Raoul dove to the ground and rolled to his right, taking cover behind the narrow trunk of a stunted piñon tree. He glanced over his shoulder, then waved Ariel and Kyle to the ground. They dove and rolled. It was a simple and effective defensive maneuver: make yourself as small a target as possible. The jihadis were not known for their marksmanship, after all, preferring to capture and torture their victims, killing them only after they’d grown bored by the suffering.
Raoul paused to gauge the assault. There were just enough small trees and chamisa bushes around the lodge to give the assault team the critical cover they needed to get relatively close. Raoul felt a fleeting moment of hopefulness. Their immediate objective was to reach a low stone wall fronting the lodge, a purely decorative semicircle of rocks, three feet high and eighteen inches thick that surrounded the tall flag pole.
As return fire crackled from the lodge windows, Raoul motioned the commandoes to keep moving. Raoul fired at the vague figures visible at the base of the heavy wood window frames, filled with nothing but jagged edges of shattered glass.
Raoul fired his Heckler & Koch, confident he’d hit couple of the jihadis, forcing the others to duck below window sills, hold their rifles over their heads, and fire blindly. Unless they had an unlimited supply of ammunition, their wild and random shots diminished their chances of survival with each squeeze of the trigger. It gave Raoul’s small yet experienced and lethal assault force yet another advantage.
Raoul watched as well-placed shots went through the windows, providing cover for the advancing attackers, who reached the protective stone barrier. Hope again flickered in Raoul’s heart. One small step and then another, he thought. The three commandoes behind the low wall would soon be joined by three more, including himself. But he needed cover as well.
Raoul rolled onto his back and signaled for Kyle and Ariel to get closer, then twisted back onto his stomach and fired a couple more shots at the lodge windows. He heard the gasping breath and thumps as Kyle and Ariel dove to the ground behind the protection of the piñon tree and the shadows of the low bows.
“You okay?” Raoul asked, searching their faces, their eyes wide with fear, their breath short and labored. Neither responded and this worried Raoul. Neither, he realized, had been part of action like this, and Raoul worried he’d made a mistake by acquiescing to their demands. His stomach sank at the thought he could cause the death of either one or both of them. This was a first for Ariel and because of it, she was the most vulnerable. Shooting a weapon and knowing how to load and unload it was one thing. It was quite another to use it to deadly effect. Two different animals. If she stayed with Kyle, it would be best. They could look after each other.
Raoul knew Kyle had been these situations before, had been shot at and knew the feeling of bullets snapping through the air just inches from his head. But as a journalist, not a combatant. It was different when you carried a weapon and fully expected to use it. The weapon in his hands was something new to Kyle, and Raoul wondered if Kyle would really pull the trigger. It didn’t matter, Raoul told himself. He needed both of them now.
“Kyle. I’m going to that wall.” Raoul pointed to the lodge. “I’m going to lead the assault into the lodge. We’re going to get our man out of there.”
Kyle and Ariel looked at him and nodded, not speaking. Raoul realized they were both in a deep state of stress. The chaos of combat. He’d seen it dozens of times. Raoul had been trained to function effectively in the midst of such madness. Combat was exhilarating, an almost out-of-body experience. Unknown reservoirs of energy were tapped, awareness was expanded a tenfold, thought processes were accelerated. Time slowed, gravity seemed a nuisance, and fears faded. It was addicting, and that’s what worried him. He’d done it enough that now it was second nature to him. It gave life meaning.
Raoul reached out and grabbed a fistful of Kyle’s shirt and pulled Kyle’s face close. “Look at me!” he shouted. Raoul had seen Kyle like this before, going back to their days and nights practicing and playing high school football in El Paso. Kyle had played quarterback because he had a good arm. That arm had served him well. It had put him on the pitching mound with the baseball team and as a forward on the basketball team. But if ever the games weren’t going well, if his passes were dropped, his pitches batted out of the park, or if he took a couple of body slams, he’d become despondent and distant. Raoul shook him back to reality.
Kyle’s eyes cleared. “What?” he said, clutching Raoul’s wrist in his hand.
