Page 167 of One Minute Out

I link up with Kareem and Rodney on the second-floor landing in the center of the building. Both men report shooting two guards, meaning we’ve dropped five in total, and together we’ve found six women and girls, all of whom we’ve asked to shelter in place while we clear the area.

The raid has been going on no more than a minute and a half, but I can see that both my teammates are gassed. Rodney puts his hand out on a wall for a breather, and Kareem is wincing with each step.

“You hit?”

“Hit by time, bro. Bad back.”

Christ.

He sees my concern as he begins reloading his rifle. “It’s all about adrenaline now, anyway.” He snaps a fresh mag in and drops the bolt release. “Let’s rock.”

Rodney gets off the wall and we stack up in a three-man train, then begin heading down to the first floor, but before we make it more than a couple of steps, a group of three armed Latino males spin into view below us. They are looking for threats, but they hesitate an instant as they size us up as targets.

Kareem, Rodney, and I each fire a controlled double-tap, two into each man, and all three tumble back down to the ground floor, dead.

We start down again, but Kareem grabs me by the shoulder just as Rodney tosses a flash bang grenade past my ear. All three of us turn away as it detonates below us in the entry hall of the ranch house.

We descend the rest of the way, where we stumble upon two white men in plain clothing on their hands and knees, disoriented from the banger. Kareem knocks them both flat to the floor while Rodney and I cover back up the stairs as well as the ground-floor hallways leading into both the east and west wings, and a doorway from the entry hall into the kitchen.

The first man on the floor who Kareem checks is unarmed, but the other is lying next to a Heckler & Koch semiautomatic pistol, and under his coat we can see the telltale imprint of a radio on his belt.

Kareem says, “He’s hostile. What do I do with—”

Without speaking, I shift my AK and shoot the man once in the back of the head.

“We don’t have time to give quarter to these motherfuckers.”

Kareem, who is now kneeling on a dead body, just says, “Works for me,” and then he rises and drops back down over to the unarmed man, wincing with back pain as he does so.

This civilian is in the fetal position; he’s pissed his pants and he’s crying like a baby. He’s obviously expecting to lose his life, just like the man on the floor six feet away has.

He is a john, a rapist, likely a pedophile, and my first inclination is to kill him. But he’s not a threat to me. Kareem obviously gets it, because he leans into the man’s ear. “You lay yo’ ass right the fuck here, facedown, and you don’t move till you see daylight through that window. You feel me?”

The man turns and presses his face into the floor, and he continues crying uncontrollably.

The front door to the building flies open now and the three of us find ourselves twenty feet away from multiple armed men. We shift aim to the doorway and open up in bursts, and the attackers dive from view. I don’t know if we made any hits, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t expecting to get shot at the instant they opened the front door, just a couple of minutes after we inserted on the roof and the third floor. They can’t possibly know how many of us are in the building, so I expect they’ll take a minute or two to reassess the situation before making a second breach attempt.

Rodney runs to the door, shuts and locks it, then reloads while Kareem and I cover the entire area.

Another plainclothed Caucasian, this one young and very fit looking, steps into the entry hall from the kitchen on our right, and he raises his empty hands upon seeing us. “Shit! Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!”

Kareem speaks softly to me. “That ain’t no john.”

Before either of us can react, however, the man drops hard to the wooden floor. Behind him, two more men, one Caucasian and one black, spin into view with HK MP-7 Personal Defense Weapons at their shoulders.

I fire as Rodney dives for cover behind a massive planter by the front door. Kareem and I shoot the armed men, but both of our rifles run dry simultaneously.

As we transition to our pistols, the man on the floor draws from his hip and aims our way.

He gets off a single shot before Rodney rolls out from behind the planter and dumps a dozen rounds from his SCAR into the prone attacker, killing him instantly.

I look next to me and see that Kareem is hit. His right shoulder glistens red, and he stumbles back a step but does not fall.

He looks down at the wound. “Dammit!” he shouts, in anger, but not in pain.

I’ve been shot before. Pain comes later.

I reach for the medical kit on his chest rig to patch him up, but he just shakes his head. “I’m good to go. First things first; we ain’t got much time till those cartel boys bust back in. Rodney and I will get the girls together upstairs; you go check out that grotto.”

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