CAIRO, EGYPT
Manton saw that Russell was unsettled, but at least he was ambulatory and still in the fight. The same couldn’t be said about Trent. Not much Manton could do about it now.
Manton pulled a satellite phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and called Treadstone Director Levi Shaw’s direct line. The device was equipped with a chip that held an encryption package that guaranteed only the person at the other end of the line would be able to hear him talk.
Director Shaw picked up right away.
“I’m listening,” Shaw said, his voice strained. Agents didn’t usually call him when deployed—unless something had gone horribly wrong.
“We were ambushed on Airport Road at the intersection of El Nasr Road.”
“What? By whom?”
“Don’t know. Trent’s down, but the principal, Patrick, and I are fine. For now,” Manton told him. “But we’re about to get hit again.”
“Understood. I’ll do what I can. Keep your phone with you.”
Manton disconnected the call, then reached inside the SUV and snatched an MP5 from under the fallen Treadstone agent. Trent wouldn’t need it anymore.
Manton inserted a fresh magazine into his own MP5 and pocketed the partially spent one for future use. So far, he had fired fourteen well-placed shots at six different assailants. The six bastards had come at him in two waves of three and begun shooting in his direction the moment he had rolled out of the Audi. Clearly the ambush had been well planned and these guys had been the mop-up crew. Had the six men been better shots and coordinated their final assault on the SUV the same way the first phase of the ambush had been orchestrated, it would be Manton lying dead in the street instead of them.
But the fight wasn’t over. Far from it. To his right, Patrick had taken cover behind the capsized SUV.
“What do you see?” Manton asked, handing Patrick the MP5 he’d just retrieved from the Audi.
“Two pickups, each loaded with half a dozen fighters heading our way.”
Manton grabbed one of Russell’s shoulders and looked at the man. The bureaucrat was holding his shit together surprisingly well considering the clusterfuck they’d suddenly found themselves in.
“Have you fired a pistol before?” Manton asked.
“A few times, but never in combat. I was a logistics officer in the army before joining the Foreign Service,” Russell said, his eyes sharp, his voice perfectly even.
Manton made a judgment call and reached for the SIG Sauer P365 SAS concealed at the small of his back in a waistband holster. The pistol wasn’t an offensive weapon by any means—the P365 SAS was a straight-up close-quarter-engagement handgun—but that’s all he had to share with Russell.
“You have eleven rounds of nine-millimeter goodness. Ten in the magazine, one in the pipe. Got it?”
“Yes,” Russell said, accepting the pistol.
“Cover our six,” Manton said, pointing in the direction he wanted Russell to keep his eyes on.
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Just point and shoot,” Manton continued. “There’s no iron sight on this one, no manual safety, either. And please, don’t try to hit anything farther away than fifty feet. You’ll only waste ammo. Yell if you see something.”
Russell nodded, but Manton had already moved to the other end of the SUV. He glanced over the rear bumper of the Audi. The two pickups were barreling down the side street perpendicular to Airport Road, zigzagging between stopped or slow-moving vehicles.
“If they flank us, we’re dead,” Manton said to the other Treadstone agent.
Bullets clanged against the SUV and both agents took cover.
“These assholes are taking long-range potshots at us,” Patrick said. “They want to keep our heads down.”
Manton took another peek. One of the pickup trucks had stopped and fighters were dismounting from its bed, fanning out quickly.
“These guys are the fire base!” he yelled at Patrick.
Manton leaned slightly out of cover, took aim at one of the running men, and squeezed the trigger. The man spun and fell. Patrick fired, too, and another fighter tumbled, dead. Manton searched for a target, but the remaining four had taken cover. He shifted his aim to the pickup’s windshield and fired five rounds. His first shot went too low and ricocheted off the hood of the truck, but the next four punched the driver’s side of the windshield just above the wipers, two of them hitting flesh and muscle.
The second pickup had banked sharply to their right and was moving into a flanking position, confirming Manton’s suspicion.
Shit!
“Patrick, keep the fire base pinned down!”
When Patrick began to fire, Manton stood up, abandoning his cover, and emptied the rest of his magazine at the second pickup. The passenger-side window exploded and the pickup veered left, its tires barely gripping asphalt. The driver lost control and slammed directly into the back of a dump truck parked on the shoulder. Two of the fighters in the bed of the pickup were ejected and flew headfirst into the side of the dump truck.
