one of them was rolling through the area searching for them right now. And coming damned close.

Flash strained to hear where the closest approaching pickup was located. When the sound dissipated into the distance he relaxed, only to tense again when male voices reached him from only fifty feet or so to the west. Right where they needed to go.

When the team reached the only structure still standing, Flash signaled a halt until the tangos passed.

“We’re only about three hundred meters from the pickup point,” Hawk muttered.

It might as well be three thousand. How much longer could their luck hold?

The team slipped around the corner and double-timed it silently up the street. The sound of footsteps echoing through the silence reached Flash only an instant before a patrol turned the corner directly in their path. The entire street stretched before them, concrete slabs, sand, and nothing else. The little asphalt remaining on the road was old and crushed by heavy traffic. Only the concrete walls the Iraqis usually built around their houses offered cover. Finding a breach in one of the structures surrounding a business, Flash motioned for the team to take cover behind the barrier. Once they were concealed, he slid in behind Greenback and braced his back against the wall.

Moments later, footsteps crunched the gritty concrete debris on the other side of the wall. With an effort, he kept his breathing slow and easy, but rested his finger on his rifle’s trigger. Adrenaline pumped through his system in a rush, warming his cheeks. Every nerve in his body fired. His hearing became hypersensitive to the sounds emanating from the other side of the wall.

The barrel of a rifle, followed by a head and shoulders, thrust through the breach they’d used. Flash tensed, ready to swing his rifle toward the tango.

“Gabir.”

The man turned back toward the voice behind him, his AK-47 disappearing from sight.

The voice continued in Arabic, “We will go south and help search the buildings. The Americans have to be hiding there.”

The tangos’ movements grew fainter as they continued down the street. Flash drew a shaky breath and heard Greenback do the same. He fell in behind the tangos, and, using his rifle’s thermal scope, monitored their progress up the street. He turned the scope farther north. Nothing.

“It’s clear for now. Move out.” At this rate they were going to miss their pickup window, and there were more patrols looking for them every minute. Shouts came from up the street and the sound of a truck accelerating revved from somewhere close by.

The team broke into a trot. Flash glanced over his shoulder and saw the grimace of pain on Hawk’s face, but he was keeping up without Doc’s aid. It would be really good if they could find transport about now. A truck came around the corner, swinging wide, the vehicle’s headlights highlighting every detail of their position. The three men in the truck bed opened fire.

CHAPTER 1