A Cold Day In Mosul (25 page)

Gray Beard pointed his A4 at Maaz. "Get back inside!"

Maaz raised his hands defensively. "We're going to be late for our wedding. We can't—"

The fighter slammed Maaz against the side of the Rio and held him there, blocking Ethan's window.

Keeping the pistol hidden beneath the door frame, Ethan aimed at the militant. At this distance, the bullet would pass right through the metal door and retain enough kinetic energy to penetrate Gray Beard's body. The bullet would probably pierce any Kevlar the man might be wearing, too. Still, Ethan wasn't about to risk a potentially deadly ricochet. If he needed to fire, he would raise the Glock to the window.

The Khansa'a woman approached, AK dangling threateningly from one shoulder. Her ghostly figure moved toward the front of the vehicle and then crossed over to the passenger side: toward Sam's door.

"We don't have time for this," Sam said underbreath.

She got out of the car.

The militant on that side raised his voice menacingly. "Get back—"

Sam lifted the two Glocks she had hidden in the folds of her abaya and pointed them in opposite directions. She shot the mujahid and the Khansa'a woman in the head at the same time.

Ethan raised his Glock to window height and squeezed the trigger twice, puncturing the chest of Gray Beard, who still had Maaz pinned to the Rio.

Sam was already firing her next shots.

Ethan shoved the door open, pushing against Maaz and the deadweight of the militant. Behind him, he heard the opposite door open, and knew that Doug was springing into action as well.

Time seemed to slow as the closest two militants in the lane across from him brought their assault rifles to bear. Ethan fired a headshot at the first, diving toward the ground as the other man unleashed his A4.

Ethan adjusted his sighting during the fall, knowing he had to get off the shot before he hit the ground—the impact would throw his aim way off. He fired, slamming into the dirt a split second later.

Both militants dropped.

A shot rang out behind him, and from the periphery of his veiled vision he saw another militant topple to the left. The gnarled-nosed one.

Good job, William.

Across from him, the other two fighters handling the inbound lane dove for cover behind a civilian pickup.

Sliding off his veil with one hand, Ethan turned toward the technical; the militant in the bed was swiveling the big ZU toward him. Another pistol report sounded loudly behind Ethan, courtesy of William, and said militant toppled.

Gray Beard stirred on the ground beside him: the mujahid had survived the chest wounds. Ethan released a quick headshot on the man, stilling him.

He returned his attention to the inbound lane, and the civilian pickup the remaining two militants were using for cover. He squeezed off two shots toward the rear of the vehicle, doubting his bullets would penetrate through to the other side. But that wasn't his intention.

Sure enough, the terrified driver slammed on the gas, causing the tires to squeal; the Iraqi had no desire to serve as a human shield.

As the pickup sped away, Ethan eliminated the first exposed militant; another shot rang off almost simultaneously beside him, striking the second target. Both tangos slumped.

Ethan glanced at William beside him.

"Good shooting, Tex," Ethan told him.

"Ain't my first rodeo," William muttered.

Ethan glanced at Maaz, who cowered against the side of the Rio. "You okay?"

Maaz nodded quickly. For a second Ethan thought the youth was going to suck his thumb.

Keeping crouched, William and Ethan moved toward the rear of the Rio. William carefully peered past.

"Clear," the operative said, standing.

Ethan cautiously stood. He spotted Sam and Doug on the opposite side of the vehicle: their niqabs were raised, and they were holstering their Glocks. The pair had taken care of the three remaining tangos on that side, including the muj near the Humvee.

"Everyone all right?" Sam said.

"Peachy," William answered.

Ethan took a moment to survey the blockade. Ten dead militants. One lifeless Khansa'a. Blood pooled like oil on the asphalt underneath the crumpled bodies. The queued civilian vehicles had fled on either side, save for one pickup truck in the inbound lane whose driver was cowering behind the dashboard.

"Let's go before any Islamic State cavalry arrive," Sam said. She spun toward the civilian and shouted: "Get out of here! Go!"

The driver slammed on the accelerator, driving through the unmanned checkpoint and onto the highway.

"Grab yourselves some A4s and let's go," Sam said, scooping up an assault rifle from one of the fallen. 

