“Jesus,” he muttered to himself, shoving the rockets back behind the truck bed and getting to his feet. There was plenty of killing yet to be done before this mission concluded.
CHAPTER 51
Everyone in the operations center breathed a collective sigh when Gil slipped out the back of Kohistani’s house and headed toward the river.
“I think it’s safe to assume that Mr. Kohistani won’t be joining us for the duration,” General Couture remarked, almost casually. “Christ, this guy’s bold. To watch him move, you’d think he owned that goddamn village.”
“At the moment, he does,” Metcalf muttered, taking his chair. He had suffered a spinal injury years earlier during a parachute jump, and his lower back was killing him. “Forgive me for sitting, General. It’s the old bones…”
“Warrior’s bones,” Couture replied. “Put your feet up on the table if you need to.”
Metcalf shook his head. “This will do, sir. Thank you.”
They watched Gil return to the outbuilding.
“What’s he doing with the damn rockets now?” Couture wanted to know. “Jesus, this guy’s killing me! Grab the woman and go, son!”
Metcalf stared at the screen, a shadow creasing his brow. “Looks like he’s got something in mind, sir.” This was the first worrisome thing that Gil had done so far. He was wasting time now. There was nothing he could accomplish with those rockets that wouldn’t bring every Pashtun hiding in the mountains down into the village. Could that be his plan? It hardly made sense.
They watched on as he paused and seemed to reconsider his decision. In the end, he shoved the rockets back out of sight and pulled the bulky cloak back on over his multicam ACUs.
“Thought better of it,” Couture mumbled, “whatever it was… thank God.”
Gil trotted back down the river to the south, turning east at the end of the row of houses and sneaking back into the building near the stone corral. A couple of minutes later he came back out leading a saddled horse.
Metcalf rocked back in the chair, gaping at the screen.
“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me,” Couture said, turning to look at Metcalf. “Is he kidding? Is he kidding me?”
“He certainly isn’t,” Metcalf replied, scratching his head. “I guess now we know his plan for extraction.”
“Shit,” Couture said, putting his hands on his hips. “I wish he’d gone with the RPGs. At least then he’d have taken some of the bastards with him.”
Gil led the horse north up the lane toward Sandra’s quarters, crossing in front of the row of houses this time, rather than behind.
“I wish we knew what the hell he can see that we can’t.” Couture griped. “Anybody in here got a cigarette?”
No one did.
“Goddamnit.”
As Gil was passing the last house on the lane, a villager came from inside and walked out to intercept him, his hands spread out before him in a gesture of confusion.
“Must be the owner,” someone remarked.
Gil put the suppressor of the .45 right up against his forehead and started walking him backward into the house. It seemed an eternity before he finally reemerged.
“That does it!” Couture hissed. “Sergeant Becker! Go find me a pack of cigarettes. I don’t care what brand or who you have to mug to get them.”
“Yes, sir!” The Air Force sergeant jumped up and hurried from the room, obviously wanting to get back before he missed anything.
Gil was leading the horse straight across the road now toward Sandra’s quarters, bold as a shiny brass tack.
“Look at the balls on this guy.” Couture stole a glance across the room where the black Air Force lieutenant sat behind the console, piloting the UAV. “You didn’t hear that, Cynthia.”
“Hear what, sir?” she replied without looking up from her monitor.
The sergeant returned with a pack of Pall Malls.
“Throw them here, Sergeant.”
“Sir.” The sergeant pitched the smokes over the console, and the general caught them with two hands, finding a green pack of MRE matches tucked inside the cellophane.
“You’re a good man, Sergeant. I take back all of the foul and disgusting things I’ve said about you.”
“Sir!”
Moments later Couture stood puffing away, obscured in a cloud of smoke. “Christ, I’d forgotten how good these damn things are under stress. Thanks to this son of a bitch,” he said, gesturing at the screen, “I’ll probably be smoking for the rest of my life now.”
Metcalf chuckled in spite of himself. He couldn’t help it. There was too much tension in the air.
CHAPTER 52
Luckily, the owner of the horse had spoken some broken English; otherwise, Gil would have had to kill him. He’d lied to the man instead, saving his life by telling him, “CIA! Danger outside! Stay here. I bring horse back.”
The villager was angry about the horse, but he believed Gil when he said there was CIA in the village and that they would kill him if he made trouble. It hadn’t been all that hard to convince him, really. The CIA was usually pretty good at following through on their threats to kill someone, especially the operatives who were crazy enough to infiltrate a village so heavily occupied by enemy forces.
He walked the horse to the end of the lane and out into the open, approaching Sandra’s cluster of buildings. He could see the guards through the open door of their shack, still playing cards by candlelight. Ramesh appeared in the doorway and stood leaning with his forearm against the doorjamb, watching him. Gil didn’t like the way the guy’s bulk was blocking the doorway, so he stopped and pointed back in the direction he had come, waving for the man to come and see. Ramesh said something over his shoulder to the others and then stepped out to follow Gil.
Seeing the other guards were too involved in their card game to be interested, Gil turned to lead the horse back the way he had come, wanting to lure Ramesh out of view. He turned the corner and walked the horse beneath a tree, quickly tying it to a hitching rail and shrugging out of the robe. He hung the robe by the hood from a limb and hid behind the tree.
The brute came around the corner with his AK-47 in both hands. He was alert but not overly circumspect as he strolled up to the horse and said something to the robe in Pashto. In the same instant he realized he was talking to an empty coat, Gil stepped out behind him and jammed the Ka-Bar through the side of his neck, instantly severing the trachea to stifle any sound. In the same movement, he grabbed his prey by the hair with his left hand and kicked him behind the load-bearing knee to bring him down, ripping the knife out the front of the throat to sever both carotid arteries and the jugular in one swipe. Blood gushed in a fountain. Gil kicked him forward onto his face.
“You can keep the finger, motherfucker.” He shrugged back into the robe and turned around. “Now,” he muttered, flipping up the hood, “if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed… Mohammed must come to the mountain.”
He took the stallion by the bridle and led him back toward the corner, where he set out on a direct course for the guard shack. The men were now arguing over the game. It looked like one of them was pissed over having lost. But who the fuck could tell, the way they were carrying on? He covered the thirty feet to the shack without them paying him much attention until he stepped into the doorway and brought up the 1911.
They all grabbed for their weapons with a shout, but it was far too late. Gil shot each of them once, center mass, inside of two seconds. Then he shot them each in the head. Barely four seconds had passed by the time the slide on the 1911 locked back and the last empty shell casing tinked across the table. He pressed the magazine release with his thumb, and the empty mag clattered against the stone floor. He slipped a fresh one into the pistol and pressed the slide release, loading a round into the battery. Then he brought the horse into the guard shack to keep it out of sight.