“This way! The ferangi are at the foot of this avenue,” he called.

  Haddad was unused to such exertion but kept pace with the figure trotting before him. He cursed the man for his vigor even while admiring him for his zeal. The face of Haddad’s mask contracted and expanded noisily with each labored breath. The plexiglass lenses fogged and cleared, fogged and cleared until they were opaque with the wet air condensing within the confining mask. Haddad tore off the mask with a gasp. Better to breathe the poisonous swill than be asphyxiated within the cloying mask.

  “Go! Go, my brothers!” Haddad stopped and croaked to the others. He gestured with a fist as they passed and urged them to speed so as not to see his flushed face or hear his labored breathing. The last of his men jogged past into the swirling gloom. Haddad covered his mouth with a sleeve and continued after them at a shamble. He would rest when the ferangi were dead and the scourge secured.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THINGS GO BOOM

  There was no Home Depot in the neighborhood so the SEALs had to make due with what they had.

  To turn the three artillery rounds into vault-busters they needed stable electrical lines. They found these in the walls of the office building. Chili and Pig were assigned to loot the equivalent of Romex wire in lengths as long as they could find. They started at the terminal box in the basement and loosened the connections. They worked their way upwards breaking through the plaster walls to find the longest un-spliced runs, which they snaked out of the walls, checking for tears in the insulation as they worked. The office block was definitely an upgraded property and wired with UK-regulation single core wire insulated with PVC. Priest ordered up a length of two hundred feet. Using duct tape, they were able to meet his requirements with three long pieces spliced together. They kept three spare fifty-foot lengths in case the first blast or second didn’t do the trick.

  Woody went with Heath to find a pair of useable, charged car batteries. It was easily accomplished as the garage building across the street from the bank housed a few cars whose owners had not fled the city. The batteries were still juiced. They unhooked them and carried them to place them against the front wall of the bank.

  Priest instructed Heath on how to wire a 122mm into an IED in three easy steps. Heath had been to a few courses in improvised destruction but it didn’t hurt to have a refresher from a master and Priest was recognized as a Jedi across all the teams. Priest explained that Heath would be back up if something went wrong with the first round and Priest was turned to vapor. The rest of the team was sent to position along the street on overwatch. Pancho sent his two gunfighters to sniper posts as well.

  The air was close and humid inside the office suite above the bank. There wasn’t a great danger of a static charge in the heat. Just as a precaution, Priest and Heath touched a metal chair to discharge any ambient charge. There was no such thing as being too careful when dismantling an explosive charge capable of turning a heavy tank to steaming scrap in a nanosecond.

  Improvising with a plumber’s wrench and a flathead screwdriver, Priest loosened the nose of the device to reveal the detonator cap atop the warhead. The shell was packed with four kilograms of TNT. From the wings folded at its base it looked to be an anti-armor or anti-bunker round. That meant the charge inside was directed to blast forward in one destructive punch. In other words, perfect for their purposes. They needed massive directed fire to smash a hole through the steel interior wall. The detonator looked innocent enough, like a part you might find if you took the back off a washing machine. But it was one sophisticated little button, able to sense altitude, passage of time and trajectory. A twitchy bastard if not handled right.

  Priest trimmed the insulation from a four-foot length of cable and separated the two copper wires and the steel ground line.

  “I wrap wire one around the body of the round,” Priest said evenly while miming the operation with his hands. He’d wait until Heath was clear before actually prepping the round.

  “Wire two goes inside the nose. I make a loop and drop it in behind the touch pad and make sure it’s making clean contact with metal.” Priest made a loop in the wire wide enough to slip over the tab visible in the warhead.

  “I drop it over the cap then turn my cinch until it’s in there tight.”

  “Then back to the battery, touch the poles on the car battery and we’re in. So simple even an asshole could do it,” Heath said.

  “Now get clear out while I put it in place,” Priest said and lifted the round to carry it to the hole they’d torn in the floor to expose the vault roof below.

  Heath made his way across the street at an easy walk. They were keeping up a façade though they hadn’t seen anyone on the street all day. Even with visibility significantly reduced by the literal fog of war, you never knew who was watching or from where. They had to assume there were eyes on them. Heath entered the garage building and sat down by the pair of car batteries in the shelter of the stout concrete wall. The other two artillery rounds were in their rucksacks a few feet away along with the spare loops of electrical cable. The other SEALs were spread out over the area keeping the bank front and garage inside their field of fire in case something came along to bite them in the ass. Pancho was atop the garage with Blair Freeman. His two pistoleros were staying out of sight.

  The city was eerily quiet except for when it wasn’t. The MiG would boom overhead followed by the tremor of bombs going off somewhere over the rooftops. If the JDAMs hit a sweet spot there’d be an encore of muted secondary blasts. Sometimes there’d be some half-hearted anti-aircraft fire. Then all quiet until the next sortie. That would change if Assad’s bullies made a big push. Once the helo gunships got in range it would be shitting death from the sky non-stop.

  Heath heard a scuff of a sandal sole from within the shadows of the garage. He rose to one knee and trained his front sight on the source of the noise.

