The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 4: It only Gets Worse

The ISIS terrorists were insistent, but Sulla stood his ground waving the Quran in their faces. “I cannot give up my guests! They are Muslims. They sought my aid in good faith. I would be violating all we hold dear.”

“They are going to die!” the terrorist told him firmly, motioning his men forward, shouting to two of them, “Go around back and see that none escape.”

Two of the terrorists headed around the corner of the house to the back door. Slade heard Killer whisper in his mike, “Bravo, two Tangos coming to you — quietly!”

“Bravo!”

As the rest of the ISIS party approached the front door, Sulla tried desperately to bribe them. That caught the terrorist’s attention. “They are a middle aged man, his young son, wife and three girls; what possible threat could they be to you? I will pay for their safety!”

The terrorists talked it over amongst themselves. While they did so Slade heard Bravo team report in a matter-of-fact way, “Tangos are down.”

At that moment the ISIS party made their decision. Four terrorists pushed past Sulla and forced the door open. They were met by screams and shouts. The head terrorist told Sulla, “We will take your money for the lives of the woman and girls. They will satisfy my men, but we will let them live. The man and boy we will shoot!”

“You cannot shoot the boy!” Sulla objected, tearing at his beard. “How can you say such a thing; he is only fourteen!”

“We have fighters already his age,” the ISIS terrorist said, yanking Sulla out of the way as his men shoved open the door. “Besides, what do you care; he is Shia? Do you have some love for these dogs?”

Slade heard yelling in the next room, screams from the women and girls, and guttural curses from the ISIS thugs. Calm and cool, Killer’s voice came over his headset, “Easy boys, no one makes a move until they get outside and we have a clear line of fire. I don’t want a firefight inside the residence with all these women and girls — steady now. Shooter’s got the triggermen. Everyone on his mark!”

The KRISS Super-V was already steadied in the corner of the window. The room behind him was dark, so Slade was invisible to those outside. He had a perfect view of the entire area in front of the house through his red-dot sight. It wasn’t a scope, but Slade didn’t need one at twenty meters. He could have placed a round up the lead bastard’s nose without leaving a mark.

The ISIS terrorists dragged the man and boy outside. The father was pleading for the life of his son. The boy was skinny and gangly at that age; awkward and stumbling. He was in shock. His eyes were round and staring at the ground, not registering what was happening. For Slade, his deep seated rage turned him to ice — everything slowed down — he was in complete control. The entire scene unfolded as if he were a movie director editing the film, frame-by-frame, picking his time and his spot.

The boy was thrust to his shaking knees, falling almost prone before the ISIS scum yanked him viciously upward, shouting, “On your knees boy! I want your father to see you die!”

The father’s voice was one long drawn out wail. Every pair of ISIS eyes looked at the boy, lusting for the slaughter of the innocent. A short rumble of automatic fire split the night air. It was just a burst, a split second long, and the boy flinched, his hands spasmodically jerking toward the back of his head as a spray of blood splattered over him.

The blood erupted from a ragged hole in the ISIS thug’s face. Three forty-five caliber slugs slammed through the sweaty, greasy flesh at the narrow isthmus of the uni-brow, punching into the festering, diseased brain and blowing out the back of his skull. The material not exiting the crater in the terrorist’s head sloshed back forward in a fountain of blood and chewed up brains, exiting through the hole like sludge from a sewer pipe.

Before the terrorist’s knees began to buckle, Slade had already shifted his sights to the ISIS thug holding the father. The KRISS finished its slight recoil, bucking up almost imperceptibly thanks to its delayed blowback mechanism. He centered on the shocked expression of the terrorist and pumped three bullets right up his nose.

The terrorist’s head snapped back, certainly breaking his neck, and he collapsed like a rag doll, dropping his pistol. The father reacted instinctively, leaping across the space and tackling his son, smothering the boy beneath his own body to protect him from the incoming hail of bullets.

That fire came swift and deadly.

To his consternation, Slade didn’t have an opportunity to get in another shot. The Deltas were strikingly efficient and deadly, dropping the other eight terrorists in short, concentrated bursts of fire. The firefight was over in seconds. When the last body dropped to the ground Killer’s calm voice penetrated Slade’s earpiece.

“Alpha is everyone down?”

“No more Tangos,” Alpha said calmly.

“All right,” Killer said tersely, “let’s get these bodies in the back. We don’t want ISIS to know any of this happened.”

Slade walked back out to the front room. Both families were huddled together, sobbing, praying; happy to be alive but frayed. As the Deltas dragged the bodies out back, Sulla was already speaking to Killer, his voice still heavy with excitement.

“When ISIS finds out these men were killed here they will slaughter everyone in the village — everyone!”

“Now Sulla, we’ll put them in the desert,” Kincaid told him. “No one will find them for days — if ever. You’re going to have to bug out by then anyway.”

Sulla argued that his neighbors would have to face the repercussions, but surprisingly it was one of the neighbors who provided a solution. He’d watched the firefight from his window and hurried over to Sulla’s afterwards, afraid for the same reasons.

“I drove from the village north of us today, just ahead of the ISIS dogs. There is a place only a few kilometers from here on the road where we can get rid of the bodies,” he said eagerly. “No one will ever know they attacked our village and died.”

Slade wondered why today was any different than any other day on the road, but Killer just shrugged. Sulla and his neighbor got their cars and the Deltas loaded up the bodies. The Deltas and Slade piled in while Sulla’s family packed.

“Don’t worry, the ISIS scum won’t bother us anymore tonight,” the neighbor said. “These pigs were after this family. The rest are too busy raping and celebrating — some warriors of Allah!”