Ethan and the others moved among the dead, gathering A4s and the associated magazines, as well as grenades. He started back toward the Rio, but something caught his eye in the technical's truck bed.

"Well I'll be damned," Ethan said. He sprinted to the truck.

"Ethan!" Sam shouted.

"Just a sec," he called over his shoulder.

The dead man in the cab had an M24A2 slung over one shoulder. Ethan reverently pried the sniper rifle out from under the body. "Now that's what I'm talking about."

H-S Precision PST-25 fiberglass and carbon fiber reinforced polymer foam stock. 416R stainless steel barrel with 5-R rifling. Leupold Mark 4 10x fixed mag scope. Top and side Picatinny rails. Fold-down Harris bipod. Maximum effective range, eight hundred to a thousand meters. The weapon was missing a Quick Cuff for unsupported firing, but that was fine.

He named the rifle "Beast II."

The Rio pulled up behind him.

"Ethan!" Sam said.

"Coming." He filched a ten-round magazine from a pouch in the man's harness and then hurried to the Rio. The rear hatch popped open and he stowed his new toys inside.

Ethan loaded into the rear passenger seat. His eyes drifted to the abandoned Humvee, and he almost suggested that the group steal it and pretend to be militants instead. Sam would have to play a man, of course, but without Islamic State-issued papers showing who their commander and barracks were, that option wasn't any better than the civilian route. They could purloin said papers from the dead militants around them, but there was the small problem of the photos. Ethan supposed they could wear down the pictures with a spare key or coin while they drove, but it would draw suspicion if all four IDs were abraded. Plus they'd have a hard time explaining what they were doing on the road when their commander and barracks were based in Mosul.

In the driver's seat Maaz remained motionless. He appeared shaken, and seemed to be staring off into space.

"Let's go!" Sam said. Her eyes were locked on the side mirror as if she expected an attack to come any second.

Maaz snapped to attention and slammed down on the accelerator.

"Should we call in an airstrike?" Doug asked.

"If I spot any pursuers, yes," Sam replied.

"Maybe we should've switched vehicles with that civilian," Doug said. "In case our muj friend back there reported the car we were driving. Ethan said he was on the radio, after all."

That was a valid concern, given that the Islamic State had a network of "spotters" dispersed at five mile intervals throughout the countryside, some located on farms, others villages, men who carried Hytera radios to retransmit nonsensitive information across the territory in the absence of working radio or cellphone towers. The use of such unencrypted transmissions was mostly restricted to the lower echelons of the Caliphate, as the senior leadership was far too afraid of the eavesdropping West to utilize the network very often. It would take something like the death of Afri before the Shura council resorted to such practices. Hence the popularity of couriers.

"It wouldn't have mattered if we'd switched vehicles," Sam countered. She already had her laptop open in front of her. "Because the driver would have reported the theft to the Islamic State anyway. We'd be in the same boat."

"Unless we killed the driver," Doug said.

Sam looked over her shoulder and smiled sweetly. "Always so eager to shed the blood of innocents to complete the mission, are you?"

"Don't take the moral high ground on me. You've killed plenty of innocents in your day. Even during this very op. Look at what happened to the scholar."

"Yes." She lowered her gaze, obviously chagrined. "But listen, I already have a better plan for switching vehicles. Let me spell it out for you. We overtake a vehicle along the highway. We flag it down, take it at gun point. We bind the driver with duct tape and leave him a mile from the road. By the time the Iraqi crawls back to the highway, we're long gone. Probably out of the country. We get away scot-free, and don't kill anyone. See how that works?"

"Not sure about the scot-free part, but I hear ya," Doug grumbled. "But what do we do about the checkpoints until we switch cars? The spotters might be passing on our details even now."

"I guess we'll find out," Sam said. "Look."

Maaz slowed down, because up ahead lay the vaguely M-shaped South Gate Of Mosul; located seven kilometers south of the city, the two arches spanned either lane of the divided highway, with the wide central pillar resting in the median.

Ethan was slightly worried that the civilians who'd fled the previous checkpoint had warned the fighters on duty, but the militants paid more attention to the incoming traffic than anything else and quickly waved the Rio through.

Ethan sat back, removing his hand from the Glock holstered to his ankle.

