Direct Action - 03 (49 page)

Cover blown. On my own. Somewhere between Nusra and Army lines.

A few seconds later, Pat responded to this text:

Heavy contact. Not even sure who we are fighting. We're pushing up to the front but I need you to mark on map where you are and where last loc of wpns was.

Deckard went into the map feature and marked his current location and roughly where he had been when he shot Paul. The chemical weapons had surely been moved since then, but not far. Liquid Sky could not push forward into the Syrian Army lines and could not retreat to the rear with Samruk coming up behind them. That left them with limited maneuver room on their flanks. Deckard typed out the tactical situation to Pat as well and sent it along. Another incoming message came in half a minute later.

We'll move as far up as we can tonight. Sorry dude, can't help you until we link up.

There was nothing to be sorry for, of course. They were in an impossible situation. The sun had almost set beneath the skyline of the ruined city by the time Deckard went looking for food and water. With the electricity out, everything in the refrigerator had rotted. He managed to find some canned food and a couple warm cans of soda. In a nearby apartment he was able to scrounge up a bottle of water.

Setting his stash of supplies in the corner of one room, he scooped up an empty soup can to use to construct a booby trap. Using a cinderblock that had fallen from one of the walls, Deckard wedged the soup can under it near the stairwell. Then he pushed one of his hand grenades inside the soup can. Using a piece of string he found, he then tied a knot around the grenade and the other end of it to a pipe sticking out of the wall. Finally, he very carefully removed the pin from the grenade. The spoon of the grenade was held in place by the soup can which prevented it from detonating, at least until someone came walking up the steps and hit the trip wire.

With his early warning system in place, Deckard covered himself in a blanket to keep warm in the cool desert air. It was dark as he began tearing into the food. His mind and body were sluggish, moving in slow motion, and he knew he had to replenish himself. Tomorrow was another day. Even on his best day, he might not have enough to survive what was coming.

All he could do was hope that he had enough left in him to complete his mission.

38

Deckard was up on his feet and moving the second the grenade exploded. It was early morning and the cold night air cleared his head as he threw the blanket off. Running out the door, he turned through the smoke hanging in the air from the explosion and sprinted down the hall as he slung his Kalashnikov over his shoulder. He had done a quick route recon before drifting off to a restless sleep and now it was paying off.

Diving into another empty apartment, he made for a window and took a quick look before jumping. Vaulting out of the window, he sailed through the empty space above an alley before his combat boots made contact with the balcony of an adjacent apartment. He had quickly broken contact with the enemy but had to keep moving. Using the butt of his rifle, he cleared away some broken glass and climbed through a window.

Once inside, he carefully looked out a few windows at the building he had just escaped from. He could see the Nusra fighters taking a knee in the shadows at two corners of their target building. He had no doubt that they were on the other two corners as well. Someone had directed them to isolate the building before the assault team began clearing. They were using American tactics. It was Nusra with Liquid Sky in an advisory role. They were looking for him.

Whether they had been able to specifically track him to his bed-down site or if they were just doing a cordon and search on the entire area was irrelevant. Now they were back on his trail. Deckard couldn't run and hide. There was nowhere to run to as he was in enemy territory no matter what direction he went. A stand up fight was out of the question. He'd be gunned down in seconds as he was up against overwhelming numbers.

Mentally noting the enemy positions one last time, he turned and looked for a way down to the ground floor. What he could do was wage an unconventional battle, nickle and dime Nusra bit by bit and wear them down with a harassment campaign. Hopefully he could hold out until he could link up with Samruk.

Deckard quietly stepped down the stairs and out on to the street. There were four Nusra shooters at the nearest blocking position up ahead. Deckard stayed low with his AK in his hands as he moved forward in the dark. It would be another hour or so before the sun starting coming up. There was a burned-out car in the middle of the street and he was able to keep that between him and the enemy as he advanced towards them. When he came up alongside the car, he was less than ten meters away.

The undisciplined jihadists talked amongst themselves as they waited. They had been posted at the corner of the building to prevent anyone from escaping, specifically Deckard. They didn't seem to be taking their job all that seriously despite the booby trap that their comrades had set off. The four gunmen squatted on the street corner next to the target building.

Deckard slowly eased off the safety on his Kalashnikov. Staring down his rifle sights, he had them dead to rights. The jihadists were all facing in towards the target building with no rear security posted. Deckard quickly worked them like human e-type silhouettes at the range, shooting from left to right, two shots center mass in each one.

Crawling forward towards the bodies, he could hear shouts from the other security positions. White lights flashed from inside the building as the assault element continued to clear room to room. A walkie-talkie radio snapped inside the pocket of one of the dead jihadists crackled. Arabic voices came over the net as the other checkpoints tried to find out who was shooting.

Working quickly, Deckard stripped a couple chest rigs full of AK magazines off two of the bodies, grabbed the radio and then retreated back the way he came. The voices were getting more frantic on the radio. Depressing the push-to-talk button, Deckard began shouting in Arabic.

“He's at our position, he shot at us until we had to retreat. He's there now.”

