Extraction (John Taylor #8) - Chapter 15

Hofyo, Somalia

It was a few hours after dark when they got near the village. Taylor learned that he’d been lucky not to be spotted on his first trip down here.

Barsane had gotten his hands on a fleet of Toyota trucks a few years before when he raided an oil-drilling operation that had thought they were getting government protection, only to learn the realities of how far that protection extended after they set up operations. They’d opted to ransom their people back and walk away from operations, and Barsane had taken the money and pretty much everything that hadn’t been nailed down as his just payment. This meant that, for now at least, most of Barsane’s men drove the same type of truck, most of which were newer than the stuff Gehdi’s men were driving.

Taylor figured he probably had been spotted, but only at enough of a distance that they couldn’t tell it was a white guy driving the truck. They’d seen it was one of ‘their’ trucks and hadn’t paid him any further attention.

Thankfully, Gehdi knew how to get close to the village without relying on luck, which was good, since they needed surprise for this to really work out. For all that Barsane had in men and firepower, he had been - at least, according to Gehdi - neglecting anything that wasn’t brute force. Gehdi claimed to have infiltrated Barsane’s operations both in his home village and in some of the other villages he controlled.

Taylor didn’t tell him that, had he been as successful as he thought he had been, he would know about the targeting system that was the real prize Barsane was sitting on. It was possible that Gehdi was playing him and he knew about the targeting system, and was hoping Taylor would get it for him so he could just take it from Taylor, but he didn’t think so. Taylor thought he was a fair judge of people, and he was pretty sure Gehdi was in the dark about what was actually going on. Besides, it wasn’t like he had a lot of choices.

Their convoy had made a weaving path through Barsane’s territory based on where he was the blindest. Just as Taylor had done, Gehdi had all of his men unload from their vehicles so they could finish the rest of the approach silently on foot, although he did leave a few men behind to make sure their transportation was still there when it was time to go.

“My weapon,” Taylor said as the men were piling out of the trucks.

“Yes,” the warlord said, waving at one of his men to bring over Taylor’s rifle. “This has been an interesting partnership. Next time you visit my village, perhaps call ahead.”

Taylor thought calling his being held in a hut under guard a ‘partnership’ something of a stretch, but he had enough to do tonight without getting into useless arguments. They’d gone over the plan several times while Gehdi’s men had prepared, but Taylor still wanted to double-check one last time.

“I’m going to set up on that rise over there,” he said, pointing at a small rise about a third of a mile from the village. “I will give you fifteen minutes to get into position before I take out the first barracks hut, followed by the tank and then the third barracks. As soon as you see the tank go, begin your attack. Please, try and keep your fire towards the front of the village.”

He wasn’t worried so much about the small arms fire. There were enough buildings in the way that, while there would be some danger, it wasn’t going to be worse than the danger of running across Barsane’s men. The thing that worried him was Gehdi’s decision to bring along a very old mortar that looked to be from World War II.

Gehdi had insisted that, even with the tank being taken care of, he needed something to even the disparity in manpower. Taylor was only concerned that, if they overshot, those could cause serious problems for him and the freed hostages.

“Just be careful with the mortar, please.”

“We know our jobs. You make sure the tank is destroyed and we will do them.”

Gehdi had been against putting the tank second on the list, but Taylor had seen enough to know he had some time before it got into action and he wanted to go for the barracks first.

Taylor had used this system several times before and knew that it would be just over a minute before he could fire a second shot. It didn’t actually take that long to drop the launch tube and connect the Command Launch Unit to the next one, but the CLU needed a good minute in the current weather conditions to cool down enough to be good to fire again.

That’s why he wanted to hit the barracks first. A minute was enough time for most of the building to empty once they’d heard the first explosion, since it didn’t take much for a man to roll out of bed and grab a weapon on the way out of the door. The tank, on the other hand, would be slower.

When he’d seen it before, they didn’t keep it manned and ready to go. A few guys had wandered over and climbed inside as he’d watched, but they’d come out again a few moments later. It made sense in a way. Barsane’s village hadn’t been attacked in some time and it would be pretty grueling on the guys operating it to be inside and buttoned up all the time. They were probably living very nearby in one of the huts at the outer edge of the village.

