The Enemies of My Country

by Jason Kasper

  “It’s on the move—BK made it out.”

  I keyed my radio.

  “Cease fire, cease fire, cease fire.” The chatter of assault rifle and machinegun fire went quiet, and I continued, “BK is on the move. Haul ass to our trucks—we’re going to interdict him on the road.”

  Cancer ran down the hillside, his footfalls displacing crumbling chunks of shale. He felt ridiculous in his ghillie suit, the sand-colored strips of burlap trapping his body heat while giving the appearance of a highly flammable human bush scrambling downhill.

  Then there was his sniper rifle, which had been fantastic for destroying the rear vehicle’s engine block before Worthy’s rocket turned the kill zone into a whitewash of smoke and sand. Now, the Barrett .50 cal in his grasp was little more than a five-foot-long, thirty-pound burden threatening to topple him over as he ran toward his team’s two vehicles at the bottom of the hill.

  Once they’d gotten into position for the ambush, those vehicles were to serve one, and only one, purpose: to speed the men to their pickup point along the Agency ratline, where they’d be whisked out of the country before any coherent search effort could mobilize to find them.

  There was nothing in the mission description about tear-assing around Syria, however briefly, in the hunt for an escaped vehicle with their target inside. Still, he could see the logic—there was an overland route by which they could intercept the curving canyon road as it emerged onto flat ground, and perhaps a brief diversion was in order to make it there. If the team arrived quickly enough, they could smoke the target vehicle in a hasty ambush.

  The question was whether they could make it there before their target slipped away for good.

  Nearing the bottom of the hill, Cancer caught sight of one of his team vehicles ripping east across the desert. Not until he’d threaded his way between boulders at the base of the hill did he see the second—a sand-covered SUV idling with Ian at the wheel.

  Cancer yanked the rear door open, angling his massive sniper rifle inside without banging the scope out of alignment. He’d barely felt the seat beneath him before Ian floored the gas, causing the door to slam shut as they gained speed over the desert.

  David turned around in the passenger seat and fixed Cancer with an accusatory glare. “What took you so long?”

  Reilly braced himself in the pickup bed, doing his best to remain standing.

  Trying to hold his machinegun stationary on the roof of the cab was like trying to use chopsticks while riding a rodeo bull. The truck pitched and bounced over the rolling terrain, causing the machinegun bipod to carve across the roof in ear-piercing metallic screeches as Reilly fought to stay upright, much less keep the big gun pointed forward.

  The ammo presented an additional complication—for the ambush, Reilly had been able to neatly S-fold his ammunition belt in advance. Now, he had to control an ammo bag while keeping the belt angled evenly into the gun, all while trying not to die as Worthy sped them forward.

  Ian transmitted, “Looks like BK is exiting the canyon—we should have eyes-on any second now.”

  Reilly scanned the foothills to their front, catching sight of the target vehicle as it emerged a moment later. It was already speeding out of the canyon, perhaps three hundred meters distant and gaining ground fast on the mostly level dirt road. He couldn’t tell at a glance if any men—any living men, at least—were in the back, but the pickup itself looked like it had just driven smoking out of some fresh hell. Its front half was coated in black ash and marked by shattered windows; its Islamic State flags flapped in tatters.

  Astonishingly, there were survivors in the truck bed—Reilly knew this from the sparking muzzle flashes opening fire toward him.

  Grabbing one leg of the bipod to steady it on the roof of the cab, Reilly took aim and loosed a long burst at the truck.

  The orange streaks of his tracer rounds interspersed with ball ammunition arced toward the pickup, his first burst landing short as Reilly struggled to adjust his fire. By the third burst he was dropping rounds with general accuracy, the bullets kicking up clouds of sand around the pickup and sparking off the cab as enemy fire continued. Between machinegun bursts, Reilly registered the crack of incoming bullets slicing through the air overhead.

  Worthy cut a hard right as they met the dirt road, causing Reilly to nearly fly out of the truck bed.

