Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven Part Twelve Part Thirteen
No Place For Heroes, Part Fourteen
Al Jawal, Gharbambiyah
"INTERCEPTOR is on the ground," Gerry Anthony said on the radio. "Repeat, INTERCEPTOR is on the ground."
"Roger," Rysa Browne replied as she lifted off the Aerospatiale Alouette III helicopter that had transported the team of RBI "troubleshooters" into Al Jawal. "FIREFORCE is circling the objective and ready for fire support."
"Copy that," Gerry replied. He didn't look back at the helicopter as it lifted off away from them. Back when he was in the Army, Gerry had heard stories of soldiers who looked back at their chopper transports before going on a mission and ending up getting killed in the line of duty. Gerry wasn't a particularly superstitious man, and he was no longer in the Army, but he wasn't about to tempt fate right now just because.
Ellie Quest closed her eyes to protect them from the dust being blown up by the Alouette. She then followed the tall form of Gabriel de Galicia as they began walking through the streets of Al Jawal towards their objective, where they believed that the so-called "Emirate of Al Jawal" was holding Arby Balladur, son of General Rowan Balladur of WAMIGHA, hostage.
They walked past a row of identical-looking warehouses. The heat radiated from the galvanized iron sheeting tha made up the walls of the warehouses, nearly kniocking the wind out of Ellie. Soon, she felt like her nose and lungs were coated with a fine layer of sand.
"Holding up, Ellie?" Gab asked her.
"I'll be fine, Gab," Ellie replied. "I could be doing better, but I'm fine right now. Still, I'm British, so I'm definitely not used to this kind of heat."
"Usually, I'd say that you'll get used to it," Gab said, "but then again, you're British, like you said, so..."
Their walking slowed to a crawl as they got nearer to their objective, and then finally Gerry lifted up a closed fist just as they approached a small steel door that looked like many other steel doors in the area. The heat emanating from the steel walls felt like a thousand degrees, but nevertheless they went as close to it as they could. "Soft or loud?" Gab asked Gerry, referring to the method of entry.
"Go soft," Gerry said. Gab nodded and used hs left hand to reach for the doorknob, keeping his right hand on his rifle. He touched the knob gingerly, and then grunted in surprise when the door moved freely. "Unlocked," he said. "There might be an ambush waiting for us on the other side," he told the others.
"Keep your eyes and ears open," Gerry said. "If it comes down to that, we're going to have to fight our way out whether we like it or not."
Gab nodded, and then he raised his rifle to his shoulder and pushed the door open wide enough to let one man through one at a time. The others followed him into the warehouse when they didn't hear any kind of gunfire, either from Gab or aimed at him. The interior of the warehouse was huge, and the steel walls were keeping the heat as effectively as a brick oven or a greenhouse. Pallets holding whatever were scattered throughout the warehouse alongside a few shipping containers. Most of the pallets were under heavy tarps, but a few tarps on some pallets had slipped off or fallen away, revealing these pallets to be holding all kinds of foodstuffs and other relief goods. If the Emirate of Al Jawal was indeed the people who were occupying this warehouse, this was proof that they were running some kind of food-for-protection racket among the locals.
"How are we supposed to find Arby in all this junk?" Elizabeth Glenn asked.
"Elementary, my dear Lizzie," Gab replied. "Find him."
"Har, har, har, Gab," Lizzie shot back. "Very funny." The tone of her voice more than implied that no, she didn't actually find it that funny.
"Heads up," Gerry said. "Three tangos up ahead on the catwalk watching us." Ellie looked up and saw that there were indeed three men watching them from some kind of flimsy metal catwalk that looked like it could only support three men if those men were thin and malnourished. These men would hardly be seen as a threat were it not for the Kalashnikov rifles cradled in their arms and hands.
"Engage?" Gab asked.
"Negative," Gerry replied. "Unless they're firing at us, they're not our concern just yet. Our main objective is still finding Arby. But if you see them making any funny moves, you're cleared to fire."
"Cover?" Lizzie asked.
"Might as well," Gerry said. "God knows we're exposed right where we are."
Ellie lowered her gaze from the three men watching them from the catwalk and back to ground level. That was when she noticed more men with Kalashnikovs running in from the side of the warehouse. They were a mix of Africans, Arabs, and Whites, and they were carrying along with their rifles a handful of machetes. "Guys, up front," she called out.
"Shit," Gerry muttered. "Weapons free!" The warehouse then rang with the deafening sound of rapid and automatic gunfire as both sides opened fire on each other. Bullets struck the pallets and the shipping containers, ricocheting off in all directions. The four members of the extraction team: Gerry, Gab, Ellie, and Lizzie, all returned fire from different places in the warehouse. But even as she fired at the enemy, Ellie shivered at the sudden feeling of dread that washed over her. She had been in her fair share of firefights before as part of Gerry Anthony's special deniable operations unit of Abanhfleft's Republican Bureau of Investigation, but once again she felt herself mortal and vulnerable.
