Chapter 23 Great Minds

Chapter 23

Great Minds

With rolling echoes of thunder still pounding in my skull, Skipper said, “Sitrep. What’s going on in there?”

A thousand answers to that question floated somewhere above me, but the truth was a phrase I couldn’t bring myself to say. “Unclear, but all four inside are still operational.”

Before she could respond, automatic weapons fire roared from the overhead, and I watched for the rounds to tear through the ceiling and rip us into shreds, but they didn’t come.

A thousand scenarios raced through my mind, and I called, “Singer, report.”

The sniper’s breathy response came. “Shots fired through the roof. He knows I’m up here. Egressing now.”

Anya pulled open a narrow closet door, revealing a ladder protruding from the ceiling inside. She and Shawn stood with their eyes trained on me, obviously waiting for the order to give chase.

I spread two fingers, pointed to my eyes, and then to the ceiling. Shawn started up the ladder with his rifle leading the way. Getting eyes into that attic was the only way we could know what or who we were facing.

Near the top of the ladder, our SEAL pulled out a small telescoping rod with a round mirror affixed to the end and extended it through the opening above. He made a three-hundred-sixty-degree sweep of the space and then glanced back at me while shaking his head. He stowed the mirror and signaled with a raised thumb that he wanted to go up, so I gave a nod.

Shawn’s muzzle was first through the opening as his boots made slow, deliberate progress up the ladder. He twisted his massive shoulders to squeeze through the opening as he took one more step upward. Then, to my surprise and utter terror, both of his boots left the rungs of the ladder, and he yelled, “Get down!” as he fell back through the opening.

Mongo, Anya, and I dived for the deck, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene unfolding in front of me. Before Shawn’s boots hit the floor, the overhead exploded into a billion shards of wood, sheetrock, and insulation. Shawn landed on his side with a massive cloud of dust boiling around him and hundreds of pounds of debris raining down on him.

With lumber still flying and the roar of the explosion still echoing through the building, Mongo lunged for Shawn. The giant gripped the unconscious SEAL by the collar of his plate carrier and dragged him from the rubble. Mongo stumbled and fell backward, dragging Shawn’s limp body on top of him. I shoved two fingers against the flesh of our newest team member’s neck, begging for a pulse.

His helmet and nods were gone, and his rifle hung from its sling around his neck and shoulder. His face was a bloody, dirty expanse of nothing.

Finally, a weak thud touched my fingertips, and Shawn’s nostrils flared slightly.

I yelled, “Get him out of here.”

Mongo scampered to his feet and hefted Shawn across his shoulder, leaving Anya and me to continue the fight.

I grabbed the footboard of the bed and dragged it beneath the gaping wound in the ceiling where the tiny closet and ladder had been only seconds before. Using the bed as a step, I leapt upward and planted both arms on the framing of the destroyed ceiling. Anya stepped onto the bed and grabbed each of my boots, placing them on her shoulders. With her effort from below, I hauled myself into the attic and scanned every direction in search of any sign of Sidney Barbour, but the smoke and dust from the explosion reduced the visibility to mere feet. Reaching beneath my plate carrier, I yanked my T-shirt up and over my mouth and nose to avoid breathing the dust that filled the air.

Convinced that Barbour had to be at least as blind as me in that environment, I abandoned my search and spun around to grab Anya’s arms. I pulled the Russian through the opening and deposited her beside me.

Hoping my comms were still operational, I said, “Anya and I are pursuing into the attic. Shawn is down, and Mongo is bringing him out. Hold your fire, and somebody cover the exfil.”

Singer said, “I’m on the ground and covering the northeastern corner.”

Gator said, “I’ve got the southwest, and Kodiak’s moving to cover Mongo and Shawn. Where are they coming out?”

Mongo huffed. “We’re moving to the west end.”

Disco’s calm voice came over the radio. “The bird’s ready to fly if Shawn needs dust-off.”

Mongo’s breath was coming hard, and he said, “Get that chopper in here. Shawn needs more help than I can give in the field. He’s down hard.”

I leaned toward Anya. “How many mags do you have?”

She whispered, “Eight. Do you want me to pin him down?”

I pulled four thirty-round mags from my rig and slid them into her hand. “Great minds think alike. I’ll stay low, and I want every ounce of lead you can fire to fill the air above me. I’m going hunting.”

The telltale womp-womp of the Huey settling into ground effect reassured me that Shawn was only minutes away from an emergency room somewhere near Houston, but the sick feeling that followed reminded me that we no longer had a helo for extraction. In that moment, I had no way of knowing that neither of those things was true.

Staying as low as my gear would allow, I crawled on my belly toward the east end of the barn’s attic. The holes Barbour had shot in the roof allowed just enough light into the space to give my nods something to magnify. My visibility wasn’t great, but it was better than nil. The deeper I crawled into the space, the more I could see, but if Barbour had access to grenades and explosives, I had to believe he had his own set of night-vision goggles. If I turned on my infrared light or laser, it would point directly back to me, giving him a perfectly lit target to destroy. Darkness, in that moment, was both my friend and my enemy.

