Dragon Two-Zero (Fury's Fire Book 1)

by William McCaskey

  As he neared the open doorway, Reaver followed the path of least resistance, flowing into the room with ease. The entryway opened on his left side into a combined kitchen and eating space that meshed seamlessly into an open living room area, he could tell from the overturned couches and table in the middle of the room. The wall he followed was broken up by a hallway that a glance showed led to the master bedroom on the left, sharing a wall with the living room, and a guest bedroom on the right. Titan had moved into the suite behind him; a cursory search of the bedrooms turned up nothing. As quietly as they had infiltrated the suite, the Marines exited and made their way to the door on the opposite wall, Reaver performing a sweep of the doorframe with the back of his hand for any wires or other signs of booby traps; finding none, he tested the door latch and found it unlocked. The door swung inward, Titan leading the way this time as Reaver had a hold on the door to keep it from banging against the wall. The layout of this dwelling was a mirror image of the one across the hall and just as empty. As they exited the second suite, Reaver signaled for Titan to take the next door on the right and he would clear the next on the left.

  The two Marines staged themselves outside their respective doors, checking them for traps and the latch. Both doors were unlocked. At a signal from Reaver, they entered their respective suites. The suites were flipped mirror images of the initial two, with the bedrooms sharing a wall with the bedrooms of the first suites.

  As Reaver stepped through the doorway of his suite to clear, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and a moment later his consciousness caught what his eyes had first noticed subconsciously. The furniture had been set aright and stretched out on one of the couches was the uniformed figure of an enemy soldier, laid out on his back with his feet facing toward the now open door; the even rise and fall of his chest showed that Reaver's entrance had not disturbed his sleep. Transferring his pistol to his left hand, Reaver reached across his body to his left shoulder. His fingers slid into the duster rings and wrapped around the leather-bound handle, and with a slow draw removed his K-Bar from its sheath.

  Keeping his movements steady, and lowering his entire body, Reaver duck-walked to the far edge of the couch and passed behind it to keep himself out of the enemy soldier’s potential sightline. Bracing his left hand for balance, still holding his pistol, on the floor as he rounded the final edge of the couch, his right arm came up and around the armrest. With a swift downward thrust drove the tip of his blade into his enemy's throat, right of center to avoid notching the blade tip against the spine. He felt the skin part beneath the edge of the graphsteel blade, almost like slicing into and through a tomato. The soldier's eyes snapped open as he felt the initial prick of the blade pierce his skin. His reaction was much too late to save his life as Reaver rotated the duster handle of the blade down to the left, the keen edge carving effortlessly through the carotid and jugular and severing the soldier’s larynx, preventing him from raising any alarm.

  After withdrawing his knife and wiping it on the uniform shirt of the enemy soldier to clean it, Reaver returned the blade to its sheath and left the Renk to drown in his blood, hands reaching into the space that had just seconds ago been closed off flesh. Swiping his hand once back and forth across the couch to wipe most of the blood from it, Reaver made his way across the living room area toward the bedrooms.

  The master bedroom was vacant, though a low bloodstained table stood in place of the bed. A strong copper scent lingered in the air, and Reaver knew he had found where they had tortured the Lieutenant and his radio operator. Reaver’s next thought wasn't exactly a Christian prayer when he hoped the enemy soldier that lay dying in the living room had been one of the men to take part in the torture.

  Stepping across the short hallway and testing the closed door to the guest bedroom, Reaver found it slightly ajar and pushed it open, entering the room and sliding along the inside wall to clear the corners. After registering no threats, Reaver let his eyes sweep across the room’s contents. The bed had been removed, like in the master bedroom, and two chairs sat in the center of the room facing one another. The window shutters remained open so light spilling in would spotlight the chair set facing away from it. In this chair sat the headless corpse of the radio operator, the uniform stained and crusted with dried blood. Someone had placed him at a macabre position of attention, his arms ending at the wrists from where they had separated his hands set on his thighs, while his legs, ending above the knees, were positioned so that if they had been complete, his feet would have been shoulder-width apart on the floor.

