Read Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) for Free Online Page A

way. And it was better to be up high and
able to defend yourself than down in some gully hoping they didn’t toss
grenades down on you.
    As the sun
and the heat climbed higher and higher, the men sweated under their nets. Each
man was awake and alert, fighting off fatigue with the kind of energy that can
only come from the feeling of being hunted.
    Although
they couldn’t be sure, the suspicious and volatile reputation of the people in
this area made it easy to assume that danger was not far behind them. The
villagers, or possibly even the Pakistani army if they had been alerted, might
have spread out and could approach from above, below, or from either side.
    There’d be
no sleeping today.
    Nick laid on
his stomach, rolling dirt between his fingers and chewing on their situation.
He looked down at the dirt, then dragged his hand across the dry, dusty ground.
Damn it, he thought, he was sick of all the humping and more than ready to infiltrate
al-Habshi’s compound.
    “Hey, guys,”
Red whispered. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
    Nick turned
and saw Red, who was behind him, holding his hand out with two shell casings in
it.
    Truck saw
the casings, as well, and scoffed, “Sorry, you little commie environmentalist,
but there are no recycling bins in the area.”
    “No,
asshole,” Red replied, clearly not in the joking mood. His eyes were fixated to
his palm. “I only have two casings. I thought I fired two rounds into that dog,
but I just remembered to reload my pistol and the magazine is missing three
rounds. I left a casing back there.”
    That wasn’t
good, Nick thought. And then he remembered the stress of the moving through the
huts and how he’d ordered everyone to move out immediately.
    “It’s my
fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have rushed you back there.”
    “It wouldn’t
have mattered. I thought I only fired twice.”
    “It doesn’t
matter,” Marcus said. “We live as a team, and we die as a team.”
    No one said
anything for a moment, and Marcus added, “Truth be known, it should have
occurred to me to grab that dog. We could have carried it out of there, and the
bloody mess could have easily been buried under loose dirt.”
    Nick slung a
handful of dirt to the ground with frustration. The situation was spiraling out
of control. It was out of the norm for him to have overreacted to his fear. It
was out of the norm for Red, such an incredible point man, to have accidentally
fired three rounds instead of two. He was typically used to the adrenaline. And
Marcus never missed anything.
    What the
hell was happening to them? He wiped his nose and knew it was the fatigue. This
mission just pushed the parameters of what any team could achieve.
    He ran his
hand through the dirt and wondered if he’d signed their death sentences the
moment they crossed the border.
    “It is what
it is,” Nick finally said. “Let’s stay sharp and with luck, we’ll hit this
compound tomorrow.”
    He picked up
another clod of dirt and sifted it through his fingers. He saw movement,
dropped the dirt, and raised a pair of binoculars along the trail behind them.
    “Speak of
the devil,” Nick said.
     

 
     
    Chapter 13
     
    Tariq Hijazi
and his men slowed. They had to be getting close. And at some point, the trail
would end with a man waiting for them. And that man would be armed.
    Tariq had
more than thirty men with him, and besides being armed with AKs, his men had
brought machine guns and RPGs to strengthen their power. At forty-four, Tariq
was more than an elder. He was the enclave’s military leader. And this hunt
presented a great opportunity for fame.
    He was
willing to sacrifice them all, including himself, to earn the respect and honor
he had spent his life pursuing.
    The group
pushed to the top of another finger of the mountain range, scanning ahead.
    “There!” one
of his men yelled, pointing to the next finger.
    And
squinting, Tariq saw it. Off in the distance, on the next piece of high ground,
a