Crusader One (Tier One Thrillers Book 3) Page 22

  The crowd panicked en masse, and people began running chaotically in every direction. Someone let out a bloodcurdling scream. Someone else another. And then, he heard someone shout, “Allahu Akbar!”

  He released Elinor’s hand and the SEAL inside him took control. All the noise and chaos fell away, and he scanned the street with laser focus, his mind assessing the battle space for threats. To the west, toward King George Street, he noted a man in a white tunic. The man was screaming like an animal, bent at the waist, bringing down what could only be a meat cleaver again and again on a crumpled figure. The crumpled figure was a man in a suit, covered in blood. Dempsey watched the businessman raise his arm and the cleaver take it off. The next blow landed square in the middle of the man’s face, and a geyser of bright-red blood painted the terrorist’s tunic. With rabid eyes, the jihadi zeroed in on his next target—a group of women this time. He ran toward them, the knife dripping blood in his right hand, while they fled in hysterics. One of the women stumbled, fell, and screamed.

  A heartbeat later the maniac was upon her.

  Dempsey took off in a sprint toward the jihadi, but Elinor was already in motion, her head down like a rugby player, barreling toward the man with the cleaver. The jihadi screamed something and raised the cleaver. Dempsey followed behind Elinor. The killer saw Elinor, but too late. She drove her shoulder into the side of his ribcage and knocked him to the ground. The man’s head whiplashed against the pavement and the cleaver popped out of his grip. Elinor rolled out of the fall and was up straddling the man’s chest in a split second. Her hands flew to the sides of the man’s head, and gripping him by the hair and ears, she smashed his head repeatedly into the pavement beneath them. A dark puddle of blood grew underneath his head.

  After the fifth blow, Dempsey grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off. She whirled toward him, her face contorted with homicidal rage.

  “He’s done,” Dempsey barked.

  “Sleeper agents,” she growled, scanning the street. “There could be many.”

  Dempsey nodded and helped pull a fallen woman to her feet. “Get indoors,” he commanded, having to peel the woman’s fingers from where her nails dug into his forearm.

  A gunshot rang out, and then more followed in rapid succession.

  The shooter was close.

  Dempsey dropped into a crouch and pulled his Sig Sauer from the holster at the small of his back. Someone was shooting at pedestrians in the fleeing crowd. He triangulated where the gunshots were coming from and saw a muzzle flare in the doorway of a nearby souvenir shop. He took aim, but the store’s brick facade blocked him from getting a clear shot. Another muzzle flash, another pop, and in his peripheral vision Dempsey saw a teenage girl drop to the ground and shriek. He sprinted toward the souvenir shop, ducking and weaving through the manic crowd. He stopped short of the doorway, hugging the wall and sliding toward the shooter’s outstretched hand, which was clutching a semiautomatic pistol. As the shooter’s pistol burped fire, sending another round into the crowd, Dempsey slipped his own pistol into his waistband. Then, with lightning speed, he brought his left palm down on top of the shooter’s wrist, grabbing and driving the hand down simultaneously. The shooter stumbled forward and squeezed the trigger, sending a round into the sidewalk. Clutching the shooter’s wrist, Dempsey drew the arm toward him and into a deft arm lock. In a single fluid motion, he hyperextended the shooter’s elbow with a sickening crack. Despite the wail of agony, despite the impossible angle of the man’s arm, the gun remained somehow in the assailant’s grip.

  With a scowl, Dempsey flexed the arm and repeated the maneuver, this time completely shredding the elbow joint, turning the man’s arm into a useless, dangling hunk of flesh. As the gun clattered to the ground, the shooter howled with rage and lunged forward. Teeth bared, the terrorist tried to bite Dempsey’s face, but Dempsey drove his right elbow into the side of his foe’s eye socket with a crunch. Dempsey finished him off by wrapping the man’s neck into a headlock and dropping to a knee, breaking the shooter’s neck.

  He let the lifeless body drop to the ground and his fingers found his Sig. Dempsey scanned left and right from his kneeling position, sweeping for threats and looking for Elinor. He spied her twenty feet away, sparring with a woman in a long black dress. He launched himself from the doorway, sprinting to help.

  “IDF is en route with a QRF,” Rouvin said in his ear. “We need to reassemble our team.”

