Strike Force Delta (35 page)

Following the glow of the flares, he turned another left, ran down an alley full of burning debris and on to the next street over.

At that moment, the
Psyclops
plane went over again, more flares shooting out of its fuselage. It was flying very low and wagging its wings as it went over.

Ryder followed the glow again, running down two more alleys, then emerging on a much wider street. He looked to his right. Nothing but old wooden buildings. He looked to his left and saw exactly what he was looking for: a line of warehouses, made not of wood but of
aluminum and tin. They were painted bright white with a red racing stripe going right down the middle of each one. The whole street was filled with them.

Amazing . . . a few seconds ago he'd been lost. Now, suddenly, he was right where he was supposed to be.

But which building was it?

Two artillery shells came down dangerously close to him, reminding him that he really didn't have time for deep thought here. He ran over to the door of the first building and yanked it open.

It was dark inside, with extremely pungent odors drifting around. There was no electricity anywhere in the city, so there would be no lights to turn on in here. But his eye was directed to a small red bulb burning about six feet down from the open door. This might be a switch for emergency battery-powered lighting.

Ryder felt his way along the wall, finally reaching the tiny red light and pushing the switch below it. Sure enough, some very dull emergency bulbs clicked on. Ryder found himself looking at a warehouse full of one-thousand-pound aerial bombs.

But these weren't ordinary half-tons. Printed very clearly on their nose cones, among a lot of Arabic writing, was the skull and crossbones symbol again. But that wasn't all. Along with it was the national insignia of not Afghanistan or Iran but the armed forces of Iraq. The old armed forces, back in the Saddam days.

Son of a bitch
. . ., Ryder thought, the ramifications not yet sinking in.
Good thing I didn't bomb this place. . .
.

He got out of the warehouse as quickly as he could and started running again.

He reached the next door seconds later, this as another
pair of artillery shells came down nearby. Just his luck that Tarik's cousin was giving them some bonus bombardment.

This second door was unlocked as well. Ryder went in, gun first again, to find another darkened interior. He found the emergency lights again and snapped them on. And again he was confronted with a room full of bombs bearing the insignia of the “old” Iraq military. But these explosives weren't carrying the universal toxin symbol.

Instead they bore the very distinctive black triangle with the bright yellow cut-out circular icon inside.

The universal sign for radioactive materials.

And that's when it hit Ryder.

The missing WMD. . .

The reason for the war in Iraq.

Here it was.

But he didn't have time to think about this now. As globally significant as it was, Ryder had something even more important on his mind.

He still had to find her. . .
.

He exited the building quickly and went toward the third door. But before he could reach it, the door opened on its own and two armed men walked out. They might have been guarding the entrance; he wasn't sure. Strangely, they were not dressed like typical mooks. They were wearing uniforms, helmets, boots. They both looked up into the sky nonchalantly, checking to see if the artillery was still coming down, as casually as someone checking on the rain.

Whoever they were, they were so surprised to see Ryder tearing down the street that he was able to kill both of them easily with a burst from his borrowed M16.

A third uniformed soldier stumbled from the doorway. Ryder nailed him with a bullet to his head. A fourth soldier stumbled over his comrade's body, losing his weapon while falling right at Ryder's feet.

He looked up at Ryder and screamed, “
Fatah!
” Mercy!. . .Ryder put a bullet through his throat.

A fifth soldier stood paralyzed at the open door to the warehouse. He shouted something in Arabic, cut short as Ryder's bayonet ran him through. This man's uniform he checked. It was standard issue, Iranian Revolutionary Army.

Again Ryder didn't have the luxury to contemplate the geopolitical significance of this. He burst into the warehouse itself.

Like the first two, it was dark inside here—except for one spot, in the corner the farthest away from him. Down there he could see bright lights, like movie lights, burning as if on fire. He could also see a man, holding a large video camera; he was inserting a tape cassette. Ryder could see wires and cables and large car-type batteries. There were other people around, too, technician types. But for whatever reason, they seemed so intent on their work, they hadn't heard the battle taking place just outside the door.

