Osama Read Online Free Page B

metres ahead, weapon in the firing position as he hugged the left-hand wall. They were standing in the shadows, but he could just make out Ricky’s eyes as his mate looked at him over his shoulder.
    They were in a corridor open to the sky, some three metres wide and lined by two five-metre-tall walls. Twenty metres ahead, Joe could see where the SEALs had blasted through these walls: there was a cloud of smoke and dust, illuminated by a beam from the right that he assumed emanated from the downed Black Hawk. Silhouetted figures passed from right to left, obscured by the dust. He counted six men. Seven. He saw the outline of a sniffer dog, then another two human forms. Nobody was heading towards them. They were moving swiftly into position from the LZ to the compound’s accommodation area.
    The thunder of the Black Hawks’ rotors took on a different quality – a slightly higher pitch. The undamaged chopper was rising. Then it appeared above the right-hand wall, huge and threatening, and continued to rise until it was about fifteen metres in the air. Looking up, Joe could see that the Yanks had decided, now that everything had gone noisy, to use the helicopter as a weapons platform. He could see a door-gunner aiming a Minigun down into the compound, plus three other soldiers with their assault rifles pointing downwards. The guys in the Black Hawk showed no sign of being able to see him or Ricky. If he could just persuade his mate to get back to the entrance . . .
    The dust was settling up ahead. Peering in the darkness, Joe could make out two piles of rubble, each a good couple of metres high, by the blast site. There were no longer any SEALs moving towards the house. He could hear evidence of their activity, though. There were screams: not the constant, bloodcurdling screams of a massacre, but the occasional shouts of women and children, obviously very frightened. And, punctuating the screams, the dull knock of suppressed weapons. Joe counted them. One. Two. Three. The clinical sound of individuals being deliberately picked off. There were more people screaming than being shot, which meant the SEALs were being selective. They knew who they were after. But even though the Yanks might not be greasing everyone, Joe knew exactly what he would do in their shoes if he unexpectedly came across two men as heavily armed as him and Ricky.
    ‘We’re surplus to fucking requirements, mucker,’ Joe whispered. ‘Let’s get the hell out . . .’
    Ricky’s only response was to go on another five metres. He was halfway towards the rubble now, and still advancing. Joe ran after him.
    A shout from the other side of the wall. An American voice, clearly a SEAL commander, instructing two of his men: ‘Guard the main entrance. No one enters, no one leaves.’
    Joe froze.
    He looked back towards the gate. Fifteen metres. To get there, re-open the gates and extract? Fifteen seconds. Too long. But the piles of rubble were only five metres away. The light shining from the choppers through the gap in the wall meant the vision of anyone passing through there would be compromised.
    He could sense Ricky making the same calculations.
    They sprinted towards the rubble. A rectangular block of concrete – about two metres long by a metre high and with a crack running its entire height – was resting at forty-five degrees against what remained of the left-hand wall, with other chunks of debris littered around it. Joe wormed his way into the gap, fully aware that Ricky, with his back against a metre-high boulder of concrete alongside the wall on the right, was less well hidden.
    They’d found cover just in time.
    Two SEALs ran from the courtyard into the corridor, heading for the security gates. Joe didn’t move. His mouth was filled with the dry taste of dust, and the sharp edge of the concrete was digging into his right arm. Through a foot-wide crack in the otherwise undamaged part of the wall, he could see into the central courtyard. It was about