  “Copy. I’m with Munn,” Grimes said, her voice clinical. “We’re engaging two shooters with assault rifles firing from a second-story window. Wang and Adamo are moving back toward the rally point.”

  Dempsey assumed she meant the alley beside the gelato shop, but he didn’t have time to ask. The scene unfolding before him sent a sickening surge of dread through his entire body. Elinor was engaged in a tactical dance with the woman in the black dress, circling and talking with intense focus while at the same time waving for him to back off. The woman, who Dempsey could now see was actually a girl no more than seventeen, was wearing a suicide vest. Her dark eyes were wild, darting this way and that with fear and doubt. The bulge beneath the torso of her dress made the rest of her rail-thin body seem frail and out of proportion.

  Shit, she’s wired to blow.

  Elinor had both hands in the air like an orchestra conductor now, and she was pleading with the girl in Arabic. Dempsey gripped his pistol but kept it lowered at half-mast, not wanting to encourage the girl to detonate early. Something exploded a half block away, and he turned to see bodies flying before the scene was enshrouded in smoke and dust. Seeing this, the suicide bomber screamed and dropped to her knees.

  She’s going to do it. We gotta go, Elinor.

  The girl raised her arms to heaven, and Dempsey saw that both hands were empty. No trigger, no dead man’s switch. Was the vest on a timer? Detonated remotely? The girl was crying now, but instead of backing up, Elinor cautiously approached her. A commotion erupted to Dempsey’s left. A crowd of people, mostly teens, came sprinting toward them, fleeing the detonation and carnage that had just happened down the block.

  “Stay back,” he shouted, but the frantic crowd kept coming.

  The suicide bomber saw the crowd, too, and jumped to her feet. Dempsey could see it in her eyes: she’d made her decision. This was her target. She stepped first toward Elinor, shouted something anti-Semitic in Arabic, but then abruptly spun on a heel and sprinted toward the group of converging teenagers. Her dress flowing behind her like a trail of black smoke, she screamed, “Allahu Akbar!”

  Dempsey aimed and fired.

  The suicide girl pitched face forward and hit the pavement with a thud. The panicked teens split into two groups, parting like the Red Sea and diverging around the girl.

  “Run,” Dempsey yelled, and he and Elinor sprinted for cover.

  Seconds later the girl exploded, consumed in a cloud of fire, smoke, blood, and flesh. The heat and shock wave knocked him to a knee, but he caught himself and kept moving while attempting to shield Elinor with his body. Debris rained down on him, and he wondered how many had died. He pulled Elinor to her feet, lifting her under the armpit. Blood streamed down her forehead, arced over her right eye, soaking her eyebrow and then continuing down her cheek.

  “You’re injured,” Dempsey said, cocking his head to get a better look at the wound.

  Elinor wiped the blood from her eyebrow. “Just a scratch,” she said. Then, louder and to the rest of the team, she said, “We’ve got suicide bombers in the crowd. Inform the QRF the bombs appear to be remotely detonated, but control is within line of sight—probably an upper-story apartment within a one-block radius of my position.”

  “Copy,” Daniel said. “IDF tac teams are on-site and moving into position. Stand by to evacuate.”

  Dempsey had Elinor by the elbow, pulling her with him onto the sidewalk while he scanned the crowd for threats. Sporadic gunfire began to echo in the distance; he hoped that it was the arriving IDF forces beginning to enga
ge. The scene before him was the stuff of nightmares. The lovely, lively Jerusalem of ten minutes ago was now replaced with destruction, death, and chaos. In the middle of the street, a thin middle-aged man in expensive slacks and a white dress shirt was waving a club over his head, blood running down the handle and soaking his right sleeve to the elbow. The jihadi ran toward an older couple huddling behind an upended food kiosk. From their dress, Dempsey pegged them as American tourists, no doubt separated from their tour group in the pandemonium. Dempsey led the target and fired. The bullet hit the club-wielding terrorist in the side of the head and dropped him straight down, like a marionette suddenly cut loose from its strings.

  A familiar voice crackled in Dempsey’s ear: “We have an urgent surgical. We need a CASEVAC right fucking now.”

  It was Munn.

  Shit.

