“I can’t stay around here. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Why don’t you pop open the hood, and I’ll take a look at it,” Elmer Fudd said.
Chris watched the man carefully. What could an American be doing way out here in a country fighting a civil war? He could be faking the New York accent, but it sounded real enough. Chris hadn’t met him in the Teams. Maybe he was Delta Force. Or CIA. Maybe one of Jim Bob’s goons. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing out here, and right now, I’m not feeling too much peace on earth and goodwill to men.”
“Name’s Sonny.” He held out a hand to shake.
Chris ignored it but hesitantly responded, “Chris.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any spare clothes, would you?”
Chris shook his head, but he reached under the seat and felt around for a poncho he’d seen Jim Bob stash there when they’d first arrived. He rolled down the window the rest of the way and handed Sonny the raingear.
He put the poncho on and smiled.
Chris couldn’t help but return the smile. Something about this guy was oddly comforting. He handed Sonny a compact yet powerful, flashlight.
Sonny took it and examined it. He eyed Chris suspiciously.
It looked like they both needed a change of fortune, and maybe a little faith was the ticket. Chris rolled the dice and pressed the hood release.
Sonny hurried to the front, lifted the hood, and flashed the light around the engine.
“How’s it look?” Chris called.
“Some of the electrical connections in your fuel injection on the air intake side got knocked loose,” he answered.
“Can you fix it?” Chris asked anxiously.
“I hope so.”
Arabic voices sounded from the woods to the west, breaking the still night. “Friends of yours?” Chris asked.
“Probably an al Qaeda tracking team,” he said casually.
Chris’s pulse burned through three stages of rocket fuel. “How do you know?”
“Lucky guess.” A sedan shining its high beams stopped fifteen meters behind them. “Friends of yours?” Sonny asked this time.
“Police,” Chris said matter-of-factly.
“How do you know they’re police?” Sonny closed the hood, hurried to the passenger side, and waited.
“Lucky guess.”
Chris unlocked the door and let him in. Sonny stared at the long, grey travel duffel between them.
From behind, a PA system sounded. “Police, surrender yourself now!” At the same time, muzzles flashed, and shots rang out from the woods.
Chris turned the key again. The engine started. The fecal matter was about to hit the rotating oscillator, and Chris wouldn’t be able to drive and shoot effectively at the same time. And he wasn’t about to give this stranger a weapon. “You drive.” He climbed over his travel duffel and Sonny.
No sooner had Sonny settled into the driver’s seat than he drove around the lifeless donkey. Then he stomped the gas, and the van leaped forward. They sped north on Highway One, passing through a spattering of vertical dark lines, trees in orchards. The van stank of astringent sweat. Chris didn’t know if it was his, Sonny’s, or both.
Chris unwrapped his rifle. Al Qaeda on foot were no threat, but now the police were a clear nuisance. The fastest way to disable their vehicle would be to take out the driver, but Chris had no reason to kill a cop. He aimed through the van’s back window and squeezed off four rounds. The window blew out, and Chris’s bullets struck the police car engine. The shots wouldn’t disable it, but they’d deliver a message.
The police swerved off the road and stopped following. Message received.
“That was easy,” Sonny said with a nod.
Chris raised an eyebrow. “Where you heading?”
“As far from here as possible. You?”
“Turkey.”
“Turkey’s good,” Sonny said.
At normal speed, it would take about fifteen more minutes to reach the border, but Sonny wasn’t driving at normal speed.
Forests of trees materialized on both sides of them. Chris turned and surveyed a large, shimmering light emerging behind them.
“We’ve got company again,” he said calmly.
“Not driving in jeeps, are they?” Sonny asked.
The glaring orb neared, and it split into multiple lights, a swarm of headlights racing after the van. “How’d you know they’d be driving in jeeps?”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Sonny accelerated. The forest on the left opened up to orchards with fewer trees and a handful of residences.
Now Chris became irritated, and he didn’t hide it in his voice. “AQ tracking team?”
“AQ revenge team.” Sonny glanced at Chris’s GPS tracker. “That’s an interesting piece of equipment. Who you following?”
Chris turned it off and put it in the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. “Amelia Earhart.”
As the road veered right, Chris leaned to counteract the effect of the centrifugal force tugging on him. Weaving back and forth through both lanes, the men in the jeeps weren’t concerned about rules of the road. AK-47s fired on full auto, pecking holes in the van like the fangs of angry rattlesnakes. One round hissed past Chris’s head and struck the front windshield of the van.
Chris aimed for the driver in the closest jeep, but he wasn’t a hundred percent the shooter he used to be. Even if he was, adrenaline overrode his fine motor skills, the van veered, centrifugal force pulled him, AQ weaved, and the darkness worked against him. He missed. Then his muzzle hissed two-round and three-round bursts through his sound suppressor — still no satisfaction. The bullets’ smokeless powder smelled like chocolate, charcoal, and metal, and the hot empty shells ejected from the side of his rifle, hitting Sonny, who howled and rained f-bombs.
Chris stretched out his two- to three-round bursts to five-round bursts. Sonny’s verbal tirade increased in volume. One of the smoldering shells bounced off Sonny, hit Chris in the neck, and landed inside his shirt on the flesh of his shoulder. It burned, but he had more pressing issues to deal with. He nailed the driver in the nearest jeep. Although the road curved, the jeep didn’t. It headed for an off-road rendezvous with a tree.
“AQ is after you, not me, buddy,” Chris said. “You better start doing some explaining or start doing some walking.”
“I’m the one driving,” Sonny pointed out.
“I’m the one shooting,” Chris said coolly.
Sonny shook his head and scowled. “AQ is trying to imbed themselves in Syrian antigovernment forces, but I kind of distracted them. Now AQ wants my head on a stick. You can guess my opinion on the matter.”
Chris didn’t inquire further; instead, he refocused on the enemy. The AQ vehicles kept coming. Another jeep took the previous one’s place. Al Qaeda loomed large, Leviathan with too many heads to hack off. He and Sonny needed to break contact and escape. He shot as well as he could, and Sonny pushed the van as fast as he could, but they couldn’t escape the beast.
14
The tangos in the nearest jeep pressed forward more militant than the others. Their AKs rattled without pause, even as a small pickup truck pulled up alongside the jeep. A tango standing in back of the truck seemed to be wielding a rocket-propelled grenade.
“RPG!” Chris warned. He tried to shoot the RPG thug, but he rushed the shot and accidentally hit a tango sitting in the passenger seat.
The RPG launched with a swoosh, a white tail of smoke trailing behind it.
Sonny pinched a tight curve to the right, Chris falling against Sonny. The rocket passed their van on the left side and pounded the trees with an explosion, its shockwave knocking the van.