Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller

by Stephen Templin

  “You think our contact will really show up alone?”

  Max hit a straightaway and accelerated. “That’s the plan.”

  “Since when do plans go according to plan?”

  “We could really use a sniper,” Max said. “Sixty minutes.”

  “I can read my ATAK fine, and I know the time to rendezvous,” Tom said with a hint of little brother syndrome in his voice. Even though Tom was two inches taller, he was still the little brother.

  Max’s ATAK continued to display his GPS coordinates: they were nearing their last waypoint before reaching the Syrian border. At the crest of a small hill, he looked up from the monitor and scanned the surrounding patchwork of various sizes and shades of rectangular-shaped farms, some darker than others. To his right stood a clump of Kasnak oaks, stretching up from the ground thirty meters high. At the speed Max travelled, the oaks appeared to run past him, and their desperate hands grasped at the heavens. Earlier, he’d seen the trees on a satellite map that he committed to memory. He flipped the switch on his motorbike console from gas engine to electric—stealth mode. Tom did the same. The pair of screaming bikes quieted to a humming no louder than a couple of electric toothbrushes. Every nation’s borders had its weaknesses, and Max and Tom were experts at exploiting them.

  Max drove off road, still glancing at his ATAK display at regular intervals. His heart rate increased at the prospect of running into border patrol, bandits, or terrorists. Recently, Russian aircraft had been patrolling the airspace, which was why Langley deemed it safer to cross into Syria by land rather than air. He looked up at the black heavens, listened carefully, and hoped to avoid the dark demons—Russian MiG jet fighters or Hind attack helicopters.

  No threats flew overhead, so his eyes returned to the ground. In front lay a patch of pitch-black ground that might be mud, so he drove around it to leave as few tracks as possible. There was no need to make audible or excessive hand signals back to Tom. They were big boys who played by big boy rules. Max glanced over his shoulder and saw Tom shadow his lead.

  A series of bumps came so fast that Max couldn’t process them visually, only feel them. Then he came upon a hill where he couldn’t see the other side. He sped up the hill and caught air, hurling himself into the void.

  Forty-five minutes. Desert overcame a stretch of farmland. In the dark, it was difficult to distinguish soft sand from regular sand, and Max hoped he didn’t hit the soft stuff, which might record his tracks or bog him down. He passed a charred tractor turned over in a field of sand and weeds. Not only did Syrian farmers have to struggle against Mother Nature, but they had to struggle against insurgents, who robbed their land and crops. The insurgents milled stolen wheat and sold the flour to local bakers and then taxed the bakers’ bread and other products.

  Thirty minutes. The brothers reached the base of a hill and parked. They reached into the saddlebags on their bikes and pulled out camouflage netting. Max’s had gotten twisted up, and he quickly untangled it before he covered his motorcycle. Then he smoothed out some of the wheel prints in the sand. Their bikes concealed, Max and Tom crouched, climbed, and circled round the hill. The ground under Max’s hiking boots was hard like baked clay.

  They reached the other side of the hill and then climbed high enough to get a good look at the nearby village, but not high enough to where the moonlight could silhouette them as targets. The brothers went prone and slithered up to some buckthorn bushes. Through the spiny naked branches, the brothers could see the town of al-Bad, a sprawl of concrete buildings in variations of block shapes. In the western half of the village stood the spire of a mosque.

  Tom pointed to the center of town where a guarded complex stood with a flag hanging limp atop a two-story building. Earlier satellite photos had shown it to be a black ISIL flag, and intel had warned them that this was a hot spot to avoid.

  Max removed his helmet, pulled his compact Steiner binoculars from his pocket, and peered through them. In one corner of the ISIL compound, the contents of a metal barrel burned. Temporary construction lights illuminated much of the surrounding area. In front of the compound stood the only functioning streetlight in town, spotlighting a parked Russian two-and-a-half-ton truck. The tangos weren’t shy about using the equipment of their enemies. Its engine rumbled and its headlights shone. “Deuce-and-a-half there could go mobile at any moment,” Max whispered. Because Tom monitored their surroundings to make sure no one threw them a surprise party, it freed Max to focus on the village.

