“Right. Go right,” I said, as my driver fishtailed around another corner. The good news was that we had escaped Bear’s fortress. The bad news was so had the Martyr Maker. The beast was much faster than I expected with all those extra tons of steel.
Tracers streamed over my head. How to lose it?
“There! There! Two o’clock,” I shouted. To our left was an abandoned barracks complex. The Americans had brought premade containerized housing units, or CHUs, that were walled-in fortresses. A twenty-foot-high concrete wall surrounded the complex, and inside was a maze of Hesco barriers: stacked seven-by-seven-foot cubes filled with dirt and rocks and held together by heavy-duty fabric and wire mesh. They served as blast protection around what seemed like an endless yard of trailer-like living quarters. CHU villages were meant to be the last stand, if the base was ever overrun.
Perfect, I thought.
“Focking ’ell,” Wildman said over the headset. “Locke’s led us into a Choo village.”
“Bad place to get cornered,” Boon added.
“Then don’t get cornered,” I said. CHU villages were dense mazes, with narrow alleys. It was our best chance at losing the Martyr Maker.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk—the fifty-cals cut into a CHU beside us, as if reminding me of the danger.
“Keep making turns,” I yelled to the driver, knowing our advantage was cornering. The forty-foot-long Martyr Maker lumbered around the tight blocks of the CHU village. Of course, it could just crush one of these CHUs like an empty beer can, but at least that slowed it down. Maybe.
“They’ve got reinforcements,” Boon said, and I noticed the two ISIS technicals trailing the behemoth.
“Split up and lose them. Meet me on the other side.”
We took two turns, then straightened out on what appeared to be a main road. We passed a defunct Burger King and a Green Beans Coffee before an ISIS technical appeared behind us, firing toward our tires. My Kurdish driver took the next corner (I noticed a blue U.S. mailbox as we went past) but he had turned too late and we drifted into a Hesco barrier before bouncing off and accelerating. The technical took advantage of our mistake and unloaded. Bullets pounded our left side, cracking the side windows in spiderweb patterns.
“How’s she doing?” I yelled to Kylah.
“Better than expected,” Kylah yelled, urging Marhaz to breathe.
I needed to get Marhaz to safety, but that was going to have to wait. I fired the fifty-cal, but within seconds it was jammed. Smoke. Sand. Too-rough terrain. I ducked behind the turret’s front deflector, flipped open the cover, sprayed lube on the chain-links, slammed the cover closed, and cycled a round.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk—the trailing ISIS technical laid into us as I cleared the jam.
Boon’s vehicle appeared behind it and zigzagged to avoid our cross fire. But the fanatics were boxed in and they knew it. Wildman swept their tires with his fifty and the pickup flipped sideways into the Hesco barriers, Boon cornering around it.
“Another one bites the dust!” Wildman sang over the radio.
The Martyr Maker appeared two corners ahead, already shooting.
“Scatter!”
Boon went left; we went right.
“Use the angles,” Boon said. “That monster can’t corner.”
“There’s still at least one more technical in here with us,” Wildman said.
“Look for the exits,” I said. Cornering or not, if we went down the wrong alley, we could easily get stuck in our own trap.
Fooosh. An RPG smoke trail whizzed across our hood.
Instinctively, I stooped into the Humvee’s cabin for cover. Bullets plinked off our armored exterior. Through the door window, I could see the Martyr Maker. It was waiting for us. Boon cut across us from a side alley; Wildman unloading into the Martyr Maker from no more than fifteen meters, but all it did was crack the Hemmet’s bulletproof windshield.
“Hard left,” I yelled, a different direction from everyone else. Within a block, no other vehicles were in sight. But I knew they were in here, and I could hear the main battle raging between ISIS and Bear’s mercs not too far away. At one point, I saw the taillights of the ISIS technical, but it vanished around a corner. At another point, we passed a concrete building standing incongruously above the one-story CHUs. It had a faded painting of Saddam Hussein on the side of it, smiling and drinking tea.
“They’re on our ass,” Boon said over the radio. “I can’t shake him.”
I started to ask where he was, but then I heard Wildman’s fifty firing.
