“Roger.”
“Improvise, but figure that there are at least a dozen enemy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“One other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m gonna need that saw blade.”
Davis reached into his back pocket and handed it over. “Good luck.”
“Two minutes. Start your timer…”
“It’s engaged.”
“See ya in a few.”
He was running.
Looking up, Crocker saw a shooting star flash across the sky. His mother had told him they were good luck. He hoped so.
Glancing at the timer of his watch, he saw that fifty seconds had passed. At sixty, he was rounding the end of the barracks. At seventy-nine, he reached for the ladder. Ninety, he was on the metal fire escape. At a hundred and five, he knelt under the second-floor window.
Light spilled out. Looking down at the PPSh-41 and its drum magazine, he took a deep breath. Inside, the same man was still shouting questions. His voice sounded angrier this time.
At 119 seconds, Crocker took the weapon off safety, checked to be sure that a round was chambered, put it on full auto, and got ready to throw himself through the window.
He heard an explosion. Soldiers shouted in Arabic from the front of the building. A gun discharged.
He waited ten more seconds, praying that Davis was safe, then threw himself through the window back first. Hitting the floor, he somersaulted and started looking for targets. Two soldiers near the back wall were reaching for their weapons. He squeezed the trigger and ripped them with one long stream of bullets. Tore one soldier’s leg in half at the knee. Caught the other in the groin. The PPSh-41 made a loud clanging sound and felt like it was going to come apart in his hands.
The bearded guy who had been doing all the shouting threw his stick at Crocker and reached for the pistol in his holster, but before he could remove it, Crocker peppered him with bullets from his chest to his head-a modified Mozambique, in SEAL lingo.
The little man stumbled back, hit the far wall next to where Ritchie was seated, and slumped to the floor. Crocker blasted another couple of rounds into his head just to be sure.
Ritchie started squirming and tried to talk through the tape plastered across his mouth. He wanted to be cut free. Crocker turned to his right to exchange the ancient PPSh-41 for one of the more modern AKs the soldiers had been carrying. But just as he started to pivot, two more soldiers came rushing into the room. Seeing Crocker with the Soviet submachine gun pointed at them, one of them jumped behind the door. The other raised his AK.
Crocker squeezed off three bullets before the Soviet submachine gun jammed. The bullets tore into the soldier’s right arm. But instead of giving up, the young man with a thick black beard tried to shift the AK-47 to his left. It was a valiant effort that ended when Crocker, wielding the submachine gun like a club, took his right knee out, then finished him off with a blow to the head.
Crocker heard more automatic-weapons fire down the hallway and below.
He grabbed one of the AKs and pulled the tape off Ritchie’s mouth.
“Motherfucker!” Ritchie shouted. “You took off half my lip.”
“You don’t need it anyway. Hold still.”
He removed the rusted saw blade from his pocket and used it to cut through the tape around Ritchie’s ankles and wrists. Then he handed him the blade.
“Cut the others free. I’ll watch the door.”
“Ten-four.”
The room was a mess of blood and smoke. A bleeding, bruised, naked Jabril lay in the fetal position in a corner. His eyes were closed, but Crocker noticed the skin near his sternum was rising and falling. John Lasher sat slumped in a chair, long red slash marks over his chest and face. He too looked unconscious. Crocker would attend to them later. He had to deal with the enemy first.
It sounded like all-out war downstairs. Made him feel proud of Davis.
When he stuck his head out to look, bullets tore into the concrete wall, spitting dust into his mouth and eyes.
He dropped to the floor and fired back. The AK felt smooth and light in his hands, producing half the noise and recoil of the PPSh-41. But the hallway was dark, and he couldn’t see anything except a dark object coming toward him that landed with a thud on the floor and rolled.
“Grenade!” he shouted, jumping inside and hiding behind the wall.
The concussion was so strong he thought his head was going to burst open. So powerful, in fact, that it picked up the four fallen soldiers and threw them against the wall facing the window he’d jumped through only minutes earlier. The room was foul with entrails and smoke.
Ritchie and Mancini staggered to their feet, armed themselves, and were ready to exact revenge.
“Where’s Akil?” Crocker asked.
“He wasn’t with us,” Mancini answered, wiping gore off his face with the back of his hand.
“What happened to him?”
Ritchie: “Don’t know.”
“You two okay?”
“More or less.”
Ritchie: “Fucking savages hadn’t gone to work on us yet.”
“Lucky.”
“Sodomized the doctor with the stick.”
“Jesus!”
“What now?” Mancini asked.
Crocker said, “Manny, you and Ritchie stay here. Defend the room. Kill as many of those fuckers as you can.”
“Where you going?”
“I’m going to circle around front and hit the bastards from behind.”
“Nice.”
Crocker started toward the window and stopped to retrieve an automatic pistol from the dead leader’s blood-and-guts-covered holster.
He was about to grab the frame of the window when he heard someone shout. He looked back to see Mancini using a hand to break his fall.
“You okay?”
Mancini had a vague, confused look on his face. “The explosion fucked my head up a little.”
Crocker turned back to check him. Since Mancini wasn’t bleeding from his nose or ears, he figured it was a mild case of shock. He said forcefully, “We’re depending on you, Manny. We need you to focus.”
“I will.”
Another, much milder explosion shook the building as Crocker climbed out the window. The concussion made him stumble.
Fuck!
He ran to the ladder and slid down. The back side of the building appeared deserted. All the action seemed to be going on out front. He heard something stir in the field to his right and readied the AK.
Something moved near a shattered wooden crate. Another hyena? A soldier?
He made out the form of a tall man holding a piece of wood or metal. The outline reminded him of someone.
“Akil?” he whispered.
“Boss?”
Akil dropped whatever he was brandishing and approached, holding his right wrist. He whispered, “I managed to get away, but I fucked up my hand again.”
Crocker handed him the pistol. “Here. Hold this with your left. Follow me.”
He proceeded quickly to the end of the barracks and peered around the corner. Saw orange flames as high as the roof of the barracks coming from two of the Toyota trucks. They lit up the whole front of the camp.
“What’s going on?” Akil whispered.
Crocker held a finger to his mouth. Soldiers were trying to save the other two trucks. He took aim with the AK and fired. As he did, someone started shooting at them from behind the barracks.
Akil pushed him. “Boss, get down!”
Bullets slammed into the ground around them and whizzed overhead.
Crocker said: “Use the pistol and try to take out the driver. I’ll deal with the bastards behind us.”
But the building cast a dark shadow, making it hard to see. He squinted into the ribbon of black. Saw someone move, followed by a shoulder-fired rocket discharge. He shouted, “Hit the ground!” as he dove belly-first to the cement.
The rocket screamed overhead and exploded against the side of a disabled tank. Hot metal spun through the air, smacking the side of the building and ricocheting.