On target

FORTY-ONE

"Sierra Six is Oscar Mike! ETA four-five seconds!"

Zack acknowledged Court's transmission. "Six is on the move, roger."

Court drove out of the gas station in the open-topped jeep. Behind him flames rocked seventy feet into the air from a burning fuel line that spun and bounced across the concrete, swinging wildly in all directions from the gas pump.

Two of the soldiers were dead by Court's gunfire, and two more had been stabbed in the liver and lay facedown and injured in the street. Civilians ran for their lives, sprinting away from the flamethrower igniting everything in sight with a wild mind of its own. Minivans and buses slammed into one another in attempts to get clear of the station. Locals in the street, safe from the flames, now found themselves forced to dive out of the way of the military jeep that lurched in a wide arc to turn around, heading down the hill now and driven by the maniacal turbaned kawaga who had started this catastrophe.

Court headed east as fast as the jeep would go. The cover had popped free of the machine gun on the fixed base behind him; in his rearview he could see the weapon bouncing with the undulations of the uneven dirt track.

A pack of hobbled camels crossed in front of him, and he yanked the wheel to the right, crashed through a wooden stall selling fruit, sending a dozen bunches of bananas hanging from ropes flying into the air. He kept crashing through to the other side of the stall and found himself a block south of the road that would have led him to Whiskey Sierra's hide site. Just then, two military jeeps pulled up to the intersection in front of him.

Fuck!

Court whizzed past them, and they turned in behind and began giving chase.

"Tangos on my ass, Zack!"

"Copy that."

"Can you go one block south, or do I need to come to you guys?"

"We'll meet you in the alleyway, a left turn behind the hotel. When you pick us up, scoot over. Brad will drive." And then, "You never could drive for shit."

"Roger that." Court did not deny Hightower's charge.

The passages and alleyways were a thick congestion of man, animal, machine, and other impediments to an operator trying to make haste in a motor vehicle. Gentry leaned on the horn as he drove. A rickshaw and a donkey cart with a fifty-five-gallon water drum blocked the way just ahead of Court on his new route, so he jacked the wheel, went right one more block, and then took another hard left. Here he was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid a small crowd of children and sheep in the street, and he knew the two army jeeps pursuing him were right behind. Quickly he pulled the emergency brake, leapt up in the driver's seat and vaulted into the back, his shoulder injury protesting even through the painkilling effects of the massive amounts of adrenaline coursing through him. The two jeeps made the turn, and they, too, skidded and stopped, a huge lingering dust cloud formed by the act. Court spun the PKM machine gun back around at the vehicles, and pulled back the charging handle to rack a round. He was close enough to see the eyes of the driver of the closest jeep widen in surprise, and the black soldier ground his transmission, frantically yanking his gearshift into reverse. Court pointed right at the hood of the jeep and pulled the trigger of the big Russian weapon.

Click.

The weapon was unloaded.

Goddammit!

Court drew his Glock 19 and fired an entire magazine at the two jeeps as they backed around the corner, their green bodies slamming into one another more than once in a desperate attempt to flee the withering handgun fire. It was no belt-fed machine gun, but at the moment the nine-millimeter handgun was a hell of a lot more valuable.

As soon as they disappeared from view, he leapt back into the front seat, released the brake, and lurched forward.

He'd popped the clutch, stalling the jeep.

The windshield next to his head exploded in a spider-web of cracks as a rifle round struck it.

"Shit!" He refired the engine and launched forward again.

Thirty seconds later, he finally made it to the rally point, and he found the surviving four members of Whiskey Sierra engaged in a fierce firefight, their weapons cracking and snapping as they sent rounds towards a row of buildings at the end of the alleyway to the east. Enemy grenades exploded just short of their targets, and return fire whistled by. Court put the jeep in park and leapt into the back-again his left shoulder hated him for doing so-and he went to work immediately loading a can of ammunition to the machine gun. Sierra Two climbed into the driver's seat. Brad carried only a pistol now, which he fired over the front windshield.

Seconds later Hightower leapt into the passenger seat, took up a forward firing position, and Two dropped down behind the wheel to reload his sidearm and put the jeep in gear. Sierra Three next came out from behind a row of barrels next to a big generator; on his back was Sierra Four, and in his right hand was a Sudanese Marra pistol that, Court assumed, he'd gleaned from a fallen enemy. Dan dumped his wounded colleague in the jeep's bed next to Court and then dove in on top of him.

