Syrian Rescue

SABAH AZMEH SWITCHED out his empty AKMS magazine and snapped a full one in its place. His hip throbbed from his collision with the Jeep, a stupid, clumsy slip that made him feel like a fool even though it saved his life.

His jacket smelled strange, and he realized that gasoline had splashed on to his sleeve after he fell, one of their fuel cans punctured by the slugs that might have killed him otherwise. The stench stung Azmeh’s nostrils and made his eyes water, but all that he could do was scoop up dirt in his free hand and rub it into his wet sleeve. He glanced at Cooper and found the tall American scowling at their predicament. Whatever he had planned, turning around to face the truck and stopping there, it was not working out. Unless he had hatched another scheme…

Cooper shifted, then walked over to the passenger door, keeping low. A burst of hostile fire drilled the Wrangler’s bodywork, one slug caroming off the door near Cooper’s head. He did not flinch as he leaned inside and rummaged through duffel bags. When he backed out, he was holding two grenades.

Each F1 “lemon,” Azmeh knew, weighed a shade under one and a half pounds. A strong man could pitch one forty-five yards, remaining outside the grenade’s estimated thirty-yard kill zone. But could Cooper drop one behind the stalled truck while under fire?

“How can I help you?” Azmeh asked, worried that Cooper might suggest he make the throw himself.

“Give me some cover,” Cooper said. “I’ll tell you when.”

“Done.”

Kneeling, one shoulder against the Jeep’s sun-heated fender, Azmeh held his carbine ready, muzzle pointed at the pale blue sky, his finger on the trigger. Full automatic fire would empty his fresh magazine in four seconds flat, unless he controlled it. He’d go with short bursts to frighten his opponents and keep them from dropping Cooper in his tracks.

He waited, barely breathing, and had started feeling dizzy when the tall American said, “Now!”

* * *

BOLAN PULLED THE GRENADE’S pin and dropped the spoon as he began to move. He had about four seconds until detonation.

The opposition cut loose when he broke from cover, arm cocked for the pitch, an overhand fastball.

A bullet sliced at Bolan’s sleeve, missing flesh and bone, as he dove back to cover in the Wrangler’s shadow. There had been no time for him to follow the grenade in flight. He had to hope it did sufficient damage over there to let him make a second throw.

Bolan counted to three, then he heard the blast, followed by screams. No way for him to judge the damage without seeing it firsthand, but he knew pain when he heard it and the gargling sound of voices choked with blood.

How many dead or wounded out of the eight or ten they’d started with?

Still not enough.

Bolan switched the second F1 to his right hand and walked past Azmeh, staying low. “Good job on the first round. Time for number two.”

His guide nodded. “I’m ready.”

“On my ‘go.’”

Another nod.

Bolan could tell fewer Kalashnikovs were on the job, but counting them by sound was hopeless. He would have a better feel for how many opponents he’d taken out when he stepped out into the open a second time.

He reached the Wrangler’s rear end just as someone shot the spare tire into tatters on its tailgate mount. The Jeep already stank of leaking gasoline, its bodywork had turned into a sieve, and Bolan had his doubts about the old vehicle carrying them any farther on his desert mission. When the left-rear tire began to hiss, Bolan knew their ride was done.

It didn’t matter, though. Survival was the first priority.

He glanced at Azmeh, rising from his crouch as he said, “Go!”

Azmeh was quicker this time, firing through the Wrangler—in one open window, out the other—at their adversaries. Bolan had the F1’s pin free as he came around the tailgate, right arm drawing back—and saw one of the opposition sprinting out from cover, rushing toward him with the long tube of an RPG launcher across his shoulder.

“Watch it!” Bolan called to Azmeh, as he made his pitch and dove facedown into the dirt.

* * *

SADEK HAD STRUGGLED with the RPG-29 launcher, loading it from the rear with a TBG-29V thermobaric antipersonnel round as he sat on the hot, hard soil, praying that he got it right and was not about to kill himself, along with all the other men from his patrol.

Sadek was not a genius with technology, far from it. He could field strip, load and fire a fair variety of weapons, and he learned quickly when new ones fell into his hands. But he could not have said what thermobaric meant or how it worked, in scientific terms. He had seen its effects on vehicles and human flesh, a grisly sight replete with screams of agony from living targets as they fried and died. Sadek wished that upon his enemies today, after they had resisted and embarrassed him.

He would be satisfied, feel good about himself again, when they had been reduced to blackened, shriveled husks upon the desert sand.

And he would be a hero then—if he could only find the will to rise and make his move.

That was the hard part, breaking cover under fire and facing down the enemy. Sadek was not a fan of open warfare, but he’d sworn an oath to Allah and his outcast people, which demanded sacrifice.

So be it.

Shouldering the RPG, he took a moment to adjust its 2.7×1P38 optical sight. There would be precious little time for aiming once Sadek had shown himself, but he would do his best and hope that it was good enough.

He had not told the others what he planned to do, preferring to surprise them after some had treated him with disrespect. Let those who questioned his authority be startled and amazed when he saved them. Anyone who challenged him from that point on would face Sadek’s enduring wrath.

Or maybe they would laugh at him for failing, after he was dead. But then, it wouldn’t matter.

Allah promised a reward for soldiers slain while serving Him. If these were to be Sadek’s last moments, he would step willingly toward the open gates of Paradise.

Sadek lurched to his feet, struggling with the extra forty pounds balanced on one shoulder, then broke into a loping run. The moment he was visible, his enemies would do their best to kill him. Whether they succeeded was in Allah’s hands. Sadek’s job was to hold on long enough to aim and fire the thermobaric rocket, sending them to hell.

One of his soldiers shouted something after him, but Sadek didn’t catch it. Gaining speed, be broke around the front end of the truck and angled toward the bullet-riddled Jeep, in time to see one of his enemies coming out to meet him. The man was not firing at him, did not even have a gun in hand, but his right arm was cocked back…

Sadek understood too late. He knelt and tried to aim his RPG, just as an ovoid object dropped in front of him and wobbled forward, trailing wisps of smoke. A scream of rage had nearly reached his lips when the grenade exploded, switching off the lights in Sadek’s world.

* * *

MACK BOLAN HIT the deck and rode out the explosion, heard the shrapnel buzzing overhead and off into the desert’s dry infinity. When he opened his eyes, the runner with the RPG was gone—or, rather, most of him was gone. The F1 had exploded virtually in his lap, steel fragments ripping through his torso like a blender’s blades and shredding him before he fell.

Dying, the guy had still managed to fire his launcher, but the rocket had been aimed skyward as shrapnel and the F1’s shock wave had blown him backward. Whatever kind of round he’d loaded, it flew high and wide, arcing a quarter-mile into the clear blue, then descending several hundred yards behind the Jeep, where it erupted into oily flame on barren ground.

Bolan leaped to his feet and jerked his AKMS off its shoulder sling, charging the truck. His objective now was to catch the remainder of the team off balance as they ducked rounds from Azmeh’s carbine and recovered from the explosion of his other frag grenade.

He charged around the truck’s front end, firing before he had a clear target in sight. His enemies, some of them wounded, hadn’t seen him coming, but they did their best—which wasn’t good enough.

When all of the men were down and out, he called to Azmeh, then stood up and waved. The Arab came across to join him, cautiously eyeing the scattered dead, as if he thought they might be faking it.

When he was satisfied, Azmeh told Bolan, “They’ve destroyed the Jeep.”

No big surprise there.

“Let’s check out the truck,” Bolan said.

He walked around and dragged the body out of the bloody driver’s seat. He used the dead man’s keffiyeh to mop up the blood, discarded it and slid behind the wheel.