She would wait in hiding until the sentries changed at dawn. That would allow her two hours to eliminate the lookout, identify the leader, and kill him.
With single-minded determination, Charity stepped away from the truck and trudged steadily up the road and out of the arroyo. Even if they had night vision, which she doubted, the distance made it nearly impossible to make anything out. The mountain appeared against the star-filled background, black and foreboding, as if it could explode at any minute.
Awad didn’t sleep well. After being awakened by a bad dream, he couldn’t get back to sleep. In his dream, some kind of predatory black cat was stalking him. Invisible in the darkness, the cat spat laser-like projectiles at him from far away. When the great cat breathed fire at him, he awoke, shaking.
Checking his watch, Awad saw that it was still two hours until sunrise. In the distance, he could hear the now-familiar rumbling of thunder, only closer this time.
Awad was ready to leave this place. Predatory fire-breathing animals and heavy rainstorms were things he wasn’t accustomed to. Neither in his homeland, nor where he went to school in California. They’d been here for the better part of three weeks now, and he was having serious doubts about going through with the mission.
Having a valid American visa, he could easily slip away from this group in Reynosa and cross the border legally, just as he’d done in Arizona, when entering Mexico. Rolling out his mat, Awad prayed for the next hour, asking Allah to guide him in his decision.
When he finally left his tent, backpack flung over one shoulder, he saw Majdi was again on watch in the camp and walked toward him.
“Less than two days until we leave this place,” Karim said quietly, seeing Awad approach.
“I will be glad to be gone,” Awad replied in a whisper, sitting down next to the man. “I did not sleep well last night. I dreamed of a black jungle cat stalking me and spitting fire.”
“A black jungle cat? There is an occasional mountain lion here, but they are sandy colored. The black ones live much further to the south.”
“Nevertheless, it was a frightening dream. Who is on watch on the mountain?”
“Faud just relieved me,” Karim replied. “Fareed will take his morning meal and relieve him, when we finish eating. He should be leaving to start the cook fire very soon.”
“Do you think we are ready?” the younger man asked.
Karim thought it over a moment. “Yes, I do. The border is very porous and easily crossed. Our target is unprepared. The infidels have grown lax in the five years since our brothers’ glorious triumph in New York. The infidels have no stomach for a long fight.”
A stirring caught their attention, and they both turned toward the sound. Fareed exited the tent he shared with Faud and walked toward them.
“As-salamu alaykum,” Fareed whispered, kneeling next to Awad.
“Wa-Alaikum-Salaam, Fareed,” Awad replied. “Do you need help this morning?”
“Yes, please,” the cook replied. “Faud tossed and turned all night. I will take both our meals up to the post early, so he might get some rest before target practice.”
“What about yourself?” Awad asked.
“I will get plenty of rest in paradise when this is over. Besides, my tribe is known for sleeping very little.”
A flash of lightning from the far side of the mountain got all three men’s attention, and they turned. The loud crack of thunder split the air a few seconds later.
“It will rain this morning,” Karim said. “With this lightning, you will be wise to stay lower than the surrounding rocks.”
Fareed looked at Majdi for a moment, thinking the man was testing his resolve. “I cannot see through rock,” Fareed replied, giving the answer he thought Hussein’s third-in-command wanted to hear. “I will be alert and watching as always.”
Fareed and Awad stood, and then started up the familiar path to the volcano’s crater. Once they were out of earshot, Awad whispered, “I know you said that only for Karim’s sake. But he is right. Lightning will strike the highest object. Nobody ever drives by this mountain at night, and very few during the day. Do what is safe. We cannot afford to lose a man five days before we strike.”
The two walked in silence and reached the cook area in ten minutes. Fareed began to build the fire and Awad, familiar with his habits, brought water from one of the cans, stored out of sight. Using a ladle, he measured the correct amount of water into the large pot suspended over the now-flickering fire.
Fifteen minutes later, when the stew was finished, Fareed put some in two containers and stored them in his backpack. He then removed the large pot from the fire and placed it on a rock to cool.
“I will take Faud his meal and eat my own up there,” Fareed said, jerking his head toward the high cliff, while shouldering his pack.
“Be careful,” Awad said, sitting down on a rock to wait for the others. “Karim has not been wrong about the weather yet. If he said it is going to rain, it will.”
The older man nodded. “I will see you on the shooting range in three hours.”
Awad checked his watch, as yet another bolt of lightning crisscrossed the sky, cutting a jagged line in the blackness, the attending thunder echoing in the deep canyon.
It was still an hour until sunrise. Opening his backpack, he dug around until he found his cigarettes and shook one out, lighting the smoke from the red-hot ember of a twig from the cook fire.
As he squatted there, Awad stared into the dying flames and thought again about his dream. After a moment, as the first fat raindrop sizzled on a rock by the fire, he decided the omen in his dream must be the approaching storm.
Awad dug into his backpack once more. Finding what he was looking for, he took out a rolled-up waterproof poncho and pulled it on. Arranging the poncho around him, he pulled the hood over his head. He hoped Fareed and Faud had theirs with them, to at least shield themselves from the rain.
