Tom Clancy - Locked On

The doorframe tore to splinters from the Haqqani fighters’ rounds, but Sam managed to get back inside and up the hall without taking a bullet. Al Darkur met him there; he was still shouting into his walkie-talkie. Both men leaned back around the corner and fired a few rounds out into the dark night. Neither thought he could quell the attack with a couple of bursts of an assault rifle, but they did hold out hopes of making some impression on anyone who thought they could just rush in the open back door and make their way up the hall unimpeded.

Al Darkur shouted into Sam’s ear after firing a few more bursts in the narrow hallway. “I’ve called for a helicopter from the base in Miran Shah, but the quick reaction force will not be ready for fifteen minutes.”

“Not quick enough,” said Sam as he dropped to his knees, leaned around the corner, and shot out the lights of the hall.

“It will be thirty minutes or more before they arrive.”

Driscoll released the empty magazine from the magazine well of his rifle, then replaced it with a fully charged mag from his chest rig. Incoming gunfire from all sides had picked up now, and shouts over the comms, even though Driscoll could not understand the words, gave the impression that the building itself was about to be overrun.

“From the sound of it, we don’t have anything like thirty minutes. How many men do you have left?”

Al Darkur got back on the walkie-talkie to find out while Driscoll went prone at the corner of the hall, then slowly rolled out on his right shoulder, putting him low in the hallway toward the back door, with his weapon’s barrel scanning for threats. He could not see a thing in the dark, so he actuated his weapon light on the side rail of the M4. Instantly two hundred lumens of bright white light filled the hallway, illuminating two Haqqani fighters making their way silently toward Sam’s position. They were blinded by the beam, but they raised their weapons anyway.

Driscoll pulled the trigger on his M4 rifle, swept a dozen rounds of automatic fire back and forth across the two men. They died before either of them got aof them shot off.

More sparkles of gunfire from the dark night outside forced Sam back around the corner, where he reloaded again.

“I have six men alive,” Mohammed said.

Sam nodded as he reloaded. “All right. Any chance we can make it to the trucks in the garage on the east side?”

“We have to try, but the road will be covered with Haqqani’s men.”

“Who needs a road?”

Driscoll grabbed a fragmentation grenade from his chest harness, pulled the pin, and then flung it underhanded up the hallway like a tiny bowling ball. Mohammed al Darkur and Sam Driscoll took off toward the men fighting at the east window as the explosion tore through the doorway.

Two minutes later, a group of eight Haqqani fighters attacking from below had made it through the gate and up the drive on the southeast side of the compound. They’d left four of their number behind, one dead, felled by a shot through the stomach from a second-floor window of the enemy safe house, and three more wounded: one by gunfire and two by a hand grenade tossed down the hill by a sentry at the gate who had himself been shot dead one second later.

But now the eight survivors were within twenty meters of the garage. The door was open and it was dark inside, so the men approached quietly and slowly while their comrades fired into the building on the other sides. If they could make it into the building from the door here in the garage they could, by staying low to avoid fire from their own forces, comb through the structure and destroy any remaining forces there.

As the men came to within ten yards of the garage entrance, their leader was just able to make out two large trucks parked inside. His night vision had been all but ruined by his firing several magazines from his Kalashnikov, so as he moved forward now he had to squint to hunt for a door inside.

All eight men passed the two trucks, found the door giving them access to the building, and they went inside in a line, crouching and listening for threats.

As soon as the eight Haqqani men disappeared from the garage, Sam Driscoll, Mohammed al Darkur, two ISI officers, and four Zarrar commandos quietly climbed out from under the truck farthest from the door. A driver, al Darkur, and three others climbed in the front of the vehicle, while Sam and two others remained at the back of the garage. Once Sam heard the driver quietly release the hand brake, he and two men pushed the truck from behind with all their might. The nose of the vehicle was already oriented downhill, so once they had pushed the truck out of the garage it began to pick up speed quickly. Sam and the two men gave one more firm shove, then leapt into the back of the covered bed.

The driver did not turn over the engine, nor did he turn on the headlights. The only sound made by the dark vehicle was the crunching on the rocky driveway as it moved faster and faster down the hill. The driver had only a very faint light from the overcast sky to guide him toward the front gate, and if he missed it a few feet right or left, the truck would plow into the wall and they would then have to fire the engine, letting everyone still on the hillside or on the road below know exactly where they were.

But the driver made it through the gate, the truck rolled faster now, and the driver had to force the wheels to turn left and right by using all of his upper-body strength. It was still one hundred yards of steep wds of stinding gravel to the road below, and the pathway twisted and turned all the way down.

They made it out of the compound itself, which was where the majority of the enemy guns had concentrated by now, but someone on the hillside either heard or saw the truck when it was only twenty yards outside the gate. A shout, then a series of shouts, and then finally erupting gunfire put an end to the stealthy part of Sam Driscoll’s plan. He shouted from the back of the vehicle to the driver, told him to forget about trying to stay on the gravel road, now it was all about getting away from the guns as fast as possible, no matter where the truck ended up or what condition it was in when it got there. The driver went off road, used his big heavy truck’s momentum to propel him and his passengers down through the dark.

There were Haqqani men on all sides of the hurtling object, but most of them were unable to fire without hitting their fellow militants. A few men did fire, and Sam’s position in the back of the truck was raked with 7.62 rounds. One man with him was shot through the head, another took two rounds in his left bicep and left shoulder, and Sam took a round high on his protective steel SAPI (Small Arms Protective Insert) plate in his chest rig vest. The impact knocked him over, down to the floor, just as the huge covered truck slammed hard on a large boulder and went airborne several feet. The nearly decapitated Zarrar soldier’s body rolled with Sam in the rear of the vehicle. The truck continued, careening down the hillside, it bounced again and again, and the driver had to focus all of his faculties on keeping the truck pointed downhill so that it would not veer sideways and flip.

They were only twenty yards or so to the road when Mohammed saw more Haqqani network fighters step out of the darkness and open fire on the hurtling truck. One man held an RPG.

There was no way to engage him from the middle of the cab of the truck; it would have been impossible even if they weren’t being battered and jolted in all directions from the roll down the rocky hillside, but as it was there was no point even attempting to point a gun at the man.

Instead he shouted into the back, “Sam! RPG, right side, twenty meters!”