Джек Марс - Primary Target

Luke glanced around the room. There were corpses everywhere. Simmons was dead. Heath… a large hole had been punched through his head where his face had been. The man had no face. Luke felt nothing about that. This was Heath’s mission. It had gone as wrong as possible. Now Heath was dead.

And one more man was down.

It seemed like a complicated math problem, but really, it was simple subtraction that anyone could do. Luke’s mind was not working correctly. He recognized that. Six men had come in here. Heath and Simmons were dead. Martinez, Colley, and Stone were still in the game. That meant the last man down could only be…

Luke ran to the man. Yes, it was. It was Hendricks. Wayne.

WAYNE.

He was still moving.

Luke kneeled by him and pulled off his helmet.

Wayne’s arms and legs were moving slowly, almost like he was treading water.

“Wayne! Wayne! Where are you hit?”

Wayne’s eyes rolled. They found Luke. He shook his head. He began to cry. He was breathing heavily, almost gasping for air.

“Oh, buddy…” Wayne said.

“Wayne! Talk to me.”

Feverishly, Luke began to unfasten Wayne’s ballistic vest.

“Medic!” he screamed. “Medic!”

An instant later, Colley was there, kneeling behind him. “Simpson was the medic. I’m the backup.”

Wayne was hit in the chest. Somehow shrapnel had gotten under his vest. Luke’s hands searched him. He was also shot high in the leg. That was worse than the chest, by a lot. His pants were saturated with blood. His femoral artery must be hit. Luke’s hand came away dripping red. There was blood everywhere. There was a lake of it under Wayne’s body. It was a miracle he was still alive.

“Tell Katie,” Wayne said.

“Shut up!” Luke said. “You’re going to tell her yourself.”

Wayne’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Tell her…”

Wayne seemed to be looking at something far away. He gazed, and then did a double take, as if confused by what he was seeing. An instant later, his eyes became still.

He stared at Luke. His mouth was slack. Nobody was home.

“Oh God, Wayne. No.”

Luke looked at Colley. It was as if he were seeing Colley for the first time. Colley looked young—like barely old enough to shave. That couldn’t be, of course. The man was in Delta Force. He was a trained killer. He was a consummate pro. But his neck looked about as thick as Luke’s forearm. He seemed to be swimming in his clothes.

“Check him,” Luke said, though he already knew what Colley would say. He fell back into a cross-legged position, and sat that way for a long moment. They had a day off during Ranger School one time. A bunch of guys held a pick-up game of football. It was a hot day, and the game was shirts versus skins. Luke spent the game throwing laser strikes to this big, thick, foul-mouthed redneck with a front tooth missing.

“Wayne.”

“He’s gone,” Colley said.

Just like that, Wayne was dead. Luke’s blood brother. The godfather of Luke’s unborn son. A long, helpless breath went out of Luke.

In war, Luke knew, that’s how it went. One second, your friend—or your sister, or your wife, or your child—was alive. The next second, they were gone. There was no way to turn back that clock, not even one second.

Wayne was dead. They were a long way from home. And this night was just getting started.

“Stone!” Martinez said.

Luke pulled himself to his feet once again. Martinez stood by the pile of corpses that had once protected the target. All of them appeared to be dead, all but one, the man who had stood at the back. He was tall, still youthful, with a long black beard speckled with a little gray. He lay among the fallen—shot full of holes, but alive.

Martinez pointed a pistol down at him.

“What’s the guy’s name? The one we’re looking for?”

“Abu Mustafa Faraj al-Jihadi?” Luke said. It wasn’t really a question. It wasn’t anything, just a string of syllables.

The man nodded. He didn’t say anything. He looked like he was in some pain.

Luke took a small digital camera from inside his vest. The camera was encased in hard rubber. You could bounce it off the floor and it wouldn’t break. He fidgeted with it for a second, and then took a few snaps of the man. He checked the images before he turned the camera off. They were fine—not exactly professional quality, but Luke didn’t work for National Geographic . All he needed was evidence. He looked down at the terrorist leader.

“Gotcha,” Luke said. “Thanks for playing.”

BANG!

Martinez fired once, and the man’s head came apart.

“Mission accomplished,” Martinez said. He shook his head and walked away.

Luke’s radio crackled.

“Stone! Where are you?”

“Murphy. What’s the status?”

Murphy’s voice cut in and out. “It’s a bloodbath out here. I lost three men. But we commandeered one of their big guns, and we cut an opening. If we want to get out of here, we need to go RIGHT NOW.”

“We’ll be out in a minute.”

“I wouldn’t take that long,” Murphy said. “Not if you want to live.”

Six men ran through the village.

After all that fighting, the place was like a ghost town. At any second, Luke was expecting gunshots or rockets to come screaming out of the tiny homes. But nothing happened. There didn’t even seem to be any people left here.

Back the way they had come, smoke rose. The walls of the compound were destroyed. The helicopter still burned, the flames crackling in the eerie quiet.

Luke could hear the heavy breathing of the other men, running uphill with gear and weapons. In ten minutes, they made it to the old forward operating base on the rocky hillside outside the village.

To Luke’s surprise, the place was okay. There were no supplies cached there, of course—but the sandbags were still in place, and the location gave a commanding view of the surrounding area. Luke could see lights on in the homes, and the chopper on fire.

“Martinez, see if you can raise Bagram on the radio. We need an extraction. Hide and seek is over. Tell them to send overwhelming force. We need to get back inside that compound and bring our men out.”

Martinez nodded. “I told you, man. Luck runs out for everybody.”

“Don’t tell me, Martinez. Just get us out of here, okay?”

“All right, Stone.”

It was a dark night. The sandstorm had passed. They still had weapons. Along the sandbagged rampart, his men were loading up ammo and checking gear.

It wasn’t out of the question that….

“Murphy, send a flare up,” he said. “I want to get a look at what we’re dealing with.”

“And give away our position?” Murphy said.

“I think they probably know where we are,” Luke said.

Murphy shrugged and popped one into the night.

The flare moved slowly across the sky, casting eerie shadows on the rocky terrain below. The ground almost appeared to be boiling. Luke stared and stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. There was so much activity down there, it was like an ant farm, or a swarm of rats.

It was men. Hundreds of men were methodically moving themselves, their gear, and their weapons into position.

“I guess you’re right,” Murphy said. “They know we’re here.”

Luke looked at Martinez.

“Martinez, what’s the status on that extraction?”

Martinez shook his head. “They say it’s a no go. Nothing but wicked sandstorms between base and here. Zero visibility. They can’t even put the choppers in the air. They say hold out till morning. The wind’s supposed to die down after sunrise.”

Luke stared at him. “They have to do better than that.”