  He slammed a fist on the roof of the cab. “Easy, will you? Trying to shoot here!”

  “Sorry about that,” Worthy yelled back.

  Now, at least, Reilly had a straightforward shot to the target vehicle, which had black smoke billowing in its wake as it struggled to maintain speed. Lining up his iron sights on the fleeing truck, Reilly prepared to fire his next burst—then halted abruptly with two muttered words.

  “Well, shit.”

  Civilian vehicles were pulling off the road, scrambling out of the way to make room for the war-ravaged pickup bowling toward them. It was as if a convoy of innocent bystanders had suddenly appeared at the most inopportune time, and a split second later, Reilly realized why: they were approaching a village, the flat roofs carving a swatch out of the morning horizon.

  No matter how well he attempted to aim from the moving vehicle, he could no longer shoot without indiscriminately sending bullets into the civilian populace. He held his fire, fearing that his target was about to escape for good.

  But then he saw that it may not matter anyway—the target vehicle was starting to fishtail across the road, the damage to it finally taking hold. As it careened into the outskirts of the village, the rear end pivoted violently to the left. The enemy driver tried to steer out of the turn, but overcorrected and sent his truck into a barreling roll.

  Flooring the accelerator, Worthy watched the enemy pickup flip sideways three times before crashing to a halt in the village.

  He pulled on his seatbelt and shouted to Reilly.

  “Hold onto something, bud, I’m going to ram ’em.”

  Reilly screamed an exasperated response over the roaring engine.

  “Well that’s just super!”

  Worthy smiled to himself, thinking that Reilly would do the same if he were behind the wheel. Their jobs had all the potential for physical injury that professional football players faced—minus, of course, the paycheck and fame and cheerleaders. Add in the threat of imminent death at any moment, however, and the two careers were virtually indistinguishable.

  He transmitted to the other truck, referring to David by his callsign.

  “Suicide, what’s your ETA?”

  No response.

  Could have been a simple radio issue, or could have been David’s truck getting tangled up with some enemy force along the way, but in any case, there was no time to consider it.

  He was closing with the enemy truck, now inverted on the main road leading into the village. Worthy couldn’t tell if there were any survivors, though he made out a few black-clad bodies of ISIS fighters strewn across the dirt.

  With the enemy truck’s engine block serving as its center of gravity, striking the rear quarter panel should cause the truck to spin and shake up any survivors in the cab. All Worthy needed was a few seconds to dismount and light up his target in the passenger seat, gaining his team a confirmed “jackpot” and getting the hell out of Dodge before enemy reinforcements could arrive.

  He was seconds away from impact, barreling into the village at fifty miles per hour, when one of the enemy fighters on the ground recovered his weapon. Worthy scarcely registered the movement, hearing instead the long burst from an AK-47 as bullets pockmarked his windshield and rattled into the engine block.

  Worthy cut the steering wheel to the right, keeping his head low as the gunfire continued, growing in volume until his truck ran over the enemy fighter with a lurching thump. Then he steered left, aligning his bumper with the enemy truck’s rear quarter panel and smashing into it. The impact threw him forward against his seatbelt.

  Braking to a sudden stop that brought with it a c
rashing sound from the truck bed—Reilly and his machinegun coming safely to rest, he presumed—Worthy glanced in his side-view mirror to see the enemy pickup completing a full rotation on its roof. He found his rifle half-wedged in the passenger seat footwell and snatched it up before shouldering his door open.

  Worthy absorbed the chaos all around him: women screaming, civilians running for cover, the choking stench of gasoline and smoke from both his own wounded truck and the upended pickup.

  He didn’t bother checking on his teammate—Reilly could fend for himself, and the best thing Worthy could do for him now was to punch BK’s ticket for good, allowing the entire team to escape with mission success intact. Now that they were compromised, every passing second in the Syrian village increased the danger to their lives. With David calling the shots, that danger wasn’t likely to end until BK was dead.

