Renegade (2013) (17 page)

Wali opened his door as they neared the hapless policeman. Disoriented, doubtless in shock, the man shoved his head up just in time to catch Wali’s door in the face. The thump resounded in the SUV, and the man’s body rolled limply to the side.

“Keep pushing them! Keep pushing!” Wali screamed into the driver’s ear.

Unable to regain control of the vehicle, the ANP driver tried to speed up and get away. The SUV had more power and closed rapidly as the driver struggled to cut to the right. The larger vehicle caught the pickup on the right rear corner, pushed its rear tires so they lost traction, and turned it sideways across the front of the SUV.

They crossed the narrow street and slammed into the front of a shoe store, causing the people inside to duck away from the large plate-glass windows. Jagged shards dropped from the windows and cascaded in pieces across the pickup. The smaller vehicle crushed inward as the SUV bore down on it. Three policemen screamed on the other side of the fractured glass.

“Enough.” Wali released his seat belt. “Back away and stop.”

With a wrenching howl of twisted metal, the driver reversed the SUV about ten feet, then came to a rocking halt. Wali got out on one side and Yaqub stepped from the SUV on the other.

Some of the people inside the shoe shop had started forward, perhaps thinking that an accident had occurred instead of an ambush. Yaqub fired into them, wounding some of them and driving them all back.

Mercilessly, Wali shot the injured man in the pickup bed, then went forward and gunned down the driver and one of the passengers as well. All three of the men inside had been trapped by the crushed doors. The last man attempted to crawl from the door window, slicing his hands and forearms on the broken glass.

Yaqub walked toward the survivor, relishing the terror he saw in the man’s eyes. The man hung there, trapped by the dead man on his legs and his injuries resulting from the crash.

The man sucked in air as he stared helplessly at Yaqub. “No. Please. Have mercy. I ask this in God’s name.” He prayed frantically, his voice breaking with his fear.

“You are a traitor to God. He does not hear your prayers. And I will not listen to them.” Yaqub looked around at the bystanders, knowing he commanded their attention too. Then he held the pistol only inches from the man’s head and pulled the trigger.

The policeman relaxed in death as blood wept down the side of the wrecked pickup.

Yaqub returned to the SUV. Sebastian looked pale and sickly and had managed to free himself from his seat belt. He froze in place with one leg out the door when Yaqub pointed the pistol at him.

“Get back inside or die here on the street.” Yaqub glared at the man.

Trembling, Sebastian crawled into the SUV. Yaqub joined him; then the driver got under way again, once more rushing through the streets like a black shark.

BULLETS FROM THE SNIPERS
across the street pelted the Humvee as Pike hauled himself into the back of the vehicle. He slung the M4A1 over his shoulder and tucked in behind the big .50-cal machine gun. More rounds flattened against the defensive shroud that flared around the weapon. Under his weight, the deck listed sideways on the shredded tires as he moved.

After checking the belt feed and finding nothing amiss, Pike settled in behind the big gun. As he spun the muzzle around toward the buildings on the other side of the street, a rocket struck the street only a few feet in front of him. Broken rock beat against the Humvee, shaking it slightly as smaller debris bounced from Pike’s armor and stung his face and hands.

Pike opened fire and felt the heavy machine gun jerking and rising, climbing from the muzzle velocity. He corrected the gun’s natural upward inclination and stitched a jagged line across the buildings where the al Qaeda snipers lay in hiding.

Spent cartridges ejected out of the gun like brass rain. The .50-cal round had been designed as a tank buster, the solid core capable of penetrating armor and going on to kill targets within a steel-clad vehicle.

The rounds did their job now, chopping through wood, punching
through stone, and destroying the enemy combatants on the other side. Pike didn’t let up till the belt had nearly cycled through. Ears ringing from the basso explosions, sweat running down his face and neck, Pike abandoned the machine gun only long enough to grab the next ammunition belt from the ammo box and connect it to the last. Then he was back at the gun, scouting for whatever survivors might still be at their posts.

“Pike, hold your fire.” Heath Bridger’s voice was sharp, but he was in control.

“Roger that. Holding fire, but I’m locked and loaded.” Pike sat sweltering behind the machine gun. He kept watch anxiously as Marines debarked from the Humvees and spread out to contain the situation.

As Heath jogged forward, he managed the anxiousness that flooded through him when he thought about the danger he’d placed Bekah in. It had been his choice to have her patrol in this area. But she wouldn’t have wanted him protecting her. That would have brought out her ire; he was sure of that.