Brad hit the gas, turned the jeep to the left, sending Court reeling in the back; only his handhold on the machine gun kept him upright. Court reracked the slide on the now-loaded weapon and opened up with a burst on the barrels on the corner as they drove off. Immediately the fuel inside ignited, and a massive explosion erupted across the alley, black smoke obscuring the Americans' retreat.

In under a minute they were on the paved road that led out of town. Twice they'd passed infantry while negotiating the maze of alleys in the shanties, but the speed and the confusion of the quick encounters had kept both meetings bloodless. Sierra Three remained at Gentry's feet, his handgun and his eyes trained on the six o'clock to nine o'clock sector around the vehicle. His pistol could not do what Six's machine gun could, but if he saw threats, he knew he could direct the Gray Man to engage them with the jeep's heavy weapon. He also knew the Gray Man would cover from three to six o'clock, and Brad and Zack would cover the two quarter-slices of the pie in front of them.

Sierra Four was in the back, as well, but he was unconscious now from blood loss.

Court leaned nearer to Zack's head and shouted over the noise of the speeding vehicle, "Hey! You make a left up here, and I can get us a new ride!"

Zack thought it over for less than a second. "Let's do it!" He instructed Brad to follow Court's instructions. They made the turn to the south at the top of a hill and ran directly into a military checkpoint. Easily a dozen GOS infantry were in the middle of a road lined on both sides by clay walls of private homes. Court aimed the PKM and blasted a parked technical, exploding the pickup truck and blowing men down to the dirt at twenty yards. Other troops fired at the Americans as they shot up the road at fifty miles an hour. Brad sped through the smoke and came out on the other side. To the left of the jeep a wounded infantryman lying on his back in the street rolled quickly to his knees, raised his weapon, and raked the open-topped vehicle with automatic rifle fire from fifteen feet. Court had been shooting in the opposite direction and therefore saw the threat late, but he spun the PKM towards the gunfire, blasted the soldier back against a brown wall in a splatter of blood, and then looked down at his exposed body, fully expecting to see he'd been shot.

Miraculously, he had not.

"Hang on!" shouted Brad, and Court knelt in the jeep with his hands on the machine gun just as the vehicle went airborne at the top of a crest in the road, sending it crashing down on its axle before it bottomed out and cleared the area.

A few seconds later, Brad reached for his chest rig, hugging himself with his right arm while he drove with his left. "Dammit."

"What is it?" asked Zack, still scanning his sector.

"Think I fucking popped a rib when we hit back there."

"You good?" asked Hightower.

"Yeah, I'm good, I just-"

The break in the response turned Sierra One's head to his driver. Brad continued to hold the wheel with his left hand, his foot almost to the floor, but his right hand was up in front of his face.

His fingers were coated in thick, rich, blood.

"Son of a…

Sierra Two's hand slowly dropped in his lap, his head bobbed to the side and then fell forward towards the steering wheel.

"Three, drive!" Zack pulled Brad out of the driver's seat and across his own body. The entire left side of Two's torso was drenched in blood. An enemy round had pierced his side between his underarm and his armor.

Dan crawled over the backseat and slid behind the wheel as the jeep began veering to the left. He pushed down on the accelerator and turned just in time to avoid a crash with a high gravel mound by the side of the road.

Gentry knelt over Dan seconds later and yelled to be heard. "Hey, man. I think you're hit. There's fresh blood all over the place back here, and I can't find a leak in me!"

As he drove, Dan felt over his own body. After several seconds Gentry leaned back over again.

"GSW, left shoulder!"

Dan looked, found that he'd taken a gunshot wound high in the front of his left shoulder, less than two inches from the jugular vein in his neck. He bled like a stuck pig but kept driving on.

Soon they arrived at the home where Court met Mohammed earlier in the day. The small Skoda sedan was still in the courtyard. It took Gentry a couple of minutes to find the keys where he had tossed them in the dust. During that time, the wounded Dan took the one rifle left with the team and guarded the front gate, and Zack gave CPR to Brad on the ground next to the jeep.

"Come on, Bradley! Don't fucking chicken shit out on me! Walk it off!" he shouted at a man who, Court could tell even from across the yard, was clearly dead. But Zack didn't want to see it himself. Court wondered if Sierra One was trying to revive both Sierra Two and Sierra Five with the futile treatment.

Zack did not give up for nearly five minutes. By then Gentry had the injured Sierra Four in the back of the Skoda, with Dan bandaged perfunctorily and sitting next to him. He helped Zack put Sierra Two's body in the trunk. Court then led Hightower to the passenger seat. Court took the wheel, and the vehicle left the gate of the home and headed north, its four white men of war hidden behind tinted windows.