Direct Action - 03 (47 page)

Picking his way through the rubble, he emerged from the garage and into several empty rooms that looked like they might have been used for storage at one time. The back door wouldn't budge an inch despite Deckard putting his weight into it several times. Something was blocking the way on the other side. Looking for another way out, he found a small window covered in brown dust and grit. Turning a metal handle, the window screeched open on its hinges. He crawled out and into some more collapsed rubble.

The door did indeed have a cement pillar collapsed on top of it. In fact, the first floor of the adjacent building had collapsed and made a wall that led up to the second story. An overhang was created by the ceiling of the second story. Somehow, a glass chandelier was intact and swinging from a chain on the ceiling. It had been a dining room up until the war kicked off.

Deckard slung his Kalashnikov and ran at the collapsed floor. Planting a boot on the wall he vaulted up and out, his hands reaching out and grabbing the edge of what was left of the second story floor. He kicked his feet a few more times off the cement slab while pulling himself up into the dining room.

Walking from heel to toe, the former Special Operations soldier crept forward. On the opposite end of the building, it looked like most of the exterior wall had been blasted away. The interior was covered in pockmarks and streaks where bullets had chipped away at the walls. As he got closer, Deckard could see down into the street below. There were a couple of burnt-out cars in the street. A half-dozen dead bodies were also sprawled below with bloated stomachs and flies in their eyes.

Deckard also noticed where murder holes had been punched in what was left of the wall, giving covered positions to fire from. Everything was quiet.

That was when Deckard realized that he had just walked into the middle of an ambush line occupied by a dozen gunmen.

Bill clenched his jaw so hard, that he chipped a molar.

The Iridium phone was buzzing. Looking at the screen, he saw the number of the incoming call and knew it was one he had to take. The client.

Breathing hard, he extended the antenna and accepted the incoming call.

“This is Bill,” he answered gruffly. No code names or secret-squirrel nonsense. He wasn't in the mood for the client's usual bullshit.

“Uh, yes, this is Nancy,” his contact answered with her usual cover name. The Iridium phone had a crypto sleeve that scrambled their conversation to eavesdroppers but basic precautions were still taken.

“We're under the gun at the moment over here Nancy,” Bill said, putting on a show for her. “Trying to meet the terms of our contract.”

“We understand and appreciate that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“We've received some additional information which we felt you would want to be informed of immediately.”

“What's that?”

“You recall the incident in Nevada?”

“The one that got our contract dropped until you picked it up?”

“Right. We've been searching for the party or parties involved in a string of attacks including Nevada, and the company who worked those projects, your former client, has completed their investigation.”

“And?”

“A source in Mexico confirmed who was behind it. A dangerous mercenary. He is believed to be a major stakeholder, if not the leader of, a private military company based out of Kazakhstan.”

“What's this got to do with me?”

“Since pinpointing his identity we have been working this issue on our end. We have SIGINT hits on a cellular phone which we believe is in the target's possession. We realize that this target was not part of our original agreement, but we are prepared to double Liquid Sky's fee if you are able to resolve this issue for us. We have a last known location for his cell phone.”

“Let me guess.”

“Homs, Syria. His name is Deckard.”

Bill hurled the phone through the air. The satellite phone slammed into the side of a nearby building and shattered into a dozen pieces.

“Motherfucker!”

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a walkie-talkie. It was an off the shelf model that they had brought along with them for internal team communications in case cell phones didn't work in the city. Pressing the transmit button, the receiver beeped in his hand.

“Rick?”

A hiss of static came over the line.

“Yeah?” Rick's voice answered.

“The client just offered to double our fee if we kill Deckard. I will personally match that amount for whichever of you kills him.”

“A cool mil?”

“Fucking A.”

“We've lost him but The Operator is working on picking up his trail.”

“I want that fucker's head on a plate.”

The sound of gunfire came over the walkie-talkie. He could hear both Rick and The Operator's voices. Nadeesha and Ramon were out there looking for him as well.

“Never mind,” Rick came back over the line with. “That has got to be him.”
“Let me know when you've got his scalp in your hand.”

