SANCTION: A Thriller (31 page)

The sun was disappearing periodically behind a network of thick stratus clouds as he emerged from the outcropping. He trotted back to the observation point he had been at earlier. The city still sat in all its decrepit glory, lonely and undisturbed.

The gunshots were alarming. He tried not to imagine what it was like for the students as he half sprinted toward Quneitra.

He aimed for a small house-like structure with a collapsed roof. All sides of the supporting walls had long since buckled around the foundation. The building was adjacent to the first in a series of homes and other small buildings on the eastern perimeter of the city. He used the jagged peaks and valleys of the crumbled building to hide as he positioned himself for a better view of the town’s main street.

Brad looked at each window in the building next to his. He noticed every crevice, every hole and every shadow. Anything that a sniper could make use of, caught his eye. He studied each feature for several minutes. When he was satisfied that no one was observing, he moved to the building. He crawled under a partially collapsed porch and surveyed the street.

Quneitra was in ruins, crushed by a war in its past that Brad knew little about. Brown patches of roasted grass dotted an apocalyptic landscape. Due to the heavy use of concrete and stone block during its construction, many of Quneitra’s structures were still standing, despite being replete with bullet holes and massive craters.

He crouched low under the porch’s overhang and shot forth, digging in to loose sand with his heels. Brad ran in a dead sprint toward a building across the street and jumped through the empty frame of a large window.

Inside the room were the sparse details of a forgotten age. All that remained of the wallpaper was a few tattered pieces of mold stained hibiscus flowers. Dozens of wooden chairs were scattered about, most of them broken; several of them charred black.

Brad found the remnants of an industrial kitchen. In one corner was a dismantled oven range and a set of deep freezers, black mold caked around their yellow door seals. He walked the long hallway, following the length of the kitchen and discovered a narrow staircase in the back. Brad took his time ascending the stairwell with the MP-5.

His feet rolled heel to toe in a slow, silent fashion, following the end of the rifle. At the top of the staircase, Brad found another empty room.

He peered through a window on the second floor. He could see the neighboring building. Its dilapidated roofline leaned against the structure and continued perpendicular to the street for twenty yards. Its sunbaked shingles held tight to a layer of rotting plywood that sprawled out before him like a wave.

Brad climbed out of the window and dropped onto the spine of the A-frame. The wood sagged but held his weight easily. He crouched down to a squat and crept to the end of the building, keeping an eye on the street. At its end, the crippled roof slanted down dramatically, its edge dangling just four feet above the ground. Brad jumped down and moved quickly to the next structure.

Inside, he found the remains of a defunct machine shop. He navigated through a maze of broken lathes, band saws, drill presses and various pieces of dismantled equipment. Everything had been stripped of essential wiring and parts that had value.

He swept through the facility quickly, taking a mental inventory of its items. At the rear of the building he found a massive hole in a supporting wall. Blackened pieces of broken concrete littered the ground in front of and beyond the opening. Brad stepped through the cavity and raised the sub-compact rifle to his cheek. There was a small entanglement of brush and another crumbling structure.

Instead of heading toward the other building, Brad walked alongside the brush and out toward the road that divided Quneitra. Across the street, an endless row of disintegrating edifices matched the buildings behind him.

The sky began to shed a light mist of rain overhead. A shiver ran through his body as he thought about how to proceed.

He stepped boldly onto Quneitra’s main access road, which ran straight through the town and served as its only major artery.

The street was divided down the centerline by a yard wide patch of tall grass and weeds that sprang from a raised bed. Brad got to the patch and squatted low enough to rest his buttocks on the back of his heels. His eyes poured over the street, studying empty windows, doorways, balconies, rooftops and garages. Quneitra was lifeless.

He was about to head deeper into the city when he heard it through the subtle drum of what had quickly turned into rain. It began as a low metallic clicking sound. In the distance, it morphed from a familiar mechanical stutter into the struggling pitch and fall of an engine cranking. The cylinders resisted, turning over and over in defiance, before firing and settling into a soft idle. The sound echoed like an eerie sonnet, bouncing off of the concrete skeleton that was Quneitra.