  “Mister Heath?” Gharib’s voice.

  “Come closer. Step into the light,” Heath said.

  Gharib came out of the dark smiling and sat down by Heath after they’d shared a fist bump.

  “You are going soon?” the boy asked. His smile faltered a bit at the edges.

  “Soon as we get what we came for we’re walking out.”

  Gharib looked away.

  “You’re coming with us, right?” Heath said.

  The boy turned back, beaming.

  “I can do that? I can go with you? On helicopter like in a movie?”

  “I said walking and I meant walking,” Heath said returning the boy’s smile. “We’ll be following the refugees north to Turkey.”

  “And I go too?”

  “We’re not about to lose our good luck charm.” Heath said.

  The boy looked puzzled at that. Heath started to explain when Priest stepped from the sunlight leading the electric cable behind him.

  “Count off if you’re in position,” Priest said into his sat comm.

  Woody, Chili and Pig counted off. They were in their overwatch hides and out of range of the blast area.

  “Bronson. Acknowledge,” Priest said.

  “Bronson in position,” Blair’s voice in his earbud.

  “And our new friends?” Priest said.

  “Outside the blast radius.”

  “Fire in the hole,” Priest said and touched the bared ends of the cable to the posts on one of the car batteries.

  A sharp crack from within the bank building shook more dust off the façade. A chunk of masonry crashed to the street exploding into hundreds of pieces. Heath had a hand to Gharib’s back and pressed the boy against the concrete wall of the garage. They felt the impact through the cool surface of the wall.

  Priest removed the wire ends from the battery posts. He waited until the dust had cleared enough to see the opposite side of the street before crossing. He radioed from inside after a moment.

  “We’ll need the second charge.” Priest was up making his way into the fresh pall of dust.

  “Coming,” Heath said and hefted the heavy ruck.

  “And the spare wire,” Priest called back.

  “I’m on it,” Heath responded and turned to Gharib. “You stay here where it’s safe. Don’t follow me. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” the boy nodded.

  “And don’t touch anything. You hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  Heath followed Priest back across the street. He humped the ruck containing the second arty round through the haze. The fifty-foot length of wire was slung over his shoulder. Within the building, the halls and steps were littered with more debris than before. The 122 going off over the safe brought down more of the ceiling. Sections of wall were cracked and the plaster lath exposed over broad expanses. The air smelled like piss. Heath knew from experience that it was piss. Plasterers and masons in this part of the world often used urine in the mix.

  He found Priest waiting for him on the second floor clearing fresh wreckage from around the hole over the vault. It was mostly from the ceiling. A marble-topped desk had also fallen through from the floor above. The next detonation might just bring the building down.

  Heath gently set down the ruck and helped Priest clean the area. They shifted the heavy desk aside and Priest lay prone by the hole in the floor. Heath joined him. Priest illuminated the hole with an LED hand flash.

  The artillery round had punched a neat puncture though the steel roof of the vault. It was about eight inches across at its widest. The metal melted by the impact was still smoking from the intense heat and pressure of the blast.

  “The contents don’t look to be on fire. That’s good,” Heath said.

  “A second charge should rip a hole big enough for one of us to get inside,” Priest said.

  “If not we have one more ready to roll. You going to need help wiring it up?”

  “I can manage. Just splice the fresh wire for me on your way back to your position,” Priest said.

  Heath removed the looped wire from the ruck and handed it off to Priest. Priest cradled the live shell out and set it on the floor by the hole. He took the end of the cable from Heath who backed from the room playing it out as he went.

  “Sing out when it’s spliced,” Priest said.

  “Roger that.”

  The wire was still intact where it snaked down the stairs. Heath sat on a step and cut and stripped the cable on both ends and twisted the wires together then insulated them from one another with duct tape before wrapped the splice together with more tape.

  “All spliced up. You’re good to go,” Heath said and took up the slack.

  “See you across the street.” Priest’s voice.

  “Stay safe, bro,” Heath said and descended the stairs toward daylight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  STRANGERS IN THE HOOD

  Chili was the first to spot the black-clad figures approaching their position.

  He could see the entire street from his vantage point in a third floor office. His sniper post was atop two heavy desks he’d shoved together. The Dragunov was trained out a pair of French doors that led to a tiny balcony framed with wrought iron railings. He was situated at the base of the “T” intersection where the broad boulevard dead-ended at the bank street. He could see down the boulevard or shift his gaze to a window at his right to see the garage roof down the block. Freeman and the guy calling himself Pancho were visible there observing the bank.

  Chili watched Priest and Heath making their trips between the garage and the bank front. They were lost to his sight as they neared the bank. Pig was in a window further down the block on the opposite side of the street where he had a reverse view of Chili’s line of sight. Together they could cover the whole range of fire with some overlap in case unwanted guests showed up. Woody was on the roof of the office block and acting as floating cover to double down on the fire support where needed.

