Allah's Scorpion Read Online Free Page A

chopper, we might need a quick extraction.”
    “The beach will be crawling with Frontier Brigade—”
    “Negative. I’m betting that they’re all on the northeast perimeter.”
    Gloria clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt, and at the bottom she and Talarico crossed the no-man’s zone to the drainage culvert. She motioned for him to hold up, as she cautiously peered into the tunnel. It was possible that the POWs and whoever had sprung them knew they were being pursued, and had stationed someone at the other end.
    “You sure we want to do this?” Talarico whispered urgently.
    The tunnel was empty. Gloria could see a circle of dim light on the other side. She looked up at her partner. “Why’d they go through the trouble to stage a jail break from Echo when most of those guys are scheduled for release anyway? Unless someone didn’t want us to talk to them.”
    He immediately saw her point. “What are we waiting for?”
    Gloria nodded. He was a good man; smart, talented, and she had a lot of respect for him. He had a couple of kids and a successful marriage, which was something of a rarity for a field officer. She envied his wife. She ducked into the tunnel and scurried through to the other side, holding up once again at the opening to make sure she wasn’t leading them into an ambush.
    The night on this side of the base was quiet. During a momentary lull in the small-arms fire to the north, Gloria was certain she heard something out ahead to the south; someone running through loose gravel.
    Talarico was at her shoulder. He’d heard it too. “They’re heading for the beach.”
    Gloria grabbed the walkie-talkie and called the OD. “TAC One, this is Ibenez. They’re trying for the beach. We’re going after them, but you’d better give the Coast Guard the heads-up.”
    “Stand down, Ibenez, that’s an order direct from Commander Weiss. He’s en route your position.”
    “Negative, negative,” Gloria radioed back. “I want a chopper standing by, ASAP.” She switched off the radio, crawled out of the tunnel, and headed south along the perimeter fence, keeping her pistol at her side, the muzzle pointed slightly away from her leg.
    The timing of the breakout bothered her almost as much as the professionalism. They’d known the exact route to Camp Echo, which meant there had to be prisoners they wanted out before the CIA could get to them. It was driving her nuts to think that not only were the Cubans cooperating with al-Quaida, but that there might be someone inside Gitmo on the payroll as well.
    Talarico fanned out to the left, slightly behind her, his pistol in hand.
    They moved quickly, and as noiselessly as possible, stopping every few dozen meters to listen.
    One hundred meters from the drainage tunnel, Gloria spotted the silhouettes of a small group of figures moving south, at the same moment one of them, dressed in black, turned around. She pulled up short and motioned for Talarico to stop.
    For several seconds the main body of the escaping prisoners continued toward the beach, while the one figure remained where he stood, thirty or forty meters out. He dropped to one knee and raised something in front of him.
    All of a sudden Gloria realized that the son of a bitch was armed and was about to shoot at them. “Down!” she shouted to her partner.
    The black-clad figure opened fire with what sounded to Gloria like a small-caliber suppressed carbine of some sort.
    She squatted to a shooter’s stance, brought her pistol up, thumbed the safety catch to the off position, and started firing.
    The range was all but impossible under the conditions, but the noise from her unsilenced pistol was impressive. A lot of people on both sides of the fence had just been put on notice that the battle had shifted here from the northeastern perimeter.
    Talarico opened fire, as several other black-clad figures turned and returned fire.
    She dropped to the ground, and continued firing, until her weapon went dry. Talarico