Today’s excerpt is from Adios,
Amigos, Book #9 of the nine-book Asps Series. The Asps, working with their British friends
from SAS and SIS, Jim and some other old friends, take out several terrorists
after killing the head man, who was near the top of everyone’s most-wanted
list. Enjoy and have a great day.
m.j.
As Usama Ali ascended the platform, Tony
sighed. “Well, there goes our hopes of
taking him alive.”
Ali had come down one of the trails with his
group of bodyguards, all mounted on horseback.
One of his bodyguards held his horse as Ali mounted the platform to
speak. Tony glanced at Jim and nodded
his head. Jim nodded back and sighted in
on Ali’s forehead. “Okay, gang—let’s hit
it.” As he spoke, he squeezed off his
killing shot.
Within seconds of Jim’s shot, several other
terrorists started falling dead in their tracks. When Ali sagged to the ground with a hole in
his forehead, and the back of his head blown away, there was a gasp from the
assembled mob. When others started
falling dead with no one knowing where the killing shots were coming from,
panic ensued. The panic only increased
when Bear pushed a remote button on the panel he had in front of him.
The first of the claymores went off, tearing
a hole through those standing nearby. He
set off another, then another. He set
off all ten, spaced about ten seconds apart.
With men being ripped to shreds by the claymores—plus men falling dead
all over the compound—the assembled mass of terrorists knew what terror was all
about now, as they ran in all different directions. By prior agreement, all of those in the raiding
party were killing those furtherest away from them, on the edges of the
compound—the idea being to get the bulk of the group to head across the creek,
into the face of the claymore field there, thoughts of running early long gone.
Jim fired another killing shot at a man
running for the far tree line. As he got
ready for another shot, he noticed the horse Ali had ridden to the meeting was
now moving around unattended. Jim took a
closer look. He saw what—for lack of a
better term—were a set of overlarge saddlebags tied to the horse. He also noticed the animal was getting quite
agitated by all the noise made by the futile return fire from the terrorists,
who were firing at random all over the area, since they still had no idea where
the killing shots were coming from. Just
as he was looking at the horse, it turned facing the firing pits. Jim shrugged as he lined up a shot for the
horse’s rear, just visible to him, due to the saddlebags. He squeezed off the shot. It did just what he wanted—gently grazed the
buttocks of the horse. That was all the
unhappy horse needed to take off on a full run…toward the pits. Jim quickly growled, “Don’t anybody shoot the
horse running our way.”
The panicked terrorists paid no attention to
the horse as it forded the creek and kept right on running up the gentle
incline, which eventually rose twenty feet above the creek. It shot on past the pit to Jim’s right. Jim set his rifle down before he took off
after it, being careful to ease back from the pit, so as to not be seen by
those down below. Then he gave full
chase. The horse was headed in the
general direction of where the buggies were parked. It finally slowed, then stopped about thirty
feet from the buggies. One of the SAS
men guarding the buggies had heard Jim’s words about not shooting the horse, so
he figured out the horse was wanted for some reason. He slowly walked toward it with soothing
words. By then, Jim had seen the stopped
horse. He too slowed and offered
soothing words. The SAS man reached the horse
first and gently took hold of his reins.
As Jim reached the SAS man holding the
horse, he nodded. “Good job. Hold him while I take those big saddlebags
off him.”
“Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.”
Jim smiled.
“We’ve been down this road before.
Can the ‘sir’—its Jim.”
The man smiled back at Jim as Jim took the
bags off. A quick inspection found what
Jim had hoped against hope he’d find—a laptop that surely had to belong to
Usama Ali. There was also a good deal of
paper in the bags, along with a few personal items. Satisfied the exercise had been worth it, Jim
looked at the wound he had caused. He
told the SAS man to get a tight grip on the horse while he did some hasty repairs
to the wound. Each of the team members
carried a field first aid kit. Jim soon
had the wound disinfected, then put some healing salve on it. He did the best he could to bandage it to
keep flies off it until it had a chance to begin healing, even though he
doubted the bandaging job would stay on very long. Next, he took off the saddle and removed the
harness and bit. That done, he patted
the horse. “Okay, fella, you’re free to
go—hope you find a nice mare to hook up with.”
The horse just walked off a few feet and
started eating grass. Jim grinned as he
looked at the SAS man. “You seem to know
horses, been around many?”
“Yes, sir…er, Jim. Was a farm boy before joining the service.”
Jim just nodded, told the SAS man to put the
bags in one of the buggies, then turned to head back toward ongoing
battle. When he got there, most of the
enemy was gathered up and headed toward the ridge, where the pits were. Even as Jim picked up his rifle to start
killing more of the terrorists, Bear set off five of the claymores, then five
more—and finally, the last ten. Those
blasts had a devastating effect on the terrorists gathered just on the team’s
side of the creek.
Those who were still able to move started
running in all different directions, while the team kept up its withering
fire. Finally, Bruce decided it was time
to go. “Cyrus, best get your men down
from the trees. Once they’re down, we
can start falling back. I think we’ve
pushed our luck about all we should.”
Cyrus agreed, as he told his six tree
snipers to come down, then carefully retreat. As each of those men reached the
base of the tree they had been up, they eased back into the forest before they
slowly headed for the buggies and were followed by those in the pits. As soon as everyone was gathered around the
buggies, Jack saw one of the tree snipers limping along and took a quick look
at him. He had been hit in the foot by
one of the wild shots fired by the terrorists.
The only other wound received by the entire assault team had been a
nearly spent round that had ricocheted off a tree before hitting Kye high on
her right arm. Jack had already treated
it, even though in reality it was little more than a deep scratch.
As Jack worked on the SAS man, the others
got back in their respective buggies.
Jack helped the man to the buggy he had been assigned to. After doing so, he got in his own assigned
buggy, as Bruce nodded and ordered, “Lead the way, Dusty.”
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