"Ellie, what's the problem?" Gerry asked. "Get those sons of bitches!"
Ellie Quest took a deep breath to push aside the fear beginning to tickle the back of her mind and brought herself back to the present. She let that breath out in a slow sigh and began selecting targets for her to open fire, and she began squeezing off measured bursts of gunfire from her Galil rifle.
"Shoot back!" Gerry shouted. "Shoot! Shoot!'
Every time Ellie popped out of cover to fire at the enemy, she felt as if her cover was going to disintegrate any minute now as literally thousands of bullets went into the food parcels behind which she was hiding. The air now began to reek of cordite and hot brass from all the gunpowder and ammo being expended in the fight. "Move, move, move!" Gerry called out. "Move before they trap us in here!" He stood up from his cover and ran towards the nearest shipping container on the way back to where they had come from. Bullets whizzed past him and caused little clouds of dirt to rise up behind him where the rounds impacted the sandy soil.
"Ellie, move up," Gab said. "I'll cover you." The older man poured fire into a pocket of heavy enemy resistance where a lot of the myriad rounds aimed at them were coming from. Ellie nodded her head and then ran for the nearest pallet of food parcels, which was quickly shredded by gunfire. Gab emptied the magazine of his M4A1 carbine and reloaded. "All right, Ellie, now cover me!" he shouted. Ellie lifted her Galil up to her shoulder and fired at the enemy while Gab ran towards her. A rebel with a Kalashnikov and a machete on his back fell back under Ellie's onslaught, leading Gab to comment, "Nice shooting, Tex."
Ellie chanced another look from behind her pallet and saw another African man running towards her with his machete raised high in the air. She lined him up in her sights and fired a three-round burst. A large red hole appeared in the man's chest, and blood spread from the hole like a grotesque flower going to full bloom.
"Ellie!" Gerry called out. "Don't just stand there, get moving!"
Ellie looked around and saw that she was now alone in her spot in the warehouse. The others had run back to the door where they had come in, and they were still firing at the rebels who were pouring into the warehouse in endless waves, waiting for Ellie to make her move. Ellie shook her head and ran towards the others, but just as she was just a few paces away from them, she saw a round object land in front of her. Even as Ellie recognized the object, Gerry shouted, "Grenade!" Ellie made to jump backwards, and just as she did so, the grenade went off.
There was a bright flash of light and heat, and lots of shrapnel were flying through the air. Ellie landed on her bottom rather than on her side as she had planned, and her ears rang from the close proximity of the detonation. But even as the ringing in her ears subsided, Ellie heard a primal yell emanating from the bowels of the warehouse. It was a scream that had probably never been heard since the dawn of mankind. Ellie looked up and saw another black man running towards her with his machete raised. He was the source of the screaming.
In the few microseconds in which Ellen Quest processed these thoughts, the man was closing the distance between him and her as fast as his stick-thin legs would allow him. But just as the rebel prepared to swing down the machete onto Ellie's exposed neck, he stumbled, and his scream became choked as he struggled for air. He faltered in his steps, and then his body clattered hard on the sandy floor of the warehouse, his machete landing harmlessly on the soil just beside Ellie.
Ellie looked around for her savior and saw Gabriel de Galicia standing over her. In his right hand was a Colt Python with a smoking barrel.
"Just in the nick of time, Gab!" Ellie managed to say.
"Don't thank me yet," Gab said as he helped Ellie stand up. "We're not out of the woods yet."
There was no more resistance from the rebels as Gab and Ellie made their way back to the door where they had entered the warehouse an eternity ago. Gerry and Lizzie were already waiting for them outside the warehouse, and just as Gab and Ellie made it out, they heard Gerry saying on the radio, "I don't know if this was a trap or we were just unlucky, but there was no Arby there, just rebels. We need evac ASAP. How soon can you land?"
"Not anytime soon, INTERCEPTOR," Rysa Browne replied from the Alouette. "I'm looking at you and the LZ and I can see a lot of friends are coming out and waiting for you."
"Well, that's just great," Gerry muttered. "FIREFORCE, are you ready for fire support mission?"
"Just give us the go-ahead and point us to the bad guys, INTERCEPTOR," Rysa replied.
"Copy!" Gerry shouted. He then turned to the others on the ground and asked them, "Are you ready to slog it out?"
"Hell, no, Gerry!" Gab replied. "We're not trained for this!"
"Well, too bad! We're gonna do it anyway!"
"If I die, Gerry, I want you to survive so you can lower me to my grave and let me down one last time!"
"And the same to you, Gab! Let's move out!"