  In all the years working with Munn, Dempsey had never heard the doc’s voice more desperate. The casualty was bad, and it was one of theirs.

  “Give me your position,” Dempsey barked, sweeping left, pistol still up and at the ready.

  “We pulled her inside a bakery. Southeast corner of the intersection. Second door down.”

  Her . . . Grimes is hit.

  Dempsey’s throat tightened, and he turned and locked eyes with Elinor, whose face was now a mess of smeared blood.

  “On our way to you,” Dempsey said.

  “Hurry,” Munn barked.

  He turned to Elinor and said, “We need to reposition the SUV.”

  She nodded and gave the order to Daniel.

  Behind Elinor, Dempsey saw a man’s face peer out from behind a nearby doorway. They locked eyes, and then the face jerked back. In that split-second glance, Dempsey saw wild bloodlust—a jihadi consumed with rage and intent on murder.

  Dempsey sidestepped right, training his Sig at the doorway. “Get behind me,” he said to Elinor, releasing her arm and bringing both hands up to grip his weapon. He advanced, his weapon floating perfectly level and still while his legs churned beneath. A flash of white in the doorway was all it took. He fired twice and two dark-red holes appeared in the bearded jihadi’s chest. The terrorist looked down, his eyes wide with surprise at the bloodstain growing on the front of his tunic. Then he pulled his lips back in a snarl and ran at Dempsey holding a long curved knife and screaming, “Allahu—”

  Dempsey’s third bullet silenced the jihadist’s war cry as it split the top of the man’s head practically in half. Dempsey’s eyes were back forward before the body hit the ground. He kept moving, his entire focus on getting to Lizzie.

  Seven rounds left, a voice inside his head reminded him.

  Elinor shifted into the lead, crossing the street and heading toward the southeast corner. Seconds later, they were in front of the bakery—the name in Hebrew he could not read, but the picture of a croissant on the window removed any doubt. The bottom pane of glass in the two-panel front door was blown out, but the top was still in place. Dempsey jerked the door open, and the top plate of glass crashed to the ground and crunched underfoot as he entered. Power must have been out on the block because the bakery was dim inside. Grimes was lying supine on the floor with Munn kneeling on her right side, leaning over her chest. Adamo was opposite Munn, squeezing an IV bag against his chest, forcing fluids into her through a large needle in her arm.

  Behind them, Wang paced back and forth, hands wringing. “It’s really fucking bad, John,” the young cyber expert said.

  “We gotta get her out of here,” Munn said, his arms soaked in blood to his elbows. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Daniel went for the truck,” said Rouvin, who was sighting over his rifle, keeping an eye on the street. “He’s going to pick us up at the corner.”

  Dempsey nodded then and bent over for a better look at Elizabeth.

  Her eyes were glazed and darted back and forth, not seeming to see him. Her face was paler than he’d ever seen it—gray, in fact—and fresh, wet blood glistened on her lips and chin. She lay in an enormous puddle of blood, and her long-sleeve tactical top had been cut open as well as her sports bra. Dempsey saw that she had a foot-long section of plastic tubing as wide as his thumb sticking out of a hole beneath her right armpit. A few inches below, along the outside curve of her right breast, a ragged bullet hole dribbled purple while bloody, pink bubbles formed and popped one after another.

  “How?” Dempsey asked, not even sure what he was asking.

  “AK-47,” Munn said. “She took a 7.62 round through the lung.”

  Dempsey looked up, and his expression communicated the next question for him because Rouvin nodded and said, “I killed the bastard myself.”

  Dempsey knelt and stroked Grimes’s cold forehead with the back of his hand and felt his throat tighten up.

  “I put a chest tube in,” Munn said, his expression grave. “She had a tension pneumothorax and too much blood in her chest and couldn’t breathe. I relieved the pressure and then clamped the tube so she wouldn’t bleed out, but she is still filling up with blood in there. We have to get her out of here ASAP.”

  “Jerusalem Medical Center is minutes away, once we’re in the truck,” Elinor said softly, but her expression suggested to Dempsey that she thought the trip would be futile.

  The sound of screaming erupted outside, followed by a terrible crash.

  “Is that our truck pulling up?” Munn asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Rouvin said.

  “Go. I’ve got her,” Munn said and passed Dempsey his short-barreled SOPMOD M4 rifle.

