Nightstalkers Read Online Free PDF

walk him around, giving the spiel given a hundred times by captains to colonels, which was
everything was working just great
. Most of the SF team was out on patrol with a bunch of the Afghan recruits, so only a handful of Afghan soldiers were maintaining security.
    Carter leaned against the front grille of the Humvee, feeling the heat from the engine matching the heat from the sun overhead. He still couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. He scanned the walls. A single Afghan lounged in each tower, supposedly manningthe fifty cal, except they were nervously looking inside the compound rather than out.
    That wasn’t right. The veins in his neck pulsed as his heart surged. He readied his M-4 rifle.
    “
Allahu Akbar
!”
    Carter wheeled, bringing up his M-4. An Afghan soldier came dashing out of a dark doorway and was running toward Colonel Orlando and the captain and the recruits behind them. The pockets of his combat vest bulged with explosives, and he was crisscrossed with wires, a Christmas tree festooned with C-4 instead of lights. He had his right hand up in the air and a clacker in his hand, a dead man’s switch that would ignite the explosives as soon as he let it go. He was already close enough to take most of the recruits, Orlando, and the captain out if he set it off.
    Carter had the armored Humvee between him and the bomber. The sergeant dropped the weapon on its sling and sprinted around the protection, faster than the Afghan, faster than he’d ever run in his life. He wrapped his arms around the bomber, one hand clamping down on the Afghan’s hand and the dead man’s switch.
    The two tumbled to the ground, Carter on top. His hand was steel on the Afghan’s own and the dead man’s switch, and he pressed his other forearm across the man’s neck. The bomber was staring up at him, eyes losing focus as Carter choked him out.
    When the bomber was unconscious, Carter carefully peeled the man’s fingers from the clacker, keeping it depressed. He unscrewed the firing wire before tossing it aside. Then he stood, drawing his pistol, and pointed it down at the bomber, finger curling around the trigger.

    “Easy, son.” Colonel Orlando placed his hand over Carter’s gun.
    The Green Beret captain knelt next to the bomber. The Afghan recruits were nowhere to be seen. The guard towers were unmanned.
    “Might as well put a round in him, sir,” Carter said. “Once a man commits to that, he’s gone over.”
    Orlando smiled as Carter holstered his pistol. “Once a man commits, he commits. Why didn’t you just take the cover of the Humvee?”
    Carter shrugged as if the question made no sense. “Wouldn’t have been the right thing to do, sir.”
    The bomber blinked into consciousness and, surprisingly, the captain helped him to his feet.
    Carter whipped his pistol back out.
    “Easy,” Orlando said once more. “He’s on our side.”
    Carter blinked. “What?”
    “A test, son, a test.”
    “I could have killed him.”
    “I disabled your M-4,” Orlando said, “but not your pistol. Which is why I had to stop you.”
    “You disabled my weapon in a combat zone?” Carter’s face was red with anger.
    “Don’t worry,” Orlando said. “The SF team from here has a perimeter set up around us and everyone in here was vetted. You were perfectly safe. One of the parts of the test was to see whether you would try to shoot him with your rifle—in which case you were making a dumb decision and killing a bunch of other people—or if you’d simply save your ass by using the Humvee as a shield, in which case you were making a smart but self-centered decision. You picked door number three. Very few people pick that door.”
    Orlando reached into a pocket on his combat vest and pulled out a satellite phone. There was only one number it was programmed to call.
    It was answered on the first ring.
    “Yes?” the vaguely Russian voice answered.
    “He passed, Ms. Jones,” Orlando said.
    “I’ll have transportation