"I am an orphan, sir. I was a . . . servant . . . of a drug-trafficking gangster in the Philippines. I was not allowed to leave, until one day Exodus came and killed him. I begged them to take me with them. I didn"t want to be left alone. So they accepted me. I am honored to be on this mission, and to be working with someone of your reputation."
Reputation? "What reputation? What have you heard?" I didn"t mean to put the kid on the spot. We were getting ready to roll into combat and he was nervous as h.e.l.l. I figured by talking him up I could get him to relax a little bit. I didn"t want a wound-up driver. I was scared too, of course. You"re always scared. If you"re not, you"re a fool. You just get used to the fear, learn to control it.
Young Paolo was new at this, though, and it showed. And he kept calling me "sir" for some reason. "I was told . . . I mean, I heard that two years ago, in Mexico, you saved Ms. Ling"s entire sword."
"Uh-huh. And how did they say I did that?"
"S-sir, I mean no disrespect. I only know . . . I mean, I am only telling you what I heard from my friends."
"Yeah, I know," I said, raising my eyebrows bemusedly. "Please, tell me what you heard." I wanted to keep him talking, keep him focused on something besides our impending mission. The worst part of combat isn"t the actual fight. It"s before the fight, when you"re waiting to go. Even a short wait is agonizingly slow when you"re amped up. It drives you crazy, makes you impatient, and causes bad decisions.
Paolo shifted nervously in his seat. "Is it true that you carried Ms. Ling out of the wreckage of a crashed helicopter?"
Hoo boy.
LORENZO.
Sala Jihan"s Fortress March 25th I watched the closest guards through my night vision monocular. Kneeling, I slid around the rear of the derelict truck and tracked the two of them as they rounded the corner. Luckily the back of the compound was where the Soviets had dumped their unrepairable vehicles. There were plenty of places to hide. I was now about fifty meters from the crumbled concrete that had been the rear wall of the fort. There were soldiers positioned on top of the wall, but they were mostly huddled together for warmth on the corners in their machine-gun emplacements. I had seen at least four individuals walking back and forth near the hole in the wall. I knew that we had to make it through that gap to reach the ZSU.
There was a small noise as Anders approached. The former SEAL moved like a ghost. He was not even breathing hard from scaling the rope, and he was a big dude. He looked like some Viking cyborg with his bristly beard sticking out from under his PVS-15 night vision goggles. He squatted behind me and waited. Shen joined us a moment later. The quiet Exodus operative pa.s.sed me my rifle. It was so cold it burned my hands as I got the single-point sling over my head and one arm. Phillips and Roland took up a position on each end of a frost coated APC five meters behind us.
Turning back to the others, I held up my hand, two fingers down in a wagging motion, then four fingers up, then pointed at the gap. Four infantry patrolling. Then I made the universal sign for gun, and indicated both machine-gun emplacements that I had spied on the wall, then two fingers, for two men at each position. Then to Roland, I pointed at my eyes, then at the left emplacement, then the right for Phillips. Both men had suppressed Micro Tavors, and if anybody started for those machine-guns, they needed to pop them fast. If it came to that, there would be enough noise that the mission was hosed. I looked at Shen and made a throat-cutting motion, then jerked my thumb at the sentries. Shen nodded.
After all of that abbreviated sign language, Anders extended his middle finger to me. And to think that I had said he was humorless.
I took point, leaving b.l.o.o.d.y hand prints in the snow behind me as I crawled to the next truck, axle long since broken and left out here to rot. Anders and Shen were right behind me.
We were all armed with suppressed weapons. Everyone had one magazine of 5.56 75-grain subsonic loaded, but even then, the action of the weapon could be heard some distance away, especially on a night this quiet, and subsonic 5.56 frankly sucked at putting people down quickly, being basically a glorified .22. My other 30-round magazines were loaded with standard-velocity Hornady TAP, which through the short barrel of my gun and Silencerco suppressor sounded like a regular .22 long rifle, but at 2700 feet per second tended to leave softball sized exit wounds.