  Dempsey followed Rouvin out the glassless door and turned to his right, toward the screaming. He watched in horror as the semitractor, without trailer in tow, tore down the street, weaving back and forth and plowing through the crowd. Dempsey immediately realized that the truck was not trying to avoid the pedestrians, but to hit them. An elderly woman, one stocking down at her ankle and her purse still on her shoulder, jogged ahead of the truck and then disappeared under its left front wheel with a crunch he could hear over the roar of the engine.

  He stepped out beside Rouvin and they both sighted in. Dempsey placed the floating red dot of the holographic sight on the windshield, just above the steering wheel, knowing that a shot through the glass would deflect upward. He squeezed off two rounds in tandem with his Israeli teammate. The truck lurched suddenly to the left, smashing into the wall of a souvenir shop. After impact, the tractor drifted slowly backward into the street, the rear wheel coming to rest on the bloody lump of the old woman the terrorist had plowed down seconds earlier.

  “We’ve gotta go,” Dempsey said to Rouvin. “Now.”

  When he turned back to the bakery, the team was already coming through the door. Munn had Grimes under her shoulders while Adamo and Wang had locked arms beneath her hips and knees. Dempsey fell in next to Munn, who repositioned so that Dempsey could share the load. Their four-man litter followed Rouvin east on Ben Yehuda with Elinor bringing up the rear, covering their flank with Adamo’s rifle. Dempsey held Munn’s rifle at the ready with his free hand in the event Rouvin needed additional fire support.

  Grimes’s head rolled from side to side as they ran, gurgling and coughing red blood from the mouth. The short but awkward twenty-meter sprint took them to the intersection at the end of the block where Daniel was waiting with an SUV, the tailgate open and the third-row seat folded down. They slid Grimes’s limp body in feet first, Rouvin grabbing her legs through the open passenger-side rear door to help. Munn crawled in next, hunched over his patient in the cramped space. Dempsey squeezed in across from the doc and cradled Grimes’s head on one outstretched leg. As the tailgate came down, Adamo, Wang, and Elinor piled in the second row with Rouvin taking shotgun. Daniel whipped the big SUV expertly around and accelerated.

  “Gotta be the pulmonary artery,” Munn grumbled, looking down at her.

  Dempsey didn’t know exactly what that meant, but the pain and worry in Munn’s face spoke volumes.

  A bump and jolt knocked
the side of Dempsey’s head against the window as Daniel piloted their vehicle through the chaos in the streets. But Dempsey never looked out the window, even when he knew the Israeli operator was driving over sidewalks and crashing into street kiosks. No, he kept his eyes glued to Grimes’s ever-graying face and blue lips. He stroked her forehead and her cheeks; her skin had gone cold and rubbery. He’d been here before, peering into the black human abyss, but not like this.

  Never like this.

  “It’s okay, Lizzie,” he said, his voice cracking. “We’ve gotcha, girl. We’re almost there.”

  Grimes arched her back and gasped, the muscles in her neck straining bands.

  “Shit,” Munn said and grabbed the tube in her side. “Watch out.”

  Dempsey wasn’t sure what he meant until the surgeon unsnapped the metal surgical clamp fixed to the end of the chest tube. A slug of blood shot out of the tube with so much pressure that it spattered the ceiling and wall, followed by an audible hiss like a car tire deflating after being punctured. When the hiss was gone and red blood started to flow, Munn replaced the clamp, and her body relaxed. She immediately sucked in a long, gurgling breath.

  Dempsey shot Munn a what the hell was that? look.

  “She’s got two problems I’m dealing with here, JD,” Munn said. “Air leaking into the chest cavity, which is compressing her lung, and the pulmonary artery dumping blood inside the lung. I’m trying to manage both problems and keep her from bleeding out, but also able to breathe.”

  “I trust you, Dan,” Dempsey said. “More than any other.”

  At that, Grimes’s eyelids began fluttering and she mumbled something. Dempsey squeezed her hand and then leaned over and kissed her cool forehead and whispered, “Hang in there, kid.”

  Elinor turned in her seat.

  “One minute out,” she said. “I called them and they have trauma blood and an OR ready, but there are tons of casualties.”

  “She can’t wait,” Munn said.