“We need to get out of the X!” Patrick yelled.
“Check,” Manton replied, changing his MP5’s magazine.
Manton took in his surroundings. It was chaos. Dozens of vehicles were immobilized on Airport Road, their windows shattered, their tires ripped apart by shrapnel. Fifty feet to his left, a red minivan was on fire. One of its occupants seemed to have successfully climbed out of the burning vehicle but now lay dead in the middle of the road, part of his clothes still alight. Steps behind the minivan, inside a black Toyota Corolla, a driver was slumped over the steering wheel. Here and there, people were sluggishly exiting their damaged vehicles. As appalling as it all was, Manton didn’t give the injured men and women a second thought. His priority was to find a vehicle—preferably another SUV, but he’d settle for anything with four unscathed tires and a functioning motor—and disengage from the firefight before the attackers could regroup and continue their assault.
The sudden cracks of a pistol sent Manton spinning on his heels, his MP5 up. It took him half a second to find what Russell was shooting at. Forty yards away, one of the attackers Manton had shot earlier was on his knees, about to fire an RPG. Manton squeezed the trigger twice. The man fell to his side, but the RPG was already sailing right at them. The projectile raced over Manton’s head, clearing the Audi by only a couple of feet, and exploded somewhere in the background. Before Manton could nod his thanks to Russell, he heard the high-pitched snapping of bullets hitting the opposite side of the Audi. To make matters worse, the surviving assailants from the second pickup truck were getting into position. Within seconds, Manton, Russell, and Patrick would be caught in the middle of multidirectional gunfire.
They had to move. Now.
“On me!” he called to Russell and Patrick. “We’re going to use the drainage ditch that follows the fence to move west toward the stadium.”
Manton wished he could pop a smoke grenade to obscure their dash across the fifty feet of open ground that separated the overturned Audi from the ditch, but the grenades were with the rest of his kit inside the Audi cargo compartment. Getting to them would take time they didn’t have. Manton glanced over his shoulder. Russell and Patrick had bunched up behind him and were awaiting his command.
“Russell, I want you to stay to the left of Patrick, understood?”
“Yes.”
“I’m gonna lay down some covering fire. Then you two go.”
Patrick’s left hand moved to Russell’s back. “You ready for this?” the Treadstone agent asked. “Don’t overthink it. Just run, stay low, and don’t stop for any reason.”
Russell’s mouth must have run dry because he only managed to nod, but Manton saw that the man’s hands were steady, his eyes fierce. Taking a deep breath, Manton tightened his grip on the MP5 and sprang into action. The moment he broke cover, he knew the timing couldn’t have been worse. They had stayed too long at the X, and the enemy had zeroed in their fire.
His instinct told him to get back behind the armored Audi, but Patrick and Russell had already stepped out of cover, so he held steadfast, unwavering despite the withering hail of 7.62-millimeter rounds thumping against and around the SUV. Manton felt a round pluck at his jacket but stayed focused, squeezing shot after shot and downing one man. Another fighter got to his knees and shouldered an RPG just as another round snapped inches from Manton’s left ear. Manton engaged the new threat, one of his bullets striking the wannabe rocket man square in the gut. As Manton’s 9mm round tore its way through his organs, the fighter dropped the RPG and grabbed his belly in shock. Manton’s next round hit him in the throat.
But the bullets kept coming, and the overlapping chatter of AK-47s only grew louder. To Manton’s left, Russell dived into the ditch just as Patrick was struck by a bullet and fell—only a few feet short of the ditch. Manton let loose another volley, then sprinted toward Patrick. Steel-jacketed rounds swept the sand around Patrick with at least one of them hitting him in his side.
Manton grabbed the Treadstone agent under his shoulders and dragged him down into the ditch, his body leaving a dark trail of blood in the sand. Russell joined him halfway down and helped Manton the rest of the way.
“He . . . He saved my—”
“Not now!” Manton snapped. “Crawl to the top and tell me what you see. And for Christ’s sake, stay low.”
Manton turned his attention back to Patrick.
“Hey! Stay with me, Patrick. Stay with me.”