“I need you here,” Raoul shouted. “You wanted this, so here it is. Stay focused!”
“I am!” Kyle yelled angrily.
Raoul glared
“What do you want?” Kyle asked, suddenly calm.
“First, I need you to take care of Ariel.”
Kyle looked over his shoulder to Ariel, her hand clutching the back of his shirt back. “Okay,” he said with a nod.
They flinched as new gunfire erupted from the lodge windows, the jihadis trying to drive back the assault. Raoul had to move quickly. “I’m going to those men at the wall,” he said again. “From there we’re going in.”
“Okay. Got it,” Kyle said.
“You need to help lay down a cover of fire.” Raoul glanced at them. “Both of you. Fire short bursts into the windows where and when you see a gun barrel.”
He waited while Kyle took the Sig Saur from the back of waistband, and looked at for a moment, as if it were something strange in his hands. Raoul had warned Kyle to make his shots count. Kyle held it with both hands and steadied his forearm against the side of the tree trunk as Ariel took up a position beside him. Kyle squeezed the trigger once, then twice, the pistol jerking each time. Ariel then also squeezed off a burst. Pop-pop-pop. And again. Pop-pop-pop. Kyle waited a beat.
Raoul looked at them again, then nodded. “Wish me luck,” he said. Bent low to the ground, Raoul humped toward the wall, covering the fifty yards of exposure in just a few seconds. He leapt into the air as if diving into the end zone, hit ground, rolled behind the wall, and came up looking into the face of a another commando.
“Having fun yet?” the commando asked.
Raoul smiled. “You bet.”
Chapter 36
Tariq crouched in the corner of a room inside the Vista Verde lodge, wedged in a space below the wide curving wooden stairs to the upper floor. A good command post, he thought, protected and affording him a view of the chaos. His stomach clenched at what he saw. His men had been hit, knocked back from the windows by the well-placed fire of the attackers—attackers he did not expect and who should not be there.
Who were these people? Kafirs! They will die! All of them! He’d been told there would be no resistance, or at most, resistance he could remove easily. He’d done that. Tariq was tempted to make a call, but that would violate the blackout. If the call was tracked, which it most certainly would be, it would take the probing eyes and ears of the infidels directly to his leader.
Tariq scratched the thin hair on his cheek, then massaged the ache in his stomach. His arms felt weak from the struggle with the old man, the scientist named Morris. He’d not expected the man to fight or be as strong. Tariq was half the old man’s age, but it had mattered little. The man was dead now, Tariq relishing the feel of the blade sinking deep into the man’s heaving chest and slicing into his beating heart.
Tariq scanned the room. A couple of his men lay sprawled on the varnished stone floor, having suffered head shots, their skulls broken and exposed, their arms splayed, , legs bent oddly. Others had chest wounds and were slumped against the wall, their breaths coming in gasps, their eyes searching Tariq’s face for help, for any sign of relief. But there was none to give. One had been shot in the throat and lay in a pool of his own blood, the eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling.
Anger smoldered in Tariq’s belly, then flared in his chest, and finally exploded in his head. It was not
supposed to be like this! There was not supposed to be an assault. He had been told it would never come. They would wait for him to make a move on the president. On camera. For all the world to see how the noble and fearless soldiers of Islam had broken the back and severed the head of the Great Satan.
As Tariq surveyed his dead and dying men, a smile curled the corners of his mouth. He still had the bomb, the numbers flashing steadily on the screen in the kitchen. The time for martyrdom has come. The kafirs are defeated. Allah akhbar!
Bullets continued to pop the air inside the lodge, a couple of his last men resisting the assault, looking lost as they sat below the shattered windows, their backs to the walls, holding their weapons high, shooting blindly to the outside.
Tariq turned to sudden movement to his right. It was Carlito, the one he knew as Omar al-Amriki. He had done his job well, leading them from the remote mosque to the lodge, but Omar was now useless. Tariq clenched his jaw and watched as Omar crouched, dragging the body of a fighter into the great room. Boots scraping along the floor, Omar pulled the body closer and lay it gently on the floor beside him.
