They’d made it only halfway across the grass to the side of the building when al-Matari heard a loud grunt behind him. He kept running but looked back over his shoulder, and saw Omar stumbling forward, his entire forehead had been blown off and away. The man’s body skidded in the grass and lay still, the Uzi sliding to a stop next to it.
Al-Matari slammed against the side of the log cabin, looked to his left and right, wondering what the fuck was going on here. He knelt down low, then looked back to Omar. From the direction he’d fallen, it was clear he’d been shot from someone firing from the front of the house, so al-Matari carefully and quietly headed around to the back.
Clark racked a fresh round from his five-round magazine into the chamber of his rifle. He then centered his scope back where the one man had fallen, looking for others. He tapped his transmit button. “Target eliminated, north side. One hostile made it to the cabin on the north. I do not have eyes on. Say again, one squirter made it to the north side of the building.”
Sudden cracks of gunfire below him to his right surprised him. He spun to the source, looked over his ledge and saw the flashes of a fully automatic rifle to the south, lower on the same hill he was on, some two hundred yards away. As the fire continued he heard Jack transmit.
“Taking fire from the west! Tearing up the downstairs windows below me. John?”
Quickly Clark centered his bolt-action rifle’s scope on the flashes, and squeezed off a .308 round at the gunfire.
The flashes stopped instantly.
Algiers had been ten feet away from the twenty-year-old Pakistani from Caltech when the man stood on the hillside and opened fire on the windows of the cabin, and then, before he’d gone through his first magazine, Algiers saw the man take a round from a high-powered rifle straight through the upper back.
He lay dead on his face in the dark now, skidding a few meters down through the grass.
Algiers spun around to scan up the hill, brought his binos to bear, but it was too dark for him to see anyone there until they fired again.
He transmitted on the walkie-talkie to the rest of the group. “Shooter at the top of the hill to the west. Four hundred meters from the cabin. Tripoli, can you see him?”
Tripoli was the only attacker still in the woods. He was on the south side, while his partner, a kid named Parvez who was from Pakistan by way of medical school in California, had made it to the cabin and was now moving around to the front. Once Parvez heard through the walkie-talkie that there was a shooter on the hill with a view to the front of the cabin, the young man dropped flat on the ground, terrified to move.
Tripoli aimed his RPG-7 at the hill, pointed it directly at the top, and waited. He took his hand off the front of the weapon and transmitted through his walkie-talkie’s headset. “Algiers, if you can find cover, I want you to fire at the hilltop to give me a target.”
In seconds the flashes of gunfire lower on the hillside started, along with the echo of an AK firing cyclic. Algiers kept shooting, but Tripoli just looked through the iron sights of his big rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, holding steady on the hilltop.
Finally there was a muzzle flash just below the crest of the hill, and Tripoli pressed the trigger on the RPG-7. As soon as he fired he threw his big weapon into the air away from him, and he ran toward the cabin with empty arms as fast as he could.
He didn’t want to be anywhere near the source of the incredible flash his RPG-7 created in case someone saw it.
Chavez had just arrived at the rear window when an RPG launched in the trees below him, lighting up the entire scene. He saw the rocket-propelled grenade’s flaming trail race up toward the hillside to his right, but he had no view of the impact. He then saw the man running from the launch with empty hands, but before Chavez could get his gun through the window to fire, the man disappeared below his position. Chavez shattered out the window and opened fire straight down, holding his sub gun out the window and dumping rounds without looking.
He heard a scream, and thought he might have hit someone there, but his weapon went dry before he could rake the area some more.
He knelt below the window to reload again.
John Clark saw the flash of the grenade launch in the distant trees, and the pinprick of swirling light coming right at him. Instantly he knew he’d been set up. The flashes lower on the hillside were just to get him to fire his weapon and reveal his position, and he’d done as the Islamic State fighters had planned.
The rocketeer’s aim was true. Even from this distance John could tell that it was going to make a direct hit on his position.
He knew the incredible impact would come, and there was nothing for him to do but cover his head, open his mouth to minimize the shock wave’s effect on his body, and take it.
Unless he threw himself off the ledge. It was the only way to get far away quickly.
John crawled forward on his knees and elbows, tumbled over his rifle on its bipod, and went off the side of the ledge. He thought about Sandy and Patsy, his wife and daughter, and he wished like hell he’d called them today to tell them he loved them.
Jack Ryan, Jr., had been completely out of the battle going on around him for the past minute. He just squatted low near the top of the stairs, eyeing the front door and the great room to his right, and listening to his two compatriots fight for their lives. He heard the explosion to the west.
Chavez came through his earpiece. “Ryan, you’ve got at least one squirter on the south side, as well as the one on the north. They are outside the cabin and I do not have eyes. I can hear shooting and explosion to the west, too. Clark, you have eyes on the shooter there?”
There was no response. “John?”
Jack said, “Ding, I’ve got a good position. Go help Clark.”
Chavez did not respond.
Before Jack could speak again, the front door to the cabin began splintering and pocking with incoming gunfire. Seconds later, a baseball-sized object flew through the window, slamming against the flat screen on the far wall. Jack retreated a few feet up the stairs, and the grenade detonated below on his right. It destroyed what was left of the great room, but he was safe from the blast.
He had just taken a step back down to increase his field of view when the door opened below and in front of him and two men reached in from opposite sides, one holding a submachine gun, the other a pistol.
Jack aimed his MPX at the gun on the right and fired, but missed, slamming his rounds into the sturdy walls of the luxury log cabin. The enemy fire all went straight into the main room, which meant they didn’t know he was on the stairs.
Shit, Jack thought. Until I just fired blindly at them. Now they know where I am.
As he considered leaving the stairs altogether and falling back to the upstairs hallway, a second grenade came sailing through the front door, right toward the top of the stairwell where Jack crouched. It was a perfect throw, giving him no time to back up the steps and get around the corner or dive down the stairs. He stood up fully, kicked at the spinning grenade, and sent it rocketing back down where it came from.
As soon as it was moving away from him he dropped flat on his back on the stairs.
The grenade bounced once on the hardwood floor and then detonated right in front of the doorway. Jack could hear a scream of agony even over the ringing in his ears.
But a second man spun in now, and fired at Jack with a pistol, holding it in his right hand while his left dangled at his side. Jack returned fire while still lying on his back near the top of the stairs, firing down between his open legs at the wounded man, taking him in the chest before he dropped to his knees, dropped his gun, then fumbled to get his hand onto a detonator swinging on a cable from his right sleeve.