Free The Book of Truths by Bob Mayer

moving rapidly down the alley. She put a second round into the room for good measure and a body came flying out of a window, landing on the concrete with a solid thump.
    Neeley dropped the thumper on its lanyard and drew her MK23 .45-caliber pistol. As she passed the body, she put two rounds into its head, then pivoted right and kicked open the door where the package lived, weapon at the ready, the muzzle following her gaze.
    The package had one arm around his wife and the other around his daughter. His eyes widened as he met Neeley’s and she had no time to deal with his surprise that it was a woman coming for him. She was focused on the two men standing behind the family, scimitars in hand, raised for head-chopping strikes at the neck of the two adults.
    One of them started to shout something, but the second syllable never left his mouth because the first .45-caliber round Neeley fired hit right between his eyes. She spared him the double-tap in the name of expediency and to help the wife keep her head. As blood and brain and bone still flew out of the back of the first man’s head, Neeley had shifted right and fired, this time double-tapping, the bullets blowing apart the second man’s head and flinging his body back, the scimitar flying away with the body.
    Neeley shifted back left and fired a fourth time, hitting the first man as the body crumpled back, the bullet passing the package’s side by less than an inch.
    One of Gant’s rules was always make sure with an extra round.
    She was making sure because she’d passed up the first double-tap. She was sure Gant would have approved. Neeley strode into the shack, taking charge with action and presence, not words. She was tall, just under six feet. Her short hair was still dark; she dyed the gray because it made her stand out and she was distinctive enough as it was. Her face was all angles, no soft roundness. The lines deeply etched around her eyes told of years of stress living on the edge.
    She gestured and the family ran toward her. She exited the building, glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were following, and then began to jog at a steady rate, pistol at the ready, weaving through the alleys and streets of the slum as if she’d been born there. It wasn’t far, three blocks, and she counted on the explosion to keep everyone indoors for a little while. She had a good idea of response time and felt she had a sufficient window.
    She reached the soccer field, sirens wailing in the near distance. Neeley shrugged off her pack as the three Pakistanis caught up, breathing hard. They were staring about fearfully, looking for the helicopter they and the ambush team had expected, Neeley supposed.
    They were out of luck in that regard.
    Neeley signaled for them to put their hands over their heads. They hesitated and she gestured with the .45 and they complied. She pulled harnesses out of the pack and quickly snapped them on the man, woman, and terrified child. The harnesses were already linked with twelve-foot lengths of high-strength rope. One end was still in the pack and the other end had twelve feet and an empty loop.
    “Thirty seconds,” a different voice whispered in her ear.
    She reached in her ruck and pulled a cord. A large balloon blossomed forth from the tank that had taken up half the spacein the pack, rising rapidly into the air and lifting the rope still in the ruck. Neeley went to the free end and buckled in.
    “What are you doing?”
the man demanded in Pashto.
    Neeley didn’t answer. Coming in from the south low and fast, its dark form barely visible, was an MC-130J Commando II. It was the Special Operations–modified version of the venerable Lockheed C-130 Hercules cargo plane, first deployed in 1956 and still the workhorse transportation vehicle of the air force. This version was capable of all-weather flight and loaded with enough navigation, communication, and countermeasure electronics to make Apple headquarters in Cupertino weep with