Task Force Desperate (48 page)

Just at that moment, Mike’s voice came over the radio. “Coconut, Speedy. We are receiving heavy fire from the vicinity of building two. It looks like you have more bad guys headed your way from there.”

“Roger,” Alek replied, as he ducked back from the doorway, as more rounds splintered the wood doorjamb. “They’re already here.”

I peeked out into the doorway over Jim’s shoulder. There was the better part of a dozen men in the foyer, dressed in black. They wore tactical vests and body armor, and were packing more G36s. The well-to-do jihadis seemed to be going increasingly to HK for their armament.

I ducked back as a round snapped by my face so close I could feel the shockwave. I leaned in to Jim’s ear. “High-low,” I said. “I’ll go high.” He nodded, and I kneed him in the ass, then popped out behind my rifle, as he dropped to a knee and leaned out, leveling his Mk 17.

I couldn’t have leaned into a more perfect position if I’d tried. A bearded, black-clad man’s face blossomed in my sights just as my rifle steadied, and I shot him. Red splashed out the back of his skull, as I tracked toward the next man, a little weasely-looking fucker who was crouched behind the granite monument or whatever it was in the center, and put two rounds into him as he tried to scramble back into cover. Below, Jim was putting out rapid double-taps at anything that moved.

I ducked back behind the crumbling cover of the wall, and fished in my vest for a grenade. We couldn’t afford to get pinned down here. Letting my rifle hang on its sling, I pulled the pin, yelled, “Frag out!” and tossed it out into the foyer. A moment later, Larry did the same thing from behind Alek, as Alek and Jim were still shooting. They ducked back just as the one-two blasts rocked the building, blowing more dust and smoke around the foyer.

Alek led the charge out, flowing through the door behind his rifle. We couldn’t see much at first, but we were at an advantage over the black-clad fighters who’d been out there when those grenades went off. There were a half-dozen near the door who had avoided most of the shrapnel and some of the overpressure, but we came out of the smoke and killed them, the sound of our four rifles sounding like the air was being ripped apart. Only one got a shot off, and that missed, snapping by a few feet from my head. I shot him just above his plate, the rounds ripping through his lower throat. He dropped to the concrete, choking on his own blood. A single brain shot as he thrashed on the ground stilled him.

The shooting had paused momentarily, so we took the few moments to reload. “We’ve still got to clear this building,” Alek said. “I’m starting to think that our target might not be here, but we’ve got to make sure. Clear left.” We mostly responded with nods, and I led out, heading for the western hallway.

The hallway was lined with offices and small conference rooms. We went methodically from one to another, kicking in the door and clearing each room. We didn’t find anything; they were empty all the way down the hallway. It was starting to look like there wasn’t anybody in the target building at all, aside from the guards we’d already killed. The sound of gunfire outside had intensified, and we stayed away from the windows after a stray round shattered one in the second room we cleared.

We came out of the last room on the end just as more bad guys came in the front door. We met them with a withering barrage of fire that dropped the first three in a welter of blood and steel. The rest moved to the walls, dropping to knees or the prone. We didn’t give them any breathing room, but glided forward, firing on the move. Larry was in the rear, and chucked a grenade ahead after cooking it off. We stopped and dropped to a knee, continuing to lay down fire, as they tried to scramble clear of the deadly little ball. Most of them didn’t make it. Smoke, dust, and shrapnel stormed down the hallway. One of the jihadis came stumbling out of the smoke, bleeding from his nose, ears, and a dozen shrapnel wounds. Jim finished him with a single shot to the forehead.

I checked my ammo situation as I reloaded. We were burning through magazines at a ridiculous rate. I still had four, but I’d come ashore with eight. Half my ammo gone, and we still hadn’t gotten eyes on the target.

Just then, the radio crackled. “Coconut, Speedy. The target is building two. I say again, the target is building two. There’s no activity in the target building; it’s all coming from building two. Will attempt to provide covering fire for you to move on it. Element two has the rear isolated.”

That wasn’t all. Before Alek could acknowledge, Lee came on the radio. “Coconut, this is Mr. Big. Be advised, Yemeni security forces have been alerted to the fighting, and are inbound. You haven’t got much time left.”

