by W. J. Lundy
As Elias had predicted, there were two shaggy, black-bearded guards with red scarves around their necks. The men stood near the back entrance, both armed with rusty Kalashnikovs dangling loose. They weren’t professionals, probably local militia or recent volunteers assigned to the demeaning task of door guard. It didn’t matter to Tommy; they would fall just the same. The bearded man nearest Tommy looked up and watched him approach. The man grinned and tapped the guard beside him. Both seemed amused at the sight of a disabled person struggling to walk.
Tommy paused and put a hand on the stucco wall, feigning to catch his breath and balance. He heard one of the guards call out at him, shouting obscenities, ordering him to turn around and go away. One thing Tommy hated as much as terrorists was bullies. Hearing the man’s shouted obscenities and watching his exaggerated hand gestures gave Tommy an internal smile. This would be a two-fer for humanity.
Keeping up the hobo act, he took another staggering step forward. The second man laughed with amusement as the first stepped away from the stoop. Holding his rifle in one hand, he continued his shouts, occasionally looking back to his partner, both men laughing as he moved toward Tommy. The man let his rifle hang from a sling as he shouted, kicking gravel in Tommy’s direction. He spat on the ground and cursed him. Tommy flinched away, letting the bits of gravel hit his pants as he continued his path forward, seemingly unaware of the danger.
The man gripped the rifle and raised it to strike Tommy with the buttstock just as a large explosion ripped through the air and reverberated the ground. Windows in the upper floors of the building shattered from the shockwave, bits of glass and debris raining down. The threatening guard’s eyes went wide. He dropped the rifle and held a hand over his head, looking at the billowing cloud forming in the sky. Tommy, fully prepared for the moment pulled a knife sheathed at the small of his back. With a practiced lunging step forward, he caught the guard under his jaw and rammed the blade home, allowing it to pierce through the top of his victim’s skull.
He tossed the man aside and flung open his jacket, bringing up the carbine assault rifle. Two controlled bursts, and the remaining guard fell with hits to the upper chest and face. Tommy didn’t wait for confirmation of the kill. He snatched his knife back from the first tango’s head and moved to the door. He grabbed at the steel lock mechanism and pushed, surprised to find it unlocked. He stepped inside and saw a man crouched in the entry, looking toward the front of the building where Elias’s militia team was now filling the street with a deadly barrage of crossfire. A single suppressed round to the back of the lone man’s head knocked him to the ground, the body rolling forward unnoticed.
Leaving the entryway, he moved toward the stairwell to his right. He heard footsteps racing down, and he ducked to the side, making himself small with the 9A-91 at the ready then tucking into a corner as two men rushed out. They hardly had time to identify the dead man on the ground before Tommy had them zeroed and was stitching rounds into the sides of their bodies. The men fell with a thud in the entrance, and Tommy stepped over them into the dusty stairwell. The surface of the poured-concrete steps was dry and brittle. Every window in the stairwell was shattered allowing unfiltered bright light, dust and smoke from the blast to pour in. The hollow space echoed sounds of shouting and the occasional breaking of glass from above. He paused long enough to determine the area clear before walking up, leading the way with the carbine sweeping a path as he moved.
Gunfire increased from the street, and he heard the thumps of a heavy weapon; the police or Russian military had arrived on scene. Elias would be forced to pull back. Tommy turned, lowered his caution, and began to take the stairs two at a time, racing for the top floor. The distinctive smaller explosions from fragmentation grenades cracked in the distance. Tommy ran past closed doors and moved to the top step. A wooden barrier hung partially open. He pushed it in and heard the zip of a bullet fly by his head. Wood splintered from the doorframe and Tommy dove to the ground, firing at the flash of movement to his front. The 9A-91 carbine assault rifle held a 20-round box magazine, and Tommy bled through half of them, firing blind into the hallway.
