The Enemy Inside

by William Christie

  Racking the slide to chamber another shell, Beth dashed around Storey—who was trying to manage one hand on a grenade and the other on an AK. Turning the corner, the SureFire beam caught Murat sprawled out on the floor. Remembering the one that had blown up, Beth fired two more rounds of 00 buckshot into him.

  As soon as he heard the shotgun, Osman threw a grenade in the direction of the sound.

  But he hadn’t taken the same care with the spoon Storey had, and the ping could be clearly heard in the silence after Beth’s third shotgun blast.

  “Grenade!” Storey shouted, tackling Beth around the legs to bring her down.

  Thrown too hard, Osman’s grenade hit the wall above them and ricocheted off to explode somewhere behind them.

  Storey bounced up and threw the one he’d already had in his hand.

  It was also too long, exploding behind Osman.

  Besides the deafening noise, the grenades had thrown up an enormous amount of smoke and dust in the confined space.

  Storey grabbed the back of Beth’s belt, hoisting her up onto her feet and into forward movement. They had to get out of the bull’s-eye.

  This put Beth out in front, even more so when Storey had to look back to make sure Troy was with them.

  Osman saw the figure emerge from the smoke in front of him. Rushed and excited, he leaned around the support post he’d been hiding behind and fired his pistol one-handed.

  Beth saw the muzzle flash and fired her shotgun on the run.

  The buckshot pattern blew a volleyball-sized chunk from the timber above Osman’s head. He threw himself on the floor and crawled to safety.

  Racking the slide back, Beth lost sight of her target. Then there was just a leg disappearing behind the post. She fired at it.

  Osman felt the terrible impact, as if a car had driven over his leg. But no pain, though he was sure that would come soon enough.

  Hearing the explosions, Temiraev barked into his radio, “What is happening? Report! Murat? Nur-Pahi? Osman? Report!”

  “I will go to them,” said Nimri.

  “No, I will go,” Temiraev said flatly. He embraced Nimri and released him quickly.

  “God be with you, my brother,” said Nimri.

  “Victory or Paradise,” said Temiraev, disappearing into the darkness of the warehouse.

  Looking down at the blood pumping from his torn calf, Osman knew he was finished. He thought about waiting for the Americans to come to him, but he might lose consciousness before they arrived. Or they might throw another grenade, robbing him of the chance for revenge.

  He set his pistol down on the floor and took up a grenade in each hand, pulling the pins with the opposite fingers. The pain was beginning now as the nerves woke up from their shock. He would have to be quick. He pushed himself up onto his good leg.

  Beth was kneeling, feeding fresh shells into her shotgun. As Storey moved out in front of her again, he mouthed the words: did you get him?

  Beth shrugged her shoulders.

  The pain was very bad now. With his back to the support post, Osman gritted his teeth against it. He could not wait any longer. He pushed himself around the post with a cry of, “Allahu Akbar! ”

  Swinging his rifle toward the sound, Storey brought the two luminous dots of the AK front and rear sights onto Osman’s chest and fired two fast rounds.

  Osman tried to throw the grenades, but his arms would no longer move for him. The grenades dropped from his hands as he fell forward, and he landed on top of them.

  Storey was panting from the adrenaline. It wasn’t the first time one of the stupid bastards had killed himself by yelling that God was great instead of keeping his mouth shut. Like God wouldn’t know they were on the way.

  Temiraev was close now. When he heard Osman’s cry he dropped down behind some boxes.

  These two explosions were more muffled than the others. Storey wasn’t going to hang back and make the same mistake as before. He’d take advantage of the smoke and confusion of the explosions to get up on anyone else who still might be out there. Still moving in that fast low crouch, he advanced into the smoke.

  And then in one step his foot didn’t touch floor and everything dropped away and he was falling. Storey let go of his rifle and threw himself backward, twisting around and clawing away with his hands. They hit wood and slipped, and his jaw slammed together hard enough to chip teeth. He got ahold of something with his right hand, but then it broke off under his weight and he was dangling in midair, hanging on to the edge of the hole in the floor only by his left hand.