It might have been better for the men, but from a readiness standpoint, it left a lot to be desired. It would take a minute or two for anyone to even get to the tank and another several minutes to get all of the men in their positions inside and the engine turned over. Taylor’s worst case scenario, or maybe best case for the men in the tank, was a minimum of three minutes before it could be brought into action.

This meant that Taylor could have taken out both barracks and still had time to hit the tank before it could start firing against Gehdi and his men. Taylor still had it second on his target list because, although the Javelin was a good system and well tested, there were still occasional failures. It was unlikely that two tubes would be bad, so he was willing to take the risk and hit the first barracks before going for the tank, but he wanted a failsafe option for the tank, just in case, because if he didn’t get it, Gehdi would leave without firing a shot and the whole thing would be off.

The third building was the one Taylor wasn’t sure about. Three minutes was a long time for anyone inside to get moving, but it was the only practical target left after the first barracks building and the tank, and Taylor wasn’t one to just waste a perfectly good missile, even though it meant that he’d be shooting at what would most likely be an empty building.

Taylor grabbed one of the launch tubs and two of Gehdi’s men picked up the remaining two and followed him towards the rise, moving low and quietly. Each loaded tube weighed fifty pounds and with the rest of his gear, Taylor hadn’t really wanted to lug all of it up to his firing position by himself. The guys took off as soon as they set down the launch tubs and Taylor got himself into firing position, which for the Javelin meant sitting on his butt with his knees pulled up.

This was partly to brace against the weight of the rocket, which actually pointed kind of up. It was an indirect system so that, as long as Taylor kept the tracker on the building, the rocket would fire up and away from him before acquiring the building and taking its direct flight path towards it. For the tank, Taylor didn’t actually have to keep the target locked in the screen, since it recognized the vehicle for what it was and it became a fire and forget weapon. Of course, he still had to wait for the CLU to cool down, so it didn’t mean he’d get to fire at the third building any faster.

Taylor lined up the building and waited, counting down the minutes for Gehdi to get into position. It was almost at the fifteen-minute mark when something went wrong. A shot rang out from the edge of the village, followed by a barrage of fire from along the line Gehdi had planned to set up at. Since that wasn’t part of the plan at all, one of his men must have been noticed by the sentry. Either way, that meant it was showtime.

Taylor had had the launcher lined up with the building and ready to go for some time, so all he really needed to do was fire, which he did within seconds of the first shot ringing out. The system kicked against him hard as the rocket left the tube and Taylor made sure to reacquire the target in time, as a jet of flame erupted from the rocket above and in front of him. A burning line cut through the night’s sky as the missile entered its terminal phase and plowed through the roof of the long hut just before exploding.

Taylor didn’t stop to see the damage and barely caught the explosion. He was on the clock now and had already detached the CLU and grabbed the second launch tube. Through the reticule, he could see men scrambling towards the tank, which said good things about their response time, but was unfortunate for them, since they were going to be on or inside of the vehicle when it exploded.

Taylor waited for the indicator light that would tell him the weapon was ready to fire again as he watched the men climb up the side and the first one drop through the tank’s opened hatch. The icon turned green and Taylor marked the tank, which the CLU dutifully picked up and identified as a target. Taylor fired and was kicked again as the rocket left the tube. Even with the padded harness on the launch tube, by the third shot, Taylor knew he was going to be hurting.

The rocket didn’t just kick out and make a straight line for the target like it had the first time. Since its system had properly locked on, it did what the Javelin was actually designed to do, shooting up into the air and making a wide arc, so that it would land on the much more vulnerable and less armored top of the tank. On an older model like the one Barsane had, there was no chance it would survive. He already had the CLU clipped into the third tube when the rocket landed on the tank. Despite himself, Taylor stopped to look and make sure the tank was taken care of.

It was. A mixed cloud of debris, fire, and dust exploded out from the vehicle, with big chunks of metal raining down in a several-yard radius as the old machine came apart. Taylor could see men pouring out of the third building and already bullets were starting to whiz by him as the men in the village started to realize where these missiles were coming from. It was dark where he was and with all of the other fire happening, they probably didn’t have the time or discipline to really pick him out as a target, but enough were blind firing in his direction that Taylor didn’t want to stay up here any longer than he had to.

He acquired the third building, which he saw no one leaving from any longer, and fired, keeping the targeting locked in until it impacted. As soon as he saw the missile hit, he dropped the launcher, with the CLU still attached in a pile with the others.

