The team pulled back, huddled, and talked out their options. In this case, going down the hill was a no go. Numerous homes dotted the hillside and valley on the lower slopes. (They’d have to go above the troops, where there were fewer homes. Still, there were homes up there, too, according to their maps.)
“We’ll just have to be careful,” Nick told the team.
And careful they were as they approached the first set of homes. They slipped along walls, through alleys, and even in front of huts themselves. And somehow, even carrying all their gear and water jugs, they managed to infiltrate through the small enclave of homes.
The men of S3 had also pulled off some masterful teamwork. Covering danger areas, using hand signals, and moving like shadows through the dark.
But just when they thought they were in the clear and a good hundred yards from the last compound, they saw movement followed by the sound of a dog growling.
“I got him,” Red whispered.
Red dropped his AK, allowing it to hang across his body in its tactical sling, while he pulled a Glock .45 pistol. Red pulled a suppressor from his pocket and twisted it on as quickly as he could, then moved away from the group toward the threat.
The dog approached closer, his growl growing louder as his eyes now saw what only his nose had smelled. Nick noticed the hair on the large dog raise and knew it was seconds from barking or charging them.
“Shoot, Red,” Nick said.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
The beast dropped, hit by three subsonic bullets from Red’s pistol.
“Let’s go,” Nick said.
Although they were on the outskirts of the enclave, Nick signaled the team forward, anxious to get away in case some villager unable to sleep investigated. Red was digging around in the dirt, picking up his shell casings.
“Come on,” Nick hissed. “We gotta move.”
They stepped out quickly, wanting to get as far away as possible from the enclave, as they’d just left their first potential clue since entering Pakistan.
Chapter 11
The early morning silence was shattered by the sound of a boy yelling.
Tariq Hijazi, the village’s chief enforcer, raced toward the commotion equipped with his AK-47. He carried the AK not because of the shout, but because any self-respecting male over the age of twelve carried their weapons with them in this part of the country. Always.
A couple hundred yards from his compound, Tariq pushed through a group of men to have a look at the boy, who he now saw was crying over a dog.
The dog was dead. He yanked the boy out of the way and nudged the dog over with his sandal. Three bullet holes marked the head of what had been the enclave’s biggest and strongest dog.
His first thought was that the tribe of ul-Haq was behind this. This tribe resided in the mountains on the other side of the road below them. Often, boys of each tribe would try to sneak up on each other’s homes as part of a way to show courage.
It was a dangerous game that often left young boys dead, but whoever had made these three shots was no boy. (They were spaced a couple of inches apart -- remarkable shooting in the dark, and pretty good shooting in daylight.)
“Tariq,” someone said behind him.
“Shut up,” he hissed. “I’m thinking.”
The dog was facing down the draw. Tariq followed the direction of the dog’s look and spotted a single shell casing ten yards away. He shoved a sleepy yet curious boy out of his way and picked it up.
It was a short, pistol casing. On the base, it was marked “.45 AUTO.”
Tariq pinched the casing in his hand. Could it have been an American? The .45 was a popular American round, and the shooting had been exceptional. And clearly silenced, since it hadn’t been heard. So, someone with an expensive (and hard to obtain) pistol attachment had shot the dog with incredible skill in the dark of night.
The tracks in the dirt moved down the hill, and Tariq easily determined that the person who had done this wore boots. Further possible proof. Most Pakistani and Afghan men wore tennis shoes or sandals. Boots were a luxury beyond most of their means.
Perhaps it was an American, or perhaps it was a wayward soldier for the Pakistani army. The Army had moved hundreds of troops into the area, but the terms had been spelled out prior to the incursion. And a silencer among their troops? Completely unnecessary and almost impossible to fathom.
The Pakistani army wouldn’t interfere with villagers or search tribal enclaves, and local villagers were supposed to leave the Army alone. But someone -- either an American or a foolish soldier in the Pakistani army -- had made a big mistake. Many of the urban-raised soldiers saw the tribal villagers as nothing but uneducated and dangerous religious zealots.
Tariq wasn’t sure who he hated most: an American or a so-called “Muslim,” who had turned his back on the true teachings of Islam.
“Round up our warriors,” Tariq Hijazi commanded to the men around him. “We will hunt down this fool.”
Chapter 12
Nick and the S3 team had pushed hard after the incident with the dog. They now camped four and a half miles east of the enclave.
In the other direction, less than a mere four miles separated them from Ahmud al-Habshi’s compound. But depending on what was being discovered and decided about the dead dog they’d left behind, that four miles might as well be another hundred miles. If they had a hunting party after them, then Ahmud al-Habshi would be their last concern.
Worries of such a threat had caused them to look for a hideout up on a finger -- a high piece of ground -- that ran down from the ridge, instead of in one of the small valleys nestled just beneath the higher hills, as they had been. If they were being tracked, they’d be found either way. And it was better to be up high and able to defend yourself than down in some gully hoping they didn’t toss grenades down on you.
As the sun and the heat climbed higher and higher, the men sweated under their nets. Each man was awake and alert, fighting off fatigue with the kind of energy that can only come from the feeling of being hunted.
Although they couldn’t be sure, the suspicious and volatile reputation of the people in this area made it easy to assume that danger was not far behind them. The villagers, or possibly even the Pakistani army if they had been alerted, might have spread out and could approach from above, below, or from either side.
There’d be no sleeping today.