My secondary weapon was my STI Tactical 4.15 9mm, also with a can on it. The 147-grain hollowpoint loads were subsonic and relatively quiet, as Tausang had already experienced. Then I had my knives, because though a suppressor was quiet, these were quieter when used correctly. I was traveling relatively light tonight, as my mission depended on stealth rather than slugging it out. That job belonged to the guys in the choppers. All I had was a plate carrier and a battle belt with a few pouches for magazines.
We waited long enough to get a general idea of the guards" patterns, but pattern was a misnomer. Tonight it consisted of trying to stay warm. There was a steel drum with fire licking out of it just inside the gap. Two guards would stand next to the drum to warm up, while the other two would patrol outside the compound wall for a few minutes, before trading off. This worked to our advantage, since the fire ruined their night vision.
I positioned my single point sling so that my rifle was slung behind my back, and pulled my fixed-blade Greco. Shen drew a long, thin blade, nodded once, and glided to the side. Anders raised his HK 416 and covered us.
My pulse was beating in my ear, and strangely enough, I was no longer cold. I leaned back into the shadow of the rusted vehicle. I could hear the crunching of snow beneath boots as the guards approached. They stopped only a few feet away, glancing side to side, their scarred faces visible in my night vision. I exhaled slowly through my nose, hoping to not cause a steam cloud. My lacerated hands were leaving a red skin paste in the textured handle of my knife. The two guards, arms folded, weapons slung, hands constantly rubbing together for circulation, took one last look at the graveyard of discarded vehicles. They turned and began to move back to the small circle of firelight and warmth.
Shen and I were on them in a flash. I couldn"t watch my teammate as he came around the other side of the truck. I had to concentrate on my own responsibility, and trust in the Exodus operative"s skill. I clamped my hand over the guard"s mouth and jerked his head to the side. I rammed my knife into the base of his skull, twisted it violently, and yanked it out. Spinal cord severed, he fell, instantly lifeless. I hugged him tightly and dragged him back to the side of the truck. I could feel hot, sticky blood flowing down my arms.
I looked up. Shen and the other guard were gone. There was only a splatter of blood and some disturbed snow. He was good. I wiped my blade on the guard"s arm and put it away. I tried not to notice that the slave soldier was probably barely old enough to drive in my home country.
Shen materialized at my side. He patted me on the shoulder, then bent down and gently closed the slave"s staring eyes. He whispered something, not to me, but rather to the dead man. I unslung my rifle and raised it to cover our next move.
Anders was now moving forward, through the gap created by us. The last two soldiers were standing around the burning barrel, hands extended, leather gloves hardening just outside the plume of smoke. They were looking right at Anders as he approached, rifle muzzle down in his left hand. The big man"s head was lowered, as he slouched forward, appearing shorter than he really was. The guards looked up, their eyes adjusted to the licking flames, just seeing a black ma.s.s approaching.
Anders raised the little Ruger MKII and put two rounds into each of the guards" craniums. Tick-Tick . . . Tick-Tick . . . . The low ma.s.s of the action and tiny, low pressure round made it so that the integrally suppressed .22 was literally about as loud as a staple gun, but both soldiers went right down. The big man paused just outside the circle of light. Tick . . . Tick. He put one more into each man, just to make sure. Anders shoved the .22 back into his armor, then stepped forward, grabbed one guard by an outflung arm, the other by his boot, and effortlessly dragged them both back into the dark.
Shen and I sprinted through the gap, snow flashing around our ankles as we leapt through the broken slabs of concrete and bent rebar. We slowed to a walk as we approached the burning drum, the knowledge of what we had to do unspoken, born of years of experience. We stopped next to the fire, hands extended for warmth, as if we were the fallen guards. To anyone further inside the compound, watching this area, the two guards had only disappeared for a moment, and now there were two more black blobs cl.u.s.tered around the light, just like before. I scanned across the compound, but saw no other movement. The fire felt good.
There was more motion and a whisper of noise behind us as Phillips and Roland moved through the gap. I nodded my head toward the steel ladder leading to the top of the wall. There were still two machine guns mounted up there. Anders and the young Exodus operatives knew what to do. I made a motion toward the right, and Shen turned that direction, back to the fire, so he could watch that position. I watched the emplacement on the left.
"Psstt . . . Lorenzo," Shen whispered.