  “Can you see what the deuce-and-a-half is carrying? Or if it’s empty?”

  “Back of the vehicle is covered. Can’t see inside.” Max scanned the outer edges of ISIL’s camp. “Lone gunman patrolling the perimeter.” Max pointed east of ISIL’s position, to their rendezvous point. “The village is darker there. Hope our contact shows.”

  “Alone,” Tom added.

  Max put on his motorbike helmet. The brothers rose and patrolled at a crouch for fifteen minutes to the eastern side of the town, where they crept in like ghosts. They passed between several houses that were packed so closely together that not even a small vehicle could travel through. The close proximity of the buildings seemed ironic considering all of the unused land surrounding the village.

  Stalking through the town warmed Max’s body. Traditional Arabic rhythms and melodies played from inside one of the homes. As Max and Tom ventured deeper into the village, the distinct sounds of an Arab singer, guitar, and tambourine became louder. The music masked the noise of the brothers’ footsteps, but it would drown out the sound of enemy movement, as well. After passing the source of the music, the night air hushed.

  Once that first bullet flew, Max couldn’t think about quitting or failure—there would be no going back. Max turned a corner and found himself several feet in front of somebody. His heart leaped, and his feet froze. He whipped up his sound-suppressed Russian amphibious rifle to full ready and aimed. The man didn’t move, so maybe he hadn’t seen Max yet. Or he was petrified with fear. Max used the extra moment to line up a head shot, but he was surprised to discover that the man had no head. Then Max realized that “the man” was actually the trunk of a dead tree. It was black, especially near the top where the upper part of the trunk and the branches appeared to have rotted off.

  2

  Zero minutes. Max found the shell of a two-story building that had been bombed; its height and vacancy were ideal for an overwatch position. As he and his brother stepped inside, a rustling sound came from near one of three remaining walls. Max aimed at it. A rat scurried away. Splatter stains, gray in the moonlight, surrounded the bullet-sized pockmarks on the wall. Beneath Max’s feet, the concrete chunks and rubble were loose and made his footing unstable—the building had been recently gutted. He climbed cracked, crumbled stairs to what was left of the second floor. He expected the steps to give way at any moment, but he could survive a one-story fall—he had before. An air of gloom and doom weighed like a monster truck on Max, but he was used to walking through valleys of the shadow of death.

  Tom observed their hollowed-out two-story building and the immediate area, while Max lay down and spied on their rendezvous site, twenty-five meters away, an island of oak trees in a sea of concrete. Max stared at the stillness of the trees and listened to dead silence. Nothing. Their contact was late. Was he captured? Is this an ambush?

  CIA’s dossier gave the asset’s code name as Aladdin and noted that he walked with a limp. Their photo showed him as a young man with a bony face. Fifteen minutes later, there was movement. It was a person—a skinny young man limped to the rendezvous spot. His bony face was consistent with the photos, too. This was Aladdin, the contact they’d come so far to meet. Tonight Max and Tom would pay him cash for delivering the flash drive, and after verifying the contents, CIA would pay him more. Intel said that Aladdin was doing this because he hated ISIL—the money was just a bonus.

  Max reached over to Tom and tapped him on the shoulder. It’s time. Tom crept down the stairs
and made his way to the rendezvous site. Max didn’t like sending his younger brother alone like this, especially when they were in the enemy’s backyard, but Max was there to protect him. Max could’ve gone himself, but there’d be no one to watch over Tommy while Max was making the exchange, and Max didn’t want to risk that. Before the mission, they’d argued about who’d do overwatch, each wanting to protect the other, so they played rock-paper-scissors, which Tom usually won, but this time Max was the victor.

  Outside of the rendezvous site, a glint of light sparked for a fraction of a second. It was so minuscule and faint that Max wondered if he’d imagined it. He focused on the area where he thought the glint came from, thirty meters away from the rendezvous site, a small house. Max traced the house up to the rooftop. Nothing. He listened for anything out of place. Nada. Cold sweat gathered on his palms, so he gripped his rifle tighter, but gripping too tightly would throw off his aim, so he loosened his choke hold. Max narrowed his vision to discern the source of the glint.