“Roger all,” Alek snapped. “All right, we’re going to move to the east side of the building, find an exit, and move to building two. We’ve got to be fast and aggressive, but I don’t need to tell you guys that, do I?”

“Fuckin’ A you don’t,” Jim growled. “I’m up, let’s move.”

It was a careful balance between speed and security. We moved as fast as we could down the hallway, carefully clearing each door as we passed it, our muzzles never coming down from the low ready. We reached a door at the end of the hallway and kicked it open, moving in to clear the room beyond without even slowing down. From there, Jim, Larry, and I moved to the windows, while Alek covered the door.

Quick strikes of rifle muzzles shattered the glass, and we swept the ground beyond for hostiles. In the process, we got a good look at the fight that had shaped up outside.

We had split up into elements of two to better cover multiple lanes, and shut off the target building. We had four guys to the west, covering down the north and west sides of the target building. They didn’t have much to the west to occupy them, but they were taking desultory shots at anybody on the north side of building two who tried to poke their head out. Four of us were in the target building. And four more, with Mike leading them, were south, covering the main gate and the south and east sides of building two.

Mike and his boys had the heaviest part of the fight at the moment. There was fire coming from both floors and the main entrance, as blasted to hell as it was, of building two, and more fighters were trying to get out the back and sides to try to get at them. Some were just doing the time-honored hajji form of combat shooting, sticking their rifles out the windows and spraying south without aiming. An M60E4 and Mike’s MGL were making an unholy mess of the front of the building, along with anybody who tried to get out, but they only had so much ammo, and it looked like there were a lot of bad guys in there. Several fires were already burning on both floors, I had no doubt due to Mike’s grenades. The fires and muzzle flashes lent a flickering, hellish illumination to the scene.

Four men wearing camouflage jackets and cheap chest rigs bailed out of the lower windows. They were armed with a couple AK variants, an SKS, and a G3, and they crouched low as they tried to maneuver toward Mike’s team. Larry, Jim, and I didn’t even have to say a word. We swung our rifles out the windows and opened fire. The jihadi shooters dropped like sacks of meat. They never even knew what had happened. Our suppressors apparently masked our own muzzle flashes enough that nobody in building two knew, either. We didn’t take any fire.

Alek started shooting from the doorway, a series of rapid, muted
cracks
announcing his shots. “Got shooters in the hallway!” he yelled. Where the fuck were they all coming from?

“Speedy, this is Hillbilly,” I called, as Jim turned and sprinted to the opposite side of the door from Alek, leaning out to finish off the last three SIG 550-toting terrorists. “Four friendlies coming out of building one, east side. Shift fire.”

“Roger, go ahead,” Mike replied.

I turned back to the door and yelled, “Alek, Jim, we’re going, move!” Then Larry and I hoisted ourselves into the windows and jumped out.

I landed badly, falling on my side but managing to keep my suppressor out of the dirt. I was able to roll out of the way before getting crushed by Alek’s huge self unassing from the window. As I got up on a knee under the trees that lined the side of the building, half a dozen more bad guys came out a side door, where they were masked from the western element. The lull in firing had opened up an opportunity.

Larry had already seen them, and his FAL started barking almost as soon as they cleared the doorway. The lead shooter flopped to the ground, and the rest scrambled for nonexistent cover as Jim, Alek and I joined in. They were shooting back, but although they were showing better firearms training than I’d seen hajjis use before, they still sucked in the dark. Rounds were snapping high overhead and smacking into concrete and tree limbs, shredded vegetation falling down around us as we moved forward in a sort of half-crouch, firing as we moved.

The flickering light, along with the smoke and dust in the air, was making it hard to see, even with NVGs, but the thermals helped. I was able to pick up outlines in the green haze, something they couldn’t. We swept from one side to the other, each putting two rounds into any thermal signature he could pick up. A moment later, the gunfire coming our way died down, the only sound from the destroyed team the pained gurgles of a man not yet quite dead.

We picked up the pace without a word, heading for the opening the enemy shooters had come out of. I called Mike again. “Speedy, Hillbilly. We are making entry northwest side of building two.”

“Roger,” was the reply. The shooting suddenly redoubled again.

