guards inside talked and smoked as they sat at the tables in the cramped but warm little mess hall, wolfing down steaks and pinto beans, and washing it all down with cans of soda. The rain hammered on the trailer’s metal roof.
The cook—a Canadian Army deserter—circulated in the cramped space with a platter of more steaks, forking them over as requested, the butt of good-humored jokes about his food.
A single ten-millimeter pistol shot rang out a second before the propane tank erupted just outside the trailer’s thin walls. The guards not killed by the concussive blast were gravely wounded by the steel shrapnel or burned alive.
* * *
—
Three more gunshots took out the generator powering the overhead lights. The camp went dark, save for the burning mess hall.
A guard in his skivvies raced out of an adjacent trailer at the sound of the propane blast. He was cut down in mid-stride by a single shot from Jack’s ten-millimeter Glock.
The unit commander stood back in the shadows of the cave’s mouth, trying to assess the situation. Who was attacking? How many? From where?
He called for sitreps on his handheld radio, but no one replied.
“Merde,” he cursed.
The blazing mess hall flames spread to the nearest trailers. The burning buildings lit up the entire camp in a flickering, orange fire that hissed as raindrops spattered on the hot sheet metal.
Two more pistol shots rang out in the noise of the rain. Oxygen tanks exploded like artillery shells just as three men were running past, shredding them into smoking chum.
Suddenly, one of the commander’s men shouted in German and fired off two three-shot bursts from his Steyr AUG 5.56 Bullpup machine gun—at what, the unit commander wasn’t sure.
But two sparks from a pistol thirty yards behind the guard was the answer, tossing the big German backward into the dirt.
The commander couldn’t help but laugh.
He knew exactly who it was out there.
* * *
—
Thirty seconds later, another guard in a poncho and boonie hat and carrying a pistol-gripped Benelli M1014 shotgun barked in pain as a blade severed his spinal column where it attached to the base of his skull.
His body dropped behind one of the big sorting trays.
Jack stripped off the poncho and hat, pulled them on, then grabbed the semiauto shotgun and charged back toward the Bobcat for protective cover. Three guards had ducked behind one of the unburnt trailers, hoping to circle back around the perimeter.
Trusting that the poncho, hat, and Benelli gave him cover as one of the guards, Jack sped across the compound and ducked behind the shack, calling out to the others, “Hey, assholes!”
The three men turned around in unison. Jack recognized two of them from the bar. Before they could raise their weapons, Jack cut them down with eight rounds of double-aught buckshot in less than two seconds, flinging their shredded torsos to the dirt, with the smoke still curling from the barrel of the Benelli.
“JACK RYAN! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
Out of ammo, Jack tossed the shotgun aside and pulled out the Glock. By his count, only three guards remained. He edged up to the corner of the trailer.
“JACK RYAN! LAST CHANCE FOR THIS GIRL! COME OUT NOW OR I KILL HER!”
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. A European.
Jack peeked around the corner. Slashing rain made it hard to see clearly.
In the flickering firelight, Jack saw a man holding a pistol to the head of a woman kneeling in the puddle in front of him. Beside the man with the pistol, a dozen other miners knelt in the mud at the mercy of a second gunman armed with a rifle. And behind them, the remaining miners were huddled in the lean-to, covered by the third guard.
“JACK! I see you! You have three seconds to come out from behind that trailer! Or the girl dies! One . . . two . . .”
Damn it.
If he came out, they’d cut him down. No question.
But if he didn’t, that girl would die, and so would the others on their knees.
Fury overwhelmed him again. He was trapped. But he had no choice.
“Wait! I’m coming out.”
Jack held his hands high, still holding the Glock. He stepped toward the man with the pistol.
An LED tac light popped on, nearly blinding Jack as it swept over him.
“Drop the pistol, Jack. And keep coming forward.”
Jack tossed it aside. He closed the distance. The rain splattering against his boonie nearly deafened him.
Jack couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Jack Ryan. You act as if we’ve met before.” The man scratched his