“You got it.”

Deckard wrenched the AK-47 from the Iranian's grasp. In the awkward way he had his hands on the rifle, he was holding it upside down. Somehow he managed to depress the trigger with his pinky and sweep the barrel in a long arc that split horizontally across the ambush line that three other Iranians had occupied. They went down with gut shots and sucking chest wounds.

Pulling the Kalashnikov away, he fell to the ground as bursts of gunfire sounded throughout the hollowed out second floor of the building. He had walked right into the rear end of an ambush line manned by Quds Force foreign fighters. With Iran backing the Assad regime, Quds Force was calling much of the shots and scoring many of the victories for the Syrian military.

Although they were dressed in a mix-match of camouflage uniforms, Deckard could tell their nationality as they yelled to each other in Farsi. Point-shooting the Iranian he had struggled with for the rifle, he yanked on the trigger over and over, adrenaline taking over. As the Iranian went down in a hail of gunfire, another peered out from behind a concrete column. Deckard fired on him, but his poor trigger control skewed the shots off target, kicking up cement dust as they streaked off the pillar.

Twisting and turning, he scrambled in the opposite direction as gunfire snapped over his head.

Putting another support column between himself and the Iranian he had failed to shoot, Deckard ran. At the end of the bomb-blasted building, he found a shattered window and dived through. There were no heroics involved, he simply fell ten feet down to the ground and landed in a heap. Thankfully, his own Kalashnikov helped break his fall when the rifle swung on its sling and butt stroked him in the chin. He felt the pain explode in his head.

Pulling himself up to his feet, he stumbled forward with one hand on the wall of the building, trailing his fingers just behind him as he hobbled on. Arriving at the mouth of the ally, he glanced across the road. His options were limited. Instead of dashing across the street, he button-hooked down the street and put a burnt out Volkswagen bus behind him in case the Iranians were looking for him on the streets.

Finding a building with the front door bashed in, Deckard walked towards it, hoping to find some refuge inside as he shook off the pain in his jaw.

“Hey!”

His head automatically snapped toward the sound.

Rick stood at the other end of the street with The Operator.

Both immediately went into a shooter ready position, rifles up. Deckard flung himself towards the door as they opened fire. Their shots cut through the air and dinged off the VW bus. As he high crawled into the doorway, a fusillade of fire responded to the two Liquid Sky members. The had street just become a two-way range. Deckard smiled.

“That's my boys.”

Quds Force was engaging Liquid Sky.

Deckard crawled inside the building and then jogged through a hallway strewn with garbage, everything from bicycle tires to baby diapers littered the interior of the building. It sounded like the gunfire was getting closer. He was effectively doubling back on his former position now. Or so it seemed. Things got confusing real fast in the urban labyrinth. There wasn't anywhere he could stop and ask for directions, either.

Stepping over a pile of old books and newspapers, Deckard came out into an empty lot that looked to be a real garbage dump. He held his breath and crossed it quickly. As he hopped over a wall to get to the next building, another couple shots snapped right next to him. Hitting the ground on the other side of the wall, he was hit by
deja vu
.

In their first encounter, he had pursued Liquid Sky with the same level of aggressiveness.

Naji watched the two Western mercenaries give chase after the other infidel who had attacked them. The fighters in his cell of Iranians wanted to gun the two men down as they crossed the garbage dump. Naji held up a hand, stopping them in their tracks.

The Iranian commander spoke into his radio and quickly received a response from a Syrian artillery battery on the other side of the city. He waited for the two foreigners to climb over the wall before calling in the artillery strike. He shifted from a known point, the last call for fire mission he had radioed in earlier in the morning. It was only a block away and he was fairy certain that the first shells would be on target.

Suppressing a chuckle, he leaned against the door frame to watch the show.

Deckard kicked in the back door and barged inside the abandoned building. Taking a few steps inside, he immediately jolted backwards, wobbling back towards the door. The bottom floor had been blown out sometime during the battle for Homs. The concrete slab had cracked and collapsed into the basement. With Hezbollah and Liquid Sky both on his ass, he was running out of places to go.