Oath of Office

52

Jack and Dovzhenko watched in horror as the taillights on the vehicle carrying Ysabel grew smaller in the distance. The howling wind that blew outside Omar’s compound had covered the vehicle’s approach. The men, likely Taliban who’d come for Ysabel, had decided to cut their losses and run with the single prize.

Rifle in hand, Ryan ran back inside to grab the laptop and satellite phone while Dovzhenko kept an eye on the lights. Jack found the keys to the Toyota Hilux parked out front, and the pickup was bouncing down the road with no headlights in less than a minute.

Jack drove while Dovzhenko checked the weapons. Neither man spoke until the small station wagon turned off the road and parked in an alley behind a concrete building that looked like a mechanic shop at the far end of the block. Two men got out of the station wagon and shoved Ysabel into the shop. They left the door open to the night air.

Ryan parked the Hilux and eased the door shut.

“Let’s go before they lock us out.”

“Two with her,” the Russian said. “There are probably more inside.”

Ryan nodded. “This might get rough. Do you have a problem with that?”

Dovzhenko shook his head. “Do you? You are about to attempt a rescue of a woman you obviously have feelings for, going against an unknown number of assailants, in a place you have never been, with an untried rifle and a man with whom you have never worked.”

Ryan was already creeping down the alley, rifle at low ready, scanning. “If you put it that way, this is going to be a cinch. You do know how to run your gun?”

“Russian babies sleep with a Kalashnikov, not a teddy bear. You did not know this?”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“Do you know what Russian intelligence officers think of American intelligence officers?” Dovzhenko asked.

“You got me,” Ryan said, homed in on the building ahead.

“They think you are too good,” he said. “That you excel at critical thinking, but are not… sociopathic enough to be as cruel as you should be.”

“Yeah?” Ryan hissed. “Hide and watch. And anyway, you said ‘they.’ What do you think?”

“I think you simply know right from wrong,” Dovzhenko said.

Halfway down the block, he slowed, leaning closer, whispering. “Your plan?”

Ryan eyed the Russian. This guy was a philosopher, and for the life of him, Ryan couldn’t figure out if that was a good thing or a bad one under the present circumstances. “We’re looking at a corner-fed room,” Ryan said, stopping in the shadows of a head-high pile of trash, eyes still locked on the door. “That means we’ll be able to look down the wall before going in. You know a technique called ‘running the rabbit’?”

“Not the term,” Dovzhenko said. “But I can guess. I run in and draw fire while you shoot the bad guys.”

“No,” Ryan said. “I run in and draw fire while we both shoot the bad guys. They should be focused on Ysabel so we’ll have the element of surprise. We go in and shoot everyone who isn’t her. You SVR guys get some hot-shit training in marksmanship. Right?”

“SVR is an intelligence organization. We are not commandos.” He gave Ryan a sideways look. “But do not worry. I can shoot.”

The windows at the rear of the shop were covered with wood, but the men ducked as they went by to be on the safe side. Ryan reached the edge of the door first. He began to inch sideways, the muzzle of his rifle pointing where he looked. Each shuffling step brought a tiny fraction more of the room into view without giving away his position. The eastern wall that ran down the side of the building directly in front of the door and to the right was clear. It had a window, but no doors, which meant the bad guys either were to Ryan’s left or had gone through some other door in that direction.

A little farther, an inch at a time.

North wall — which was actually a set of rolling garage doors thirty feet away… clear.

Wooden toolbox in the northwest corner… clear.

Voices.

Metal lift rack in the center of the garage — but no vehicles, giving a clear field of fire.

Ryan froze as the shoulder of one of the men came into view. He was squatting with his back to Ryan, in the approximate center of the west wall. It was one of the men from the station wagon, which meant his eyes were not yet accustomed to the bright light of the garage. Ryan risked another half step, farther into the fatal funnel of the doorway, bringing Ysabel into view. She was gagged and seated on the dirt floor, leaning against the west wall. She looked up and to her right, at someone who was just out of Ryan’s view.

Ryan eased out of the doorway so as not to create a flash of movement.

Shoulder to shoulder with Dovzhenko, he kept his gun on the doorway. “At least two,” he whispered, then quickly described the layout. Recon grew stale in no time and he wanted to move while the bad guys were in the same relative position as when he’d last seen them. “Not sure about this wall or the southwest corner.” Ryan pointed, in case the Russian wasn’t keyed in on his cardinal directions. “The guys closest to Ysabel have to go first. I’ll take everyone north, working back to the center. You buttonhook and take everyone south — on this side. Our fields of fire will overlap in the middle.”

“What is ‘buttonhook’?”

“I go straight in the door,” Ryan said. “You come in behind me, hooking around the left side of the door, engaging as I draw fire.”

Dovzhenko gave a curt nod. “Understood.”

“On three,” Ryan said.

“On three,” Dovzhenko repeated, bringing Ryan’s anxiety level down just a little. He had done this before.

Ryan moved quickly but surely, making it a good fifteen feet before anyone realized he was there. All eyes — and guns — trained on him as Dovzhenko came in behind him. AKs boomed in the enclosed space, snapping off the concrete-block wall. Ryan turned when he reached the halfway point, putting two rounds into the pelvis of the man on Ysabel’s right as he brought up his rifle.

The angle put Ysabel between Jack and the bad guy to her left. Trusting Dovzhenko to take care of that one, Ryan swung farther left. A third target stood in the southwest corner, holding a video camera in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. Ryan shot him in the chest, then, using the muzzle rise of his rifle, followed up with shots to the neck and face. The last took off the man’s black turban along with half of his skull.

This one down, Jack scanned to his right in time to see the other man near Ysabel fall under two well-aimed shots from Dovzhenko.

Ryan covered the far door. “Any more?” he shouted over the piercing whine in his ears.

Ysabel shook her head.

“We must go,” Dovzhenko said, already helping Ysabel to her feet.

Ryan backed out, covering their exit, while Dovzhenko faced forward with Ysabel tucked in between them. Ryan grabbed three extra AK mags from one of the men, and a wood-handled knife from a table on the way out. He paused just long enough in the alley to cut Ysabel’s hands free.

The shooting lasted less than six seconds from the time Jack had cleared the door. Just over a minute later, they were in the Toyota Hilux, heading northwest.