Free Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Combat Ops by David Michaels

philosophical differences.
    Before my mother had died from cancer, she’d held my hand and told me to make the best of my life.
    I figured she was rolling over in her grave when they started calling me a murderer . . .
    Treehorn had a good ear and better eyes, and I glanced back to where he’d spotted the movement along the mountainside. My night-vision goggles revealed two Taliban fighters peering out from behind a pair of rocks, but before I could get on the radio and issue an order, Beasley appeared from behind a few rocks and slipped down toward the Taliban thugs. As they turned back, he took one out with his Nightwing black tungsten blade while Nolan, who dropped down at Beasley’s side, broke the neck of the other fighter.
    Beasley called me and said, “Looks like only two up here, boss. Clear now.”
    I called up Ramirez, who was packing our portable, ultrawide-band radar unit that could detect ground movement up to several hundred meters away. I’d con sidered leaving the device behind in case we got zapped again, but now I was glad we had it. I hadn’t expected sentries this far up into the mountains. Within a minute Ramirez would be scanning the outskirts of the town.

    Off to the northeast, along a section of wall that was beginning to crumble, a pair of jingle trucks were parked abreast. The trucks were colorfully painted and adorned with pieces of rugs, festooned with chimes, and fitted with all sorts of other dangling jewels that created quite a racket as they traveled down the potholed roads between villages. These trucks had become famous and then infamous among American soldiers. They were typically used by locals to transport goods, but in more recent years they had become instruments to smuggle drugs and weapons across the borders with Iran and Pakistan. Thugs would hide weapons within stacks of firewood or piles of rugs, and young infantrymen would have to search the loads while wizened old men glared on, palms raised as they were held at gunpoint. I must’ve seen a hundred roadside incidents of search and seizure during my time in country.
    That Zahed had several of these trucks in the village was unsurprising. That there was a man posted in the back of one truck and pointing his rifle up at us gave me pause.
    Treehorn already had him spotted with his scope, and he’d attached the gun’s big silencer, so he could do the job in relative quiet.
    I told him to wait while I scanned for more targets. “Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez,” came the voice in my  headset.
    “What do you got?”
    “Just the one guy in the jingle truck so far. The  compound we hit looks empty. Picking up movement from all the farm animals in the pens. Nothing else, over.” “Roger that. Hume, talk to me about the drone.”
    “Nothing. Just flying around. If they’re here, they’re not taking the bait. Not yet, anyway.”
    “All right, just keep flying over the town. Maybe get in close to the mosque.”
    “I see it. I’ll get near the dome and towers.” “Ghost Lead, this is Treehorn, I have my target.”
    “I know you do. Hang tight for now. Still want to see if they take the bait, over.”
    “Roger that. Say the word.”
    I continued scanning the village, which stretched out for about a quarter kilometer, swelling to the south with dozens more brick homes that had open windows and rickety wooden ladders leading up to storage areas on the roofs. Most windows were dark, with only a faint flickering here and there from either candles or perhaps kerosene or gas lanterns. I imagined that somewhere down there, sprawled across a bed whose legs were buck ling under his girth, was the fat man who wielded all the power in this region.
    “Still no takers on the drone,” reported Hume.
    I listened to the wind. Glanced around once more. Scanned. Saw the shooter still sitting there in the truck. Time to move in.
    “Treehorn, clear to fire,” I said.
    “Clear to fire, roger that, stand by . . .”
    I held my breath,