Nick laid on his stomach, rolling dirt between his fingers and chewing on their situation. He looked down at the dirt, then dragged his hand across the dry, dusty ground. Damn it, he thought, he was sick of all the humping and more than ready to infiltrate al-Habshi’s compound.
“Hey, guys,” Red whispered. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
Nick turned and saw Red, who was behind him, holding his hand out with two shell casings in it.
Truck saw the casings, as well, and scoffed, “Sorry, you little commie environmentalist, but there’s no recycling bins in the area.”
“No, asshole,” Red replied, clearly not in the joking mood. His eyes were fixated to his palm. “I only have two casings. I thought I fired two rounds into that dog, but I just remembered to reload my pistol and the magazine is missing three rounds. I left a casing back there.”
That wasn’t good, Nick thought. And then he remembered the stress of the moving through the huts and how he’d ordered everyone to move out immediately.
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have rushed you back there.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. I thought I only fired twice.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Marcus said. “We live as a team, and we die as a team.”
No one said anything for a moment, and Marcus added, “Truth be known, it should have occurred to me to grab that dog. We could have carried it out of there, and the bloody mess could have easily been buried under loose dirt.”
Nick slung a handful of dirt to the ground with frustration. The situation was spiraling out of cont
rol. It was out of the norm for him to have overreacted to his fear. It was out of the norm for Red, such an incredible point man, to have accidentally fired three rounds instead of two. He was typically used to the adrenaline. And Marcus never missed anything.
What the hell was happening to them? He wiped his nose and knew it was the fatigue. This mission just pushed the parameters of what any team could achieve.
He ran his hand through the dirt and wondered if he’d signed their death sentences the moment they crossed the border.
“It is what it is,” Nick finally said. “Let’s stay sharp and with luck, we’ll hit this compound tomorrow.”
He picked up another clod of dirt and sifted it through his fingers. He saw movement, dropped the dirt, and raised a pair of binoculars along the trail behind them.
“Speak of the devil,” Nick said.
Chapter 13
Tariq Hijazi and his men slowed. They had to be getting close. And at some point the trail would end with a man waiting for them. And that man would be armed.
Tariq had more than thirty men with him, and besides being armed with AKs, his men had brought machine guns and RPGs to strengthen their power. At forty-four, Tariq was more than an elder. He was the enclave’s military leader. And this hunt presented a great opportunity for fame.
He was willing to sacrifice them all, including himself, to earn the respect and honor he had spent his life pursuing.
The group pushed to the top of another finger of the mountain range, scanning ahead.
“There!” one of his men yelled, pointing to the next finger.
And squinting, Tariq saw it. Off in the distance, on the next piece of high ground, a small, almost-imperceptible hump. Some kind of netting barely flapping in the wind, with what appeared to be several men hiding in its shadows.
Nick Woods and his team had given up the idea of concealment and were no longer lying motionless. They had been spotted, and now it was time to fight. Red, Marcus, and Truck now faced the same direction, watching their backtrail from under the net.
They had shoved packs in front of them for cover, as well as cushioned rifle rests, and pulled ammo out from the pockets of their packs.
Truck yanked out a big piece of beef jerky and threw it into his mouth, then while prone, pushed himself forward into his RPK machine gun, using his toes to press forward and apply pressure against the bipod legs.
Red popped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. It was his first cigarette in nearly two weeks, and he relished the nicotine rush. Besides, he’d always believed that he shot better when he smoked.
Marcus checked their rear and stuck his head out from the net, looking up and down the hill. He wanted to find the best egress route in case they couldn’t stop the villagers.
And Nick went into his own world. Despite his role as the leader, Nick was, at his core, a sniper first. And in situations like this, it was not possible to focus on sniping individual targets, while at the same time monitor the overall situation as necessary when in command. Thankfully with the vast expertise of each individual and the cohesion they had as a team, there wasn’t really much to command. And whatever leadership was needed when Nick was otherwise engaged, was instinctively picked up by Nick’s more than capable second-in-command, Marcus.
Nick had laid six, ten-round magazines to his left and eased behind the Dragunov weapon he carried. He was the only man on the team toting a sniper rifle, and now he felt glad that he’d made the choice to bring it.
Marcus was watching the group of villagers through his binoculars when he said, “Mark the older one with the white turban and scraggly beard as the leader.”
Nick smiled to himself, grateful to have a man like Marcus in S3 assisting him. Nick moved his scope toward the man in question.
Marcus scanned the group of villagers topping the crest of a hill. “I count at least thirty, maybe more. Hard to tell with them all moving around.”
“Distance?” Red asked.
“Maybe twelve or fifteen hundred yards?” Marcus said, some doubt in his voice. “Nick? What do you say?”
Nick tried to use the Dragunov’s scope to measure the height of the men and assess the range better, but the targets weren’t being cooperative. And he hadn’t drawn a range card as he would have had he been in a true sniper capacity. Range cards had notable landmarks and pieces of cover with the correct distance to within mere yards. When the fighting began, the cards could make all the difference in the world, since thinking that boulder was 500 yards away instead of 700 was a big deal and enough to cause you to miss.
“Nick?” Marcus asked again.
“Sounds like a good guess,” he replied. “Definitely too far to shoot right now. But once they start down the draw, they’ll be in range pretty quickly.”
To continue reading, purchase it from here: Afghan Storm (Nick Woods, No. 3).
Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 39
