[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (21 page)

Junior ended up at the tail end of the line. The black shirt at the door held out his hand and said something in Bengali.

“You’re to stay,” said the man he’d been talking to.

“Where are they taking you?”

“Finally, to India to get some work.” The man smiled. “Good luck.”

Alone after the door was closed and locked, Junior went back to the window. He watched as two rows of refugees, men and women, were marched into the small compound. As soon as they stopped, the black shirts began opening fire.

Junior shouted and pounded helplessly on the slat window, which despite his earlier assessment failed to give way. The gunfire continued, drowning out his yells.

At the right side of the courtyard, he saw the little girl whom he’d unhooked from the fence. She was frozen, staring at the soldiers gunning down the others.

“Run!” yelled Junior. “Run!”

She looked in his direction, then bolted. At the same moment, bullets began slicing the ground near her.

“Son of a bitch!” yelled Junior. “Run!”

He punched the slat window. When it didn’t budge, he spun and ran full speed at the door to the room, crashing into it and tumbling free, into the hallway.

*   *   *

“You, here,” I said to the shorter of the two men who’d been assigned to escort me to the border guard camp. “Give me that gun.”

The man opened his mouth to object. I snatched the rifle before he could talk. It was loaded with a twenty-round magazine. I held out my hand and demanded the rest of his supply—which amounted to a grand total of two more magazines.

“What are you doing?” asked the other man, a sergeant well past retirement age.

“My son is on the other side of the border. I’m going to go get him. Are you coming with me?”

The sergeant turned pale. “We have to escort the prisoner.”

“Great—I’ll take your ammo, too.”

“I do not have a rifle.”

“I will come,” said the private who’d given up his gun. He still had a sidearm.

The sergeant started to object.

“You’re welcome to try and stop me,” I told him, heading toward the hole in the fence.

*   *   *

Junior bounced off the wall to his feet and charged down the small hallway to the empty front room. Sliding on his heels as he reached the front door, he grabbed at the handle and threw it open.

One of the black-shirted thugs was standing a few feet away, his back to the house. Junior bowled him over. Flailing wildly—his martial arts teachers would have been appalled—he knocked the guard unconscious and scooped up his rifle.

The gunfire in the courtyard had reached a crescendo, the metal rap of half a dozen guns echoing against the hills on both sides of the border. Junior ran like a wildman, barely breathing as he raised the gun and prepared to fire.

He halted just before the corner of the yard. The little girl lay at his feet, dead, her orange shirt soaked with blood.

*   *   *

There’s nothing like the sound of gunfire in the distance to make a Rogue’s heart go all pitter-patter. I quickened my pace, moving up along the side of a narrow but well-trodden trail that went nearly straight up a thirty-foot rise and led through a fallow farm field. The throb in my knee had faded, as if it couldn’t quite keep up with me.

The same was true, though in this case literally, of the private who had come to help me. By the time I reached the field, he trailed a good twenty yards behind.

The field was open for about a hundred yards. I sprinted for the first ten, then dropped to a trot for the rest, the pain in my knee gradually catching up as my speed fell. I reached the woods and grabbed for my sat phone, wanting an update from Shunt.

“You’re five hundred and fifty three meters away,” he said. “I tried getting Junior on the phone, but he didn’t answer.”

“I know. I tried myself.”

“You sound tired.”

“Fuck you.”

I pushed on through the trees. What had looked like a thick jungle from the field was actually a set of undulating hills with widely spaced trees. Bushes and smaller trees about a man’s height filled in the gaps, but there was still plenty of room to move through.

The gunfire had stopped by the time I got close enough to see the cluster of houses where the bandits were camped. A wire livestock fence, its strands forming large rectangular boxes, enclosed the entire area. I could see part of what looked like a military vehicle parked just beyond the fence; rather than green it was painted black, the finish worn and full in sunlight.

The border guard who’d been following me slipped in behind me.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Sil.”

