The Alpha Chronicles (33 page)

Pulling a white towel from the cart, Nick stuffed a corner in the barrel of the rifle and tested his white flag. Looking around at the curious men, he said, “Here goes nothing,” and began walking toward the Berber homestead.

He hadn’t made it 100 yards when a shot rang out from the house, the round puffing the desert sand in front of the big man. Turning immediately and running back to the ditch, he commented, “Fuck those guys.”

Nick uncapped the
24-x scope mounted atop the rifle and began scanning the distant holdout. While he still couldn’t detect any movement, the magnified optic allowed for a detailed examination of the premises. Making sure the weapon wasn’t loaded, he swept right and zoomed in on Deke’s team, verifying they were in position. Despite the double-check that no round was in the chamber, Nick didn’t center the crosshairs on any friendly, a habit of safety developed long ago when using a weapon’s optic to scout.

Tony whispered, “Are we going to rush the house, Nick?”

Shaking his head, the big man answered, “We’re all going to stay right here… all safe and sound while I rain down pure hell on those stupid shits inside that trap.”

“I don
’t understand? Won’t they just stay in the house?”

“Walls don’t stop bullets, Tony. Not
even brick walls. As a matter of fact, a medium caliber rifle like this one will turn those walls into shrapnel.”

“Really? That bad?”

“Watch. They won’t be able to hole up in there forever, taking pot shots at the respectable citizens of Alpha.”

Nick inserted a magazine into the big rifle, tugged once to make sure it was secure
, and then slapped the bolt release. A round entered the chamber, and the rifle was ready to fire.

At his current distance of 450 meters, Nick made an educated guess at the bullet drop. Speaking quietly to Tony, he narrated his scouting. “So if I’m
in that house, I’m trying to peek out the windows and make sure someone is not sneaking up on the place. Only the east-facing window has a view of both the front and side of the house, and that’s where I’d put one man. I’d do the same in the back.”

Nick paused for a moment to adjust his position and then continued. “So if I’m watching out that window, I would also want to cover the front door – just in case. That means I would be facing the front of the house, or on the north side.”

Nick’s view through the crosshairs was enlarged to the point where he could see old paint peeling from the window frame’s exterior. There were ratty looking, off-white curtains covering the opening, and one pane of glass was cracked.

“Going hot,” he said to everyone within earshot.

All eyes were on the distant structure when Nick sent the first round. A puff of dust appeared on the exterior wall a little low of where Nick had predicted a man would be hiding. Nick adjusted his aim and started firing in earnest.

Round after round ate at the blocks as Nick walked the shots around the home. After the first two shots
in the vicinity of the window, Nick adjusted his aim and sent high velocity lead slamming into the wall at four to six inches above the floor.

Nick paused to change magazines, Tony taking advantage to ask, “Why are you shooting so low, Nick?”

With a grimace, Nick responded, “If you were in that house, wouldn’t your ass be hugging the floor? Why waste the ammo firing above their heads? This way, we might injure one or two of them so they know we are serious, but not so much that we can’t figure out what they are after.”

After reloading, he paused and looked around at his team. There were a few bolt-action deer rifles, one
shotgun, and an AR15 among the group. “Start putting rounds into that window – hit the curtains,” he ordered. “We’ll see if a little smoke helps those guys decide they’ve had enough.”

“Smoke?” asked one of the shooters.

“That lead coming out of your barrel is hot… damn hot. Just about any cloth, like those curtains, will ignite if enough rounds hit it.”

Serious amounts of lead started pummeling the hapless structure. While the hunting rifles couldn’t fire nearly as fast as the semi-automatics, they were chambered in a larger caliber, each shot causing more and more visible damage.

Damn
, thought Nick, as he watched his team pummel the structure.
That has to be pure hell inside those walls.

Sergeant Mitchell had been in a few firefights before, but those encounters were with American units that always held the
upper hand. Now he knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a hopeless situation. Their attempt to interrogate that Bishop character had been an epic-fucking-fail and now they were pinned down inside this death-trap.

A choking cloud of dust filled the air while splinters and
shreds of concrete flew everywhere. The sharp, snapping sounds of lead striking the exterior wall joined the constant rattle of debris striking the floor.

It was practically impossible for Mitchell to breathe or open his eyes. Bits of stinging mortar and shredded plaster were flying everywhere, the larger chucks causing pain as they struck his prone body. As the rounds moved away from his position, he too
k advantage of the brief pause and yelled for the closest private, “Get to the back of the house – now!”