  Osman’s body atop the two grenades had tamped the explosions, focusing the force of the blasts straight down through the thin dry wood of the floor, blowing a hole the size of the man’s body. Storey hadn’t seen it in the swirling acrid smoke and had fallen right through. It was more than a forty-foot drop to the bottom floor of the warehouse.

  Storey kicked his feet to swing his body so he could get a grip on the edge of the hole with his other hand. But the fall through the jagged wood had ripped his palms up, and the blood was loosening his grip.

  Beth heard Storey’s grunt and then something crashing. The smoke was clearing now, and as she got closer she saw the hole and the two big hands hanging on. Oh, my God. She knew she didn’t have the strength to pull Ed up. “Lee, come quick!”

  Temiraev heard the woman’s voice, and made sure the safety was off his AK. He could not see her, but now he knew where to look. Bad conditions. Too dark to see properly, but too much light for the night goggles.

  As Troy rushed up Beth knew she had to protect them. She didn’t know that Storey had a pistol, and was afraid he’d be unarmed. So she set the shotgun down on the floor for him and drew her pistol, carefully stepping around the hole.

  Temiraev was waiting behind the boxes for one of them to show themselves. He heard the sounds of grunting, and something scraping on wood, but was afraid it was a trick to make him open fire prematurely. He would wait for a sure kill.

  Troy was starting to worry about falling into the hole himself. He couldn’t get any traction on the wood floor in his street shoes. And he couldn’t use both hands—he had to brace himself with one. Growing impatient with trying to brainstorm his way through the problem, he locked his right hand on the closest wrist and yanked up with all his might.

  Looking for the best cover, Beth noticed some crates and moved toward them, putting herself out in the open.

  Temiraev saw something moving.

  Beth heard Troy’s loud grunt of exertion, and thought it was a warning. She dropped to the floor.

  A burst of fire went right over her head. She fired four fast shots in the direction of that huge white muzzle flash, then rolled toward the nearest support post. On her stomach behind it, she fired two more rounds, then saw something fly off her pistol. She twisted her wrist to look at it, but it seemed all right. When she twisted it back to fire, the entire slide, including the barrel, flew right off the pistol and clattered into the floor.

  Beth stared at the polymer receiver in her hand, exactly half of a pistol, as if it was all some kind of terrible practical joke.

  The next bap-bap-bap of three AK rounds going by woke her up. She bent at the waist, tugged up her pants leg, and yanked the little Glock 27 backup pistol from her ankle holster.

  Temiraev had lost track of his target when the muzzle flashes stopped. He reloaded and fired a short burst in the same direction.

  Thanks to Troy’s brute strength, Storey was now at armpit level with the edge of the hole. The AK and pistol fire started up as he was swinging his legs to try and get them over the edge. It spurred them both to greater efforts—Storey whipped his body up as Troy grabbed for his belt.

  Beth leveled the three green dots of the Glock night sights and fired. That big white muzzle flash thundered up in front of her again, and suddenly wood splinters were flying everywhere. Then she felt an incredibly hard blow to the chest, and after that felt herself landing on the floor with no memory of
ever coming off it. Looking up and seeing the holes on her side of the post and thinking: was that supposed to happen?

  When she was a little girl Beth had been bucked off the back of a horse, which then kicked her on the way down. This felt exactly like that, like she couldn’t draw in a breath. Then, realizing that something bad had happened to her and getting really mad about it, she fired her pistol at that persistent white flash that just wouldn’t go away. Then the pistol wouldn’t fire anymore and she thought: what, again? Before realizing that the slide was locked back because the magazine was empty. She pressed the magazine release to drop the empty one, and reached for one of the long Glock 22 magazines in her belt pouch.

  Temiraev was wincing from the .40 caliber hollow-point in his upper arm. The fire stopped and he thought he heard a magazine striking the floor and knew it was his best chance while it was just he and the one American. Howling like the mountain wolf to terrorize his enemy, he sprang up, firing as he came.