  Slowly, Max side-crawled eight inches—until he saw something. Beside the small house where the glint of light had come from was what appeared to be part of a man’s silhouette. Max dispensed with stealth and sped up his crawl. A flash of light emitted from the silhouette—crack!

  Damn!

  The flash briefly illuminated the shooter, on a knee beside the house. Max aimed between the shooter’s shoulders and squeezed the trigger. Phht. The shooter dropped his other knee and stuck out his support hand to brace himself on the ground. Max fired again. Phht. The shooter sank.

  Max’s thoughts jumbled around in his brain. Lights came on in the buildings nearby. Adrenaline flooded his system. His sense of time became distorted, and he couldn’t organize the order of events.

  At the rendezvous site lay a body. No, no, no. Please, no. He held his breath and strained to see who it was. The man was smaller and thinner than Tom. Max was glad it wasn’t his brother lying there. A lump of matter, like pulp from a watermelon, spilled out of Aladdin’s bony head. Max noticed he’d been holding his breath, so he breathed.

  He looked for where Tom had gone, but he couldn’t find him. Then a person appeared beside him within arm’s reach. Before Max could aim at the potential threat, he spoke: “Let’s go.” It was Tom. “We’ve got company.”

  Max hopped to his feet. “What company?” he whispered

  AK bullets smacked the concrete building where the brothers stood. “That company,” Tom said softly.

  They hurried down to the first floor. “What about the flash drive?” Max asked.

  “Got it.”

  More AKs rattled off. Rounds hissed and snapped past Max and pockmarked the pockmarks on the wall. “Where the hell did these guys come from?”

  Max and Tom dashed out of the gutted building. Right-left-right-left they dodged bullets from behind as they raced into the village. They skirted the trunk of the dead tree. Max zigged and zagged between buildings, desperately trying to ditch the shooters behind them and get out of town. Concrete pieces and powder sprayed Max’s shoulder.

  “Get us out of here,” Tom pleaded.

  “I’m trying,” Max said. He made another turn—not only were the buildings so close they’d prevent a vehicle from passing between, but the gap was too narrow for a person to fit between, either. On the upside, they were protected from the enemy flanking them from anywhere except the rear. The volume of AK fire lowered, and voices shouted in Arabic: “Where are they? Spread out! Find them!”

  In their dead end, there were no windows or doors to break into. Max jumped to reach the roof of a house, but he couldn’t grab it. He tried another spot—no luck there either. There were no objects in the alley that he could use to climb onto. They were trapped.

  “They’re over here!” a voice called out.

  Tom pointed to a low rooftop and gave a thumbs-up as if he wanted to go up on it. Max approached the rooftop, but he wasn’t sure he could get up to the ledge. Tom got low and made a stirrup with his hands. Max put his foot in the stirrup and Tom lifted him. From the rooftop, Max reached down and gave Tom a hand up.

  The two of them lay flat next to each other and scanned surrounding buildings and streets for danger. Their pursuers continued to call out and taunt, but now the voices were dispersed, and Max couldn’t spot the men.

  The sound of a deuce-and-a-half rumbled in the distance. Max imagined that the back was full of armed men. He pointed to the next roof.

  Tom nodded.

  Max hopped to the next roof and then another before lowering himself to the ground. Tom was right behind.

  Lights came on in two houses behind them. The rumbling of the deuce-and-a-half became louder.

  Max turned a corner and came face-to-face with two armed men, who shouted as they shot on full auto—but their angle was bad, and they hadn’t aimed. Max pointed his weapon and plugged the closest man to him twice in the upper body. Tom took out the other. Then Max administered a safety round to his man, a bullet to the head, to make sure he didn’t rise from the dead.

  Max rushed past the two dead enemies—others were bound to investigate the noise. He weaved in and out of buildings in a northerly direction.

  Voices called out. “Silenced weapons! We know you’re there! Come out!”

  If the men behind the voices really knew where they were, they’d shoot. They’re bluffing.

  About twenty meters ahead of Max, to the west, the deuce-and-a-half’s air-assisted hydraulic brakes puffed. Its wheels squeaked and scraped dirt, and the loud rumbling engine coughed before it calmed down. Metal clanged, and more than a dozen men’s voices shouted out. Reinforcements.

