Ultimate Power (9 page)

Neil stood up, crawled down the dune. “Let’s rest a bit.”

Alexa followed him down the steep dune. They crawled into their small tent they had pitched at the foot of the sand bank and Alexa collapsed on her back. “
Merde
, I’m whipped.”

Neil unwrapped an energy bar and gave it to her, but she shook her head. “No, I’m not hungry, just tired.”
 

He shrugged and took a bite.

She closed her eyes then sat upright. “I think I have an idea.”

Alexa followed the goat herder on the rocky track that led to the small village. Whirlwinds swept up the dust and blew it across the path, only to die down and start up again fifty meters away. The wind felt warm and it sounded like a million sighing voices, each one trying to be heard above the other.

She had dressed in the traditional garb, the burka covering her face. She wore a long, loose-fitting black dress which dragged in the sand as she walked. The dress was warm and scratchy, she shifted the uncomfortable garment on her shoulder as she felt beads of sweat running down her back. Why these woman allowed themselves to be treated this way she didn’t know. It was pure torture.

She strolled along, her sandals flopping in the dust. She had a basket with a dozen eggs slung over her shoulder. Kids ran past, and a dog stood up from beneath a bush and barked at her. She ambled towards the centre of the small village, her eyes on the ground. Two woman hurried past and greeted shyly, and she nodded her head.

Neil was probably watching her through the telescopic sight. He wasn’t too enamored with her plan, he never was when it meant that she had to walk head-on into imminent danger. He had wanted to go, but she convinced him that would be stupid. What threat could a woman possibly pose? He reluctantly agreed.

She shifted the basket onto her hip, she felt shaky as she plodded along on numb legs. She would have to have it checked out, she had never felt this way before. Alexa rounded a corner and cast her eyes downward when she saw two men with rifles in front of a building. They leaned back casually, one man smoking, the other cleaning his nails with a toothpick or a twig or something. They looked bored.

They wore dirty long-sleeved robes and sweaty headscarves, the rifles slung casually over their shoulders. She sauntered towards them and repeated the words that Neil had made her memorize.
 

“Would you like to buy some eggs?”

The men snorted and shook their heads and said something she didn’t understand. To say they sounded cross was an understatement, pissed off was more like it. They pointed fingers at her, talking excitedly, gesturing and waving their hands. One guy slipped the gun off his shoulder.
 

“Now, now, gentleman, no need to get your knickers in a knot.” She pulled the pistol from the basket and fired two shots, splattering the dirty brown walls with their blood. They didn’t looked bored anymore, their eyes were wide open in surprise.
 

"Imagine that, a woman that can shoot, hell, a woman with a gun!" she said, then hitched up her dress and kicked at the door. It was made from solid wood. She kicked again and the frame ripped from the mud walls. Kids ran down the road, screaming as they went. A young girl stopped, turned and stared at her, her mouth agape. Alexa shooed her away.

One more kick and the door crashed to the ground. She entered the room, swinging her Glock in a wide arc. Cushions lay scattered on the floor, and a plate was placed next to them with what remained of a half-eaten meal. She pulled the Burka off her head and slipped out of the robe.

She shuffled to another door which stood wide open and cautiously entered the room. It was dark and smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes. A robed man turned around. He held a rifle and took aim, but Alexa dispatched him with a bullet to the head before he managed to fire. She scanned the room, wishing that her eyes would adjust to the dark already.

“Alexa?” she heard from a dark corner.

She spun to her right, saw the outline of a shape on the ground. She ran to the man. “General, are you all right?”

Laiveaux was in a bad state. His eyes were swollen shut, blood dripping from his nose. He managed to force a weak smile. “Good day, Captain,” he said in a cracked voice.

She surveyed the room. Another man lay dead in the corner, she recognized him as the agent that had been kidnapped by al-Qaeda a couple of months ago. Shit. Probably tortured to death.

“We need to get out of here, my girl. They’re sending snipers in, they know that you’ve managed to track me down.”

“Affirmative, General,” she said and put his arm around her shoulder. She hoisted him to his feet and started dragging him towards the door.

A bullet thwacked into the wall and a small hole appeared, letting in a sliver of sunlight. Laiveaux fell backward, dragging Alexa with him. He groaned, clutching his shoulder, blood oozing from the wound where the bullet had struck. He pushed himself up on all fours. “They’re using thermal imaging scopes, get out of here, Captain.”

Two more holes appeared in the wall and thumped into the ground, spraying dust in their face. She jumped up and grabbed Laiveaux by his collar, started dragging him out of the prison cell. She needed two walls between her and the shooter.

A bullet zinged through the wall and thudded into her hamstring and she went down for a second, but she managed to prop herself upright again, putting all her weight on one leg. The general did his best to help her, crawling on all fours towards the doorway.

They made it through the door as two bullets ricocheted off the floor, spitting up splinters of stone and dust. Alexa leaned against the wall and sucked in deep lungfuls of air. She had never been this slow to react in her life. She knew they had to keep moving, the sniper would change position and move to a location where he had only one wall to shoot through.

Alexa pulled the two way radio from her belt. “Someone’s shooting at us, Neil. I need covering fire.”

The radio crackled and hissed. “What?”

“Someone shot us through the wall. They’re using thermal scopes.”

“Shit. Okay, get out of there, I’ll cover you, over.”

“Get us a Medivac, Neil.”

“You injured?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Yes, both of us are wounded.”

“Aw shit, Alexa. Okay, I’ll get the Medivac, but it’ll take them at least half an hour to reach us.”

Alexa sighed. She swallowed and looked down at Laiveaux sitting cross-legged on the floor. A pool of blood had formed between his legs. “Okay, but you better take out that sniper.”

“Affirmative.”

“Please Neil, hurry.”