  Beth slammed in the fresh magazine and yanked back on the slide to slingshot it closed and chamber the first round. She fired and the floor seemed to explode in front of her and more splinters were flying and it was like the trigger drill at the Academy when you had to pull it as many times as you could in a minute. Then something hit her in the head.

  Storey was halfway out of the hole. “Go!” he yelled at Troy.

  Through enormous pains, Temiraev had the grenade in his hand. But he could not seem to get his finger through the ring. It was incredibly frustrating, and he was not a man who dealt with frustration well. His neck felt wet, and that was equally annoying. Then there was the man with the black face, like Satan himself, lunging at him like the wolf he had been ...

  Troy fired two rounds into the Chechen’s head. He took the grenade from the hand and moved it off to the side, afraid it was a booby trap with a zero-time fuse. He grabbed the radio off the Chechen’s belt and clipped it onto his. Fucking Beth—she was really something. He wanted to check on her, but he stayed where he was, covering their front, waiting for the next ones to show up from the front of the warehouse. When he felt Storey’s footsteps behind him, he pointed his arm over to where Beth was lying in the shadows.

  Storey set down the shotgun and knelt beside her.

  “I think I got shot, Ed. It hurts when I breathe, but I was too chicken to look.”

  “Just take it easy, honey,” he whispered back. “I’ll see what’s what.”

  “You called me honey,” she said. “That’s so sweet.”

  There was the tearing sound of Velcro as Storey opened up the front of the flak jacket. He ran his hands over her chest, feeling for blood and holes. Then slid down her sides and around her back. Pelvis and legs. Then arms.

  The hair on the side of her head was wet with blood. Risking it, Storey took the SureFire Combat flashlight from her belt and clicked it on. There was a crease right along the side of her head, an inch or so above the ear, where an AK round had skimmed by and broken the skin without entering the skull.

  He moved the light down to her flak jacket. Two bullet holes in the front, and the ceramic insert, which was supposed to be one piece, was now several. The vest had stopped both rounds that did nothing but bruise up her ribs. He checked her pupils with the light. Equal and reactive. No blood in the nose or ears.

  Holes in the post above her. For a stubby assault rifle round the AK really did penetrate. They’d gone right through the thick timber post to hit her. The post had probably slowed them enough to help the vest out.

  “You’ve got some bruised ribs,” he told her. “But they’re not broken. And you got creased in the head. That’s it.”

  “I’m not shot?” she demanded.

  “Well, yeah. But just a little bit. What is it with you and these point-blank pistol shootouts?” Flicking out a pocket knife, Storey rolled up the arm of her jacket and cut the sleeve off her blouse.

  “Do you know what that cost?” said Beth.

  “I cut it—I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “You just sit here,” he said. “We’re going to keep clearing down.”

  That provoked a radical change in mood. “Screw that,” said Beth, rolling over and getting up on her knees. “I’m coming along.”

  “You sure about that?” said Storey, watching her wince from the pain in her ribs.

  “Better believe it. My duty pistol broke on me. See if you can find it.”

  Storey was willing to go along with her plan to distract him while she took her time getting to her feet. He found the slide and receiver, putting the two back together.

  She was on her feet now.

  He slipped the pistol into her holster. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Let’s go, Ed.”

  “Okay, but you take over rear security. I’m going to hang on to your shotgun for now.”

  “That’s why I left it for you,” she said, passing over the extra shells from her flak jacket pocket.

  Left him the shotgun and charged ahead with a pistol, Storey thought, shaking his head and then quickly hoping she hadn’t seen him doing it.

  The radio on Troy’s belt crackled quietly. The voice was speaking Arabic. “Temiraev, what is happening?”

  “Oh, I really want to tell him,” Troy whispered to Storey.

  Storey surprised him by saying, “Go ahead. It’s probably Nimri, unless we already got him.”

