by Scott McEwen
Akram recognized the rabid look in Buck’s eyes. They were the eyes of a man unhinged. “Shoot him,” he said in Arabic.
The gunman fired his AK-47 directly into Buck’s chest, and the old Marine flew backward, dead before he hit the ground.
Marie screamed, and Akram hauled her to her feet by her hair, pressing the blade of the knife into the flesh alongside her nose. “Now tell me where your husband is.”
“I don’t know,” she wept. “You cut the phone lines; I couldn’t reach him.”
“Who killed Kashkin . . . the first man to come here?”
“I did.”
He jerked her hair, twisting her head around and hurting her. “You’re lying!”
“I’m not!” she spat in defiance, her anger suddenly overtaking her fear. “I shot the bastard twice from the bedroom window. Then I burned his body right over there!” She pointed toward the pyre.
Akram saw by the blazing fury in her eyes that she spoke the truth and slapped her to the ground. “You’re going to be very sorry your husband was not here.”
“Go to hell!” She crawled around the well to check her mother.
Akram conferred with the man who had taken Abad’s place as second in command. “How many men are left?”
“There are thirteen of us.”
“Get them ready to go. We’re leaving the same way we came in—and we’re taking these three with us.”
The man turned, shouting orders for an organized departure.
Then Akram heard an airplane engine overhead and pulled on Duke’s infrared binocular for a look up through the foggy overcast. He saw what he recognized as an old C-47 and scanned the binocular back along its line of flight to see parachutes opening in the sky over the northeastern corner of the ranch.
“Paratroops!” he shouted in Arabic, pointing up. “Kill them before they get to the ground—move!”
The men rallied quickly, gathering up any extra ammo they could find and running out to meet the enemy without really knowing exactly where he was going to land.
Akram waited until they were well away before slinging the TAC-50 around his back and snatching Marie up by her hair again. She fought him, so he shoved her back to the ground and unslung the rifle, putting the muzzle of the TAC-50 to her mother’s head.
“No!”
“Then do exactly as I say!”
She submitted, and Akram used one of Starks’s bootlaces to bind her hands tightly behind her back. Then he shoved her out in front of him toward the west, and the two of them moved away briskly, with Marie none the wiser about the parachutes descending over the ranch.
Once they were clear of the light from the fire, he spun her around and gave her a short jab to the abdomen, dropping her to her knees. He pushed her over onto the ground and jerked her pants down, cutting off her underwear with the knife and stuffing them into her mouth. He then tore a sleeve from her shirt and tied it tightly around her head to keep them in place.
“Now get up!” He pulled her pants back up and kicked her in the butt to get her moving again. “Remember . . . I stab you in the stomach the first time you make a sound.”
70
MONTANA,
Gil’s Ranch
The SEALs were taking fire before they even made it to the ground. Gil felt rounds ripping into his armor as he landed firmly with both feet together, hitting the release on the jump harness, and then hitting the deck to lay down a horizontal arc fire from his M4, forcing the heat signatures across his field of vision to stop firing and seek cover. This bought the rest of his team members valuable time in the moments before they touched down. The sight of a lifeless body impacting the ground to Gil’s left, however, told him that one of his men was already dead.
He switched out the magazine and began trading fire with the enemy as they were taking cover behind water troughs, wood piles, horse trailers, and corral posts. The SEALs were shouting back and forth, sorting themselves out and preparing to move forward.
Jack Frost crawled up beside Gil. “Take any lead on the way in?”
“Don’t think so. You?”
“Lost most of my foot.” Frost fired the rest of the magazine and pulled another magazine from his harness.
A quick glance, and Gil saw that, indeed, much of Frost’s left foot was gone from the instep forward. “The only easy day was yesterday,” he said, firing a burst and putting a man down as he broke from the stable toward the water trough. “One of my men is dead yonder.”
“I saw him hit,” Frost said. “Couldn’t tell who it was.”
