by Kaylea Cross
He held his fire, waiting for the enemy to come into the kill zone. Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.
He squeezed the trigger, firing two shots that hit the man’s chest. The Taliban fighter dropped his weapon and crumpled, unmoving. Hunter’s men began to engage the enemy in their designated sectors, methodically picking the attackers off when they came into range. The air was filled with the rattle and echo of gunfire. Hunter took aim at the next fighter but someone beat him to it, hitting him in the torso and sending him tumbling to the grass.
A new burst of gunfire suddenly broke out on their far left. The Paks, finally getting into the fight. Hunter stayed flat on his belly and waited for the remaining targets to come close enough.
“Three tangos down here,” Dunphy reported, confirming Ellis had already taken out three of his own targets. “Looks like reinforcements are coming down that trail. Four so far.”
“Team leader copies,” Hunter replied, readying to fire his weapon at the next enemy. Bullets slapped into the cinderblock beside him, showering him with dust. His vision zeroed in on the closest man’s chest, sighting down the length of the rifle barrel.
“RPG, incoming!”
At Dunphy’s warning, Hunter and Gage simultaneously flattened against the ground and covered their heads a second before the round whistled over them and hit the north wall of the school with a loud bang. The ensuing explosion blew apart the cinderblock and shook the ground. Hunter grunted as the blast wave rolled through his body and chunks of debris rained down around him.
“Tango down. Someone else is trying to load the tube again.”
“Take him out,” Hunter ordered, crawling on his elbows to get a better vantage point. The surviving enemy were still coming at them, running headlong through the hail of return gunfire. He saw three more drop. One crawled away clutching at a wound in his belly.
“He’s down,” Dunphy reported a moment later, “and so’s the RPG. Ellis did it with one round.”
One shot, one kill. This was why Scout/Snipers rocked. “Nice.” Hunter fired again, hitting another enemy fighter high up in the shoulder. His AK flew up into the air as he fell and crawled back toward his line.
More Taliban fighters fell, cut down by the lethal fire delivered by his men. One more man in the lead of his group toppled face first into the grass and suddenly everything got quiet. The eerie yells died away into silence and no more shots rang out. The survivors turned and ran for their lives, dragging the wounded with them.
Hunter counteracted the adrenaline rush flooding his system with a few slow, deep breaths, bracing for a possible counterattack. “Dunphy, report.”
“The three reinforcements are retreating and there’re only six unwounded shooters left. We don’t see any others hidden in the hills.”
“Copy that. Update me if anything changes.” Having Ellis take more of them out when they seemed to be retreating went directly against the ROEs, and with the Pak army here as witnesses it would cause a serious shit storm. Even though Hunter knew those TTP bastards would likely be back another day when the school wasn’t as heavily defended, that wasn’t his concern now.
All he cared about right now was getting enough room and time to get to Khalia and the students.
After a few minutes passed with no further sign of an attack, Hunter got to his feet and surveyed the area before getting back on the squad radio. “Execute exfil plan Charlie, over.”
In answer everyone got up and hauled ass to their pre-assigned positions. With the enemy withdrawing, now was the perfect time to evacuate Khalia and the others. No telling if the Taliban were regrouping for another round, and there was no reason to stay and find out. As far as Hunter was concerned, they were the Pak military’s problem now. His priority was to get those students and staff to safety, then get Khalia and Ray the hell out of this valley.
* * *
Youssef left work that evening in a cheerful mood and opted to walk over to one of his favorite cafés for a hot cup of tea before catching the bus home. The entire day had gone by without a single visit from Faatin and he’d made good headway on the next project in his queue. On top of that, he was looking forward to finding out if there’d been an attack on the girls’ school today.
He took a shortcut down some side streets on the way from his office to avoid the crowds. The sun was just starting to set, casting a rosy glow over everything its rays touched. Calls for prayer rang out from the mosques. Being near the end of Ramadan, everyone was in high spirits about the approach of the Eid-Ul-Fitr celebration and looking to fill up on a good meal before the ritual fasting began again at sunrise. When he arrived, his favorite coffee shop was much busier than usual.
After standing in line for almost fifteen minutes to get his vanilla chai tea and a slice of spice cake, he made his way back onto the crowded sidewalks and kept a leisurely pace as he ate his treat, then stopped to sit on a bench for a while. He deserved this reward for everything he’d done this past week.
He lingered over his fragrant cup of tea for almost half an hour, until the sky turned purple and soft and shadows began to swallow the streets. The restaurants, cafés and shops in this area of town were bustling with activity. He walked for a while. When he got tired of battling the crowds he hit an alley that led to another side street, polished off the last bite of moist, decadent cake and washed it down with a satisfying sip of hot tea. Enjoying the relative quiet on this route, he breathed in deeply and sighed. Life was good.
At the next corner he took a left away from the busy part of town. His bus stopped all along this road but he didn’t feel like waiting for it with a big group of people. Right now all he wanted was to savor his solitude and get home to check the news and see if his TTP contact had left him an update of some kind.