Although the Army would probably be pissed if they knew he’d left one of their high-tech launchers just sitting out in the Somali plains, there was enough soldier left in him that Taylor decided it was better to destroy the system entirely. Putting the launch tubes altogether, Taylor pulled the pin on the incendiary grenade he’d had Lopez set him up with what seemed like a lifetime ago.

As soon as he dropped it down the launch tube that still had the CLU attached, Taylor took off down the hill. Besides starting fires, this grenade was designed to immobilize or destroy weapons systems and vehicles, so it should make short work of the launch tubes and CLU, at least to the point where they’d be unusable.

Taylor slid down the hill he’d been using as a firing platform, his left hand getting cut up as he tried to control his descent against the rocky ground. Behind him, there was a pop and then a strange sizzling/whistling sound as the thermite inside the grenade ignited, heating the metal and electronics of the tube to an incredible four-thousand degrees. There’s wasn’t an explosion, since all that was left was circuit boards, aluminum, and steel, but there was a popping sound as rivets and welds began snapping apart.

Light from the rise increased as enough of a hole burned through the tube, which was the other reason Taylor was running so hard away from his launch site. The bright light began drawing fire from the village, which had been all but certain. The rocket kicked on up in the air and then crashed down and there’d been minimal backblast when Taylor had fired, so only those who’d been looking directly at him when he fired would have seen the launches. None of them could have missed the light and Taylor had known it’d become a fire magnet.

Taylor’s run away from the burning equipment was in the opposite direction of where Gehdi and his men continued to fire away. There was enough noise that it was unlikely that anyone would hear him crashing across the rocky ground as he circled the village and he was far enough out that it was unlikely they’d see him circling around to where the fifty-caliber gun was starting to hammer away in Gehdi’s direction. Even if they did look his way, all of the burning fire would have ruined their night vision, making Taylor all but invisible.

He didn’t slow down as he got to the hill the machine gun was on. It was steeper than the one he’d been firing on, and he had to sling his rifle and use both hands to pull himself up the back of it. If he’d had his choice, Taylor would have preferred to just lob a grenade up to the firing position and put it out of action, but an explosion back here would draw attention he didn’t want. Thankfully, both men were operating the weapon and neither was paying much attention to what was happening behind them.

Taylor pulled himself up enough to peek over the edge of the slope and saw both men were completely focused on what was in front of them. The gun was hammering away, which covered the sound of Taylor pulling himself up into a kneeling position. Taylor reached down and pulled his pistol, since it would only be seconds before one of the men noticed the movement behind them and turned to see what was happening.

Neither man had much time to figure out what was happening as Taylor shot both in the back. As soon as the gun fell silent, Taylor was moving again. For the first minute or so, their friends in the village will assume the pair were reloading. They might wait another two or three minutes, since they’d be focused on something else and they could assume there was just some kind of issue keeping the gun from opening back up. Five minutes and someone would be coming to check on it, and Taylor wanted to be long gone by then.

Pushing the men’s bodies out of the way, Taylor moved to the weapon and popped open the receiver cover. It was an older model machine gun and was probably picked up in the nineties when the US was heavily involved in the area. Thankfully, Taylor’s training as an 18B weapons sergeant had covered a wide range of weapons systems, including some older US weapons they might encounter in the field.

Taylor wanted to make sure whoever came to check on why the weapon had fallen silent didn’t have the chance to get it into action again, especially when he’d be in front of it in the village around at the same time. Taylor pushed the bolt release latch down and turned the buffer sleeve to the right, freeing it so he could pull it back, exposing several parts of the rear assembly of the gun. Taylor didn’t try to get fancy, since he didn’t care if he put it out of service long term and he was looking for speed over clever solutions.

He began pulling pieces out, as he disassembled the weapon, throwing each into the darkness as he got it free. The driving spring, bolt stud and eventually the entire bolt came sliding out of the rear of the gun, each sailing into the night. Some of the parts were hot from extended use, and Taylor had been forced to grab a chunk of canvas and wool next to him the loader had sitting on to get some of the parts out. A handful of minutes later, the gun was completely useless until someone went out into the darkness and found all of the pieces he’d tossed. Some of those, like the spring, were going to be tough to find before daylight, and even then it would take some searching.

