There were just two remaining able Salafist fighters, and they were heading for the safety of the remnants of the surrounding buildings, letting off short automatic bursts as they ran. Basilios guessed they were fearful of the truck exploding. But before he had a chance to let off a burst of his own, they fell like bowling pins, cut down by scattered volleys from his comrades.
A few seconds later, he signalled for them to cease fire and, raising himself up, jogged over to the twisted hunk of metal that was the truck. Two Salafists were motionless in the front, their faces lacerated almost beyond recognition by careering shrapnel. But as he bent down to recover their superior weapons, he heard two more pickup trucks enter the street.
The men behind the barrier called out to him to get back. Straightening up, he turned towards the end of the road and saw the unmistakable outline of two shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled grenade launchers being aimed in the direction of the barricade aboard the approaching trucks, the rear tyres fishtailing with acceleration.
He darted towards a nearby doorway, using his free hand to signal to the men to disperse. As he reached the doorway, he had to duck down under a hanging lintel before spinning around and crouching in the brick dust. He guessed they were Yugoslav-made 90mm RPGs, favoured here due to their light weight, and the reinforced plastic design. Just a little over twenty-four pounds when armed, two trained men could load and fire six unguided projectiles in a minute. He knew the rocket was propelled from the launcher at a speed of two hundred and fifty yards per second. It was accurate enough to be used effectively against large armoured vehicles up to half a mile away. The barricade wouldn’t stand a chance.
The rockets hit the barricade a couple of seconds later, crippling explosions that sent up a flurry of metal shards and wooden splinters, and caused the middle section of the wall to implode. After the initial din and the devastation caused by the blast, Basilios heard the trucks skidding to a halt. Vaguely, through the dust cloud and to the left of the lintel, he glimpsed the fighters disembarking and running forwards in a jagged line, strafing the remnants of the barrier. They shouted out: Allahu Akbar. And he knew it was almost over.
As those men and boys who were still able returned sporadic fire, Basilios saw a fighter emerge from the subsiding dust. He was sprinting towards the doorway. Basilios scrambled back and stood up, letting the AK drop to his side from the clip. If he shot the man, he would give away his position, and by the way things were going outside, that meant he’d die before he could wreak a sufficient revenge.
He pulled out a piece of cloth from his cargo pocket and used it as a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood from his leg. Wincing, he eased further back into a dark recess, his right hand going for his combat knife. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he realized he’d dropped it in the melee. Even so, he figured he’d have to dispatch the man quickly and quietly. He squatted down, half hidden behind an overturned wooden table and waited.
The fighter ducked through the doorway to avoid the swinging lintel before pivoting around to face the street. He was bearlike, the sleeves of his combat jacket rolled up, revealing thick forearms covered in dark matted hairs. His head was wrapped in a black bandana, the hallmark of al-Qaeda-inspired militants. Basilios knew that the noise from the discharge of small-arms fire and the shouting and screams of battle would mask his steps, but thick beads of salty sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes as he began to move forwards.
At the last moment, the man clearly registered Basilios’s presence and, turning his head, he began to swing his assault rifle around. Basilios hit him hard in the exposed floating rib with the stock of his AK, winding him. He cracked his skull with the AK’s metal butt. Dazed, the Salafist buckled, and knelt in the dust, his head lolling to one side.
Basilios wrapped his arm around the bull-like neck and jerked him up with great force before dropping to the floor. There was a strangely intimate crack as Basilios fractured the man’s C2 vertebrae as if it was parched wood. The burly body went limp, and Basilios eased the dead man’s head to the rubble. But it had been the first time he’d killed a man so close up that he could feel his last breath leaving his body. It left him feeling both energized and shattered.
He moved to the other side of the building, careful to avoid the electricity cable that had fallen through the shattered roof and lay doglegged on the floor. The cable’s live end vibrated and popped and fizzed, evidencing that the portable generator was still intact, or at least functional.
He crouched by a shell hole, listening to the small-arms ricochets and the shrieks from the wounded. He saw two helmeted fighters dragging a boy of no more that fifteen by his hair from the remnants of the wooden shack opposite. They wore green flak jackets and wraparound shades, their postures menacing. The boy was weeping and pleading for his life. They propped him up against a concrete wall and, as he covered his face with his hands, they stepped back and raised their carbines.
Basilios knew the boy’s father, a decent man, who plied his trade as a mechanic among the surrounding towns and villages. He did his best to rationalize the situation, but as they reversed their short rifles, about to bludgeon the kid to death with the metal butts, he took aim and fired at their legs, three rounds each. As they collapsed to the floor, he saw the side of the boy’s head explode in a mass of blood and bone fragments.
Devastated, he scanned the flat roofs above and saw a sniper edging back behind a pile of plastic chairs before turning and half crawling towards the adjoining building.
Basilios glanced around the doorway, telling himself that he would mourn the boy later. Those townsmen who hadn’t fled were dead or dying. There was nothing to be done except to try to survive and then join up with the women and children in the hills. Perhaps I will be able to lead them to safety? he thought.
They couldn’t return to the town, that was for sure. In those towns and villages where the Sunni Islamists had taken control, it’d been a liberation that had turned into a religiously-motivated occupation. People received forty lashes for stealing, and teenagers were beheaded for voicing a barely inappropriate reference to the Prophet. Sharia law had been imposed with a dogmatic ferocity. He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like for a Christian town.
Move, he thought. Keep moving or die.
Twenty minutes later, Pouter emerged onto the sidewalk again, her hips still doing the swinging routine. One of the Russian security detail, a blond guy with sloppy lips and tombstone-grey eyes, who looked as if his mother had substituted breast milk for protein shakes fortified with creatine, held four meringue-coloured paper bags dotted with little lilac flowers.
Tom guessed they held shoe ware worth more than he made in months. But the bags looked absurdly incongruous, and he shot one of his team a disdainful stare as the guy was about to snigger. Ed Swift, a rookie agent from Kansas, who was yet to get a scratch on active duty. Truth was, Tom had to repress a smirk, too. The Russians were kind of touchy about such things.
The rear door to the limo was opened and Pouter slid in. Tom breathed a sigh of relief and ordered his team to mount up via his PTT. He sat in the front of the SUV next to the driver, Sam Collins, a veteran DS agent, who Tom had worked with on three foreign-embassy assignments and trusted like a brother.
Sam had shaved what was left of his hair. He stood six-four and two hundred and twenty pounds, most of which was functional muscle. At fifty, he could still down most of his fellow agents before they’d finished clenching their fists. As he pulled away from the kerb, Tom opened up a secure laptop and checked the route ahead via images sent from a small UVA, an unmanned surveillance drone, which was being controlled by an ex-US Air Force pilot at the nearby Marine Corps Base Quantico.
The ride back to Blair House was smooth, the Russian vehicles moving in a convoy up front. Tom watched Pouter exit the rear limo and strut over the few paving slabs to Blair House, the tricolour of the Russian Federation