Текст книги "Drone Strike"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

7

Iran

TURK RESTED AGAINST THE POWER LINE POLE, TRYING to fight off the fatigue that was pushing down his eyelids. The pole rose from a ditch, sheltering him on two sides; he sat in the shadow against a jumble of rocks, willing himself invisible.

The worst thing was the urge to sleep. He knew if he fell asleep, he’d wake up either under arrest or dead, assuming one could be said to wake up in the afterlife.

A small Iranian village sat to his left behind a low hill, barely discernible in the rising haze of heat. In front of him, perhaps twenty feet away, were train tracks. When Turk first spotted them, having walked along the power lines for a short distance, he thought he might hop aboard a passing freight train and escape. It was something he had done often as a teenager, running alongside a boxcar and leaping up the ladder at just the right moment. But after watching awhile, he realized it was hardly a plan at all. He had no idea where the train would go, nor could he expect to remain unseen on it.

And besides, no train seemed to be coming.

He needed a plan, something more than the vague notion that he would escape.

Guns sounded in the distance, firing at random intervals. It was antiaircraft fire, undoubtedly the product of overanxious, nervous minds. The Iranians didn’t realize yet it was too late for all that.

Turk regretted having left Grease for dead. It seemed weak and foolish, a surrender that he shouldn’t have had to make. Logically, he knew he had no choice. Grease would have been too heavy to carry very far, and there was no way he could even have gotten here, let alone go on. But it still felt, it still was, terribly wrong.

Whiplash would be tracking him. They might send someone to rescue him—the SEAL response team or maybe even another Whiplash unit.

But if they had assigned Grease to kill him, would they bother?

Maybe Grease meant he’d been assigned to kill him if they were going to be captured.

Surely that’s what he meant. Turk could understand that. He knew too much about the program, about a lot of things. And the Iranians would torture him to death anyway. Being shot by Grease would have been merciful.

Shoot me, Grease. I deserve it for leaving you behind.

He had the sat phone but dared not use it, afraid that the Iranians would monitor transmissions in the area.

He needed clothes. The ones he was wearing were torn, dirty, and covered with blood. He’d steal clothes, then find a place to hide. Rest. At night he would start walking to the Caspian, or at least in that direction.

Turk had taken Grease’s ruck with him, knowing he’d need some of the gear. It didn’t have much in it besides ammo and first aid equipment. That made sense, but he knew he couldn’t take much with him. He needed to stay as light as possible. As precious as the ammo would be in a fight, it would slow him down too much. Besides, he could never really count on fighting his way out; he wasn’t Grease.

Grease!

The control unit was the real weight. But he couldn’t just leave it. Simply breaking it up wouldn’t do. He’d have to smash it to smithereens.

Who out here would have the faintest notion of what it was?

The sun continued to move up in the early morning sky, robbing Turk of the shadows he thought protected him. He needed another hiding place.

He got to his feet, then struggled with the backpacks before finally hoisting them to his shoulders. He started along the trail beneath the power lines, heading toward a set of low-slung buildings at the edge of the desert, beyond the far end of a village. In the distance he heard noises, vague murmurs of people going about their business.

The trail angled away from the train tracks. He decided to follow it, and as he got closer, realized the low-slung buildings weren’t buildings at all but old ruins, hard-baked by centuries of sun. Still, he approached cautiously, balking at accepting his good luck. But the ruins, a small fort and houses eons old, were completely empty.

An excellent hiding place. He shuffled around until he found a building that was small but mostly intact, except for the nonexistent roof. Constructed of large bricks, its floor was completely covered by sand. Turk took off the rucks. Rifling through Grease’s, he sorted out what he thought he could carry in his clothes: two spare magazines in his pocket, three for the pistol, which he strapped to his waist.

The paper map. The GPS. Grease’s phone, similar to his. And two bottles of water.

He slid the ruck down behind the rocks. It didn’t look like much, and even if it was found, wouldn’t tell anyone anything—ammunition for AK-47s had never been a state secret anywhere in the world.

The control unit was different. He needed a better hiding place for that. Turk took it under his arm and slipped out through one of the windows, treading carefully along the stone walls.

How long ago had the place been abandoned, he wondered. It seemed to go on forever. Most of the ruins were no higher than his knee, but enough of the rest remained to convince him that this was once an important place.