Taylor was again sliding down a hill, this time into the village. As soon as Taylor was down the hill he unstrapped his rifle and pulled it up at the ready while running through the streets. The plan seemed to be working, since he only encountered a few men on his way to the house at the center of the village. The first two were when he was halfway there and they were making a bee-line for the rise where the fifty-cal. had been, and had probably been sent back to find out why the weapon had gone silent. Neither had expected to run into a hostile a third of the way into the village coming from the opposite side of the attack and neither had their weapon at the ready, which was a fatal mistake for both of them.

The other group of gunmen were near the central house, gathered out front of its protective wall. Taylor saw them well before they saw him and he could have gotten the drop on them, but there was a camera on that wall by the entrance and the last thing Taylor wanted to do was announce his presence. It might not matter as far as getting the tracking system, but if they were still alive it would definitely get the hostages killed.

Instead, he circled around to the rear of the building. The wall was, thankfully, not very tall or well secured. It didn’t have barbed wire around the top or spikes or other deterrents for people climbing over and, while it was high enough to not directly see over, it was still short enough that Taylor could grab the top edge without jumping, making it very scalable.

Taylor looked around the rear of the house for more cameras, and didn’t see any, nor were there any along the outside of the wall, which was another sign of how lax they took their security. Of course, having patrols out and owning the whole town would make you feel more secure, so maybe they didn’t feel they needed them.

The next step was the riskiest, since it required Taylor to sling his rifle again. If anyone came across him during the next several minutes, he would be in big trouble. Taylor pushed the worry aside. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen and this was the only choice for getting inside.

He grabbed the ledge and used the outjutting of a square support post as a brace to pull himself up just enough to look around. There wasn’t any sign of patrols outside of the men standing around the front gate and he still didn’t see any cameras. It seemed inconceivable that they’d only have one camera. Taylor couldn’t imagine any security so lax that they only felt the need for one security camera, but apparently, that was the situation.

Seeing the area was clear, Taylor hauled himself over the wall and dropped down into the thin dirt area that ran between the back wall and the house. His luck continued. The house was a classic European design, including windows on the side and rear of the house. Not that Taylor was complaining. Barsane’s decision to live like some kind of king while his people lived in literal huts would work out for Taylor at least.

The window was at least locked, so Taylor busted the window out with the butt of his rifle. There was still a tremendous racket coming from the front of the town, especially with the explosions only a few hundred yards away as the first mortar rounds started dropping in. They were closer than Taylor would have liked, but they would hide the sounds from whatever he was doing at the moment.

Clearing the glass, Taylor climbed through the window into an almost empty room. He moved slowly across the wooden, or maybe fake wooden, floor and peeked through the doorway, seeing no one. He slowly made his way through the house, having switched to his sidearm since the quarters were a lot more compact and didn’t lead well to the use of a long gun. He came across two more rooms, both equally empty, before he got to a larger room that had a set of stairs going up and a door that was slightly ajar, showing another set of stairs going down. The door to the stairs down looked to be a very bad modification to the house. The entrance was probably some kind of under-stairs storage cabinet and the stairs themselves were roughly cut stone.

The empty rooms were strange, but not something Taylor needed to worry about at the moment. Taylor looked at the two stairs and decided down was more likely, especially for the targeting system, which they’d want to protect so they could sell it.

Whatever they’d taken from the compound had been pretty large, which made Taylor think there was probably another entrance, maybe a pulley or elevator, somewhere in the building. The stairs turned out to lead to a long hallway of roughly cut rock. Taylor had seen rooms and whole compounds like this cut into cave systems when he’d been held prisoner in Afghanistan, although never beneath a modern house before.

Taylor moved slower here, mostly because it was very poorly lit, with a lightbulb here or there attached to the ceiling with a long cable that ran down the hallway and turned a corner. It was, surprisingly, still fairly loud down here, although the sounds of the gunfight had gone away and were replaced by an echoing ‘chuga-chuga’ sound that Taylor thought might have been a generator of some kind.

The two rooms cut into three sections both looked to be storage of some kind but didn’t hold anything that looked like it could have been the stolen targeting system, so Taylor bypassed them.

Stopping to do a quick peek around the corner, Taylor saw a few more doorways cut out and the hallway suddenly ended in a blank, rough-cut wall. A pile of tools was leaning against the wall, suggesting they planned on extending this even further. That, along with the unfurnished rooms upstairs, suggested this whole thing was fairly new and still a work in progress, although it had to predate Barsane’s acquisition of the targeting system.

