Echo Six: Black Ops 8 - ISIS Killing Fields (18 page)

"How bad is it?"

He shrugged. "A bullet creased the skin, is all, a flesh wound."

"Yeah, it looks worse than that. Let me take a look."

He bent to examine the bloody tear in the camos. The wound was deep, almost an inch, deeper than he'd pretended, and strips of cloth had embedded in the bloody flesh.

"You need it cleaned up and a sterile dressing. I'll get Geena to take care of it."

He looked up. "Geena? Why Geena?"

"Because she's here and she's available. We’ll scour this place and look for any ISIS bastards we've missed, as well as any documents we can get our hands on. There's also the mystery of that door underground. There has to be something there, and I'm betting it's something important. What's the problem with Geena?"

"You know the problem. She's an Arab, and I'm a Jew."

He glared at him, angry at the idea of internal hatreds surfacing inside his unit. "She's an American employee of CIA. Forget her past, Guy. She's with us, not against us. Look how she pointed out the way into the fort. We'd never have made it without her."

"Still..."

At that moment, Geena came across to them and looked at the blood congealing on the Guy's pants. Her response was immediate, "Can I help you with that, Guy?"

He stared at her for a moment, embarrassed. "Sure, thanks."

Talley grinned and left them to it. Buchmann had disappeared through the doorway to the underground part of the fort. He was after an ISIS fighter who'd darted away when the Echo Six operators emerged. He left him to it and went across to where Bino was standing a few meters away from the prisoners. He waved a greeting and knew something was wrong, badly wrong.

The Iraqis hadn't gathered around the half dozen ISIS survivors, searching and disarming them. Instead, they’d formed a line a few meters away, like a firing party.

It’s a firing party! Jesus Christ!

He started to run, too late. Bino signaled his sergeant, and his men raised their assault rifles and pulled the triggers. The blast of gunfire ripped through the fort, which had gone quiet. The silence ended, as the screams of the wounded and dying vied with the gunshots to create a cacophony of agony.

"Bino, stop, tell them to stop!"

The young Lieutenant stared back at him, making no move to obey. "Why?"

Gunfire reverberated around the walls a few seconds more, and the noise ended as the last of the prisoners fell dead. Talley gripped his arm. "Don't you get it? Killing prisoners is a war crime."

"I don't care. They kill our men all the time if they capture them."

"It doesn't fucking make it right." He struggled to contain his anger, "Think about it. If you kill their men when you capture them, they'll keep on killing yours. Besides, they might have had valuable intel. We could have interrogated them."

"And then killed them?"

He sighed in frustration. "No. Oh, for Christ's sake. I hate this fucking place."

Bino smiled. "Syria?"

He was going to say Sandland, every square meter of the Islamic shithole, but he changed his mind. "Yeah, Syria. Listen, thanks for what you did. That was some rescue. We were about done. Where is Captain Salim?"

He kept his face neutral. "He’s guarding the position five kilometers away, where he can command and control the battle."

"Command and control, you mean you have working radios?"

"No."

It clicked a second later. "You and Buchmann persuaded him, but he was too yellow to come himself."

Bino chose his words carefully. "He is an astute leader, Commander Talley. He had a firm grasp of the battlefield and where it would be best for him to establish his command post."

"Away from where the bullets are flying."

This time, he grinned. "Exactly so."

At that moment, a burst of firing from the underground passage made him turn. He raced past Guy, who was climbing to his feet as Geena completed the dressing, and took the staircase three steps at a time. Buchmann was looking at the door, the one they'd failed to open. He looked around when he heard Talley.

"He went in here."

"That door? It opened?"

"And it shut, yes. There's someone inside. There has to be. Otherwise how could he have got it open?"

They examined the iron frame around the massive steel construction. It looked impossible to open from the outside. Therefore it had to open from the inside.

He stared at Buchmann. "How did they know he was out here, trying to get inside?"

"No idea, Boss, but someone inside knew. There're at least two of them in there now."

"Yeah, I get it. Stay and guard the door. I'll get Drew to look around and find more explosives. If anyone can blow this door, it's him."

"If anyone tries to get out?"

He thought for a moment, but if they were trying to make a run for it, he had little choice. "Kill them."

It's not like the situation with Bino, allowing his men to kill the prisoners. Is it?

Still troubled, he left the big German and went back up top. The shooting had stopped, although a thin veil of smoke hung over the fort. The Iraqis had manned the wall, and it looked as if they had it covered, with eyes on all sides. Rovere was there as well, ostensibly checking out the state of the walls. He waved when he saw Talley. He was keeping an eye on the Iraqis. Drew Jackson was prowling around the rubble, looking for ordnance, and he pointed toward the underground entrance.

"We still need to get that door open. See what you can find."

"Sure. I'll rig together a few grenades. That should do it. Or maybe fire an RPG at it. That would do it, too."

"See to it."

"Yeah. How much time do we have, Boss, before we pull out?"

"Plenty. They want us to hold this place for two days, make sure it sends ISIS a message."

"Two days, no problem."

He found Guy with Bielski, searching the rubble for signs of documents or other evidence. He gave him a cheerful smile. "We made it, Boss. Who'd have thought it? And those Iraqis came through for us as well."

He couldn't hide a slight smile. "They're not all bad."

A grunt. "Just most of 'em."

"Maybe. Where's Geena?"

He pointed toward the Oshkosh. "Bino's men took some hits. Two dead, one of them with a slight wound, she's patching him up."

"She did a good job on your leg."

He grimaced. "Not bad. What's our next move, call it in to Brooks, tell him we've taken the target? What is it, two days we're ordered to stay here?"

