soon ran dry. He called for cover, but the other men on his team were still fully involved with the rescue of their injured colleague. Hightower dropped his empty rifle and pulled his Sig pistol from his drop-leg holster, fired out the window and up the street with his right hand, had to lean his head out and expose his upper torso to do so, while his left felt for a fragmentation grenade in a pouch on his chest.
As his pistol’s slide locked open with the firing of the last round, Sierra Five shouldered up on his left and opened up with his small Uzi. Zack threw the grenade as far up the street as he could. “Frag out!” He then stepped back inside the room to reload and assess the situation.
Four sat on the floor. With his HK machine gun in his hands he covered the door through which he and two others had entered the building. His lower right leg was bloody, and Three checked it quickly. Two had already crossed the big room, pushing desks and chairs out of the way as he did so, and was looking out a window on the south side, trying to find a fast exit to get the team moving again. Hightower noticed that Sierra Two was limping as he moved.
Zack reloaded; he had six rifle magazines left. His 150 remaining rounds did not seem like a lot of ammo, considering he’d already blown through ninety in a sporadic fight that was less than five minutes old.
As he moved across the room to link up with Brad, he took a look at his own wounds. There was a clean, almost perfectly round bullet hole in his right forearm. Blood ran from it, soaked his brown shirt and his gear, but his hand and arm seemed to be working just fine. He then found an exit wound just above his elbow. Both arms and hands were covered in blood, but he could find no more injuries other than some abrasions from the broken glass on his cheeks, just under his goggles.
“Three, can he walk?” Zack asked into his mouthpiece as he arrived at Two’s side.
“Affirmative. I think his fibula’s cracked, and he’s losing blood. He’ll need treatment ASAP, but he can walk for a few minutes, anyway.”
“Good enough. Everybody on me, we’re busting out of here now. We are not gonna let these knuckleheads surround us.”
THIRTY-SIX
Court heard Zack’s transmission to him while he was still running with Oryx, then, a half minute later, he heard the crash in the distance. The continued transmissions on his radio told him Whiskey Sierra had made it out of the street, but it was clear they were knee-deep in shit.
But Court had his own problems. He and Oryx had ducked into a hovel full of locals to hide from a platoon of troops running towards the square. It was a dark and filthy open room, the only light coming from holes in the walls where the corrugated tin did not match flush with the driftwood. Gentry held his Glock to the president’s temple. The Gray Man panted from the exertion of his run and the adrenaline pumping through him, wincing in pain with each breath as the muscles around the arrow tightened and spasmed. As he did all this, he stared at a family of nine who just sat on the floor and stared back at him. There were children in the room, small and black with big, wide eyes that made it clear to Gentry that he was the strangest sight any of them had ever laid eyes on.
The adults’ eyes showed some fear and some surprise, as well, but more than that, there was a prideful anger, that this white man with his gun and his prisoner should just bash his way into their simple home and threaten them with his presence. These people’s lives were borne of hardship, austerity, disease, work, hunger, an absence of liberty and free will. One more danger, one more insult to their existence, was met more with derision and fury than terror.
Though the adults had noticed that this white man had not pointed a gun at anyone except the man in the suit.
These people had no idea they were in the presence of the leader of their country. He meant nothing to their lives.
Court had ignored the arrow in his back as well as anyone could ignore such a thing. From the pain he could tell it was