Rogue Commander, Leo Maloney [classic books for 11 year olds TXT] 📗

small, dark figures patrolling the grounds—bulky in tactical gear, weapons gleaming in the dim starlight. With those assault rifles, they sure as hell weren’t guarding sheep.

He swept his binos to the left and focused on a line of three black Suburban tac vehicles. Between where he lay and the farm, those trucks would be his only cover.

I hate low combat crawls, he muttered in his head. But there was no other way to do it.

Beside him in the grass lay his Smith & Wesson M&P15 tactical rifle, which he’d pulled from the trunk when he parked the car. It had a double magazine rig in the well and an Aimpoint red-dot sight mounted on the top rail, but no night-vision scope—he was old school and didn’t care for the grainy green.

He put the binos away, slipped the rifle to the ends of his upturned palms, and started elbowing forward, one slow inch at a time.

It took about an hour. But then he was there, soaked and breathless, behind the rear bumper of the first Suburban. He’d powered-down his ear piece so nothing would break his concentration, and for a while he just lay there and worked on his heart rate and lungs until the pulse stopped pounding in his ears so he could hear again.

Slow footsteps crunched from somewhere in front of the cars. He quietly laid his rifle down, slipped the silenced PPK from his jacket, pulled himself up into a squat at the right rear of the truck, and peeked around its trunk with one eye.

Another Asian dude. Morgan’s brow creased as he saw him in side silhouette—spiky black hair, muscular neck, a tactical vest thickened with ceramic plates, and an MP5 “Kurtz”—the short-barreled German subgun.

What the hell’s this? Some sorta Kkangpae drug-gang rocket-smuggling thing? But it didn’t matter. American soldiers are dead, and so shall you be.

He tucked back in, ducked-walked from the rear of that Suburban, and over behind the next one to the left. He took a long breath and emitted a low-pitched mourning-dove whistle. The boots stopped and then crunched as they turned.

Morgan did it once more. He now heard the boots moving between the two vehicles, coming his way, and he waited until they were almost on him.

He stepped out and shot the sentry point-blank in the throat. The sentry’s head snapped back, and he stiffened as if electrocuted. As he toppled forward Morgan caught the MP5 and stepped back, letting him fall. But the guy twisted to his right as he collapsed, and a large carabiner clipped to the back of his vest banged off the hide of the truck.

Damnit!

“Dong Pil?” Someone was calling the guy’s name. “Eodi Keysayo?”

Morgan recognized the words: Where are you? Definitely Korean.

He slung the MP5 strap over his back, holstered the PPK, slithered back to the first truck, and retrieved his rifle. More boots were tramping from the direction of the farmhouse, the pace picking up to a trot.

“Dong Pil!”

Shit, Morgan cursed in his head. So much for a sneak attack. If he let them get to the trucks they’d surround and take him. He snap-rolled quickly to the right and saw two more Koreans sprinting in full tactical. Center-mass shots would only dent their “chicken plates” and piss them off, so he opened up on their hips.

He had a flash suppressor on the end of his barrel, but the explosions still blazed like yellow lightning, and the reports banged off the buildings like sledgehammers on an anvil. The Koreans went down screaming.

He heard more slamming boots and shouts. He glanced to the left at the trucks, hearing the voice of his old combat-tactics instructor from “the Farm” in his head: “Whatever makes the most sense, don’t do it.” In other words, don’t take cover behind the trucks. But he had to make the next crew think that’s what he was doing.

He got up and hustled over between the first two Suburbans, took a knee in a pool of the first sentry’s blood, and fired one shot in the air, so they’d see the flash. Then he sprinted straight back into the field, skidded flat like he was hitting home plate after a triple play, and quick-crawled twenty feet to the right.

He hunkered down behind an old iron farm pump. Sure enough, two more Koreans appeared from the left side of the farmhouse, subguns blazing at their own trucks—the tires hissing out like gut-punched fat men, and the windshields splintering like glass spiderwebs in a gale.

Morgan edged up, braced his rifle on the curved head of the pump handle and took aim at a range of fifty meters. Two quick doubletaps exploded the skull of the closer Korean, and as the second one spun toward Morgan and let fly on full auto, Morgan shot him in the face.

Then the pump shaft thwanged as a bullet struck the iron right in front of his chest. Needles of flying lead stung his face, and he launched himself backward onto the ground—gasping as his spine met the slung MP5. Another bullet whip-cracked just above his nose as he spun himself around on his back like a crab and took two quick rolls to the left.

This one was nuts, coming straight at him from the right corner of the house, screaming something as he unloaded his MP5 in long bursts. But, blinded by his own muzzle flashes and rage, he was still chewing up the water pump. Morgan just lay there and waited until he heard the blessed sound of the subgun’s bolt locking back on an empty chamber; then he jumped up. He saw the guy madly trying to load a fresh mag, just before he stitched him with lead from his crotch to his throat.

Silence—except for the ringing in his ears and the groans of the first two guys whose legs he’d shattered. He waited for a full two minutes, letting his breathing calm to something like normal. He wasn’t sure how many rounds he’d fired, so he switched