The Identity Mine

IX

‘Fire team, cover Echo point.’

Lieutenant Larry Bryant of the 48th Infantry Brigade’s Combat Team eased alongside the crumbling wall of an abandoned compound, the sun blazing off the baked walls and scorched earth, sweat beading on his forehead and itchy beneath his combat fatigues as he cradled his M–16 rifle and peered around a corner.

The desolate Iraqi desert stretched away to his right, while to his left meagre towns built it seemed from the very earth itself, the walls as crumbling and abandoned as the deserts, stood forlornly to reach up into the hard and unforgiving blue skies.

‘Bryant, Echo, standing by.’

Larry waited for the command to enter the compound, glimpsing through his sunglasses the shapes of his fellow troops forming up into covering positions, their weapons held at the ready. There was minimal chatter on the RT, and when any voice was heard it was clipped and short, tight with tension that made Larry’s jaw and temples ache.

The briefing had been just that — brief. A tip off. A location, abandoned, far out to the south of Basra. Unreliable source, a hostage sighting. Proceed with extreme caution. Everybody knew what that meant. As a former regular US Army soldier and now Georgian reservist supporting the fledgling Iraqi army as it fought to control the country against the ferocious rise of Islamic State, Larry was well used to combat situations, but this one was a tight — wire even for him. Just get us in there for Christ’s sake and get it over with.

‘Eagle eye, in position.’

The snipers were ready, covering from higher vantage points further back in the district. There was little wind and they were “sun down”, the sun behind them and thus not restricting their vision, perfectly placed to pick off any ambush attackers.

There was a moment’s pause and then the commanding officer’s voice crackled down the radio.

‘Entry team, fire team, go now now now!’

Larry burst into motion and dashed into the compound as behind him twenty more soldiers, all heavily festooned with webbing, weapons, water and other battle kit thundered across a deserted courtyard. Larry’s eyes swept the scene as he moved, hyper — alert for any sign of a threat.

Debris was strewn across the courtyard, desiccated weeds poked from cracked cement, broken down walls surrounded open doorways that were as black as night inside. The walls were pockmarked with impact craters from mortars and small arms, the ageing signs of conflict from two major wars fought by US forces over the decades. No vehicles, few footprints, no enemy fire.

Larry made straight for the main entrance, the doors hanging from their hinges having been blasted in long ago by some other fire team, probably clearing the building of insurgents a decade before. He slammed against the wall alongside the entrance as two of his men hurled flash — bangs inside and took up positions alongside their lieutenant, eyes down, gloved fingers in ears. Larry pulled off his sunglasses, his eyes closed and one finger curled over his rifle’s trigger.

A double boom thundered through the building and Larry whirled and rushed inside, his M–16 held before him as he hunted through the gloom. A cloud of gray smoke swirled from the flash — bangs as he plunged through it, all around him soldiers shouting as they advanced through the long abandoned home.

‘Clear left!’

‘Clear right!’

‘Eagle eye, no movement.’

‘Fire team, advance! Bravo, hold position!’

Larry’s command echoed around the hollow walls as they moved, half of the fire team holding a defensive position as the rest of the men followed Larry through the building. He could already see the rear courtyard down a long hall, a bright rectangle of flaring sunlight, rooms splitting off either side of him filled with debris and the rusting springs of old beds. A hotel or guesthouse maybe, sometime long in the past.

‘Enemy!’

Larry flinched and dropped down into a firing position as he saw a figure lunge into sight further down the corridor and the flash of an assault rifle muzzle. Bullets zipped past him as he fired, both of the men behind him likewise opening up on the silhouette confronting them with a withering hail of automatic fire.

The figure shuddered as multiple rounds tore into his body and slammed him onto his back on the ground, the rifle in his hands clattering down alongside him.

‘Advance!’

Larry, his eyes and ears supernaturally attuned now as adrenaline soared through his bloodstream, advanced in his crouched posture to the edge of the doorway, which opened out onto a small courtyard and an outbuilding perched in one corner.

The body of the man before him was riddled with bullets, blood seeping from each wound and the man’s chest rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to take his last breaths. Pink bubbles frothed around the corners of his mouth as blood leaked into his punctured lungs, and his dark eyes stared up into the hard blue sky above.

Larry watched him for a moment and then waved his men past. They bolted out into the courtyard, weapons aiming this way and that as a second fire team entered their field of view ahead, cutting off any potential enemy’s escape route.

‘North entrance clear!’ Larry called into his microphone.

‘South entrance clear!’

Larry advanced toward the outbuilding, its crumbling walls and shattered windows long abandoned. As he breached the entrance with his rifle held before him he was beginning to wonder if this whole thing had been a bust when he saw the bright white walls of the rearmost room to his right. He slowed, glanced over his shoulder and indicated to his men that he had seen something ahead. Then, he positioned them on the left side of the dark hall so that their weapons would more easily come to bear on anybody hiding in the room.

Larry crept to the edge of the door’s jam and crouched down, then nodded his head once, twice and a final third time. On the third he burst into the room in a low run as behind him two more soldiers rushed in, aiming over his head and bringing all three rifles to bear at once.

An empty room, perfectly whitewashed walls, glass in a new window. A single bed and upon it the naked form of a young woman, her eyes closed, long blonde hair. Larry lurched upright, cautious as he searched the bed for any sign of a bomb or other improvised explosive device that had taken the lives of so many troops.

‘Could be inside her.’

The gruesome suggestion of the trooper beside him was none the less tactically sound; the enemy could have inserted a motion — sensitive Improvised Explosive Device inside the woman’s body. Nobody took chances out here, not with Islamic State moving around and seemingly devoid of the tiniest morsel of compassion.

‘Check her out,’ Larry ordered.

Within seconds, an explosives specialist in the team was inside the room and scanning the body. It took only a few moments to ascertain whether the woman represented a lethal threat to the company.

‘She’s clean.’

Larry eased forward, and he didn’t need to pull out the image that his team had been provided with to tell that the woman on the bed was the target of their mission even through the blood on her face where she had been punched, blood oozing from her nose. He slipped off a glove to press two fingers to the woman’s neck and felt a pulse throbbing vibrantly beneath his touch as the woman yelped in fright.

Larry flinched as she bolted upright on the bed, sucked in a deep breath of air and screamed as she saw the heavily armed men surrounding her. Larry jumped forward and wrapped his arms around her as she flailed in panic, and he spoke slowly and clearly.

‘You’re safe, ma’am. Lieutenant Larry Bryant, 18th Infantry, US Army. You’re safe.’

It took three repeats of the sentence before the woman stopped thrashing in his arms, and Larry turned to look over his shoulder.

‘Contact C&C, tell them we found Kiera Lomas.’