Finding a building where a wall had recently collapsed into a haphazard pile of stones, he moved some of them aside, then carefully placed the control unit beneath them. When he was finished, he rose and memorized the place, promising himself he would come back and recover the unit. Then he continued to explore, working his way in the direction of the railroad tracks. He carried the rifle in one hand, down at his side. He held his left arm out, not so much for balance as a guide, pointing the way he was walking.

The ruins were so extensive that when he entered the yard of a house that was still occupied, he didn’t realize it until he heard noises from the back courtyard: a woman calling to her children.

Turk froze, not sure what to do. The woman was standing behind the wall barely twelve feet away. He could just make out the back of her head.

He was about to back away when he saw something fly up in the air.

Clothes. She was hanging things out to dry.

Turk went down on his haunches. As the woman continued to hang up the wash, she began to hum gently to herself. He waited, turning left and right every so often, making sure he was alone. Finally he heard her moving away, back toward the house, calling again to the children.

He edged to the wall, muffling his breath in his mouth. If someone came, he would kill them.

The woman?

He would have to.

The child?

He couldn’t. Probably not even the woman.

Wasn’t he at war with these people? Hadn’t these people built several nuclear bombs? They wanted to kill thousands, even millions of innocents. Shouldn’t he want to kill every single one of these bastards?

If he had to. He didn’t seek war but now that he was here, now that he saw what they had done, what they had all done, he would kill every single one.

Except the child. And probably not the woman.

Turk leaned over the wall. There was a forest of clothes of different varieties, colors, and shapes. He saw a pair of dark pants and a longish shirt. Men’s clothes. They were hung almost against the wall. He leaned just far enough to take them, and whisked them over to him. The material was damp but not as wet as he expected.

Holding them in his left hand, he backed out, rifle ready, then scrambled as quietly as he could back to his hiding place in the ruins.

8

Iran

WHAT AM I DOING HERE? WHAT IS MY MISSION?

I’m lost. I am an assassin. My job is to kill.

I have killed many. In Romania. In Hungary. In the Czech Republic. In France. In Greece. In the States.

Not the States.

Turk Mako. Locate. Neutralize.

And then?

Return.

Stoner rose to a sitting position, gathering himself and taking stock. His legs and side were bruised but he was all right.

Still wearing the helmet, he took off the suit and rolled it into a ball. From the fanny pack at his belt he removed a small incendiary device and placed it in the middle of the ball. Then he walked over to an irrigation ditch at the edge of the field. There was a trickle of water in the bottom, but that was no matter—he placed the bundle down on some rocks, then pulled the ring on the device. It flared and began to burn.

Stoner unhooked the small ruck on his back and unzipped the rear compartment. Inside was a broken down M-4 with customized parts, including a compact upper assembly and a scope made by L3 EOTech that synched with a targeting system in his helmet. He assembled the gun, then checked his location and that of his subject.

Turk had moved since Stoner had begun his descent. He was in a small village near railroad tracks some twenty-five miles away.

It would take him four hours to run there. Or he could steal a car.

Stoner preferred speed over safety. He began looking for a vehicle. In the meantime, the words describing his mission played over and over in his head:

Turk Mako. Locate. Neutralize.

9

Istgah-E Kuh Pang, Iran

THE PANTS WERE TOO SHORT AND THE SHIRT A LITTLE too wide for Turk, but they were better than what he had. The dampness actually felt good, soothing and cooling his strained and bruised muscles.

As he balled his old clothes up, Turk formulated a tentative plan. It was simple and bare, yet it seemed to take the greatest mental exertion to construct. He would rest here until the sun set. Then he would set out along the railroad tracks, heading north with them as far as he could.

It was some 112 miles in a straight line to the Caspian. Much of that was over mountains—but that was good. Mountains meant cover. They also meant there would be plenty of places to rest.

The most difficult part was a stretch of twenty miles or so through a desert. That would take him at least five hours—a whole night, he thought, for it would be too dangerous to travel during the day.

Turk slid his satellite phone from his pocket. No one had tried to contact him. But that wasn’t unusual. Protocol called for him to contact them, since they couldn’t know whether he was near someone or not.

He raised his finger to unlock the phone, but then stopped, not because he was afraid the Iranians would home in on the signal, but because he was suspicious of Breanna, of Whiplash, Reid, and the others. They’d assigned Grease to kill him. Who knew what they would do now?

