Deep Black

by Sean McFate

  “They’re on our ass,” Boon said over the radio. “I can’t shake him.”

  I started to ask where he was, but then I heard Wildman’s fifty firing.

  “Straight ahead, then sharp left,” I told the driver, as we sped up a parallel alley. We skidded around the corner and came out, quite by accident, between the Hemmet and the technical.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. I let loose on the Hemmet to get its attention before we disappeared down another Hesco row.

  It worked. Both the Hemmet and technical were chasing us. We turned south and raced down an alley, outpacing the Martyr Maker. The Toyota was trying to pass it, but the alley was narrow, and the massive Hemmet took up the entire width, blocking the pickup truck. I fired a quarter of a belt, but the Hemmet’s steel plating was too thick. The fifty-cal rounds bounced off, leaving divots. Even the wheels were covered.

  On top, the gunners brought their fifty-cals and grenade launchers around to fire on us. With our windows cracked and armor cracking, I doubted we’d survive another barrage.

  “Heads down,” I yelled into the backseat, as I lined my cal on the lead gunner. I started low, hitting the windshield, but managed to walk my bullets into his head before he could get off his shot.

  “Keep going straight,” I yelled to the driver. We seemed to be in a long chute, with Hescos on both sides. “No turns.”

  “But there’s a dead end ahead,” Kylah screamed.

  Farhan was yelling in Arabic, too.

  “Make him keep it straight,” I yelled down to her, as a second gunner on the Martyr Maker struggled with the automatic grenade launcher. “And floor it.”

  “You better be right,” Kylah yelled, and I felt the driver speeding up as we passed the last turn.

  “I am,” I yelled, as the fifty-cal started kicking in my hand, my bullets bouncing off the deflector shield in front of the automatic grenade launcher. The Martyr Maker was right on top of us now, its dozer blade meters from our bumper. They were so close the gunners couldn’t even get the angle on the shot. I pulled my Beretta and shot him in the face.

  “Hold on,” Kylah yelled, and then I was swinging out to the side, holding on to the fifty-cal, as the driver skidded perpendicular a few meters before the dead end, bounced off the wall, and accelerated down an alley no wider than our Humvee. The Martyr Maker plowed into the dead end, running through Hescos and concrete walls until it was off its first four wheels and hung ten feet deep in rubble. The technical skidded sideways, smashing into it at speed and exploding. The last thing I saw as we disappeared down the alley was a gunner recoiling backward then slamming into his launcher, knocking it upward and shooting a grenade straight into the sky.

  “Hemmet down,” I called to Boon. “Hemmet down. Technical down. Returning to the fight.”

  “Right behind you,” Boon said, as Wildman cut over him with, “Another one bites the dust.”

  “How did you know about that alley?” Kylah asked, as I pulled myself back down into the front seat.

  “I didn’t,” I said, without looking back at her. Badass, I thought.

  We took a few wrong turns in the CHU labyrinth, but before long I could see the main fight beyond the housing area ahead. I banged the roof above the driver’s head and he slowed down. There was a small courtyard, hidden from the fight.

  “What’re you doing?” Kylah asked, as the driver pulled to a stop.

  “Letting you out,” I said.

  She started to object, but I cut her off. “I’m not taking a pregnant woman into that firefight. And I’m not staying out. I have friends in there.” But the only friends I had left in there, I realized, were the Kurds who had risked their lives beside me for the last two months. Boon, Wildman, and I could have stayed out altogether. But what kind of person would I be then?

  “You can’t keep me out,” Kylah said, as she offloaded Marhaz onto a dusty concrete step.

  “She needs a doctor,” I said. I nodded toward Farhan, who was amassing a small arsenal of weapons from our Humvee and breaking into Wildman’s C-4 stash. I almost felt sorry for any ISIS that might stumble into him.

  Kylah smirked. I wanted to kiss her. But I knew she didn’t want that.

  “Good luck out there, cowboy,” she said.

  I climbed back into the turret and motioned the Kurd forward. He hit the accelerator, and we tore out of the CHU village at sixty mph. Speed was our cover. It wasn’t until we cleared the last CHU and were flying into the open that I realized at least a dozen technicals—no, more like two dozen, or even ten dozen—were speeding toward us from the left. To my right, another several dozen technicals heading straight for us, their gunners howling with rage. They were enveloping us in a pincer move.