A block from his destination, he noticed a black SUV driving up the street toward him. He tossed his garbage into a trash bin on the sidewalk and continued up the street. The vehicle slowed as it neared him. A little weird, since the traffic light was still a few dozen meters away, but he figured maybe they were going to let someone out. When it pulled over to the curb and stopped ahead of him, he paused, a trickle of apprehension sliding through him. The vehicle’s windows were blacked out and the plates weren’t marked.
The passenger door popped open and a powerfully built man slid out wearing a dress shirt and an expensive-looking leather jacket. He stared directly at him and Youssef took an instinctive step back, pulse accelerating.
The man stepped away from the vehicle and Youssef noticed a slight bulge beneath his jacket, just under the armpit. A gun?
“Youssef Khan?” the commanding voice demanded.
Run. His feet and hands turned ice cold. He took another step backward, ready to whirl around and make a run for it. Who was this guy? What did he want?
“Are you Youssef Khan?” the man repeated in Urdu, in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t used to asking twice.
Youssef struggled to find his voice. “Y-yes.”
“I need you to come with us.” He didn’t make a move toward him or reach for his gun, but the threat was implicit all the same. Run, and the man would take him down. Maybe with a bullet.
Youssef swallowed hard, pulse drumming in his throat. These guys had to be from the government. “What do you want?” What did they know? Had they hacked into his e-mail accounts? Had they somehow listened in on his conversation the other night? His mouth went dry.
The man angled to the side and opened the rear passenger door, giving him a clear view of the holstered pistol beneath his left arm. And not by accident.
Youssef did not want to get into that vehicle. “Who are you?”
The stranger’s face hardened. “Get in.” Or else I’ll make you regret it. His voice and body language made that clear.
Youssef cast a desperate glance up and down the street, finding it almost empty. A few other cars passed by without noticing his plight. He wasn’t close enough to an alleyway to try to escape into t
he shadows.
Feeling like his legs were made of lead, he took a tentative step forward, watching the man’s hands. If he made a move to draw his gun, Youssef would take the risk and run. But the man didn’t move anything except his eyes as he tracked Youssef’s approach to the vehicle.
At the back door he paused again. There was no one else inside, save the driver who stared straight ahead without looking back at him. A hard hand between his shoulders pushed him into the vehicle. Reluctantly he slid inside and the door slammed shut behind him. He flashed out a hand to try the door handle but it wouldn’t open. They’d locked him in.
The sense of panic increased tenfold when the man with the gun climbed into the front passenger seat and the driver shot them away from the curb. His heart beat so fast he felt sick.
“Who are you?” Youssef asked again.
“Your escorts,” was all he got.
“Where are you taking me? What do you want?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
Fear curdled in his belly. They didn’t speak to him all the way across town and into the industrial section of the city. At a section of warehouses they passed several mechanical shops and garages. Then the driver took another turn into the parking lot of a darkened building that appeared abandoned. He pulled up to the rolling bay door and shut the engine off. Youssef had only a moment longer to worry before the man in the passenger seat was at his door.
It opened. “Step out.”
He did, his breathing now fast and shallow. The windows of the building were dark and there was no one else around. No one to hear him if he screamed for help.
Too late for that. The thought made his knees go weak.
“This way.”
Watching the man’s hands as he shadowed him, Youssef had no choice but to follow the driver to the rolling bay door. It rolled up with a loud metallic rattle to expose nothing but a gaping maw of blackness.
“Go inside.”
He stopped. “Alone?”
“You won’t be alone for long.” Something in the man’s tone made a shiver crawl up his spine.
Youssef reluctantly entered the bay, senses on alert. The steel door rolled shut and he was swallowed by darkness. He whirled to his left when a light flicked on overhead, bathing the room with a harsh blue-white light. There was no one there.
“Youssef.”
He swallowed a yelp and spun around. A well built middle aged man dressed in a business suit stood in the far doorway. He had short black hair that thinned on top and a neatly trimmed goatee.
“Please, sit.” The man indicated a metal chair placed in the center of the cavernous room.
Youssef’s stomach rolled. My God, were they going to interrogate him? Torture him in here until he gave some sort of confession? Sweat broke out across his face.
One side of the man’s mouth turned up in amusement. “Sit.”
Shaking inside, Youssef sat, never taking his eyes off the man. He didn’t dare speak. Who was this intimidating man and who did he work for? Some government agency?
The man spoke to him in perfect English. His voice was low and calm, as if he did this sort of thing every day. “You’ve had a lot of interesting conversations over the past few months.”
Youssef blanched. Shit, they knew. He’d been so careful to hide his tracks, he wasn’t sure how they’d found out. Who were these guys? Military? ISI? Or maybe they were working for the Americans. Either way, he was in serious trouble and didn’t know what to do.
The man walked toward him, each footstep ringing off the concrete floor and echoing through the empty space. He stopped a few feet away and folded his arms across his chest, looking down at Youssef with an unreadable expression that increased the shaking inside him. “Nothing to say to that?”
He wasn’t going to utter a word without having a lawyer here. Unless they started torturing him. His stomach pitched in a violent roll. Would they kill him?
“No matter,” the man continued, his bearing shouting of time in the military or some other position of power. “We know who you’ve been talking to. We know everything about you.”