Maybe the phone had a bomb.

He stared at it, knowing he was being paranoid. But he couldn’t call. He just couldn’t.

What would he say if he did? Help? Would he cry like a baby? What was the sense of asking them for something they wouldn’t give?

Better to put the phone away and do this on his own. Or die, if that was the option. Because the only one he could really count on was himself, not them, not even Breanna.

He understood Grease now. From the very beginning Grease had tried to maintain distance. He was trying to avoid forming a bond, to make it easier to kill him. But they’d bonded anyway. It was impossible not to, in war.

That was what Grease was trying to say at the end. He thought it was a failing, a fatal weakness.

It doesn’t negate who you were, Grease. You were still a hero.

My hero.

I’m going to get out of here. On my own.

Turk slid over to the corner of the ruined building, leaning against the walls. Without trying to, he fell fast asleep.

HE WAS IN OLD GIRL, PUSHING THE STICK AROUND. IT was his last mission back at Dreamland, flying with the admiral.

Except it wasn’t. He was lower, treetop level, looking for something.

Trees, not the open terrain of Dreamland.

There was someone with him in the backseat, though he wasn’t sure who.

Grease.

They were doing a recee, looking for the rest of the patrol. He saw the bus, moving along the highway. He pressed his mike to tell Grease.

It didn’t work. He turned his head and could see him staring from the backseat, no helmet on, dressed in the Iranian fatigues they’d worn.

It was a dream, a dream! I am dreaming!

A sense of horror came over him as he stared into Grease’s face.

Grease!

You abandoned me!

But you were going to kill me!

You abandoned me!

Turk jerked his head up, fully awake, back in the cellar of the ruins. Something loud passed overhead.

An airplane. Two airplanes.

He got up and went to the open window at the rear of the building. The planes were nearby.

They were Phantoms, their smoky contrails lingering as they climbed about three-quarters of a mile to the north.

Phantoms?

The sun was still fairly low in the sky—nine o’clock, he calculated. When he looked at his watch, it was 0921. He’d slept for a little under two hours.

The jets took another pass, this one from the north, riding down the railroad tracks. They were Phantoms, all right, not U.S. planes but Iranian, vintage craft held together by duct tape and ingenuity, as the saying went. Turk saw a reconnaissance pod hanging off the nearest plane. It had air-to-air missiles as well, but no bombs. Dressed in a tan, brown, and green camo scheme that reminded Turk of the Vietnam War era, the planes flew south, staying with the tracks for several miles, vanishing in the distance.

He heard them coming back and waited, pressed against the wall in their direction. They passed almost directly overhead and he watched them stride into the distance, then bank into a circling turn. As they came around north of him, he saw their landing gear beginning to deploy.

They were landing.

For a moment he was confused—why land in the sand? Then he realized they must be using the air base where he and Grease had stolen the vehicle the night before.

Turk stared into the haze until the planes were well out of his sight. He slipped back to the corner then, sliding his back against the ancient stones, intending to sleep some more. But he’d no sooner hit the dirt than he heard vehicles nearby.

“Damn,” he muttered, grabbing the assault rifle. “Damn.”

10

Iran

STONER FOUND NO VEHICLE WORTH TAKING IN THE hamlet of a dozen houses near where he had landed, and the only thing with four wheels in the next town was a farm truck so old and rusted he doubted it would last more than a mile. He ran for a while instead, moving through the foothills and skirting the village of Saveh, since he was making decent time and there was no need to risk being seen. He checked on Turk’s location every half hour, using a radio device that tapped into the Iranian cell phone network and from there a Web site where Whiplash was relaying the data. While the Web site could be found and his cell phone intercepted, as a practical matter he was following the theory behind Poe’s famous Purloined Letter—hide in plain sight, and no one will see you.

Some nine miles east of Saveh, Stoner came to the outskirts of another village, this one large enough, he reasoned, to have a good choice of vehicles. It had taken nearly three hours for him to get this far; he reckoned that it would take another two to get to Turk. Taking the vehicle now was insurance against needing one later; getting away from the area after dispatching Turk would be best done quickly.

The place wasn’t particularly large, and with a few key exceptions—one being the lack of pavement on the streets, another the two minarets—it looked like a rural hamlet in the southwestern United States might have looked in the late 1940s. As Stoner got closer, he noticed a curious set of low-slung brown structures near the older houses.