She heard the radio click once.

Alexa ducked as another shot exploded through the wall above her head. “C’mon General, we need to keep moving.”

Neil lifted his head over the dune and scanned the horizon. "Where the hell are you?"

Alexa's desperate pleas for help rang in his ears. He scanned the landscape clockwise through three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, then anti-clockwise. He noticed a glint to his right. "There you are, you bastard."

He took aim, zooming in with his scope. A man wearing army fatigues was laying on a dune, firing in rapid succession with what looked like an F2 sniper rifle. Alexa had been right, the rifle was fitted with a thermal scope.

He bounded down the dune and pulled the AWM .338 Lapua from the tent, pumped his legs up the dune again. Neil steadied his breath and took aim. It was going to be a hell of a shot, the target was at least nine hundred meters away.

He adjusted for the wind and aimed above the target to adjust for the distance and squeezed the trigger. The gun slammed into his shoulder as he watched through his scope, and two seconds later a puff of dust exploded a meter in front of the shooter.
 

Neil adjusted a millimeter down and pulled the trigger again. Through the scope he saw the shooter look up as the bullet struck him. The shooter dropped his rifle and clutched his shoulder. "That should keep you busy for a while."

Neil rolled to his side as a bullet struck the dune next to his ear.
 

Shit. Another one? Where are you?

He lay on his back, scanning the horizon. Then he saw another flash of a scope reflecting the sun five hundred meters to his left. He changed his position, rolling a meter to the left as another round whacked into the sand where he had been. He crawled over the dune, praying that the other shooter hadn't recovered enough to shoot him in the back.

He centered the crosshair on the shiny glint and pulled the trigger. He heard the double thwack that told him his aim was true.

Neil crawled back and aimed his rifle at the first shooter, unsure of whether the man was mortally wounded. He saw a movement and fired into the dune. The guy returned fire, his aim was high, not even close. They kept at this cat-and-mouse game for fifteen minutes before Neil heard the familiar whop-whop sound of rotor blades. The Medivac had arrived.
 

He aimed his scope at the entrance to the building Alexa had gone in. She appeared a second later, dragging the general behind her, bullets exploding around her as she ran.

Neil aimed at the first shooter, he was laying uncomfortably on his side, taking pot shots at Alexa and the General. Neil aimed and squeezed. At first Neil thought that he had missed, but then the man rolled onto his stomach and slumped forward, his face buried in the sand.

He watched Alexa through the scope again. The medics had helped her and the General into the chopper, and it was lifting into the air and banking steeply to its side, heading for Kabul, Neil guessed. He rolled down the dune and started packing their supplies.
 

Please be okay, please be okay
, he repeated like a mantra as he packed up.

Alexa ducked low as the Blackhawk HH60 hovered in the air above them, the powerful rotor blades spraying sand and grit into her eyes. She dragged the General by his collar, holding onto him with both hands, pulling him backwards. Another bullet ricocheted off the ground beside them, and Alexa wondered why the shooter hadn’t managed to hit her yet, they were open targets.

She glanced down at Laiveaux. Shit. He was clutching his throat, blood seeping between his fingers, and had a bullet wound in his lower leg.

Two guys carrying rifles jumped down from the chopper and helped her drag the General into the aircraft. The helicopter rose into the air and banked steeply, away from the firing line.
 

Alexa took a seat on a bench next to Laiveaux. She felt helpless. Two medics were working furiously, trying to save the older man’s life. One inserted a drip into Laiveaux’s arm, the other pulled open a silver fridge filled with bags of blood. “What blood type is he?” he asked Alexa over his shoulder.

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Give him ringers and warm the O negative,” the man working with the drip said. “How’s his blood pressure?” The name tag on his chest said
Williams
.

The man rummaged in the fridge, looking for the right bag.

“Jackson, blood pressure?” Williams shouted, inserting another thick IV line into Laiveaux’s arm.

“Seventy over forty, he’s lost a lot of blood.”

The man nodded with pursed lips. “Ok, let’s keep him hypotensive, he’ll bleed less that way. He’s got a fractured leg and ribs, it’ll be difficult putting pressure on those.”

Jackson removed a bag from the fridge, inserting a plastic tube into it. He ran the tube around a device on a pole and clipped the bag onto the pole. He removed a large bag with white fluid and inserted the IV line that Williams was working with into the bag. “Ringers is a go.”

Williams moved over to the General’s throat. He waved Alexa over. “I need your help.”

She shuffled over and crouched next to the General. Laiveaux tried to speak, but he choked, a frothy mixture of blood spilling from his mouth.

“Keep still, General,” the medic said as he looked at Alexa. “He can’t breath properly, I need to perform a cric.”
 

Alexa’s entire body shook. “A crike?”

“A Cricothyroidotomy.” He held a metal tube in the air. “Look, I need to insert this into his windpipe.” He pointed at the other medic. “Jackson over here will help me get the damn thing in, but you need to keep on transfusing the General. Jackson show her how.”

The medic removed two bags of blood and put them into her hands. “Open the bag here, then connect it like this.” Alexa watched closely as he performed the procedure. “Then you squeeze it gently like your baby’s boobies…Sorry. You know what I mean. Get every last drop into him.”

She took the transfusion bag from the man.

“Okay, give me one hundred milligrams of Ketamine,” Williams said.

Jackson injected something into the IV line and looked up. “Okay, ready.”

“Let’s give it a minute. Don’t worry, General. You won’t feel a thing.”

Laiveaux closed his eyes.
 

They started working on his throat, pulling the flaps of skin apart.
 

He picked up a scalpel. “Okay, I’ll make a thirty millimeter longitudinal cut like this,” he said and slit through the skin. “Dab it, Jackson, I need to see what I’m doing.”