Closest to the end of the hall were two rooms across from each other and the cable along the ceiling split of, going into each room. Since the echoing sound had gotten louder, Taylor assumed one of those housed the generator, although there wasn’t a lot of smoke and the air only smelled dank, so they must have set up some kind of exhaust system, which was actually pretty clever of them. One of the issues in those Afghan caves was they never ventilated their generators and he’d seen more than one person drop from being overwhelmed by fumes.

The other room was more interesting, since it was the first lit room he’d seen, which probably meant someone was in there. If there was, it was impossible to tell, because of how loud the generator was.

Taylor made his way forward. The second room held a surprise, since it wasn’t a room at all, but another small hall, maybe fifty feet long, with doorways cut into it that had bars over them. It was extremely dark, since the only light was the dim bulb out in the main hall, but he could see a few faces that definitely stood out as Americans. They were dirty and bruised, but alive. One of them noticed him and started excitingly getting the attention of the others. Taylor made a quieting motion at them, since they’d started getting excited and even with the generator, there was a chance whoever was at the end of the hallway would hear them.

They didn’t let up, which changed things. Taylor turned away from the jail area and readied his sidearm, moving towards the lit room as the hostages began screaming after him. He could hear them clearly over the sound of the generator and it wasn’t a surprise when an armed man came out of the lit room, probably headed to check on what was happening. He hadn’t expected to see a hostile, though and his weapon was down at his side as he stepped out and Taylor dropped him. To his credit, he did manage to get his weapon up a few inches and pulled the trigger as he fell, the slug bouncing off the stone floor between them with a metallic ping.

Taylor was already moving even as the ricochet whizzed past him, running the last few steps right next to the doorway, grabbed one of the flashbangs, pulled the pin, and tossed it in, turning to keep from looking at the flash as it went off, covering his ears, since the echo in here was going to be murder.

Even with that, when it went off it felt like someone tried to stab him in the ears. They were ringing badly as he straightened back up and came around the doorway, his weapon extended. There were two men inside, one dressed like the other militia members he’d seen and once dressed in a dark red robe of all things, although he still had a gun in his hand. Both men were bent over, their mouths opened and they were probably screaming, although Taylor couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in his ears.

Taylor didn’t hesitate, since he wasn’t here to take prisoners and dropped both men, double-tapping each to make sure they were down. The room itself was a lot bigger than Taylor thought it was, and it did indeed have some kind of elevator pulley system. Taylor was a little lost on the geography of where he was and wasn’t sure where the elevator went. It could have gone to one of the huts outside of the walled-in house or just to the other end of the house that Taylor hadn’t explored.

Either way, in the middle of the room, was what looked like a large encased piece of electronics that didn’t seem to have any screen or control surfaces, although there were a series of ports on one side that probably were meant to hook it up. It clearly didn’t belong down here and had to be the targeting system. Also in the room, near where the two fallen men had been standing, was a little monitor that looked like it had been bought in the late eighties. Taylor guessed it must have been where the video feed from outside was going, although the screen had been blown out by the flashbang. Next to it sat a large radio that these guys were probably using to keep in contact with the men up top, which also meant there was a good chance the man in the robe was Barsane, not that it mattered much to Taylor’s mission.

What did matter was that, if he’d been on the radio when everything went down, Taylor was going to be in a world of trouble in a very short amount of time. Taylor stared at the tracking system. He’d given some thought ahead of time about how to destroy this thing, but without seeing it, he hadn’t been able to work out a plan in detail. He did, however, have an idea.

First, he checked the room and the men in it for keys to the barred cells he’d seen holding the hostages. Thankfully, they were in the pocket of the guy not in the robe, which solved one problem.

Taking his knife, he pried open the casing in several places, although he left the metal covering in place. Pulling out his grenades, he wedged each one into the case, making sure they were securely lodged in and wouldn’t come out without pulling the case out further.

He then grabbed some rope he had in his bag and cut them into three equal sections. It was a thin climbing rope that he carefully tied to the pins of each of, making sure the spoon wasn’t blocked and would release, and then backed out of the room. He probably could have gotten away with just pulling a grenade and tossing it in through the panel, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t just fall out when he did and he wanted to make sure the system was well mangled.