Let it go. When she’s out here, she’s a Marine. If you treat her any differently, even for a second, you’re doing her and yourself a disservice, and you won’t be fit to command these Marines.

But thinking of her as one of the other Marines was hard. Thinking of female Marines as regular squad mates was difficult to begin with. His first inclination was to protect them. Most male Marines had to squelch that reaction when they were partnered with women on a line. That was one of the reasons the SEAL teams didn’t allow females. Men got torn between fighting and protecting. Women made brave, good soldiers, but for the men, undoing generations of genetic and social hardwiring was a challenge.

With difficulty, Heath shelved that line of thought once more. He scanned the streets and listened to the progress of the men he’d ordered into the surrounding buildings. There wasn’t much al Qaeda resistance. Pike had become a lethal force with the machine gun.

The dead littered the street. Men, women, and children lay scattered and bloody, some of them missing limbs and unrecognizable from the damage. The sight sickened Heath even after everything he’d seen in his previous tours. A soldier didn’t get used to this. If he was lucky, he developed a means of setting it aside, but it still affected him. A lot of soldiers dealt with posttraumatic stress disorder. Heath had seen a number of those men since his first active tour.

As Heath approached the Humvee, Pike clambered down from the vehicle with his M4A1 in one hand. Although Pike was a couple inches shorter than Heath, his shoulders were broader and he was more powerfully built. Pike was a guy who couldn’t be overlooked when he made himself known.

At present, the man looked hard-pressed. His camo was torn and tattered in several places. Blood streaked his stubbled face beneath his nonregulation sunglasses. But he moved like a big cat on the prowl. In his football career, Heath had seen linebackers who moved like Pike did—hungry, hunting, restless, always a danger because they intuited so much and moved with lightning quickness.

Heath nodded to Pike. “You good?”

Pike’s lips tweaked in a slight smile that never looked quite genuine or at ease. “I am.”

Once again, Heath wondered at Pike’s background. The man never said much about where he’d been and what he’d done before becoming a Marine. “Nice work with the fifty.”

“I aim to please.”

Then Heath’s attention centered on Bekah as she emerged from the building sporting bullet-pocked walls. A feeling of relief washed
over him, followed immediately by guilt. He shouldn’t feel any differently about her than any other Marine, but he did—and he felt differently about her than he did about the other female Marines as well.

He just didn’t know how those feelings were going to shake out. In fact, he wasn’t sure how she’d react to them if she knew they were there. She wouldn’t like the confusion inside him at all. Of that he was certain.

Bekah was almost as disheveled as Pike. In a couple places her body armor showed through her camo, and he knew she’d taken rounds or gotten hit by shrapnel.

“Are you all right, Corporal?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

Sir.
The word defined their relationship in this time and place. He was an officer and she was a noncom. Not only was there not supposed to be any fraternization between male and female Marines, but there wasn’t supposed to be any between officers and noncoms.

That was two strikes.

He looked into her eyes, thinking maybe she wanted him to say something else, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He remembered how awkward things had gotten the last time he’d seen her in the park. Her granny had been playing matchmaker, not knowing that was the last thing Heath or Bekah could afford in their military careers.

They were in dangerous circumstances. Both of them needed to be focused.

Gunney Towers stepped into the awkwardness. He waved over at the Humvee. “Looks like the tangos shot the crap out of your vehicle, Corporal Shaw. I count three flats, and that surviving tire don’t look to be in much better shape.”

Under the layer of dust that covered Bekah’s face, she blushed a little and looked uncomfortable. “Actually, Gunney, the tangos
aren’t responsible for all of that damage. I tossed a grenade under the vehicle.”

The big sergeant cocked a surprised eyebrow at her. “Nobody told you not to do that?”

“The tangos were using the Humvee as cover. I parked a frag under there to flush them out. I figured the blast plates would save the vehicle.”

Gunney Towers turned to frown at the dead al Qaeda warriors around the Humvee. “You probably figured right, Shaw, but the people in the motor pool ain’t gonna be any too happy with you for all the extra work you’re throwing their way.”

“Probably not.”

Towers switched his gaze back out over the street. “Luckily, you ain’t gonna be having to explain that anytime too soon. We still got a lot of work here to do.”

In an effort to get the city back to normal more quickly—even though Pike didn’t think Kandahar had seen anything close to normal in years—the Marines were tasked with helping watch over the citizens while they took to the streets to claim the bodies of their family and friends.