"Two days, yep, except we haven't taken the target. We still have to get inside the steel door underground. There could be a battalion of ISIS inside, chemical weapons, even nukes."

Guy grinned. "It could even be their private store of porn. They're hotshot rapists, these people."

"True. Whatever it is, I feel uneasy knowing some of them are down there. As soon as Drew blasts it open we'll know."

"Right. If it's porn, the Iraqis will love it. They go for that kind of thing."

"I'll pass it on to Bino."

He left Guy and went to find Geena. Her clothes were covered in blood. She was trying to stop a damaged artery from draining the lifeblood from a young Iraqi. He jumped up to the bed of the Oshkosh. "How is he?"

She gave a slight shake of her head. "Not good."

The soldier turned his head and murmured something in Arabic to Geena. She replied in the same language, and her voice was soft, comforting. He moved a fraction, and he made a convulsive movement as pain racked through him. His eyes filled with fear, and he called to her. The girl scooped him into her arms and held him close for several minutes. Then she eased him back to the bed of the truck.

Talley didn't need to ask. He'd seen enough men die from gunshot wounds in his time. He looked down and noticed two other bodies lying in the truck. Someone had covered them with ponchos, most likely Geena. She turned around to meet his gaze.

"How're things going, any problems? I'd like to think the shooting has stopped, so I can get on with my job hunting down documents and intel on ISIS."

"They're searching the place now."

"The fort is secure?"

"All except for that underground doorway. They're still trying to get inside."

She shuddered as he reminded her of the terrors she'd suffered during that long crawl. "I thank God we haven't got to go out the same way. I never want to see a tunnel again for as long as I live."

He grinned. "When we leave here, we're going out the front door, I guarantee. No more tunnels."

"Right. I have to make a start. You're not calling this in?"

"Not yet, no. Not until we know."

"It's your call."

She vaulted down from the truck and strode away, a slim, petite figure in bloodied clothing.

Guy was wrong about her. She's proved her worth
time and again.

Talley made a last patrol of the fort, making certain the men were all on alert. Rovere was still up on the walls. Vince stood astride the wreckage of the main gate, his eyes gazing into the distance, searching for any sign of the ISIS counterattack they knew would come, had to come. He hoped it wouldn't happen. It was even possible they didn't know their base had fallen. Equally, he had to allow for the worst. Problem was, they couldn't close the gates, not since the truck had smashed them down.

Bino joined him and waited in silence, as if for orders. Talley turned to him. "Lieutenant, get those gates closed. There's a good chance the enemy will hit us hard and try to take back the fort."

"But the gates are broken. It would take days to repair them, Commander."

"Use your initiative, man. Think of something you can use to close up the gap."

Bino looked around helplessly. "There's nothing. No timber, no ironwork, nothing."

"Bino, there's enough stone here to build a section of the Great Wall of China. You don't need it to last that long, but it'll protect us from bullets if they come."

"Stone? You want my men to carry lumps of stone to build a wall."

"That's the general idea, Lieutenant."

"Yes, Sir, I see, but..."

"Bino, I don't want a discussion. Tell them to build it. Otherwise when ISIS comes, they'll die. That should give them some motivation."

"You think they will come?"

He thought about the question. There'd been that ISIS warband somewhere between them and the Iraqi border. Maybe they'd lost them, but they had to anticipate the possibility they’d come to this place, even more so if an important weapons dump was underground. Whatever it was, they'd want to protect it. They'd also want to take revenge on the foreign troops who'd given them a bloody nose.

"Yes, they'll come."

Bino gulped and raced away, shouting for his men to come to him. He had the sense to leave ten of his soldiers on the walls to guard against attack. The rest he organized into a working party, scavenging the rubble for large chunks of stone, and then carrying them to the gateway. In a matter of minutes, the first layer of stone was in place. He was satisfied they were doing everything they could, and he went to find Geena.

He persuaded himself he wanted to make certain she found what she was looking for, anything that would give them a line on ISIS. Even if she didn't need his help, she'd gone through a lot for a non-combatant. She'd want someone to talk to, someone to unload to. That was his rationalization.

She was in the remains of what looked as if it had been the commandant's office. The air attack had torn it to shreds and started a fire that had destroyed almost everything. Still, fragments of paper had survived. She was kneeling on the floor, examining some documents when he entered the bombed out shell. She didn't hear him at first, but when he moved his boot, he knocked aside a loose stone and she looked up.

"Oh, I didn't know you were here. Is there a problem?"

"Nope, that's a negative. I came to see if you needed a hand. Things are pretty much sorted in the fort, so I'm a spare pair of hands."

"Right." She stared back at him, "Is that all?"

"All? What else could there be?"

He was achingly aware of her gaze, as if she could see all the way through him. "You tell me." She continued to regard him for a few moments, and then her face fell, "You thought I was about to fold after that underground crawl, that I couldn't hack it. You're watching me, Abe, isn't that right?"

He moved a step toward her. "You got it all wrong. I just..."

Her gaze was curious. "Yes?"

"I wanted to make sure you were okay. I don't mean like that. I just mean...I care about you."

"You care?"

She sounded incredulous, but as she moved, she tripped on the rubble, and he grabbed her to stop her falling. For some reason, they swayed together. She looked up at his face, and he looked down at hers. Their lips brushed as if some powerful magnetic force had pulled them together. He started to pull away from her, and then their eyes locked. He kissed her again, and this time their mouths explored each other hungrily until they broke apart, more from lack of oxygen than lack of desire.