Free Direct Action - 03 by Jack Murphy

ready to go. Once he closed on the woman, he would drag her across the stream and behind a stone wall a few meters further back. From there he would have to escape and evade, run as hard as he could, ambush the Liquid Sky team when and where he could to slow them down, and eventually find a vehicle and make his way back to Kabul. Truth be told, he'd be lucky if he lasted five seconds into that plan and he knew it.
    He was a dead man walking, killed by his own self-restraint.
    Silently, Deckard moved through the thicket in a crouch. He cursed as he saw the blue burka through the twigs and leaves of the bushes. She could have saved her own life, if she had only known. Now they were both dead.
    Deckard was on the opposite bank of the stream from her, but the stream was only a few feet wide. Once he closed the distance he would be right on top of her. He could jump out of the bushes, grab her, and make a run for it. Maybe. A big maybe.
    The Afghan woman bent down to wash another one of the pots. He was almost within striking distance now. The American commando readjusted the sling on his shoulder and prepared to move. He had the butcher knife in his hand up until this point, but now he stuck it in his belt.
    He took a deep breath. It was now or never. His muscles tensed, prepared for what was about to happen. He was ready to execute.
    Suddenly, the woman stood straight up and turned towards him.
    Deckard froze.
    “What the fuck do you think you are fucking doing you stupid cocksucker?” she asked him.
    His jaw hit the ground.
    “Get your dick beaters in the air where I can see them. What the fuck are you doing over there?” The voice coming through the burka didn't match anything Deckard had expected, to say the least, but it was a woman's voice. “Hey fucker, I'm talking to you.”
    Suddenly the crackle of a radio sounded under the burka.
    “Got you good this time,” Bill's voice said over the radio. Laughter could be heard coming over the net.
    “Very funny asshole,” the burka clad woman said. “Who is this needle dick you sent down here to hide in the bushes?”
    “He's the new guy,” Bill answered. “Whatever.”
    Deckard was pissed.
    “Who the fuck are you?” he asked the woman.
    “Who the fuck am I ?” she answered as if she was insulted. “I'm the one who has been pulling overwatch on your fucking objective for twenty-four hours, dick face. I confirmed that Muhammad what-ever-the-fuck was bedding down there. Then I walked through the night to secure your fucking extraction,” she practically screamed. “That's who I fucking am, so who the fuck are you?”
    “Just a trigger puller told to do a job,” he answered honestly.
    “And like a true meathead you proved to be very good at following orders. Good for you. Just squat there in the bushes and try not to piss me off any more than you have already.”
    “Yes ma'am,” Deckard said as he rolled his eyes. This was getting stupid.
    Exhausted, Deckard sat on the edge of the stream with his feet in the water. The woman kicked the pots into the water and cursed at him some more. They sat silently for a few minutes, Deckard unable to discern anything about her through the mesh eye window in the burka. A few minutes later the rest of the team arrived and sat down alongside the stream. The tactically correct answer was to push into the thicket and maintain a security perimeter but that didn't seem to concern Liquid Sky.
    “What the fuck was that?” the woman asked.
    “C'mon Nadeesha, it was just a joke,” Rick laughed.
    “And how far would you have let that joke go before that pussy sunk a knife into my back?”
    She was pissed, balling up the burka and throwing it into the stream. Underneath, she wore spandex shorts and a loose t-shirt. That and a MP-5k sub-machine gun. Deckard's eyes went wide. Her skin was dark like someone from southern India, but she had almost Caucasian features and large brown eyes. The woman, Nadeesha, busted him too, seeing the