Brad shot across the street and ducked into a nearby doorway. He hunkered down behind the doorway and part of a cinderblock wall as the sound grew louder. He cocked his head sideways, which allowed him to keep an eye on the street but remain out of sight. Instinctively he tensed and drew himself in as the sound approached.

A late model Land Rover passed on the opposite end of the road in front of him, its white panels stark against the persistently beige landscape. Its driver searched the street and buildings opposite Brad’s position.

Brad’s heart pounded as it synced with an almost primal desire to stand up and riddle the SUV with bullets. He recognized Saleem Nejem from his internet video.

B
rad waited until the Land Rover was out of sight before he came out. The rain was still falling but beginning to decline. He glanced down the street in Saleem’s direction. He had no idea how long the Palestinian would be gone but he intended on dropping in on the terrorist’s friends before he returned.

He slipped around back and ran parallel to the street one block over. He kept the abandoned structures to his left, crossing the gaps between the buildings with trepidation. At first he jogged aggressively, breathing in through his nose and exhaling in short bursts through his mouth. But as the solitude of Quneitra embraced him and the image of his brother’s face–bashed and beaten, as he’d been imagining it–flashed across his mind, he picked up the pace until he was sprinting hard, bounding over rocks and debris as he weaved a path through the rubble.

He reached a bend in the road more than half a mile from where he’d started and slowed to a stop. Around the corner Brad spotted another of the white Land Rovers. Elation washed over him.

The building directly in front of the Land Rover was one of the larger standing structures. It was attached to a lower three and a half story building, by a long breezeway. A bright blue sign announced that the building was once the, ‘Golan Hospital’. Brad recognized it from the sat photo Kingsley had showed him.

Now it stood, pockmarked by thousands of large and small caliber holes, made by a multitude of varied weapons. Dozens of empty windows faced the street, keeping watch on the wallowing town. Years of warfare, followed by neglect, had rendered the facility as useless as everything else in Quneitra.

Brad pulled the MP-5 in tight under his arm and backtracked one block down from the curve. He crossed the street and headed for the back of the first building he came to. Brad moved up a block, until he stood inside an old apartment complex across from the hospital.

Toward the front of the complex he climbed another staircase and found a room with an unobstructed view of the front of the hospital. He stepped close to one of the windows and peered out. From his vantage point on the second floor, he could see through the windows on the ground floor. Most of Saleem’s men were there, spread out lazily on old army cots, their weapons carelessly unattended. The high pitched voice of a woman singer belted rhythmic melodies in Arabic over a small radio from a corner in the breezeway.

The DIA agent was counting heads when he spotted a pair of badly bruised legs through one of the breezeway’s large empty window frames. The rest of the torso was obscured by part of a wall. It was his first glimpse of a hostage. He watched closely for several seconds as the victim struggled to remain standing, their damaged leg muscles wobbling under the strain of their own body weight. With one of the students in the kill zone, things would be infinitely more complicated. Brad raced down the stairwell and headed back to the street.

The rain was back and falling in sheets, making it impossible to focus on the abandoned medical building on the other side of the road. The Golan Hospital was visible only as an outline, with its series of broad first floor windows appearing as dark ominous holes. Brad pulled the MP-5 around to his front. Walking toward the open area, he kept special attention on his peripheral vision. He got to the edge of the building where the apartment complex met a pedestrian sidewalk.

Brad rounded the corner and jogged to the end of the block. An adjacent building blocked the view of the administrative portion of the hospital, where Saleem’s men were staying. He crossed the street and doubled back so that he was close to the breezeway but still covered by the tall structure that adjoined it.

Brad crouched low and slugged his way forward. He stopped just below one of the giant bay windows next to a broad, stone staircase.

