Threat Zero

by Nicholas Irving

  Defend to the north; be prepared to escape to the south.

  The morning dew brought a chill into the open concrete bay. He walked back to the north side of the building, about a fifty-yard trek, and found Hinojosa, asleep, tired, exhausted.

  “Cameras everywhere,” he said to himself this time, thinking his way through the problem set. “Two hours not good enough.”

  Hinojosa grunted; okay, maybe half asleep. The traffic on the interstate and freeway was picking up, hissing and rumbling as it echoed into the concrete cavern. After thinking another minute, he reached into her small backpack and retrieved her phone, pressed her thumb against the button and dialed Monisha’s phone from memory.

  On the third ring a sleepy voice said, “Yeah?”

  “Monisha—”

  “Reaper?” She awakened quickly.

  “Yes. Don’t have much time.”

  “Been trying to reach you. Your voice mail is full and it doesn’t ring.”

  “It broke,” he said, which was one way to describe deliberately destroying it.

  “Sammie left me something, Reaper. Sent me a flash drive,” she said.

  “Don’t open it,” Harwood said.

  “Too late,” she replied.

  “Give it to Sergeant Major,” Harwood directed.

  Monisha was silent. There was a noise in the background. Some mumbling and then in a hurried voice she said, “It’s all about that Pakistani guy. Sounds like the basketball player, Steph Curry. They saying you killed the wrong people. That you were doing someone else’s bidding.”

  “What?” Harwood asked.

  The muffled voices grew louder. Then there was a thump, which could have been the phone dropping on the floor. Breaking glass rattled through the speaker. A loud explosion erupted and everything went silent.

  “Monisha!” he shouted into the phone.

  His voice woke Hinojosa.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Something happened to Monisha!” His mind raced as the world spun beneath him. An inescapable feeling of helplessness enveloped him. He never quit. He never let the odds, no matter how stacked against him, deter him. But now, perhaps for the first time ever, he felt a fresh vulnerability. Sure, he’d been scared in combat before. Anyone who said they weren’t was lying. But when it was just him, it was okay. He was usually square with his values and his God and if he bit it, well then, so be it. It had been just him. Now, the larger responsibility for Monisha, a young girl who had been abandoned much as he had been when he was a child, weighed heavily on him.

  That fatal feeling of failure slid around him like a python, suffocating him.

  “Reaper, we’ve got to go!” Hinojosa shouted.

  Two cars screeched to a halt outside of the fence.

  Harwood focused.

  “How the hell?”

  He had been right. The most likely axis of attack had come from the north. In the morning darkness, tattooed MS-13 gang members poured out of the cars carrying shotguns, five from each vehicle. Even the drivers were joining the fray. One group of five raced to the northwest corner while another went to the northeast corner.

  Harwood made a command decision.

  He laid down beneath his SR-25 and aimed through his Leupold scope at the lead gang member at the nearest entrance to them. With the darkness and mist obscuring his sight picture, he was going for body shots. No margin for error. He needed to slow the advance and then stop it.

  One pull, first man down. Another pull, second man down. The muffled shots still ratcheted loudly in the concrete cavern. The two followers split left and right. Harwood tracked to the left and winged the third man. The fourth had hidden behind the big pile of concrete blocks they had passed earlier. He slewed to the right and fired twice, hitting two men who had failed to gain cover.

  Five down, five to go. It was a numbers problem. He had to kill as many as possible outside the building.

  “What the hell?” Hinojosa said. She pulled her pistol out and backed against the wall, eyes darting nervously to the left and right as if they were in a last-stand fight. Perhaps they were.

  “Watch this stairwell,” Harwood said. He pointed at the northwest stairwell they had entered earlier.

  He repositioned to get a better angle on the northeast attackers. They were moving more methodically this time. One was covering, while the other would move. Bounding overwatch, a tactic taught in the military. He lined up beside an open window and peered through the gap. One man was motioning for the other to move forward.

  Harwood slowly raised his rifle. The man moved. Harwood fired. The man fell. He switched to the lead gang member, fired again, hitting the man’s weapon. That wasn’t his target, but he would take it. But it was the only shot he could get before the attacker sprinted to the base of the building. Dead space. One coming from each direction. He needed to rely on Hinojosa, whatever her real identity and purpose might be.

  Her pistol boomed, echoing along the open bay. Harwood made the mistake of wheeling in her direction to confirm her status. She was standing over the man who had come racing up the stairwell.

  A noise to his rear caused him to wheel around in time to receive a roundhouse kick to the head from a fully tatted gang member. Harwood spun, held on to the rifle, but quickly dropped it as he rolled away and came up with his knife. The man had bare feet and looked like a tribal warrior from a different century. Swirling tattoos and bared teeth. Demonic eyes. Hands flashing with two knives. He lunged at Harwood, who deflected the thrust with his own knife, the blades sparking in the darkness.

  Harwood slashed with his knife, but the man leaned back in an acrobatic and athletic move that didn’t bode well for Harwood. He corrected quickly and took up a knife fighter’s stance. They circled, slashing and grunting. They were moving too quick for Hinojosa to get a shot. He concentrated on the task at hand. Expected no rescue. He was a fighter and he would win.

