“I did, sir,” Tay admitted. “I thought—”
Max raised his hand, interrupting him. At least Tay was man enough to own up to his blunder. That was something Max respected.
“We’ll talk about it at debrief,” Max said. “Where’s the launcher?”
“Back seat.” Tay pointed a finger at the second sedan.
Max walked briskly to the rear passenger door, yanked it open, and grabbed the RPG launcher.
“Take cover,” Max yelled for the benefit of his men.
He mounted the weapon system on his shoulder, took a knee, and checked the back-blast area behind him. Once assured none of his men would be incinerated, he sighted on his target and pressed the trigger, sending the high explosive antitank warhead sizzling toward the SUV.
The warhead hit the armored SUV and exploded in a massive fireball, sending flaming pieces of wreckage in all directions. Max walked to Tay and handed him the launcher, exchanging it for his M4. He checked the magazine, then made sure the selector lever was flicked to single shot.
“Follow me!” he called. He led his men around the burning SUV. Twenty or so feet past the SUV, Max saw the driver. The poor man’s dead body had been thrust in the air by the explosion and had landed next to a small bush. Even though the man was clearly dead, Max shot him anyway. Two seconds later he fired another shot.
“Sir?” Aidan Wood asked.
Max looked behind him. Wood had served two decades with the New Zealand Special Air Service—New Zealand’s premier combat unit, closely modeled on the British SAS—and had been decorated twice for valor in Afghanistan. He was tall and thin, built for running. He had thick eyebrows and a pencil-thin mustache like the one movie stars had worn in the forties.
“I want my mother to think that whoever attacked her is finishing the job by making sure the driver and I are dead,” Max replied.
He peered through the three-power night-vision scope attached to the M4 and swept the steep hill in front of him. He picked her up in no time, a distinct green heat signature. He fired one shot, missing intentionally. The round hit some sort of glass receptacle a couple of feet behind her. He then fired six or seven shots in quick succession, all of them to her right, his intention being that his mother continue on her way without looking back. A few seconds later, she started the descent on the opposite side of the hill, out of sight.
Max smiled, satisfied. For his plan to work, his mother had to live.
“Two police cars are approaching,” Wood said. “What do you want us to do?”
Max hesitated. Killing police officers wasn’t something he particularly relished, and his men felt the same way. Collaterals were expected, but it didn’t feel right to ask his men to do his dirty work for him.
“Go back to the cars. I’ll handle the police,” he said.
Wood nodded, and with the fourth member of their team—Thomas DeLarue, a former member of the Second Foreign Parachute Regiment of the French Foreign Legion—they retreated to the sedans. Chiang Tay followed them but came back seconds later with Wood’s M4 in his hands. Tay joined Max, who had positioned himself in the ditch about sixty feet behind the still-burning SUV in order not to cast a shadow that would be easily visible to the approaching police officers. No words were necessary between them. Tay was paying his dues for his mistake in shooting Triggs. He wouldn’t let Max alone carry the burden of what they were about to do.
By the time the police cars were within range of their rifles, DeLarue and Wood had moved the two sedans down the road so they wouldn’t be immediately identifiable by the officers.
“There’s no going back now,” Max said. “We’ll do our best to stop the cars, but if the officers shoot back . . . I’ll take the one on the left. You take right.”
“Copy that,” Tay replied as he raised his rifle.
Our cause is just. It’s bigger than we are, worth more than we are, Max repeated to himself while taking aim. An image of his dead wife passed within his mind. I’m doing this for you, Zehra. His old life was over. He wouldn’t get it back. In one horrific moment of violence, his wife and unborn child had been stolen from him. Filled with rage from the CIA’s refusal to help him and in the midst of indescribable grief and anger, he’d done unspeakable things to quench his thirst for vengeance. But shortly after his return to the United States, his conscience, like an avenging spirit, had begun to torture him. Nightmares about the things he had done in Istanbul had become even more vivid than his actions had been in reality. His life had become a living hell, and if it hadn’t been for his newfound mentor, who’d helped Max channel his frustrations into a worthy cause, Max had no doubt he’d be dead by now.
Probably by my own hand, Max thought, as the police vehicles continued racing toward the burning SUV.
With their flashing blue and red lights, Max didn’t need to use his night-vision scope. The police cars were easy targets. Max was the first to fire. He squeezed the trigger five times, each round finding its mark. His bullets tore into the engine of the first car, causing it to sharply skid to the left. It slammed into a large tree, then burst into flames.
Fuck!
Next to him, Tay was firing short controlled bursts into the engine block of the second cop car. He wasn’t having much luck. The driver, instead of turning back upon seeing what had happened to his colleague, punched the gas pedal and barreled toward them. Muzzle flashes appeared from the front passenger seat. It took Max half a second to understand what was happening. One of the officers was firing rounds through the windshield with his service pistol.
As the police car sped past the burning SUV, Max, ignoring the rounds coming at him, leveled his sights and returned fire. The windshield deflected the bullet, but a spiderwebbed hole appeared at the height of the driver’s chest. Max took a millisecond to reassess and fired twice more. This time the windshield shattered, and the police car violently swerved to the left and away from them. Tay fired the next volley, and it hit the driver in the shoulder and neck. The surviving cop in the passenger seat tried to grab the wheel, but the vehicle was traveling too fast. Then came a horrid wrenching sound as the police car slammed into a lamp pole.
Max could barely believe it, but by some miracle the officer in the passenger seat was still alive. The officer slowly moved his head toward Max. Max raised his rifle, but before he could fire, the lamp pole toppled and crashed down directly on the roof of the car.
Max sighed. A bitter resignation took hold. The night had started well, but it had ended on a much different note.
“Let’s go,” he said to the former Singaporean commando. “We don’t want to be here when the marines show up.”
Max climbed into the first sedan, while Tay ran to the second. Wood was behind the wheel. Max told him to drive to the Bay Street Marina.
“The South African team you hired for security just called,” Wood said. “They said everything was clear at the marina. Same goes for Norman’s Cay. Plane’s ready for us.”
“Good,” Max replied. The plan was to take the fifty-five-foot fishing boat they had chartered to Norman’s Cay, a small island in the Exumas about forty nautical miles from Nassau. From there, they would take a small plane directly to a private airfield in Turks and Caicos to regroup and debrief.