When I was ten feet from Anya, she raised her M4 and sent a flurry of 5.56mm rounds screaming over my head. The projectiles were mindless killing machines at that point, and they’d be just as happy to tear into my back as they would to find the flesh of Barbour’s body somewhere in the dark. Anya wouldn’t lower her rifle, but the supersonic lead slicing through the air just a few inches above me was enough to keep my attention focused as low as possible.

Counting full auto rounds leaving a muzzle is impossible, but the pause in the gunfire made it clear Anya was changing magazines. That gave me two seconds to scurry forward as quickly as possible, and I gained ten feet of advantage just before she opened fire again. This time, though, two sets of automatic weapons sounds pierced the air. Barbour was shooting back.

The sound of his submachine gun against the thunder of Anya’s M4 was like a violin competing with a bass drum. He was clearly ahead and right, and in that moment, I wanted his neck in my hands. Crawling onto his dead body full of Anya’s rounds would be a disappointment. I wanted to look into his eyes and make him beg to stay alive. I couldn’t call off my gunner, though. If she let up, he’d fill the attic with lead until neither of us was alive.

It was time for a fresh magazine for Anya, so I braced the toes of my boots against a rafter and prepped to charge Barbour when the pause came. It came, but Anya’s wasn’t the only gun that fell silent. Barbour’s weapon hushed as well, and the eerie silence made my blood run cold.

Did she hit him? Am I on the verge of explaining to the police why I was in a gunfight in somebody else’s attic a thousand miles from home?

Anya’s fire returned, but it wasn’t rifle fire. It was the dull thud of her 9mm instead of the sharp crack of the M4. She was alive, but her rifle clearly was not.

A wedge of light exploded from the southeast corner of the attic, and the shadow of a figure flew into the beam.

I yelled, “Cease fire!”

Anya’s pistol fell silent, and I raced toward the opening through which the light had come. I dived to the deck and stuck my head through the hole. It was a small ladder affixed to the wall. Barbour was nowhere in sight, but he had to be there. He had to be somewhere near the base of the ladder.

I spun and forced my body through the narrow opening and onto the ladder. As I descended, I made the radio call. “He’s on the ground floor at the east end. Take him alive if possible.”

When I hit the ground at the base of the ladder, the world around me exploded into bright white light. I threw a hand against my nods, shoving them up and over my helmet on their hinge. Someone had turned on the lights, and my eyes were paying the price.

As I shook off the confusion from the flood of light, I heard Anya descending the ladder above me. She hit the ground to my right, and I said, “Clear the stables.”

She started down the right side, and I moved left, kicking open stall doors as we went. We were no longer in a capture mindset. We were fighting for our lives, and I was determined that either Barbour’s body or mine would be carried out of that barn.

Every stall was clear and looked as if the concrete floor had just been scrubbed and disinfected. If there had ever been a horse in that barn, there was no sign of him left. With only four stalls remaining for Anya and me to clear, the thundering report of Singer’s.338 Lapua roared through the night.

Singer said, “Do you still want him alive, boss?”

I stopped my search through the stalls. “If you can take him without casualties, take him alive. Say position.”

He said, “You’ll find a burning Jeep two hundred yards east of the barn, and your target is pinned to the ground.”

“Hold him,” I ordered. “I’m on my way.”

Anya and I sprinted from the barn to find the scene just as Singer had described, with the Jeep in flames. Kodiak stood six feet away from Barbour with his rifle trained on his head.

Kneeling on the man’s back was our SEAL with his sidearm pressed into his prisoner’s neck. “Come on, boss. Please let me kill him.”

I took a knee and grabbed a handful of Barbour’s hair. With his head twisted far enough for him to look into my eyes, I said, “I’ve got a few questions for you, but why don’t you take a little nap first?”

A butt-stroke to the temple sent him into the spirit world, and Kodiak stuck him with the same tranquilizer that had his wife sleeping like a baby.

Shawn relaxed and settled to the ground beside me.

I watched him squint and reopen his eyes several times. “I thought you were dead.”

He twisted his neck, popping his spine in both directions. “I’m pretty sure I was, but I rubbed a little dirt on it and sucked it up. I feel better now. Are we taking this guy back to the ship? I’d like to have a little prayer meeting with him. Just the two of us.”

“We’re taking both of them,” I said. “Gator, you and Mongo get the wife while we load this heap on the chopper.”

Disco touched down a few yards away, blowing fire from the burning Jeep in every direction, and we had both detainees strapped inside in no time.

I yelled into the cockpit, “Do you have the fuel to make the ship nonstop?”

Disco gave me the thumbs-up, and I patted the door.

I turned to the team. “I want Mongo and Kodiak on the bird. The rest of us will clean this up and meet you back at Houma after you drop off our guests in their suite aboard our luxury ocean liner.”