Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (16 page)

I grinned back.  “Keep it quiet,” I told him.  “We can use this.  Abu Hawid?”

He just drew a hand across his throat, his grin getting slightly more feral.

When we got back into the team room, however, Mike was leaning against the table, his arms folded and a frown on his face.  This looked like trouble.

“What’s up?” I asked, before anybody could say anything.

“The RSO has been getting suspicious,” he replied, pushing onto his feet.  “She came in here demanding to know what we’re doing here.  Said that if we’re supposed to be bolstering security, she hasn’t seen it.  We’ve just been driving around Baghdad and losing a State vehicle to an IED.”

I leaned my rifle against the wall and started to drop my kit, what I had of it, before grabbing a belt of 7.62 from the machine gun stocks to de-link to reload my expended magazine.  “What did you tell her?”

“The same thing Ventner told her,” he said, “that we’re here primarily to facilitate the evacuation, and that we’ve been familiarizing ourselves with the local terrain and laying the groundwork to get them out without getting rolled up by either Saleh or ISIS.”

I had yet to actually meet the Regional Security Officer, mainly because Ventner had been insulating us from her.  She was a career State bureaucrat, who was put in charge of diplomatic security in Iraq by virtue of political connections more than anything else. 
She had no military experience, and, as far as I’d been able to tell, no real security experience.  I hadn’t had a lot to do with the MSG detachment on the Embassy, mainly because we were trying to keep as low a profile as possible, but I had heard that the Marines detested her, and that the feeling was mutual.

“How did she take that?” Jim asked as he came through the door.

“About as well as you might expect,” Mike said.  “She’s one of those who insists that the whole evacuation thing is a waste of resources, that we’ve got nothing to fear from Saleh, and that she’s going to get the entire thing shut down and have us on the next plane back to the States.”

I snorted.  “
She does realize that the evacuation’s been going on for a couple of weeks now already, doesn’t she?  And that she doesn’t have the final say on that in the first place?

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” Larry chuckled.

“We’ve got to do something to put her suspicions to rest,” Eddie said.  Even as he spoke, Ventner knocked on the door.

“Jeff, Mike, you guys got a minute?” he asked.

“Sure, Joe,” I said, making sure the briefcase and any other evidence of the ambush was hidden away.  The fact that we were all a little sweaty and dusty, with weapons that had been recently fired I hoped would pass him by.  It wasn’t likely, but if he did notice, he chose not to comment.  “What’s up?”

He
came in, glanced around, then leaned against the wall by the door, his arms folded, looking relaxed.  “We’ve got another lift going out tonight.  I was wondering if you guys might be able to run cover for it.  It’s not a huge group, but things have been getting hotter on Airport Street, and we’ve got to make the run before sundown.  I’d really appreciate the extra layer.”

“Why’s it got to be before sundown?” Mike asked.  “That does not strike me as
being all that smart.”  In Iraq, the night time is the right time.

Ventner grimaced.  “It’s all about the flight.  The pilots won’t alter their schedule for little things like trying to get their passengers to the aircraft alive.”

“Sounds like somebody needs a swift kick in the head,” I said, “but sure, we’ll do it.  If we’re going out in daylight, though, we’re going guns up and out, no matter how much it upsets the State people’s delicate sensibilities.”

Ventner just grinned as he turned to go.  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Movement brief is going at—“
he was cut off by the compound security radios squawking on the table.

“
Code Red, Red Gate.  I say again, Code Red, Red Ga
—“

The transmission was abruptly interrupted by a tooth-rattling concussion that shook the building.

“Oh, shit,” Ventner said.  “We’ll have to continue this conversation later.”

“
Agreed,” I said.  “You guys need some help?”

“Every bit you can give us,” he replied, then he was through the door and running down the hall, even
as the rest of the teams piled through the door, most already in their kit.  I hurriedly grabbed my own vest and belt before slinging my rifle.