Pike stood guard with Cho, but he couldn’t just hang around and watch as those people grieved over their losses. He got bloody helping gather the bodies and place them on flatbed trucks and pickups that were commandeered by the Afghan National Police.

One of the victims had been close to ground zero when an RPG warhead had gone off. The blast had shredded the man’s body and torn off his legs and one arm.

A young private from back east stared down at the dead man. He spoke in a flat monotone and sounded out of it. “‘We can rebuild him. We can make him better than he was.’”

Pike looked at the man. “You doing okay, Marine?”

Startled, the young private took a step back and looked at Pike. He hadn’t known Pike was there. His eyes were red, and Pike suspected it wasn’t just from fatigue and the dust. The guy looked like he was flying on something, wired tight. He shrugged. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“It’s just this guy.” The private jerked a thumb at the dead man. “Reminded me of Steve Austin. You know, the Six Million Dollar Man? Lost both of his legs and an arm in a plane crash. Government rebuilt him. Made him into a cyborg.”

Pike vaguely remembered the television show. “Nobody’s gonna make that man into a cyborg.”

“Guess not.”

“You’re Hutchison, right?”

The private hesitated, then nodded. “Trevor Hutchison.”

“Some advice, Hutchison.” Pike stepped over to the man—intimidation through proximity. “Maybe you want to chill with the pop-culture references around these people and show a little respect.”

Hutchison’s hand tightened on his assault rifle. “Maybe you want to chill with the advice. I didn’t ask for none, and I sure don’t need it.”

“You don’t need whatever you’re flying on either. I catch you using again while you’re on patrol, I’m gonna throw you a beat down myself.”

Heat showed in Hutchison’s face, and for a minute Pike thought the man was going to act rashly. That was fine with Pike. He’d spent the last three hours picking up pieces of things that used to be individuals. He could use the distraction.

Suddenly, like he’d blown in on a quiet breeze, Gunney Towers was there, looming over them. “Do we have a problem here, Marines?”

“No, Gunney.” Hutchison looked at the big man. “Just looking
for the pieces. Pike volunteered to get this one.” The private turned and walked away.

Watching the man go, figuring the last thing Towers needed was to deal with a stoned Marine in the middle of all this carnage, Pike let out his breath, then squatted and took hold of the dead man lying at his feet. He hooked one hand under the man’s armpit and fisted his shirt in the other. Even wearing surgical gloves to prevent skin-to-skin contact, Pike could feel the coolness of the dead man’s flesh. The sensation was alien, wrong. The corpse rolled in his grip, feeling as heavy as wet cement.

Towers went to the man’s truncated hips, grabbed hold, and lifted. “Want to tell me what that was about, Pike?”

“Difference of opinion.” Pike walked backward over the blood-drenched street.

“What difference? What opinion?”

“It’s nothing to cry over.” Pike lifted the body out of Towers’s grip and stowed that half of him on the truck. Two other Marines stood on the flatbed and helped shift the bodies that arrived.

“Didn’t look like you were gonna cry over nothing. Looked like you were ’bout to stove that guy’s head in.”

Pike didn’t bother to deny it. He went back to where they’d collected the corpse and picked up one of the legs. The other leg was twelve feet away. He hadn’t found the arm yet.

Towers picked up the other leg and followed Pike to the flatbed. “Folks deal with this stuff in their own way.”

Listening but not taking it in, Pike went into his neutral zone, that place he’d created as a kid to shut down his emotions. Nothing mattered there. Nothing could touch him. He was a rock. This—and the private—didn’t matter either.

“I’ve seen you clean up bodies before, Pike. You’ve never let it bother you.”

“Not bothering me now, Gunney.”

“That kid’s attitude lit you up.”

“Nah. I was just looking for a diversion. My bad.” Pike strode over to a woman’s body that lay against a delivery van. He knelt down and took her by the shoulder, deliberately not seeing the bloody mess the shrapnel had made of her back. If he didn’t take those sights in, own them, he didn’t have to remember them. He pulled the body away from the vehicle.

Underneath the van, a small boy who looked like he was seven or eight lay on his side. Blood oozed from a wound in his stomach. Scrapes and bruises on his face, arms, and hands offered mute testimony that he’d gotten beneath the van under his own power. The woman’s hands showed the same kind of wear and tear, and Pike suspected that she’d tried to shove the boy underneath the van to protect him. It hadn’t done any good.