Youssef fidgeted restlessly in his chair. Unable to take the strain any more, he blurted, “What do you want?”
The man’s black eyes sliced over to him. “To deliver a message.”
He couldn’t imagine what sort of message this man had for him. Thinking frantically of what to say, he opened his mouth to speak but the man cut him off.
“The operation today was a failure.”
He snapped his mouth shut. So there had been an attack at the school?
“Your friends did not fare well, I’m afraid. They not only failed to take the school or inflict any casualties, most of them were either killed or seriously wounded in the attack.”
Despite the growing fear, a wave of disappointment washed through him. He managed to find his voice, unsteady as it was. “I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”
The man’s cold smile was terrifying. “Don’t you?”
No. At least, he hoped not.
His interrogator took another step closer. Youssef instinctively leaned back in the chair. “The Taliban thought you important enough to consult with, so naturally that caught our attention. You not only speak perfect English, but your cover is ideal. No criminal record, graduated with honors from university, working at a sought after engineering firm here in Islamabad. And you’re eager to help TTP’s extremist agenda. I can see why they saw you as useful.” He tilted his head slightly, measuring him with those deep set black eyes. “Just as I’m sure you will be of great use to us.”
The words sent a chill racing up his spine.
Youssef now understood what this meeting was about. He’d just gone from being a casual observer on the sidelines of this war to being thrown between the front lines in no man’s land, and there was no escape.
Youssef swallowed and closed his eyes. He was nothing more than a pawn now. Expendable. And he didn’t know which side would be the one to sacrifice him, his friends or his enemies.
Chapter Nine
The sound of the gunfire was terrifying, but it was the sudden silence that filled Khalia’s veins with ice. A deathly stillness now engulfed the underground shelter as everyone held their breath. Only a single dim emergency light shone in the far corner, casting shadows on the rear walls. The front half of the enclosure was swallowed in blackness, increasing the sense of claustrophobia.
Khalia clutched the little girl, Aisha, to her chest, struggling to stay calm in the suffocating tension. Everyone was totally still, afraid to move. She cut a glance ahead at Ray, who stared up at the trap door that led to the emergency shelter that had been built at her father’s insistence. The end of the firefight meant one of two things. Either Hunter and the others had eradicated the threat, or the Taliban had overwhelmed them and were coming to kill them next.
Khalia swallowed hard. There was no place for them to go. Nowhere to hide but here.
Hold it together. The girls are looking to you for a sense of security.
Her radio squawked, startling her and several others around her. “Khalia, you copy?”
The sound of Hunter’s voice made her sag in relief. She set Aisha beside her and fumbled with her robe to get the radio out. Her fingers were icy as she keyed it to respond. “I’m here.”
“We’re coming to get you. Be ready to move fast.”
“Okay.” Did that mean the Taliban were still out there? She knew better than to ask. Everyone was staring at her with anxious eyes as she conveyed the message to Zaid. He translated for her and the adults got the girls organized. It seemed like a long time before someone finally pounded on the top of the trap door. Khalia had no idea what they’d find on the other side of it. Some of those explosions had been big, large enough to shake the ground and rain dust and dirt down on them in the shelter.
Ray unlocked the door and an instant later someone wrenched it open from above. Squinting against the sudd
en flood of light, Khalia recognized Hunter standing in the opening, bathed in the sun’s dying rays. Relief punched through her system at the sight of him, a gorgeous, lethal warrior here to save them.
He dropped into the opening with the agility of a cat and took in the scene with a single sweeping glance before his gaze came to rest on her. “You okay?”
She swallowed. His face and clothing were covered in dirt, but no blood that she could see. The hot ball of tension in her gut eased slightly. “Yes. Are you?”
“Fine.” He motioned to Zaid to come forward. “We’re going to bring the girls out in groups, starting with the oldest ones. A teacher will escort them with some of our men to the Pakistani army vehicles waiting half a klick from here. They’ll make sure they get home to their families okay.”
And then what? she wanted to demand. The military would escort them home and just pull out again? These people needed protection, not an escort. She barely held the words back. Now wasn’t the time for an argument like that and she knew it was the government’s fault, not Hunter’s.
As everyone started moving toward the exit, Aisha tightened her arms around Khalia and whimpered. “Shhh,” Khalia soothed, rocking her slightly from side to side. “It’s all right.” It had to be all right. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if anything happened to these girls because of her or the foundation.
“Khalia.”
She whipped her head up to find Hunter staring at her, face grave. “There are things out there the girls are better off not seeing,” he said. “Do what you can to distract them, or at least shield their view north of the school.”
Bodies. He meant there were dead bodies out there. But whose? She wanted to ask if all of his men were okay but didn’t get the chance because he was already helping the first teacher climb the steel ladder to the trap door opening. Khalia kept the group moving toward him, filing into a line. When it was Aisha’s turn, her little arms suddenly constricted around Khalia’s neck like a vise. Giving her a reassuring squeeze, Khalia shifted the child from her hip to her front until Aisha’s legs wrapped around her waist, then moved toward the ladder. Hunter was waiting for her at the bottom of it.