He stopped. Focusing his eyes—his augmented vision let him see about as well as a good pair of field glasses—he examined the huts. At first he thought they were barracks and that the village had been turned into a military town, something not unheard of in Iran. But as he watched, he saw people emerging. After a few minutes of observation, he realized the structures were hovels constructed for the poor by the government, or some local charity. The town was filled with them. Many of their occupants worked at the small factories on either end of the village or tilling the fields that surrounded it.

Stone moved around the outskirts of the village cautiously, staying just beyond the edge of the cultivated fields. His smart helmet was slung over the top of his narrow rucksack; his gun was over his shoulder. The dark green jumpsuit he wore was patterned after clothes Pasdaran mechanics used. If he went into town, he would stash his gear and keep his mouth shut, hoping that between the coveralls and his frown he would look both sufficiently ornery and ordinary to be left alone.

Stoner found a group of fallow fields separated by a narrow, weed-strewn lane. He walked down the lane, trying to see beyond the farms at the village boundaries. There weren’t many people on the streets; most people were either at work or school this early in the morning.

A pair of cars were parked in the courtyard beyond the fields. He walked toward them, considering which of the two would be easier to steal. He had just decided on the car on the left—it looked like a ’70s Fiat knockoff—when he spotted something more enticing leaning against the barn wall: a small motorcycle, twenty years old at least, but with inflated tires and a clean engine.

Stoner walked to the bike. Everything in his manner suggested he was the proper owner. He put on his helmet—rare in Iran, especially in the countryside, but appropriate—then reached to fiddle with the ignition assembly.

He didn’t have to. A pair of wires hung down from the keyed ignition, already used as a makeshift hot wire. He connected them, then launched the kick start.

He kicked the metal spur so hard it stayed down for a moment. The bike caught in a fit of blue smoke and a backfire. He eased it toward the dirt road that separated the fallow and productive fields, gradually picking up speed. He didn’t look back.

THE MOTORBIKE STONER FOUND WAS IN NEED OF A tune-up; its clutch stuck and the brakes grabbed only on whim. But these were considerations rather than impediments as far as Stoner was concerned. He nursed the vehicle north through a series of low hills, occasionally cutting back to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He’d gotten clean away. No one was following him.

He wasn’t sure he could say the same for Turk. As he approached the village where Turk was hiding—its name according to the GPS map in his smart helmet was Istgah-E Kuh Pang—he saw a pair of troop trucks rushing along the dirt road that paralleled the railroad tracks. Two jets, Phantom F-4s, streaked across the sky so low that it seemed he could have spit on their bellies.

It would be more difficult if the Iranians found him first. But only a little.

Stoner let the little bike putter along at four or five kilometers an hour, easing it over a dirt road that veered eastward away from both the railroad tracks and the village. Old ruins lay dead ahead, their red-tan bricks already growing warm with the morning sun.

Troops were going door-to-door in the village. They’d cordoned it off for a search. But they hadn’t reached the ruins yet.

The motorcycle stalled as Stoner took it up an incline. He coasted to a stop, then pulled out the cell phone to find out where Turk was. He’d just hit the button for the locator app when something whizzed over his head.

He threw himself and the bike to the ground, instinctively knowing he’d been fired on before the actual thought registered in his conscious mind.

11

Istgah-E Kuh Pang

COLONEL KHORASANI JERKED HIS HEAD AROUND AS the rifle fire began.

“What are they shooting at?” he demanded.

Sergeant Karim, who was no closer to the action than he was, nonetheless answered in his usual authoritative voice. “Someone near the ruins, Colonel. On a motorcycle. They called to him and he didn’t stop. The villagers say he does not live there.”

“I want them alive,” he commanded. “I want them alive so they can be questioned.”

“They may get away, at least temporarily,” said the sergeant. “Would you prefer that?”

The sergeant’s tone was halfway between condescending and informative; Khorasani couldn’t quite decide whether he was being mocked or not. He decided to give the sergeant the benefit of the doubt. They’d had a long night without any sleep.

And now that he thought of it, wouldn’t it be better, and simpler all around, if they just shot the bastards? In that case, the matter would be much more easily settled. He could huddle with his superiors, and then with Shirazi. They would concoct a story that would minimize the damage. There would still be great danger, and undoubtedly more complications, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about someone getting hold of the prisoners and reinterrogating them.