We paused to stack on the door, as Alek prepped a frag and tossed it in. We followed the earthshaking
thud
of the explosion, moving fast into the smoke and debris. There were more corpses in the hallway; it looked like another team had been on its way out when the grenade had gone in. We had well and truly kicked the hornet’s nest. It was starting to look like there was at least a reinforced company of troops of one kind or another here.

There was an open door ahead, leading to a stairway. Alek led the way to it, while Larry popped the corner of the intersecting hallway, holding it as the rest of us headed up the stairs. Jim thumped him as he went past, and Larry fell in with the rest of us going up.

The top floor was kind of strange, with a hallway running around the outside of the building, and what looked like it might be a conference room in the center. There were several shooters, of the camouflage jacket and AK chest rig variety down at the south end, taking shots at Mike’s element. They never even knew what hit them. Staccato pairs of suppressed shots dropped them into heaps of meat and rags leaking blood on the tile floor.

There was another stairwell at the far side, and shouts in Arabic were starting to come up from the one we’d just ascended. Larry was posted on the landing, his FAL aimed down the stairs, waiting for the first hajji to show his face. Alek took the corner, facing down the long hallway to the south, watching the far stairs. Jim and I moved to the nearest door.

It was wood, or at least wood veneer, and it looked like it was pretty good quality. Most of this place had been pretty fancy at one time, before decades of neglect had been topped off by us blowing the shit out of it. There was a lot of yelling on the other side, most of it that I could make out was in Arabic. Somebody didn’t sound happy. I reached for the doorknob and turned it. It was unlocked.

The door splintered inches from my hand, as someone on the other side fired a long burst from what sounded like an AK-74 through it. So much for that option. I moved to donkey-kick it open, while Jim pulled out his last frag.

There was more defiant yelling from inside, and another burst tore up the door some more. Jim had the pin out, and his hand clamped around the grenade’s safety lever, and nodded to me. I wound up and slammed my foot straight back into the door.

The door latch ripped right through the splintered doorjamb, and the door slammed open. Jim lobbed the grenade inside, throwing it high to bounce it off the ceiling, hoping to lessen the chance that somebody could scoop it up and throw it back out.

He must have cooked it off while I was winding up. It detonated a bare second later, and I felt the concussion in my chest, even through the wall. I pivoted and went in, Jim on my heels, with Alek and Larry falling in on the door behind us.

The room had been a conference room, and a very nicely appointed one. Rich wood paneling was now gouged by shrapnel, and what I could only assume was a very expensive deep red carpet was smoldering where the grenade had gone off. Several burning papers were still fluttering in the smoky air.

The first half of the room was a charnel house. Whoever had been shooting at the door was down, missing both his arms and one leg, along with a good chunk of his head. His AK was a smashed ruin, bathed in blood at the foot of the now thoroughly smashed end of the conference table. Two more lay crumpled off to the side, similarly mangled. We cleared the corners and moved forward, stepping over the mutilated bodies.

There were four men at the far end of the conference table. They had been knocked senseless by the overpressure, and were bleeding from several shrapnel wounds. We closed on them quickly, rifles leveled.

One was dressed in traditional flowing white Bedouin robes, with a black keffiyeh on his head. The other three were all dressed in expensive suits, marred now by dust, blood, and shrapnel holes.

The first one to start to pick himself up was a short, spare-framed man, in a black silk suit, with short, oiled hair and a short, neat beard. He came to his hands and knees, and looked up at us, his eyes bleary. He obviously wasn’t seeing straight.

I recognized him, though. After Baird had provided the ID, we’d gotten photos. The man on the floor was responsible for hundreds of dead Americans, and who knew how many dead Africans and Arabs. He had plans to be the next Osama Bin Laden. He was Mahmoud al-Khalidi. Al Masri. I leveled my rifle at his forehead.

As his eyes started to clear, he looked around at us, then at his associates on the floor, who were also starting to shake off the effects of the grenade blast. Recognition lit in his dark eyes, followed immediately by a flash of hatred so intense that if looks could kill, his would have incinerated the side of the building. He stared up at me for a moment, then simply said, “Allahu akhbar,” and reached into his suit.