“Straight ahead, then sharp left,” I told the driver, as we sped up a parallel alley. We skidded around the corner and came out, quite by accident, between the Hemmet and the technical.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. I let loose on the Hemmet to get its attention before we disappeared down another Hesco row.
It worked. Both the Hemmet and technical were chasing us. We turned south and raced down an alley, outpacing the Martyr Maker. The Toyota was trying to pass it, but the alley was narrow, and the massive Hemmet took up the entire width, blocking the pickup truck. I fired a quarter of a belt, but the Hemmet’s steel plating was too thick. The fifty-cal rounds bounced off, leaving divots. Even the wheels were covered.
On top, the gunners brought their fifty-cals and grenade launchers around to fire on us. With our windows cracked and armor cracking, I doubted we’d survive another barrage.
“Heads down,” I yelled into the backseat, as I lined my cal on the lead gunner. I started low, hitting the windshield, but managed to walk my bullets into his head before he could get off his shot.
“Keep going straight,” I yelled to the driver. We seemed to be in a long chute, with Hescos on both sides. “No turns.”
“But there’s a dead end ahead,” Kylah screamed.
Farhan was yelling in Arabic, too.
“Make him keep it straight,” I yelled down to her, as a second gunner on the Martyr Maker struggled with the automatic grenade launcher. “And floor it.”
“You better be right,” Kylah yelled, and I felt the driver speeding up as we passed the last turn.
“I am,” I yelled, as the fifty-cal started kicking in my hand, my bullets bouncing off the deflector shield in front of the automatic grenade launcher. The Martyr Maker was right on top of us now, its dozer blade meters from our bumper. They were so close the gunners couldn’t even get the angle on the shot. I pulled my Beretta and shot him in the face.
“Hold on,” Kylah yelled, and then I was swinging out to the side, holding on to the fifty-cal, as the driver skidded perpendicular a few meters before the dead end, bounced off the wall, and accelerated down an alley no wider than our Humvee. The Martyr Maker plowed into the dead end, running through Hescos and concrete walls until it was off its first four wheels and hung ten feet deep in rubble. The technical skidded sideways, smashing into it at speed and exploding. The last thing I saw as we disappeared down the alley was a gunner recoiling backward then slamming into his launcher, knocking it upward and shooting a grenade straight into the sky.
“Hemmet down,” I called to Boon. “Hemmet down. Technical down. Returning to the fight.”
“Right behind you,” Boon said, as Wildman cut over him with, “Another one bites the dust.”
“How did you know about that alley?” Kylah asked, as I pulled myself back down into the front seat.
“I didn’t,” I said, without looking back at her. Badass, I thought.
We took a few wrong turns in the CHU labyrinth, but before long I could see the main fight beyond the housing area ahead. I banged the roof above the driver’s head and he slowed down. There was a small courtyard, hidden from the fight.
“What’re you doing?” Kylah asked, as the driver pulled to a stop.
“Letting you out,” I said.
She started to object, but I cut her off. “I’m not taking a pregnant woman into that firefight. And I’m not staying out. I have friends in there.” But the only friends I had left in there, I realized, were the Kurds who had risked their lives beside me for the last two months. Boon, Wildman, and I could have stayed out altogether. But what kind of person would I be then?
“You can’t keep me out,” Kylah said, as she offloaded Marhaz onto a dusty concrete step.
“She needs a doctor,” I said. I nodded toward Farhan, who was amassing a small arsenal of weapons from our Humvee and breaking into Wildman’s C-4 stash. I almost felt sorry for any ISIS that might stumble into him.
Kylah smirked. I wanted to kiss her. But I knew she didn’t want that.
“Good luck out there, cowboy,” she said.
I climbed back into the turret and motioned the Kurd forward. He hit the accelerator, and we tore out of the CHU village at sixty mph. Speed was our cover. It wasn’t until we cleared the last CHU and were flying into the open that I realized at least a dozen technicals—no, more like two dozen, or even ten dozen—were speeding toward us from the left. To my right, another several dozen technicals heading straight for us, their gunners howling with rage. They were enveloping us in a pincer move.
“Oh fuck,” I yelled, as the bullets slammed around the Humvee. “Abandon ship!”