  Worthy raced to close the distance to the enemy vehicle, skidding to a halt beside the engine block before kneeling to take aim within the cab. Gunfire had carved long scrapes along the cab before ricocheting or boring into the truck, whose windshield was shattered by the triple roll that had crippled it for good.

  But the truck was empty.

  Before Worthy could fully process the implications of this discovery, he heard Reilly’s belt of machinegun ammo jangling as his teammate ran toward him.

  “I’m fine, in case you were wondering.”

  Worthy rose to a crouch, scanning the surrounding buildings in a desperate attempt to determine BK’s location. They would have to get off the street in a matter of seconds—he and Reilly were completely exposed to view from countless buildings, any one of which could hold enemy combatants ready to deal themselves into a gunfight.

  Just as this thought occurred to him, sparking muzzle flashes erupted from a darkened window across the street, and the first bullets impacted the truck to his front.

  Ian sped toward the village, catching his first glimpse of Worthy and Reilly: they were pinned down behind the wreckage of the enemy truck, rounds kicking up sand around them. He couldn’t tell where the enemy fire was coming from, but apparently the men in his truck could.

  From the passenger seat, David asked, “Cancer, where do you want to set up?”

  “Park next to that gray building.”

  Ian squinted through the windshield. Half the buildings in the village were gray. He steered toward the nearest one on the left.

  “Not that gray building,” Cancer reprimanded him, “the one to the right! How am I supposed to engage from over there?”

  Ian adjusted course, suddenly far out of his depth. These men were all seasoned fighters; by contrast, he was an intelligence operative, more suited to analysis than combat. Sure, he could shoot and move when he had to, but he lacked his teammates’ reptilian reflexes. If he could have somehow manned his surveillance equipment from a remote location, he knew that David would have kept him off the firing line.

  He slowed as they approached the building, and Cancer spoke again.

  “Park with the bumper facing our two o’clock.”

  Ian cut the wheel and braked to a halt, expecting some shouted order or criticism, but instead, David said calmly, “Ian, on me.”

  That was it, he thought; three words, no further explanation of where they were going or why.

  Then the two men were out of the vehicle, David circling behind it and Cancer setting the bipod of his sniper rifle on the hood.

  Ian was prepared to run straight toward the row of buildings opposite the enemy truck, and instead saw David cut left and begin a semicircle route.

  Ian stutter-stepped and changed course to follow, hearing Cancer’s voice over his earpiece.

  “Get outta the way, asshole.”

  He suddenly realized David’s circuitous route was to clear a line of fire for Cancer, and he’d barely made it four steps when the sniper rifle blasted behind him.

  It was a monumental sound, a .50 caliber gunshot heard at close range that was followed by several more at two-second intervals. Ian saw gaping holes being bored below the window of a building directly ahead of him. That was exactly where David was heading.

  Guess that’s where the bad guys are, Ian thought. David never moved this quickly unless there was some risk of death to be taunted.

  Ian struggled to keep up, bursting through the doorway and moving to the corner opposite David. He visually cleared one corner, then the next, coming to a halt in preparation for David’s announcement that the room was clear.

  But David was already moving into the next room, not knowing or caring that Ian could barely keep pace.

  Apparently Cancer had seen them enter, because his voice crackled over Ian’s earpiece.

  “Shifting fire.”

  By now Ian was in the next room, trying to clear his corners but instead cracking his knee against a side table that crashed into a couch. Then Worthy transmitted, “Racegun and Doc consolidating on target building.”

  “Copy,” David replied. Ian only heard the response over his earpiece, not in person—David had already moved into the next room. Ian rushed to follow, entering a kitchen with an open door leading into an alley.

  David stood beside the doorway, his barrel angled outside. Ian started to move to him, then noted with surprise that two young women were in the room, both tucked into the corner.

  Ian raced to David’s back, giving his shoulder a squeeze to indicate he was ready to move.

  But instead of flowing outside to continue the hunt for BK, David kept his eyes forward and asked, “They here yet?”

