Free Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) by Peter Nealen

going to be able to avoid the first checkpoint out from the police station.  The nature of the canals that crisscrossed Basra had made sure of that, to our chagrin.
    Th at first checkpoint was already coming up fast.  Of course, we’d discussed getting past the checkpoints in planning, but I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with Hussein Ali’s plan.  His logic was that since he was still a PPF commander, he’d just bluff us past them.  I wasn’t sure that was going to work, especially once any of Daoud’s men who had survived our little ambush at the police station called in.
    The checkpoints had started as little more than blocking positions, with a couple of trucks, maybe one of the few surviving PPF ILAVs, and some concertina wire.  While several of the more major ones were getting more and more fortified, first with sandbags but increasingly with concrete jersey barriers, this one was still just a couple of trucks with DShKs and concertina wire.  Concertina wire could still fuck up a Ranger or a HiLux; we weren’t going to be able to just barrel over the wire if it came to it.  We’d have to fight our way through.
    In spite of my discomfort, the lead vehicles slowed, and came to a stop just inside the concertina wire funnel.  Hussein Ali got out and walked over to the PPF troops manning the checkpoint.  They looked alert but not overly amped up.  One of them waved back when Hussein Ali raised his hand in greeting.
    Apparently completely unconcerned about the bodies we’d left behind us, or Daoud’s men probably wanting their commander back, Hussein Ali walked up to the checkpoint, shook the sergeant’s hand, spoke with them for a moment, then returned to his truck and climbed in.  The checkpoint guards waved the convoy through, and the lead truck lurched into motion.
    I couldn’t believe it.  It couldn’t be this easy.  But we rolled through the checkpoint like it was just another day, like the carnage back at the police station had never happened, and we weren’t toting Daoud along as a hostage in the back of my truck.
    I was right.  It couldn’t be that easy.  As we rolled past, one of the guards who’d been listening on the radio noticed that the middle two trucks were full of Praetorians.  He started yelling, waving his arms and running toward Hussein Ali’s truck, apparently meaning to warn him that the Americans were now bad guys.
    I watched as Hussein Ali extended his CZ pistol out his window and shot the PPF trooper in the mouth.
    All hell broke loose after that.  Little Bob swung his PKP and lit up the right-hand PPF truck.  The al Khazraji gunners on the two lead trucks were already firing long bursts into the trucks and the PPF troopers around them.  These guys weren’t fucking around, even though they probably knew the men they were cutting down.
    It was over quickly.  All six trucks were accelerating even as the gunners opened fire, and in seconds we were past, leaving at least five or six shattered corpses, two wrecked trucks, one of which was starting to smoke, and a handful of survivors wondering what the fuck just happened.
    Guaranteed we weren’t going to be able to pull that off again.  Word of our “defection” might have just made it to the checkpoint, but word of this hit would be spreading like wildfire and the next checkpoints would be better prepared.  It was time to head into the side streets.
    They were going to present their own challenges.  The side streets were narrow, often choked with trash and parked cars, and had innumerable places for an ambush.  Our advantage lay in speed and surprise; no one knew our route but us, and we were going to be halfway making that up on the fly, anyway.
    We hung a hard right just past the checkpoint, then a left, running alongside a canal.  We were still moving fast, but not as fast as we could have on the main streets.
    At first, it was still pretty easy.  Being as close as it was to the police station, in