“Can you understand my accent?” I asked him.

“I understand.”

He didn’t sound convincing, but there wasn’t any time to give him a competency exam.

“I’m going to move up to the fence and reconnoiter,” I said, pointing to the area of the compound near the road, which was on our right. “I want you to move a little closer to the road. We don’t shoot until I say so, all right?”

“Yes. Do not shoot until ordered.”

“Make sure you can see me. If I wave to you, come forward. Got that?”

“Come forward with wave.”

“Good.”

Head low, I started trotting toward the fence. After having UAVs and satellite photos and laser dazzlers, this was a very old-school operation.

Modern’s better. Though I would trade an army’s worth of high-tech gadgets for a single SEAL any day of the week.

Screened by the truck, I ran up toward the compound, searching for a good vantage. I found one near the fence, where a row of bushes provided cover. Still, much of the view was blocked by the nearby building. Two or three men were standing out of sight. They sounded angry, but I had no idea what they were saying.

I turned and signaled to Sil. He made a little more noise running than I would have liked—there was something jangling in his pockets—but he reached the fence without attracting any attention.

“Can you hear what they are saying?” I asked.

“Yes.” Sil listened for a few moments. “Bury the bodies.”

That made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

“Come with me,” I told him. “Stay low. Cover my back.”

I moved along the fence, pausing a few feet from the entrance as the interior of the compound came into view. I saw a little more than half of the yard, which was empty except for two large feed troughs.

And bodies. A pair lay a few yards from the nearest trough. Neither of them looked like Junior, but that was small comfort.

Making sure Sil was behind me, I ran forward to the building nearest the entrance to the compound. Checking quickly through the slats and seeing no one there, I moved up to the corner, cleared the area in front of me, and then began moving down the side of the house.

Two men in black shirts walked over to the dead men, arguing.

I raised the rifle. Double-tap left, double-tap right.

Argument over.

I swung out to my right, looking for anyone else in the yard. A man came flying from the building I was watching. He was roughly Junior’s size, and for a second my eyes saw what my mind wanted them to see—my son.

By the time I realized my mistake, the black shirt already had the barrel of his weapon pointed at me. A shot rang out; the man fell sideways, sliding onto the ground.

Sil had nailed him.

Three down, but how many to go?

There were more bodies, at least a dozen, on the far side of the compound, next to another of the buildings. I did my best to ignore them.

Nothing else moved. The place was quiet. I took out the sat phone to talk to Shunt.

“Where is he?”

“Twenty yards due east. I’m looking at a sat image from yesterday,” he said. “You see the building?”

“Yeah, all right.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m teaching the Bangladeshi to fish.”

I looked at Sil, then pointed at myself and the building. “I’m going in. Cover me when I run. Then move up, cover the outside.”

He gave me a thumbs-up, and I started to run.

The door to the building was on the right, angled away from my view. I went to the window, checked briefly but couldn’t see much. Then I moved to the corner of the building.

There was a body on the ground. I could only see his legs; the pants were khaki, just like Junior’s.

Damn.

Sil ran up behind me. Fighting emotion, I crouched down and began crawling on my haunches toward the body. After a few feet, I could see that he didn’t have a shirt, and his coppery torso was darker than Junior’s, and not as developed. He was one of the gang members, his upper body scarred in several places. He was still breathing.

Instinctively, I reached for my knife, only to remember that I wasn’t carrying one. No problem. I put his neck in my arms and twisted.

Sil moved to the corner behind me. I went to the doorway and listened.

I didn’t hear anything.

“Junior,” I said, as softly as I could. “Junior?”

Nothing.

I raised my voice a bit.

“Junior, it’s me.”

There was still nothing. I pushed in, gun ready, but at the same time aware that it might be Junior in my sights.

The room was empty. I moved around it left to right, hugging the walls until I reached the door to the short hallway and other rooms. I crouched down about as low as my knee could take without complaining.