Crosswhite scrambled up on Gil’s left and hit the dirt. “Gil, why don’t you make a break and flank these sorry cocksuckers to the west? Go find Marie and let us reduce these guys. It’s obvious they don’t have infrared.”
The team was formed up now and laying down lethal grazing fire, pinning the enemy and maneuvering forward aggressively for the kill.
Gil detached from the M4 and unslung the Remington MSR, peering through the nightscope to place the reticule on the face of a man firing at their muzzle flashes from the loft above the stable. He squeezed the trigger, and the .308 Lapua Naturalis round struck the man to the left of the nose, mushrooming perfectly within the brain box to blow the head almost completely apart. An instant later, Gil was up and sprinting for the house over open terrain. It was during this sprint that he realized he was missing the little toe from his right foot along with part of the metatarsal bone, requiring him to roll the foot inward as he ran and giving him a slight limp.
Even with his damaged foot, he managed to quickly cover the hundred yards to the house, emerging from the fog to see that it was fully engulfed. The eastern half of the roof collapsed inward, and thousands of sparks shot skyward. A dead horse and a number of bodies littered the back lawn. No one inside the house could possibly be alive, so he ran around front, where he nearly shot Dusty Chatham standing beside his horse with a Browning hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. Dusty’s face was gleaming with sweat.
“Jesus! Is that you, Gil?”
“Dusty! Where’s Marie?”
Dusty shrugged, looking slightly ashamed. “I dunno. I just got here. Buck Ferguson’s dead, and Janet’s been shot in her hiney.” He pointed toward where they lay, just beyond the firelight. “She’s over there with some FBI guy; he’s pretty bad off too.”
Gil found his mother-in-law unconscious, her pulse weak. The sight of Buck Ferguson’s body filled him with a nauseating sensation of dread. Agent Starks was semiconscious, but he was so badly concussed that he could only mumble confused responses to Gil’s urgent questions.
“Who’s doin’ all the shooting yonder?” Dusty asked. “That the cavalry?”
“Yeah, a day late and a dollar short,” Gil muttered, disgusted with himself and terrified for his wife. “Is it possible Marie’s in the house, Dusty?”
Dusty looked at the house and then back at Gil. “I don’t know, Gil. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. The house was already burning when we crested the rise.”
“Marie!” Gil shouted, looking helplessly around. “Marie! . . . Marieee!” He turned on Dusty. “Where was the last place you saw her?”
“Just over the rise.” Dusty pointed back toward his ranch. “She bolted on ahead of me. I’m sorry, Gil, I froze up . . . I was afraid to follow her with all the shooting.”
“Did she ride in on the dead horse out back?”
Dusty nodded.
Gil ran back around the house to double-check the bodies, finding Hal Ferguson struggling to get to his feet, coughing blood and bleeding from a hole through the left side of his chest.
“Hal!”
Hal saw him and fell back to the ground. “Christ, am I glad to see you.”
Gil took a knee and rolled the wounded man onto his bad side to keep the blood from draining into the good lung. “Have you
seen Marie?”
“Not since I got hit,” Hal grunted. “You shoulda seen her, Gil. Christ, she was blazing away with a .45 like a cavalryman.”
“Hal, I can’t find her. Was she hit?”
“I dunno. Last I saw her, she was running off with Janet.”
This gave Gil hope. “Okay, Marine. Hold on.” He took Hal by the arm and hefted him up over his shoulder.
“My dad’s dead, ain’t he?”
“Yeah,” Gil grunted, his foot hurting like hell under the added weight.
He carried the wounded Marine around to the front of the house, putting him down beside Buck’s body. “I’m sorry I got your family involved in this, Hal.”
Hal pulled himself up alongside his father, seeing the bullet holes in his chest, the calmness of his death mask. He looked up at Gil with tears rolling down his cheeks. “We’re Marines, Gil. My family’s been involved in this shit since Guadalcanal.” He wiped his face with bloody fingers and shook off the dread, knowing that Gil didn’t yet realize his younger brothers were very likely dead as well. “Better go find your wife now. Don’t let all this be for nothin’.”