"Yeah." My eyes never left the two hunched shapes on the wall. There was an angular black thing mounted on a pintle up there, probably a 12.7mm DhSK heavy machine gun, and if those guards gave any indication that they had seen Anders, Roland, or Phillips, I was going to light them up with my ACR. Something thumped into my shoulder, and sat there, a slightly damp weight. I reached up and grabbed it. They were thin wool gloves.
"You looked like you needed them more than the soldier I removed them from," Shen said simply.
"Thanks." I pulled the gloves on and flexed my fingers. At least they had finally gone numb.
"Target spotted," Shen said, both to my side, and in my ear, as he had keyed the radio. "Two hundred meters to the north."
Sure enough, there it was. The antiaircraft vehicle was a brutish, squat thing, sitting on top of a small hill. The only reason Shen had seen it was from the twirling motion of its radar, constantly spinning, seeking targets for its huge guns.
"That"s no ZSU." Anders voice was a whisper on the radio. I could see his shape halfway up the ladder to the top of the wall. "That"s a Tunguska."
I looked at the shape through my night vision. It looked a lot bigger than it had before. "That"s a different one. The one I saw had four guns. This one"s taller and has two guns."
"And missiles," Anders said. "Plan"s changed. We"ve got two antiaircraft systems in the compound."
The vehicle I had seen when I had toured the compound had been closer to Jihan"s silo. This second vehicle was a bad complication. So much for good intel. "We"re going to need more time."
Shen fiddled with his radio. "Ibrahim"s not responding."
The choppers had already entered the canyon. They would be here in less than twenty minutes. As we spoke the choppers were tearing along just above the tree tops, navigating a narrow pa.s.s. Our radios were not powerful enough to reach them with mountains in the way.
"Take out those machine guns. Fast." I ordered. Then I flipped my radio to Jill and Reaper"s channel. "Jill, come in."
"Go."
"Unexpected problem. There are multiple antiair vehicles. We can"t reach Ibrahim. Try to reach him. Tell him we need more time. Over."
"On it."
I flipped back to my team. Hopefully Jill could reach Ibrahim, otherwise those choppers were going to fly right into a stream of giant tracers. I returned my attention to the emplacement. A third shadow was stalking up to the men on the gun, then the shadow went low, below the railing. I bit my lip, ready to open fire. There was some motion, a small bit of noise, and one of the shapes flipped over the wall and plummeted to the ground outside the compound. The second guard started to rise, then appeared to get a whole lot shorter as his head flopped to the side, mostly severed from his neck. A noise like someone chopping firewood hit my ear just a moment later.
I glanced around. There were no other guards close enough to have heard the noise.
"This is Phillips. Southern position secure," he panted.
A moment later, Shen stiffened up as he took aim at the northern point. Then he relaxed and lowered his weapon.
"This is Roland. North secure."
"I was faster," Phillips replied.
"Yeah, but listen to you. I heard you from here."
"Whatever, dude."
"Guys, on my signal, use those machine guns. Kill everything that isn"t us. Anders, Shen, on me. We have to reach those tanks. Now."
I checked my watch. We were almost out of time. I made a spinning motion with my finger in the air and gestured toward the Tunguska. Move out.
The next few minutes were a blur. The three of us kept to the shadows under the wall. We would move quickly, sprint to the next piece of cover, scan for threats, and then move again. I spotted guards, but all of them were moving in directions away from us. We had also seen no sign of dogs, which was lucky, as they would have sensed us long ago, but Katarina"s intel had indicated that Jihan hated dogs for some reason.
We reached the rear of one of the concrete bunkers, Number Five when it had been a Styrofoam block on Kat"s table. There was a ten-foot alley separating the wall of the compound from the back wall of the bunker. There was a single steel door on that back wall, and Shen and I crouched down as we pa.s.sed it, since there was light coming through a gla.s.s slit at eye-level through the door. Anders stayed back, covering the way that we had come from.
I peeked around the corner. We were now only twenty meters from the Tunguska. It was straight up a small snow-covered hill. I could see a few men milling around outside the beast, and could hear the diesel engines running from here. Good. The noise would mask our approach.
What the h.e.l.l, the noise should be enough to mask suppressed gunfire as well. I scanned the Tunguska through my night vision. A thing like that should have at least four people manning it, but I only saw two on the outside. The other two were probably sitting inside, actually running the radar and the guns. I signaled for Shen to approach the tank, and if either of the guards noticed him, I would shoot them.
