by Tom Clancy
So he decided to set up here on a hill to lead the rest of the teams to the target and provide covering fire if necessary. He peered carefully through binoculars, noticed lights inside the building, but he also noticed something else. “There is no vehicle. How can someone get here without a car?”
Just then, the front door opened, and a man stepped out with a beer in his hand. He walked along a wooden porch, looking casually out at the wooded hills to the west.
Algiers held his radio to his mouth. “Yes. It’s him. I see him. It’s the President’s son. Drinking a beer on the front porch. He is not alerted at all.”
Al-Matari replied quickly. “Can you shoot him from there?”
“Possibly. I . . . have an AK, and I might hit him. But there is no optic on my weapon. If I miss he will flee inside and it will be harder for us to take him by surprise.”
“Wait, then,” al-Matari said. If the American was sitting around with a beer, then they should have no problem getting closer. “Do you see anyone else?”
“No one. There isn’t even a car in the driveway.”
“All other teams keep moving closer.”
70
John Clark really wished he could understand the voices on the scanner. He could hear the garbled transmissions of the terrorists through an earpiece in his right ear that searched and locked onto active UHF transmissions nearby. Several of the dead al-Matari men and women in the past weeks had been found with simple walkie-talkies on their bodies, so Clark had brought along the device to capture any comms. Some of the dead so far had been Americans, so he thought there was a good chance they would speak English over their radios.
But not this group, they were speaking quickly, and in various Arabic dialects, and he couldn’t understand a damn thing they were saying.
Even so, Clark touched the PTT button on the cord hanging from his ear, transmitting to the men on his encrypted mobile phone, which used a digital band and could not be picked up on the terrorists’ walkie-talkies. While he spoke he looked through the scope of his Remington 700 bolt-action rifle and whispered, not knowing where the terrorists were around him. “Be advised. I’ve got Arabic radio traffic in the vicinity. Within five hundred yards. Possibly much less. I only hear two voices speaking, and I do not have eyes on anyone at this time.”
He watched Jack Ryan continue to drink his beer on the porch swing, the last of the evening’s light fading by the minute. “That’s enough, Jack. Get back in, you’re a sitting duck out there.”
Jack stood up from the porch swing and idly walked back inside the cabin, closing the door behind him.
Clark scanned his weapon’s eight-power scope in all directions. The light was bad, but he didn’t want to take his eye out of the weapon to use his handheld thermal device, lest he see a target that needed to be immediately dispatched. So far he’d seen no threats, but he knew they were out here somewhere.
He was positioned on the ledge of a rocky hilltop that was only partially covered by trees, four hundred yards from the front of the cabin. Below the man-sized ledge was a steep decline of rolling hill covered in brush. This wasn’t an ideal location because he had no cover other than the lip of the ledge in front of him, but it was the only place to get good eyes on the entire scene and still have some standoff distance to use his sniper rifle. If he was sighted during a fight, he’d be a sitting duck, and he’d have no quick way to get off the ledge without standing and climbing higher up the hill.
He just hoped he was deep enough in cover that any of these ISIS terrorists wouldn’t see him, or step on him, for that matter, because he had no idea where these guys were right now.
Jack’s voice came over the earpiece. “See anything, John?”
“Nothing so far. But if they’re in the woods, I won’t see them till they get right up on top of you.”
Jack then said, “Ding?”
Chavez had positioned himself in a long narrow crawlspace attic, with darkened windows on the north side and the south side of the cabin. He could look out only one side or the other, and now he was facing south. “I’ve got nothing but some grazing deer. If the deer spook, then we’ll know the bad guys are getting close.”
Chavez turned around and went back up to the north side of the cabin, looked out the window there. It took him thirty seconds of crawling to get there. “No deer to the north. I don’t know if that just means there are no deer or if . . . wait one.”
He saw movement deeper in the trees, something darting through bushes. “John, get a scope on the north-side woods.”
After several seconds Clark’s voice came back over the net. “Nothing. Nothing on thermal, either, but that’s thick brush. I’m scanning south now.”
Chavez kept looking to the north through the window for a few minutes, and finally he saw two figures in the darkness there, moving toward the house. “I’ve got two pax. Working together, ten yards inside the tree line on the north. Both carrying weapons. I will engage them from here when they get in the open.”
“Roger that,” Jack said. Chavez knew Jack was at the top of the staircase in the cabin, looking down to the main room and the front door. For now, at least, Jack was completely on his own if anyone made it inside the building.
Clark said, “Once Ding fires, anyone else in the vicinity is going to go loud, so be ready.”
Chavez acknowledged the transmission, flipped the safety off on his suppressed SIG Sauer MPX nine-millimeter, and then he saw the two figures launch to their feet and begin running out of the trees and toward the house. They were twenty-five yards away and slightly to his left when Chavez said, “Engaging hostiles, north side.”