“On second thought, Sergeant, tell them to attack with extreme prejudice and vehemence,” commanded Colonel Khorasani. “The sooner we dispose of these pests, the better.”

STONER SAW THE TWO MEN WHO’D FIRED MOVING down along the rocks. He could take them easily; the question was what to do next.

Turk was in the ruins due west of him. To get there he would have to get past another group of soldiers coming down a road at the far end of the village.

He could retreat south, then swing back, hoping they didn’t have time to span out along the flank. Some would follow him; those he could ignore. The others between him and his target could be picked off one by one.

Better to move ahead now, while the size of the force was still manageable and the initiative was still in his favor.

Stoner rose and fired two bursts. The men who had shot at him fell. He picked up the bike and pushed it to the left, coasting with the hill until the engine caught. Steering down the dirt road, he angled toward the ruins.

The dirt in front of him began to explode in tiny volcanoes of dust.

More bullets. There were men nearby he hadn’t seen.

TURK PUSHED AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE RUINS AS THE gunfire stoked up. It was coming from the western end of the hamlet, up near the tracks.

They weren’t shooting at him.

Was it Grease?

Grease was dead.

It had to be Grease.

Dread? Curtis? Tiny? Captain Granderson? Gorud?

All dead. He knew they were dead. He’d passed the truck. So it could only be Grease.

A fresh wave of guilt and shame swamped him. He’d abandoned his companion, even though he was still alive.

Turk started through the window, then stopped, catching a glimpse of a vehicle moving from the far end of the ruins, down the dirt road at the eastern edge of the desert. A half-dozen men trotted behind.

There were too many. Too many for one man, and even two.

Too many even for Grease.

STONER PUT THE M-4 ON HIS HIP AND FIRED AS HE drove, hoping to chase back the men coming down from the village on his left. It worked, but he faced a more difficult problem ahead—a troop vehicle had stopped at the far end of the ruins, and soldiers were using it for cover. From their uniforms, he guessed they were Pasdaran, Revolutionary Guards.

He got off two bursts, taking down three or four, and was aiming a third volley when the bike began slipping out from under him—someone had managed to get a bullet into the tire. He let it go as gracefully as he could manage, putting his weight on his left foot and swinging his right out as the bike hit the dirt. As he started to run, something hit him in the chest, just above his heart.

The slug was stopped by the thin, boron-carbon vest he had under the coveralls. He barely felt it.

Stoner sprinted to the left, running toward a low wall. As he neared it, he rolled on his shoulder, turning and facing the men who had fired at him from above. He saw three men; all of them fell with a tight double-pump on the trigger.

Stoner checked his breathing, slowing it to retain control. He could feel blood vibrating in the vessels at his neck, and knew adrenaline was coursing through his veins. For years he’d been pumped with artificial stimulants, every bit of him altered and manipulated. He’d been the slave of monsters who used him as their weapon, primed him to kill, hired him out as a high-profile assassin.

And now he remembered not the details of that time, the horror of being controlled, but something deeper: excitement. Danger. Life.

He loved it. It was oblivion.

Stoner saw two more men coming from the direction he’d just driven. He aimed and fired, got one, but missed the next, leading him rather than simply squeezing off a bullet into the man’s chest.

It was the sort of error one made in haste. It was emotion-driven, adrenaline-fueled. He would not make it again.

The man had ducked behind a wall. Stoner took a very long, very slow breath, switched the gun to single fire, then waited for the man to rise.

He took him with a shot to the head.

“Infrared,” said Stoner, telling the smart helmet to switch on its infrared sensors. “Count.”

The smart helmet calculated five targets moving along the edges of the ruins behind the men he’d just killed. They were obscured by the terrain, but their heat signatures were visible.

Stoner looked left and then right, gauging the area and its potential for cover.

They’ll expect me to be in the ruins.

If I retreat to the low run of buildings behind me, I can crawl into the weeds on my left. Then I’ll have a clear shot at the group coming up in front of me now.

I’ll get Turk Mako when I’m done. If they don’t find and shoot him first.

TURK REALIZED HE WAS GOING TO DIE. BUT RATHER than scaring him, the knowledge freed him. It told him that he should take out as many Iranians as he could. In that way, he would atone for having left Grease.