Tariq looked at the face, and seeing the fair skin and pale blue eyes, knew it was not a fighter, but the woman Halima. She was alive, breathing slowly, the rise and fall of her chest barely noticeable. Tariq raised his eyes to Omar and saw the lips twitching, struggling to form words.
“You have to do something!” Omar said. “She’s dying.”
Tariq’s anger flared. Still clutching the handle of the combat knife he’d used on Halima’s father, Tariq contemplated sinking it into Omar’s slender torso, giving the fearful boy immediate martyrdom. But he didn’t. Tariq shook his head slowly, stared at Omar, and spoke calmly, as if her fate had been decided. “There is nothing that I can do.”
“She’s dying,” Omar cried. “She’s been hit! It’s bad.”
“Be joyful, my American friend,” Tariq said. “Today she will join her father and our father Allah and live in everlasting peace and beauty. Allah be praised.”
Omar glared at Tariq, confusion clouding his eyes, then he turned to the few remaining fighters at the windows where the crackle of gunfire piercing the room.
“Take her to her father,” Tariq said, with a wave, toward the kitchen. “That way they can be together in death.” He watched anger contort Omar’s face.
Stunned at Tariq’s command, Carlito, who never accepted his Arabic name, twitched with indecision, nearly paralyzed with fear. He glanced around the room, the air peppered with gunfire. He sat on his knees beside Jennifer and put his hand on her cheek.
Her eyes fluttered open, searching for help, her lips moving but emitting no sound. Carlito swallowed hard and stared at the blood now spreading across her stomach, soaking into her clothes. His eyes blurred with tears as he realized there was nothing he could do. She would die. And it was his fault.
Carlito wiped his eyes and looked again at Tariq, his heart sinking. Tariq shook his head in disgust and waved again toward the kitchen.
When Carlito did nothing, Tariq crawled over Jennifer and scrambled across the floor on all fours to join a couple of his men near a window.
Carlito looked again to Jennifer. He moved behind her, and lifting her shoulder with one hand, he slipped a hand below her right arm, and did the same with her left. Jennifer cried out in pain as he scooted backwards, dragging her into the kitchen and pulling her between the steel counter and the cooking stoves.
There he was. Jennifer’s father, flat on his back, his neck arched, his chin jutting up from the floor, the entire front of his shirt wet with dark red blood. Again Carlito swallowed, staring at the dead man.
He tugged Jennifer, her eyes squeezed tight with pain, deeper into the kitchen, then turned her slightly, arranging Jennifer beside her father, not knowing what else to do. Gurgling sounds erupted from Jennifer’s throat, followed by a moan and long sigh that made him shudder. He felt a chill in his bones even as sweat trickled down his temples.
Carlito crouched beside Jennifer for a moment, then turned to the crackle of unabated gun fire in the room just outside. He felt strangely safe in the kitchen, surrounded by all the stainless steel. His eyes fell on the orange plastic case sitting on the counter. He rose and stepped to it, peering onto the I-phone screen where numbers flickered. The bomb! Fucking pendejos! If he stayed, they all would surely die. Carlito glanced again to the sound of gunfire beyond the doorway, then turned back to Jennifer, bleeding beside her dead father. He squatted beside her.
Jennifer slowly reached out, her hand touching her father’s blood soaked chest. “Daddy?” she said in a rasping whisper. “Daddy?”
She sounded surprised, Carlito thought, that the man might not be okay and could be dead, her voice carrying the expectation that Morris would lift his head, glance in her direction, and say, “What is it, baby girl?”
Jennifer drew her bloodied hand close to her face, squinting as if puzzled at the blood. “Daddy?” She stared at her palm, then looked to Carlito, her eyes searching for an answer.
He knew she wanted to hear him say everything would be okay. Carlito swallowed hard. His throat felt like sandpaper.
Jennifer turned her head sideways again to her father, and sounding like a little girl, said, “I’m sorry, Daddy. Don’t leave me. Please, Daddy. Don’t go.” Jennifer winced, her eyes squeezing shut as a jolt of pain ripped through her. She moaned , her face ashen, her eyes unfocused.