The injured Treadstone agent let out a long, painful groan. His eyes fluttered open as he took in a ragged breath, which immediately led to a wet, bloody cough. Manton patted Patrick’s sides and back with his hands, looking for the entry wounds. When he drew his hands back, they were slick with blood. Patrick had been shot numerous times and was bleeding internally. There was nothing Manton could do for him, and Patrick knew it.
“Sorry, brother,” Manton said, drawing Patrick’s pistol from its holster and handing it to him. “Good luck.”
“They’re coming from two sides,” Russell said, panting as he hurried back down the ditch.
“Tell me.”
“Four men. Fifty yards,” Russell said, using his left hand to indicate the direction. “And there’s five more coming out from behind the dump truck.”
“How far is the second group?”
“About eighty yards, but they’re closing fast. They’re halfway across the road now.”
Manton could see the approaching fighters and their locations in his mind’s eye. The second group was moving to cut them off farther west. It was going to be a challenge to get out of the ditch alive. Manton would have to move fast, or he and Russell would get walled in on two sides.
Manton took one last look at Patrick, who nodded weakly, his face deathly white.
“Okay, Russell, we’re moving,” Manton said. “Follow the ditch and run.”
Staying low and moving fast, they followed a slight northerly bend in the ditch. The arc was pronounced enough to break direct line of sight from where the dying Treadstone agent was about to make his last stand. Ahead, Russell hadn’t slowed down, and Manton was happy to see that the former logistics officer’s fight-or-flight mechanisms weren’t yet overloaded. Manton had seen civilians become downright paralyzed by much less.
Pistol shots cracked the air behind them. They were promptly drowned out by several long bursts of AK-47s. Russell glanced behind him, and Manton could see dread in the older man’s eyes.
It was then that something snapped inside Manton’s head, and he stopped running.
“Stay there. I’ll be back!” he shouted to Russell.
Before Russell could muster a reply, Manton spun one hundred and eighty degrees, brought the butt of his MP5 tight against his shoulder, leveled the muzzle toward the gap in the bend, and started advancing down the ditch in a combat crouch, his heart thudding in his chest. He had never been one to play defense. It didn’t sit well with him. He was Treadstone, and Treadstone took the fight to the enemy—not the other way around. There was only one way to play this if he didn’t want to get squeezed out.
I’m gonna run straight down these assholes’ throats.
Manton, fully aware he was critically outnumbered and outgunned, charged ahead, visualizing what was about to happen next. He was going to kill them all.
Surprise. Speed. Violence of action.
The lead fighter appeared in front of Manton, not even five yards away. The man was dressed in a pair of khaki cargo pants and a loose-fitting, faded green T-shirt. His AK-47 was pointed in front of him, but away from Manton.
Manton double-tapped him in the face.
Manton, closing in with lightning speed, fired three rounds at the next fighter, who had been standing less than three feet behind the leader. The three 9mm bullets caught the fighter in the mouth. The man dropped still in the dirt, his body coming to rest almost on top of the other guy. Manton stepped over the two dead bodies and continued to push forward, surprised not to immediately see the two other fighters Russell had spotted earlier.
He understood why five steps later.
The third man lay dead halfway down the ditch, several bullet wounds dotting the front of his shirt. The fourth, though, was very much alive and was applying a tourniquet to his left leg using his belt. With his dying breath, Patrick had killed one of the shitheads, and incapacitated another. The injured fighter just had time to gasp a startled curse before Manton sent two rounds into the side of his head.
Edward Russell hesitated, his mind racing to make sense of what he was seeing. Why had Oliver turned around? Why was he heading straight into the four armed men he’d seen heading toward the ditch? Was he nuts?
Russell flinched when he heard gunfire.
Pop-pop! Pop-pop-pop!
Definitely an MP5. Making his decision, Russell brought his pistol up and headed in the same direction Oliver had taken seconds ago.
Pop-pop! Two more shots. Again from an MP5.
Russell picked up his pace and sidestepped over two dead bodies. As he cleared the bend, he saw Oliver, who immediately spun toward him, the muzzle of his MP5 pointed directly at his head.
Holy shit, this man is fast.
Oliver had just started to lower the MP5 when his eyes opened wide, and that’s when Russell knew something was very, very wrong.