  The man lunged. Harwood was quick to step left and rake his knife upward against the gangbanger’s tatted arm. The knife bit, causing the man to drop one of his two knives. He recoiled in pain, while keeping his eyes on Harwood, who pursued success and spun, switched the knife to his left hand, and used the force of his whirling body to slam the blade into the man’s abdomen.

  His attacker doubled over. Harwood leaned in and lifted the blade up to the sternum, cutting everything two inches deep inside his abdominal cavity. Blood poured over his hands as the gangbanger head butted him, causing him to step back. The man retrieved the knife, even though his guts were literally beginning to unfold from his torso. His movements weren’t as quick as before, but he was coming at Harwood, who was regaining focus.

  The knife was slashing down at him when he heard the pistol bellow. The back chunk of the man’s skull shattered, blood spraying onto Harwood. He grabbed his knife from the man as he fell to the concrete.

  “Nice shot,” he said to Hinojosa, who hefted his rucksack and passed it to his blood-soaked hands.

  They ran to the southeast exit before any first responders could descend upon them. Harwood scouted the marina, the river, and then the far side using his night-vision goggle again. The sun was threatening, but begin morning nautical twilight was just arriving, the first hint of gray on the horizon. He had done some quick mental calculations on countersniper operations. The rooftop where they had first stopped was a decent nest. The park was less than a half mile across the river. The first row of homes along the road were good spots as well.

  As they approached the southeast stairwell that would lead them out the back way toward the marina, an anomaly registered in Harwood’s night-vision goggle. It was the slightest aberration, but it was there. He couldn’t place it, thought about it a moment, lost it, and then said, “Down!”

  He grabbed Hinojosa as he dropped the night-vision goggle, let it swing by its lanyard around his neck and he saw the muzzle flash from the weapon. It was on top of a row house five houses in from the bridge over the Anacostia River
, just above the park. The bullet smacked into Hinojosa’s backpack with such force that she spun around, sort of a pirouette. Two more shots sprayed concrete dust into their faces, but they were safe behind a block wall that would soon be a fire escape for the building. Harwood tucked Hinojosa behind him. Her breaths were raspy.

  “You okay?” Harwood asked.

  Hinojosa nodded. “Backpack took a direct hit. That would have been me,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “If you really are Samuelson’s sister, I’m assuming he’d want you to stay alive.”

  “I am, and he would,” she replied. Her voice was clipped, pissed off.

  He retrieved a device from his rucksack as he collapsed the bipods. He snapped a small tripod into place with telescoping levers connected to the rail system on the barrel and the buttstock. He plugged a micro-USB cable into the remote aiming device and nudged the rifle barrel around the corner of the stairwell so that the muzzle and scope had clear line of sight across the river. He powered up the remote camera in the palm of his hand and manipulated the controls on the touch screen until the weapon was aimed at the building where he had seen the two men on top. With each adjustment on the screen, the weapon moved microscopically. Harwood focused the scope on the rooftop. The thermal imaging was clear and defined. Two men in dark clothes were lying side by side and looking in his direction. They were talking, heads turned toward one another. The remote also had a trigger pull that simulated Harwood’s typical pressure from his trigger finger. He focused the scope, which blurred for a second before becoming high-definition clear on the remote pad.

  “Snipers. Has to be Stone and Weathers. Saw two lumps laying on the roof,” he said.

  Harwood had the crosshairs on the dark-haired Weathers, who was serving as sniper. He was surprised the former Marine Force Recon sniper had missed. It must have been closer than he realized. Stone was motioning in their general direction, looking through binoculars. They were acting as if they knew their position was burned, which was fine with Harwood.

  He put his finger on the remote-control trigger button on the plasma screen.

  A helicopter sang in the distance, the blades chopping through the black sky.

  Bronson.

  It was flying low along the Anacostia River, sweeping circular contrails of moisture in its wake. The helicopter would cross the path of Stone and Weathers. Harwood fired twice and he saw them roll away. He had only used the remote device a few times and it wasn’t as accurate as him holding the weapon to his cheek. Stone and Weathers had to know they were burned though, and like suppressive fire on a landing zone, his shots might have bought them time to do what Bronson had in mind. He quickly collapsed his gear, stuffed it into his rucksack, retrieved his infrared strobe, turned it on and tossed it into the middle of the open concrete floor.

  As he turned, he heard, “Vick.”

  Hinojosa was standing in front of an MS-13 gang thug, who was holding a knife to her throat. He was shirtless with blue jeans and bare feet. He had a large block-lettered DIAZ across his forehead. Whether that was his name or an homage to Miguel Diaz, the East Coast leader of MS-13, Harwood didn’t know. Her entire body was blocking everything but his left eye and a fraction of his face. Hinojosa’s pistol was tucked beneath the Swiss Seat. No good options. Harwood’s pistol was slung low on his hip, like a Western gunfighter’s. His rucksack weighed on his back. The helicopter was on the way, growing louder. They knew it was for them. The attacker had no idea.