He felt a stinging pain in his side and a tug at his clothing. Landing hard, he rolled through the fall and came up to his knees, placing more shots into the already crumpling figure to his front. He stepped to his feet and placed a gloved hand to his side. He brought it up, seeing the crimson traces of blood against the tanned leather. Tommy shook it off then continued on. He kicked in the first door to find an empty room filled with stacked boxes. He moved past and continued to clear the spaces until he reached a large room at the back of the hallway. The door was hanging open, the previous gunfight having damaged a hinge. The thump of a 12.7mm machine gun outside reminded Tommy that he was out of time.
Tommy rushed the door. Inside was a cowering man; a handgun lay on a tabletop beside him. The man backed away, his arms up, pleading. Tommy shot him twice in the chest. Hearing a whimper, Tommy spun to the back of the room. On the ground, chained to the floor, was a blonde-haired woman. She cowered and looked away, crying. In English, she begged him not to hurt her. Tommy stepped forward, looking over his shoulder to verify the rest of the room was clear. His heart raced as he reached down and brushed the woman’s hair away. It wasn’t Sarah.
The gunshots outside turned to screams and sirens. He was out of time; if he was going to get the woman out of here, he wouldn’t be able to search the room for information. He had to go. Tommy pulled his knife and pried the rusted hasp from the floor, freeing the woman. He pulled her to her feet and looked her in the eye. “Can you walk?” he asked.
She looked back at him with a blank gaze. She nodded her head and gripped his arm tightly. Pulling away, he moved back to the door and closed it then turned to a large, open window covered with a white sheet. He ripped the sheet down and could see the roof of the neighboring building only a short drop below them. He pushed the woman ahead of him, and not taking time to ask her, he grabbed her wrist and lowered her down to the opposing roof.
Tommy stopped and turned back toward the dead man. Sweeping the room a final time, he found random paperwork on the desk. Behind it were two steel safes. He wanted to look inside for anything that could lead him to the other women, but knowing his time was up, he popped both incendiary grenades and rolled them to the back, setting the room ablaze. If he couldn’t have whatever was important enough for the Badawi to lock in a safe, then Tommy would destroy it. He turned back then dropped to the adjoining roof alongside the woman.
The narrow rooftop was packed with antennas, satellite dishes and clotheslines. He dragged the woman behind him, snatching a black garment from a line as he moved along and pulled her into cover around a corner. Tommy could see that she was close to full shock, her face pale white with her pupil’s wide. He needed to get her someplace fast while she was still on her feet. He pulled the garment over the woman’s head and straightened it to ensure she could see him. Mindful of the pain in his side, Tommy eased into a sitting position and, for the first time, opened his jacket to check his wound. The bullet had cut through the fat on the side of his abdomen, blood was leaking from both ends.
“You’re hurt,” he heard the woman gasp.
Tommy nodded, then removed his crumpled scarf and tucked the ends into the bullet hole, wincing from the pain. He took a deep breath and looked back at the woman. “It’s fine. I was wanting to get rid of the love handles anyway.”
He forced himself back to his feet and continued leading the woman away. They followed a walkway onto another rooftop and then to a fire escape, taking them down into a crowded street. Police cars raced past with sirens wailing. Crowds of people pushed by, trying to move away from the chaos. Tommy closed his stained jacket back up. Keeping the woman close by his side, he merged them into the procession of people. He spotted policemen running on the opposite side of the street with rifles up. A Russian armored vehicle convoy rushed past them. Tommy quickly found that traveling with the woman w
as a benefit. All of the police were searching for attackers, single armed men, not a couple moving together within a crowd of civilians.
At the end of the street, Tommy pulled away from the main road and moved them toward a green park. Monuments lined the sidewalk and people stood along the curb, still watching the chaos of events in the distance. He heard men say there was an attack against the hotel and that neighboring buildings were on fire. Tommy ignored them and kept moving toward a stand of Turkish pine trees before dropping to a bench and letting the woman sit beside him on his injured side. He leaned back into the bench, exhausted from the gunfight, the pain in his side clouding his thoughts. He looked at her and asked her name.
“I’m Carol,” she stuttered, then looked at his tattered and stained clothing, “Who are you?” she asked.
