Matador checked the time on the phone strapped to his wrist. An encrypted icon appeared on the home screen: the file from Gutierrez. Through the night vision goggles, his prisoners looked like ghostly apparitions. Three scrawny men with beards lined up against a stone wall, blindfolded, flex cuffed, and on their knees. Another man slumped on the floor. Tao, a clean-shaven Mandarin American with a noise-suppressed HK416 assault rifle, stood guard. The dead had been searched and left where they fell.
Fullback entered the room and stood next to Matador. He was chewing gum and had a digital camera in one hand and a tattered book in the other. Matador gave him a sideways look. “What?”
“I count twelve dead plus four captive. There’s weapons in one of the huts. Trigger’s going to destroy it. Here’s the only piece of intel we found.” He handed the book to Matador. “Handwritten Koran, heavily used. Nice one too.”
Matador took the Koran and flipped through the pages. It was old and worn, but in excellent condition.
“You see this? This is what’s wrong with the world,” Matador said. “Holy books and the zealots who read them. I can’t tell you how many of these I’ve found on the bodies of dead men.”
“There’s also a message from Overlord. They say a Little Bird is inbound for you.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Exfil in three minutes. It’s coming here, not to the evac site.”
That was as close to questioning Matador as Fullback would get.
Matador nodded. “Follow me.”
He stepped over a body, ducked through the low opening of the hewn-stone hut, and walked down a flight of ancient steps to a clearing. The small rocky yard was surrounded by a dozen similar huts. Fullback ducked and angled his 6’1” frame through the opening and followed.
It was a cloudless night, and there was enough moon in the sky to make out the contours of the terraces in the mountains around them. The cluster of stone houses clung to a craggy outcrop overlooking a narrow valley. Matador spotted the three other members of his team who had set up a security perimeter around the area.
He then surveyed the steep mountainsides for any signs of danger. No movement on the ridgeline. No slivers of headlights in the valley. No one on the shepherd’s path that led up to the huts. No discomforting silences. The area appeared secure.
He crossed his arms and let out a frosty breath. Fullback stood nearby.
“There’s a hostage situation in Jeddah, a senator’s son. Langley wants me there. They’re attaching me to the consulate, making me visible. I guess the kid’s important. Finish up here and get the team to the LZ. It’s your mission now.”
“All right,” Fullback said, taking the news in stride. “What about the prisoners?”
Jordan Hunter, a.k.a. Matador, looked down both ends of the narrow valley. Sana’a, Yemen’s ancient capital, was due east, the pirate-infested waters of the Red Sea, due west. They were somewhere in the mountainous, god-forsaken middle.
“You heard the interrogations. Tell me, what are the odds that any of those dirty goat herders are going to tell us where we can find Abdulrahman Al Samara?”
“The chances aren’t good, chief.”
“That’s right,” Matador said. “They can’t tell us jack. I don’t want to keep them, but can’t turn ‘em loose. That leaves only one option.”
Fullback acknowledged with a tug on his ball cap.
They stood there in silence.
Then, in a rush of wind and noise, a black AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopter appeared and roared over the valley. It hung in the air, like a giant insect, sizing them up.
The “Killer Egg” bristled with dual 70 millimeter rocket pods, 7.62 millimeter mini-guns, and a Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) system. The chopper flew over the huts and positioned itself above the yard. The clearing was too tight for landing, so it just hovered there, twenty feet off the ground. The blasts of rotor wash filled the air with dust and debris.
Someone inside the chopper tossed down a braided fast rope. It unfurled and gyrated in the air; the excess rope piled on the ground. Matador attached a carabineer on his harness to a loop on the rope.
Over the noise, he yelled, “Get the team out. I’ll catch up with you when it’s over.”
Hunter gave a “thumps up” to the Little Bird, and it took off. The rope went taut and jerked him off the ground. With a thumping downwash, the chopper climbed, rolled away from the mountainside, and then dove sharply into the valley with Matador dangling behind.
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ABOUT Dustin J. Turner
Dustin Turner is an entrepreneur, world traveler, and a former international field director for a medical relief agency. His work has taken him to such global hot spots as Sudan, Eritrea, Mauritania, Cambodia, China, and Haiti. He is the author of The Senator’s Son, a 2013 Colorado Gold Finalist for Best Action Thriller of the Year. Dustin and his family live in Arkansas.
I appreciate you taking time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word. Thank you for your support.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Dustin Turner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief
After the Fall: A Prelude to The Senator's Son Page 3
