Direct Action - 03 by Jack Murphy Page B

leg was throbbing, the cut on his thigh was hot to the touch with inflammation. The rest of the team was also hunched over, grabbing their knees as they tried to catch their breath. They were in good shape and no one complained, but between the altitude and the demanding climb, they were all winded.
    “That's it,” Bill said pointing down into the valley.
    Below them was a small archipelago of walled compounds. Pinpricks of light could be seen in the darkness from morning fires being lit in the courtyards. Bill was pointing to the nearest compound at the base of the mountain. That was their target.
    “Let's get down there and clean the place out,” he ordered.
    Liquid Sky scrambled down the side of the mountain for the better part of two hours, the way down actually being more strenuous than the way up. It was almost four in the morning by the time they bottomed out in the valley and walked along the edge of a dry river bed. It was a wide, rocky gouge in the earth that looked like it hadn't seen water since the Triassic Period, but when the rains came in once a year, water would come rushing down the riverbed like a deluge and sweep away anything in its path.
    Bill picked up the pace as they moved out in a single file. They had to make up some time to get into position, hit the compound, and move out before the sun came up. Moving from the riverbed, they crawled over a rock wall and walked through a terraced field. Finally, they were within a hundred meters of the target compound.
    “Listen up,” Rick whispered to Deckard. “You are our black-side security, so that means you need to position yourself where you can see the back of the compound.”
    Deckard knew what black-side security was, and merely nodded his head.
    “Find a good field of fire so you can waste anyone who tries to go over the high walls and escape.”
    “Got it.”
    “We will be preparing to breach. Radio us when you are in position.”
    “Will do.”
    Deckard skirted around the edge of the compound, weaving between scraggly trees that barely clung to life. It only took a few minutes for him to find a shallow depression that he could lay in where he would have an open lane of fire on the back side of the compound with his AK-47. He pressed on the push to talk button on his radio.
    “This is Deck. I'm set.”
    “Okay dude,” it sounded like Rick.
    They would not be explosively breaching the compound's gate. That would give away the American's presence. Deckard didn't see any mechanical breaching equipment like battering rams or hoolie tools, none of them would want to have carried that crap up the side of the mountain anyway. He did see Zach with a locally procured double-barrel shotgun over one shoulder, so he knew it would be a ballistic breach.
    The radio crackled and hissed, so Deckard turned the volume down a little bit more.
    “Standby,” came the call.
    Two shotgun blasts punctured the night. Deckard tucked the stock of his AK into the pocket of his shoulder and waited. There was a long silence as the Liquid Sky mercenaries began clearing the compound. Then came the gunfire, first in spurts and then full auto blasts. It was a one-sided firefight, Liquid Sky no doubt catching the enemy stumbling out of bed in the night. More auto fire sounded, then silence, then a few single shots here and there. Finally, everything went quiet again.
    Then, an Afghan dropped down off the back wall and crumbled to the ground.
    Show time.
    Deckard confirmed a pistol in the Afghan's fist as he attempted to run away out into the fields. Pushing the selector lever one click down, he aimed low at the runner's legs and triggered a full auto burst of gunfire. Three of the five rounds he let off spun the Afghan around and sent him staggering to the ground.
    As he lay in the prone, he began to get cold. The last few hours before dawn are usually the coldest, and his soaked-through clothes were only adding to the problem. Fifteen minutes went by before he heard