"How far are we from the target?" he asked when the Gate was well behind them.

Sam retrieved her hidden laptop and turned the screen toward him. "Twenty-five klicks behind. I'd like to close that gap to three klicks within the next twenty minutes. Maaz, if you wouldn't mind picking up the pace?"

Maaz abruptly pulled to the shoulder of the road and stopped.

"What are you doing?" Sam said.

"I'm sorry," Maaz replied, placing the vehicle into park.

Fearing betrayal, Ethan reached for his pistol once again. That's when he saw the crimson drops trickling from the edge of the front seat, where blood had soaked the surface.

Sam looked at Maaz and gasped. "I asked if you were all right!" she said accusingly.

"I didn't want to slow everyone down," Maaz said weakly.

Ethan leaned forward to have a look. The driver's hand was pressed into his side; when he removed it, his palm came away red.

"Get him in the back!" Sam said. "William, take off your hijab and drive! If you spot any checkpoints pull over immediately!"

"What about my abaya?" William said.

"Leave it on for now!" Sam said. "Get Maaz in back. Move!"

Ethan and William exited the vehicle and transferred Maaz to the backseat. Ethan grabbed the medkit from the rear cargo area. It was basically the standard corpsman "Unit One" kit with a few substitutions, packed into an ordinary-looking burlap sack that was meant to pass casual inspection at the checkpoints. If any of the guards asked why they needed all that medical equipment, Maaz was to play a premed student.

He won't be doing much playacting now, though, will he?

Kit in hand, Ethan loaded into the back beside Maaz. Sam swapped seats with Doug, giving him the laptop, and joined Ethan. She rested the youth's upper body in her lap.

Ethan placed Maaz's lower body over his thighs and opened the medkit. He grabbed the AAT—Abdominal Aortic Tourniquet.

"William, what's the hold up?" Sam said.

"Just a sec." William was apparently trying to wipe the blood from the front seat with the hem of his abaya.

"William—" Sam sounded at the end of her patience.

"Hell with it." William plunked himself down, letting the crimson fluid soak through the black fabric he wore, and slammed on the accelerator.

Ethan finished wrapping the AAT around the youth's abdomen. He fastened the buckle, adjusted the strap, and squeezed the air pump several times. The front inner portion of the device inflated into a wedge shape that put eighty pounds of pressure on the abdominal aorta, cutting off blood flow to the pelvis. 

The youth hyperventilated. His face was extremely pale and slick with sweat. Individual droplets trickled from his matted hair.

Maaz looked up at Sam and said, between frantic breaths: "I wanted to come with you. Dreamed of it. I wanted to start a new life. In a land without war."

Sam gripped his hand tightly. "And you're still going to come with me, Maaz. I promise you." She glanced at Ethan for confirmation, trusting in his judgment.

Ethan refused to meet her eye; he neither nodded nor shook his head. He couldn't promise her anything. Not yet. It was obvious Maaz had lost a lot of blood. Too bad none of them were universal donors. The first order of business if he wanted to save the youth's life was to inject a plasma volume expander to increase the blood pressure.

He grabbed a peripheral venous catheter, a saline fluid bag—the volume expander—and associated tubing. He connected the tube to the bag, quickly flushing out the air bubbles. Then he grabbed the youth's hand and prepared to insert the catheter needle.

"You're so beautiful," Maaz abruptly told Sam. "I've been wanting to tell you. Since the moment I met you."

Sam smiled. Her chin quivered. "Thank you."

"No, thank
you
," Maaz said. "When I am in paradise, I will refuse the virgins. I will tell God, I want to wait for you instead."

Sam blinked. Her cheeks were wet. "Don't wait for me. Don't you dare."

As he worked, a part of Ethan's mind wondered if it was his fault. Gray Beard had been holding Maaz when Ethan shot the militant. It was possible a bullet had deflected from a rib or other bone, striking the youth. But what about the fighter who'd released the AK burst at Ethan from the inbound lane? That man might be the culprit.

Well, someone had hit Maaz, one way or another, and dwelling on it wouldn't save the youth.

Ethan inserted the needle. There was no flashback of blood into the tip—he'd missed the vein.

Maaz looked away from Sam for just a moment to glance at Ethan with big, pleading eyes.