He jabbed the tip of the suppressor through the old plate-glass window, shattering one of the small panes, and then he fired burst after burst at the men running there. Flame blasted out of the window, illuminating him and his firing position, and just as both men dropped and rolled onto the grass on the north side of the house, the window frame on his left splintered violently.
Chavez dropped to his right onto the wooden-slat floor of the attic as the window burst in completely, showering him with glass, and he heard a Kalashnikov dumping rounds at his position. There was someone else in the woods he’d not seen, and they were letting him have it.
He shouted over the gunfire. “Two down, but I’m compromised up here and falling back! Unknown number of hostiles in the trees. Be advised, the north side is now open to the enemy!”
Chavez spun around and moved on his knees and elbows through the black crawl space, trying to get back to the south as fast as he could, hoping to get eyes on any targets there.
—
Abu Musa al-Matari reloaded his AK-103, after just expending an entire magazine at someone shooting from a window inside the cabin. He’d not expected the President’s son to have a weapon, or any security, but it was clear now he had one or both. He’d seen his two men on his right fall into the open ground next to the house, and he cursed the Saudi’s intelligence product. The folder had suggested this would be an easy kill. Al-Matari considered pulling back, but he and Omar were just twenty-five meters from the cabin now, and he had four more mujahideen around the property. He stood and ran forward, and Omar followed with his Uzi.
They’d made it only halfway across the grass to the side of the building when al-Matari heard a loud grunt behind him. He kept running but looked back over his shoulder, and saw Omar stumbling forward, his entire forehead had been blown off and away. The man’s body skidded in the grass and lay still, the Uzi sliding to a stop next to it.
Al-Matari slammed against the side of the log cabin, looked to his left and right, wondering what the fuck was going on here. He knelt down low, then looked back to Omar. From the direction he’d fallen, it was clear he’d been shot from someone firing from the front of the house, so al-Matari carefully and quietly headed around to the back.
—<
br />
Clark racked a fresh round from his five-round magazine into the chamber of his rifle. He then centered his scope back where the one man had fallen, looking for others. He tapped his transmit button. “Target eliminated, north side. One hostile made it to the cabin on the north. I do not have eyes on. Say again, one squirter made it to the north side of the building.”
Sudden cracks of gunfire below him to his right surprised him. He spun to the source, looked over his ledge and saw the flashes of a fully automatic rifle to the south, lower on the same hill he was on, some two hundred yards away. As the fire continued he heard Jack transmit.
“Taking fire from the west! Tearing up the downstairs windows below me. John?”
Quickly Clark centered his bolt-action rifle’s scope on the flashes, and squeezed off a .308 round at the gunfire.
The flashes stopped instantly.
—
Algiers had been ten feet away from the twenty-year-old Pakistani from Caltech when the man stood on the hillside and opened fire on the windows of the cabin, and then, before he’d gone through his first magazine, Algiers saw the man take a round from a high-powered rifle straight through the upper back.
He lay dead on his face in the dark now, skidding a few meters down through the grass.
Algiers spun around to scan up the hill, brought his binos to bear, but it was too dark for him to see anyone there until they fired again.
He transmitted on the walkie-talkie to the rest of the group. “Shooter at the top of the hill to the west. Four hundred meters from the cabin. Tripoli, can you see him?”
—
Tripoli was the only attacker still in the woods. He was on the south side, while his partner, a kid named Parvez who was from Pakistan by way of medical school in California, had made it to the cabin and was now moving around to the front. Once Parvez heard through the walkie-talkie that there was a shooter on the hill with a view to the front of the cabin, the young man dropped flat on the ground, terrified to move.
Tripoli aimed his RPG-7 at the hill, pointed it directly at the top, and waited. He took his hand off the front of the weapon and transmitted through his walkie-talkie’s headset. “Algiers, if you can find cover, I want you to fire at the hilltop to give me a target.”
In seconds the flashes of gunfire lower on the hillside started, along with the echo of an AK firing cyclic. Algiers kept shooting, but Tripoli just looked through the iron sights of his big rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, holding steady on the hilltop.
Finally there was a muzzle flash just below the crest of the hill, and Tripoli pressed the trigger on the RPG-7. As soon as he fired he threw his big weapon into the air away from him, and he ran toward the cabin with empty arms as fast as he could.
He didn’t want to be anywhere near the source of the incredible flash his RPG-7 created in case someone saw it.
—
Chavez had just arrived at the rear window when an RPG launched in the trees below him, lighting up the entire scene. He saw the rocket-propelled grenade’s flaming trail race up toward the hillside to his right, but he had no view of the impact. He then saw the man running from the launch with empty hands, but before Chavez could get his gun through the window to fire, the man disappeared below his position. Chavez shattered out the window and opened fire straight down, holding his sub gun out the window and dumping rounds without looking.
He heard a scream, and thought he might have hit someone there, but his weapon went dry before he could rake the area some more.
He knelt below the window to reload again.
—
John Clark saw the flash of the grenade launch in the distant trees, and the pinprick of swirling light coming right at him. Instantly he knew he’d been set up. The flashes lower on the hillside were just to get him to fire his weapon and reveal his position, and he’d done as the Islamic State fighters had planned.