On the way out of the room, Taylor stopped and grabbed the assault rifle and extra magazine the guy he shot had on him before stepping around the door and going as far as the cut cords would allow him, which wasn’t very far. The walls seemed strong, so Taylor thought he’d be okay, although the sound would be deafening again.

Turning his back to the doorway, hunching over slightly, and opening his mouth to try and equalize some of the pressure, Taylor tugged on the cords. The ropes pulled tight and then suddenly slackened, followed by the sound of small pieces of metal hitting stone. Taylor covered his ears and after a short delay felt a wave of concussive force tear through the doorway, dissipating as it hit the tunnel/hallway, where it had room to spread and weaken.

Taylor peeked inside the room, just to confirm that the tracking system was wrecked. The casing was ripped apart, although there were still large sheets intact on the ground. Most of the internal workings, which were much more fragile, being held on with soldering, had been blown to pieces. Pieces that were now covering the floor, embedded in the walls, the ceiling, and stuck into what was left of the two bodies.

There was pretty much nothing left of it now. Maybe someone would be able to piece it all together, but Taylor doubted it. It was good enough for him and if they did, that was Wheeler’s problem and not his.

Besides, Taylor didn’t have a lot of time to deal with it. If they hadn’t heard the gunshots and flashbang, they definitely heard the grenades. Taylor slung the extra rifle and stuck the magazine in his pocket. That had been mostly out of habit, because from the weight of it, he could feel that it was empty.

Hurrying down the hall, Taylor opened up the cells, looking at the faces to see if he recognized anyone.

“Wait in the hallway so we can all go up in a group. I have transportation waiting outside the village, but we have to stick together,” Taylor yelled.

He could kind of hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears, which was a good sign that his hearing was coming back. He didn’t check to see if they listened, since he was more focused on looking for Wayne Nash, who was thankfully in the second door he opened.

“Wayne?” Taylor asked the man who looked like the picture Claire had shown him.

The man said something that Taylor couldn’t hear.

“My hearing is screwed. You’re gonna have to speak up.”

“Yes, I’m Wayne Nash,” the guy yelled into Taylor’s ear.

“Your wife sent me to come get you. I want you to stay on my ass the whole way out of here, got it?”

“Got it,” The guy said.

Taylor went to open the third door and encountered another surprise. In the back was Stone, who looked uninjured, and his sidekick O’Brien, whose chest had been sloppily bandaged by someone. Stone glanced at his sidekick and walked out, past Taylor into the hall.

“He’s dead,” Stone said as he passed.

Stone hadn’t yelled, but Taylor made out enough to tell what he was saying as the ringing continued to lessen.

“Give me a weapon,” Stone said as Taylor caught up to him and began to push his way through the fifteen or so hostages so he could lead them out. “You’re going to need my help.”

Taylor looked at Stone for a moment, appraising him before handing his rifle to Nash.

“Hold this,” Taylor said.

His hands-free, Taylor walked past Stone and through the rest of the crowd before turning to find Stone right behind him. Racking the bolt once, Taylor handed the weapon out to Stone.

“Take the back of the group,” he said.

Stone, thankfully, didn’t argue and pushed his way back to the rear of the crowd of hostages.

“Everyone, follow me, stay low, and stay in a tight group. We’ve got transportation waiting just out of town, but we’re not out of danger, yet.”

Taylor moved up the stairs slowly, weapon at the ready, expecting someone to come bursting around the corner at any moment. He was halfway up when he realized why no one was coming to investigate the explosion in the basement. His had been just some gunfire and three grenades. He could hear more of the mortar rounds landing as he moved up the stairs, and they sounded a lot closer than they had before.

The hostages were injured and malnourished after weeks in captivity and weren’t making their way over a back wall, which meant going through the front door, directly into the arms of the men who’d been standing outside the gate. If he’d had some grenades, Taylor would know what to do, but this would be harder without them, since he wouldn’t be able to engage them till he was right in their midst.

A steady crashing of explosions could be heard as they got to the front door of the house. It was weird, coming from a rough tunnel to something that could have been found in most American suburbs, and then heading out into a village of fairly primitive huts. If Taylor wasn’t so focused on trying to keep an eye on the rescued hostages and looking for hostiles, he would have been distracted by how out of place this whole thing was.

There were more important things to pay attention to, however. The problem with the men who’d been stationed out by the front door was solved for him. They’d relocated inside the wall surrounding the house, most likely to avoid the shrapnel created by the mortar shells hitting nearby huts and parked vehicles.

