Excerpt from Chapter 8 – A Moving Target

Tom led at a fast pace. They circled the outcrop and came around by the generator shed. There was about fifteen minutes before the Harrier strike and the timers on the Semtex would go off. They needed a fast escape route. Tom breathed a sigh of relief when he spied a Toyota pick-up just behind the generator. It was locked, but Khalid was in the vehicle in less than sixty seconds. Tom watched open mouthed as he broke open the plastic cradle surrounding the steering column and hotwired the vehicle in another thirty seconds.

“Goddamn!” Khalid screamed. “It’s almost out of fuel.”

Tom grabbed a hose from the generator day-tank and siphoned off fuel into the pick-up—another precious five minutes wasted. Just as they were about to get in the truck to take off, they heard the unmistakable chatter of automatic weapons and suddenly bullets started flying all around them. By instinct, Tom and Khalid hit the deck and then systematically scanned the field of view to determine the source of the attack. Using sign language, Tom indicated that crossfire was coming from one of the gun emplacements down the hill to their left and from the observatory behind them. The rapid fire clunked and clanged as it ricocheted off the generator.

“We’ll never get past that emplacement,” Tom yelled at Khalid.

Before Tom could say anything more, Khalid had rolled away to the left and shouted, “Cover me!”

Tom was nervous and sweating, as he emptied a magazine from his AK-47 in the direction of the emplacement. This made his enemies put their heads down for a few seconds, but he was still vastly outgunned. Their reply was a volley of machinegun fire that ripped through the cladding on the roof of the generator shed. He flipped over on his side to reload and pumped a few extra rounds at the gun emplacement and then at the observatory door. Two minutes later, the gun emplacement went silent, and Tom turned his attention to the observatory. Khalid slipped back out of the shadows into the shed. Tom saw him with a grin on his face, wiping and sheathing his blade.

“Okay, boss, we’ve got about two minutes and thirty seconds to get the hell out of here!”

They mounted the truck, Khalid driving, Tom aiming his AK-47 at the observatory hanging half out of the pick-up door. They rattled around the corner in a four-wheel skid.

“Man, that was close,” Tom shouted, with a mixture of exhilaration and relief.

He pulled himself into the truck, closing the door. “Go! Go! Go!”