  Troy grinned as he brought the walkie-talkie up to his mouth. “He’s dead,” he said in Arabic. “It’s next time, Nimri. You remember Arlington, do you not?”

  “Nice touch,” Storey whispered.

  Abdallah Karim Nimri stared at the radio in his hands. The same American agents as before? How could this be?

  He dropped the radio, tears of frustration falling down his cheeks. Once again they were all dead, and he was left alive. And once again he had failed. No television images sent around the world for days on end to delight the Faithful and shake the Americans before their election. The explosives and rockets had all been lost. All he had was a rifle, a pistol, and a few grenades. They would shoot him down and, as before, deny that anything had ever happened. Why, God?

  Nimri got control of himself. God was merciful and compassionate. God was great. If this was His will, then he was His servant.

  “He can’t have many guys left,” said Troy.

  “Let’s go see,” said Storey.

  “You’re not taking point with a pump shotgun.”

  “Don’t get careless.”

  “I don’t plan to,” said Troy. “I plan on using up these grenades.”

  “Fine with me.”

  So they started off again with Troy tossing grenades into every bit of potential cover he saw.

  Other than the noise making her head hurt worse than it already was, Beth felt all right. As long as she kept her arms tight to her chest her ribs didn’t hurt. And she had to keep them there to shoot anyway.

  They made steady progress, until the upper warehouse ended in two walls and a narrow hallway.

  Troy snuck forward for a quick look. Offices along both sides of the hallway. That was a problem. If they stopped to kick each door, their shit was hanging out in the middle of the hallway. Passing them by could mean getting shot in the back.

  He was still thinking out the best move when Storey signaled him to get a grenade ready.

  When Troy was ready to throw, Storey walked up to the wall and fired the shotgun from about six feet away. At that range the buckshot didn’t have time to open up into a wide pattern, instead blowing a softball-sized hole in the wall. Troy released the spoon, counted two to let the fuse burn down a bit, and whipped the grenade through the hole and into the office. Problem solved.

  As they moved to do the same thing on the other side, a clattering of metal on wood came down the hallway.

  “Grenade!” Troy shouted. And they all hit the floor.

  But instead of an explosion there was a loud pop and a hissing
sound. The hallway filled with white smoke.

  Troy edged in to get a whiff of it, then jumped back as the pungent vapor hit his nostrils. “It’s CS, not smoke.”

  Storey sent his fragmentation grenade down the hall in reply. It was probably a futile gesture. Running through CS without a gas mask wasn’t a problem. Doing it and expecting to shoot effectively afterward was. That was why the Mexicans had tried to use it on them. “Let’s wait a minute and see what happens.”

  “Even after it burns out they’ll be crystals all over the hallway,” said Troy. “We’ll kick them up just walking through.”

  Beth saw the flash of orange through the smoke. Except this wasn’t a muzzle flash. “We’ve got a fire.”

  CS grenades burned so hot they were always setting things on fire. Which was why the hostage rescue teams were always careful about using them. It didn’t take much to ignite the bone-dry wood of the warehouse.

  “Well?” said Troy, as the flames filled the hallway.

  “It’s time to get the hell out of here,” said Storey. Nimri wouldn’t be coming that way.

  They ran back down the length of the warehouse, mindful of the hole in the floor. Reaching the stairway they’d come up, they found they had a problem. The top was all splintered wood, and the first section of stairs no longer there.

  “Now we know where that grenade they threw at us went,” Storey observed.

  Troy grabbed one of the stairway supports and shook it. The whole structure swung back and forth with dramatic cracking sounds. “How do you like that? Asshole couldn’t have hit it intentionally if you gave him a case of grenades and all day to throw them. Think we ought to go up to the roof, wave a fire truck over?”

  “What if there aren’t any out there?” said Beth. “You know how fast a building like this can burn down?”

  “Follow me,” said Storey.

  He led them on another run back down to the middle of the warehouse, this time stopping at the open-cage freight elevator. Except there was no power, and the elevator was down on the ground floor.