Page 56 of Dead Fall

There was so much noise, the Russians didn’t realize another gun had joined the fight until they saw another of their men go down.

When the first Russian turned to engage, Harvath shot him square in the chest, knocking him over backward. It was the last shot he was able to visually confirm hitting its target.

As several of the soldiers began shooting at him, Harvath had to duck back behind cover. With the rounds falling on his position like a hailstorm, all he could do was point the muzzle of his Galil in their direction and blindly fire.

He ran his magazine dry and, pulling his weapon back in, swapped it out for a fresh one. The Russians took advantage of his pause to unload on him.

The bullets popped and whizzed all around him—high, low, and wide. Whoever these soldiers were, they were not terribly good marksmen. Their aim and their discipline sucked.

Based on how many Russians Peshkov had fed into the wood chipper of Ukraine, Harvath could only figure that a good chunk of the soldiers now seeing combat had very little experience and even less training.

The moment they stopped firing, Harvath went at them again—this time risking a peek to better direct his fire. He needed to be a big enough pain in the ass that they couldn’t help but come after him. What he saw made him pull his headandhis rifle in and start to retreat—the bullets pinging around him were cover fire for a group of soldiers headed to take him out.

The Russians had likely figured out that this was the guy who had been thinning their ranks. Now that they had a fix on him, they weren’t going to let him get away, which was exactly what he wanted.

Running as fast as he could, Harvath raced back past the APC andaround the corner. He kept going until he found a pile of rubble large enough to safely take refuge behind.

Tucking in, he radioed the Ukrainians to get ready. Half of the Russians attacking their position had just broken off and were about to hit the APC.

Not knowing what kind of training they’d had, Harvath figured one of two things was going to happen. The Russians were either going to drop a grenade down the open gunner’s hatch, or they were going to line up in a stack, yank open the rear door, and fill the belly of the APC with automatic weapons fire. For all he knew, they might even do both. The result, however, would be the same. All that mattered was that they took the bait.

By now, they should be coming around the corner and have full view of the large, armor-plated vehicle. As they got closer, eventually even the least observant among them was going to discover the empty magazine near the rear hatch.

If they only sent one soldier forward to investigate, he’d see all this, plus notice that the gunner’s hatch was ajar. It would only be a matter of seconds now as they settled on a plan and put it into action.

Harvath wished the Ukrainians still had the sniper in place. He would have killed for a play-by-play. As it was, he had to settle for waiting and decided to count backward in his head from thirty. That would have to be more than enough time for them to orient and act.

He counted all the way down yet arrived at zero and still nothing had happened. Back at the school, the gun battle was still raging.What the hell was the delay?

Had the Russians smelled a trap? Had they bypassed the APC altogether? Had he miscalculated and now they were only steps away from being right on top of him?

The noise from the gunfight was perfect auditory camouflage. He wouldn’t have known they were there until one of the Russians stuck a weapon in his face and pulled the trigger. The thought of the Russians turning the tables on him like that was nuts, but it would be the ultimate irony. Murphy pulling one last cruel trick before Harvath got his ticket punched. He had to risk peering out from behind the rubble.

Leading with his Galil, he crawled to the edge of the pile and then rolled onto his side to take a look. As he did, there was an enormous explosion.

All of the wooden buildings around the APC were flattened and a gigantic, roiling orange fireball shot up into the sky.

The shock wave pelted Harvath with hot pieces of flying rock, glass, and other debris. Moving as fast as he could, he rolled back behind his pile of rubble.

As soon as the rain of detritus had subsided, Harvath leapt to his feet and ran back toward the blast zone. If any of the Russian soldiers had survived, he needed to make sure that they couldn’t return to the fight.

Arriving at the flaming APC, he saw nothing but dead bodies and body parts. His ears were ringing, and he strained to hear any sounds of gunfire coming from the school.

Slowly, his hearing started to come back. After a lull in the fighting, probably due to the shock of the explosion, the battle was back on.

Gripping his weapon a little tighter, Harvath headed toward the school to finish the job and mop up the remaining Russians.

This had been an expensive detour. He needed to get to the front and link up with his team. Every minute they weren’t chasing the Ravens was one more minute in which those psychopaths were free to inflict their terror.

CHAPTER 17

The Colonel loved to watch his war dogs work. The men from the asylums were always the first ones in. They were fearless. And with their faces painted like skulls—terrifying.

As long as their drug of choice was available—narcotics, alcohol, or women—they were easy to keep in line. The hard-core criminals—the rapists, gangsters, and thieves—were more difficult. They had a level of functional intelligence, as well as street smarts, that seemed to be lacking in the insane. The criminals were able to think beyond their immediate gratification. And while they also gorged on a steady diet of drugs, women, and alcohol, they additionally wanted money. The war wouldn’t go on forever. At some point it would end, and when it did they wanted to have a nice chest of riches to show for it and from which to retire, or finance their next endeavor.

The Colonel didn’t blame them. Yes, by joining the war and agreeing to fight they had secured their freedom, but that agreement with the Russian state had ended the minute they had all gone AWOL.

Even the Colonel was a wanted man, marked by Moscow for death. He had not only stopped fighting for Russia, but was actively stealing from Peshkov and his cronies inside the Kremlin.

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