Gil lifted Janet’s legs, resting her feet on the edge of the well to help keep the blood flowing to her vital organs, where she needed it most. Then he looked at Dusty. “My team will be here soon. Keep Hal on his wounded side so he doesn’t bleed into the good lung.”
Dusty nodded. “Gil, I’m sorry about—”
“Don’t apologize.” Gil put a hand on his shoulder. “You showed up, and that means a lot.” With that, he moved out toward the stable where his men were dragging an enemy survivor out of the main door by his heels.
The survivor was shot in the hip and couldn’t walk. “Just shoot me,” he said in American English. “I’ve said my prayers.”
Gil ignored him for the moment, turning to Alpha. “Who bought it on the way down?”
“Clancy,” Alpha said. “Took one in the head.”
Gil turned back around to step on the Al Qaeda man’s fractured pelvis, causing him to howl. “Why is your English so fuckin’ good?” He took his foot off the wound so the man could answer.
“Because I’m an American!” the Al Qaeda man gasped. “And you’re a—”
Gil stepped on him again. “Where’s my wife?”
The man gritted his teeth in agony, sneering. “Go fuck yourself!”
Gil stomped on the hip, breaking the fractured pelvis apart with a sickening crunch. “I said, Where the fuck is my wife?”
The Al Qaeda man screamed in furious agony. “Go fuck your mother!”
Gil lifted his bloody foot and stepped back. “He’s not gonna talk.”
Crosswhite drew his knife. “I’ll make the man talk.”
Gil shook his head. “Not this one.”
“Then he’s dead.”
“No. We’ll let the FBI have him. Did you clear the stable?”
“We did. She’s not in there, Gil.”
One of the SEALs pointed toward the well, where Oso was sniffing the unconscious Janet. “That your dog, Chief?”
Gil turned. “Sure as hell is.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and whistled. The dog froze and looked toward the stable, spotted Gil, and came running.
Gil ducked inside and reemerged with one of Marie’s Carhartts. He held the jacket to the dog’s snout. “Where’s Mama? Find your mama now!”
The dog ran back to the well, with Gil hot on his heels. He put his nose to the ground and began moving in a zigzag pattern toward the northwest. After forty or fifty seconds of sniffing, he stopped and looked back at Gil, barking once to let him know he’d picked up the scent.
Gil turned to Dusty. “Can I borrow your horse?”
Dusty handed him the reins. “He’s all yours.”
Gil mounted up, looking down at Crosswhite. “Secure the area as best you can, then pull yourselves into a defensive perimeter. Get Pope on the horn and bring him up to speed on everything that’s happened. Tell him it’s safe to get the FBI in here. I’m going after Marie.”
“Sure you want to do that alone?”
“Got no choice. You boys can’t ride, and you’ll never keep up on foot.” He looked down at all of them, saying, “I can’t ever repay what you men have done.” Then he reined the stallion around and dug in his heels. “Oso, find your mama!”
The dog took off, and Gil galloped after him.
Crosswhite and the others watched them go.
“What’s he gonna find out there?” Alpha wondered aloud.
Crosswhite shook his head and shouted, “Doc!” at the corpsman who was busy tending to the wounded Al Qaeda fighter near the entrance to the stable. “Leave that fucker alone for now. There’s three of our people over here who need help!”
71
MONTANA
Holding another human being dead to rights in the crosshairs can fill a sniper with an undeniable sense of invincibility. Akram had never before experienced that feeling of power, and as he watched the thermal image of Gil making his way up the slope on the back of the horse, the Remington sniper rifle resting butt down on his thigh, his face cracked into a smirk. For almost a year now, he had planned for Shannon’s death, and Allah had at last seen fit to grant him the privilege of killing the American at his own game.
He knocked Marie to the ground with the butt of the TAC-50 and took a knee behind a granite boulder, placing the reticule on Gil’s chest at one hundred yards. He fingered the heavy trigger, drawing a shallow breath as he began to gently squeeze, awaiting the surprise of the rifle’s report.
