Court drew his Glock 19 and fired an entire magazine at the two jeeps as they backed around the corner, their green bodies slamming into one another more than once in a desperate attempt to flee the withering handgun fire. It was no belt-fed machine gun, but at the moment the nine-millimeter handgun was a hell of a lot more valuable.
As soon as they disappeared from view, he leapt back into the front seat, released the brake, and lurched forward.
He’d popped the clutch, stalling the jeep.
The windshield next to his head exploded in a spider-web of cracks as a rifle round struck it.
“Shit!” He refired the engine and launched forward again.
Thirty seconds later, he finally made it to the rally point, and he found the surviving four members of Whiskey Sierra engaged in a fierce firefight, their weapons cracking and snapping as they sent rounds towards a row of buildings at the end of the alleyway to the east. Enemy grenades exploded just short of their targets, and return fire whistled by. Court put the jeep in park and leapt into the back—again his left shoulder hated him for doing so—and he went to work immediately loading a can of ammunition to the machine gun. Sierra Two climbed into the driver’s seat. Brad carried only a pistol now, which he fired over the front windshield.
Seconds later Hightower leapt into the passenger seat, took up a forward firing position, and Two dropped down behind the wheel to reload his sidearm and put the jeep in gear. Sierra Three next came out from behind a row of barrels next to a big generator; on his back was Sierra Four, and in his right hand was a Sudanese Marra pistol that, Court assumed, he’d gleaned from a fallen enemy. Dan dumped his wounded colleague in the jeep’s bed next to Court and then dove in on top of him.
Brad hit the gas, turned the jeep to the left, sending Court reeling in the back; only his handhold on the machine gun kept him upright. Court reracked the slide on the now-loaded weapon and opened up with a burst on the barrels on the corner as they drove off. Immediately the fuel inside ignited, and a massive explosion erupted across the alley, black smoke obscuring the Americans’ retreat.
In under a minute they were on the paved road that led out of town. Twice they’d passed infantry while negotiating the maze of alleys in the shanties, but the speed and the confusion of the quick encounters had kept both meetings bloodless. Sierra Three remained at Gentry’s feet, his handgun and his eyes trained on the six o’clock to nine o’clock sector around the vehicle. His pistol could not do what Six’s machine gun could, but if he saw threats, he knew he could direct the Gray Man to engage them with the jeep’s heavy weapon. He also knew the Gray Man would cover from three to six o’clock, and Brad and Zack would cover the two quarter-slices of the pie in front of them.
Sierra Four was in the back, as well, but he was unconscious now from blood loss.
Court leaned nearer to Zack’s head and shouted over the noise of the speeding vehicle, “Hey! You make a left up here, and I can get us a new ride!”
Zack thought it over for less than a second. “Let’s do it!” He instructed Brad to follow Court’s instructions. They made the turn to the south at the top of a hill and ran directly into a military checkpoint. Easily a dozen GOS infantry were in the middle of a road lined on both sides by clay walls of private homes. Court aimed the PKM and blasted a parked technical, exploding the pickup truck and blowing men down to the dirt at twenty yards. Other troops fired at the Americans as they shot up the road at fifty miles an hour. Brad sped through the smoke and came out on the other side. To the left of the jeep a wounded infantryman lying on his back in the street rolled quickly to his knees, raised his weapon, and raked the open-topped vehicle with automatic rifle fire from fifteen feet. Court had been shooting in the opposite direction and therefore saw the threat late, but he spun the PKM towards the gunfire, blasted the soldier back against a brown wall in a splatter of blood, and then looked down at his exposed body, fully expecting