  Max turned and ran in the opposite direction, putting as much space between the truck and them as possible. Lights came on in more houses in town. They snaked by. A family of dumbasses on top of their roof watched the show. A three-legged dog stood in the road and barked at Max, but he ignored the animal and headed toward it. The animal scurried away.

  After putting fifty meters between the sound of the truck and them, Max led his brother out of the village north. They patrolled in a large half-circle back to the hill where they’d stashed their motorbikes. Max breathed more easily knowing the enemy was far behind.

  One of the bushes near the top of the hill ahead wasn’t really a bush at all. It was a squatting black-clad man with a rifle and radio strapped to him. He was looking through binoculars toward the village—a spotter. From the spotter’s place on the hill, he could direct troops at Max and Tom. The spotter eyed Max. Instead of attempting to shoot him, the man chattered into his radio. Max and Tom aerated him. The spotter tipped over on his side—end of transmission. If he had succeeded in getting the word out, a gaggle of bad guys would show up any moment now, so Max raced around to the back of the hill. There he found the camouflage coverings and removed his from his motorbike.

  The deuce-and-a-half’s rumbling continued from the city, but now its engine was louder.

  Max pressed the button to start his SilentHawk. Tom started his, too. Max tapped the ATAK screen with his gloved finger, the silver conductive material in the fingertip allowing him to manipulate the screen. He selected a preprogrammed exfiltration route, slightly different from the infiltration route—just in case anyone had spotted them coming in and was lying in wait to throw a coming home party. The noise of the deuce-and-a-half was so loud that Max couldn’t hear the hum of their bikes.

  He looked back. Tom followed close behind. A spotlight mounted on the truck swept back and forth, then caught them in its glare. Damn. The deuce closed within a hundred meters behind Tom. Abruptly, Max’s motorbike slowed. He faced front to find himself in a bed of fine dirt, like talcum powder. “Moon dust,” he warned Tom over the radio. “Don’t let off the gas.” If either of them slowed down, the silt would swallow them whole.

  Max cranked his accelerator. His front wheel bogged down, nearly flipping him over the handlebars, and he had to lean back. Then his front wheel broke free and hi
s rear bogged down, almost dumping him off the tail, and he had to lean forward. The SilentHawk lurched left and right on him as the wheels scrambled for anything they could grip. It felt like riding a bucking bronco.

  Tom cried out from behind Max’s powdery spray. “I can’t see a damn thing!”

  Max riveted his full attention to staying on the bike, and he couldn’t look back, but he knew Tom was covered in a cloud of dust. He couldn’t hear Tom’s engine because the deuce had become so thunderous.

  “Don’t let off the gas!” Max repeated frantically.

  Max’s wheels gripped solid dirt, and the SilentHawk stabilized. He rose out of the bed of moon dust. Then he looked back, but all he could see was a massive screen of dust. No person or thing was more important to him than his brother, and now he worried if he’d lost him. “You okay, Tommy?”

  The only answer that came was from the rumble of the deuce—roaring from inside the dust cloud. One saving grace of the powdery fog was that it blocked the effectiveness of the spotlight.

  Max slowed down, preparing to turn around and head back for his brother. Then Tom emerged from the dust, flying toward him. The roaring deuce toned down. Then the truck’s engine revved, but it sounded like it was spinning wheels. It was stuck.

  “I’m right behind you,” Tom said.

  Max wanted to cheer. Smack! His front fork clipped a boulder, and the impact shot up through the handlebars and into his thumb. He struggled to steer straight. “Rock.” His eyes searched ahead for more boulders, but there were none. The front of his bike wobbled. He worried that the bike wouldn’t hold together until they reached Turkey. His thumb felt like it was broken.

  Max studied the red line on his ATAK and used it to guide him through deserted Syrian farmland. He cruised across the border without another incident. When he reached his waypoint in Turkey, he switched off stealth mode and became a screeching hawk again.

  Max’s bike wobbled along dirt roads between harvested fields. Sweat soaked his body, causing him to shiver, and his thumb throbbed. The slice of moon still hung coldly, and Max was thankful to see it. It hadn’t been a perfect op—their contact was killed, and they had to run and gun, but they had the USB stick.