He had to be smart about it. Going kamikaze was foolish, and an insult to all Grease and the others had taught him.

Slipping out the window of the ruined building, Turk slithered to the ground like a snake. Automatic rifle fire boomed left and right; it sounded like he was on a firing range.

Move out!

He crouched down, keeping himself as low as possible as he moved along the ancient alley between the ruins. The loose sand and dirt were slippery, and with his weight bent forward, it wasn’t long before he tripped, sprawling forward in the dirt and landing hard on the rifle.

Once, this might have discouraged him, perhaps even sending him into a depressed spiral that he’d never recover from. It would have reminded him that he was a pilot, useless on land, awkward and vulnerable. Now it was only something to work through, even take advantage of: he had become adept on the ground as well as in the air, a true warrior.

Turk crawled along the ground, knowing that in his final moments on earth he was going to kill as many of his enemies as he could. He kept going until he reached an open spot between the walls where he could see the nearby ruins. Something moving on his left. He raised his rifle but before he could aim it was gone. He watched along the top of the old stone wall, saw one, two shapes briefly passing, then nothing as the wall rose a little higher.

Two men, a pair of Iranians trying to get down along the side of the ruins.

Turk started forward, then stopped. It would be better, he realized, to retreat to the remains of the building on his left and a little behind him. Then he could go around and come up on their rear.

He’d have to be fast.

Up, he told himself, and in a moment he was on his feet, running.

SEVEN TARGETS APPEARED ON STONER’S SCREEN, IR ghosts that moved across the darker rectangles of the ruins. Lying prone in the dirt amid a few clumps of scrub weeds, he waited until they stopped near the edge of a building that was nearly intact. Switching to burst fire, he moved his rifle left to right, shooting into the scrum until all but one of the men were down. The survivor retreated up one of the alleys, disappearing behind a low run of tumbled-down blocks and stone.

Two or three of the men he’d shot were still alive, trying to crawl to safety. Stoner dispatched them, then changed the magazine and started after the man who’d escaped.

Two vehicles appeared in the distance on his left, both Kavirans. One winked at him—a machine gun was mounted in a turret at the top, Hummer style. Stoner went to a knee, zeroed in on the small area of glowing flesh at the top of the flashes, then fired.

The Iranian fell off the top of the vehicle. The passenger-side door opened. Stoner waited, then took the man as he tried to climb up to the gunner’s spot.

Stoner shot down two more Iranians, one from each truck, before they decided to retreat. Then he shot out the tires on both vehicles. It slowed, but didn’t stop, their retreat. He turned back toward the collection of ruins to follow the man who’d gotten away.

Something moved at the corner of his vision as he neared the closest ruin. He spun and found two Iranians taking aim.

He emptied the mag, dropped the box and pulled up a fresh one. In the half second it took for him to grab the fresh bullets, something turned the corner on his right. Two men, shooting—Stoner threw himself down. But before he hit the ground, the gunfire abruptly ended. Both Iranians keeled forward, blood pouring from their shattered heads.

Behind them stood Turk Mako.

IT WASN’T GREASE. TURK STARED AT THE FIGURE IN THE field, the man he’d just saved. He had the faded camo uniform of the Pasdaran Guard, but he was wearing a Whiplash smart helmet.

Grease really, truly, was dead.

“We have to get out of here!” yelled Turk. He pointed left and started to move. “Come on.”

STONER STOOD, FROZEN TO THE SPOT. TURK MAKO was there, not fifty feet away.

Assassinate.

He raised his gun, then hesitated. Turk had just saved his life; at that range, the Iranians would have had good odds of hitting him somewhere.

A strange emotion took him over: doubt.

What was his job, exactly?

Find and eliminate Turk Mako. He had been sent precisely because he wouldn’t feel.

Stoner hesitated as Turk ran. Killing him was trivial. He raised his weapon.

What was his mission? They wanted him eliminated.

Stoner was a killing machine, turned into something less than human. He hesitated. He had a memory of something else, something deeper.

Turk Mako had just saved his life. He was an American. Turk Mako was on his side.

A man’s heat signature flared in the corner of his screen. Stoner turned, saw that he had ducked behind the wall.

He waited until the man peeked out again, then fired, striking the Iranian in the head.