Mark Greaney - On target

"Ugh!" He grunted with the impact; the blistering sting did not dissipate as he slowed and looked back over his shoulder.

A long brown arrow protruded from his shoulder blade.

Court's run slowed as he stared at it. His brain had difficulty processing what was right before his eyes for a long moment. He looked down to his chest to make sure it had not gone all the way through his body. It had not. He then tried to reach back for it and failed. Finally, he began jogging forward again, still looking back at the arrow. Softly, he muttered, "No fucking way."

The beige van slammed on its brakes at the side entrance to the three-story hotel, a colonial-style building that must have been an architectural gem a hundred years earlier. With wooden balconies, gabled hoods above the windows, white shutters, and ornate latticework columns, the hotel looked more New Orleans than Arab African. Zack looked through the windshield, scanning for targets, but he could not help but notice the dilapidated state of this building and those on either side of the road. Spencer ducked into the side door of the vehicle, and it lurched forward again. Milo fired a pair of bursts down the street to keep the infantry's heads down, but it appeared that the SLA attack to the west had drawn many of the troops away from the southwest corner of the square.

Spencer had been roaming Suakin in cover for two days, therefore he was dressed in local attire and carried only a small Uzi submachine gun. Quickly he grabbed a chest rig with body armor that had been waiting for him inside the van. He struggled to put it on in the back as the Econoline bounced on the bad road.

Whiskey Sierra's vehicle turned north and accelerated quickly up a wider unpaved road. Civilians' heads could be seen in windows and doorways and peering through the gates of walled buildings. The locals were staying off the roads themselves, which was good for them and good for Zack. He had no doubt the Sudanese Army would not think twice about collateral damage, though he and his men were doing their best to avoid it.

Less than thirty seconds after collecting Sierra Five at his hotel, the van again slammed on its brakes, this time at the doorway to a two-story building. Spencer opened the door.

They were parked less than a second before Zack transmitted. "Three, we're not gonna sit here all damn day for-"

A crash on the roof of the van shook it to its chassis, the impact like a dull thud to the battered eardrums of the occupants. It was Dan, jumping from the roof of the building. He slid off the side of the vehicle and ducked into its open door. Sierra Three slammed the door shut behind him, and Sierra Two once again stomped on the gas pedal.

Zack called into his headset for Court, "Sierra One for Sierra Six, break. I've got my guys, and I'm getting the fuck outta here. You are on your own for now. Good luck, and watch out for that damn chopper. One out!"

They'd made it no more than fifty yards up the paved street when three policemen in dark uniforms stepped to the edge of the roof of a small blacksmith's shop. Each man heaved two large concrete blocks off the roof. The heavy cement arced into the air in front of the van, forcing Brad to jack the wheel to the right, nearly scraping the paint from the right side as he passed an old parked Chevrolet sedan. He pulled back to the left and just missed a pair of unoccupied rickshaws by the side of the road.

Another group of locals was up ahead on the roof of another building with cement blocks and large tires, ready to throw them at the van. Hightower knew it would be dangerous to try to drive under them.

Zack shouted from the front passenger seat, "Left up here, Brad, hard left!" The van turned hard into an alley even narrower than the road they'd just left.

Before he could even finish his turn, Brad shouted to the passengers of the van, "Contact front!"

The windshield of the van popped and cracked. It did not shatter entirely, but a stitch of white-rimmed bullet holes drew across it from right to left, from low to high.

Zack felt a vicious tug to his forearm and stings to his face and neck. He lifted his rifle over the dashboard and fired back through the glass fully automatic, emptying his thirty-round magazine at targets in the road in front of him and pulverizing the windshield into bits of white sand.

The van veered hard to its left. Zack knew there was no room for error at this speed in such a narrow alleyway. He braced for impact, and the impact came, a hard jolt to the left, then the vehicle bounced back hard right, and this time Hightower knew the impending impact would be vicious and directly on his side. He pulled his legs up just as the big van slammed into a white building on the right, slowed, and came to a stop four feet from the broken wall of concrete blocks.

Steam from the radiator shot into the air in front of the broken window. The van was dead.

Zack shouted without hesitation, "Bail! Bail! Bail!"

After ordering his team to de-bus, Hightower rolled out the front passenger-side door, fell to the hard ground, landed on his shoulder and hip, and found himself facing away from the direction from which the gunfire had come. He looked back over his shoulder. One of his men had already tossed a white smoke grenade to obscure the view of the gunners ahead of them in the road. A decaying but occupied coral stone building was just a few feet away from his head, a window waist-high just above him, and Zack wasted no time scrambling to his feet, launching himself from the street and into the air, tucking into a ball, crashing through the plate glass, and slamming again hard now onto the ground floor of the building. It was a dark office of some sort. There was a government feel to the setup, but no one was inside this early, and the generators for the lights were not running. Zack rolled quickly to his knees and began reloading his rifle. He could not help but take note of the blood; it was on his arms and his gloves and the shattered glass and the floor where he landed, and it was smeared all over his tan-colored gun. But he went about his work, did not pause an instant to check the severity of his injuries.

Gunfire outside in the street continued ceaselessly. Just as he racked a fresh round into the chamber and began to stand, Sierra Two came flying through the same window. Their bodies hit, a glancing blow, and Brad slammed to the ground, his unslung FAMAS F1 rifle skittering free of him and sliding several yards across the floor.

"Four is hit!" came the call through Zack's headset; it was Dan's voice, and Dan was still outside in the street full of flying lead.

Zack shouted into his mouthpiece. "I'm suppressing to the north; Two will open the door by the van. Get Milo in here!" Hightower leaned his rifle out the window and fired short bursts up the alley. Without looking he knew that Brad would already be rushing to the building's back door to help the others inside.

Zack did what he could to conserve ammo, but his weapon soon ran dry. He called for cover, but the other men on his team were still fully involved with the rescue of their injured colleague. Hightower dropped his empty rifle and pulled his Sig pistol from his drop-leg holster, fired out the window and up the street with his right hand, had to lean his head out and expose his upper torso to do so, while his left felt for a fragmentation grenade in a pouch on his chest.

As his pistol's slide locked open with the firing of the last round, Sierra Five shouldered up on his left and opened up with his small Uzi. Zack threw the grenade as far up the street as he could. "Frag out!" He then stepped back inside the room to reload and assess the situation.

Four sat on the floor. With his HK machine gun in his hands he covered the door through which he and two others had entered the building. His lower right leg was bloody, and Three checked it quickly. Two had already crossed the big room, pushing desks and chairs out of the way as he did so, and was looking out a window on the south side, trying to find a fast exit to get the team moving again. Hightower noticed that Sierra Two was limping as he moved.