We could already hear small arms fire from the west.  Apparently, this wasn’t just a car bomb.  “Mike, you reinforce Blue Gate; Hussein Ali, you’ve got Black, we’ll move to Red.  Make sure you ID yourselves to the guys already in position; we haven’t been all that sociable here, and some of them don’t know us.  Any questions?”

There weren’t any.  Even if there had been, we didn’t have much more information to pass, and nobody was calling us with anything new.   Once again, we had to roll with the punches.  Good thing we were getting pretty good at that.

We came out of the billeting at a run.  Black smoke and dust were rising over Red Gate, and the crackle of small arms fire was intensifying.  There was another
boom
, probably from an RPG, even as we hastily piled onto our vehicles.  I got to one of the trucks first and jumped behind the wheel.  Somehow, we got eight guys into one HiLux in a matter of seconds, and none of us were exactly small.  I glanced back to make sure we had everybody, then threw the truck in gear and headed for Red Gate.

The compound was seething with activity, but very little of it appeared to be useful activity. 
There seemed to be a lot of people trying to get to shelter or just get the hell away from the gunfire.  Several people appeared to be trying to take charge, but didn’t look to me like they had a fucking clue what was going on, or what to do about it.  A guy in a 5.11 tuxedo, cargo pants and overly-pocketed shirt, jumped in front of our truck and held up his hand for us to stop, but I didn’t recognize him, and he wasn’t armed, so I dismissed him.  He jumped out of the way just before I clipped him with the front fender.

It took only a couple of minutes to get to the gate, or at least to the first covered position close to the gate.

Fortunately, I knew better than to just go plowing right up into the middle of it.  I stopped short of one of the consulate buildings, keeping it between us and the gate.  We weren’t alone; there were about a dozen of Stahl’s guys along with several Ventner shooters behind cover, trying to bring the gate area under fire.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of cover; we were right on the grassy boulevard running between the main consulate buildings straight toward the gate.

Fortunately, the gate itself was acting as a chokepoint, and for all the wild fire the bad guys were pouring through it, they were still bottled up in there.  For now.

We piled out of the truck, and I ran up to one of the Stahl shooters, a skinny guy with a bushy brown beard, who was leaning out around the corner of the consulate building behind his M4.  Most of the rest were stacked up behind him as bullets skipped and snapped down the boulevard.  There weren’t a lot of firing positions outside of the buildings themselves, and I wasn’t interested in holing up in either of them.  You don’t push attackers out by going to ground.

Yeah, we tend to be a little aggressive.  The “Security” part of our company name can sometimes be a little euphemistic…

The skinny dude fired about four aimed shots before ducking back, as rounds smacked the ground and wall where he’d been, caroming off the concrete with nasty whines and spitting grit and frag into the air.  I grabbed him by the shoulder as he ducked back, and he turned to look at me, his rifle muzzle pointed at the sky.

“Where are the guys who were manning the gate?” I asked.

“If they’re not here or back by the conexes, they’re dead,” he yelled back over the intensifying noise of the enemy fire coming from the gate.  I pulled him back away from the corner and slipped in where he’d been, waiting until a lull in the fire to ease one eye around to see the gate.

There were black-clad figures leaning out into the compound, blazing away at us.  I counted three at least before I had to duck backward, a round splashing chunks of metal and concrete into my face before whizzing off over my left shoulder.  That was a little close.  I pulled back into shelter and issued orders fast.

“Jim, you keep Nick and Little Bob here.”  I’d noticed Little Bob had grabbed one of the M60E4s we’d gotten out of Basra, and was lugging two more bandoliers of rounds over his shoulder.  “Set up a base of fire, but don’t expose yourselves any more than necessary.  The rest of the team, on me.”

The skinny guy yelled, “Hey!”  He spread his hands.  “What do we do?”

“Help Kemosabe,” I said, pointing to Jim.  “Or come with us, but if you do, you follow our lead, roger?”