  The two Israeli gunhands were somewhere in the buildings along the street. Chili caught a glimpse of one of them crossing a window opening directly across from his sniper hide. Chili was well back from the French doors and invisible even to someone looking directly at him. He figured the other Mossad guy was probably somewhere on his side of the street echoing the pattern of concealment he and Pig adopted. The two Jews were not on the SEALs’ encrypted sat network. They’d just have to keep up or keep out of the way.

  Visibility was limited down the north-south boulevard as it was filled with smoke from the air strikes downtown. Chili spotted a dude loping out of the cloud as he scanned the fire zone. The guy was running. From his body language, Chili intuited that the guy was running toward something not away from something. The runner was all in black with his head in mufti like a half-ass ninja. He was strapped to the balls with an ammo vest, grenades and a Kalashnikov that he carried as if it was a part of him.

  Chili flipped his scope to digital and worked through the facets to the filter that allowed him to peer through the smoke and dust like it wasn’t there. Behind the lead runner were other pixelated figures carrying guns and rocket launchers. They were coming on like they meant it. The runner wasn’t point. He was the hound dog and leading the pack right to the SEALs. The strangers were all in black; some kind of crazy martyr rah-rah brigade. These guys were not good news for the mission.

  “Contact. I have action on the boulevard,” Chili said low.

  “Passing through or coming hard?” It was Freeman’s voice.

  “Coming hard,” Chili said.

  “Coming for us?” Freeman again.

  “We’re the only ones here,” Chili said. Over the two days they’d been active on this street these were the first armed men they’d seen.

  “Discourage them,” Freeman said.

  “Roger that,” Chili said.

  No turning back now, Chili thought. Once this switch is flipped there’s no turning it off.

  He pulled the shoulder pad of the Dragunov snug to his shoulder and sighted past the lead runner to a jogging figure in the pack. The lead guy was in the open with no cover on either side. That man was Chili’s whenever he wanted him.

  Chili let his breath out, adjusted for angle and squeezed the trigger home. His view through the scope jumped and he eased it back down in time to see his target flipping hard enough to send a sandal spinning from his foot. He dropped the crosshairs on a second target and squeezed. That man slipped to the ground like he’d passed out.

  Now the cockroaches realized there was someone in the kitchen with them. Some dropped to the ground. The rest fled for either side of the street. Chili nailed a third man running before he dove into a building entrance.

  The lead runner stopped in his tracks and looked behind him to see the street empty. The hound dog lost his pack. He ran first to the left and then to the right. Chili stayed on him until it turned from funny to sad. Chili then put a slug center mass into the clueless bastard, sending him tumbling to the street.

  The Dragunov was fitted with a damn fine flash suppressor. There was no way the gang in black could see where their long distance tormentor was. That didn’t stop them from unloading in his general direction. Full mags were emptied at him. Tracers flew from every angle down the throat of the boulevard to strike every surface within their range of fire. Shots peppered the bricks facing Chili’s hide. A few came through the open window to punch holes in the ceiling behind him. His breathing regular, Chili framed one of the muzzle flashes in the reticules of his scope and squeezed. The muzzle flash went dim and he was rewarded by the sight of a black figure sagging to the cobbles, a hot rifle skittering from dead hands.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  “Situation report!”

  Priest and Freeman were cross talking in Chili’s ear.

  “Listen up! I have contact front! Twenty fuckers or more!” Chili barked. He stopped when he heard an AK cutting loose with controlled bursts somewhere above him. Tracers streamed downrange to suppress movement on the boulevard. It was Woody up on the roof two floors above him.

  “I have eyes on six of them! The rest are on your side of the wide street where I can’t see them!” Chili continued. “They may be hiding or they may be inside the buildings looking for a way through.

  As he said that, fire erupted from inside the building nearest the corner across the street and to Chili’s right. One of the Israeli gunhands was in there and making contact. It was close-combat. The half-ass ninjas were inside their perimeter.

  “Contact corner building! One of Pancho’s guys!” Chili sighted on the building to see what support he could offer. He focused in time to see a sudden bloom of gas from one of the windows.

  An RPG.

  Chili rolled off the desks and made himself small against a wall.

  The building felt like a ship at sea. Smoke darkened the room. He had ear protection in one ear. In the other, the earbud offered a scant barrier to the crush of noise all around him. His head rang.

  “Grenade! Ar-Pee-Gees! Flanking the garage!” he called but could not hear the words. He knew he was shouting because his throat felt raw. He braced himself against one of the desks and something stung his hand. The fog of smoke cleared a bit and he could see the top surface of both desks looked like they’d sprouted evil steel weeds; the leaves glowing hot where they’d pin-cushioned the thick wood. They rained down from a floor above to strike right where he’s been lying.

  Woody was on the roof above him.

  “Woody! Woody!”

  All he heard was the insistent buzz in his head. All he could see was a swirling blue smog.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE HEAT

  The roof seemed to drop away under Woody’s boots and he was hovering like a cartoon coyote. Gravity restored its pull an instant later. He was slammed down on the graveled surface. The heavy wooden stock of the AK punched him in the chest. A dense cloud of slate gray dust settled on him. He could still see the streaks of light left by tracers.