Rising Tiger: A Thriller (5)

When he retreated back to cover, his teammate Mike Haney shouted from his position, “Nobody else wants to say it, but your new plan sucks.”

“It’s a good thing nobody else gets a vote,” Harvath replied. “Make sure the family’s ready. I want everyone prepared to exit in sixty seconds.”





CHAPTER 4


Everything now was about speed, surprise, and overwhelming violence of action. Slinging his suppressed, short-barreled Heckler & Koch 416 A5, Harvath grabbed two fragmentation grenades from his chest rig. The moment the team signaled that they were ready to go, he pulled the pins and threw the devices into the street, yelling, “Frag out!”

They exploded with a deafening roar, showering the Taliban with red-hot shrapnel.

From his rooftop perch, Gage recommenced firing, and Harvath rushed forward, finding concealment behind a parked car. Removing a pair of smoke grenades, he yanked their pins, rolled them across the road, and transitioned back to his rifle.

As soon as the visibility was sufficiently impaired, he gave the order for his team to move out.

He used the engine block of the car he was hiding behind for partial cover and, popping over the hood, began firing on the Taliban position.

Two of their vehicles had been badly damaged. They were both on fire and from what he could tell, were definitely out of commission. That was the good news.

The bad news was that only a couple of blocks away, headlights could be seen racing in their direction. Reinforcements were arriving. He wouldn’t be able to hold all of them off. In fact, it would be a miracle if he could hold off the gunmen he was already engaged with.

Over his earpiece, he heard teammate Tyler Staelin radio that they had successfully made it to the truck. That was Gage’s cue to get off the roof and get down to the street up ahead so he could be picked up.

As the truck fired up and peeled out, Harvath—per his own orders—was left alone.

What he hadn’t told Haney was that he didn’t much like this plan, either. It was suicide. It was also the only way.

He needed to keep the Taliban at bay long enough for Topaz, his family, and the rest of the team to escape. It was the only thing that mattered. Ducking back behind the car, he prepared himself.

Once he was ready, he grabbed his next-to-last frag, pulled the pin, and sent it hurtling through the air toward his attackers. The moment it detonated, Harvath charged.

He used the smoke, as well as the shock of getting fragged again, to his advantage, allowing them to veil his movements.

Sprinting to the other side of the street, he slid soundlessly along the parked cars until he reached his objective. It was a flanking position from which he was going to launch his final attack, but the Taliban had a surprise waiting for him.

A skinny, sickly-looking kid, no more than sixteen, had been positioned between the last two parked cars to protect their left flank. He had his weapon ready, and the moment Harvath came into view, he pressed the trigger. There was just one problem. The teen hadn’t properly seated a round in the chamber.

The sound of the rifle’s metallic click caused a wave of panic to crash over his features. Before the boy could cry out to his comrades, Harvath butt-stroked him with his weapon, knocking him out cold.

He took no joy in doing it, but it beat the alternative. The kid was a combatant. He could have shot him. That, however, wasn’t something he wanted on his conscience.

Dragging the teen behind one of the parked cars, Harvath laid him down, disabled his weapon, and helped himself to the young Taliban’s spare magazines.

With his impromptu resupply complete and the approaching reinforcements only seconds away, he then made ready for his final push.

Ripping the pin from his last fragmentation grenade, he tossed it through the air, dropping it right at the feet of the remaining members of the security patrol. As soon as it detonated, he sprung.

Harvath moved quickly through the smoke, double-tapping each of the Taliban gunmen. It didn’t matter whether they were moving. It was the only way to be absolutely certain that they were dead.

Once he was done, he changed magazines and ran toward the only thing with four wheels that wasn’t on fire.

The beat-up, former Afghan National Police pickup had massive steel bumpers, an M60 machine gun mounted to a roll bar behind the cab, and keys that one of the Taliban had left in the ignition. With a phalanx of likely enemy vehicles barreling down on him, Harvath wasted no time. Placing his suppressed rifle on the seat next to him, he took off as fast as he could.

At the end of the block, he jerked the wheel hard to the left and headed north. He had no idea where he was going; he just knew that he had to get out of the area as quickly as possible.

“Moonracer. This is Norseman. Do you copy?” he said over his radio as he sped through the dusty streets of Kabul.

“Roger that, Norseman. Lima Charlie,” a voice replied from an operations center thousands of miles away in Northern Virginia.

It was military slang for loud and clear. And while the little man, known only as “Nicholas” to his friends, had never served, he had made it his goal to be proficient in the language his colleagues spoke—especially when they were engaged in life-or-death tactical operations.

“What’s the status on Beach Ball?” Harvath asked, wanting an update on his team as they made their way toward Kabul International Airport.

“En route. Seven klicks out. Zero contact,” Nicholas replied.