The rocketeer’s aim was true. Even from this distance John could tell that it was going to make a direct hit on his position.
He knew the incredible impact would come, and there was nothing for him to do but cover his head, open his mouth to minimize the shock wave’s effect on his body, and take it.
Unless he threw himself off the ledge. It was the only way to get far away quickly.
John crawled forward on his knees and elbows, tumbled over his rifle on its bipod, and went off the side of the ledge. He thought about Sandy and Patsy, his wife and daughter, and he wished like hell he’d called them today to tell them he loved them.
—
Jack Ryan, Jr., had been completely out of the battle going on around him for the past minute. He just squatted low near the top of the stairs, eyeing the front door and the great room to his right, and listening to his two compatriots fight for their lives. He heard the explosion to the west.
Chavez came through his earpiece. “Ryan, you’ve got at least one squirter on the south side, as well as the one on the north. They are outside the cabin and I do not have eyes. I can hear shooting and explosion to the west, too. Clark, you have eyes on the shooter there?”
There was no response. “John?”
Jack said, “Ding, I’ve got a good position. Go help Clark.”
Chavez did not respond.
Before Jack could speak again, the front door to the cabin began splintering and pocking with incoming gunfire. Seconds later, a baseball-sized object flew through the window, slamming against the flat screen on the far wall. Jack retreated a few feet up the stairs, and the grenade detonated below on his right. It destroyed what was left of the great room, but he was safe from the blast.
He had just taken a step back down to increase his field of view when the door opened below and in front of him and two men reached in from opposite sides, one holding a submachine gun, the other a pistol.
Jack aimed his MPX at the gun on the right and fired, but missed, slamming his rounds into the sturdy walls of the luxury log cabin. The enemy fire all went straight into the main room, which meant they didn’t know he was on the stairs.
Shit, Jack thought. Until I just fired blindly at them. Now they know where I am.
As he considered leaving the stairs altogether and falling back to the upstairs hallway, a second grenade came sailing through the front door, right toward the top of the stairwell where Jack crouched. It was a perfect throw, giving him no time to back up the steps and get around the corner or dive down the stairs. He stood up fully, kicked at the spinning grenade, and sent it rocketing back down where it came from.
As soon as it was moving away from him he dropped flat on his back on the stairs.
The grenade bounced once on the hardwood floor and then detonated right in front of the doorway. Jack could hear a scream of agony even over the ringing in his ears.
But a second man spun in now, and fired at Jack with a pistol, holding it in his right hand while his left dangled at his side. Jack returned fire while still lying on his back near the top of the stairs, firing down between his open legs at the wounded man, taking him in the chest before he dropped to his knees, dropped his gun, then fumbled to get his hand onto a detonator swinging on a cable from his right sleeve.
Jack pulled his trigger, but his weapon was empty. He started to reach down to grab his pistol, then remembered he’d passed it to Davi, who was now down at the far end of the hall, hiding in the bathtub with Jack’s sister.
“Fuck,” Jack said—there was no way the S-vest wasn’t going to rip him to shreds from this distance.
Ding Chavez appeared in the hall right over Jack’s head, and he shot the wounded man at the bottom of the stairs, then shot him again and again when he realized he held a detonator in his hand.
The man fell onto his face, Ding grabbed Jack by the drag handle of his vest, and then pulled him up the stairs and around the corner.
Two seconds after they mad
e it to cover, the vest detonated below them.
“You hit?” Chavez shouted it over the ringing in his ears.
“No,” Jack shouted back. His own ears were ringing loudly. “Where’s Clark?” Jack asked as he began reloading his SIG.
“He’s off comms. Out there somewhere. I tried to get out on the roof but took fire from the west.” Ding said, “I think John got hit with an RPG.”
“Jesus Christ! We have to get to him.”
When Jack had reloaded and aimed his gun back around the corner toward the front door, Ding reloaded his own weapon. “We didn’t figure for so many shooters. Have you seen al-Matari?”
“No.”
Chavez said, “I shot some guys to the north. He might be one of them.”
They both listened for a moment. There was no more shooting. Chavez said, “I’m going for Clark. Check on your sister.”
Ding launched to his feet and ran down the stairs to look for Clark. Jack stood up as well, and had made it only a few steps up the hallway before he heard a series of loud noises from the master bedroom.
First, his sister screaming.
This was followed instantly by a pair of gunshots.
Jack ran as fast as he could up the hall.
71
Chavez raced out the front of the house with his SMG on his shoulder, and found himself face-to-face with a dark figure rushing up the driveway in his direction. The figure raised a weapon in surprise, though clearly the last thing this guy had expected to see was one of the defenders of the cabin charging out the front door.
Chavez was faster, and he took the terrorist in the chest with a two-round burst. He charged up to the man as he fell, kicked the man’s Kalashnikov away, and knelt over him, rolling him onto his back.
