“How did you get in here?” the fifth man said as the others stopped what they were doing.
“Is Mr. Budak here?” Mike asked, ignoring the question.
“There is no one called Budak here,” the man said, reaching down. “How did you get in here?”
“The door was open,” Mike said, stepping forward to place himself by one of the tables. “I’m looking for Dzore Budak. He said he would be here.”
“Well, he’s not,” the man said, his hands out of sight behind the table. “You need to go.”
“What are you doing?” Mike answered, looking puzzled. “This is the warehouse of Dzore Budak, isn’t it?”
“Get out,” the man said, lifting up an AK as the others began diving behind tables and the large forge.
Rifles are hard to lift quickly but pistols are very quick indeed, and before the AK could come up all the way the silenced pistol had targeted the man’s chest. Mike put a round into either side of the chest and dropped behind the table, turning it over with a massive heave as the others pulled out rifles from their hiding places.
Asfaw Rabah watched in shock as Nadhim was cut down by the American, then reached under the worktable and pulled out his AK. He could not believe that Nadhim had been killed so easily. Nadhim was a legend in the Jihad and his stories of fighting the Dar Al Harb throughout the world had passed the slow times on this mission. It made Asfaw incredibly angry that so great a man had died in such an ignominous way.
Asfaw was from Saudi Arabia, the only son in a family of five. His parents were not particularly devout, to his way of thinking, and did not support his choice to join the jihad. But when he was fifteen he had gone with some friends to hear the words of the Mullah Yahya Mahad, one of the many Wahabbist preachers who made their living bringing the Word of God to the Dar Al Islam along the road to Mecca. At the time the forces of the Great Shaitan were still infesting the Holy Lands, their main base within a few hundred miles of the Holy City. Until that time, Asfaw had never thought what a sin against Allah it was to have the Crusader forces so close to the Holy City. The mullah, though, had thought long and hard upon it and he pointed out how very angry Allah must be.
From that day forward, Asfaw had pledged himself to rid the Holy Lands of the Crusader forces, wherever that might be. He had been picked up by the Saudi police in a demonstration against the Crusaders and, while his family had managed to get him out of prison, he had been forced to leave his home country. He had added to his pledge the vow to eventually throw down the corrupt House of Saud who had allowed the Crusaders into the Holy Lands and had joined the Jihadi Al Islam with that purpose in mind. With the fall of the kaliphate in Afghanistan he had been forced to go to Syria, and it was there he met Nadhim and been recruited for this mission.
Asfaw held the AK by his hip, as Nadhim himself had taught him, pointing it at the table the cowardly infidel had ducked behind and blasting the top as the weapon bucked in his hands. The weapon, stupidly, ran out of rounds and he reached under the table again for his spare magazine. He had his head down and never saw the American peek around the table…
Mike heard the rounds hit the top of the heavy working table and one punch through as he rolled to the left side of the table and peeked out. One of the terrorists was standing in the middle of the room, reloading after a “spray and pray” so Mike targeted two rounds right through his breast bone, spaced no more than a quarter’s width apart.
Asfaw felt the rounds in his chest like two punches and a sharp pain in his back. His legs gave out from under him as the spinal cord was severed, and he dropped the AK and the spare magazine as he fell, his face striking the ground, hard. His nose was broken, he was sure, and, as his vision faded, he thought that his mother would be very angry at him for breaking his nose…
One of the terrorists was running to the right, heading for the crane for a better vantage point. Mike shot at him but missed as the target dove behind the crane. He reloaded, considering the situation, then popped straight up.
This received fire from behind one of the tables, also turned over, from the forge and then from the crane. He burst out of cover to the left, rounds cracking around him as the terrorists fired off most of their clips, and slid to a stop on his stomach behind the last table in the room. As he did the Geiger counter started screaming: the metal shavings on the floor were hot as blazes. At that realization, he popped up to his feet, quick. He duck-walked forward, trying to keep his balls away from the shavings. The Geiger was still screaming from the dust and shit on his clothes, so he yanked the earbud out and ignored it, then leaned out, looking for targets.
Zuhair Adil put his last magazine in the weapon and considered what to do. Adhim and Asfaw were probably dead. He had seen Adhim shot and had heard the chuffs from the American’s silenced weapon and the sound of Asfaw’s weapon clattering to the ground. It was a great thing to die in the Service of Allah, but it was a greater thing to kill the infidel at the same time. Killing, in this case, meant staying alive long enough to do so.
Zuhair was seventeen, a Bosnian Muslim who had been too young to join the jihad against the Serbs. But after the war was over the Wahabbists had come in to rebuild the mosques of Bosnia that the Serbs had defiled, bringing with them their extremist brand of Islam. Zuhair was an orphan of the war; his father had been a shopkeeper killed by the Serbs and his mother had disappeared when they were refugees. He had been taken into a madrassa funded by the International Council for Muslim Charities, a Wahabbist charity funded primarily by Saudi oil money, and it was there that he had been taught the truth of Islam, that Mohammed had declared that the whole world must be in submission to the will of Allah and that the way of jihad against the Dar Al Harb was the highest calling of the Muslim.
He had been recruited by one of the mullahs of the madrassa to assist in this mission, which was simple enough: clean up the warehouse and make sure no one got into it until the clean-up was complete. He was told that there might be trouble, but he had thought they would have some warning. And he very much would prefer not to die. He realized that as he considered what to do. Dying for Allah was all well and good to shout at the madrassa. But facing it, in real life, was a different thing. He would gladly kill a Serb if he had a chance. They had killed his mother and father, after all. But this was no place to die and no way to do it. All he wanted was out. But to do that meant either surrendering, which would look very bad, or making it to the door. To do that, he had to know where the American was. So he leaned around the forge, searching for him. As he did, he saw the American, around the side of a table, doing the same thing, and he lifted his rifle in terror, pointing it at him and yanking the trigger…
The tango by the forge was leaning out, also, and fired at him as he came around the side. But all the rounds went high, so Mike put a round through his exposed forehead, spreading the terrorist’s limited brains all over the back wall. He slid back, then lifted himself straight up over the barrier. None of the terrorists were in sight, so he reloaded, thinking…