He turned left and picked up a little speed now that he was on a road of sorts.
A large bug splashed against the windshield in front of his face, leaving a blob of greenish goo. The body fluids of that one joined those of several other low-flying moths, mosquitoes, beetles, and whatevers. Apparently the insects didn’t hibernate for the winter here.
He wasn’t driving that fast, and you’d think they could see him coming for a long way off, but they kept splattering against the front of the car. He turned the wipers on, smeared the bug goo around, added the washer fluid to the mix, and managed to clear a patch of glass he could see through.
The road dipped into a gully, then came up, and he rolled over several half-buried rocks in the dirt, jolting him hard enough so his head nearly hit the ceiling.
He didn’t remember that part of the drive coming in. None of it looked familiar. Dark as it was, he couldn’t see anything but what was in the cone of his headlights, but surely he should have reached the highway by now.
Had he somehow taken a wrong turn?
He looked at his odometer. The highway couldn’t have been more than three or four miles from the dirt road. He must have come that far, he’d been driving for at least twenty or thirty minutes. It was 2:20 a.m. Howard would be hitting the terrorists in five minutes.
Maybe it was time to check the GPS.
Well, not yet. Give it another mile. If he didn’t see the highway by then, he’d turn around and backtrack.
Michaels shook his head. Brother. Wouldn’t that be a story for the folks at HQ? You heard about how Commander Michaels got lost in the desert? still don’t think so, Alex, m’boy.
There was a hillock ahead that curved to the left.
As he rounded the curve, the dirt was loose, and the car fish tailed and slipped traction, so he slowed to a crawl. To his left, there was a little stand of scrub trees, stunted pines or some such, none of which looked to be more than ten or twelve feet tall.
That was practically a forest out here.
A man stepped out of the scrub growth. He wore chocolate chip desert camouflage pants and a jacket, and held a short assault weapon in his hands, pointed at Michaels’s car. He waved the weapon, his meaning clear: Pull over.
An AK-47?
For a moment, just a moment, Michaels thought it must be one of Howard’s troops, but then he knew the man was all wrong. Wrong clothes, wrong gun, wrong place.
Fear spasmed in Michaels” belly as he realized who this must be: It was one of the terrorists– to Oh, shit! What had he done?
Better still–what was he going to do now?
Chapter 18 Sunday, December 26th, 2:24 a.m. Hila Bend, Arizona
Howard looked at his watch. A gift from his wife on his thirty fifth birthday, it was a Bulova Field Grade Marine Star, with a black face and a dial light, an analog quartz whose battery was recharged by the smallest body motion.
It wasn’t the most expensive watch made, not by a long shot, but she had saved for a year to buy it.
It kept dead-on time, and right now the sweep second hand was moving toward 0225 hours. Thirty seconds left… It was time.
“Ready to rock. Sergeant?” “Just call me Elvis.” The four vehicles were rolling, slowed somewhat to time their arrival.
The compound was just ahead, a smear of hard yellow flaring in the spook eyes’ optical field from the security light mounted high on the wall of the barn.
Which illumination should be going out just… about… now.
The compound went dark.
“Better make sure your filters are up.
Colonel, the light show is about to begin.” “I’ve been down this road before. Sergeant.” Both men smiled.
Time slowed for Alex Michaels as the gunman walked toward his car. It seemed as if he had days, weeks, months to decide what to do. The problem seemed to be that he couldn’t move.
Well, he could, but the speed of his movement bogged down to match the gunman’s walk. Just to lift his hand from the steering wheel seemed to take forever.
In what couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds, Alex sorted through all the possibilities he could think of. He could try to talk his way out of it. He could stomp the gas pedal and haul ass, ducking low so that when the guy opened up on him he might not get hit. He could pull his taser and hope to get the needles into the man in camo gear before he was hosed with jacketed death.
He could shit or go blind.
So many possibilities. How to choose?
The gunman got to within a foot or two of the door, and motioned with the assault rifle’s muzzle for Michaels to roll his window down.
Choose, Alex. Choose!
The PEE lights strobed like an electrical storm gone insane.
The polarizing filters in the suit’s helmet visor blocked the effect–plus they were behind the lights, and thus got only a partial hit anyhow.
“Gate dead ahead!” Fernandez yelled.
“Looks like our sappers have taken it down along with the guards. Might as well have rolled out a red carpet for us.” “Don’t count those chickens just yet.” The Humvee rolled through the gate, and one of the sappers waved at it as it went past.
“Alpha has landed,” came a voice over Howard’s LOSIR.
“We’re in the door.” “Beta’s got the back door,” came another voice.
“Delta’s on patrol,” came a third.
Fernandez slewed the Humvee to a stop by the shed where the chickens were kept, not far from the barn. Howard bailed out, the Thompson held ready, and Fernandez was next to him in two seconds.
“You didn’t lock the keys in the car, did you?” “Negative.” “Good, I hate it when you do that.” Truth of it was, Howard himself should have stayed outside the fence in command mode and directed traffic from there.
He didn’t really have a function here, except as backup for Alpha, which they ought not to need– “We’re in, got static, stand by–” Howard heard gunfire, both over his helmet phones and in real time. It came from inside the main house.
“Two terries down, two down! Alpha intact!” Alpha’s team leader called.
“Target just down the hall, stand by.” There came the sound of more gunfire from inside.
“So far, so good–” Howard began.
He felt the impacts of the bullets before he heard the shots, and the incoming rounds hit hard enough to jolt him. Thump, thump, thump, three of them, all on the left side, but the armor held-Damn!
Howard turned, saw a man and a woman in the doorway to the barn, illuminated by the bright yellow-orange of their muzzle flashes as they fired bursts from fully automatic rifles at him and Fernandez. Now and then, a tracer left a glowing red trail in the darkness. Bad idea– tracers worked both ways-Anot her bullet hit Howard on the torso. It felt like being whacked with a hammer.
Shit–to Michaels took a deep breath, then pressed the button to lower the window with his left hand while he carefully pulled the taser from his belt with his right hand.
The terrorist stepped right up to the car.
“Excuse me, officer,” Michaels said.
“What’s the problem?” Michaels already had his left hand on the door’s latch. He took another deep breath, then stared off in the distance and saw a series of dim light flashes. That would be the attack on the compound.
“What the hell is that?” Michaels said, still looking into the distance.
The gunman must have caught a glint of light peripherally.
He glanced away from Michaels to get a better look-Michaels yanked the latch up, threw his weight against the door, and slammed it into the surprised gunman. It wasn’t enough to knock him down, but it did rock him off balance.
“God damn–to was the man began. He flailed with the weapon and his empty hand, trying to catch his footing, but slid a little in the loose dirt on the road. He recovered a hair, enough so he could swing the assault rifle around-Michaels pulled the door shut. A little too hard–the door’s latch handle came off in his hand–but he didn’t have time to worry about that. He thrust his taser through the open window, pressed the laser aiming stud, saw the red dot on the center of the man’s chest, and fired the weapon. It seemed to take eons-The man jerked, juttered toward the car as the capacitor needles fed him however many thousand volts they held. The assault rifle nosed skyward and went off five or six times in one long noise–blaaaat!– flashing red-orange and making less noise than it seemed it should. The gunman spun to his left and corkscrewed, hit the dirt, and continued to spasm, the gun still gripped tightly in one hand but no longer firing-Michaels couldn’t open the door, since the handle had broken off in his hand, but he grabbed the window frame and hauled himself headfirst out of the car, did a sloppy dive and forward roll, and came up next to the downed man. He bent and jerked the AK-47 away from the gunman, then took two steps back and pointed the weapon at the man.