“Roger that,” he said
, raising his eyebrows.  He slipped his mag out, checked it, then slapped it back in the well.  “Let’s go.”

Jim and
Little Bob were already moving.  Little Bob threw himself down in the prone behind the corner then edged out so only the gun and one eye were visible to the gate.  He started shooting even before Jim leaned out over him and added single shots from his Mk 17 to the M60’s bursts.

I left them to it and led out, jogging toward the east side of the building.  A glance inside through the windows showed me a bunch of people cowering on the floor and no one with a weapon.  Useless rabbits.

I got to the northeast corner, where some of the building’s climate control equipment was surrounded by concrete barriers.  There was a stretch of open ground to cross between us and the handful of Stahl and CP guys covered down behind the conexes.  A few of them were throwing rounds in the general direction of the gate, but I couldn’t tell if they were hitting anything.

A quick glance at the gate showed that none of the black-clad shooters were facing this way.  It also showed that the Stahl and
Ventner contractors’ fire was completely ineffective; they had no targets.  I turned back to my guys and the half dozen or so Stahl contractors who had come along.  I didn’t bother with hand signals, since the Stahl guys weren’t going to know our communications anyway.  I leaned around Larry and addressed the Stahl shooters directly.  “One at a time, across the open area.  The man behind covers.  DO NOT shoot unless you have a target, and then, make fucking sure you hit what you’re shooting at.”

I got nods from all of them.  I made eye contact with each to make sure they heard and understood, then thumped Larry on the shoulder with my fist.  He returned it with bruising impact, and I came off the blocks, sprinting toward the conexes.

I hadn’t been running a lot lately; continuous combat operations can put a bit of a dent into a PT schedule, but those operations had been rough enough that I hadn’t lost much.  I crossed the open area in seconds and skidded to a halt behind a big, burly dude with a shaved head and pointed beard who was blazing away at the gate area and doing nothing but kicking up dust.

The rest of the team followed, as I grabbed Pointy-Beard and yelled in his ear, “Cease fire!  You’re not hitting shit!”

He turned and looked at me, looking a little surprised; I suddenly realized he hadn’t known I was there until I yelled at him.  Talk about target fixation…  “We’ve got them pinned down in the gate area,” he protested.  “We’ve got to keep them suppressed!”

At about that moment, Little Bob
let rip a longer burst with the 60.  The enemy fire slackened suddenly as a storm of 7.62 hammered through the gateway.  “That’s what machine guns are for,” I told Pointy-Beard.  “You guys have any grenades?”

He looked at me like I had a dick growing out of my forehead.  I shook my head before he could answer.  Of course not.  State would have a conniption fit if they knew the kind of ordnance we’d smuggled onto the compound.
  Well, I supposed they were about to find out, anyway.

I pulled one of our few remaining L109s out of my kit and made sure the tape was off the lever before shoving it back in its pouch.  Pointy-Beard’s eyes went a little wider.  “You guys stay here and cover our movement,” I told him and the other black-shirted Stahl contractors.  “Just don’t shoot us in the back, okay?”  I didn’t wait for a response, but led out, my rifle up and ready.  I kept it to a low glide; there was no cover to speak of aside from the gatehouse itself.  I was momentarily
thankful that I’d grabbed a slick plate carrier from the Ventner guys.  I’ve never liked the extra weight of body armor, but in this situation, having that little extra something between my vitals and the bullets was rather reassuring.

Little Bob
continued to hammer the gatehouse with tight bursts from the M60, occasionally punctuated by a single shot from either Jim or Nick.  The gun was suppressing the hell out of the bad guys, but he only had so much ammo, much like the rest of us.  We had to move fast.

I figured I was close enough, waved the rest back against the concrete wall, let my rifle hang from its sling, and pulled out the frag I’d prepped.  I had to step out in the open a little more than I would have liked to get the angle I was looking for, and an ISIS fighter back behind one of the concrete barriers looked straight at me, even as I cocked my arm back to throw the frag.