by Greig Beck
“Dammit,” Jack mumbled. “Search every square inch of this place.”
It didn’t take long to clear the entire home. It was evident that Azrael, and his family, had exited through other means. Once they confirmed that the house was empty, they began searching for the hidden access point. Jack came clopping down the stairs from the second story just as one of his men discovered something inside the first-floor master bedroom.
“In here!” Miller called out.
Jack hurried inside. The space held very little in the way of furnishings. A simple dresser, a nightstand, and a bed that sat atop a worn area rug was all that was in the bare room.
Miller was kneeling at the foot of the bed, pointing a small handheld flashlight beneath it. The two men swiftly lifted the drooping mattress from its frame and handed it off to the duo waiting outside the doorway. Now, there was nothing on the floor except for the bedframe and the rug. That’s not what interested them, though.
There was a slight, square-shaped lump in the middle of it.
Jack stepped into the middle metal frame and stomped on the lump. It sounded hollow, and it gave a little under his weight. They quickly removed the frame and threw back the rug.
“Bingo,” Jack said, reaching for the hatch’s metal ring pull.
He stopped, thinking better of it. Backing away, he called, “Hey, Dyson, have a look, will ya?”
The young African American entered the room and dropped to his hands and knees. Rolling onto his side, he did what he was trained to do. Keno Dyson was a sure-handed demolitions expert. He was also well-versed in their applications. In this case, he was looking for a tripwire.
It only took him ten seconds.
“Hello there.” He looked up at Jack. “Good thinking, sir.”
Jack grinned and waited for his man to disarm the device. The effort only took a minute, but in a mission like this, it seemed like it took closer to an hour. Every second was precious in raids like this. Soon, Azrael’s people would figure out what was happening and come to check things out. Jack expected that the guard he had taken out was to check in regularly. It was only a matter of time now.
He glanced over his shoulder and found a pair of boots. The rest of the man was out of his line of sight.
Not this time.
Miller reached for the hatch ring this time. He yanked it open with a shrieking protest of warped wood. Jack got moving, clanging down the utilitarian metal ladder, even before the basement entrance had been made entirely accessible. He descended fifteen feet before finding earth again. The floor was stone, and the room, like the ladder, was unmarkable.
Jack flicked on his rifle’s barrel-mounted light and shouldered the weapon. “What the…?”
It wasn’t a basement at all.
There were concrete-reinforced passages to the north, south, east, and west. Jack was standing inside the access point of an elaborate tunnel system covertly hidden beneath Mosul.
This was how they moved around the city so fast!
“Ho-ly shit, sir,” Dyson said, arriving next.
“Holy shit, indeed,” Jack replied, sneering in disgust. The smell was unbearable. Regardless of where the odor was coming from, he stepped away with Dyson to give Miller and Lansing room.
“Uh, which way, sir?” Miller asked, seemingly as confused as the rest of them.
Jack trusted what his gut was telling him and headed north. They moved in a single-file line, keeping their guns pointed away from each other’s backs. As always, Jack led the way. He was one of Delta’s finest and had served with honor for the last decade. Like so many others, he had been recruited out of the Army. From the day he applied, Jack wanted nothing more than to join one of the Special Forces divisions. And after a brief conversation with a member of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), General Solomon Raegor, Jack knew his calling was with the legendary SFOD-D, the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta.
He connected with Raegor the moment he met him, learning a great deal from the man. Unfortunately, five years later, the general passed away from pancreatic cancer. It crushed Jack. He had been the second man in Jack’s life to succumb to the disease. First, it was his grandfather, who, like Raegor, had been a great and honorable man.
The tunnel wound like a snake for a quarter of a mile before the team saw natural light again. When they stopped, they also saw movement. Jack raised a fist, stopping his men in their tracks. Then, he signaled them to drop to one knee. They stayed in this position for thirty seconds and watched as a slightly built man disappeared up a ladder similar to the one they had descended.
No, not a man, Jack realized. It was a boy.
“Azrael is here.”