He ignored her question and grimaced away the pain. “Do you know Sarah Donovan?” Tommy said between labored breaths, keeping his eyes steeled on the distant mob, watching it slowly fade as the sirens wailed.
“Of course. I know Sarah. I was with her when we were taken.”
Tommy turned to look at her. “Sarah is my sister.”
Looking Tommy in the eyes, she said, “Yes, Sarah spoke about you.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No, we were separated. But Sarah said you would come for her.”
“She did?” he asked, his expression softening.
Her head nodded. “She knew you would, that if nothing else you would come.” The woman looked around. “She said nothing would stop you—that you’d die trying.”
Tommy winced and swallowed hard, dropping his head at the words, in the knowledge that his sister hadn’t lost faith in him. He took another deep breath and, with a grunt of pain, returned to his feet. “Come on, I have to get you somewhere safe.”
He watched armed men moving through the park. A pair dressed in black with yellow insignia broke off from the group and turned toward them. Tommy looked away, leaning toward Carol, watching the men in his peripheral vision. The two were on the hunt, slowly moving through the anxious crowd, examining faces as they passed. One of them looked up and locked on Tommy’s position.
“Stand straight up, they’re on to us,” he whispered to Carol, turning her so that her back faced the approaching men, shielding his movements. Tommy shifted his position and stood directly to her front and readied the suppressed MK23.
Carol looked down at the weapon then back to him with wide eyes. “Who are they?”
“Special police, paramilitary types; definitely no friends of ours.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“I’m going to kill them.”
Tommy kept his eyes in the distance while watching the two men approach from the corner of his vision. Carol began to tremble. Tommy gripped the pistol in his right hand and put his left hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing it.
“It’s fine, close your eyes,” Tommy whispered, keeping his own eyes engaged on the approaching men. They were now within fifty feet and closing fast, focused and moving directly toward them. Both policemen carried holstered weapons, hands resting on the grips.
When they closed to within twenty feet, the men stopped. The one to the left pointed at Tommy and began to speak while the other drew his pistol. Before the words could leave the first man’s mouth, Tommy pushed Carol aside as he brought up his weapon. He fired four shots and paused. The first man was on his back, and the one on the right had bloody hands clasped around his neck. Tommy focused and fired a kill shot into the wounded man’s face then turned, pulling Carol behind him.
Even with the suppressed rounds, the bodies on the ground drew attention. Women near the street began to scream, and the crowd was again in a panicked motion. Tommy heard a shout from behind him and spotted a blue Toyota van on a narrow access road. A man was leaned over the hood of the van while another waved toward him frantically. Papa’s pickup crew had arrived. Tommy turned and beelined directly toward them. He felt the air move by his head and heard the zip of a near miss.
Instinctively crouching, he saw a group of policemen firing at him from the main road. Looking ahead, he could see the man by the van returning fire with the AK47. Tommy, not wanting to be caught in a deadly crossfire, gripped Carol tightly by the wrist and led her into the cover of trees while still moving toward the van. The gunfire intensified and was joined by wailing police sirens. The man by the van door began tossing canister grenades that popped and spilled dirty yellow smoke.
Taking the signal, Tommy turned to Carol and looked her in the eyes. “Run to the van, I’ll cover you.”
She returned his stare with glassy eyes but nodded. Tommy didn’t wait to see if she was running. He brought up the 9A-91 and held the weapon at his shoulder, firing fast bursts into the officers. Blowing through a full magazine, he let it drop to the ground, reloaded, then fired again until the yellow smoke was engulfing him, screening his escape. He walked backwards, firing two more bursts before turning and running the rest of the way to the van with his head down. When he reached the vehicle, it was already moving. Carol was huddled in the back and Tommy dropped in beside her, hearing the door slam shut behind him.
Tires squelched on the pavement as the van raced away, moving down the access road and turning a corner before dropping into an alley, where another small car fell in behind them. Tommy rose to his knees, readying the 9A-91 to fire on it when one of the men shook him off. “He is with us, my friend,” he said.