Seconds later, one of the other blocking positions opened up on the one he had just taken out. The bullets kicked up little clouds of dust around the dead bodies.

“Not that one,” Deckard corrected. “The other blocking position!”

That did it. The remaining three blocking positions began opening fire on each other. In the confusion, they then returned fire on each other as well. The radio cracked and hissed as shouts and screams were garbled over the net. The jihadists were working themselves up into a confused panic as they shot their team mates.

Deckard turned the knob on the radio until it clicked off. He wasn't about to get decisively engaged with the enemy when they could just wear themselves out instead. His work was done here.

For now.

They were getting close. Pat could feel it.

The fighting had picked up in volume and intensity over the last few minutes. The jihadists had their backs up against the wall and they knew it. The Syrian Army had them stonewalled on one side and Samruk International was turning the handle on the meat grinder on the other. The boys had already run through their ammunition and were scrounging what they could off dead enemy. It was Deckard's foresight that they had to thank when he bought a 7.62 platform for the mercenaries rather than going with something cooler and more high-tech which would not be able to fire ammunition found on the battlefield.

Deckard knew that Samruk would be going into austere environments and denied areas.

Homs seemed to fit the bill.

Between a rock and a hard place, the Nusra fighters knew this was their last stand and were not budging any further. Samruk had traded fire with them off and on throughout the night. With night vision capability, their shooters were much more accurate at night fire to say the least. Nikita had been having a turkey shoot up on the rooftops. Every time a Nusra gunman poked his head out from behind a wall, the Kazakh sniper had taken it off.

But now the momentum had stalled and they were not making any further progress. Samruk needed to attempt a breakthrough to blitz forward, locate the chemical weapons, and capture them. Right now they were at a stalemate; every time they tried to push across the street they took fire from multiple heavy machine guns spread around the surrounding buildings.

Cracking this problem would require a little unconventional thinking, Pat knew. While Samruk mercenaries pulled security on the front line, others were busy at work inside the buildings they had occupied. It was dawn, and Pat wanted to wait until they had some good daylight before baiting Nusra into his trap. The men would have some more time to prepare their defenses.

Pat continued to inspect the lines and their preparation until Sergeant Fedorchenko approached him. The Sergeant had been with Samruk International since day one. As one of their first recruits, he had risen to the rank of Platoon Sergeant. Between Pat's bad Russian and Fedorchenko's bad English, they were able to communicate. The Platoon Sergeant informed him that his men were ready to go.

Everyone moved to take their places. It was a few minutes past seven in the morning when Pat gave the order. Samruk mercenaries fired RPGs at the machine gun nests they were able to locate and the riflemen and machine gunners on the ground began pouring it on with everything they had. Pat let the onslaught continue for a good half-minute before ordering the men to go from a cyclic to rapid rate of fire while they initiated a phased withdrawal plan.

One element fell back at a time as the Nusra fighters returned fire in earnest from their positions in the ruined neighborhood. The Samruk mercenaries were retreating to positions to the rear in groups of five or six while others provided cover fire. To the Nusra fighters, it looked like the Kazakh mercenaries were spent and were now beating a hasty retreat. Pat knew it was working when he heard the shouts in between bursts of gunfire as the jihadists celebrated.

“
Allah Akbar!
”

“
Takbeer!
”

From his vantage point on the second floor, Pat saw them poking their heads out from their fighting positions. Some of the Arabs were coming out into the open to fire their weapons in the general direction of the Samruk men. Pat fired off a short burst himself and then joined the retreating mercenaries.

Bailing out the back of the building, he joined the rest of the men in the secondary positions they had scouted out the night before. They were now barricaded inside three other buildings, behind what had been the front line for them over the course of the night.

Meanwhile, Nusra fighters spilled out of their own fighting positions and surged forward to occupy the ground they had lost the previous day. They were feeling the pressure from being stuck between Samruk and the Syrian Army. Now they wanted some breathing room back.

Pat smiled when he heard the first explosion.

It was a tactic called defense in depth. There is no need to hold a defensive position until the last bullet. Why waste the resources when you can just booby trap your position and then fall back to a secondary position? With the enemy running into the buildings that Samruk had occupied, they were now getting a special surprise.

Explosives ripped through the Nusra fighters as they mindlessly walked into trip wires and stepped on pressure plates that the mercenaries had rigged overnight. Many of the doorways leading out had been blocked by tumbleweeds of razor wire that the mercenaries had found on the battlefield and improvised as obstacles by jamming the mess into the exits. Now the Nusra gunmen were panicking and running right into razor wire.

Another blast sounded, probably one of the bricks of C4 plastic explosives that they had rubber-banded pieces of scrap metal to. Dust clouds rolled out of the windows and screams filled the morning air as another detonation was triggered.

Pat turned to Fedorchenko. It was time to skirt around the booby-trapped buildings. With Nusra softened up, they were ready to drive into the hold-outs and crush what was left of them. The platoon sergeant nodded and went to gather his Squad Leaders without having to be told.

The former Delta Force operator looked at the black smoke spiraling into the sky and knew that, one way or the other, it would all be over by the end of the day.