Jack stood, signaling his men to do the same. They moved toward the exit, keeping their pace steady and controlled. As fiendish as the ISIS leader was, Azrael’s death could wait until the opportunity properly presented itself. They were trained never to rush into anything.
He slowed and carefully stepped over a pile of rubble. It contained equal parts of brick and stone. The damage had been caused by the passage’s builders. They had forcefully broken through the wall of the local sewer system to connect their tunnel network to it.
Ugh, Jack thought. So, that’s what that was!
Jack slung his carbine over his shoulder and ascended the ladder without haste. Above his head was an open manhole. It allowed the moonlight in. It was the light Jack had spotted earlier. He had some past experience with maintenance hole covers. They were hard to move for a grown person, let alone a child.
In one motion, Jack drew his sidearm and rocketed his head and right arm out of the opening. Up ahead was an alley similar to the one they had been in minutes earlier, at the beginning of their night raid. In the soft, flickering glow of a bent streetlight, Jack saw the same boy disappear across a road, and then reappear on the other side. He ducked through a second, artificial light source and then vanished into the shadows beyond.
But before he slunk away, the youngster glanced back the other way. Jack ducked back into hiding, leaving just his head above the surface. The child’s eyes stopped on Jack, though he wasn’t positive if the kid did, indeed, see him, or not.
Slowly, he lifted himself entirely out of the sewer, keeping his pistol pointed forward. Seeing nothing, he holstered his sidearm and opted for his heavy-hitting M4, a weapon with far superior accuracy. He kept the barrel light off and used his keen eyesight to his advantage.
A shadow twitched further ahead. Was the boy baiting him, or was he scared and in need of a rescue?
Shit… Jack didn’t like this.
“Move,” he whispered without checking the location of his teammates first. He knew they were already in position behind him. He loved these guys. They were always exactly where he needed them to be.
Unlike the child, the four operators avoided the first streetlight, ducking behind a pair of burned and bombed-out vehicles before attempting to cross. Jack held out his left hand and slowly bounced it up and down as if he was leisurely dribbling a basketball. The motion was for his people to move at the same speed. Then, he jabbed a thumb into his chest.
“Me first.”
Dyson, Lansing, and Miller weren’t happy. They never separated from one another. It was too dangerous for multiple reasons, especially when they were deep into enemy territory.
Halfway across the charred street, Jack was forced to step around random car parts. There was a half-melted tire, most of a spiderwebbed windshield, and a car door, among other nondescript items.
Jack paused when the boy stepped into the light. The child shook, and his eyes were on his own feet, not the armed American in front of him. He was terrified. With nowhere to hide, Jack stopped and lowered his rifle.
It was a mistake to do so.
“Hey,” Jack said, speaking in Arabic, “are you okay?”
The child didn’t reply. The only answer Jack got was a pair of sad, helpless eyes as he looked up at him. Then, the boy did
the unthinkable. He raised his right hand and showed Jack something. It wasn’t a gun…it was something far more dangerous.
It was a detonator.
Tears streaked down the kid’s face. Jack did the humane thing and lowered his carbine, going as far as setting it down on the road. He lifted both hands and spoke softly.
“Take it easy. You don’t have to do this.”
The boy sniffed. “I do… I will not go back to him.” He choked back a sob. “I…can’t.”
What did he do to you?
The child raised his hand, and Jack did the only thing he could do. He wasn’t going to shoot the boy. He couldn’t live with himself if he did. So, Jack reached for the mangled car door and lifted it in front of him just as a burst of sunlight exploded to life. The blast threw Jack backward. He landed with the smoldering car door laying on his chest. Jack tried to climb to his feet, but he couldn’t, and it wasn’t just the half dozen injuries he sustained that prevented him from moving.
It was also his soul.
Jack didn’t care that the mission was a bust. Eventually, Qasem Azrael would come to justice. All he cared about was the little boy who had lived a rotten life—one that was so bad that he’d rather kill himself than return to his father.
Jack laid his head back with tears freely rolling down his face.
He was done with the military.
The Forgotten Fortune is available from Amazon here!