Shen nodded once, and pulled that same long knife. Hopefully from the Tunguska"s vantage point, we could spot the ZSU.
CREAK.
The metal door to the bunker opened slowly. Shen pushed himself back against the wall, knife blade held flat against his chest, the door shielding him from view. A squat figure stepped into the alley, pulling round goggles down over his masked face, an AK47 slung over one shoulder.
A Brother!
He stepped into the snow, goggled head swinging in my direction, the door closing automatically behind him. Shen was up in an instant, the knife a pixilated blur through my goggles.
The Brother sensed him somehow, and impossibly, at the last possible instant moved fast enough that I thought my night vision had malfunctioned. The Brother ducked and sidestepped, Shen"s knife flying through the s.p.a.ce where his throat had been a second before. At the same time, the Brother"s palm struck Shen"s chest. The Exodus operative flew back, colliding brutally with the wall.
I turned, my finger already flying to the trigger of my rifle as the Brother stepped toward me, his body uncoiling like a spring, but then the rifle was knocked out of my numb hands, snow from his boot struck me in the face. The son of a b.i.t.c.h had kicked the gun out of my hands. Then he kicked me. Hard.
The concrete impacted my back with a great deal of force. My night-vision device went flying into the distance. I went for my pistol, but with the suppressor mounted, I had to carry it in a shoulder holster. Slow to draw, too slow. As I reached across my body, the Brother"s leather glove clamped onto my wrist. I jerked my knee into him, but it swept through nothing but empty furs. I locked my left hand onto arm, and tried to leverage him into an arm bar. He was impossibly strong. Those blank goggles stared into my face and he didn"t make a sound.
Shen was back up. I saw him rising behind the Brother"s back. Shen latched onto the Brother"s slung AK with his hands, pulling back while he kicked his boot into the back of the Brother"s knees, a move sure to take the little man down.
The brother grunted at the impact, but didn"t drop. He threw a backhand that hit Shen like a sledgehammer. The Exodus operative and the AK went down.
I struck out with my left. He took the blow to the face and barely budged. He swung me back into the wall. I shook loose, the STI coming out of the holster. He smashed me in the elbow, CHUFF, and I fired my pistol uselessly into the snow at his side. Now somehow he was holding onto my gun, and bending it back into my stomach.
TickTickTickTickTick.
The Brother turned toward the source of the impacts. Anders was striding forward, the little Hush Puppy extended in one hand. The bolt locked back empty, and Anders dropped the spent magazine. The Brother was still locked onto me, and he spun me, like a discus thrower, and launched me into Anders. We collided, both of us slipping in the snow.
I sprang to my feet. My pistol was in the snow somewhere, so I pulled my knife. The Brother was standing in the center of the alley, in a wide stance like some old-west gunfighter. He put one hand to his side, then slowly raised it, studying his own blood. Anders had hit him several times, but .22s suck. His black mask c.o.c.ked to the side, incredulously, and then looked back at us. Anders grunted as he got to his feet.
Anders raised his carbine, but the diesel noise died with a cough. They had shut down the Tunguska. There was some yelling from the top of the hill. They probably just ran it long enough to charge up the batteries for the radar. Our opportunity for gunfire had pa.s.sed.
Shen pulled himself off the ground, the Brother"s AK in his hands. He looked at it in frustration, knowing it was too loud. He dropped the mag and racked the charging handle back to eject the chambered round. Shen was prepared to use the rifle as a club. Anders and I were on one side of the alley, the wounded Brother in the middle, Shen between him and the Tunguska crew. I don"t know why the Brother didn"t shout for help. He had already soaked up several .22 rounds, but he didn"t make a sound. Anders stepped past me, a SOG knife held low at his side.
The Brother waited for him, his head swiveling slightly to keep all three of us in view. The goggles were cold and almost insectile. Anders moved first, charging forward, the knife coming up in an eviscerating arc, but the Brother was faster. The knife cut through a layer of wolf pelt and cut the cord of a bear tooth necklace, but no flesh. Then the Brother hit Anders, once, twice, three times, before the big man was sliding through the snow on his face.