One by one, the other men began to arrive, and Awad took over Fareed’s job of ladling out the spicy stew. Once everyone was there, he put some in his own bowl and sat down with Hussein, away from the others. As the heavens opened up and the rain began to fall heavily, Awad realized that even in this desolate place, the rain pouring down, he was at least alive and wanted to continue living.
“Today will be good training,” Hussein said, bringing Awad back to the present. “We have no way of knowing what the weather will be like when we attack in San Antonio.”
Awad only nodded. Just then, he decided he wasn’t going to go through with it. He’d become enamored with the American lifestyle and wanted nothing more than to return to his studies and nightly parties.
Hussein ate quickly, urging the others to do so as well. “Let us take advantage of this weather and ready ourselves to fire the weapons in the rain!” he shouted, putting his bowl away in his backpack.
“Yes!” Awad shouted to the four men in his group, overcompensating for his doubts. “Eat quickly and move to the firing range. Shooting while it is still dark and in bad weather can only make us better.”
Within minutes, the men were arranged around the giant round rock that they’d been shooting at for two weeks. Hussein was at one end of the semicircle and Awad at the other. The rain was falling lighter now, the short-lived storm moving away to the west. By the time the men removed their machine pistols and stood ready, guns hanging low at their sides, the rain had completely stopped.
Suddenly, Hussein raised his weapon and yelled, “Open fire!”
The sound of thirteen guns, all firing short bursts, nearly drowned out the thunderclap that rolled across the rim of the crater to the north. Had any of them been paying attention, they might have realized the booming thunderclap wasn’t preceded by the usual flash of lightning. Or that the rock they were shooting at had grown more than five feet in width and a foot taller.
When the rain started falling in earnest, Charity began to move faster. The large boulder that was her objective was almost di
rectly above her head. The goat path she was on continued at an angle to a gap between two large rocks, east of there.
Small rocks on the steep slope became dislodged by the water flow, adding to the sounds that masked her movement. The tiny gap meant she would have to get down on her hands and knees to get through to the inside of the crater.
Working quickly, the rain soaking her clothes now, she removed her backpack and slung the rifle over her head and shoulder, so it rested on her back. Through the gap, she could see a flickering light, bouncing off the rocks on the far side of the crater.
Charity drew her Colt and began moving cautiously through the opening, knowing it would be an ideal place for a booby trap. She probed the sand at an angle with a large Ka-Bar fighting knife, looking for an IED or trip wire, as she moved her pack forward inch-by-inch. After a few minutes, she reached the far side.
Slowly scanning the interior of the crater through the night vision goggles, she was able to make out a good bit of detail. The moon was halfway to the western horizon and had not yet been obscured by the growing storm.
To her right, she heard two clicking sounds and froze. The sound was familiar, almost like the sound a semiautomatic handgun makes when chambering a round. The ground in front of her flared into full brightness, allowing her to see the rocks ahead of her in great detail.
Realizing the sound wasn’t a gun, but a cigarette lighter, she again studied the terrain below. This would be an ideal hiding place to wait for the sentry to change. Checking her watch, she saw that she’d made much better time than she’d thought she would. Sunrise, and the changing of the watch, was ninety minutes away.
A few minutes passed as Charity lay flat on her belly in the narrow confines of the rocks, shielded from the onslaught of the steadily falling rain. Across the crater, where the cook fire was hidden behind mountainous boulders, a man came into the clearing.
As the man walked across the nearly flat valley, she realized the sentry to her right was going to be relieved early. She lost him a couple of times, the gray-green image created by the night vision growing faint, as the storm clouds moved west, blocking the stars and moon.
Reaching into her pack with her left hand, Charity found the case containing her SPi T60 thermal monocular and switched it on to better track the man’s progression across the crater. What she saw startled her for a moment.
Near the center of the crater was a huge glowing spot, much brighter than anything else. Remembering what the message had said, she knew it was the spout of the volcano.
What was it Deuce called it? Charity thought. A fumarole? It was huge, whatever it was. Rising above the crater floor at least ten feet, it had a base nearly thirty feet across.
As the man neared the fumarole, he stopped for a moment, as the wall of rain reached him. He appeared to squat down, and when he rose again, his temperature signature dropped. Charity set the monocular aside and switched back to the night vision scope. The man was now wearing a rain poncho.
As she heard the flick of the lighter again, with the brightening of the area directly in front of her, a plan quickly formulated in her mind. Ahead and to her left, just a few feet away, was another large boulder. The sentry to her right was probably expecting the early relief and a hot meal. He was also temporarily blinded from lighting another cigarette.
Those things will kill you, Charity thought sadistically as she quickly but quietly shed her gear and scurried forward around the rock to her left.
Charity stayed low, moving quietly down the hillside away from the sentry. Finally, she looked over a jagged volcanic outcropping and could see him easily by the light of his cigarette.
Glancing down, she saw that the other man was only a hundred feet away and would have to pass right in front of her, invisible to the man above.
With the rain dripping from the brim of her cap, Charity slowly drew the large Ka-Bar fighting knife from its sheath on her web belt, then pressed herself back into a deep crevice, waiting.
She didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, the man walked slowly up the trail toward her position. Unsure of his footing in the darkness, he kept his head down. He had the hood of his poncho up over his head, so his peripheral vision was limited as well. A large bulge under the poncho told Charity that he was wearing a backpack under it. She didn’t see any tell-tale bulge of a rifle, but he could easily have a sidearm concealed under the poncho.
As the man stepped directly in front of Charity, her right hand shot out, covering his mouth and yanking him back against her chest. Standing on her toes, she used his backpack for leverage and hauled the man’s head back, exposing his neck. Panicking, he flailed his arms under the poncho, useless to defend himself. The knife came quickly across his throat, severing both artery and windpipe.
There was no need of a second thrust. The man would die in just a few seconds, and he was unable to make a sound. Charity pushed him forward as she slid the knife back into its sheath. He went down to his knees, hands reaching in vain for his neck, but only succeeded in getting tangled in the loose-fitting poncho. Charity stepped out and kicked the man in the back, sending him sprawling in the dirt.
“Karim! Is that you? Did you fall?” she heard a voice shout in
Arabic above her.
In a guttural baritone, Charity moaned in perfect Arabic, “Yes! Help me!”
Charity pressed herself back into the crevice and waited, drawing her knife once more. In seconds, the other man came stumbling down the trail, going straight to the dead man in front of her. As he knelt over his fallen comrade, Charity quickly and silently stepped forward with her left foot and kicked the man hard between the legs with her right, connecting solidly.
He grunted hard, falling into a fetal position on his side, both hands holding his groin. Charity was on him in an instant. Rolling the man onto his back, she straddled his waist, clamping his hands and torso between her thighs like a vise.
The man opened his eyes and looked up at her, startled by the sight of her goggles. When he opened his mouth to scream, she thrust the blade of the knife deep between his ribs, yanking the handle left and right. He gasped, but made no other sound as he struggled in vain against her weight. A few seconds passed, Charity leaning hard against the knife’s handle. Then the man’s body went limp.
Rising, slowly, she pulled the Ka-Bar from his chest with a sucking noise. She lifted the man’s poncho and wiped the blade off on his shirt before sliding it back into its sheath again.
Now it’s only thirteen against one, she thought.
“I like my odds so far,” Charity said to the two bodies lying in front of her.
She quickly went through their belongings. The one she’d just stabbed in the chest had had nothing on him but a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. In the other man’s backpack, Charity found more cigarettes, two containers that were warm to the touch, and a machine pistol on a sling. She hung the weapon around her neck and picked up one of the containers. Pulling the lid off, she sniffed the contents.
Deciding she wasn’t that hungry, Charity dropped both containers and hurried back up to the gap in the rocks, where she’d left her rifle and backpack. Feet first, she went back into the narrow opening. When her feet touched her backpack, she nudged it forward until she could reach it with her hand. Placing the pack in front of her, she rested the heavy rifle on it, flipping the bipod legs down and locking them in place.
Opening the rear cover on the scope, then reaching forward, she switched on the ATN optics and flipped its cover up. From her web belt pouches, she extracted three extra magazines. Two were loaded with ten of the massive fifty-caliber BMG match-grade boat tails. The third magazine was loaded with ten Raufoss armor-piercing incendiary rounds. She arranged them within easy reach, moving the one loaded with incendiaries to the far left side of the opening.
The rain seemed to be letting up as Charity looked through the scope toward the far side of the crater. The light from the cook fire behind the rocks illuminated
the whole area on the far rim like it was midday. Several men could be seen coming out of the area behind the rocks where the fire was located.
As if a spigot had been turned off, the rain stopped. Charity scooted forward, craning her neck around the left side of the gap she was hiding in. Though it was still dark, the sky to the east was lighter now, and stars could be seen as the cloud cover moved quickly west.
Settling back down behind the scope, she could see a lot clearer now as the men formed a loose circle around the south and east sides of the fumarole. Each man had slung a machine pistol around his neck, just like the one she’d taken from the dead man. They held the weapons down at their sides, as if trying to hide them from someone.
As the men fumbled and arranged their weapons and ponchos, Charity moved the scope over each man, looking for her primary target. As she got to the last man, she recognized Hussein Seif al Din Asfour immediately from the pictures. The same man that had committed the terrible atrocities against his own people in Afghanistan.
The range was a little over four hundred yards with a declination angle of about thirty degrees. With the scope already zeroed at four hundred, she ran the declination calculation in her head. Below, inside the walls of the crater, there was almost no visible wind on the grass and shrubs, none that would deflect the massive half-inch-thick bullets, anyway.
As Charity studied the man’s face, she wondered if there was anyone who would miss him. She tightened her fingertip against the trigger, aiming at a spot just below the man’s Adam’s apple. Slowly, her eyes closed behind the scope for a brief moment, opening that dormant part of her mind that contained all the hate, humiliation, and fury. When she opened them again, al Din Asfour’s face transformed into that of the leader of the Taliban fighters who had held her captive and raped her repeatedly.
Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) Page 14
