Brian Drake - The Glinkov Extraction

One truck left.

Return fire zipped overhead. Stiletto didn’t hear it so much as feel the small shockwave of each bullet. Something chunked into the back seat, tearing open the vinyl, seat stuffing flying in Stiletto’s face as he dropped the empty mag and shoved another in place.

Beside him, Short Fuse took over firing, his AK-47 spitting rounds, hot brass landing on Stiletto’s back. Short Fuse was as good with a rifle or pistol as he was with a bomb.

Stiletto had hired both to help out with an assassination mission from the Israelis. The target: a Palestinian master mind training insurgents in Iraq. The whole plan had gone belly up quickly. Now they were on the run. And the target still breathed.

Stiletto shifted out of Short Fuse’s muzzle blast, trying to fire as the Jeep took another sharp turn, to the left this time, the tires screaming again. He would have complained except that turn meant the landing zone was only a few blocks away.

Both AK-47s spat flame, rounds striking the hood of the truck, gunmen leaning out the windows to fire back. Stiletto tried to target one of those gunners, but his shots went wide as the Jeep hit another bump. He aimed instead for the front tires, shouting for Short Fuse to do the same. Presently one of the front tires popped, the truck swerving wildly left-and-right, and the gunners were more interested in hanging on than fighting. Short Fuse faced forward, Stiletto continuing to cover their rear, as Hardball kept the accelerator floored.

Stiletto looked ahead. The bombed-out warehouse they’d used as a hide site grew in the distance, Stiletto very happy to see the exposed steel beams where walls had once stood. Almost there indeed. He looked skyward. No sign of the pick-up chopper.

Stiletto stayed low and hauled a satellite phone from under his shirt. “Where are you?”

“Ten minutes out,” replied the pilot, his voice almost crystal clear over the handset.

“Copy. We’re at the extraction point.”

Hardball brought the Jeep to a stop near the open front of the warehouse. The trio hopped out, dragging equipment bags with them. The pursuing gunners had no vehicle, but they still had feet. Four gunners ran toward them.

“Inside, on the roof,” Stiletto ordered, Hardball and Short Fuse double-timing into the building. They pounded up a set of steel stairs three floors up to the roof.

Most of the roof remained intact. The chopper couldn’t land, but the pilot planned to get low enough for the team to climb aboard via rope ladder. Now that they were exposed and on the run, their clandestine escape was anything but.

Hopefully, this time luck was smiling on them.

And then Stiletto reminded himself that he didn’t believe in luck. The only thing that would get them out of this was skill and the ability to plan on the fly.

In the event of an attack, Stiletto and his men had arranged piles of concrete in various places throughout the warehouse and on the roof to use as cover. They ran to those spots now, Stiletto and Hardball choosing locations close to the roof’s edge while Short Fuse found a spot covering the stairwell opening they had passed through.

Stiletto jammed a fresh magazine into his AK-47 as he took in the sight around him. A lot of the city was rebuilding, but most of the structures remained damaged, crumbling from lack of attention and continued fighting.

“There they are,” Hardball said. Stiletto looked down at the street. The four surviving gunners from the second truck were spreading out on either side of the street.

“What are they waiting for?” Stiletto said.

The wind picked up, cooling the sweat on Stiletto’s neck, carrying with it a distant rumble.

Hardball cursed.

Around the corner a block way turned an armored truck with a cannon on the roof.

Hardball said, “Twenty-millimeter by the looks of it.”

“They’ll knock this building down like a house of cards.”

“It’s a good day to die,” Hardball said. The sky was clear and the sun burned bright; the empty desert in the far distance looked majestic.

But Scott Stiletto had no intention of going to the hereafter this day.

“You can die here if you want,” Stiletto said, rising and heading for the stairwell. He yelled for Short Fuse to follow. The stocky bomb expert didn’t argue and followed closely on Stiletto’s heels.

They were halfway down the stairwell when the twenty-millimeter cannon launched its first shell. The building shook violently, the explosion crumbling what remained of an upper wall and sending chunks of concrete debris flying everywhere. Stiletto stumbled and fell down the stairs, the hard metal tearing at his clothes and cutting open exposed skin, and crashed to the ground. The stock of the AK-47 slammed hard into his belly as he fell. Short Fuse grabbed onto the railing to remain upright. Gasping hard, Stiletto fought to rise. He couldn’t hear. Everything hurt and bloody patches now dotted his clothes top-to-bottom. Through gaps in the wall ahead, he saw smoke curling from the muzzle of the cannon, and the four troops primed for an assault.

Something tugged on his shoulder. Short Fuse. He mouthed something about having a plan. Stiletto nodded. He had a plan too. Hit them from behind. Get a bomb on the back of the armored machine. If they could survive to get close enough.

His hearing started to clear up a little, but the shrill ringing persisted. Gunfire crackled from above. Hardball. The shell hadn’t taken him out and his shots peppered the ground near the assault troops, driving them to cover. Stiletto and Short Fuse charged through the front of the warehouse heading for an alley across the street. One of the troopers saw them and let off a burst that kicked up chucks on asphalt. Short Fuse reached the alley first, sliding a pack full of explosives off his back. As Stiletto reached the corner, shards of brick and dust exploded in his face, gunfire zipping past him to smack the alley wall ahead. Stiletto pressed his back to the corner wall, swung around, and jerked the trigger to unleash the full magazine on the trooper in pursuit. The slugs spread across the man’s chest, opening new body cavities he’d hadn’t been born with that spilled his guts all over the ground.

Short Fuse was halfway down the alley. Stiletto ran after him as he reloaded. The cannon boomed again. Another explosion. Stiletto hoped Hardball was out of the way. A short burst of return fire answered his question. Keep ’em pinned down, buddy, we’re almost there , Stiletto thought, his face stinging from the blast of brick shards, as he and Short Fuse reached the opposite end of the alley.

They turned right at the alley exit, stopping at the building’s corner. Up the street sat the armored truck and the troopers. Stiletto pointed at the troopers closest to them—the ones on the right side of the street—and drew a finger across his neck. Short Fuse nodded. He opened his bag and took out a wrapped satchel charge, pulling a fuse cord. He ran for the cannon and Stiletto braced himself against the wall.

The twenty-millimeter roared again and another section of the warehouse wall crumbled, and a plum of dust stretched through the streets. The AK bucked against Stiletto’s shoulder as he aimed at the two troopers, Stiletto shifting his aim with each burst, one trooper’s head exploding like a melon and pelting his partner with gore. Before the second could turn, he joined his dead partner in a bloody heap on the street, the red stuff picking up dust and turning to a reddish mud.

Short Fuse slapped the satchel charge to the armored truck, the bomb’s magnets holding it in place. He turned and started running back. Stiletto covered him with the AK. A winking muzzle flash on the roof of the warehouse proved Hardball still lived. Short Fuse reached the corner and he and Stiletto hit the ground as the explosion filled the street, more dust and debris taking flight and landing around them.