Shen clubbed the Brother in the back, and having been clubbed by Shen myself, I knew that the man knew how to put some juice into it. The Brother stumbled, but mule kicked Shen in the ribs. I leapt over Anders, my knife leading the way, and drove my blade into the Brother"s side. He jerked away, but I knew that I had scored a hit. Then a black clad fist slammed into my jaw and sent me sprawling.
All four of us were up again, the Brother still in the middle, hands up and open in front of him, his back to the compound wall. He still hadn"t made a sound, but now I could hear him breathing, the leather of his mask bulging slightly as he exhaled. My knife was dripping.
Then it was on. All three of us closed on him at the same time. We were all experienced fighters and the Brother had to be losing a lot of blood. It should have been over in an instant.
It wasn"t.
It was a flurry of motion and flying frost, yet it was eerily quiet. Shen smashed the AK into the Brother"s raised arm. The stock broke off and flipped past my head. Anders and I both waded in, blades singing, but somehow the Brother stayed ahead of them. He danced through the steel, forearms and elbows colliding with ours with bone-jarring force. Shen hit him with the rifle again, hard enough to bend the barrel. The Brother moved like part of the shadows, disregarding the impact, and the next part was confusing because he had kicked me in the side of the head, but somehow Shen was upside down, in the air, then corkscrewed violently into the ground.
Anders finally scored a hit, driving his knife through the Brother"s wrist, the blade erupting out the other side, blood spraying everywhere.
Without a tourniquet, that was a fatal hit.
The Brother jerked the knife away, slammed Anders in the throat, sending him sprawling, and pulled the knife out with his other hand. I could hear it grind through the bones of his wrist.
"s.h.i.t. Now he"s got a knife," I muttered as I got back to my feet. The Brother closed on me. Anders" blade aimed at my heart. I readied myself, but I knew that he was too fast.
THUD.
The Brother stopped, the hilt of another knife sticking out of his back. Shen had apparently found his and hurled it down the alley. The Brother stumbled slightly, then stabbed toward me. I dodged aside, his knife striking sparks off the steel door behind me. I kicked him in the knee, them slashed my knife across his stomach, driving it in deep. He rolled into me, both of us locked together, churning down the wall, the unkillable Brother leaving a trail of fluids.
The clock was ticking.
Not fast enough. The point of the knife was inches from my eye. Somehow I had grabbed his good wrist, and muscles straining, was holding it back. I stabbed my blade into his chest, levering it around his ribs, slicing toward his heart and lungs. But still he fought, the knife descended slowly as he overpowered me. I could see my reflection in his goggles.
CHUFF.
The Brother"s head snapped forward violently, colliding with mine in a spray of warmth. His head rolled back limply, and one goggle instantly pooled with blood, that then came leaking out the sides. I shoved him back, and he collapsed silently into the powder, his brains leaking out the back of his head into the snow.
Anders was holding my 9mm.
I stumbled back over to the corner and peered around. If the guards had heard that noise, we were screwed. It was dark, but the reflection from the snow was giving the surroundings a faint, almost pink glow. I had no idea where my night vision had landed. There were a few lights around the Tunguska, and I could see shapes moving. Someone was running a hose into the beast. That"s why they had shut it down. They were refueling.
There was movement at my side as Shen stumbled forward. He still had his night vision. He scanned back and forth, and gave me a thumbs-up sign. We were okay. I checked my watch again. The choppers would be arriving soon.
"What"s the holdup?" Roland asked over the radio. "We"ve got guards headed our way. I think it"s the shift change."
I secured my rifle. "We ran into a Brother."
"Ooohhh," he whistled. "Is everybody alive?"
"Barely," Shen grunted.
"Guys, pop those guards if you have to. Wait as long as possible though. Anders. Let"s go . . ." There was no response. "Anders?" I turned around. The big man was kneeling next to the still twitching Brother and had pulled back his mask and goggles. It was too dark for me to see what he was looking at. The Majestic man stood, dusted the snow off his knees, and joined us. He handed me my pistol.
"What?" I asked as I secured my gun.
"Nothing . . ." He shook his head. "I just had to see if the stories were true."
"What stories?"
"Sala Jihan cuts their tongues out. Okay. Let"s do this."