True Faith and Allegiance

Chavez had just arrived at the rear window when an RPG launched in the trees below him, lighting up the entire scene. He saw the rocket-propelled grenade’s flaming trail race up toward the hillside to his right, but he had no view of the impact. He then saw the man running from the launch with empty hands, but before Chavez could get his gun through the window to fire, the man disappeared below his position. Chavez shattered out the window and opened fire straight down, holding his sub gun out the window and dumping rounds without looking.

He heard a scream, and thought he might have hit someone there, but his weapon went dry before he could rake the area some more.

He knelt below the window to reload again.

* * *

John Clark saw the flash of the grenade launch in the distant trees, and the pinprick of swirling light coming right at him. Instantly he knew he’d been set up. The flashes lower on the hillside were just to get him to fire his weapon and reveal his position, and he’d done as the Islamic State fighters had planned.

The rocketeer’s aim was true. Even from this distance John could tell that it was going to make a direct hit on his position.

He knew the incredible impact would come, and there was nothing for him to do but cover his head, open his mouth to minimize the shock wave’s effect on his body, and take it.

Unless he threw himself off the ledge. It was the only way to get far away quickly.

John crawled forward on his knees and elbows, tumbled over his rifle on its bipod, and went off the side of the ledge. He thought about Sandy and Patsy, his wife and daughter, and he wished like hell he’d called them today to tell them he loved them.

* * *

Jack Ryan, Jr., had been completely out of the battle going on around him for the past minute. He just squatted low near the top of the stairs, eyeing the front door and the great room to his right, and listening to his two compatriots fight for their lives. He heard the explosion to the west.

Chavez came through his earpiece. “Ryan, you’ve got at least one squirter on the south side, as well as the one on the north. They are outside the cabin and I do not have eyes. I can hear shooting and explosion to the west, too. Clark, you have eyes on the shooter there?”

There was no response. “John?”

Jack said, “Ding, I’ve got a good position. Go help Clark.”

Chavez did not respond.

Before Jack could speak again, the front door to the cabin began splintering and pocking with incoming gunfire. Seconds later, a baseball-sized object flew through the window, slamming against the flat screen on the far wall. Jack retreated a few feet up the stairs, and the grenade detonated below on his right. It destroyed what was left of the great room, but he was safe from the blast.

He had just taken a step back down to increase his field of view when the door opened below and in front of him and two men reached in from opposite sides, one holding a submachine gun, the other a pistol.

Jack aimed his MPX at the gun on the right and fired, but missed, slamming his rounds into the sturdy walls of the luxury log cabin. The enemy fire all went straight into the main room, which meant they didn’t know he was on the stairs.

Shit, Jack thought. Until I just fired blindly at them. Now they know where I am.

As he considered leaving the stairs altogether and falling back to the upstairs hallway, a second grenade came sailing through the front door, right toward the top of the stairwell where Jack crouched. It was a perfect throw, giving him no time to back up the steps and get around the corner or dive down the stairs. He stood up fully, kicked at the spinning grenade, and sent it rocketing back down where it came from.

As soon as it was moving away from him he dropped flat on his back on the stairs.

The grenade bounced once on the hardwood floor and then detonated right in front of the doorway. Jack could hear a scream of agony even over the ringing in his ears.

But a second man spun in now, and fired at Jack with a pistol, holding it in his right hand while his left dangled at his side. Jack returned fire while still lying on his back near the top of the stairs, firing down between his open legs at the wounded man, taking him in the chest before he dropped to his knees, dropped his gun, then fumbled to get his hand onto a detonator swinging on a cable from his right sleeve.

Jack pulled his trigger, but his weapon was empty. He started to reach down to grab his pistol, then remembered he’d passed it to Davi, who was now down at the far end of the hall, hiding in the bathtub with Jack’s sister.

“Fuck,” Jack said — there was no way the S-vest wasn’t going to rip him to shreds from this distance.

Ding Chavez appeared in the hall right over Jack’s head, and he shot the wounded man at the bottom of the stairs, then shot him again and again when he realized he held a detonator in his hand.