  In the gleam of the moonlight streaming into the room, Reaver could see the bloodstained, heavily-bruised face of the figure in the opposite chair, his uniform covered with blood. The soldier’s legs ended in stumps just above his knees. As Reaver approached, he picked up the scent of seared flesh and knew that the amputations had been cauterized. A low sob wracked from the chest of the figure within the chair confirmed the Lieutenant was still alive, despite appearances.

  Reaver moved toward the Lieutenant, pressing his hand over the man’s lips to prevent him from making any further noise. A closer inspection revealed that the soldier’s arms were lashed together behind the chair, with the remnants of his legs tied down to the seat of the chair. As gently as possible, while also being quick with his actions, Reaver cleared as much of the crusted blood as he could from the Lieutenant's face. A glance at the tactical display on his left forearm gave Reaver the bona fides he needed from the soldier to confirm his identity, along with a picture.

  The picture matched, kind of. Kid had aged in five days; definitely beyond the twenty-two years listed. Reaver spoke quietly into the young officer’s ear. “Cavalry's here, Lieutenant. We're gonna get you out of here. I need you to answer some questions for me. I need your number combination, the name of your first dog, and the first vehicle you owned." Reaver removed his hand from the soldier's mouth, ready to clamp it back down should something go awry.

  The soldier's eyes started unfocused, but Reaver's words seemed to awaken something and after a few moments, lucidity reappeared within them. The Lieutenant answered in a harsh, grating rasp. “Two seven five one. Skye, and a Davidson."

  Reaver let the smile he was holding back split his face. “Let's get you home, LT." His left hand triggered the radio mic. “Titan, get in here. I've got him. Bull, Space, get topside. Quinn, get on the horn and get us a ride out of here. If they bitch, override them, no way he’s walking out." Holstering his pistol, Reaver drew his K-Bar and sliced through the ropes holding the Lieutenant to his chair. As his bonds fell away, the reality of the situation hit the soldier with the force of a freight train, and he collapsed onto Reaver, sobs of relief wracking his body.

  Reaver took the full weight of the Lieutenant’s body against him and felt the officer’s body tremble. There was no faulting him for the tears he shed. A noise in the doorway had Reaver shoving the wounded soldier backward, tipping the chair over and Reaver landing on top of him, to shield his body, his pistol drawn and aimed at the figure of Titan entering the room.

  "Jumpy, jefe?” Titan quipped as he took in the sight of his squad leader aiming a pistol at his heart. “Your handiwork on the couch?"

  Reaver holstered his pistol and checked on the Lieutenant; a few of his cuts had reopened but nothing life-threatening. Lifting slightly, Reaver slid the Lieutenant across the floor and helped him to sit against the back wall of the bedroom, then turned to answer Titan. “Yeah. C'mon, we're gonna backpack the RTO; he's going home too."

  Built into the back webbing of the combat vests was a strap system to assist in carrying heavy loads, and in times of emergencies, the Marines had discovered the straps could carry severely wounded or even dead comrades. They took to heart the old Earth adage that no man got left behind.

  Reaver cut the RTO’s body loose from the chair he had been lashed to and cursed under his breath with the effort of lifting the corpse. Titan reached over his shoulders and grabbed hold of the dec
eased soldier’s uniform to hold the body in place against his back so Reaver could weave the straps across the body and between the legs and tighten them down so the load would hang evenly against Titan's broad back.

  A grunt escaped Reaver’s lips as he hoisted the Lieutenant across his shoulders, in a fireman's carry with his left shoulder between the Lieutenant's legs. Titan ran a strap from the Lieutenant's front forearm to his front upper thigh, binding them together across Reaver's chest and giving Reaver more freedom with his offhand while leaving his firing hand completely free. As the lieutenant’s weight settled in across his shoulders, Reaver knew he wouldn’t have any issues getting the LT to the pick-up site. The words of his Drill Instructor rang in his ears. “They’re wounded, they aren’t heavy! That’s your brother or sister across your back. Get them home!” The two Recon Marines moved out of the suites. As they neared the stairwell exit, all hell broke loose on the floor above them.