The man didn’t move. As Mitchell crawled past, he noticed a growing pool of purple underneath the body and knew one of the bullets had found its mark.

His other man was pinned down next to the window, frozen motionless by either fear or the swarming, stinging storm of incoming fire and the blizzard of deadly shrapnel it created.

Belly crawling toward the rear of the house, Mitchell found a spot that seemed to afford some protection, at least for the moment. As he adjusted his position, there was a slight give in the floor under his elbow. Curious, he felt around the wooden strips and detected a
thin seam.

Mitchell pulled his knife and inserted it into a straight, obvious cut in the wooden planks. Prying with the blade, he was soon looking down into a small root cellar, the area just big enough to hold his body
, about three feet deep.
Praise the lord
, he thought.
I don’t like close places, but I’ll do anything to get out of this death trap.

A few moments
later, Mitchell pulled the trapdoor closed over his head and relaxed.

Nick went back to spreading his shots at floor level, working the impact randomly to deliver maximum terror to the inhabitants. Three minutes later, a curtain began smoking, quickly followed by visible flames. Nick adjusted his aim to the window, waiting on someone to
show up and extinguish the burning cloth. No one did.
Come out
, he thought.
Get out of there and surrender. Burning isn’t a good way to go.

He waited until the entire opening filled with a boiling black smoke, licks of red flame filling the now-glassless frame.

“Cease fire,” he ordered. “They’re dead.”

“What?” asked a surprised
Tony. “How do you know?”

“If anybody inside that house was alive, they would either be pouring out the doors or trying to put out the fire. I know – I was just inside a burning building. They’re dead or unconscious, which is one and the same about now.”

“Shouldn’t we go try and pull them out?”

“No. I’m not risking a single man on that shit. They could have raised a white flag and surrendered. They had plenty of time.”

Nick waved his team forward, and the men began a cautious movement toward the residence. Taking random turns, each would jog 15-20 steps and then go prone. By the time they were close to the structure, the blaze had spread to the roofline and flames showed clearly in three windows.

The team eventually halted their approach, the spreading inferno confirming Nick’s prediction of zero survivors. Turning away in disgust, he faced the men and experienced a vision that was dark and troubling - medieval. A ring of men surrounded a burning home… human flesh inside… the reflection of the flames shining off the attackers
’ eyes, flickering reflections illuminating weapons of war.

Nick’s mind visualized the Berber home as a castle, his team the victorious
pike men and knights from an age long past. The haunting scene could have been a village in Vietnam, or an earthen hut in the path of a conquering Khan.
How many times has the vanquisher stood and watched a foe’s stronghold burn to the ground? We’re all thinking the same thing. Wondering what it would be like to be inside of that inferno – what it would feel like to be dying in such a way.
The primitive, raw darkness of the event was disturbing.

Deke moved to Nick’s side, his perception and experience giving insight to Nick’s thoughts. “Shit like this happens too often,” the contractor commented, “but you did it the right way. There wasn’t any other option.”

Nick shook his head in disgust, “That doesn’t make it any less fucked up. My mind is already polluted from seeing this shit too many times. You’re probably right there with me.” The big operator turned and pointed at his team, “But these guys are family men… civilians who didn’t sign up for this bullshit. Peaceful men that shouldn’t have to wake up in a damp sweat from the nightmares.”

“You know it would feel a lot worse if we were preparing to bury one of your peaceful civilians right now.
That would be a worse head-fuck. You did it the right way, man. Those guys in the house committed suicide – no one made them do it.”

Nick nodded, appreciating Deke’s words and the consideration behind them.

The big man turned to his men and shouted, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Mitchell couldn’t stay in the hole any longer. At one point, the heat from the fire had convinced him he was going to be baked alive in his subterranean oven
, but it had faded just as he felt like he couldn’t take any more. Then the thirst had started, no doubt the dehydration accelerated by the perspiration pouring from his pores to fight the heat.

Twice he had lifte
d his arm to push open the trapdoor, but the sound of what could have been human voices thwarted the attempt. Now, he didn’t care if the burned-out home was surrounded by riflemen ready to shred his body to bits – he had to get out.

Slowly pushing up on his coffin lid, the rush of cool air entering the root cellar gave him strength. He had sensed darkness had fallen, but was relieved to glimpse a view of the night sky above. Opening the door further, he panicked for a moment when he met resistance. Timbers or part of the roof had collapsed on top of his exit and visions of being trapped forever and dying
in the small space filled his mind.