  “Oh fuck,” I yelled, as the bullets slammed around the Humvee. “Abandon ship!”

  Chapter 49

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Boon said.

  “It’s the entire ISIS army,” my driver said, panicking. Thirty technicals raced toward us, while another twenty were chasing. We would be crushed.

  “Get out of their way,” I said, but there was no escape. Seconds later the horde swallowed us. Technicals side-swiped each other, gunners mowed down other gunners. Vehicles blew apart and tumbled end over end. No one seemed to notice us.

  “They’re shooting each other!” Wildman exclaimed.

  “Whiskey tango foxtrot?!” I said. What the fuck?

  “Brace!” my driver yelled, lurching the Humvee to avoid an out-of-control technical. “Civil war. Sunni ISIS versus Shia militia.”

  “Battle Royale Speicher! Yee-haaaaw!” Wildman said. I really wished he’d shut up, but this was Wildman’s ecstasy.

  A side window blew out, one bullet too many. Another bullet ricocheted inside the cab, my driver screamed.

  Once the ISIS and Shia lines passed through each other, they turned about to face each other again. Vehicles collided, shattering into a million parts. Bodies flew through the air, run over before they hit the ground. A man with an ax leapt from one technical to another, cleaving a gunner in the skull before he was torn in half by another technical’s fifty-cal.

  “What the fuck, over?” Boon said.

  “Just get us out of here,” I said. Anywhere but here, I thought. The first thing they teach you in the infantry is: if you’re being ambushed, get off the X.

  Then I saw the battling horde turn toward the CHU village.

  Kylah, I thought. There would be no escape for them.

  “About-face,” I said. “Back to the CHUs! We need to get to Marhaz and Farhan before the battle does.” The driver spun the Humvee in a J-turn and sped toward the barracks complex.

  I was shooting technicals in our path with the fifty-cal, clearing a path. Those we could not hit, we destroyed. Boon was right behind us. Dust kicked up by the battle obscured vision, and we had three near misses with speeding technicals. But we could hear the heavy weapons firing, see the muzzle flashes through the dust cloud, and feel the blast shock waves rock our two-and-a-half-ton vehicles. The noise was deafening, even at fifty mph.

  Kaboom. A technical in front of us blew into the air sideways, then landed and rolled another hundred meters. We fishtailed around it, nearly clipping it.

  “IED!” I shouted—improvised explosive device. We were racing across a minefield.

  Another technical blew ten meters high.

  “It’s raining Toyotas!” Wildman said.

  Yet the technicals didn’t slow. That’s the problem with fanatics; they will continue to fight no matter how futile.

  Enjoy hell then, I thought.

  The Humvee erupted beneath my boots, flinging me through space. My body bounced off a Hesco barrier, then the dirt. There was pain in every cell. Behind me was the burning hulk of our Humvee, destroyed by an IED. My driver’s body crumbled against the inside windshield. I could move my limbs. Things ached, but nothing was broken.

  I’m exposed, I realized. Jihadists of all stripes were entering the
CHU village. Some were in vehicles, some on foot like me.

  In a firefight, you focus fast. The world gets small, as you search out immediate danger. Amateurs flip to full auto, empty the clip, and usually miss. The barrel superheats and bullets go wide. Better to be disciplined on semiauto. Acquire target, inhale, sight picture, exhale, squeeze. Shooting is like violent Buddhist meditation. No time to focus? Then a three-round burst center of mass. Pop. Pop. Pop. Target falls. Move on.

  The best among us never fired full auto. For us it was one shot, one kill.

  I brought my SCAR to firing position, finding them one by one. The air reeked, the temperature was scorching, and the smoke was so thick it was stinging my eyes. I moved quickly through the maze, dodging battling technicals, to where I had dropped off Kylah.

  “Boon, Wildman,” I said over my headset. “Anyone, come in.” Static.

  I heard popping, saw an ISIS fighter drawing down on me from a tight angle, and knew I wasn’t safe. I ran to a wrecked Humvee, smoking and shot to hell, but still offering good cover. I scooted around to the rear, staying low, and broke off the vehicle’s side mirror. Angling it, I could see around the corner.

