Free Murder Team by Chris Ryan Page A

twelve  to fifteen men. Definitely armed. ‘ Shit! ’ Danny hissed. One of them had raised their rifle. He was aiming in Danny’s direction. Danny hit the brakes sharply. The vehicle skidded on the dry, loose ground. As it came to a halt, he threw himself down so he was lying across the front seats.
    Not a moment too soon.
    The retort of a single round rang out, and there was a sudden, earsplitting crack as the bullet slammed into the Land Rover’s windscreen. Danny looked up. The round had hit squarely in front of the driver’s seat, and a cobweb of splinters had spread out from that central point.
    He’d obviously made a grave error in thinking Friedman would be warmly received here.
    He checked his watch. Twenty seconds. Should he shoot back, or wait for the ordnance to hit?
    A burst of fire from the settlement. Danny started as a single round ricocheted off the chassis somewhere to the front, grating his ears, the impact sending a sudden shock through his body. He couldn’t show himself. Not under heavy fire. He had no option but to wait for his diversion.
    Fifteen seconds. He could hear voices. Shouting. Getting closer. The enemy targets were advancing on the Land Rover. He had insufficient room to manoeuvre the Diemaco from underneath him, so he pulled the Browning instead and lay with it pointing out toward the driver’s side window.
    Ten seconds. Another burst. Louder and closer. He estimated that the shooter was no more than twenty metres away. And this time the aim was better. The windscreen shattered completely. Thousands of tiny shards rained over him. He managed to close his eyes just in time to stop the glass getting in his eye, but as it hit his face it felt like a hundred pinpricks all at once. He was sure he was bleeding badly.
    Five seconds. The voices were very close. A handful of metres.
    Impact.
    Danny steeled himself for the explosion, knowing it would be close enough to send very strong shockwaves in his direction.
    It didn’t happen.
    What the fuck . . .
    The pit of his stomach became leaden. His strategy hadn’t worked.
    A second later, a figure appeared alongside the vehicle. Danny could see the militant’s head through the side window.
    He didn’t hesitate. Two rounds in quick succession. The first successfully shattered the window. The second slammed into the militant’s head. A flash of red in the darkness, and he hit the ground.
    Where was the fucking drone strike?
    The shouting outside grew more frenzied. Danny couldn’t stay in this position. He had to take the fight to them, and that meant showing himself.
    He took a deep breath, then stretched out his arm and, twisting his hand at a right angle, fired two rounds through the shattered windscreen. The shouting stopped momentarily. Danny hurled himself up, opened the side door and grabbed his Diemaco. In a single, sudden move, he hurled himself and his weapon out of the car and threw himself behind the protection of the open door. As he moved, he briefly caught sight of the situation outside the vehicle. Six or seven armed militants, about ten metres from the car, spread apart at two-metre intervals, all of them one knee down in the firing position. Impossible to take out with a single burst. But if he presented himself as a target for longer than that, he was fucked.
    There was a dead, ominous silence all around. Danny’s breath was shaking, the sweat pouring off him. He cursed himself for thinking he’d been able to trick the Israelis into launching their strike off-target. He must have unwittingly alerted them to the fact that something wasn’t right. Perhaps he’d failed to transmit some kind of security code. Maybe they just didn’t like that he’d marked a location other than the one they were expecting.
    Whatever, everything was turning south.
    His fingers felt for the stolen fragmentation grenade. He yanked it out of his ops waistcoat, squeezed the detonation lever and ripped the pin. With a swift swing of his