Killer was riding in the front bench seat with Sulla. The back seat of his white Renault had four bodies stuffed into it. When Sulla and his family fled they were going to have a disgusting time of it. The ISIS thugs stank in life but dead they smelled like the Devil himself crapped on them.

The neighbor drove an old battered station wagon. It was a rocking, rolling ride as Slade rode on top, lying prone in the luggage rack. One Delta rode in the front seat with the neighbor and the refugee father, leaving Slade and three others on the roof, two facing front and two facing the rear. The back was filled with dead ISIS terrorists; stacked like firewood.

Slade grimaced at the Delta Force soldier next to him, a twenty year old kid nick-named Johnny Bravo. Bravo grinned from ear to ear. “Didn’t you ever want to do this as a kid?”

The sniper gave him a sour look, and answered in his best deadpan voice; that is, his normal tone of voice, “What are you talking about Johnny; we didn’t have cars when I was a kid.”

The Delta’s laughed.

The heavily laden station wagon led the way, bouncing across the pothole scarred road. After ten minutes they slowed down. The headlights groped ahead in the darkness. Slade peered through the night, picking out a rough area next to the road. Something was in the shallow ditch; it stretched on for about twenty or thirty yards, it was hard to tell.

They stopped. The night was eerily quiet. There was only a slight desert breeze, pleasantly cool after the heat of the day. The breeze carried the stench of death.

Slade hopped off the top of the station wagon to see what it was in the ditch. Switching on the rifle mounted flashlight caused Slade’s already stern expression to grow positively grim. There were bodies in the ditch, dozens and dozens of bodies. Killer went to one of them and then another, examining them. He waved Slade over.

Slade felt his stomach turn as he got closer. Killer pointed out, “They weren’t even bound when they were shot. They look like they laid themselves face down and let the scumbags machine gun them to death.”

“They didn’t even put up a fight,” Slade said harshly.

“They died like sheep,” Killer agreed, standing up. He jerked his thumb back toward the cars. “Our Tangos probably took part in the killing. Let’s hide them amongst the men they murdered. Put them at the bottom; no one will ever know we did them.”

The Deltas hid the bodies, but halfway through the grisly chore they got a surprise. A trooper called Killer over. The commander was talking with Sulla and Slade.

“What is it?” he asked bluntly, stomping over to the pile of bodies. “You better not be showing me some of their handiwork! I mean, I’ve seen everything, but these guys are the sickest bunch of bastards on the planet!”

“No sir,” the Deltas said, visibly excited, “We got a live one!”

Killer hurried over and Slade followed. Sure enough, two Deltas were extricating a boy from the bottom of the pile. He was a skinny teenager, Slade couldn’t tell how old, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He wasn’t strong enough to burrow his way out from under several layers of dead men.

The boy was shaking when they finally got him clear. The Deltas gave him some water and he started talking. Neither Slade nor Killer could keep up with the boy’s Arabic. He spat out the story in a frantic spasm of shocked terror.

When he was done, Sulla told them, “ISIS rounded up everyone in the village who was from the military or the police. They broke into the homes, killing any who didn’t follow their orders or let them rape their wives and daughters. The boy watched his mother and younger sister get raped — he thinks his sister must be dead because she was so young and so many men brutalized her — Allah watch over her!”

Sulla wiped his eyes, continuing with difficulty. “When there weren’t enough police they simply gathered all of them up, men and boys as young as twelve. They herded the men out into the street and picked out the Christians. The rest they ordered into line and marched them to the trucks. They loaded themselves in the trucks and then they were driven out here, lined up in the ditch and told to lie down. Then the shooting started.”

“Bastards!” Slade cursed.

Killer sighed and grimaced, “We got about fifty or sixty men and boys back there — I’ve got to report this. I mean, this needs to stop. ISIS is on the offensive and out in the open going from village to village.”

Slade shook his head, “B-52’s loaded with cluster bombs and the problem disappears.”

“They’ll never go for it; it sounds too much like war,” Killer said scathingly. “Unfortunately, it’ll have to wait until after the meeting tomorrow — that takes priority.”

“Wait — what about this man’s son?” Sulla asked, pointing to the refugee father who was picking through the bodies, searching for someone.

Killer nodded, and then he turned to Slade. “He’s searching for his eldest son. The son was shot while they were fleeing, but he was still alive.”

“And he left his son back there?” Slade whispered incredulously.

“Yeah, damndest thing isn’t it?” Killer said. “Anyway, he wants us to go back to the village and take a look. Maybe he’s still alive.”

“It’s a little late for parental concern,” Slade replied coldly.

“We’ll go take a look, but if there’s any signs of ISIS still in town we’re out of here,” Killer said. “I can’t compromise the mission.”

An hour later they were in a ghost town; a movie set from Hell. Bodies, furniture and trash were strewn over the streets and barren yards. Burning houses lit the place up with an evil, flickering glow. The street was lined with dozens of men and women — even children — hung on makeshift crosses, trees and telephone poles; the ISIS terrorists crucified the village Christians. It seemed as if no one was alive, and indeed, that’s what they found when the father led them to his house.

The door hung half on its hinges. The family’s main room, where they watched TV, entertained relatives and otherwise lived their lives was a room of horrors. The refugee father saw his son bound to a chair, slumped over — dead.

On further inspection, death was a release. The young man was clearly tortured. The father was distraught, asking, “Why, why would they do this? Even when I was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war we never treated our prisoners this way. We’d shoot them — yes — but quickly, mercifully! Why would they do this; I don’t understand?”

All Slade and Kincaid could do was leave. They didn’t understand this either — any of it.