Marie had listened to the gunfight back at the ranch as Akram dragged her up the slope through the rocks, wondering who had arrived to help and where they had come from. She knew that her mother would soon die without medical attention, and she was hard pressed to fight off an encroaching feeling of despair as Akram took her farther and farther away. The firing had died off fifteen minutes ago, leaving her to guess at the outcome of the battle below, but whatever the situation was back on the ranch, one thing was obvious: her captor was about to blow somebody out of his socks—and she was damned if she was going to just lie there on the ground like a half-wit and watch him do it.
She kicked out with both feet, catching Akram on the hip with the heels of her boots. The big rifle went off, and he whipped around angrily, snarling, “Stupid bitch!” and stomping her shin with a combat boot. He swung the rifle back down the slope, quickly working the bolt and squeezing off another shot.
“Yes!” he hissed in English, working the bolt again to squeeze off a third a shot. Then he jumped to his feet, holding the rifle high over his head in triumph.
“Allahu Akbaaaaaar!” he shouted at the heavens. “Allahu Akbaaaar!” God is great!
He turned and stepped on the side of Marie’s face. “Your murdering husband’s brains are in the dirt, and his soul is burning in hell!” He ejected the spent casing and rammed another round into the battery. “Allah is indeed merciful! His greatness cannot be questioned!”
Marie felt the life running out of her, her will to fight slipping away. How could Gil be dead? It didn’t seem possible.
With what felt like the strength of ten men, Akram snatched her up by the hair again, putting his face close enough to hers that she could smell the stink of his coffee breath. “I have defeated your husband.” He shoved her forward contemptuously. “When we reach the truck, I will take you as a man takes the woman of his enemy, and my victory will be complete. If we were in my homeland, you would become one of my wives, and you would bear my children to the glory of God.”
She struggled to breathe with her panties stuffed in her mouth, stumbling numbly forward through the dark, her wrists bound so tightly behind her back that she no longer had feeling in her hands.
Akram chuckled, unable to suppress his overwhelming happiness. To be
victorious—to enslave the women of your enemies—was a glorious prize granted by Allah in exchange for doing his will on earth. He had read of such glory and had dreamt of it many times as a boy, but he had never truly believed it possible. The West had kept the East in a stranglehold for centuries with its superior technologies, but now times were rapidly changing—for the everlasting glory of Allah.
“I would take you here and now,” he said, feeling his ardor beginning to build, “but it’s too dark to see what I’m doing.” He chuckled again, obnoxiously.
Marie whipped around and kicked him, burying the toe of her cowboy boot firmly in his groin.
Every star in the universe seemed to explode before Akram’s eyes. He dropped the TAC-50 to grab himself between the legs with both hands, letting out a veritable squeal of pain as he collapsed to the ground.
Unable to see how badly he was hurt, Marie turned and ran as fast as she could through the fog, her cracked rib making it impossible to draw more than the shallowest of breaths through her nose as she careened down the dark slope, her feet quickly getting away from her. She tripped over a nub of granite in the narrow trail, pitching forward off her feet with no way to break her fall and struck the side of her head against a rock, knocking herself unconscious.
Back up the trail, Akram lay writhing on the ground, crying like a child, never having known such pain in his whole life. His entire essence was consumed by the throbbing agony, every labored breath felt like a desperate gasp for life. He vomited and shivered, sucking the vomitus back into his throat, choking and gagging as he attempted to expel the burning bile from his chest.
After what felt like an eternity, the pain at last began to subside, and he gathered his knees beneath him, hacking up the phlegm and bile lodged at the back of his throat. As his mind began to clear, he realized with much shame that this agonizing, humiliating experience was entirely his own fault. Allah had found him prideful in his victory and seen fit to punish him for indulging in physical arousal over the infidel woman at a time when he should have been focused on completing the mission. There would be time enough for earthly pleasures, but for now the enemy was almost certainly still searching for him, and his first responsibility was to escape and to evade, to ensure his further service to Allah.