He pulled two flash bang grenades out of his cargo pocket. He set one of them down on the asphalt, while he prepped the other. He yanked the cotter pin out of its home and tossed the grenade through a bay window directly above his head. The flash bang had a time delay fuse, its user had anywhere from three to five seconds before detonation. He picked up the second grenade and ran to a set of stairs opposite the ones that he had leaned against. He could hear the confusion above, as Saleem’s men tried to process the sudden appearance of the device.

He closed the twenty yards and heard a loud pop. An obnoxious bright light followed the disorienting sound as he pulled the ring on the second flash bang and threw it up the next staircase. It spun on the landing and detonated in front of two of Saleem’s men who were still stumbling from the effects of the first grenade.

Brad hurdled the first three steps from the side, as Saleem’s white Land Rover pulled up behind him.

The agent brought his weapon up in front of an armed Arab that was just beginning to regain his sight. The kidnapper pulled the trigger to his AK-47 squeezing several rounds off harmlessly into the aging concrete floor. The bullets hit the ground and skidded past Brad as he stepped forward. Brad jerked the trigger on the MP5 twice and released it. Two rounds landed squarely in the center of the man’s chest. The man fell backward, tripping over his opened cot and spilling himself onto the ground behind it.

Another man, also trying hard to focus in his dazed state, brought his weapon up. Brad loosed two more rounds. Red hot metal sliced through the man’s shirt and he toppled easily. The Defense Intelligence agent swept through the common area quickly, moving from target to target with the ease of a veteran special ops soldier. Saleem’s men were not only ill prepared to respond to Brad’s attack but they were full of fear, their motor skills fleeing in their time of need. The young men bumped into each other as they scrambled for an exit, rather than engaging their common enemy.

Brad counted rounds as he fired. The MP5 held thirty. He had eight shells left by the time he’d dispatched the last terrorist on the breezeway. He pressed a release button on the barrel receiver group. The magazine fell to the floor with a clang and he jammed a fresh one into the magazine well. Brad knew better than to go deeper into the compound without a full load. He stepped past the hostage that was tied to the pillar. It was an older man who’d been beaten badly.

“Where are the rest of the students?” he asked.

“Uh…. They’re in the…” the man stuttered badly. The last thirteen seconds had shocked and numbed every sense in his body.

Another captor sprang from his hiding place at the end of the breezeway. Brad dropped to a knee and fired. The MP-5 jumped as three rounds barked out of its tip. The man fell in a heap, his Russian rifle banging on the ground behind him.

• • •

Saleem jumped from
the truck as soon as he saw him. The stranger moved with a purpose and skill that spoke of training that none of Saleem’s men could boast of.

The Land Rover coasted into the lower half of the building, slamming into the short staircase and screeching its tires on the wet asphalt. Saleem ran around to the back of the building. He’d expected to catch an intruder tripping his sensor on the road, or wandering the outskirts of the city but he was somehow, unprepared for a frontal assault.

The stranger’s deliberate and calculating shots shocked him as he bolted down the sidewalk. They came two at a time, almost rhythmic in their delivery; pop-pop, pause, pop-pop, pause, pop-pop. The skill and bravado that undergirded his attack could only mean one thing; and Saleem hadn’t planned for dealing with the Americans this quickly.

The Palestinian ran as fast as his skinny legs could carry him. His heart jumped in his chest and heaved as he took giant strides around the perimeter of the building.

• • •

Brad waited. Staying
on his knee, he rotated around keeping the gun level and the butt stock firm against his cheek. He scanned the area for survivors; he saw none.

He stood up and walked back to the hostage on the pillar. He kept the MP-5 trained out in front of him, its barrel permeating heat.

“Who…are…are you?” the man on the pillar asked.

“I’m here to get you guys home. I need to know where the students are, right now.” Brad said.

“That room there.” The man said pointing with his head to a door at the end of the breezeway.

The door was locked. Brad jerked the MP-5 up in the air and brought the stock’s butt plate down hard. The knob clanged loudly and dangled loose in the door hole. He stepped back and drove his right boot into the door. It burst open and slammed against the wall behind it.