Richard Johnson - Deadly Cargo - A Chilling Naval Terrorism Thriller

On agile feet, Josh stepped left, and while his feet were crossed, the Taliban rushed in. It was just what Josh expected, and he whirled to avoid the point of the dagger, then smashed his opponent with a spinning back elbow that caught the man cleanly just below the temple. Josh heard the crack, as his elbow crushed the man’s jaw, and the Taliban went to the ground.

Sorgei stood with his mouth agape, watching the two men fight. Not knowing what he should do, he did nothing – just stood there with his cloth bag in hand, trembling with the adrenalin rush of fear and excitement. He had never been in a fight before, and didn’t really want to be in one now.

Josh was surprised that the Taliban fighter didn’t stay down after the crushing blow to his head. With the nimble movement of a trained martial artist, the man rolled and came back to his feet, dagger in hand and a darker look in his eyes. “Now you will die, kafir,” the man spit the Arabic words from lips that barely moved.

“I will die,” Josh replied in Arabic, “but not today.”

The Taliban lunged, and the point of the dagger caught Josh on the sleeve and sliced the fabric. White teeth glistened through the black beard, and the man circled again. “My dagger will find joy in your heart.”

“Your dagger will be found among your bones and the bones of these your brothers, after the vultures and wild dogs feast on your flesh,” Josh said, flashing a wild grin at his opponent.

They circled, hands wide but neither man making a move, and neither taking his eyes off his opponent. “You are a coward, kafir,” the Taliban snarled. “Allah hates cowards.”

“Then come ahead and send me to Allah,” Josh goaded, trying to lure the man into making a move that he could counter. “Or perhaps it is you who are afraid?”

His black eyes flashed, as the Taliban lunged. Josh sidestepped and parried, slicing the forearm that held the dagger as it went past. “Aghh,” the Taliban screamed, then instantly shifted the dagger to his left hand. When the warrior steadied himself, his back was toward the cave. Josh looked into the man’s eyes and saw only murder and hatred.

Behind the Taliban, Josh noticed movement at the mouth of the cave. It was Sorgei, coming out of the darkness, a large rock held in his uplifted hands. In an instant, the Russian brought the stone down in a smashing blow on the back of the black turban. Cushioned by the pile of cloth, the blow to the head rattled the man but failed to knock him down. The dazed Taliban growled and spun around to face Sorgei.

It was the distraction Josh needed. He leaped forward and shot a knife-edge kick at the side of the enemy’s knee. The man’s leg folded with a snap, and Josh followed with a slash of the razor across the side of the man’s neck, sending him sprawling into the mouth of the cave in a shower of gore. Sorgei caught the full impact of the falling man and was thrown backward onto the floor of the cavern, sending a cloud of brown dust into the air.

Josh rushed in to finish his opponent, but saw that the razor had already done its job. Sorgei was pinned beneath the lifeless Taliban, and Josh rolled the dead enemy to the side to free the Russian. Sorgei lay on his back, staring at the cave ceiling with a bewildered look on his face. A widening crimson stain soaked through the front of his clothing. The hilt of the dagger was wet with blood, and the blade was buried in Sorgei’s chest.

Josh went to his knees beside Sorgei. “Hang in there. I’ll get you out of this. Just hold on.”

Sorgei slowly rolled his glazed eyes toward Josh, and swallowed hard. “I tried to fight. Tried to help you, but I think I will die here.”

“You fought well, Sorgei. You did exactly the right thing.”

A little after midnight, high on the northwest shoulder of Mount Preghal, Josh Adams sat in the complete darkness. It had taken half the day and half the night to get here from the cave. After dragging the dead bodies of Sorgei Groschenko and the three Taliban warriors deep into the cave, piling rocks over the corpses and doing all he could to sweep away the evidence of their struggle in case there were others who followed, he had set off across the wilderness toward this sloping mountain. In the growing darkness, unrelenting wind beat against him as he hiked, destroying any chance of hearing or smelling pursuers. An eerie feeling in the back of his mind kept him looking over his shoulders as he hiked, but he saw nothing.

Now, as he sat alone on the mountain in the deepest part of night, he removed his left boot, then lifted out the foot-bed. In a hollowed compartment in the sole was a tiny transmitter and a lithium battery. He assembled the components and pressed the switch. A red LED blinked. Eleven thousand miles up, an array of satellites captured his GPS locator signal with its individualized code, and sent it on to NIA headquarters in Titus, Maryland.

There was nothing for him to do now except wait. In the dark distance, the sharp clatter of a rock shifting against other rocks below him on the trail put him immediately on his stomach, as tight to the ground as he could get. Someone’s out there. He held his breath and listened, but the only thing he heard was the droning of the wind. Then the wind carried the faint smell of dust. Then nothing.

What he feared most was a secondary search team that might follow up on his trail when the first Taliban failed to check in on their radio schedule. His imagination played the worst-case scenario. His ears picked up every sound and turned it into a threat, and his eyes transformed every hint of a shadow into an enemy. Out there in the darkness, there might be a squad of hunters combing the mountain side. They would scour every inch of the rugged terrain until they finally found him. Then they would fill him with AK47 rounds as he lay trapped in the boulders, unable to defend himself.

He heard another rock move, then heard their voices. This time, it wasn’t his imagination. He heard them talking. Although he spoke and understood Arabic, these men were still too far off to distinguish what was being said. As the minutes ticked by and he listened, he thought he heard three different voices. They were spreading out across the slope, searching slowly through every rock pile. It was only a matter of time.

There was no place to go from here. If he moved, he risked immediate detection. The instinct to jump up and run, or even to try to sneak into a better position, was suicide. There was no real cover from bullets, and no place to hide himself other than to snug flat among the small boulders and remain as still as possible while the Taliban searched the area.

His mind raced through his options, but there were none. Then the thought came, and he decided to take a chance. It was either that or rely on slim luck that they would overlook him in their search. Quietly as possible, he gathered a couple of small stones in his hands, then rolled to his back and pitched one stone after another as far as he could throw them over a small ridge back up the hill. If could just divert them to another search area, he might have a chance.

An excited voice called the other two men to search over the ridge, and gradually, Josh heard the footfalls and voices move off, away from him. Still, it was too dangerous to risk moving to another position, so he hunkered down and hoped the hunters kept moving and were satisfied that they already searched the place where he was hiding.

Three and a half hours later, a stealth helicopter flying in whisper mode slipped across the border into Waziristan and eased up the northwest slope of Mount Preghal. In the distant sky, Josh saw the dark form blank out the stars before he even heard it coming. Only a faint red glow from inside broke the scene of utter blackness. Guided by the GPS locator, the chopper touched its skids on the high plateau less than 30ft from Josh, and gunfire erupted from just beyond the small ridge to his back. Small arms rounds hit the chopper four times before the helo lifted off and banked away, leaving him stranded and surrounded by Taliban.