TA - 1v2

He’d waited. He’d bided his time. For forty-eight hours, he had kept himself awake, waiting to hear any sign that Ashammi had stayed at the site. He’d cursed Prescott—the president had failed him again, ignored his request for an airstrike, let Ashammi escape thanks to dithering and gutlessness. Then, he’d begun banging on his door.

“Yusuf!” he yelled in Farsi. “Yusuf! Your pig mother whore is lying with the Zionists tonight. I shit on Mohammed’s beard!”

When that tirade resulted in nothing more than some angry grunts from Yusuf, Brett turned it up a notch. His Farsi was limited, but as he knew that for every language, the first words to learn were the most colorful curse words available. Now he unleashed them over and over again.

Yusuf threw open the door, snarling.

And Brett hit him directly in the face with four days’ worth of shit and piss. It hit him right in the eyes. Before he could wipe away the waste, Brett punched him in the belly with one hand, grasping for Yusuf’s knife with the broken arm. The pain made him gasp.

Yusuf went crashing into the hallway, slamming his head on the stone wall. He bellowed in rage; his companion, the seventeen-year-old cameraman, came running down the hall, an aged Kalashnikov in his hands. Brett grabbed Yusuf with both hands, clenching his jaw, and spun him around like a tackling dummy. Yusuf spun, stumbled, regained his equilibrium, and then charged. Brett sidestepped him, deflected a clumsily thrown haymaker, and then stepped behind him and slit his throat.

Yusuf spluttered, his blood jetting from his neck in great bursts. Brett pulled his head back, opening the wound wider. As he did, the seventeen-year-old appeared in the doorway, shouting in Farsi. He opened fire just as Brett charged him, using Yusuf’s still-upright body as a battering ram. He threw the giant Persian at the teenager, hearing the bullets thunk deep into Yusuf’s flesh. Yusuf, clasping at his throat, tumbled forward, landing directly on his friend in the hallway. Before the boy could push Yusuf off, Brett jumped on top of Yusuf’s corpse, pinning the boy to the ground.

Then, without hesitating, he stabbed the boy through the eye.

- True Allegiance, Part 2: President Prescott