There were five of them, and they all had their backs to the house, either trying to look through the unbarred gate in the wall or just pressing themselves to the wall out of fear. Taylor took note of the targets, pulled up his rifle, and worked right to left. The three men on the left side of the gate were so close that Taylor had barely needed to pause between shots, and his biggest obstacle was being able to swing his muzzle past the gateway and onto the two remaining targets before they could turn and fire.

Thankfully, they didn’t even notice something was wrong until all three on the left started falling. The last man finally started to turn when Taylor put two bullets into him. It might not have been sporting, shooting men from behind, but Taylor would take that any day over a stand-up fight.

Waiting a moment to make sure no one else was coming through the gate, Taylor turned to the prisoners and said, “We’re going through that gate and cutting to the right, away from the mortar fire. I know some of you are injured, but keep moving. The longer we stay out there, the more chance there is you’ll to get hit by shrapnel. Move fast and stay on me.”

Taylor made sure they all looked like they understood and started moving. Even with his warning, he couldn’t just run through the gate and sprint out of the danger area. His rescued prisoners were just in too rough shape to move collectively at anything more than a walk.

Sticking his head through the gate, Taylor saw the coast was clear, and then ducked inside as a round landed within a hundred feet. He could hear bits of metal hit the wall as he pulled his head back in under cover. It was going to be a miracle if they got all of these people out of the village in one piece.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to wait for a lull. He’d been moving very fast since he’d finished firing the rockets and the attack had only been going on for twenty minutes. Gehdi had agreed to stay for half an hour before he pulled out, so they didn’t have much time to make their escape. Taylor moved, trying to ignore the mortars while watching both ahead of him for targets and the people following him to make sure he didn’t get too far ahead.

As soon as they got to the edge of the wall, he turned west, leading them out a different direction than he’d come in. Gehdi had left two trucks for him not far from where he’d fired the rockets, and he didn’t have time to get all of these people out and around the village before the warlord pulled out. Taylor also didn’t want to head towards the machine gun, since there’d almost certainly be militia members there by now, trying to get it back into action.

The upside of being this far into the attack was that nearly everyone capable of fighting was already engaged, so there weren’t any more men this far into the village. Although they’d managed to not encounter any fighters on the way out, they didn’t get out unbloodied.

They were still moving along a line not far from where the mortars were landing. Less than a minute after leaving the wall surrounding the house, a shell landed not far from the group. In battle, there are often these strange moments where one person goes down from direct fire or shrapnel while the men on either side are completely untouched, like God reached down and decided to pluck one man out of the line.

This was one of those moments as one of the prisoners about five men deep into their line suddenly dropped. Taylor doubled back to check on him and see if he could help the man make it the rest of the way out, only to stop as he got close enough to see the body. A chunk of shell casing was sticking out of the side of the man’s head. It must have been a big piece, because the man looked to have been dead before he even hit the ground.

“Leave him. Move!” Taylor shouted at the men who’d stopped to gawk at their friend.

There wasn’t anything to do for him and they didn’t need anything slowing them down anymore. Taylor felt bad one of them had gotten that close to freedom only to be so randomly killed, but that was the way things happened sometimes.

They managed to get the rest of the way out of the village and around to the trucks. Taylor was helping men into the vehicles when Stone’s voice called out, stopping him.

“Get out,” Stone said, his weapon pointed at Taylor and the men he’d been helping climb into the back.

“What?” Taylor said.

The rest of the men had frozen and looked between Taylor and Stone, both confused. They’d thought they’d made it out and now they were looking down the barrel of a gun again.

“I’m taking that truck.”

“The hell you are,” Taylor said. “One truck isn’t going to carry all these people.”

“I don’t expect it to,” Stone said, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Wha…” the mercenary got out before Taylor pulled his sidearm and shot him in the middle of his forehead.

The rest of the men still stood around the trucks too stunned to move. The firing at the village was slacking up, which meant that Gehdi’s men were starting to pull back.

Taylor grabbed the rifle Stone and been holding, ejected the magazine, and slid in the full one he’d swapped out in the hallway, handing the weapon to Nash.

“He was going to kill us,” Nash said, still in shock.

“Yes, he was. We need to move. Now.”

The rest of the men piled into the trucks. They drove away from the smoking wreck that had been the village of Hofyo, and headed for the coast.