Outside, Chris’s feet hit the dirt at a sprint. They’d covered the first twenty-five meters through open territory when someone shouted in Arabic, “There they are!” A truckload of men gave chase. More truckloads followed. Chris had a vague sense of shots being fired, but he didn’t know if he’d felt the heat or heard the pop. In that moment, he was more worried about getting run over by a truck than getting hit by a bullet. The engine noises became louder, the vehicles getting closer. Before the trucks could strike them, though, the trio diverted into a patch of palms. The trucks stopped, and the occupants jumped out to pursue Chris’s team on foot.
Chris ran as fast as he could, but it didn’t seem fast enough, especially when he exited the cover of the trees and hauled ass through an open field, exposed to gunfire. Now his pursuers were close behind. They had the advantage of numbers, but Chris had the advantage of being scared. He pumped his thighs harder and faster. His feet struck awkward angles in the furrowed field, and he stumbled but didn’t fall.
He weaved around one farmhouse then another, using the buildings to block incoming bullets. One truck full of Syrians sped parallel to their right flank. The noise of AK rounds reported from their location. This time, he heard the distinctive sonic snaps of slugs that were meant for him.
The trucks turned onto a dirt road that threatened to cut off their escape.
We have to make it across the road. If we can make it to the city buildings ahead, we’ll escape their line of fire.
Noise and heat in the air increased like the inside of a popcorn popper. Chris dug deep inside of himself to muster every last atom of strength as he bounded over the road ahead of Hannah and Sonny.
Gotta lose these AKs.
Hannah and Sonny followed close behind. Chris passed between two buildings then cut a diagonal route left through the first block of buildings in the city, giving his team some protection from the enemy’s sight and bullets. They bolted through an outdoor market, closed for the evening.
Then they cut a right diagonal and ran straight under an arch. In front of them, a road stretched seventy-five meters until it reached a three-story-tall sandstone minaret. Chris’s eyes swiftly followed from the base to the shaft and up to the gallery on top. Instead of a call for prayer, a flash of light and a bang emitted from inside from the gallery.
Something that felt like a hot knife sliced the side of his neck. “Shit!” he yelled.
He spun 180 degrees, retreated, and bumped into Hannah. He grabbed her and pulled her under the arch and around the corner. Damn. Given the choice between fighting one sniper or truckloads of militia, Chris chose the sniper. He gestured toward the sniper’s location and signaled for Hannah and Sonny to defend his flank while he tried to take out the threat. He crawled behind a car parked on the curb. Lying on his belly, he poked his head and rifle around the tire until the minaret gallery came into view. Pushing farther, he spotted the gallery window opening and the sniper. Only the sniper’s upper shoulders and head were exposed. The sniper was no dummy. Chris would have to attempt a head shot, and if he didn’t shoot accurately and fast enough, the sniper would nail Chris’s head in the dirt.
He hardly had time to briefly assess the situation. The surrounding buildings blocked the wind, so a breeze wouldn’t cause his round to drift. Then he calculated the approximate distance and height of the sniper’s head from the ground. He adjusted his aim. There was no time to wait for the calm pause between his lungs inhaling and exhaling, so he held his breath to keep his lungs still. He squeezed the trigger efficiently — slow enough not to jerk it and throw off his aim but fast enough to have a fighting chance. He felt helplessly suspended without control in the fraction of a second before the truth be known.
A metallic crack sounded above his head. A sniper bullet hit the car bumper. His heart skipped a beat, but he was in a zone, and it didn’t matter.
The rifle’s butt stock recoiled sweetly in his shoulder. He already knew the result before he saw it. Perfect. The sniper’s bloodstained head slowly descended below the window sill.
Remembering the sniper’s first shot, Chris touched his neck — no blood. Weird. He crawled back out of his position.
“I can’t believe you said shit,” Hannah whispered.
Chris stood up to a crouch, still mostly concealed by the vehicle, and scanned the area. A ladder led up to the ledge beside the arch. He climbed up to the ledge and poked his head around the corner, looking out over the arch. A second-floor window in a building to the right had the best strategic field of fire to cover a large area. Chris saw the safest route to reach the position. He wasn’t the only one who recognized the strategic value of the window. Someone poked his AK out of it and panned toward him. Chris took a shot before the man in the window could take his. The man slumped out of sight.
Chris slid back down the ladder. He climbed up on the roof of a car, and Hannah and Sonny followed. Chris jumped from the car, grabbed a ledge, and pulled himself up to the second floor. Now they were terribly exposed to multiple angles of fire: street avenues, windows, doorways, building corners, and surely more places he couldn’t see. He had to move quickly to exit the danger zone. When he arrived in front of the second-floor strategic window, he came face-to-face with another man wielding an AK. Shit. He didn’t even aim, jerking the trigger four times at point-blank range. The man shook like a scarecrow in a windstorm. They were still exposed outside on the ledge, and he didn’t wait for the man to fall out of his path. He jabbed him with the HK416 muzzle and knocked him to the floor.
Chris bounded inside — a bedroom. He capped a round in the skulls of the two bodies on the floor, stepped over them, and turned a corner.
He followed a staircase down, but before he reached the landing, another man appeared. Chris and the man fired at each other at the same time. One round grazed Chris’s shoulder, but Chris’s round tore into the guy’s chest, followed swiftly by a second round. The man tumbled backward down the steps, out of sight. Chris rounded the corner of the landing. The body lay on its back on the stairs, his head pointed to the bottom. Chris administered the coup de grace — he would take no chances of tangos rising from the dead.
Chris climbed the steps and hooked up with Hannah and Sonny in the bedroom. “With all the activity here,” he said, “the rest of the neighborhood seems to know the strategic value of this window. Now this spot doesn’t seem like such a great idea anymore.”
“But this is prime real estate to knock the piss out of them,” Sonny said. “Then they’ll leave us alone, so we can get out of here.”
“I agree,” Hannah said.
“Okay,” Chris said. “Hannah, take that corner on the first landing and watch the stairs to the bottom floor and the front door. If they toss a grenade up the stairs to the landing or you get in too much trouble, retreat upstairs here to Sonny’s position.”
“I want this window,” Sonny said.
“It’s a magnet for bullets,” Chris said.
Sonny raised an eyebrow. “Find your own window, bitch.”
Chris couldn’t help but smile. He shifted his attention back to the situation. If he took the exposed ledge outside to the left, he could crouch down in a dark corner between the buildings. Although it wouldn’t protect him from bullets, he should be able to spot the bad guys before they spotted him. Most of their attention would be directed away from him, toward the window, anyway. It was probably a risk worth taking. The tangos in the trucks would show up any moment.