  The sound of small arms shots came through the ceiling above them as loud pops followed by muffled shouting which was, in turn, answered by the roar of Bull's assault cannon, the layers of building material between them doing little to suppress the deep bass bark of the heavy weapon. Both Reaver and Titan swore and picked up the speed of their pace toward the stairwell. Behind them, they could hear confused shouts echoing from the other end of the hallway.

  As they banged through the door into the stairwell and started their ascent to the roof, first Reaver and then Titan dropped a pair of prox-mines within the staircase between the fourth and fifth floors. The noise level was deafening, the cacophony echoing just as Reaver predicted. Bull's short measured roars of firepower launched into the building's interior bounced up and down the walls of the stairwell and vibrated the teeth of everyone within. Space Case had been watching the descending stairs as rear security and waved Reaver and Titan up to the fifth-floor landing. Titan replaced him on security as Bull increased the savagery of his rate of fire, forcing the Renks attempting to advance down the hallway to dive for cover and giving Reaver and Space Case the opportunity to dash up the stairs toward the roof.

  Reaver stumbled, tripping on a step, swearing as he caught himself with his left hand. The jarring motion caused the lieutenant hanging across his shoulders to groan painfully, but he grit his teeth and kept from making any other sounds. Kid was a fighter; Reaver had to give him that.

  From the floor below, the crashing explosion of one of the prox-mines told them that their real-estate was about to get very tiny. Titan dropped two more prox-mines on the landing and sprinted past the open doorway, a hail of gunfire following his passage and clipping the upper thigh of the radio operator's corpse. Bull unloaded a final salvo down the hallway for good measure and left a trio of his own prox-mines on the stairs to round out the surprise for the Renks following them.

  The silence on the roof was staggering after the deafening cacophony of noise within the building. Spinning on his heels and dropping to a prone position beside his fellow heavy weapons wielder, Bull double-checked the ammo feeds to his assault cannon as Titan charged his Ogre and the two Marines pulled security on the open stairwell door. Harlequin called from his perch on the western edge of the roof. “Skyhook's inbound, two mikes. They're dropping a vest for the package. Who the fuck did you piss off?" He shouted this last question as he turned and took quick aim with his rifle and snapped off a shot. “They're swarming from the secondary like ants from a kicked hill."

  A series of coughs and cracks from Alice's side of the building showed she had tuned her rounds up from subsonic to supersonic, and that she had her own selection of targets to handle. Reaver sent Space Case to assist on the eastern side of the building with Alice, as he moved to reinforce Harlequin.

  Unslinging and lowering the Lieutenant, as gently as possible, to the rooftop, between himself and Harlequin, Reaver stuck the injured officer with a medical grade tranq. Keying his mic, Reaver directed over the net. “Keep an eye for officers; scope cameras on! I want to know who we're dealing with." Scope cameras had started with some bleeding heart late in the twenty-first century who thought he could catch the commission of war crimes, but an enterprising unit turned the cameras to their own purposes: for kill confirmation of high-value targets after the fact.

  A whipcord series of explosions rippled up the stairwell, immediately followed by screams and furious shouting. Titan and Bull tightened down behind their weapon stocks, preparing for the next wave of enemies to brave the stairs. The initial soldier to clear the obstruction of the top step made it far enough that his upper torso had become visible before Titan squeezed the trigger of his weapon. The Ogre’s rounds shredded the chest of the enemy soldier and ripped into those climbing the stairs behind him. The two heavy-weapons Marines alternated bursts of fire, keeping the doorway clear and giving the enemy soldiers no chance at breaching it. The measured snap-crack of Harlequin’s rifle nearby echoed with Alice’s from across the roof.

  Reaver had plenty of targets to choose from when he put his combat optic to use. The process became nearly mechanical for him: crosshairs of the optic as close to center-mass as he could, pressure on the trigger, the sharp pop of the round leaving the chamber while the butt of his RAW jumped back into his shoulder; second round and move to next target. The enemy numbers were high enough he didn’t bother watching his targets fall, more would replace them. Across the roof, Reaver knew that Space Case was doing the same. They weren’t going to win this fight by killing everyone; they just needed to survive till the recovery bird showed up.