  Five meters away. Two ISIS, one firing, one looking for me. I slung my SCAR behind me and grabbed my Beretta pistols. I spun around the bumper and put them both down, firing both pistols at once, then crouch-ran to them as quickly as I could. The first was dead. The second was fumbling, trying to get a grenade from his bandolier with a bloody hand. I killed him with a headshot.

  One more block, I thought, as I moved. Another technical exploded, the gunner coming off his perch in slow motion and slamming to the ground as if he’d already shattered all his bones.

  Then I saw her. “Kylah!”

  “Locke!” Kylah shouted back. “We’re trapped!”

  She was ten meters away on the edge of the action, firing on ISIS with her AK-47. Behind her was the CHU where Marhaz presumably hid. Farhan was in the middle of the courtyard, bloody and holding a knife. Five jihadists lay dead around him.

  “Farhan!” I yelled, but he didn’t hear me over the din of the battle. He returned to Marhaz, carrying only his blade.

  A technical nearly ran me over, as I rolled out of its path. By the time I got upright, a figure walked toward me, like a ghost coming out of a wall: a tall man in a dirty white robe and a long beard, striding casually through the gunfire and smoke. He had no gun, as far as I could tell, but a long scimitar was strapped to his back. He looked so completely at ease, not looking to either side, that I hesitated for a second, and in that time he slipped up on Kylah and chopped into the wooden handguard of her AK-47 with his sword, wrenching it from her hands and knocking her to the ground.

  “Kylah!” I screamed, but the man barely slowed. He didn’t care about Kylah. He had his eyes on Marhaz. I leveled my SCAR at the center of his back, two kill shots, pop, pop, easy as that, but before I could fire I felt burning in my shoulder, then a sharp pain, and I turned to face an ISIS attacker closing so fast I could see the filth in his teeth. He leapt on me and knocked me down, grasping for my throat as I fumbled for my knife.

  Chapter 50

  The Wahhabi strode toward his target, oblivious to the shooting around him. Allah sawf tuaffir, he thought. Allah will provide. The letting go of fear and worry—the confidence it provided—it wasn’t easy, but it was what had brought him this far. There was no need to question the universe now. The small man followed him, filming him with his iPad and ducking at every explosion.

  Coward, the Wahhabi thought, as he glided through the firefight. He saw the red-haired female before him, and he relished the opportunity to show her his power. She was half turned when he cut into her AK-47—The steel Allah has blessed is strong!—and kicked her to the ground. It was unnecessary and fulfilling not to look at her again. She was a woman. She was nothing.

  “No man can stop me!” the Wahhabi shouted, eyeing his prey, a man and a woman and—yes, a baby. It was obvious what had happened here, and why they needed to be cleansed.

  “Prince Farhan Abdulaziz,” he intoned loudly so that it would rise above the battle sounds.

  He drew his scimitar with care, like someone taking the last step on a long journey. “You are judged a kafir, unbeliever, unclean and apostate in the eyes of Allah. You are sentenced to die!”

  He locked eyes with the young man and raised the scimitar above his head, but Farhan attacked with the zeal of an ISIS Emni, knocking the Wahhabi into the wall. The man ducked as Farhan went for the death blow, leaving a small crater in the CHU’s wall. The Wahhabi swung the sword at the prince, but the prince was too fast. Crouching, Farhan made fast jabs at the Wahhabi’s inner thighs, seeking the femoral artery. The Wahhabi hopped backward and counterattacked, but the narrow space hindered the long scimitar. He reversed the grip, so the scimitar was facing downward, and thrust.

  The prince screamed, but something next to him was screaming louder. It was the pregnant girl, the Wahhabi saw too late. She had risen somehow, despite her condition. She had gone animal, attacking him with her claws, trying to gouge his eyes. He staggered to regain his balance and then grabbed her around the throat, lifting her up. She tore at his arm, drawing blood, but he only looked at it and laughed.

