True Faith and Allegiance

John Clark really wished he could understand the voices on the scanner. He could hear the garbled transmissions of the terrorists through an earpiece in his right ear that searched and locked onto active UHF transmissions nearby. Several of the dead al-Matari men and women in the past weeks had been found with simple walkie-talkies on their bodies, so Clark had brought along the device to capture any comms. Some of the dead so far had been Americans, so he thought there was a good chance they would speak English over their radios.

But not this group, they were speaking quickly, and in various Arabic dialects, and he couldn’t understand a damn thing they were saying.

Even so, Clark touched the PTT button on the cord hanging from his ear, transmitting to the men on his encrypted mobile phone, which used a digital band and could not be picked up on the terrorists’ walkie-talkies. While he spoke he looked through the scope of his Remington 700 bolt-action rifle and whispered, not knowing where the terrorists were around him. “Be advised. I’ve got Arabic radio traffic in the vicinity. Within five hundred yards. Possibly much less. I only hear two voices speaking, and I do not have eyes on anyone at this time.”

He watched Jack Ryan continue to drink his beer on the porch swing, the last of the evening’s light fading by the minute. “That’s enough, Jack. Get back in, you’re a sitting duck out there.”

Jack stood up from the porch swing and idly walked back inside the cabin, closing the door behind him.

Clark scanned his weapon’s eight-power scope in all directions. The light was bad, but he didn’t want to take his eye out of the weapon to use his handheld thermal device, lest he see a target that needed to be immediately dispatched. So far he’d seen no threats, but he knew they were out here somewhere.

He was positioned on the ledge of a rocky hilltop that was only partially covered by trees, four hundred yards from the front of the cabin. Below the man-sized ledge was a steep decline of rolling hill covered in brush. This wasn’t an ideal location because he had no cover other than the lip of the ledge in front of him, but it was the only place to get good eyes on the entire scene and still have some standoff distance to use his sniper rifle. If he was sighted during a fight, he’d be a sitting duck, and he’d have no quick way to get off the ledge without standing and climbing higher up the hill.

He just hoped he was deep enough in cover that any of these ISIS terrorists wouldn’t see him, or step on him, for that matter, because he had no idea where these guys were right now.

Jack’s voice came over the earpiece. “See anything, John?”

“Nothing so far. But if they’re in the woods, I won’t see them till they get right up on top of you.”

Jack then said, “Ding?”

Chavez had positioned himself in a long narrow crawlspace attic, with darkened windows on the north side and the south side of the cabin. He could look out only one side or the other, and now he was facing south. “I’ve got nothing but some grazing deer. If the deer spook, then we’ll know the bad guys are getting close.”

Chavez turned around and went back up to the north side of the cabin, looked out the window there. It took him thirty seconds of crawling to get there. “No deer to the north. I don’t know if that just means there are no deer or if… wait one.”

He saw movement deeper in the trees, something darting through bushes. “John, get a scope on the north-side woods.”

After several seconds Clark’s voice came back over the net. “Nothing. Nothing on thermal, either, but that’s thick brush. I’m scanning south now.”

Chavez kept looking to the north through the window for a few minutes, and finally he saw two figures in the darkness there, moving toward the house. “I’ve got two pax. Working together, ten yards inside the tree line on the north. Both carrying weapons. I will engage them from here when they get in the open.”

“Roger that,” Jack said. Chavez knew Jack was at the top of the staircase in the cabin, looking down to the main room and the front door. For now, at least, Jack was completely on his own if anyone made it inside the building.

Clark said, “Once Ding fires, anyone else in the vicinity is going to go loud, so be ready.”

Chavez acknowledged the transmission, flipped the safety off on his suppressed SIG Sauer MPX nine-millimeter, and then he saw the two figures launch to their feet and begin running out of the trees and toward the house. They were twenty-five yards away and slightly to his left when Chavez said, “Engaging hostiles, north side.”

He jabbed the tip of the suppressor through the old plate-glass window, shattering one of the small panes, and then he fired burst after burst at the men running there. Flame blasted out of the window, illuminating him and his firing position, and just as both men dropped and rolled onto the grass on the north side of the house, the window frame on his left splintered violently.