No doubt about it—he'd stumbled upon a barebones TV studio.

Ryder kept his cool and crept into the murk. The closer he got to the klieg lights, the more people he saw in the illuminated corner. At least a dozen or so, maybe more. Five were dressed in black robes and rags. They were standing in the light, in front of a black curtain that had been hung on the far wall. There was Arabic scribbling
all over this backdrop. One of the men was holding a huge machete-style knife.

And on the floor in front of him, blindfolded and once again awaiting the fatal blow, was Li. The way the light was hitting her, she almost seemed aglow.

Now it really was like Ryder was in a dream, because the next thing he knew, he thought he was flying two feet off the floor. He began firing his weapon, single shots all, each round looking like it was laser guided, each bullet finding its mark among the people gathered near the camera. It was like being inside his own video game, flying toward the small army of mooks, killing each one with just one bullet apiece. At the same time, bullets were coming his way; some might have even been hitting him. But still, he kept advancing.

By this time, he'd attracted everybody's attention, but it was too late for anyone to do anything about it. He could hear people shouting in Arabic, words he somehow knew meant “Hurry up!” and “Proceed!” They were more intent on getting their camera rolling than they were on dealing with him.

So this is what it has come to
, he thought darkly. A simple and deadly truth. The mooks might have been expecting an entire army to come through their door, not just him and his weapon. Yet they were still determined to kill Li anyway—on videotape, in hopes that somehow, someway, the gruesome footage would find its way to Al-Qazzaza.

More bullets went by him now, but Ryder didn't care. He was in among the camera crew in an instant. He shot four of the five men standing over Li; they were all armed, but in posing for the camera they'd had no time
to take their weapons over their shoulders and fire back at him.

Then Ryder turned and put two bullets into the camera itself. It exploded in a thousand pieces. One more bullet for each of the huge klieg lamps. He destroyed two but only wounded the third. It stayed on and started swinging wildly, causing weird shadows to dance around the room. This made things even more eerie.

Only a handful of men now stood between Ryder and Li; she was now on the floor, hands over her head.

Ryder shot the man closest to her, catching him once in the chest. He fell over, dead before he hit the floor. Then Ryder dispatched the man behind the camera, this bullet going to the stomach. He went over with a scream.

Two more fighters appeared out of the dark. Ryder put two bullets into the first man's groin. The second man fired at the crazed pilot—and missed. Ryder turned his M16 toward the man and pulled the trigger.

But nothing happened.

Ryder was out of ammunition.

He fell forward in an instant, his bayonet catching the man in his ribs. The man fell over but grabbed onto the razorlike weapon, slicing off three of his fingers. The scream that came out of him was bloodcurdling. Ryder finally yanked the blade from his rib cage and quickly stabbed him again, this time the bayonet going right into the man's open, screaming mouth. There was another sickening crackling noise, and the man finally died. But in killing him Ryder discovered he'd snapped his bayonet in two, leaving half of it in the man's skull and rendering the other half useless.

That's when Ryder saw one more shadow rise up
from the floor. The last man, with the machete in his hand. He'd pulled the mask over his head and now Ryder was face-to-face with him. He looked like something from a horror movie. His hands and body were, for some reason, covered with blood. But it was his face. Gnarled and bloody, too. And he was wearing a patch.

He raised the hatchet—Ryder had no defense. No gun, no knife. Nothing. Everything froze—now he awaited the blow, supremely pissed that he'd made it this close to rescuing Li, only to be dispatched by this monster.

Ryder looked up at his executioner. The man was literally foaming at the mouth. He started to swing down with the gleaming hatchet. . . .

