Daniel glanced at the surrounding terrain, as the low structures grew in the windshield. The indomitable steppe lands yielded little in terms of visual interest. They passed a few fissures that spread perpendicular to the road, but beyond that, the town of Kaynar was the only thing that attracted his eye. The road fell away to the right, yielding a crude ditch that they had followed since crossing a stone bridge a few minutes ago. These rudimentary improvements provided the only sign that they might be entering an inhabited area. Daniel couldn't imagine why anyone would choose to live here. The Geiger counters had assured his team that their DNA would likely remain unaltered, but none of them could shake the uneasy feeling that nothing could erase the ill effects produced by nearly fifty years of Soviet nuclear testing in the region.
The sun finally cracked the seemingly endless and featureless eastern horizon, changing the landscape's grayish blue hue to a dull, grayish brown. Not much of an improvement, he thought and checked his watch. 0510. They had been driving for three hours in the dark, through some of the shittiest roads he had ever experienced. Sunlight was a welcome sight. A tiny reflection of sunlight from Kaynar caught his eye and before he could react, Farrington jammed the steering wheel to the right, spilling everyone to the left side of the cabin.
The SUV skidded to a halt in the side ditch, throwing everyone against their seatbelts just a fraction of a second before the road ahead of them erupted into a geyser of dirt and rocks. The blast's concussion rocked the vehicle, but left the SUV undamaged. Daniel opened the passenger door and spilled out into the ditch as earthen debris rained down on them, pelting the SUV's thin metal roof and hood in an unsteady hollow rhythm. The sharp crack of supersonic bullets immediately followed, adding to the unspoken urgency of their situation. He grabbed a backpack from the vehicle and yelled into the back seat at their CIA liaison.
"Get your pack and get the fuck out of here!" he said, as the front windshield shattered, followed by the repeated hollow popping sounds of bullets puncturing the steel hull of the Toyota.
He didn't need to tell the rest of his team what to do. They had started to bail out of the vehicle before it had come to a complete stop, and he could already hear the distinctive pounding of their Russian assault rifles. Several long bursts, mixed with semi-automatic fire. His team was on auto-pilot and would require little direction at this point. He glanced toward Kaynar, but couldn't make an immediate assessment of the situation. The cloud of dust and dirt caused by the explosion on the road still obscured the view between their position and the village, which would give them a few more precious seconds of concealment. His first priority was the satellite phone.
Dustin Bremer was still in the SUV fumbling with gear when Daniel drew even with his door. He reached inside and grabbed Dusty by his collar, yanking him out of the vehicle. He made sure that the CIA agent kept a grip on the bag that contained their satellite phone.
"My rifle!" Dusty yelled, trying to reach back into the Land Cruiser.
"Fuck the rifle, Dusty. Your job is to get the Predator here…we're fucked without it!" Daniel said, pushing the young CIA agent forward.
"Suppressive fire! Shift to the other side of the road!" Daniel screamed.
Farrington lay prone near the crest of the road, firing extended bursts from his AKS-74 at the village 150 meters away. Sergei, Andrei and Leo sprinted across the road, throwing themselves to the ground on the eastern side. Although the eastern side of the road didn't fall off into a ditch like the western side, it was raised high enough to give them adequate cover from the automatic weapons fire that poured out of the town. The western side of the road was exposed to the majority of the town's structures, and Daniel could already tell that a majority of the opposing gunfire emanated from the structures and low stone walls on that side of the road. They would have been open to a systematic pulverization if they had instinctively stayed with their SUV.
He shoved Dusty across the road amidst the snap and crack of a dozen near misses before kneeling next to Farrington.
"Nice parking job!"
"I could have parked us on top of that IED!" Farrington replied, quickly changing rifle magazines.
Daniel immediately saw what Farrington meant. A smoldering crater now covered the left side of the road less than fifteen meters ahead of them, created by an explosive force ten times more powerful than a rocket propelled grenade. By swerving right and taking them below the level of the road, Farrington had shielded the entire vehicle from the fragmentation effects of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Farrington continued to impress Petrovich.
"I'm glad you didn't. We're in a bad way here!" Daniel said.
The road around Farrington and Petrovich started to explode with the impact of bullets and the distinctive crack of near misses filled Daniel's ears, barely competing with the prolonged bursts of thunderous fire from Farrington's rifle. A few seconds later, Farrington's rifle fell silent and one of the assault rifles on the other side of the road picked up the slack. Farrington started to reload again, but Daniel slapped him on the back.
"Get across, I'll cover," he said and dropped to the road next to Farrington, shouldering his own AKS-74 toward the village.
Through his Trijicon 4X ACOG, he lined up a target partially obscured by one of the buildings on the left side of the road and pulled the trigger twice, absorbing the recoil in his collarbone. He wanted to clear as many of their attackers from the eastern side of the road as possible so they could fully use the elevated road as cover. Anyone firing at them from the eastern side of the road would be able to shoot right down the exposed axis of his team. Focused on his new job, he barely noticed Farrington scoot over his legs and dive for cover among the group on the other side of the road.
He saw the figure he had just shot stumble into the open and crumple to the ground. Satisfied that the ACOG scope was sufficiently zeroed for this range, he started to systematically acquire and shoot any targets that presented him with enough surface area for a clean shot. He didn't require much of a commitment in terms of exposure at this range. At roughly 150 meters, if the enemy gave him three quarters of a human skull for more than a second, he could remove most of it.
Two quick shots, one second of silence. He repeated this three more times, silencing four more shooters on the eastern side of the road before the intense volume of fire concentrated on Daniel's location forced him to vacate his overly exposed position.
He rolled off the road and righted himself, searching around for Dusty. The CIA agent lay huddled against the shallow road bank, assembling the team's satellite phone for mobile use. Daniel turned toward his team, all of whom were frenetically engaging targets with semi-automatic fire.
"Start moving up the road. Keep one weapon up for suppression. We need to close the distance to the village. If our air support shits the bed, we won't last long out here. Fuck! Crossing! Take them down!" he screamed and stood up to shoot at several figures sprinting across the road.
Every weapon on the road and in the village started to unleash long sustained bursts of automatic fire at his team, as the enemy tried to suppress their efforts to gun down the squad sent to cross the fifty-yard stretch between the western and eastern sides of the village. Despite the incredible volume of incoming fire, Petrovich's team held steady and concentrated all of their fire on the ten men trying to cross the road. Each man in his team crouched low, reducing their exposure to enemy fire as much as possible, while keeping their rifle optics trained on the erratically moving targets over a football field away.