Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) by Peter Nealen Page B
Authors: Peter Nealen
Ads: Link
of movement up ahead, and then Cyrus was crawling through the scrub toward me. I moved up to meet him.
“We need to get t he hell away from these lights,” he murmured. “I’d like to move us north.”
“You’re the pointman, dude,” I replied in the same low tone. Whispers can actually travel farther than low-pitched speech at night. “If I think you’re getting too far off course, I’ll correct you, but you know where we’re going just as well as I do. Be the pointman.”
He stared at me for a moment, as if expecting something else , as the diffuse but still too bright light of the headlights swept over our position again. “Roger,” he said shortly. “North it is.”
The light traveled on as the car swung away on whatever patrol route it was on, if that was indeed what was going on over there. Cyrus got up on a knee, took a long look around, then stood up and led off, this time heading straight into the desert, away from the oil compound. After a short interval, I got up and followed him, my leg protesting at every movement. I looked back to make sure Ahram was getting up and following me, and hadn’t fallen asleep during the halt. It was a real concern; as comparatively good as Hussein Ali’s boys were, there were still issues with their fieldcraft, issues we’d have to correct quickly and probably harshly.
However, he was getting to his feet behind me, his M4 held ready in his hands, and looking back to make sure the man behind him was also getting up. Satisfied, I turned back to follow Cyrus.
The rest of the movement, while slow, was relatively uneventful. It continued to get steadily slower as the night continued to wear on. Marcus was all in by the time we got to the RV point, beginning to weave as well as limp. He’d lost more blood than we’d thought, and was utterly spent. Plus, most of Hussein Ali’s boys, even the unwounded ones, weren’t exactly endurance athletes. Something we’d have to work on in the future.
Cyrus and I were huddled in the bush, watching the RV point. From ground level, it looked much the same as any other stretch of road in the desert; the overpass to the south wasn’t all that large, and the on-ramps were more like side roads leading onto the highway than ramps per se. Since it was about 0300, there was no traffic to speak of on the road. There were, however, four dark shapes on the other side of the highway, all roughly truck sized and truck-shaped, glowing faintly with heat in the thermal attachments on our PVS-14s.
I flashed the IR illuminator on my 14s toward the shapes. A moment later, an answering double flash came from the lead truck. Mike and his team were on-site and everything was clear.
I pointed to Cyrus, signaling him to push forward and make contact, then turned back toward the rest. A quick passing of hand signals and, in the case of those without night vision, taps on shoulders or ankles, and the group was getting up and moving toward the vehicles.
I was still plenty keyed-up. Extract is always the most dangerous part of any mission, mainly because guys start to “smell the barn” and get focused on getting back safe instead of security. Murphy dictates that that’s when the bad guys show up.
Not to mention the fact that we weren’t safe once we were on the trucks. Not by a long shot. We were still in Indian country and would be for a long time. Hell, there really wasn’t anywhere in this country where we were “inside the wire” south of Kurdistan. The entire fucking country was hostile, and until we knew more about the Project, I had to admit that that included the US Embassy, where we were headed.
Mike had two deuce-and-a-halfs as well as three HiLuxes. He was trying to stay a little more low-profile, so the vehicles weren’t visibly armed. That did mean there was more room in the beds without the machine gun mounts. Between Jim, Hussein Ali, and I, we got
“We need to get t he hell away from these lights,” he murmured. “I’d like to move us north.”
“You’re the pointman, dude,” I replied in the same low tone. Whispers can actually travel farther than low-pitched speech at night. “If I think you’re getting too far off course, I’ll correct you, but you know where we’re going just as well as I do. Be the pointman.”
He stared at me for a moment, as if expecting something else , as the diffuse but still too bright light of the headlights swept over our position again. “Roger,” he said shortly. “North it is.”
The light traveled on as the car swung away on whatever patrol route it was on, if that was indeed what was going on over there. Cyrus got up on a knee, took a long look around, then stood up and led off, this time heading straight into the desert, away from the oil compound. After a short interval, I got up and followed him, my leg protesting at every movement. I looked back to make sure Ahram was getting up and following me, and hadn’t fallen asleep during the halt. It was a real concern; as comparatively good as Hussein Ali’s boys were, there were still issues with their fieldcraft, issues we’d have to correct quickly and probably harshly.
However, he was getting to his feet behind me, his M4 held ready in his hands, and looking back to make sure the man behind him was also getting up. Satisfied, I turned back to follow Cyrus.
The rest of the movement, while slow, was relatively uneventful. It continued to get steadily slower as the night continued to wear on. Marcus was all in by the time we got to the RV point, beginning to weave as well as limp. He’d lost more blood than we’d thought, and was utterly spent. Plus, most of Hussein Ali’s boys, even the unwounded ones, weren’t exactly endurance athletes. Something we’d have to work on in the future.
Cyrus and I were huddled in the bush, watching the RV point. From ground level, it looked much the same as any other stretch of road in the desert; the overpass to the south wasn’t all that large, and the on-ramps were more like side roads leading onto the highway than ramps per se. Since it was about 0300, there was no traffic to speak of on the road. There were, however, four dark shapes on the other side of the highway, all roughly truck sized and truck-shaped, glowing faintly with heat in the thermal attachments on our PVS-14s.
I flashed the IR illuminator on my 14s toward the shapes. A moment later, an answering double flash came from the lead truck. Mike and his team were on-site and everything was clear.
I pointed to Cyrus, signaling him to push forward and make contact, then turned back toward the rest. A quick passing of hand signals and, in the case of those without night vision, taps on shoulders or ankles, and the group was getting up and moving toward the vehicles.
I was still plenty keyed-up. Extract is always the most dangerous part of any mission, mainly because guys start to “smell the barn” and get focused on getting back safe instead of security. Murphy dictates that that’s when the bad guys show up.
Not to mention the fact that we weren’t safe once we were on the trucks. Not by a long shot. We were still in Indian country and would be for a long time. Hell, there really wasn’t anywhere in this country where we were “inside the wire” south of Kurdistan. The entire fucking country was hostile, and until we knew more about the Project, I had to admit that that included the US Embassy, where we were headed.
Mike had two deuce-and-a-halfs as well as three HiLuxes. He was trying to stay a little more low-profile, so the vehicles weren’t visibly armed. That did mean there was more room in the beds without the machine gun mounts. Between Jim, Hussein Ali, and I, we got
Similar Books