When suddenly he stopped. Just for a moment. His eyes looked to the right—it was almost as if someone was calling his name. At the exact same moment, the unmistakable rumbling of the
Psyclops
plane going over filled the empty warehouse. In all this took maybe two seconds, but it was all the time Ryder needed.

He hit the Patch with a rolling block. They both fell over; suddenly Ryder was on top of the terrorist. And suddenly the hatchet was in
Ryder's
hand.

He put it right to the terrorist's throat.

“Ryder Long,” he spit at the man. “Colonel. United States of America. This is for all the people you killed on September 11th.”

The Patch went white. He tried to say the Arabic word for “mercy”—but it never came out. Ryder pushed the hatchet into the Patch's throat, severing his jugular, his windpipe, and his vocal cords all at once.

The look of horror froze on his face. His one good
eye went to his right—almost as if he was looking at Li. Than he mouthed his final words:
All for that American bitch. . .
.

Then he died.

Ryder somehow got to his feet. He staggered over to Li, pushing debris and bodies out of the way. She heard the footsteps but did not look up. He stood over her, not really believing this was happening. He reached down and lifted her blindfold, then rubbed his fingers lightly across her cheek. Only then did she look up and open her eyes.

It was clear to him that she thought she was dead—and was experiencing something in the Afterlife. Because when their eyes met, she almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Ryder knew he had to say something to convince her this was all real. So he smiled and then whispered: “Time to go home.”

That's when she leaped to her feet, threw her arms around him with such enthusiasm they both toppled to the floor. He felt his whole body turn to pins and needles. He went numb. She squeezed him so tight he thought his ribs would crack. She pulled him down to her and kissed him once, twice, three times, all over his face—finally on the lips, and that's when they both just fell into each other's arms. Laughing and crying at the same time.

“I can't believe it,” she kept saying over and over. “I can't believe you came for me.”

She never stopped hugging him. They kissed deeply—their first. Outside, the artillery shells were still exploding. The ground beneath them was shaking—or at least that's what Ryder thought it was. He couldn't
quite believe it himself—that this quest, first for revenge and then as a rescue of this precious girl—he couldn't believe he'd actually done it.

He would learn later that two of the Superhawk copters were outside firing on groups of mooks who were trying to get to the warehouse. The building itself started to collapse all around them, but no matter. Ryder and Li remained there for the longest time, just holding on to each other.

That's when one strange thought went through Ryder's head. He'd done the impossible. Li was alive. He'd saved her. And now he knew that she was into him, in a very big way.

And as he added all this up in his head, just two words came to mind: “Now what?”

Ozzi was having trouble walking now. He'd lost a lot of blood. He was disoriented. He was cold yet sweating profusely. Still stunned over seeing his Zabul allies blown away, he felt his own life start to drip out of him.

He'd stumbled into yet another alley somewhere in the middle of the city. The blood was pouring out of his leg and he had nothing with which to tie off the wound. He was too weak to rip some material off his own uniform, too weak to look for tourniquet material among the ruins all around him. If he didn't do something about the wound soon, though, he knew he would die here, in this dirty little city.

He fell facedown in the alley, and for the first time in his life he didn't want to get up. What was the point? He
could stumble just a few more steps, for what? Only to fall again?

So he stayed down and closed his eyes and saw bits and pieces of his life flash before him. It was just like they said: a movie reel, from his first day in school to his first bicycle, his first girlfriend, his first cool car. High school, college, Annapolis. His tiny office in the Pentagon. An OK life. An ordinary life. No wife. No kids. Nothing to leave anybody, except some misery for his parents once they found out he was KIA.

There the movie reel stopped. . .

But only for a moment. When it started again, he began seeing flashes of his life since joining the Ghosts. The mooks he'd taken out. The lives he'd saved. The way that he'd made his country just a little bit safer, a little bit better. It was corny, but it was also true. He might have been an ordinary guy, but the Ghosts were certainly not an ordinary bunch. It was a very exclusive club. And suddenly it seemed very important that he stay a member of it.