Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

Wallace checked his GPS, showed his findings to Chace, and she nodded, then took the lead, now heading northeast.

After fourteen minutes, the wadi widened considerably and its walls had slowly begun to drop. Another GPS reading put them within five hundred meters, and here they spread out again, Chace to the eastern side of the wadi, Wallace to the western. Chace moved the P90 to her shoulder, made certain the safety was off and the selector was on burst.

They moved very slowly now, listening hard, trying to ignore their own sounds, trying to control their own fear.

With one hundred meters to go, the wadi curved again, and Chace hugged her wall as she followed it around. Over the emptiness, she heard a rustling, the scraping of a foot, and peering the rest of the way, she saw the sentry, Kalashnikov held in one hand, covering his mouth to suppress a yawn.

She looked to Wallace, could barely make him out in the darkness across from her. She held up a finger, hoping he could read the sign, and she saw him return it, then made a circle, then showed him all five fingers. She lowered her hand, went back to watching the sentry, counting seconds.

The time the sentry had left to live.

Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0248 Local (GMT+3.00)

Matteen stopped the car.

"What are you doing?" Sinan demanded.

Matteen grinned at him, opening the door and dropping out of the vehicle. "Relieving myself, if you don't mind."

Sinan groaned inwardly, closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to be back in the safety and sanity of the camp, where the world was ordered, where doubt could not exist. He remembered Nia's head in his lap, felt a pang of guilt.

Outside the car, he could hear the sound of Matteen passing water.

"Come on."

Matteen climbed back behind the wheel, started the car once more. He drove carefully and slowly, and when at last they entered the wadi proper, their progress, it seemed, slowed to a crawl.

"It would be faster if we walked," Sinan complained.

"You are too impatient, Sinan. You must learn to take things as they come."

"And what has that gotten us? Patience, what has it brought?" Sinan gestured angrily. "This is holy land, Matteen, and it has been defiled time and time again by those kufr who would destroy everything we believe. Patience! Did patience remove the American air bases?"

Matteen just shook his head, concentrating on negotiating the wadi.

"Action," Sinan said. "Action, not patience. We act, that Allah, praise His name, acts through us."

"There is a time for action and a time for planning. The unseen knife cuts cleanest, Sinan, and your way would shout out to all who would hear what it is we do, what it is we are planning."

"They should know! They should know, and they should be afraid!"

"They already are. They live in fear, haven't you seen it? The West awakens every morning, anxious for news, nervous and scared, wondering where we will strike next. That is terror, Sinan. And when they talk about a war against terror, they don't understand that they have already lost, because they are already afraid. And they will never sleep safe again, no matter how many missiles they drop on our camps, no matter how many of our brothers they capture and torture and murder. They fear us already, and thus we have already won. It will just take time for the victory to be complete."

Sinan looked out the window at the rough terrain bathed in the headlights. He could hear the truth in Matteen's words, and it soothed the heat in his blood.

He thought about Nia again, wondered again if she had been afraid. He hoped not; he didn't want her to have entered Paradise afraid.

He wondered if she would be happy to see him when his time came.

Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0253 Local (GMT+3.00)

Chace reached three hundred, uncovered the scope on the P90, raised it again to her shoulder, and settled the crosshairs on the man's chest. She moved her finger onto the trigger, pulling gently, exhaling, and the burst flew, the weapon hissing at the sentry, and through the scope she watched him jerk and topple, and she was moving forward again before he hit the ground. She looked around as she went, scanning, and saw no movement, no light.

She debated about moving the body, then continued past it, thinking it a waste of time.

There were eleven tents, the largest cluster of them centered in the wadi, with camouflage netting draped above them. Smaller tents hugged the walls. She worked from the eastern wall first, setting down her pack and removing the first claymore, extending its legs, setting it to face the nearest tent, some fifty meters from her, then stripping the end of her det cord with her knife, prepping it before attaching it to the mine.

She repeated the procedure with the remaining seven claymores, placing them roughly twenty-five meters apart, in a gentle semicircle, until the entire line was covered. She returned the pack to her back, its weight now negligible compared to what it had been, then attached the end of her remaining det cord to the daisy chain and quietly worked her way through the center of the camp.

Wallace was already finished and waiting for her with his end of the cord. She stood watch while he prepped the line, joining the segments, and then followed her back the way she had come. Back across the claymores, they stopped again, and Wallace took his timer, fitting it to the recess on the mine nearest the center of Chace's chain. He checked his watch, set the timer, and then showed Chace four fingers.

She checked her watch, noting the time. Oh-three-oh-four, kick-off at oh-three-oh-eight. She slid her sleeve back down, nodded to Wallace.

Wallace pointed at himself, then at the western side of the wadi, then at her, then the eastern.

She nodded again, and they parted. Chace had to sling the P90 to climb out; although the wall was shallow, it was steep, and she needed both hands to get above it.

Once up and out, she scanned the terrain for cover and found an indent in the earth that met with the wadi wall. She rested in it, checked her watch again.

Oh-three-oh-six.

She readied her P90, looked across the wadi, trying to spot Wallace. She didn't see him. She'd have been worried if she had.

She waited, hearing the night, counting down the seconds, waiting for the inevitable. Each claymore held 650 grams of explosive and 700 small steel balls, and when the timer ran down, the whole line would detonate in sequence. At their optimum distance from target, fifty meters, and placed as they had been some twenty-five meters apart, each mine would send its explosive load in overlapping coverage. The steel ball bearings would fly in a sixty-degree arc, covering up to two meters in height, and would tear through the tents as if they weren't there, and tear through the people asleep inside them in much the same way.

For Queen and for country, she told herself.

Then the timer reached zero, the daisy chain detonated, exploding in a sequence of flashing orange and red flowers, spitting steel that tore fabric, flesh, and bone.

Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0308 Local (GMT+3.00)

Sinan jerked awake, thinking at first that the flashes of light were something from a dream. He leaned forward, hands on the dashboard, and the bursts of fire continued in sequence, then vanished behind the wadi wall.

Matteen stopped the car, killed the lights, saying, "Did you see that?"

The heat came rushing back to Sinan, and he reached up, flicking the switch on the dome light so that it wouldn't illuminate the interior of the vehicle as he opened the door. He grabbed his rifle, slipping out, and as soon as the door was open he heard the explosions, but worse, he heard the screams, echoing through the wadi.