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Prologue to
THE ASSASSIN
By
Stephen Coonts
Copyright 2008 by Stephen P.
Coonts
October--Iraq
“Ragheads
dragged the driver out of the vehicle and took him away,” the sergeant
told the lieutenant, who was sitting in a Humvee. “They shot the woman
in the car. She’s still in it. Iraqi grunt says she’s alive but the
assholes put a bomb in the car. They’re using her as cheese in the
trap.”
“Shit,” said
the lieutenant, and rubbed the stubble on his chin.
The day was
hot, and the chatter of automatic weapons firing bursts was the musical
background. The column of vehicles had ground to a halt in a cloud of
dust, and since there was no wind, the dust sifted softly down,
blanketing equipment and men and making breathing difficult.
U. S.
Navy Petty Officer Third Class Owen Winchester moved closer to the lead
vehicle so that he could hear the lieutenant and sergeant better.
He could see
the back end of an old sedan with faded, peeling paint sitting
motionless alongside the road about fifty yards ahead. Three Marines
and three Iraqi soldiers were huddled in an irrigation ditch fifty feet
to the right of the road. On the left was a block of houses.
“Let me go
take a look,” Winchester said to the lieutenant.
“Listen, doc,”
the sergeant said, glancing at Winchester. “The ragheads would love to
do you same as they would us.”
“I want to
take a look,” Winchester insisted. “If she can be saved…” He left it
hanging there as distant small-arms fire rattled randomly.
The place
was a sun-baked hellhole; it made Juarez look like Paris on the Rio
Bravo. The tragedy was that real humans tried to live here… and were
murdered here by rats with guns who wanted to rule the dungheap in the
name of a vengeful, merciless god, one who demanded human sacrifice as a
ticket to Paradise.
The lieutenant
had been in Iraq for six months and was approaching burnout. The
wanton, savage cruelty of the true believers no longer appalled him—he
accepted it, just as he did the heat and dirt and human misery he saw
everywhere he looked. He forced himself to think about the situation.
A woman. Shot. She would probably die unless something was done. So
what? No, no, don’t think like that, he thought. That’s the
way they think, which is why the Devil lives here. After a few
seconds, he said, “Okay. Take a look. And watch your ass.”
The sergeant
didn’t say another word, merely began trotting ahead in that bent-over
combat trot of soldiers the world over. With his first-aid bag over his
shoulder, Winchester followed.
They flopped
into the irrigation ditch directly opposite the car, where they could
see into the passenger compartment. There was a woman in there, all
right, slumped over. She wasn’t wearing a head scarf. They could see
her dark hair.
Fifteen feet
from them was the rotting carcass of a dog. In this heat, the stench
was awe-inspiring.
An Iraqi
soldier joined them. “She has been shot,” he said in heavily accented
English. “Stomach. I get close, see her and the bomb.”
“How are they
going to detonate it, you think?” Winchester asked, looking around,
trying to spot the trigger man. He saw no one but the Iraqi soldiers
and Marines lying on their stomachs in the irrigation ditch, away from
the dog. The mud-walled and brick buildings across the way looked
empty, abandoned, their windows blank and dark.
“Cell phone,
most likely,” the sergeant said sourly. “From somewhere over there, in
one of those apartments. Or a garage door opener.”
“Saving lives
is my job,” the corpsman said. “I want to take a look.”
“You’re an
idiot.”
“Probably.” Winchester grinned. He had a good grin.
“Jesus! Don’t
do nothin’ stupid.”
With that
admonition ringing in his ears, Winchester ditched the first-aid bag and
trotted toward the car. From ten feet away he could see the woman’s
head slumped over, see that the door was ajar. He closed to five feet.
She
wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and a bomb was lying on the driver’s seat.
Looked like four sticks of dynamite, fused, with a black box taped to
the bundle. The woman moved her head slightly and he heard a low moan.
Winchester ran back to the ditch, holding his helmet in place, and
flopped down beside the sergeant.
“There’s
a bomb on the driver’s seat,” he told the sergeant, whose name was Joe
Martinez. “And she’s still alive. I think I can get her out of there
before they blow it. Takes time to dial a phone, time for the network
to make the phone you called ring. Might be enough time.”
“Might be
just enough to kill you, you silly son of a bitch.”
“The door
is ajar and she isn’t wearing a seat belt. I can do this. Open the
door and grab her and run like hell.”
“You’re
an idiot,” Sergeant Martinez repeated.
“Would
you try it if she was your sister?”
“She
ain’t my sister,” the sergeant said with feeling as he scanned the
buildings across the road. “What do they say? No good deed goes
unpunished?”
”I will
go,” the Iraqi soldier said. He laid his weapon on the edge of the
ditch, began taking off his web belt. “Two men, one on each arm.”
“She’s
my sister, Joe,” Owen Winchester said to Martinez, and grinned
again, broadly.
The
sergeant watched as Winchester and the Iraqi soldier took off all their
gear and their helmets, so they could run faster.
“You
fuckin’ swabbie! You got balls as big as pumpkins. How do you carry
them around?” Martinez laid down his rifle, took off his web belt. He
tossed his helmet beside the rifle. “I’ll get the door. You two get
her.” He took a deep breath and exhaled explosively. “Okay, on three.
One, two, threeeee!”
They
vaulted from the ditch and sprinted toward the car. The sergeant
grabbed the door, jerked it open as the other two men reached in.
Winchester got one arm and the Iraqi the other. They pulled the wounded
woman from the car, hooked an arm under each armpit. Joe Martinez
picked up her feet and they began to run.
They were ten feet from
the car when the bomb exploded.
Copyright 2008 by Stephen P. Coonts
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