  “Wasawf yakhudhuk swa’ alan,” he said, wrapping his hands around her throat. She gasped. He felt his power, and he reveled in it. “I will take you both now,” he said again in Arabic, marveling at the ecstasy of strangling a life. It was even better than the sword. “No man can kill me!” he said. “I am the sword of Allah. I am the prophet. No man can—”

  He felt the pain shoot up his back and turned, dropping the lives in his hand. He saw the woman standing there, the one with the red hair, and he swung his sword in a wide arc. He felt it bite into her chest, felt its power, and saw the knife drop from her hand. He raised his sword again, to administer justice. He said, “No man can kill me—”

  But he never finished. He fell to the ground, a metal pole thrust through his back, its sharp point pinning him to the CHU.

  “I am no man, fucker,” Marhaz said.

  I stabbed the man’s side, to make sure he was dead. He fell on me like a weight, and I pushed him off, his body slippery from blood. I was covered in it, we both were, and I wasn’t sure how much was mine.

  A technical rounded the corner, then accelerated to run me down. I tried to stand, but I fell, slipping on guts. The world was fuzzy, and my balance poor. I crawled backward, away from the charging pickup truck. The ground shook, then the Martyr Maker burst through a CHU and rammed the charging technical, scattering man and machine into a million parts.

  The gunner in the back of the next technical turned. He had twin antiaircraft guns, ZPU-2s, if I wasn’t mistaken. It might be enough, I thought, but the men on top of the Martyr Maker unloaded on the technical, blowing off the head of the gunner’s assistant beside him and allowing the Hemmet time to knock the vehicle aside and crush a technical coming up quickly to assist.

  The Martyr Maker paused, its huge front wheels spinning. It backed up to free itself from the crushed truck, paused again, then turned toward me and began to advance. I knew it wasn’t coming for me. I was too small. It was headed for the center of Bear’s remaining mercenaries, to change the flow of the battle, but I was directly in its path.

  I thought of trying to roll out of the way, but I had no strength. I thought of tossing a satchel charge over its walls as it passed, but I had no satchel. I thought of the way people put skulls inside wheels in movies, and then the wheels grind to a halt, until the skulls explode from the pressure. I thought of Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto, the first major piece of music I ever learned to play like a master.

  The missiles struck. I couldn’t tell the type. They zoomed over my head, from behind me and moving fast, and then they exploded into the Martyr Maker.

  The concussion blew me sideways. I lay there, ears ringing and my face in the bloody dirt, and summoned the strength to look up. Th
e Martyr Maker was dead. I could tell the battle had broken and that the surviving ISIS militants, seeing their behemoth felled, were fleeing back to their barracks complex.

  I thought of the stranger with the sword, and I looked toward Marhaz. I saw them: Kylah, Farhan, Marhaz, the madman. They were all on the ground, not moving.

  I had to get to them. I started to stand, but slipped. I was halfway to my knees again when I felt the barrel in the back of my head and the click of the hammerlock.

  “Don’t fucking think about it, traitor,” someone said. “Don’t even move.”

  Chapter 51

  I sat, drained and bloody, the pistol pushing my head toward the ground, as the battle sounds ebbed away. I stared down at my hands, wondering what was happening to Boon and Wildman, the Kurds, Kylah, Marhaz and Farhan.

  “Stay still, bitch,” the man behind me hissed, when I tried to raise my head. He wasn’t fighting. He seemed to be waiting for the fighting to end, which was happening quickly, by the sound of the diminishing gunfire. It wasn’t hard to figure out who he was. He was an American. A merc. He must have been from the Apollo team in Sinjar.

  “What we have here,” the man said, “is a Mexican standoff.”

  He put his hand around my neck and pulled me to a sitting position. In front, facing me, was a force of Muslim fighters with their assault rifles drawn. I saw three men in Quds uniforms, two in attack position, and one quietly staring, and realized they must be Shia militia. Facing them, the remaining ISIS force of a dozen men, weapons up, glancing over their shoulders like they wanted to run. To their left, Wildman and a remainder of the mercenaries, along with a remnant of the Iraqi army that must have joined the battle, were standing with rifles pointed in all directions. I figured my captor had a team behind him, probably ten Tier One warriors, if they’d all survived.

  Shia, Quds, mercs, ISIS, Americans, Kurds, and Iraqi Army irregulars, all staring at each other across a jihadi-scarred battlefield. It wasn’t a Mexican standoff, exactly. It was an Iraqi one.