  “Venganza,” the man said.

  Revenge.

  As the man spoke, the helicopter flared over the open bay. Diaz craned his neck toward the loud machine whirring overhead. Hinojosa pulled at the man’s arm and ducked.

  Harwood drew the pistol and fired twice, clipping Diaz’s forehead, enough to make him stumble back, allow Hinojosa to spin free, and for Harwood to grab Hinojosa and race toward the SPIE rope the crew chief had dropped. There were two snap hooks about five feet apart. The special patrol insertion and extraction technique was a Marine invention. Bronson was a marine turned FBI special agent. Harwood had guessed right. He snapped Hinojosa into the first one and said, “Hold the rope!” All the while, Harwood was feeling an uneasy presence to his rear. Was Diaz dead or alive?

  He pulled the second snap hook to him and clicked himself into the SPIE rope, which he then tugged. The helicopter began lifting away slowly at first, pulling Harwood’s feet off the concrete and beginning to raise him above from the construction site.

  Diaz leapt and grabbed Harwood from behind, causing the rope to sway and slam into a side wall of concrete block. The attacker clawed his way up Harwood’s rucksack and reached around his outer tactical vest. Harwood released his hands and was suspended by the snap hook secured into the SPIE’s rope. Diaz’s thrashing caused him to lie flat until he used one hand to grasp the rope again, while reaching for his pistol with the other hand. As he spun wildly, Harwood caught a glimpse of Hinojosa looking down from five feet above, helpless.

  Diaz ripped open the Velcro tab on Harwood’s knife case and retrieved the blade. He flipped it open about the same time that Harwood had his pistol in his hand. The helicopter lifted above the future condo building, nosed over and sped south along the Potomac River. It was flying so fast that the rope, which was suspending Hinojosa, Harwood, and now Diaz, was nearly at a forty-five-degree angle beneath the helicopter.

  Harwood and Diaz were locked in an isometric stalemate. Harwood was holding the knife hand of Diaz and the pistol with his other hand, while Diaz was clutching to Harwood’s tactical vest and pressing down toward Harwood’s neck. Diaz kicked his leg up onto Harwood, who was nearly horizontal and parallel with the Potomac River gliding by beneath, causing Harwood to loosen his grip on Diaz’s wrist. Diaz’s knife hand was free and arcing toward Harwood, who blocked the move with his forearm.

  The knife missed him by a fraction, glanced off his shoulder, and bit into the SPIE rope. They free-fell from forty feet above the river into the water. Eye to eye with the crazed killer, Harwood saw the look of abject fear on Diaz’s face and figured one of two things: He was afraid of heights or he couldn’t swim. Harwood used the opening to head butt Diaz, who was now clinging onto him with both hands, and snatch the loose knife that was tumbling from Diaz’s hand. As they impacted the water, Harwood’s rucksack absorbed much of the fall. Diaz did a back flop into the dark water. While morning was just over the horizon, darkness enveloped them. Harwood tumbled through the water, feeling the weight of his rucksack as water gathered inside. He stabbed the knife into the water where Diaz had landed, thought he hit something solid a couple of times, and then did the combat water survival sidestroke.

  Surfacing, he saw nothing but river to the east and a wooded area to the west. He stroked until he hit a muddy bottom. Keeping his gaze on the water where Diaz might emerge, he felt his way up the bank and rolled onto a flat piece of ground, an animal trail. He lifted the night-vision goggle to his eye. About fifty meters out, Diaz was thrashing the water.

  Couldn’t swim. Maybe stabbed.

  He looked skyward. No helicopter. The sound of the engines had dissipated. They weren’t coming back, at least, not yet. Hinojosa had no way to communicate to the pilots and while the crew may have suspected a struggle, there was very little that they could have done other than putting them on the ground.

  Harwood turned and used the goggle to pick a path through the forest. After walking for thirty minutes, he was still in deep woods and climbing out of the river valley. The sun was beginning to nose over the horizon and he saw a small clearing with large rocks jutting up from the ground.

  Better still, after walking another hundred meters, the rocks were more prominent, some with overhangs. He chose a small, protected area and emptied his rucksack, allowing his items to dry. He cleaned and assembled his SR-25 and Sig Sauer pistol. He made sure the Blackhawk spec ops knife was clean, sharpened, and in its sheath.

  After repacking all of his gear, he improved his p
osition with camouflage and chopped away some fields of fire toward the river. The sun had risen and he was combat ready for Diaz or whatever might come his way.

  He waited, hearing the faint noise of highways and suburban life. Kids shouting at each other. School buses braking with a screech and a hiss. Mothers shouting out not to forget something. After an hour of remaining perfectly still in his sniper hide, he carefully removed his handheld global positioning system from his rucksack’s outer pocket and pressed the power button.

  He knew it was a risky move. Stone and Weathers had probably regrouped and were trying to determine his location. Whoever had unleashed the MS-13 zombies on him was assuredly looking for him, also. Whether he could trust the FBI remained to be seen. Regardless, knowing his location was crucial.