  A screeching whistle pierced the discordant cacophony of mixed gunfire that ceased only with the crashing clamor of metal slamming into the graphcrete roof. The Recon squad's discipline showed as only Reaver looked toward the sound and saw the Skyhook bird had dropped the cable weight directly onto the strobe Harlequin had set for them.

  Reaver called out to his squad as he dashed for the cables. “Space, grab yours and Alice's; I'll take care of the rest!"

  Space Case moved at a low sprint to meet Reaver at the cable weight and secured the ends of two cables before carrying them back to his and Alice's side of the roof. Each Marine would be responsible for getting the seat straps of their combat vests hooked in, an easy one-hand operation they had practiced under countless situations and scenarios. With the seat straps connected, the vest created a secure climbing seat, and only requiring one hand allowed the wearer to keep their gun in the fight. Grabbing two cables, Reaver dragged them to where Bull and Titan maintained the stairwell's fatal funnel. Dropping the lines between the two heavy-weapons Marines, Reaver ensured their seat straps were hooked in before clipping and locking down the cable hooks on the drag loops set into the vests between the shoulder-blades of the Marines.

  Sliding back and away from the position, Reaver returned to the cable weight and grabbed the last three cables, hooking them all to the spare vest that had been dropped with the weight for ease of movement. High above him, the thick lines disappeared into the clouds where the Hawk hovered, waiting and trusting the Marines on the ground to move with a purpose before the enemy could catch on to their intention. Reaver quickly snapped Harlequin's hook into place before rolling the Lieutenant into his vest and slapping the clips into place. Reaching over his shoulder with his left hand, Reaver held his loop up and slid the hook into place, giving a sharp tug to ensure he had caught the loop before locking it down, triggering his squad mic. “By team, run it down."

  Alice was first to answer. “Six, good to go."

  Space Case followed her. “Five, good to go."

  Bull was next, with the team call. “Four, good to go. Dragon Two-Bravo, good to hook."

  Titan followed Bull on the net. “Three, good to go."

  Harlequin threw a thumbs-up to Reaver, his rifle tracking as he followed a target, and Reaver answered for him. “Two and one, good to go. Package is hooked, Dragon Two-Zero good to hook." Reaver twisted the frequency control to Skyhook's channel. “Skyhook, Dragon Two is green f
or hook."

  "Copy, hook," the voice of the pilot crackled across the communications band and into Reaver's earbud. The winch on one side must have started before the other because Alice, Space Case, and Bull left the ground a few seconds before the rest of the squad.

  Harlequin muttered. “Get some, bitch," and squeezed the trigger. His rifle coughed, the round cracking the sound barrier as the cable came taut and Quinn rocketed from the roof. Harlequin's expletive followed the round into the night sky. “Fuck!"

  As he lifted into the air, Reaver coughed; it felt like he had been kicked in the gut. A few centimeters lower and it would have reminded him of the time a sparring partner had caught him in the nuts with a snap kick.

  After the initial jerk, the ascent became almost serene, and the staff sergeant watched the ruins of Craxus grow smaller beneath his feet as the temperature around him plummeted, the combination of the winch hauling them in and the accelerated climb of the Hawk pulling the Marines through the cloud cover over the city. The waiting crew guided each member of the squad into the interior of the bird as they came into the doorways, taking care with removing the corpse of the radio operator from Titan's back and strapping it in like a live passenger would have been. They treated the Lieutenant with the same care, and a waiting medic began checking him over the moment he was secure. Last one into the Hawk, Reaver strapped himself into an open seat. Taking the comm box offered to him by one of the crew so he could talk to the pilots, he plugged his auxiliary cable into a free slot and keyed the mic. “Thanks for the ride."

  Reaver released his mic-switch and saw the crewman on his side of the aircraft key his own switch after receiving a thumbs-up from the opposite side's crew member. “Rear doors secure, pax secure."

  The voice of one of the pilots answered. “Copy secure. Welcome aboard, Marines. Get yourselves tight, we're going highside."