  Ian blinked. “Who?”

  As if on cue, Worthy and Reilly charged into the room.

  They’d just been pinned down and very nearly shot, yet both men looked calmer than Ian felt in that moment. Worthy gently pushed Ian out of the way, assuming the number two position behind David. “My truck’s down, engine is shot out,” he said quietly.

  Reilly nodded to the two women and said, “Hello, ladies,” before jostling into the number three position, relegating Ian to the rear of the stack and muttering, “Pick up rear security.”

  Then David flowed into the alley, with his team following behind.

  I moved quickly, scanning for any indication of BK’s path. It was impossible to discern his footprints from the countless marks on the dirt path, and I threaded my way around clotheslines and children’s bicycles that had been abandoned after shooting had begun.

  There wouldn’t be much to see—a door left ajar, if I was lucky—but I continued with the grim determination that this was our last opportunity, and the clock was ticking down to BK escaping forever.

  Granted, the wheels had already come off this mission. But if we were going to get BK, now was our chance. He was on the run with at least one additional fighter—probably his driver—after Cancer’s .50 caliber rounds had sufficiently dissuaded them from remaining in place. We had a very momentary advantage in numbers and firepower, but it wouldn’t last. BK’s trip hadn’t been a social call; he was on his way to meet with some very bad people, who would be arriving any moment to rescue him.

  The alley took a sharp turn, paralleling the village’s main road. Cancer would have just lost his line of sight to our progress, and I suppose it didn’t matter much—any fighting at this point was going to occur up close and personal.

  Turning the corner with my rifle raised, I took aim at a figure tucked into the corner junction of two walls—an unarmed man, looking at me not with defiance but eager opportunity. He urgently pointed to the door of the building beside him, and I gave him a nod of understanding before running toward it.

  The man didn’t know who we were, only that we weren’t ISIS, and that seemed to be motivation enough for him to help.

  I threw the door open and flowed inside, cutting left to clear a blind corner and hearing my teammates’ footsteps spilling inside the building behind me. We began clearing the ground floor, splitting into two-man elements. Worthy and Ian moved into a doorway, and I gave
Reilly a moment to sling his heavy machinegun and draw his pistol before I proceeded into the next room.

  But it was empty, with only a pair of windows providing a view of the dusty street extending northeast through the village.

  And it was through those windows that I saw we were too late.

  A convoy of ISIS vehicles was speeding down the main road, black flags waving as fighters jockeyed to take aim from the truck beds. They were two hundred meters distant and closing fast.

  I called out, “Reilly, hit them!”

  He obliged at once, holstering his pistol and readying his machinegun as I slid a table up the wall beneath the left window. Taking his ammo bag, I waited for him to set his bipod atop the table before linking the short, free-hanging belt of ammunition in his machinegun to the S-folded ammo belt inside the bag.

  As soon as I said the word “linked,” Reilly opened fire.

  His opening salvo decimated the windowpane, with his successive bursts lacing into the convoy’s lead vehicle.

  The trucks screeched to a halt, the second and third vehicles flanking the first as men scrambled out to return fire. Our radio earpieces had a decibel cutoff to serve as hearing protection, but the tremendous blasts of the machinegun cycling inside a confined space were jaw-rattling nonetheless.

  Reilly took hold of the ammo belt with one hand, continuing to fire in short bursts to conserve his dwindling supply.

  I transmitted, “Cavalry has arrived—set up local support by fire to hold them off. Cancer, get the truck ready and stand by for an emergency exfil.”

  “Copy,” Cancer replied.

  Moving to the opposite window, I assessed the situation. My first glimpse told me everything I needed to know: the enemy fighters weren’t the most highly trained opponents, but with their numerical advantage, that didn’t matter much.

  There were five trucks that I could see, and the ISIS fighters were firing indiscriminately into the village. They didn’t know exactly where we were, not advancing and not needing to. They weren’t coming for us, not yet. They were instead laying down a wall of lead to allow BK to make his way to them.