Andrew Britton - The Invisible

Kealey could hear the man’s feet slapping the wet soil as he drew near. Without warning, the guard raised his weapon and fired again, the rounds whining 5 feet over Kealey’s head. Five, six rounds total. Kealey heard a grunt to his rear, a pregnant pause, and then a wet, heavy thump as a body fell face-first into the mud. The guard had stopped moving; apparently, he had heard his target fall. He began inching forward, and Kealey, lying nearly motionless beneath the juniper, drew his knife and waited, praying the man would pass him by. He could not believe the disastrous turn the mission had taken, but it could still be salvaged. If the guard walked by without incident, then no harm done; they would be able to maintain their positions, and the op could proceed as planned. It all came down to what happened next, and the footsteps were coming closer. . . .

WASHINGTON, D.C. • SIALKOT

In the Situation Room beneath the West Wing, there was mass confusion and no small amount of panic. All eyes were fixed on the infrared feed from the 8X positioned in GEO 22,237 miles over Sialkot. The clouds had cleared enough over the past several hours to provide a limited picture, but even with the distortion, the fact that something had gone badly wrong on the ground was abundantly clear.

“Christ, who the hell is that ?” Brenneman demanded over the chaos, not realizing that he was only contributing to the problem. He was pointing directly at the first heat signature, which had just stopped moving after a hard sprint north of the house. “And who is that going after him? What the hell is going on out there? ”

There was no immediate response, not that anyone had heard the question. Harper stared at the satellite phone plugged into the room’s audio system, waiting for Kealey to call and tell them what had just happened, but it stayed silent. He wondered if he would even hear it ringing over the cacophony in the small conference room. On the screen, the heat signature moving away from the house was drawing ever closer to one of the men lying prone in the field.

“Jesus, whoever that is, he’s going to trip right over one of them,”

Andrews said, his voice laced with undisguised tension. He was standing a mere foot from Harper’s left shoulder. “How far out are the helicopters?”

Harper opened his mouth to answer, but he was beaten to it by a USAF major, who held up a handset and lifted his voice to get the attention of everyone present. Strangely enough, he found success where the president had not, and once it was quiet enough, he said,

“The word is coming in from air traffic control at Bagram. Eagles 1 and 2 report they are still ten minutes out.”

The room fell silent for a moment; everyone present, even the most junior aides, understood what that meant. In the end, it took an army colonel standing frozen with a phone to her ear, not 3 feet from the grim-faced secretary of defense, to voice what everyone in the room was thinking. “Christ,” she murmured. “They’re not going to get there in time.”

Harper silently agreed as he stared at the heat signatures moving into the field. He had never felt more impotent. There was nothing he could do but watch as disaster loomed. He could only pray that the separate signatures would not converge, but even as he thought it, he knew that they would. The only question now was how the men on the ground would handle the unexpected change in plan. Shaheed was sure he had heard the American go down, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He waited for a moment, listening, but he couldn’t hear anything over the falling rain, the tanks in the distance, and the outraged screams of the Algerian at the top of the hill. Cursing the man’s stupidity— the general should never have brought him into this —Shaheed slapped a fresh magazine into his weapon and began moving forward slowly, each step planned and deliberate. He swept the ground with his eyes, searching for a lump that might represent the doctor’s body. He kept his right hand around the grip of his rifle as he used his left to brush aside the damp, waist-high grass. As his eyes started to acclimate to the dark, he picked up a few things he hadn’t seen before. There was a pine tree approximately 10 meters to his right, and to his left, nearly within reach of his arm, there was a small, low-lying shrub.

And beneath the shrub, he could see something that looked like a rock, or maybe a log. Shaheed hesitated. He was almost certain the American had fallen farther to the right, close to the pine, but as he stared at the dark shape beneath the vegetation, he could have sworn he saw it move. . . .

As the guard was firing his last barrage at the fleeing man, Kealey had taken advantage of the noise to adjust his stance. He’d planted his left hand in the damp soil and brought his right leg under him, wedging his foot against a large, partially buried rock. If he had to use it, the rock would serve as a starting block of sorts. It was all he could do without revealing his position, but it would give him a chance to move quickly and decisively if the guard stumbled over him. Right now, things were not looking too good. He knew he had to call in and tell Harper what had happened—the situation had changed drastically, and the helicopters might be forced to turn back—but it just wasn’t possible, and he could see the other operatives in his mind’s eye, swearing under their breath, wondering if they should take the shot.

Don’t do it, Kealey thought, hoping they could somehow hear his silent, urgent plea. Don’t fire. Just let him go. He doesn’t know I’m here. Just let him walk on by. . . . It wasn’t going to happen; Kealey sensed as much in the last crucial seconds. As the guard drifted past the juniper, he seemed to hesitate. With his head turned to the left, Kealey could see the outline of the man’s head, and he could tell from the profile that the guard was looking in his direction. Then he turned, took a few steps forward, and reached down with his left hand, his splayed fingers moving directly for Kealey’s left shoulder. . . . When he saw the contact coming, Kealey’s mind shut down, and his body took over. Operating on pure instinct, he launched himself up and batted the rifle aside with his left hand, pushing the muzzle away from his body. At the same time, he whipped the knife around in a short, controlled arc, plunging the blade deep into the guard’s neck, directly beneath the hinge of his jaw.

Even in the dark, Kealey could see the man’s reaction. His head jerked back and to the right, partly from the impact and partly in an effort to pull away from the knife. Blood and spit sprayed out of his mouth as the tip of the blade delved into his opposite cheek. His face tightened into a grimace, and his mouth fell open, his partially severed tongue protruding between bloodied teeth. He was obviously trying to scream, but all that came out was a wet, guttural hiss. He dropped the rifle and lifted his hands to grip Kealey’s right arm. It was a completely instinctive reaction, but there was nothing he could do; the damage was already done, and the wound was fatal. The guard just didn’t know it yet.

The knife was buried up to the hilt, and Kealey had to pull hard to extract it. The man automatically started to fall, and Kealey followed him down. He landed hard on his back, and Kealey was on top of him in an instant, ready to finish the job. As the man stared up at him, his face contorted with rage, pain, and fear, Kealey drew the knife firmly across his throat, severing the trachea, the carotid artery, and the connecting muscle tissue with one deep, powerful cut. Blood sprayed out of the wound immediately, splashing onto Kealey’s face, arms, and hands, but he repeated the process, then did it again, determined to extinguish the stubborn light in the other man’s eyes. Once he was sure the guard was dead, the strange ringing noise in his ears began to subside, and gradually, he picked up on the traffic coming over his earpiece.