Neil paused long enough to holler, “They’ll take that out of my pay!” He went back to firing, swapping magazines as his gun went empty.
“You’ve got more enemy coming,” Eric said, voice strained.
“We can’t hold them,” Deion shouted, as a group of AQ fighters rounded the corner and took cover behind the trucks in the intersection, their AK’s joining the din.
They were still taking fire from the house across the street. He heard a scream as Nancy killed a man. The flashes of light from the fighter’s guns lit the rooms like strobe-lights. He saw a squat man struggle to the broken windows with an RPG launcher.
“RPG, across the street. Another RPG,” he screamed.
He heard Eric’s voice, calm and determined. “Take cover. Hellfire is inbound.”
He pressed against the rooftop as a whisper of sound, like a bottle rocket, grew louder and then the explosion thumped through his chest, his bones shaking in sympathetic vibration. His hands covered his ears, but the sound was still deafening.
He peaked over the rooftop and saw the cloud of fire and smoke rising in a mushroom cloud, the fire from the burning Helix illuminating it from below. He turned his head, waiting for the rock and gravel, but the missile had been so fierce it blew the debris far past their rooftop and was raining down on the houses behind them.
The house across the street was gone. The Hellfire blew the building apart and collapsed what was left. The AQ fighters stopped firing and looked at the rubble, awestruck. Deion took the opportunity to calmly shoot the biggest man right through the chest. The man dropped, breaking the spell, and the AQ fighters screamed and started shooting again. He saw another man fall and knew that Nancy hadn’t run out of ammo.
“Neil, how you doing?” he hollered.
“Still alive,” Neil shouted, “but I’m down to my last magazine.”
“Me too,” he said. “Eric, got any other miracles?”
“No more Hellfires,” Eric said, “but I do have some good news. Little Birds are almost there.”
The fighters behind the truck stepped out and started to advance.
“We don’t have a minute,” Nancy yelled.
The men came in a deadly wave. The street was a kill-zone, barely passable from debris, and the flashes from their weapons sparked in the night.
Deion shot another fighter. The bullet struck the man in the side of the face, but as he fell, another took his place.
Deion’s M4 ran dry. He pitched it and pulled his M11 pistol. He saw Neil do likewise.
“Sorry, Eric. We just can’t hold them.”
Below, he heard Nancy’s pistol firing again and again.
In the midst of all the gunfire he heard the whine of turbines, and in the distance he saw black helicopter silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
As the AQ fighters approached, the pair of MH-6 helicopters unleashed their missiles. The remains of the two trucks in the intersection erupted in flames. The AQ fighters turned to run, but there was no shelter. The pilots unleashed their M134 miniguns and the street became a deathtrap, the high pitched whine of the miniguns piercing the night sky in a continuous scream, the men in the street desperately trying to run away.
They found no refuge. The chain guns tore into them and left a pile of useless meat in their wake.
Four Delta Operators were positioned in the doors of each helicopter, two per side, their feet resting on metal platforms. When the chain guns stopped, the men spooled ropes from the helicopters and dropped to the street. The eight heavily armed Operators took up positions as the MH-6’s returned to base. Within seconds of their departure, a Blackhawk swooped over the intersection long enough for eight Rangers to rappel to the ground.
His radio squawked. “Things get a little hairy?”
He smiled at the familiar voice. “You just saved our ass, Redman.”
The lead Operator approached the building, entering carefully, two others following. “Fuck, what a mess,” Redman said. “Steeljaw, your people are secure. You owe me one, brother.”
“Add it to my tab, brother,” Eric said. “Thanks for the assist.”
Deion and Neil shoved aside the debris on the stairs and exchanged positions with the pair of Delta snipers that relieved them. They joined Nancy, who was checking on Valerie.
“She’s alive,” Nancy said. She tossed aside the bricks covering Valerie’s leg. An Operator with a shaggy red beard lifted Valerie up and carried her outside.
Deion watched, numb, then looked around. The house was utterly destroyed, the front room exposed to the street, the walls pocked with bullet holes. The wall that separated the front room from the kitchen was nearly destroyed and Deion gave silent thanks that the house hadn’t collapsed.
Jaabir lay dead in the corner. Shrapnel had taken his right arm off at the shoulder and his ribs and chest were split wide, blood and organs spilled on the dirty floor. Deion knelt and took a moment to pray for the kid in whatever afterlife he would find.
“He stayed with the fight,” Neil said behind him.
“Yeah,” Deion said. He looked for a rug or blanket to cover Jaabir’s body but the room was empty.
“We need to check on Koshen,” Nancy said.
The trap door in the floor was covered in rubble, but Redman helped him clear the biggest pieces until they could open the door. Redman handed him a flashlight and followed him down into the cellar.
The room was quiet. Koshen dangled from the back of the wooden chair Deion had sat in only a short time before. His pato was wrapped around his neck, his sightless eyes starring off, the charred leather journal resting in his lap. The other chair lay in splinters.
Nancy joined them. “Valerie’s going to be okay.” She saw Koshen’s body and her face fell. “Shit.”
“He tipped himself over, broke the chair, then hanged himself,” Deion said. “That’s a hell of a lot of determination.” He turned to Nancy. “I want to talk to you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t bother.”
He gaped at her. “Don’t bother?”
“I know,” she growled, starting back up the stairs.
“We’ve lost our only asset that knew anything about Abdullah. What next?”
She shrugged. “We go home.”
“This isn’t the end of this conversation,” he said. “We’re going to talk about this.”
“No, we’re not,” Nancy replied, as she left the basement.
Karen was getting lunch in the cafeteria when she saw Eric sitting alone, head down. She had watched as Eric’s team struck out in Denver and then as he worked to save Deion and Nancy in Afghanistan. She approached and cleared her throat. “Is this seat taken?”
He glanced up. “Help yourself,” he said, shoving the chair out with his foot.
She took the offered seat. “How’s the CO doing?”
“Just fine,” he said. “How’s the hunt?”
She paused, her fork loaded with broccoli. “Nothing so far. There’s so much data to process, it’s—”
“Like finding a needle in a haystack?”
She laughed. “That’s a dumb cliché. Every piece of data we gather is available and searchable, but there’s just so much of it….”
He leaned forward. “How do you do it, exactly? I mean, I know the basics, but how did you learn to analyze it?”
She noticed his eyes, a mottled bronze, and felt a warmth in her cheeks. She loved her husband. Brad was a good man and a good soldier, but Eric was intriguing as hell. God, he’s handsome. “I took the ASVAB in high school and scored a perfect 100. I didn’t think much of it until the recruiter called. It was right after 9/11. I joined up, went to basic, then I was asked to take a new test. It was weird — random paragraphs and contextual analysis. I thought I’d bombed. Then I got sent to Ft. Meade and wound up working with some NSA crypto geeks. That’s how I was recruited into the Office.”