leave their homes.
The moon was out, but the hills to the north blocked some of its glow, so when the big armored truck flipped off its headlights just before turning south onto Saidi Street, it was all but invisible.
In the back of the vehicle, just behind the driver, the leader of the force of nine drummed gloved fingers over the upper receiver of his M4 rifle. The weapon lay across his knees, its suppressor just inches from the small gunport in the armored vehicle, which he could open if he needed to fire into the street. Looking out the thick starboard-side window, just above the gunport, he watched as his MaxxPro turned onto Mualla Street. There were apartments up and down the road, and many of the residents were out and about, as evidenced by the large amount of foot traffic on the sidewalk visible to him.
Other locals sat in chairs in front of little shops, or stood on apartment balconies.
A voice came over the team leader’s headset. “Mercury for Hades.”
Still looking out the window, the man with the rifle in his lap depressed the push-to-talk button on his interteam radio and spoke English in a midwestern accent through his headset. “Go for Hades.”
From the front seat Mercury said, “Shitload of folks out tonight. Intel said it would be quiet by now.”
The operator next to Hades, his second-in-command, didn’t transmit over the radio, but as he looked through the window on his right, he spoke in a southern drawl. “We good, boss?”
Before he could answer, a voice crackled over both men’s radio headsets. “Mercury to Hades. Target in sight. No security visible at the front gate.”
The team leader nodded in resolution, then answered his second-in-command. “We’re good.” He clicked his radio. “Execute.”
The vehicle pulled to a halt seconds later, twenty yards from the entrance of a gated office complex next door to the public works building. The property consisted of a pair of identical three-story structures, surrounded by a high privacy fence and a sliding steel gate.
Eight men piled out of the big MaxxPro, leaving only Mercury behind the wheel.
Hades brought his rifle’s optic to his eye and crossed the street, third in a line of four operators. They flagged their barrels across a pair of older locals walking by dressed in ankle-length robes, quickly evaluating them as potential enemies. Then, after discounting the threat the pair posed, the Americans moved their focus to a group of four younger civilians standing next to a sedan with an open hood, smoking cigarettes while watching the heavily armed men who had just emerged from the heavily armored vehicle.
The young men did not move a muscle—they weren’t idiots—and soon the Americans had passed them by, heading south along the street towards the office complex.
While they were still ten yards from the front gate, one of the four men who had taken a position around the MaxxPro spoke over the net. “Thor for Hades. I got a cluster of military-aged males eyeing us from an alley entrance, west side, two blocks south of your poz. How copy?”
Hades kept his trigger finger straight across the receiver of his rifle, one-handing his gun while clicking his radio with the other. “Solid copy. If they brandish, you light ’em up.”
“Roger that.”
The four-man assault element stopped in front of the gate. Three men covered as the fourth, the breacher, began setting a small charge on the lock. He’d just finished arming the device when gunfire boomed on the street.
The Americans dropped to their kneepads and identified muzzle flashes two blocks south of their position.
Americans at the MaxxPro began returning fire; incoming and outgoing bullets raced in both directions, ricocheting off concrete walls. Civilians dropped and huddled behind cover; others ran around blindly, frantic for refuge.
Others died where they stood, spinning down to the asphalt.
Hades squeezed off short bursts into the general area of where he’d seen the flashes. In the low light he saw bodies running, falling onto one another, diving into shops and alleyways, desperate to get away from the wall of gunfire generated by eight rifles operated by well-trained shooters.
Hades’s M4 ran dry, and he ducked behind a small panel van near the gate to reload. As he triggered the bolt catch release with a click impossible to hear through all the shooting, he tapped his mic with his other hand. “Mars!” he called, giving the call sign of the man who had placed the charge on the lock. “Go secondary! Go secondary!”
Without hesitation the breach