The van turned right onto a main street then left again into a tight alley, where it screeched to a stop. The car, a rust-red Fiat, pulled alongside, and the van door was again pulled open for Tommy and Carol to switch vehicles. In the back of the Fiat, Tommy quickly checked his weapons. Carol was sitting crunched over, her head pressed into Tommy’s side with her hands gripping his left forearm in a death grip. He let the weapon rest on the seat beside him then put a hand to the side of her head and looked down at her.
“Are you oaky? Are you hit?”
She shook her head and pulled away, looking up at him. Her face was dirty and streaked from tears. Tommy tried to smile to reassure her, but instead pursed his lips, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. “You’re going to be okay. These are friends, and they’ll get us somewhere safe.” A muscle in her jaw twitched and she dipped her chin, acknowledging his words. She moved his left arm out of the way and curled up, taking shelter by his side. Tommy swallowed hard, flinching away, but then put his arm on the scared woman’s back and allowed her to rest. “You’re going to be okay,” he said again, looking straight ahead as the small car left the congestion of the city and headed toward the safe house.
19
The situation was changing rapidly. Sarah was bound and gagged, dragged from the room where she’d been kept, and then forced into the trunk of a large sedan. The car stopped several times in different locations, moving so frequently she lost track of the amount of time she’d been in the trunk. She heard crunching gravel under the wheels of the car and saw the glow of the tail lights. The car came to a stop. Doors slammed and feet approached the rear of the vehicle.
When the trunk lid popped open, she rolled to her back, trying to focus on the figures above her. It was dark and the heavy clouds blocked out the moon. Men stood over her, looking down and speaking in Arabic. A bright light shone in her eyes, causing her to look away. Hands reached into the trunk, roughly grabbing and dragging her out, letting her drop to the ground with a thud.
She heard a voice in English; this one she recognized, but unlike the last time she had heard the man, Jamal, his voice was cold and hard. “We are taking you inside. If you ever wish to leave this place alive, you will do exactly as we say,” he said, walking behind her as two larger men dragged her toward a stone building, her toes scraping against the gravel. “I don’t care if you live or die. If it was my decision, I would bury you in the desert.”
Sarah didn’t speak. Her throat was dry, and she found words im
possible to form. They pulled her through the building, passing through a large room filled with sleeping men, then down a long corridor and eventually tossed her against a wall, where an old woman with a silver head scarf hissed and grabbed her by the hair. The woman forced Sarah into a crouch and pushed her into a small room, where she smacked her body until she crumpled to the floor in a corner. She grabbed her wrists and bound them together with a plastic zip tie. Sarah looked up and could see that another woman was lying on the floor across from her.
The old woman shouted at Sarah in Arabic and kicked a waste bucket closer to her. The guards laughed as the woman yelled insults. Jamal smiled, shooing the woman away, then entered the doorway. Sarah slid away from him tighter into the corner, pulling her knees into her chest. Searching the room, other than the waste bucket, she found only a tattered blanket. She squinted, trying to focus on the second woman who was lying motionless on the floor.
“Water,” she begged.
Jamal, still standing in the doorway, flinched at the words then looked down at her, disgusted. He tossed her a half bottle of water. “I should do with you as your people did with me,” he said and spat at her feet.
Sarah took the bottle with her bound hands and drank, coughing as she finished. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then you need to think hard. You need to tell me who is looking for you so we can end this.”
Sarah looked down at her dark, blistered, dirt-covered feet then back up at Jamal. “What more can I do? I’ve already told you everything. Please just let me go.”
The man smiled and shook his head.
Sarah looked at the other woman and suddenly recognized her as Abella. “What have you done to her?”
Jamal ignored the question and placed a black hood over the French girl’s head. He then looked to Sarah, and using his left arm, he pinned her head against the wall then dropped a second hood over her head and cinched it tightly around her neck. “There is nothing left for you to worry about; your fate will be decided soon.”