Carlito wanted to hold her close, as if his embrace could make her well and whole, to pick her up and take her out of there. But it was useless. She needed a doctor. She needed surgery to repair the organs mangled by the random bullet that had ripped through her torso.
After the spasm of pain passed, Jennifer looked at him, her eyes refocused. “Am I going to die?”
Carlito’s mind was on fire, his breath short and hard. He struggled to calm himself, to show a strong face. “You’re going to be okay, Jen. Just relax. Stay calm.”
He didn’t believe the words even as they came out of his mouth. He was suffocating with guilt, the crushing weight of what he had done pressed down on him. She had proved her love again and again. She had clung to him from the moment she first heard the story of how his grandfather had been killed by the gringo pendejo David Benedict.
She had held him as he told her about his father, the heir to the vast meadows and mountains of the beautiful Vista Verde Ranch, but who was shot down by the gestapo state police when he tried to claim what was his. Jennifer had taken up his causes. She too had accepted Islam. She had joined the jihad. But this was where she would die. This was not the way it was supposed to end. Where was the victory? Carlito looked from Jennifer to her father, now only a corpse. There was nothing left of Carlito’s causes. Nothing but blood and death. Nothing but defeat.
And Tariq didn’t care.
Carlito clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth. He still cared. He looked out the kitchen doorway where the gunfire continued. He would find Tariq and show him what victory was. Carlito rose to his feet, darted through the kitchen entrance, and down the hall to the cavernous atrium, intending to collect a rifle from one of dead jihadis when a deafening blast and flash of blinding light forced Carlito to twist away and reflexively cover his face with his hands.
A moment later, a couple of canisters clunked onto the floor, spinning and hissing, filling the room with green smoke. Then another explosion rocked the room. Though the swirling air, Carlito saw armed men burst through the lodge’s blown out front door and the flashes from their gun barrels. He felt three hot fists slam into his torso, one to the stomach and two to his chest, throwing him backwards against a wall where he collapsed to the floor.
The shots felt like white hot iron had been jammed into body, burning through his flesh. He gasped for breath and clutched the wounds, warm blood pumping from his body. He coughed as the green smoke enveloped him, filling t
he lodge. He felt the darkness come as his body grew numb. He wheezed his last breath.
Chapter 37
With the door to the smoke-filled atrium now in pieces, Raoul and the six other commandos charged inside. The men moved cautiously, kneeling in the roiling smoke and spraying the room with gunfire to clear it. The dining room was next, the walls splattered with high-powered bullets. But it was empty. As the smoke began to thin, Raoul quickly counted seven terrorist bodies. There had to be more! Four of the commandoes moved down the hall and through the wafting green air to the other rooms, clearing each.
Raoul waited and watched as they methodically entered each of the rooms, crouched, weapons drawn. Then silence. It made Raoul uneasy. He whirled to sudden motion behind him, and saw Kyle and Ariel through the wafting, thinning smoke. “I told you two to stay put!” he growled, his lips tight, his jaw clenched. “I almost shot you!”
Kyle jerked back, not expecting Raoul’s anger. “Sorry. Didn’t want to miss the action.”
“Get out!” Raoul said, waving them back. “It’s still not safe here.”
Kyle glanced around the room, littered with bodies. “Looks pretty dead to me.”
Raoul shook his head in disgust, grimaced, and pointed to the kitchen.
Kyle nodded, then crouched slightly and hurried across the room, stooped beside the kitchen door, Ariel close behind him, both with the backs flat against the wall. Raoul trailed them a few steps, then paused at the other side of the kitchen doorway where he raised a hand, signaling Kyle and Ariel to wait. He then flicked one finger, then another, and finally a third, silently mouthing the words, “one, two, three.”
Raoul sprang into kitchen, crouched with his weapon leading. Silence. Nothing. Kyle slowly peeked around the corner, and then stepped inside, about five feet behind Raoul, followed by Ariel.
Enemy of the People Page 24