Clear.

Something was on the floor a few feet away.

Junior’s satellite phone. Murphy had pulled it from his pocket and dropped it on the ground as he ran from the room.

*   *   *

My heart was beating overtime, not because I was in a particularly large amount of danger; I’ve been in far worse situations. What was amping me up was the fact that I was looking for Junior. I told myself I would have been nervous about any member of my team, but I think I knew deep down that I was lying, or trying to.

Just as in SEAL Team Six, we add a shooter to the team by consensus—everybody in the room gets a say. Yes, as top dog I may have the biggest bark, but the team only works when everyone’s a partner. You have to trust the person who’s got your back. Junior had seen a lot of action with us, but he was still a probationary shooter, trying to work his way into field operations from support.

Until now, the questions about him were the same ones we ask of everyone: How’s he going to react to pressure? What’s his breaking point? Etc., etc.

What I hadn’t done was ask myself the question: How would I react when he was in danger?

He’d been with us in tight spots before, yet somehow this one felt different. It was
my
reaction that was different. I was worried about him. I’d always treated him the same as everyone else—hell, I was probably harder on him. But I had to ask myself, even as I was figuring out where we would go next, could I deal with his getting hurt?

I’d rather lose my proverbial left nut than see one of my people hurt. In Junior’s case, I couldn’t even work the math for a trade.

There were still three more buildings to check.

“That building,” I told Sil, pointing at the next one. “Same routine.”

“I think camp empty,” he said.

“We don’t take it for granted,” I told him. “Cover me.”

The next building was larger than the others, but laid out roughly the same. The front room looked like a campground brought inside, with blankets and pillows on the floor and a small hibachi-like stove in the corner. There were some papers piled haphazardly near the wall, along with a laptop.

The rest of the rooms were used as sleeping quarters. The stench of sweat got thicker as I went, until in the last room I nearly choked with it. But the building was clear.

“Next one,” I told Sil as I came outside.

He wasn’t there.

“Sil,” I growled, keeping my voice low. “Where the hell are you?”

I felt like I was in a teenager slasher movie, looking for my date. Backing against the front of the building, I slid over to the corner and peeked around. Sil was sitting on the ground, a big smile on his face.

A smile I knew too well. As I watched, his head flopped to the side. The rest of his body slid to the ground.

Bullets slammed into the building above my head. I threw myself down, hunkering into the dirt, unable to see where the shots were coming from, let alone who was doing the shooting.

The gunfire quickly stopped, the gunman trying for a better position. As he moved, I realized he must have been firing from the corner of the truck or the woods farther back.

I retreated on my belly to the corner of the building, then rolled around it, checking quickly to make sure I hadn’t just blundered into someone’s sights. The yard was clear. I could see all the way to the fence and the slight rise beyond it.

A burst of shots pinged into the dirt a few yards away. The gunman was at the corner of one of the buildings I hadn’t checked. Then a second man appeared behind him, standing over the crouched figure and firing as well. I fired two bursts from my rifle, then rolled right, pushing to the side of the nearest building.

If I’d been in their position, I would have split up, with one circling around while the other held me in place with covering fire. I decided to head off the flanker, racing to the far end of the building just in time to see one of the gunmen running to my right about sixty feet away, trying to circle the long way around. He went down as I fired, diving to the ground. Unsure if I’d gotten him or not, I started moving toward him, but before I got there a wave of bullets from the other gunman drove me back.

Dead or not, the man I’d shot lay still on the ground. I decided to concentrate on the one I knew was alive. I went back along the building and dashed across to the place where I’d started, intending to either engage him from there or, if he had retreated, come around from that direction.

Sil’s body lay slumped where I had left it. By now I was low on ammo for the rifle. So I took his pistol and began searching his body for spare magazine boxes.

As I did, I saw someone in a black shirt aiming an AK47 at me from near the truck.

(III)